You've spotted the problem! The clear thing about audio is that technical excellence does NOT mean it sounds 'nicer' - it sounds more or less to our individual tastes. I've got a few mics that I really don't like, and never use, but out of my favourites, their 'rating', as in my personal one, depends on their distortion of the actual sound being perceived in a positive way. So those with response peaks and troughs that react favourably to the sound source get talked about as being good, and the reverse - where their performance on a source is destructive, get categories as poor.
I got slammed on a forum for liking a Samson cheap condenser. The reason? Snob value. It's pocket money price compared to the studio favourites, and a pittance compared to the boutique microphones that go for 4 or 5 time the price of something professional in quality and standard.
Add in our different hearing and our different studios and the playing field is nowhere near flat. My favourite and most versatile mics are the AKG 414. My current pair never get put away. The Shure SM7B never comes out of its box. However, in my studio at the moment is a counterfeit Shure I deliberately bought to check out how dreadful it was, and discovered it actually sounded quite nice. It does not sound like the genuine article, but as a mic, it's fine.
I'm old, set in my ways and pretty unshakable in my opinions, and I think mics are like guitars. As long as they play OK, then the differences are personal. Who cares if they have a solid maple top, or of it's veneer, or hell - even a photograph covered in varnish. You pick it up and play, and it sounds just right - then it is right. If it's an Epiphone and not a Gibson, or a Mexican Squier or a Fender Strat - does it matter? We don't use totally flat measurement microphones for recording do we? Science suggests that the flattest most accurate mics capture the truth - trouble is, we don't want truth, we want 'character'. Maybe just careful eq could do the same thing?
If you like the sound of the cheap mic, buy it and be happy - nobody will ever criticise the sound of a track for using a cheap mic, until you tell people you used a cheap mic, THEN they point out the problems. Nobody ever says the vocal was spoiled by using a cheap mic, in case it was a U87, and you just liked the eq you used.
How many people have ever spent two grand on a mic then said "you know, I like the sound of my SM57 better?" Your brain won't let you! You will find the excuse, rationalise the thing you didn't like - because the two grand mic MUST be better, it was two grand!