411–420 of 723 posts
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…
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Which seems intentionally nitpicky given that "HEPA" is defined and the Ikea one doesn't meet it while the others do. Therefore, "true-HEPA" almost certainly just means "HEPA", and the "true" just means "is actually HEPA" not some other special definition. The rest of the article's points are good, but this one comes across as just axe grinding.
Yeah. I'd assumed that 'true-HEPA' was a made-up term intended to trick people into thinking something is HEPA when it's actually worse. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
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Consumer Reports used to be good but it seems to have gone through change in management or something because now it is indistinguishable from the avg SEO spam site.
I gave up on Consumer Reports many, many years ago when they got caught taking kickbacks from tire manufacturers.
E12 is NOT a HEPA filter. Which is why it's called E12. HEPA starts at H13 and H14. This is right in the wikipedia page TFA links to:
> The specification used in the European Union: European Standard EN 1822-1:2009, from which ISO 29463 is derived, defines several classes of filters by their retention at the given most penetrating particle size (MPPS): Efficient Particulate Air filters (EPA), HEPA and Ultra Low Particulate Air filters (ULPA).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEPA#Specifications
So the IKEA filter is an Efficient Particulate Air filter, but not a HEPA filter.
There is nothing wrong with The Wirecutter's review. TFA's allegation that The Wirecutter dismissed the IKEA filter because they don't get an affiliate fee from IKEA is without evidence or merit. The Wirecutter does in fact recommend other IKEA products:
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-stuff-from-i...
The Wirecutter is not a perfect site, but it's where I often start my product research and it has yet to let me down.
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…
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…
Anyways, how specifically is it "highly flawed" though?
One thing that irks that shit out of me in reviews -- not normalizing or banding for cost. Measuring performance without taking into account cost is meaningless. Hat tip to (old) Tom's Hardware for being the first site I knew that did this well, with their cpu / gpu hierarchy, which attempted to rank the last 2 generations or so of product against each other. It boiled it down to two columns (Intel, AMD), with gaps w…
That said, in 2012, IKEA sold an amazing year-long-capacity-no-maintenance fiberglass German "Flimmer" filter like the ones they use over-head in their stores to keep products dust-free. That was incredible but wasn't marketed well and its replacement filters were discontinued in 2015: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/garden/sure-it-purifies-a...
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I found similar at the UK take, Which. Everything is boiled down to star ratings and then Mail Merge creates the review text. Apparently, each air purifier which can handle a large room is big, heavy and loud. And the air purifiers that score highly on being quiet have the downside that they can only handle small rooms. Oh, and they did measure the CADR, and will tell you that "this air purifier scored five stars on…
For air purifiers, if cost is no constraint, my IQAir GC has worked like a champ. The lower three speeds are reasonably quiet, and speed 6 cleans out the room in no time when my partner burns the cooking. Comes with a 10 year warranty.
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Not having bias doesn't mean not having an opinion on things. It's a review channel, it doesn't work unless he "likes" some things and "hates" others, as long as he elaborates on the /reasons/ for those opinions.
Well, no, it would work way better if he had no bias. Otherwise you have to trust that he's aware of his bias and is somehow capable of separating his opinion from reality. Otherwise how does it help anyone make a financial choice? I like the show(s). They're fun. But I don't use them to determine which CPU to buy or whatever. Their opinion changes depending on who is sponsoring them, no?