It is like arguing that for free speech to work everybody has to write newspaper articles or that you personally need to be a programmer for opensource to be useful. These can be different people and for a free market (/free(dom) speech/free(dom) software) to work you need a sufficient number of qualified people.

So I wouldn't blame the consumers (btw this term always sounds like slur to me as compared to customers) for using price as a proxy. You can't expect them to get loaners, purchase testing equipment etc.. That should be tech journalists' job and then consumers can make an educated decision, which in turn ensures that price indeed is a good proxy.

Hence, blame the sorry state of tech reviews in the American market. What even are the reasonably good sites still left? I know of wirecutter (mixed), rtings, tftcentral and maybe prad.de. What are consumers supposed to base their evaluations on in your opinion?