I will argue that looking good is subjective because their form factor looks a lot like a big sidekick which has been around since 2002. As for good hardware, they have the same hardware as Nexus One which has been available since the beginning of this year.

To draw your analogy, its like two cars being released 4 months apart, the new one looks hideously ugly with same speed as the old one - but getting raving positive reviews (without anyone even touching or driving it).

I am pretty confident that these are paid posts and staged leaks.

If you hang around these gadget blogs enough, you'll notice that anything new will get a few comments saying "Ooooh this looks hot, it's just what I've been waiting for! I'm gonna replace my xxx device with this as soon as it comes out." ... Good for them, but it doesn't correlate at all with actual market success.

As you just said. It's subjective. What doesn't look impressive for you, may look impressive for others.