My solution: only read negative reviews. They're much more telling. As a bonus, they'll often kill impulse purchases, saving me money.

They’re way too negative and usually list weird one off problems or shipping issues.

The real action is 3 star reviews. Those people have really given a lot of thought to the review.

Also the reviews with pictures tend to be useful.

> They’re way too negative and usually list weird one off problems or shipping issues.

That's presumably why they said "read" the negative reviews. Obviously you don't then base your decision off negative reviews that turn out to not matter.

This is a useful trick for quickly vetting just about anything that's outside your area of expertise. Often a simple search like "X sucks" or "X is bad" can be very telling. It's a good sign when it's difficult to find well written negative reviews. Of course, there are many misguided negative reviews, but they can still help you make an informed decision.

It's not a completely foolproof solution, because competitors with dirty tactics can write fake negative reviews.

Almost no one write 3 and 4 star reviews out of spite.

I agree, sometimes the complaint is a niche problem resulting from the buyer's false expectation but, generally speaking, I've avoided buying a lot of products.

Recent example, shredders all have great 5 star reviews but only the odd negative will point out the obvious problem that cheap shredders are made cheaply and will break in a short space of time.

Unless it’s a really big ticket item I’ve given up on product research as the investment is just not worth my time. I just buy whatever Wirecutter tells me to; usually they’re not too wrong.

OMG wire cutter. Affiliate advertising once removed.

EDIT: NextDesk scandal aside, when was the last time you saw WireCutter recommend a product that did NOT offer affiliate commissions (let’s just call a spade a spade: these are kickbacks).

I don’t use WC anymore so I can’t answer that myself. I stopped using them when I saw some companies completely ignored in 2 different industries with which I’m familiar. Those companies did not have kickbacks.

Yes, they will never recommend something they can’t monetize. But they also do some basic product testing and I’ve yet to get actual crap buying their recommendation. If I’m getting something under $100 they get me a good enough solution and save me a lot of time. It’s just not worth the research cost to do better.

I guess the paid alternative is consumer reports, but I feel like they’re not noticeably better.

Have you found a good alternative to wirecutter?

I am sure there are plenty of honest reviews on the internet, tucked into enthusiast sites or on personal blogs. It's hard to find them unless you're a member of their community. Unless they review a lot of products, you have no continued relationship with them. This means you can't evaluate your opinion of their reviews (as to trustworthiness, or even just taste).

Surely anyone who devotes a lot of time and money to reviewing products is going to want to be (and deserves to be) paid. That means direct payment has to come from the customer, or the business.

The "business pays" model has an incentive to exclude businesses that don't pay, to push you towards more expensive items, and in general to get you to buy shit you don't need. But at least the reviewer has some skin in the game, since you won't continue to buy through their referral links if they recommend too many products that are too bad.

The "customer pays" model seems to solve a lot of the incentive problems, but it's always hard to get people to pay for something that others are giving out for free (even if the free ones are occasionally subpar or even harmful!)

Ultimately, I'm not really sure I see "buyer pays" review sites as terribly unfair? Surely they'll just pass the cost on to customers. Some of the businesses, like NextDesk, seem to find the process unfair. I have some sympathy for them, but the reality is that the products I've bought based on Wirecutter recommendations tend to be better. I don't have the time, or even the ability these days, to pick through search results trying to figure it out for myself.

Maybe I will give Consumer Reports a try, but is the cost of the subscription (of which I don't know the utility), and the lock-in, worth the marginal cost of missing out on great products like NextDesk? Does Consumer Reports even give more complete surveys of options than Wirecutter? Hard to say. I think I would go insane if I spent any more time than I already do looking for "truth" on the internet.

If you don't mind paying and can handle German, Stiftung Warentest is very reliable. I only wish similar organizations were more widespread.

https://www.test.de, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiftung_Warentest

In the UK there is an organisation called Which? They publish a magazine and have a paywalled site with reviews of most household products.

