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→Build Quality
Guitar manufacturers stake their reputation on their build quality. The bigger companies usually use a different brand name to market their cheaper, generally-lower-quality lines. For example, the big names like Fender and Gibson have Squier and Epiphone lines, respectively. That said, even the big names can produce duds. Most guitars are factory-built, many in foreign factories. Quality assurance is lacking. It's best to give any guitar you want to buy a good look over - make sure there are no chips, warping, glaring knots in the wood grain, loose parts, rattling, or any other defects.
Play the guitar all over the neck - '''make sure no frets produce rattling or mysteriously fade out instead of sustaining'''. A guitar's build quality will determine if the guitar itself has strange resonances or nulls that cause some notes to ring into overtones or fade out prematurely.
Used guitars can make for good bargains; but if you're not sure how to check if the guitar has any defects, you may want to buy a new guitar. These will have a better return policy with the store you purchased it from, plus have a 3 month - 1 year manufacturer's warranty you can honor if you later discover some non-obvious defect.