Snare Drums

As for the snare drum, it always used to be the case that the snare drum was the weakest link in the beginner package. It would have a steel shell with an ugly internal vertical butt-weld and turned-over bearing edges that were ragged and did not inspire confidence in the overall quality of construction.
The steel would be thin, and the chroming poor so that the sound would be dark and ringy. These might strike you as admirable sonic properties for a tom tom but they’re not so hot for a snare drum. You generally want your snare drum to be high pitched and bright with a fastish decay: a sort of short, sharp, shock.
The bottom line is it’s probably impossible to make a really good metal-shelled snare drum at this sort of price. The most recent examples are better but will never be great. The trend in any case is towards including a matching wood-shelled snare drum. These are slightly less of a problem in as much as they are less ringy with fewer nasty overtones.