Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

dynomight.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 723 posts

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#211

Post by wgjordan »

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…

>> They didn't actually try any of the products themselves (they admitted as much in the article).

> I’m going to dissent here on this thread because I’m not seeing any references.

OK, here's one such reference in "The Best Baby Formula" [1]:

> We didn’t do any testing for this guide, because babies have minds of their own, and it would be impossible to control for all of the variables that might make a baby prefer one formula over another.

Now there might be various reasons why actually testing the product is difficult or unnecessary to produce a helpful, well-researched review article, but there are definitely examples of this.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-baby-formula...

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#212

Post by ethbr0 »

underhill wrote: post #188
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…

I feel like the crowd-sourcing / SEOing / optimization of reviews on the internet has, for all its benefits, made everything too noisy and untrustworthy. I know myself and a lot of other people first search reddit now instead of google because it's impossible to get anything written by a real nonbiased human otherwise. For similar reasons I've used things like Yelp less and less and tried to use professionally editor…

I (about half-honestly) blame Amazon, and more recently Google Maps.

All reviewers are not created equal.

In the early days before mass-SEO, you at least got the benefit of most reviewers being authentic, even if inept.

Now, we have the worst of all possible words: mass fake reviews + a public trained to expect only amateur-level reviews.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#213

Post by armchairhacker »

irishloop wrote: post #202

I see a lot of discussion here about Wirecutter and/or Consumer Reports being untrustworthy. But I am not sure "reviews" are a solvable problem, really. The human element of perception is inherent to reviewing products. I might think something is genuinely better than you because it meets my needs better. Or because you got a bad part in yours through sheer bad luck. Or I had a migraine that day. I usually just try t…

That’s why you look at reviewers who have similar other opinions to yours, and look at pros / cons instead of the overall rating

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#214

Post by hooloovoo_zoo »

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).

The Wirecutter takes that standard to be minimum as that is the minimum necessary to be considered a HEPA filter, which the author should presumably know as that is stated in 2 articles they cited lol.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#215

Post by Youden »

GistNoesis wrote: post #138

I am no professional but air quality as been a pet peeve of mine, here is my advice. The main problem with air purifier is that they create a false sense of security while doing only part of the job, and in many cases the job can be done better by opening the windows to change the air. The step number one if you care about your air quality, is getting an air quality monitor. They are quite cheap, and should display t…

Nothing against the rest of what you say but I wouldn't recommend a "cheap" air quality monitor for CO2.

"Cheap" usually means eCO2, which isn't actually a CO2 measurement but rather an estimation based on VOC measurements. This has basically zero correlation to actual CO2 levels [0].

For CO2, you need to look at air quality monitors that cost at least $100, or which do nothing but monitor CO2. These will have real sensors in them that actually measure CO2 levels (NDIR). You should check to confirm they advertise NDIR somewhere to be sure.

You also need to be very careful with calibration. If your area has consistent low levels that don't match ambient, the calibration will be thrown off and all your readings will be garbage.

TVOC and particles don't have the same problems, there are fairly cheap sensors for them that work pretty well, it's just CO2 you have to be picky about [0].

[0]: https://jsss.copernicus.org/articles/7/373/2018/

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#217

Post by nexus7556 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #203
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…

I've always enjoyed Marques Brownlee (MKBHD)[0]. He's made a pretty lucrative career of great reviews, without selling his soul. [0] https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee

I think he is entertaining, but I don't find his reviews critical enough. He typically reads off a spec sheet and shares subjective opinions of just a few days of use. I need deeper, more critical reviews

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#218

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ReaLNero wrote: post #207
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always enjoyed Marques Brownlee (MKBHD)[0]. He's made a pretty lucrative career of great reviews, without selling his soul. [0] https://www.youtube.com/user/marquesbrownlee

He's great at getting there first with the unboxing or review with insane visuals and editing, but the content itself is very lacking. He's very heavily biased towards Apple devices, and doesn't dig deep at a technical level, preferring more subjective judgements which are difficult to compare across devices. I don't find his advice any more objective than a Reddit comment.

I tend to use reviews as a "try this door" kind of thing, and do my own research. Probably the most awesome review site that I used to rely on was DPReview[0]. I haven't really looked at that site, in the last five years, but they used to be absolutely top-shelf, and full of geek value.

I tend to be heavily Apple-biased, myself (I write native Swift software for Apple devices). Other sites tend to be heavily biased towards Intel/AMD (usually gaming review sites).

[0] https://dpreview.com

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#219

Post by ethbr0 »

thechao wrote: post #127
wgd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding "reviews written by people who have actually touched the thing they're reviewing", I'm not sure Consumer Reports deserves to be listed these days either. I bought a subscription a few months ago because I needed to buy several large appliances for my home, but all I found behind that paywall curtain was computer-generated tables of star ratings and statistics about mechanical reliability. Which is probably…

I have a service tech for appliances. I just ask him what I should buy. He usually has suggestions from all the cost-ranges. Sometimes, I buy used through him (built-in fridge); sometimes I buy new. Since I had the opportunity to buy a bunch of equipment this year (a huge power surge from my HVAC fried appliances, and bad luck): Built in fridge: GE monogram; Dish washer: anything that is quiet (below 42 dB); Dryer: a…

So much this. Find someone who does a lot of residential repairs of X. Ask a few of them for recommendations, specifically on what not to buy.

As the Farmer's Insurance jingle goes, "They know a thing, because they've seen a thing."

Every service tech I've ever asked has immediately had a "Never buy {popular brand}, because they all {have shoddy part | catastrophic design error}."

And it's night and day between what service techs all know vs what even the most detailed internet sleuthing would give you, because they actually see a representative sample size.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#220

Post by bombcar »

hackernewds wrote: post #182
bombcar wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This blew my mind. And would be highly unethical that Amazon should know, since the accounting often happens on the publisher's side

https://toolguyd.com/top-tool-deals-11122020/ has some comments on what the site owner can see, things like which links work better than others, etc. Surprisingly large amounts of info could leak without anyone really realizing it, even if everything is entirely "anonymized" there's still the total dollar amount paid out, etc.
Post reply on HN