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Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

dynomight.net

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Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#151

Post by bombcar »

CharlesW wrote: post #92
hammock wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes conspiracy theories are true. They are still conspiracy theories

“A conspiracy theory is not the same as a conspiracy; instead, it refers to a hypothesized conspiracy…” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

Exactly, if they're true it's a conspiracy fact or just a conspiracy.

And even if they do NOT take kickbacks, there's no financial incentive at all to "link" to a sales page that doesn't offer affiliate links, where there is one to link. And so the best way to handle this is to not review at all products that aren't available through said sites.

Think Southwest tickets not being available from aggregators.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#152

Post by [deleted] »

daenz wrote: post #83
jeromegv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but nobody is preventing that information to be shared. When I looked for air purifier last year, there was tons of articles I saw on how to build your own. This isn't hidden, there's tons of good resources out there. I don't understand why you try to shame us for choosing to buy our own. Of course we are fortunate we can afford it. We aren't talking of a sports car here, it's few hundreds dollar, this is…

I am being polite in explaining the low-income perspective on devices like these. Looking at a device designed for low-income people who are trying to breathe healthy air and saying, essentially, "it's ugly, I would never want that" is extremely tone deaf around why it exists in the first place: because desperate people need an inexpensive solution. If you feel shame from that alternate perspective, I would suggest i…

[deleted]

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#153

Post by DeathArrow »

hypersoar wrote: post #51

The Wirecutter is a highly flawed review site, but at least it's a real one. There are vanishingly few left for general consumer products. There's WC, Consumer Reports, and what else? They've seem to have all been killed off. When I'm researching some category of product, I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing. I know we've all had the e…

Project Farm is testing a lot of things:

https://youtube.com/c/ProjectFarm

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#154

Post by bombcar »

arkitaip wrote: post #85
Saint_Genet wrote: post #3

Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but the IKEA one which they singled out as not recommended to buy is the only one in the article they don't earn a commission on when someone buys it

You know what the messed up thing about Wirecutter's affiliate marketing is? Their Amazon links are consistently broken to the point where the links don't point to products but are faulty search queries. Like, if you are going to compromise your reputation doing affiliate marketing, at least get the damn links right so I don't have to perform a Amazon search to find the actual product.

Some might say this is intentional, the whole point for the link is to corrupt your Amazon cookie so that they get credit for the (next?) purchase you make.

At least that's how I've always assumed the links work, not that you have to buy the exact product immediately.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#156

Post by syntaxing »

A bit off tangent, but Blueair purifiers was the only brand where the output air was 0 PPM2.5 during wildfire season in the Bay Area (I have the $50 uncalibrated laser PPM sensor that purpleair uses so interpret this as you want). I tried Dyson, Winix, and making a V-shape DIY purifier with a vornado fan. Nothing was able to pull the indoor air below 15 besides Blueair so I recommend it to any of my family and friends.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#157

Post by bramblerose »

etchalon wrote: post #134
jefftk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article explains it well: Here’s a thought experiment: Take a 1000 cubic feet room and a purifier that processes 100 cubic feet of air per minute. (I follow Wirecutter in using vulgar imperial units.) Assume pessimistically that all particles are the worst-case size. If you run that purifier with an E12 filter, the fraction of particles that will remain after one minute is .1 × (1-.995) + .9 = 0.9005. That’s beca…

The idea that the difference between 0.9005 and 0.90005 is "small" is … weird. The moment I read that I checked out on the rest of the authors opinions.

Why do you feel it is weird? They are both 90%, because 90% * 100% + 10% * "effectively 0%" is completely dominated by the first term.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#158

Post by jorvi »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #112
edgefield wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rtings.com is very good for certain types of products like TVs, headphones, etc.

Agreed, minus the headphones. Their headphone reviews are a joke. It's also worth noting some products have a lot of variation due to poor QC (PC monitors) and they may get an unusually good/bad unit from time to time, skewing the review.

For headphones I just use Crinacle. It’s served me well so far.

For other stuff, I usually check Wirecutter and cross-reference it with Reddit reviews.

I also have noticed that Wirecutter seems.. less qualitative (?) since they got bought by The NY Times.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#159

Post by yurodivuie »

jldugger wrote: post #91
yurodivuie wrote: post #49

Probably more aggro than necessary... Wirecutter takes H13 to be the minimum level that can be considered "HEPA" because that seems to be the "H" in "H13", per the same chart that Dynomight references in Wikipedia (though they cut off that column in their own article).

What does the H in H12 stand for then?

It's actually E12 vs H13 - there is no H12. The "E" in "E12" stands for "EPA", as opposed to "HEPA".

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#160

Post by criddell »

aiisjustanif wrote: post #143
allenu wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel lucky if I find any professional reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing I would say even Wirecutter doesn't always do this. I recall doing research on some products before and encountering a Wirecutter article and the research was essentially just what they themselves pieced together from online sources. They didn't actually try any of the products themselves (they ad…

I’m going to dissent here on this thread because I’m not seeing any references. I personally feel the quality of Wirecutter has gone down since NY Times just a bit. However, after almost a decade of reading Wirecutter they have overwhelming provided a decent “why you should trust us” section for staple consumer items. There is a good example from just today. [1] You can always say they should do more, but honestly th…

I'd love for Tim Heffernan of Wirecutter to respond to this article. It seems pretty damning and I think it hurts his credibility.
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