It is a fair question as to what the process would be. In my case, most but not all of the bows I have bought over the last ten years have been Mathews. In that sense a lot of the stuff is already predetermined. For instance the grip is a super high priority for me, and I really like double mount holes for my rest, with mathews I already know where I stand on these issues (keep repeating "it's all good... it's all good"
I would go into the process with a tactical objective: be as effective as I can on deer, 280 3D, or IBO 3D. With the objective in mind I would be looking at the new models to see whether they will let me do anything the old ones won't. So this year the Icon with the round wheel would be a fairly different bow, possibly for all of the above uses. I would have to figure out whether it really does something that say my C2 doesn't. The Achilles heel of my C2 strategy (seriously!) is based on the MaxCam. I shoot this bow dramaticaly better because I was able to drop down 60# while still being in the 280 range, with a much more forgiving bow. The key is the MaxCam which isn't, however, a forgiving cam. Would I be better with the round cam bow, maybe even in the higher weight (70# is what I always shot before the accident)?. This is the kind of thing I think about.
On the hunting front, I couldn't convince myself that there was any bow with a tactical advantage over the FeatherMax, in other words there is no bow that would put more deer on the ground (though this isn't true since with the inguries I could really use this bow in 60#). I therefore resolved last year to get the very best accessory package that could be conceived of. This is harder because no shop I have ever seen carries anything like the best package, nobody has all the best sights, Stabs, releases, and rests, and they won't let you try them out obviously, so though I wanted to do this, considering the cost I couldn't make up my mind. In fact I couldn't find anyone who had even one of the products I was interested in so I would have had to buy blind.
While I am generaly considering the Mathews upgrade path, I am really open to new models as well but again, often I can't find them, so actualy seeing them or trying them would be tough.
Price doesn't matter to me at all, though these days it might stop me buying the bow as soon as I would like, but I won't buy something that doesn't meet a tactical need, and if it does I don't care how much it costs. Bows are good that way, there aren't any $100,000 double guns to hunger for.