Blast from the past: Tech reviews – influencers and other fakes

Blast from the past this week is a aggregation of articles posted on other websites, the date of the original posts cover 2016-2018. Like most people I enjoy reading interesting articles, reviews and comparisons on the internet. I also use it for a lot of product research before purchasing and fact finding. However it has become clear that the most popular reviews in particular are not quite factual or properly researched and claim no responsibility for their errors.

OLED screens on the Samsung phones vs the LCD IPS screens on the Apple phones. This was around about 10 years ago or around 2011. Every popular self claimed professional reviewer didn’t like the OLED screens due to their claimed color reproduction the over used term ‘over saturated’ flew about as if it was a bad thing. None ever mentioned that you can actually adjust the colors and brightness at the same time on the OLED phones. One of the many features still missing on iPhones now and at that time. This to me meant their reviews were not well researched if at all and everything thing they said was merely self opinioned throw away statements and ignorant ones at that. Then came the copy cat reviews which was based on the same throw away lines. I can understand why Youtube is cracking down.

2021 – The LCD and TFT screens of the day and even now can’t show black, the most basic color and as a result can’t truly produce the entire colors a accurately as an OLED which is still the superior technology. (Warning throw way line.)

The other sad thing is the trend of justifying why one computer or phone in particular is better than the other by using benchmark results. Some brilliant websites that do the analysis but then the talking heads are rarely technically minded – unfortunately their conclusions are misrepresented by the even more popular talking heads and assume they will be believed due to popularity and can just get away summaries often incorrect on what’s already out there without actually understanding. Unfortunately for them they get caught out and complain that it is the algorithm rather than they poor content. The best ones are not those with HD videos and vibrant colors, the best ones do not feature  talking heads. Anyway it’s hard to beat their troll like aggressive throw away comments. Here’s my throw away line – why can’t a $1000 phone  open a webpage any faster than a $500 phone?

2021 Don’t get me started on those who claim they aren’t sponsored by the company products. Any decent marketing student can pick out the signs!

Which brings me to the latest Apple product the Homepod. After hearing the Apple Homepod I was underwhelmed and a little disappointed. It’s not close to what I would describe as Hi-Fi, sounding like a shopping centre speaker. A cheaper UE Boom (Logitech) portable speaker sounds just as good. Yet I hear and read tech reviewers proclaiming amazing sound quality and power purely because you have to connect it to a power socket. Now they say it’s great for an Apple product. They have only made Homepod model at the time of this post. (BTW My earing is pretty good.)

That said in 2021 I happen to see one reasonably popular talking head on Youtube complain about their video being demonetized as it did meet the guidelines. Clearly they were not thinking straight. Youtube wasn’t taking down the video they just didn’t allow monetizing on content. Now Youtube admin is definitely not perfect as I’ve seen some perfectly accurate content banned and disappear – they do get things wrong – very wrong a lot of times. Especially when it comes to music and even to wrist watches but that story is for another day. These days the surviving popular talking heads winge about color correcting and video editing – if only they did proper proper reviews not swayed by brand or brands’ current popularity. Short sighted and little depth and repetitious.

Now motorcycle and car reviews are highly opinionated. Some less experienced motoring journalists, bloggers and self proclaimed professionals or those who just own many cars or motorcycles pass their opinion as truth. The smart ones clearly indicate that their views are for entertainment purposes – which is the best thing to do. In fact I noticed it so much that I now have to deliberately make sure that I to say enough to see what level of troll I have visiting.