no Bose, no Beats, no Skull Candy, no Monster or anything that is "popular" or marketed to the mainstream. If you're having to ask about headphones, then a good judge of "garbage" is any brand that people say is good.
I don't think you should ever use the word "best" when talking about audio equipment. That is a very dangerous word. Best is custom made 16-driver in ear monitor or electro static paired with a tube amp.
Here's my quick and dandy headphone selection guide.
I will narrow it down to 3 main styles for you.
Full Size or over-the-ear (Circum-aural)
Earbuds (hard shells you put in your ears, or the 1-flange silicone ones)
In-Ear-Monitor or IEMs (you probably don't know about these)
Everything is based around primary use.
Home listening = Full Size
In a quiet environment when outside isn't going to bleed sound to you, and you're not going to affect others, you use full size. They will offer you the best acoustics. Things will sound big, and you'll be able to place them around you like violin in my 12-O-Clock position, flute at my 2.
A good pair of full size headphones will trump those gimmicky 5.1 surround headseats when gaming any day of the week. If you've never heard "good headphones", go ahead, try on a pair, they will literally blow you away.
Commuting = IEMs
IEMs have the highest noise attenuation out of all styles of headphones. You would use them to block out noise of your surroundings. It's very noisy when commuting. Bussing, walking, people chattering, horrific squeal of the skytrain, these are all bad things that get in the way of you and your music. A common use of IEMs are for stage musicians so they get a properly fed mix of their own vocals as well as a mix of the backing track and their band members.
Excercise or high-traffic situations = Earbuds
Earbuds are cheap, or at least there isn't any time you're going to want to use nice ones. Use them while at the gym or while you're out jogging and hiking. Places where the cords could get yanked, they can get drenched in sweat and dust. Don't buy nice earbuds ever. Just not worth it.
Some good starting brands to look at would be BeyerDynamic, AKG, Shure, Sennheiser, Westone.
Here's my personal setup:
Commuting
Earsonic SM3 (triple driver IEMs) I went to get impressions made at an audiologist so I could get custom silicone tips. I'm running this out of a Cowon D2.
Home
BeyerDynamic DT-990 or AKG K-702, fed from an Auzentech Prelude, Foobar2000 playing FLAC (lossless files).
Please, please, please don't get suckered in by "what's popular" and "marketing gimmicks". If you've got more questions, just let me know.
Shameless Plug:
I might consider selling off my AKG-702.
Tom Lee Music - AKG ACOUSTICS - K702 PROFESSIONAL STUDIO HEADPHONES
I do a lot of soft listening and they just plain don't like it there, they crave medium to louder music, they shine there a lot better.