After my initial buying mistakes made years ago based on too much faith in reviews, I now consider reviews to be leisure reading with the following exceptions;
- I have had personal contact with a couple of reviewers who I give more credit to than the others,
- I pay more attention to reviews that make direct and meaningful comparisons between the product currently under review and competing products
- I appreciate reviewers who at least make a good faith effort to match their review system with the component being reviewed (I.e., no mega-watt power amps for horn speakers, no impedance mis-matches, etc. - you get the picture)
- I like good photographs, and especially of the innards of the component under review....so, 6moons is at the top of my list for photographs
on the other side of the coin,
- I am greatly skeptical of manufacturers that do not allow pictures of the insides of their components or, worse yet, void the warranty when an owner opens a component to look inside
- I am skeptical of reviewers who claim every reviewed component to be the “best thing yet”
- I am in general skeptical of new technology that is said to be “as good as, or better than” proven and well-regarded existing technology as those new products are too often a “flash in the pan”