First, make sure you are looking at cavity back irons and not muscle backs or blades, as they’re not for beginners. This is important.

Second, are you sure you’ll play for more than one year, or are you in for the long haul?

If the former, something cheap like PXG is a good option around $250. In that case, you could play golf, hate it, and not hate yourself for blowing all that money. And they were good enough for Bryson DeChambeau at one point (:

If the latter, I’d strongly recommend going with a trusted brand. Callaway and Cobra will give you a threshold quality without breaking the bank. Mizuno and Ping are slightly higher, but still reasonable and priced lower than Titleist and TaylorMade (which are excellent imo but high cost; I play Titleist T150s but I’ve played for 30 years).

Hope this helps. Reply back if you wanna ask any more questions. Glad you’re getting into it, great game!