Three Great Product Review Sites
I've been doing a lot of purchasing because of the new apartment. I'm pretty meticulous about researching items before I buy. I do this for everything from books to washing machines, and I've come up with a few sites that I consistently rely on when I'm about to lay down cash for an item. I thought I would share my most-travelled areas for reviews.
CNET
Looking for software or electronics or anything gadget-related? Go over to CNET to see what they have to say. CNET has professional reviewers who test and rate the products in a lab or 'natural' environment, and provide both written and video reviews. They also do great comparisons--whether of different cell phones or new Roomba generations. CNET shows it's WEB 2.0 capabilities by allowing its users to review, which often give you some real-world experiences.
Epinions
Epinions isn't as limited as CNET, in that it reviews just about everything. They don't have a professional review staff, but they have an extensive data base of reviews. The front page for any product is a list of stores, which I find a bit annoying (and rather gauche) but there is a link for both reviews ("View Reviews") and specifications ("View Details"), which is also helpful. I have no idea where they get the specifications from, but I've found them to be amazingly detailed. As with any review page, the reviewers often go off on tangents, but I've found it helpful to compare the problems people have had with products, and see if there are any glaring and troublesome patterns.
Amazon
I love Amazon. This is, of course, one of the few online businesses that survived and flourished after the first internet boom. Amazon started out as a bookstore, and obviously exploded from there. I don't know anything you can't buy, now.
Amazon is an excellent source for a lot of product information. It flourished because it successfully transformed into the most comprehensive WEB 2.0 product-based company out there. It supplies professional reviews on products, as well as hosts one of the best, in fact probably the best, user-based review systems. The key to their success, obviously, is the number of users. Hundreds of thousands of people review on Amazon, more than that read the reviews, and their ranking system helps good reviews rise to the top (that's a subjective and contentious statement, of course, but I usually find the top reviews to be helpful). The "lists" are often useful, or at least humorous, too, and while it's not exactly a review, and it took me a long time to try it, I actually enjoy the ability to personalize Amazon. I have entered a large number of books that I like into my "I OWN" folder, and it does a damn good job of bringing up books that I might like to read.
That's it. No big surprises for many, I'm sure, I just thought I would toss them out there.
1 comments:
Here's a few tips I've found useful when looking at review sites.
1. Don't just look at the star ratings. Read the reviews. There's a couple of reasons why this is a good idea. First, poor ratings may be because of a feature that's unimportant to you, but needed by the reviewer. Second, you can get a better idea of what it's like to actually live with the product.
2. Numbers matter. One guy giving something a great (or poor) review doesn't really matter. Twenty people doing the same thing is more valid.
3. Read critically. Once I was looking at some reviews that were all either very poor or very good. While reading, I noticed that the very good reviews all had the same writing style, and in fact made the same typos and misspellings. It was pretty obvious that the company had tried to weight the reviews in their favor. Once I discounted those, there was no way I was buying the product.
Also, weight your judgment toward reviews that tell both the good and bad. "This sucks!!!" isn't helpful.
4. Write your own reviews. It doesn't take long, and it will help someone else make a wise purchasing decision.
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