I don't know about cheap guitars being hard to play. I'm sure there are some still out there but nowadays there are many cheapies that are fair to good. Yamaha make a range of guitars, some under $200, that are consistently good.

Our local discount warehouse BJ's had some off brand guitars just before Xmas for about $90 each. I tried one, the action was perfect and it sounded OK.

I agree with the remarks about Seagull, excellent, great sounding solid top guitars.

I would take a good guitarist along with me to a large store and do blindfold tests starting with the cheapest they have.

Try different examples of the same model, they all vary. I remember helping a friend with a very limited budget one day. A local store had some VERY CHEAP Chinese guitars they were trying to get rid of. They were all the same model, mostly a load of crap, necks out of alignment, action all wrong, awful sound. We had to try just about every one they had but eventually we found one that was pretty fair.

Bert.