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Comment by BikiniPrince | Hacker News Reader

CR hasn’t completed an insightful review in ages. It isn’t even worth subscribing prior to a major purchase.

I find independent YouTubers significantly better.

To a point! There are a number of obvious non-critical flooded reviews for lots of products.

I suppose in closing CR is garbage and you have to do relevant research commiserate with how much you want to spend/care.

If only we had a review organization we could trust!

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> CR hasn’t completed an insightful review in ages. It isn’t even worth subscribing prior to a major purchase.

> I find independent YouTubers significantly better.

Could me extremely skeptical. "Independence" on YouTube is very cheap and easy to fake.

IMHO, YouTube is mainly useful for video of someone poking at a product, because for some reason retailers and manufacturers don't provide good enough media on product pages to get anywhere close to substituting for seeing something in person.

I’ve recently used their reviews for doors, roof shingles, and washing machines.

YouTube isn’t even a similar product. I assume all reviewers are paid and have no idea their methodology.

I like CR because their methods are defined and they don’t have any competing agendas (ads, sponsored posts, product placement , etc)

How would one know if Youtuber is independent? Say, I need to buy a lawnmower. How do I know which reviewers are good and which are idiots and which are paid shills? It's kinda hard to figure it on YT. If I have a specific product in mind, I can look through YT reviews of this specific one as a point of information. But if I have 100 potential lawnmowers to sort through, I won't watch every YT review for 100 products, I'd have to take a sabbatical for that. YT doesn't fill the niche.

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