Hardware Reviews - Who do you trust?

[Attila the Bun]

When did my first build a little while ago the advice from the HEXUS community was a real boon as it helped to confirm or contradict opinions expressed by "Expert" reviewers.

As a build newbie it was sometimes difficult for me to differentiate between truely objective accurate reviews and those written by someone who only knows all the right words and stock phrases and is essentially just trying to sell you something.

Are there any sites out there that you always check before purchasing?

HEXUS allows anyone to comment and challenge their reviews which suggests to me that they attempt to give an unbiased view but currently I don't know whether or not their benchmark testing of new GPUs, for example, is fair and accurate.

When I was researching my new case I found a great review which convinced me to buy it and I'm pleased to say that I agree with all of the technical points raised which means I will use them again because I felt they were being objective.

So...who you go to first for hardware reviews and why?

[scaryjim]

tbh, I don't trust any *one* review site. The problem is that within a product you'll get natural variation, and each review site only gets a single sample to test, so you can't extrapolate for the whole lot based on that one sample.

That said, I usually come to Hexus first, because I like the writing style of the reviewers and they seem to test for more real world scenarios than a lot of other sites. Add to that the responsiveness of the Hexus staff if you raise any questions or concerns about a review (for instance, look at my comments on the recent GT430 review and the willingness of Tarinder to enter into a dialogue about the testing) and you get a slightly more rounded service than I think a lot of other sites offer. I certainly don't think Hexus reviews are perfect (again, see my comments on the GT430 ), but I feel that if I'm not happy with a review I can ask questions and I'll get a prompt response from the actual reviewer - that's very good for building confidence in a site.

Otherwise, if I'm genuinely thinking about buying a product (probably because it got a very favourable Hexus review ) I'll hit google and read as many reviews as I can find: in general it's best to get as many impressions as you can about a product.

If I can't find many reviews for a product, or I'm looking at a product that is either specialist (e.g. watercooling kit) or generally very poorly reviewed (I'm thinking PSUs and fans, that very few sites review properly "Oooh, the blades spin, this is a brilliant fan!") I'll jump on here and ask if anyone's seen any good reviews - I've got an appalling memory so can never remember the names of the sites that are good for those items

[HalloweenJack]

to add on what jim has said , its also sad to see that some review sites have an agenda or obvious bias , either amd or intel or nvidia , so reading a broad range of reviews is the best option , saying that finding a review can be quite challenging at times *cough* 980a chipset*cough*

[Rob_B]

I trust scaryjim & cat-the-fifth, nuff said

[redddraggon]

I couldn't find one decent "professional" review when I was looking at getting a new monitor a couple of weeks ago.

I was looking for a LCD 24" under £200, so I looked through Scan and ebuyer at screens I fancied the look of and then looked up reviews on google. Every review I looked at for monitors I liked the look of said that that monitor was substandard compared to most other monitors. Most reviews then offered suggestions of better "similarly priced" monitors to get instead. Most of the recommended monitors were twice the price, in my books twice the price is not "similarly priced". In the end I took a risk and got a Samsung that had some negative issues, and I can't see what they are going on about, however a year ago I got an LG that had pretty much positive "professional" reviews and I don't rate it at all. I think when you are buying "lowish end" stuff, "professional" reviews are biased because they often review high end stuff too, and even if they try not to, a small element of negativity does seem to creep into reviews about low end stuff - it's obvious that low end stuff is likely to be poorer performing, but not everyone can afford high end.

I try to get a mix of user and professional reviews. Often with user reviews though, you get the people who buy rubbish and justify the purchase to themselves by giving glowing reports and then you get the out of proportion negative reviews - a lot of people only speak up when something is wrong and make a big noise, while the huge majority with no issues stay silent.


So I take most reviews with a pinch of salt. On the whole I've not had too many issues with Hexus reviews, but they don't often seem to review the stuff I'm interested in.

[Attila the Bun]

...look at my comments on the recent GT430 review...