Their reviews are more trustable than from a regular affiliate site but a lot of products score quite well despite being mediocre at best.

I've recently had bad experiences with wirecutter's recommendations. I no longer trust them. It started a little before the NYT acquired them but the downward momentum accelerated from there.

The biggest flaw I see is their product selection process, it always involves looking at the amazon top sellers. Those are usually filled with astroturfed, paid and bribed reviews.

Honest question: have you found something better? Or do you just do all your own research now?

I haven't found anything better. It's back to my own research and conclusion. I miss the days when sorting Amazon's best selling item was the way to go, adding reddit as a keyword to the search query for best X or even sorting Newegg ratings by best. Nothing seems trustworthy anymore.

I don't mind spending the time researching things because the frustration of owning something that isn't up to usually snuff costs more time, grief and money.

All that being said, here are a few sources I still respect:

* Appliances: Consumer Reports * Kitchenware: America's Test Kitchen * Hardware: Project Farm (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2rzsm1Qi6N1X-wuOg_p0Ng/vid...) * TVs/Monitors/Audio: (https://www.rtings.com) * Gym Equipment: GarageGymReviews (https://www.garagegymreviews.com) * Laptops: (http://www.notebookreview.com)

Actually Wirecutter has gone down the toilet and is just as scammy and pay to play as everything else now.

https://www.xdesk.com/wirecutter-standing-desk-review-pay-to...

It seems like the only hope for a solution here is competition? One would assume review sites need to both be more honest, and take a smaller commission, before they gain market dominance.

I think we need this too, but I'm skeptical it would work. I'm afraid most of us don't know/trust enough people. For example, I'm considering buying a sofa from store X, but no one I know has ever bought from store X.

There's a good chance that the items you're most ignorant about are also the items your friends are most ignorant about (or at least enough of them that it'll significantly reduce the quantity of the feedback).

Also, once this became a thing, once it became monetizable, my web of trust would shrink drastically. I mean, geez, I'm even suspicious of my doctors prescriptions.

Maybe we need professional reviewers with a transparent system in place to protect against manipulation (as much as possible). Something like Consumer Reports on a larger scale.

One solution as a consumer is to buy from a place you trust. It would be nice if there was a version of Amazon that didn't have 3rd party sellers and only consisted of reputable (verified supply chain) products.

Since Amazon is not providing this, one example of a place to shop is Costco in person. Things sold by Costco are generally reliable enough. On top of that, Costco has a generous return policy so I can buy whatever I need. If it was truly unusable/broken, I can return it easily.

Part of the reason I continue to shop on boutique eCommerce sites, for lack of a better term, is that a store with a good reputation can essentially verify it's own catalogue. I know if I buy for X or Y store they will have chosen the best product for the job, because their store's reputation is built on their ability to curate good products.

In the UK we have John Lewis which is a department store with a decent reputation. OK, they are far from perfect, but their product range is curated to the point that when you search for, say, a toaster, you're not overloaded with 1000's of options and their own customer reviews seem to be quite genuine.

Anything over £100, I tend to default to John Lewis rather than amazon.

Can confirm, its a shame they stopped delivering to the EU :/

There’s no incentive to fix reviews. Amazon doesn’t gain anything neither does the company selling the product. Unless you’re willing to pay money for reviews, reviews will never factor in the consumers’ interest. People aren’t willing to pay for content.

I'm really sad that APlus (the first incarnation) never really took off. Their review system where you would ask e.g. your tech-friend for tech-recommendations, and those are then visible to any other friends (I think that's how it worked?) seemed really nice.

Is there a review system where I can see just my friends' reviews? Eg browsing for a phone and I see my buddy's review, you see your buddy's?

I have no friends.

Web of trust doesn't scale. This isn't broken because most reviewers can't be trusted. It is broken because a very very few actors are abusing these systems. As someone above pointed out, Amazon can fix this. It isn't a hard problem. The issue is, their incentives are not aligned with fixing it.

Google tried this in the Play Store. People hated it because it was super creepy.