Integrity of Hardware Reviews

[burton]

I'm sure most people here read /. and saw this article posted today: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22332

So, what sites do you trust and what sites don't you trust? What about AT?

I know personally I have not trusted Tom's Hardware Guide since I read an article years ago praising a speed bump to RDRAM over DDR even though almost every benchmark showed the contrary; what GALL...

 

[markgm]

Yeah, I was wondering what sites were affected too.

 

[Acanthus]

HardOCP is the only site on my "wtf" list.

 

[spaceman]

i trust word of mouth.

 

[T3C]

I was going to post this but I was not sure how it would go over here. The guy raises some good points.

 

[Trevelyan]

I used to run a small hardware review site back in the day... and man let me tell you a lot of it is just greedy people with some alterior motive.

It really boils down to conflict of interest. The companies will send you free hardware, but they don't want you giving them a bad review on their product. Sometimes they are willing to pay you to review an item, and even if they don't say it to your face you better give a good review or you won't hear from that person again.

Honestly, I think legitmate sites need to buy hardware they review so to avoid hand-picked review samples, bias and other problems. Let them get their work money from advertisements. If their reviews are known to be honest, they'll attract more visitors. It's as simple as that.

 

[Mo0o]

I try to read as many reviews as possible on an item from large sites that get free hardware as well as reviews from smaller sites that probably bought their stuff. That plus customer reviews from ecommerce sites.

 

[T3C]

Originally posted by: Mo0o
I try to read as many reviews as possible on an item from large sites that get free hardware as well as reviews from smaller sites that probably bought their stuff. That plus customer reviews from ecommerce sites.

I am the same way. I always read multiple reviews

 

[Baked]

When I did reviews for a hardware site, I bought my own hardware, using my own money. If it's good, I tell it like it is. If it's bad, I gave it no mercy and ripped it to pieces.