Do you want to know something odd? I hate tech reviews. A lot of people find this weird because I look up reviews for everything. However, for tech I almost ignore them all. Why? Because a lot of tech reviews are awful and all of them are worthless except for forum reviews 1-2 years after the product has been out. How? I’ll explain.
First, I want to go over the importance of a review. Reviews are very important because they tell us about something before we buy it. We can find reviewers who align to our tastes and judge off of that. There used to be a game reviewer for Nintendo Power I basically aligned with. If he gave a thumbs up I tried it, down I was cautious. The same goes for music. I have a few friends if they recommend something I’ll check it out because our tastes align pretty well. Of course the issue is most reviews are pure opinions. Roger Ebert didn’t like slasher movies so he was never going to give Friday the 13th a positive review. Tech reviews are different. They’re supposed to be based on facts, but are they?
A main issue I have with tech reviews is many of them pass their opinions off like facts. You can read a review from some games website, rotten tomatoes, or watch one on YouTube for a piece of media and everyone will frame something in the term of an opinion. This is important because it lets us know they don’t hold this as absolute fact and it is their opinion so things can change. Even with this review of tech reviews I’ve referenced this is my opinion of them and this is what I find faulty with them.
“But with tech it’s not a matter of opinion! If a piece of hardware works or doesn’t work that is fact.” Yes, you are correct. THAT is a fact. For instance, if I buy something that promises to play Doom Eternal in 8k at 240 FPS on max settings and it can’t even run it at 720p30 then it is a fact the product fails to meet its advertised specs. Which will then lead to a poor review. However, if you ever look at tech reviews you can always tell which company the reviewer has a bias for once you start reading their stuff. There was a phone I was going to buy. It got shit reviews. Finally I decided to read these reviews. Every technical aspect made the phone sound amazing. It loaded X programs faster then the other phones they rated higher. Its battery lasted longer under heavy loads. It cooled down faster. So, what was the issue? It was a Huawei phone.
Looking at every other review these people made of Huawei phones was poor. Even with some great phones. They were rating budget MetroPCS phones higher then this phone. Why? Well, I did some digging. Because the phone had bezels, they didn’t like where the speakers were positioned, they didn’t like that the 3.5MM port was on the bottom of the phone, and other non-issues. They took their bias out on the phone using things that don’t matter but passing them off as facts. “Bezels looks ugly and no one wants them”. Blow me. I love bezels. “Phone has a 3.5mm why when we have bluetooh?” Etc… They would pass these off as deductions for the facts of the product rather then opinions. So you’d have a 4-5 star phone down to 1-2 over cosmetics and personal gripes listed as facts. Then you’d go to an objectively worse preforming phone and it was 4-5 stars.
Of course this issue is with some reviewers not all. So where is the big fault in tech reviews, and why I said to wait a year? Another big issue with tech reviews is they test the product out for a limited time and then tell you buy it don’t buy it. Then in a month the product sets on fire in airplanes (Samsung…). This is where my main issue with tech reviews come in. GamersNexus, a channel I love, has fallen to this issue in the past and had to retract a recommendation because they were getting slammed with questions of “This gets your seal of approval!?” What happened is they recommended a liquid cooler for AMD processors that later wound up causing them to overheat because it would get clogged. Apparently this didn’t start to happen until 5 months into the product being used. After an investigation they found their review models weren’t doing the same and requested fans send in theirs as proof. They got the proof and did an interview of it.
All good right? Well, kind of. While GamersNexus did retract and even investigate this issue they still give reviews based off of limited time usage, as do most tech reviewers. While GamersNexus has stepped up their reviewing process this will always be an issue. Unfortunately it isn’t viable to hold a review for a year or give month to month updates by constantly wasting time using the product to see how it fairs. This is why I tend to buy from brands that have proven themselves and models that have been proven. I never buy the latest greatest because that’s asking for trouble.
I remember in the 00’s when AMD was picking up. Everyone would recommend their processors because they were outperforming Intel. Then after a few months they started to match Intel then after a year and few months doing worse. Everyone I know who used AMD, myself included, were needing to replace parts much faster then Intel counter parts. While the Intel parts were objectively worse out of the starting gate, and priced much higher, in the long run they were objectively better. With my P4 from when windows XP came out lasting until Windows 7 and preforming degrading within reason compared to my friends with AMDs who were replacing them often and meeting my performance until I replaced it. “Wait you said you had a P4!” Yeah, I had to swap back because I couldn’t afford a new processor . This is actually the reason why I refuse to get a Ryzen. As amazing as they are out of the box the track record I’ve seen and had with AMD with product degrading at an alarming rate makes me cautious to try it. Now Ryzen 3 has been out for a bit and it doesn’t seem to have too much of an issue? But, I can’t tell because I see people replacing processors for new Ryzens and not caring because they’re cheap. However, I see people who have had them for a while with minimal issues. They just have to keep replacing the water pumps to keep up with cooling. Which makes me think they are failing, or the pumps are, and they are making a lot of heat due to it. No clue, while people with Intel are just reporting false numbers. So, it’s a lose lose in general this time.
Honestly, I would like for reviewers to use the product over time and keep us up to date because unless something drastic happens like the Samsung phones exploding or the water pump issue that GamersNexus addressed stuff like this never gets brought up in future reviews of products. Even the iPhone bendgate issue was left out of most reviews until later YouTube consumer reviews happened. This is why I recommend using forums for reviews and going with who has an honest track record. Someone who had a motherboard for 2 weeks doesn’t know how reliable it is, especially with wonky Windows updates, compared to someone who had it for a year and it just fell apart. Yes that happened to me. I bought a highly reviewed motherboard and then within 2 years the PCIE slots just popped off and MSI refused to RMA it.
Why would I like reviewers to do this instead of my current method of forum posts? Simply because a reviewer is supposed to have a better understanding and grasp of how to describe and compare things. They are also supposed to remain neutral, but that ain’t happening. In the end though someone who can describe why something sucks VS “It sucks” is better to me.