going to assume that you have alienware at the bottom of that list?
and na, there's still a difference between Asus and Acer and HP and Dell, there's negative things that can be said about the consumer grade of each but so far Asus have been rather reliable.
Yes, you're pretty much paying for the name when you buy alienware, iirc they use cheap parts, and you can buy everything and put it together yourself for much much cheaper price on top of having more guarantees and control of your system.
I love Asus, I have used their mother boards for 10 years now and have never had an issue with them. I just finished picking up a monitor by them just a week ago, currently no problems~
Other companies that I find to be reliable are Samsung and EVGA. Never had problems with HP though the prices of some are eh at times.