Things may be different now, but I remember 12 years ago when I bought my acoustic, my main concern was the action. I was shopping in your price range.

To me there is nothing worse than playing an acoustic with high or badly set action. If it's hard for me to play, I'm not going to play it...I don't care if it sounds like angels singing! The action on the various models I tried varied considerably. I had tried Fender, Gibson, and Yamaha - they were all hard for me to play. There was an Ibanez and a Seagull that were comfortable for me...I went with the Seagull, but I could have done just as well with the Ibanez.

Unfortunately, you can't really determine how the action feels unless you hold the guitar in your hands.

Is the action consistent within a brand?

Especially as a beginner, I think comfort should trump any sound characteristics. There's nothing worse than learning to play on something that hurts to play, especially when it doesn't need to be that way. As a kid, I had a cheapo guitar I learned on...and it was horrible :-)!!