Fram is one of the few companies I can think of that have a tiered offering for air filters. Most others just have a one-n-done approach.
There are some various articles out there, often accompanied by rather unscientifically conducted "study", which might give one a false sense of something being "better". I prefer to rely on the UOA; it will tell me if the air filter is doing a decent job. And generally, just about any brand name will suffice well.
There are some studies which do go in-depth and have trustworthy data; of note is the Donaldson "Total Filtration" one (SAE 952557). Yes - it's an older study, but it's one of the better ones and nothing has surpassed it that I'm aware of in recent years. It studies the cumulative effects of air filter, oil filter, fuel filter on overall engine health. The greatest contributor to wear, by far, is silica ingestion. Hence, the greatest effect one can have to improve engine life is a good air filter. But it does not have to be a super-duper-premium filter; just a decent one. And the greatest influence on ingested contamination (damage from silica) is the environment; how dirty is the air you operate in? If you're in a typical urban/suburban lifestyle, the air around you is fairly clean. If you run in the dusty fields of a large farm or mining operation, the air is much dirtier. Further, changing the air filter too often is a major contributor to increased engine wear. It truly is correct to say that you should leave your air filter in place and not change it often. Even the OEM schedules for air filters are too frequent, but they must post something as an average estimate, and so they defer to the frequent change to avoid heavy ingestion concerns. A better way to discern AF change intervals is to use a typical vacuum gauge; easily bought via many sources. I've installed one in my truck and my Taurus. I no longer have to guess; I know when to change filters (and it appears to be very infrequent at current indications).
Also, pretty much any car/truck from the last few decades is run via monitored fuel injection, and so the air/fuel ratio is always adjusted by the PCM (gas engines for sure, and even some diesels). So the fear of running rich (not enough air due to filter plugging) is a VERY rare occurrence.
You can seek out the "best" (your definition applies here), but frankly I doubt you'd see much if any difference in wear rates, depending upon where you live. My advice is to pick an OEM style filter (style means media construction, not brand) from any brand you loke, and then keep it in place for about 2x the OEM FCI, if you live in a reasonably clean environment.
If you have to just know what is "best", then you'll have to prove it out. You'll have to do a long series of UOAs, tracking the Si levels for each choice. Then study the data with statistical analysis. It will take 30 UOAs of each choice to make a fair and accurate prediction. So you can see the challenge here; time and money preclude this ...
Or, just trust the overall anecdotal evidence of a bazillion engines around the world. Most engines can run just fine for 250k+ miles using "normal" filters. Sure, you can drive a car further than that, and you can probably use normal filters for that, also. The things that will likely cause the vehicle to leave your possession are either being wrecked, rusted to death, or traded out via sheer boredom with the vehicle; these will happen long before your engine will die from air filter selection. Obviously, very low quality filters will compromise the effects I speak of. But decent brand name filters will carry the vehicle a very far distance, especially if you don't change it too frequently.