I highly recommend a 30 Day trial subscription on Consumer Reports (CR) online if you're looking to buy a big ticket item. You can put in your CC# & other details and get free 30 day access to CR testing of a lot of products. Then cancel before the 30 days are up. You may end up paying a little more for a top notch product, but you can be assured if CR reviewed it, you're getting what you pay for.
Maybe there's a market for verified customer reviews of popular items - even ones that aren't big ticket. Consumer Reports might grow to cover additional items and perhaps develop a browser extension for subscribers who gain access to trusted reviews.
If consumer report (or the more general, independent testing lab) is the solution, I wonder if Amazon should buy them or build their own.
A trusted source of reviews has proved itself successful with the USB-C cable example and Benson from Google verifying all of them
I do reviews for my startup, the fake reviews is a big problem. My solution has been to collect more data. I'm using twitter to collect millions of comments about web hosting companies and built a review site around it. (https://reviewsignal.com) I think writing a 'review' can be a strange behavior, listening to people talking organically and analyzing that seems more accurate. Also there's more data that way.
The sellers are not really to blame here though.
Often they are just Chinese-speaking American entrepreneurs. The problem is the lack of IP protection in China. And lack of any interest in branding and brand differentiation, hence you got "brands" that sounds like they were picked via /dev/rand. And of course everything is probably manufactured in the same 3 or 4 factories.
Lev Andropov: It's stuck, yes?
Watts: Back off! You don't know the components!
Lev Andropov: [annoyed] Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!!!
Currently you have a bevvy of brands for China sourced goods. The brands are obviously made up without much thought. Something like "Scarvast" trekking pole. "Vargus" flashlights, "Zukil" wireless speakers. "Brikor" dehumidifiers.
And often times the same seller will have multiple "brands". This is what makes it unreliable and untrustworthy. It's like they live A/B test products on AMZ.