Looking for some general food opinions!

So this is less for my personal use (since Shylo is going to be going full raw eventually), but while I was at work today and going through the cat food section I couldn't wonder what you guys think of some of the brands that are on the shelf of big-box pet stores. I know a lot of them vary from formula to formula, but I'm just going to list a few of the "upper end" foods that are marketed as being a better quality in the hopes that I can get a general consensus on either a), this is a good/ok food to recommend or b), this food is not that great/is probably overpriced for what you get.

In particular I was looking over Avoderm, Halo, Solid Gold, Natural Balance, and Canidae... these are all brands that we get told are really great & high quality, but I don't see them mentioned that often on here so it's got me curious. If you leave an opinion or personal experience you can specify which line (regular vs grain free, etc) you're referring to! I've learned a lot skimming through these forums already but I'm always looking to learn more, naturally.

We have some kidney failure cats, so unfortunately all the cats in the house are eating Science Diet KD (because you can't separate the kidney cats from the non-kidney cats). But, before that we favored Wellness brand, and also Paul Newman canned food. We are not up on which brands are the "best," just what seemed to be higher quality (not cheap with creepy by-products), available, and what the cats would eat. YMMV.

I tried Avoderm once before. It was a shredded chicken formula that had a very strange bright pink color and a very off-putting smell. My cat refused to eat it.

There are  lot of high end bransd of canned food out there now. I haven't gone to the pet store in awhile but the last time I went there were at least 3 new canned food brands. Personally, I feed the brand I'm most comfortable with and my cats will eat.

I personally feed Halo, dry and wet, which my cat loves, and I like the ingredients as well so it's a win-win For Halo, the dry is the sensitive stomach Turkey (not grain free, which poor kitty can't seem to handle), and then a variety of Halo wet which is grain free. I also feed other wet foods including: Wellness, and Nature's Variety, which I switch up and rotate every other day. I've tried other brands, but our cat didn't seem to really like any of them. These 3 brands are the ones she gobbles down and licks the plate clean

Honestly I think it gets to a point where there are several foods out there, that are "the best" or "top brands" because they're all making the same product, but their ingredients are listed a little differently. However that's just my opinion. 

The cats and I like nutro natural choice chunky chicken loaf or turkey loaf (pate with little chunks), pride by instinct rock star rabbit (minced in gravy) merrick duck pate (has carageen) so I rotate every 7 days, weruva or soulistic or cats in the kitchen (all 3 are weruva brands) chicken or duck flavors. Weruva are all shreds in gravy. Tiki cat is also shreds no carageen.The cats like daily rotated brands, textures and proteins. I like to avoid grains, carbs, by products and carageen. I feed no dry.

Excellent, thanks for the input everyone. I haven't tried much with my cat mostly because he's new to wet-food world (and we're going to go mostly raw anyway)... we sell a fair amount of most of the brands I mentioned (except maybe Solid Gold, but we don't carry a huge variety of that). There are a handful of regular customers that buy Avoderm consistently, but pretty much all of the flavors (the ones we have in the store at least) have chicken in them, which makes it difficult to recommend for cats with sensitivities. I've checked out the Newman's Own occasionally when I skim through the pet aisle at the grocery store, for the price the ingredients actually seem fairly good.

There's a smaller chain pet store five or ten minutes up the road that carries more natural foods, they have Tiki Cat and Weruva and a handful of other brands that are mentioned a lot on here for being particularly good... totally wish we could get them in the big-box stores hahaha. Making them more accessible would make it easier to teach pet owners on proper nutrition.