Hacker News Reader

Comment by johno215 | Hacker News Reader

I like seeing an in-depth review.

These days it feels like all the major sites rush out the reviews right before launch day with less than a day of actually testing being done. The reviews often sound like just a re-hash of the press release specs.

View on HN

I, as I assume most on this site, only considers Anandtech the one true tech product reviewer on the web. The only other equal is John Siracusa's review of the latest Mac OS release.

Exactly. Which is why the only time I quote a review in a post is when it's one from Anandtech. It takes a solid hour and a little more for me to go through their reviews and it's always a pleasure because one comes out wiser at the end of it. In this review, I really enjoyed reading the A5 architecture and the optics section, it was interesting that they bothered to dig out where the optics might be sourced from (Genius Opt.).

Anandtech does awesome in-depth reviews but most of the stuff they are talking about is not relevant to the average consumer in the slightest. If other sites were all doing that many would not be relevant to their readers interests.

I agree that Anandtech serves a niche market, but I feel like most other review sites kind of serve the same niche, but more poorly. What I mean is that a gadget reviewer's experience is so far different from a normal consumer's as to be almost informationless. Gadget reviewers are always looking at new things, never have to use the old things for very long, and their use is probably not representative of most people's use. (For example, when reviewing an Android phone, why does it matter that the UI is different from another Android phone? This only matters for a gadget reviewer who has to switch between phones all the time. Most people will choose a phone and stick with it for at least 2 years. They'll learn to use that UI. They will rarely encounter other UIs.)

I think Brian Lam's Wirecutter[0] takes a step in the right direction. Gdgt[1], which has been around for a while, seems interesting, too, as it's user-generated content, so the experiences rendered are those of self-chosen peers.

P.S. For some reasons, I always read your username as the first word of the comment, so it always sounds in my head like you're saying, "Ugh, Anandtech does awesome..." In my head, you're quite an irritable fellow. There's someone else named "yawn" who always seems bored.

[0]: http://thewirecutter.com/ [1]: http://gdgt.com

Reply on news.ycombinator.com