Oddly enough it was those comments that got me thinking on this subject. HEXUS seems to cover a lot of ground and will be one of the first places I choose when looking for a review but I wondered if there are any "Specialist" reviewers that have there own sites. When I say specialist I mean someone who looks at one or 2 componants that they have a deep knowledge of as opposed to "Generalist" reviews that have a stab at anything.

[scaryjim]

I trust scaryjim & cat-the-fifth, nuff said

Awwww, thanks dude I really appreciate that

EDIT: btw, I should point out that while I work in IT and did run my own IT consultancy for a while, I'm not a hardware expert. I try to keep up with the current state of play, but I'm really just an enthusiastic amateur like the rest of you. Don't take all the rubbish I spout as gospel

[Queelis]

Oddly enough it was those comments that got me thinking on this subject. HEXUS seems to cover a lot of ground and will be one of the first places I choose when looking for a review but I wondered if there are any "Specialist" reviewers that have there own sites. When I say specialist I mean someone who looks at one or 2 componants that they have a deep knowledge of as opposed to "Generalist" reviews that have a stab at anything.

JonnyGuru - PSU specialists. They run very demanding tests for PSUs.

SPCR - fans, coolers, PSUs.

XbitLabs - all round comprehensive and knowledgeable reviews. They used to do brilliant reviews on monitors, but haven't seen those for a while.

Several of my liked sites

[Terbinator]

No love for Anandtech ?

[jim]

Personally, would second a lot of what Queelis said.

SPCR only for fans
JonnyGuru only for PSUs
Anandtech only for SSDs

All other PC components I'm not too picky, but those ones I think are harder to analyse than most others, so it takes someone who's prepared to go the extra mile.

[Rob_B]

Awwww, thanks dude I really appreciate that

EDIT: btw, I should point out that while I work in IT and did run my own IT consultancy for a while, I'm not a hardware expert. I try to keep up with the current state of play, but I'm really just an enthusiastic amateur like the rest of you. Don't take all the rubbish I spout as gospel

well you (and snootyjim I think, you're the same person yeah?) seem to offer good advice so its the forum I trust really, people are happy to discuss things in a reasonably sensible and knowledgeable manner
I can't keep up to speed to be honest!

As for the OP, I don't 'trust' many sites (even HEXUS!) as there can be so many variations in testing I like to get a few opinions.

[nibbler]

Basically you ask a question and you get a very enthusiastic response from Cat within an hour and with various hyperlinks with rubric pertaining to each hyperlink. Can't ask for much more than that. Encyclopaedic knowledge goes a long way on tech forums

[Pob255]

Things vary from reviewer to reviewer and which thing you're looking for, often a website or magazine will have different reviews and opinion can vary greatly between them.

I agree with
SPCR for fans
JonnyGuru for PSUs
Anandtech for SSDs

I'll add
Hardware Canucks for case reviews
Clunk.org for motherboards and other odds and ends (Clunk used to hang around hear alot before he started his own forum up)

But generally I'll always look at multiple reviews of anything.

Oh and if you take review site reviews with a pinch of salt, then take retail site user review's with a shovel of salt.
I still remember the one user giving a low end 19" lcd a rave 5 star review, saying how much better it was than his old 15" CRT
Forum user reviews are better, generally more indepth and you often have a far better grasp of the users level of knowledge.

Finally I treat review from the "gadget show" with the utter contempt they deserve.

EDIT: almost forgot the wonderfull game reviews of Zero Punctuation

[DWhitley]

A few years ago, the company I was working for replaced all the computers in one go. The IT engineer positioned them all side-by-side for ease of setting up. I was struck by how different the monitors looked - all Samsung CRTs, same model.

This isn't a dig at Samsung and was probably typical of CRTs but I've been very distrustful of reviews based on single samples ever since.

My policy - don't buy anything as soon as it appears, read several reviews AND PARTICULARLY, read the forums for other people's experiences (bearing in mind that people with problems are more likely to post than people who are satisfied).

[jim]

Yeah, Clunk does excellent motherboard reviews. Very detailed, loads of info there. It certainly isn't my only site for motherboards though, as there are just way too many out there for any one site to get a good handle on.

[GheeTsar]

Agree with what's already posted, but I also check Bit Tech too for their view too.