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Comment by InitialLastName | Hacker News Reader

> I never trusted Wirecutter because their reviews were always in stark contrast to the reviews I'd read on Amazon (by actual people who used the product),

To be fair, I've known multiple people (when my peer group hadn't yet established their veblen side hustles) who got paid to write Amazon reviews for products they had never used.

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Yes, some Amazon reviews are even written by ChatGPT. But my point is that there are far better reviews on Amazon than these "review" websites.

That’s true but for a lot of these products, they were negative ones like “broke after a few uses.”

Super sus when Wirecutter is promoting something as a top pick.

But it also makes sense. A review site like Wirecutter is using the product like one time — they have no idea if it’s going to last.

Many of the negative reviews are posted by competitors

Not from my experience.

I’ve used Wirecutter top picks. They suck and actually do break

Can you give a couple examples of Wirecutter top pick items you bought that broke after a short time?

I've used Wirecutter top picks and have never been burnt. This entire thread is people bashing Wirecutter without providing any examples of bad products.

Yes, some stuff does break, and some categories suck more than others, and sometimes Wirecutter gets it wrong. But I have not seen anyone point to any meaningful evidence that Wirecutter is improperly biased or is anything worse than simply a product review site that does it best but sometimes gets it wrong.

I don't find such a review very informative. Especially if it's a popular product sold 10000s times. Even quality things sometimes break. Does it have stupid buttons that are hard to press? That's worse

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