511–520 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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I actually subscribe to Which a UK consumer reports guide. And mostly it's kind of like subscribing to the Guardian newspaper - putting a few quid where my shrivelled liberal conscience used to sit. Oddly there is a episode on this on BBC podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-bottom-line/id2643... This podcast is not the best (it's often too lightweight and too frightened to dig deep, or the format is w…
"I actually subscribe to Which a UK consumer reports guide." I used to too, for quite a few years. However, their IT related reviews boiled down to "Windows PC: Good, Apple: Pretty, Linux and Open Source: Not on my watch". A Consumer Forum "for good" completely ignores Open Source - why? Personally I think it is down to a lack of imagination rather than anything politically motivated. I did find many of their reviews…
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…
choice.com.au (Australian context, Aus version of consumer reports) Their reviews just seem to miss the mark sometimes, but at least you can count on the fact its an honest take so you can kind of pick specific facts from the reviews and take them as true, maybe don't rely on their overall recommendations though. funded through magazine/web subscritoions
rtings.com - tech stuff, detailed and with a good table tool for comparison. funded through subscriptions
notebookcheck.com - funded by ads, but does a very good job of highly detailed and consistent reviews. same as choice where you don't necessarily follow their recommendation, but they give you lots of information that you can compare. Their model is a red flag, but my impression is of general trustworthiness.
I subscribe to choice and rtings to support them because honest brokers are so rare in this space.
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Any TV is stupid if you don’t connect it to the Internet.
I haven't bought a TV in about ten years and I've started shopping recently, knowing I'll probably have to get one soon. What I'm interested in, knowing I'll probably have to do this (smart TV with no internet), is what the out-of-box experience is without internet. Will it have preloaded ads that will never change because it can't download new ones? Will there be huge gray boxes where the ads should be in the UI? Wi…
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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'm inclined to debunk this debunking. To be clear, I do think that Wirecutter has problems. I don't like their practice of affiliate-linking. I think a review company should avoid even the "appearance of evil". But more importantly, their practices seem spotty: they tend to test only a relatively small number of models, which may not accurately reflect the market. But I think this article, while it does present a lo…
The authors point is that if it takes 3 min to clean the room vs 1 min to clean the room, there’s essentially no difference. The efficiency just translates into time, and hardly much at that. Both will clean the room.
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I'm hopeful for LMG's lab too. It's still a bit of a gamble, but from the sound of it the company is set up such that they can review products in an objective, data-backed way and tank any blowback from manufacturers that occurs as a result. It's much more focused on enthusiast computer hardware, but Gamers Nexus[0] is doing good things in this space too. Their style is much more dry and data-dense than LMG's though,…
I appreciate the depth of gamer’s nexus, but their videos are like watching someone read an Anandtech breakdown.
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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Wirecutter's "business team" won't let their "editorial team" review the new iterations of the NextDesk product because if their "unbiased recommendation" is NextDesk, revenue will go down. The CEO was explicit in his email that he looks to maximise revenue on the standing desks page (and by implication, every other page on the site). The "business team" was explicit - the editorial team doesn't act directly, they ca…
Eight years ago, right? Are they refusing now? (Genuinely curious if you've got up-to-date info. If they are terribly biased I want to know it, so I can downgrade my trust, which is why I upvoted the OP about the air purifier.) Also, it's not really clear to me that "independently review" has to mean "we completely isolate any business-related decision-making from editorial functions" as Nextgrid seems to assume.