What I personally do is, when I need some hardware I go to a local hardware shop for professionals and ask/buy from them. I am probably not getting the best deal, but it's better than no deal whatsoever or exhausting myself searching for a solution, or buying something in the internet that is not worth it.
I've done this succesfully for thousends of items. This is a lot of time and headaches I did not have to endure in front of my PC.
If I was him I would look for some distributor or just go where these laser printers are used and ask.
A phone call is more useful than a search engine.
You are a little naïve if you think that will work with IT (or any electronics).
The IT industry is a box-shifting industry. It resolves solely and exclusively around the world of sales targets and sales promotions. Anyone who tells you otherwise is not telling the truth.
For example, an IT reseller is not "Microsoft Gold" (or similar for other brands) because they are awesome and always put the customer first. No, they are "Gold" because they've hit the sales targets (sure there are other "requirements" such as a minimum number of trained staff, but "requirement" number one is ALWAYS hitting the sales targets.)
So if you walk into your local shop, more likely the advice you get will be based on a combination of:
1) If they keep stock, what they have in stock
2) What the manufacturer promotion of the day is and/or if they need a push to get over the line with some manufacturer's targetsDepends what you're buying.
If its a highly commoditised product like an average PC then it basically doesn't matter. Most commodity PCs are (basically) identical and its largely a case of "you get what you pay for", so your budget will do most of the dictating on what your outcome will be.
If its something more niche or more expensive (e.g mid-range/high-end commodity servers), then you've got two alternatives:
1) If you've got a group of trustworthy friends who either work in tech or are "techies" then the old-school word-of-mouth to find yourself a trustworthy reseller (there are some truly independent resellers out there, but they are a rare species, especially in places like the US or Europe).
2) As you say, do your own homework via niche forums / reddit / youtube videos / slack channels / discord / whatever you prefer. Remember that the goal here is not necessarily to know exactly what you are buying, but to make yourself an "informed consumer" so at least you know broadly what your options are.
I don't think that I would get good buying advice that way. E.g. I was looking at eink Android tablets. The information I got from reddit, HN and youtube reviews was so niche that I'd have been suprised if a random electronics store salesman would have had it.
Their website is absolutely awful though: https://www.cetronic.es/
And sadly, a lot of companies which have built up a stellar reputation over the years, at some point turn to cutting cost while milking their reputation into the ground.
The top non-ad article I get on DDG is a top-10 article that includes 5 lasers, 1 LED printer: Canon MF741Cdw, Brother HL-L8360CDWT, HP M182, HP M479fdn, Brother MFC-L3710CW (LED), HP M404dn.
These generated spam contents are indeed problematic, but if done correctly, should contain zero printer anyway.
For example, it could be linked to accounts, and dishonest accounts get removed, together with all their votes. Or the votes are kept, but because they're so different from real people's votes, they only count for the search results shown to other bots and spammers.
And at the very least, your own votes should override anyone else's votes, so for regular users who actively vote, the search results will still be close to what they want.
I'm also thinking about classifying results by different contexts. A page might be very relevant in one context, and not at all in another. But do let users control those contexts.
Except it doesn't help any single bit because the top result it's exactly the same "smallbiztrends.com" that was mentioned in a rant.
Russian Yandex is not any different than Google because their primary income is exactly the same: ads.
I tried with "laser printer", and the results were simply PERFECT.
Now, this may depend on one's location, but for me (here in Europe) it works perfectly well (and I'm not Russian), I just ignore the site language, since the results are mostly English anyway.
(An earlier version of this comment listed the actual results and commented separately on each. Unfortunately, while trying to refresh one of the result pages which hung without displaying any actual content I accidentally refreshed the HN "Add Comment" page, which threw away everything I'd written, so what you get is the summary above. Sorry.)
I got (for UK/English settings)
Google: 5 Ads followed by https://smallbiztrends.com https://www.printerland.co.uk
DDG: 1 Ads followed by: https://plumbaroakland.com https://smallbiztrends.com
>top result is for https://foodisforfuel.com
Just looking at the domain it already looks like a massive failure in results. Clicking into the site it looks like a content farm. The top articles are:
Do Justin Boots Run True to Size?
Air Duct Cleaning Services in San Antonio
Where to Find a Fireworks Store in Chicago
The Advantages of Being a Social Entrepreneur
Why You Should Choose a Cannabis SEO Agency
And I checked: DuckDuckGo has a different top result, but the same problem: an article about top 10 laser printers that contains only ink jet printers. These are crap articles that lie intentionally and search engines should filter them out.