I think Wirecutter is still a decent source; they probably won't steer you too far wrong if you're not too picky. But nothing, including your trusted friends, is an all-knowing oracle if only because their tastes and priorities are probably different from yours. Certainly pre-Internet there were few enough reliable sources of recommendations--maybe some specialist magazines but even those were far from perfect.

I think you hit the nail on the head. They won't steer you far wrong, but they also may neglect excellent options. For example, they recently published a "best water bottle of 2024" list. They chose to rate Hydroflask #1 and mentioned Yeti in a brief comment about "other bottles to consider" near the bottle. No mention of Kleen Kanteen at all. Yet they do cover the current trendy options of Owala & Stanley Quencher. I don't think it's really objective -- not in the same way that rtings.com is for the electronics categories they review.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-water-bottle...

That's almost certainly true. Depending on your preferences, there are just a ton of perfectly serviceable options out there, including what you're handed at trade shows. I have some Nalgenes that are sort of the standard for hiking (and fit my water bottle parkas) and otherwise mostly random stuff I've been given.

No affiliate link = less likely to be a star pick?

That's probably a testable hypothesis, with a little screen scraping and some time.

Probably also hard to test. I was an analyst for many years and, if you generally hated on a company for reasons that you thought were valid, they were unlikely to hire you.

> or you find a trusted friend to advise you

I think there's an opportunity here for a review platform that only shows you reviews from individuals that you personally trust. "Find a trusted friend" but for the internet.

The problem with reviews from individuals (trusted friends or complete strangers), is that for major purposes they only get to deeply evaluate a single product. So they could tell you if they are happy with the fridge they bought, but they wouldn’t be able to do a detailed comparison between multiple fridges.

This will lead to you getting a product that’s good enough, but there may be a superior quality/value option that you don’t know about

Yeah, but it might be a satisficing approach. Most of us don't really need to optimize an appliance purchase, just not get screwed.

Could have been an interesting application for social networking. (Friend of a friend)^n. I’d probably trust most of my friends, and most of their friends, not to be bots. Probably want to see the links, past that.

That review platform is called "the phone", "hanging in the pub", "having a get-together".

Friendship requires regular contact anyway. We don't need somebody to intermediate that.