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

421–430 of 723 posts

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#421

Post by p1necone »

fartcannon wrote: post #329
mrkwse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting if LMG can pull off what Linus is aiming for with the massive investment in a laboratory environment. There are huge parts of the tech market where the most critical reviewing you can find is anecdotal accounts of if the reviewer liked a product or not (or the more clinical reviews are drowned out by the anecdotal noise).

Do you trust Linus, though? He often promotes himself as without bias, but he very clearly hates Apple (except the watch). He also loves things he already understands (anything Microsoft). He's got heavy duty fanboyitis. And he's clearly someone you can buy demonstrated by his flip flopping AMD/Intel/NVidia praise. I don't think he outwardly lies (at least not in a way that matters), or anything, but he's got pretty…

> flip flopping AMD/Intel/NVidia praise

This is a silly take. Tech evolves and companies release more than one product at a time. It would be weird if LTT /didn't/ have "flip-flopping" takes on various companies.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#422

Post by Smoosh »

cush wrote: post #301
mrkwse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting if LMG can pull off what Linus is aiming for with the massive investment in a laboratory environment. There are huge parts of the tech market where the most critical reviewing you can find is anecdotal accounts of if the reviewer liked a product or not (or the more clinical reviews are drowned out by the anecdotal noise).

Phones and anything Apple are reviewed to oblivion. There are some incredible consumer product review YouTube channels out there too.. The Best one imo is project farm ( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vO3UX4oEnZI ). If you're into headphones, Crinacle's site/YT are on a completely different level than any other review site I really hope LMG does videos in these styles with their lab

I would also recommend The Torque Test Channel as very similar in approach to Project Farm.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZem9C5rWjSb0B8tV3k2EZg

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#423

Post by dangus »

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…

The worst part about Consumer Reports is that they barely test anything.

They're only useful for a specific set of popular products.

There are too many categories where the content says "sorry, we stopped testing this category, this information is old."

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#424

Post by wabain »

This article falls into the trap of conflating the Wirecutter's misapplication of filtration standards with irrelevant minutiae about which terms and diameters they cite for the filter classes. So alongside a pretty cogent description of how fine-matter filtration works by particle size, there's the claim that "a 'PM2.5 filter' … isn’t a thing," despite the PM2.5 class of fine particulate matter being the range specifically mentioned in the Ikea product description in the screenshot. A cursory search will turn up lots of results for filters which show that this is a pretty common term. Where the Wirecutter review actually goes wrong is in taking 2.5 microns as the lower bound of the particulate range, whereas it's conventionally the upper bound.

Then there's the idea that "Neither size mentioned (0.3 microns or 2.5 microns) has any relationship to either of the design specs" [the EU E12 and H13 standards]. When I google "hepa" my first hit is a US EPA page giving the specification for the most penetrating particle size of HEPA filters as 0.3 microns, rather than the 0.15 microns given in the article (from the empirical research or EU standards, I'm not sure which). This is from North America, but then, the Wirecutter is an American review site. It's worth considering this kind of (IMO) misfire in light of the article making the least charitable possible inference, that the Wirecutter deliberately set out to discredit the Ikea product because it couldn't give an affiliate link.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/what-hepa-filter

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#425

Post by highwaylights »

sampo wrote: post #267
highwaylights wrote: post #97

I have three of the Fornuftig and am very pleased with them, save for the noise being quite bothersome at the highest setting. They’ve helped quite a bit with a pollen allergy. Getting good information has been a nightmare and it’s nice to see a post calling out the utter nonsense that gets spread about HEPA and filtration, with no thoughts to diffusion. The big problem I have now is that I would like to upgrade to t…

Ikea Starkvind flow rates: From https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/starkvind-air-purifier-white-00... "Product details" and then "Other documents" gives you https://www.ikea.com/us/en/manuals/starkvind-air-purifier-wh... and there the table on page 7 gives you the flow rates. The filter is EPA12. "The particle filter is tested according to EN 1822-1 and ISO 29463-3 which corresponds to class EPA12." https://www.ikea.com/us…

I appreciate this, and thanks.

Sadly it seems like it’s essentially giving the same not-particularly-helpful stats as listed in the authors article.

I’d love some independent particle test results for it (carried out properly as described in the article of course).

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#426

Post by idk1 »

7402 wrote: post #400
idk1 wrote: post #388

Can anyone tell me what 'Contra Wirecutter' means. It's like I've gone mad, everyone seems to know what this term means, both of these words mean nothing to me and I've spoken English my entire life. You're all acting like they're two words that make perfect sense. Haha. It would be really great is someone could explain the two words to me.

Dictionary definition of contra : "against; in opposition or contrast to" So "Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier" means that it is an essay in opposition to the opinion of the Wirecutter.com website regarding the IKEA air purifier.

Oooo thank you so much! I can't believe I've never come across this word, and I love words! I thought it was a video came and that's it. I guess it's the short version of contradict?

I also think in the context of having Wirecutter, a website I've never heard of afterwards, also added to the confusion. Thanks so much!

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#427

Post by jamiek88 »

crummy wrote: post #420
fartcannon wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Are there reviewers you would recommend without any biases at all?

It’s pretty much impossible for humans to be unbiased. All we can do is work around it like with double blind experiments for example.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#428

Post by Stevvo »

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…

HDTVTest is good for TVs. The reviews are boring as they come; the same objective measurements on every TV.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#429

Post by adastra22 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #281
darzu wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube or google site:reddit.com usually yields the best actual human reviews for me. Or specific categories like America’s Test Kitchen for kitchen stuff.

100% this. YouTube's fantastic for real reviews.

Video is terrible as a medium though. Can't skim, can't grep, not trivial to index. I hate that more and more content is moving to video (or podcast) format.

Re: Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier

#430

Post by Smoosh »

throw0101a wrote: post #139
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…

> 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? I like America's Test Kitchen for kitchen-y stuff. Project Farm (on YouTube) for tools / DIY stuff perhaps.

I already mentioned it above, but repeating it here.

I would also recommend The Torque Test Channel as very similar in approach to Project Farm, maybe a bit more technical and thorough. Their focus was on impact drivers, but they have branched out into other power tools, LED lights and hand tools.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZem9C5rWjSb0B8tV3k2EZg

Post reply on HN