To my dismay some of the "professional" reviews are using their phone or some low-fi device to evaluate a set of headphone's performance.I feel your pain brother and couldn’t agree with you more. A little while back I did some research looking for some decent ‘phones for a friend and found it extremely difficult to weed through all the crap out there to find anything halfway credible. In fact, as a result I’m now starting my own head-fi review site to try to provide useful reviews coming more from an experienced audiophile perspective rather than from a headphone “hobbyist” turned blogger who struggles to convey what they’re hearing because they have little to no foundation in what good sound truly is. Sorry if that sounds arrogant or condescending, but that’s how most headphone reviews out there come across to me. (BTW, big Car & Driver fan here and point well taken on R&T — good analogy).
Anyway, I think posting what type of sound/performance characteristics you’re looking for here along with your budget might be more helpful than trying to parse through all the detritus that exists out there. FWIW.