I would say from my experience that a Falcon 3D and Dragonfly 36 are similar in quality actually. The 36 comes in different configurations, and configurations with brushless motor and HH gyro go for around the same price as a Falcon. The main advantage a Falcon 3D has over Walkera helis, at least in the USA, is just that Hobby Lobby sells the Falcon, and Hobby Lobby offers very good customer support. For me at least though, this didn't make up for the hassle of dealing with a low quality heli like this. If I had a local hobby shop that carried Falcon parts that might have been different.

I would say it's worthwhile to spend a couple hundred more up front and start out with a better setup like this:
http://www.heliproz.com/prodinfo.asp?number=335017COM
You'll almost certainly end up replacing most of the electronics in a cheap RTF like a Falcon or Dragonfly anyway if you stick with it that long, so it's not really going to cost you more in the long run.

If you're worried about the fact that the above is a kit rather than an RTF, consider this: a Falcon 3D or Dragonfly 36 are only nominally RTFs. In practice the assembly quality is poor enough that you really need to go over every single screw on the heli and and remove it and loctite it if it's metal on metal, and otherwise make sure it's tight. You'll also need to make sure everything is setup right, since these helis often come with serious assembly flaws out of the box. In addition, the first time you crash you'll need to reassemble it anyway. So I don't think there's all that much advantage to getting an RTF, especially one that's not even likely to actually be ready to fly. If you do a google search for "finless bob's tech room", you'll find some very nice video series showing how to properly assemble and setup a Trex 450 SE or Trex XL HDE.