On the Integrity of Hardware Review Sites

leathered writes "Charlie Demerjian of The Inquirer has posted an interesting article on the integrity of hardware review sites. Apparently the benefits of running such a site go far beyond advertising revenue with a fair amount of 'sweeteners' from the hardware manufacturers to say the least. All is not lost as Charlie informs us that there are a small number are flying the flag for trustworthy reviews, but the question of which sites we can trust remains." I like Daniel Rutter's (of Dan's Data) policy best.

Comments

Trust? On the net?

[winkydink]

I don't trust anybody. I'll read multiple reviews and, if available, end-user experiences as well before making a serious buy decision.

But, then again, how do you know I'm not just making this up? :)

Integrity?

[schild]

I'm not so worried about the integrity of hardware sites so much as software. But they fall under the same categories. Those that shill and whore themselves out the most get the most goodies and are loved by companies. Those that are hard on product and serious with reviews tend to be ignored. As in, just not taken seriously. The entire press outlet/developer relationship is as corrupt as 1930's Manhattan. Integrity is not a word that should be used anywhere near it. At least hardware sites SEEM to be giving real benchmarks.

Re:Integrity?

[kannibal_klown]

Hardware benchmarks aren't what bother me, it's stability that matters to me.

The first PC I built from scratch was in college (my previous computers were either my parents or a small-shop one I bought). I hit the hardware sites and many claimed that a particular ASUS board was great and rock solid. I was naive and took the 3 or 4 sites word at it and bought it. I started having MAJOR problems and later found out it was the Via chipset on the board. Forums were FLOODED with the exact same complaints. I eventually had to replace the board.

Since then I don't buy hardware until I've searched forums for personal experiences with said product. I'll still look at some review sites but I now take what they say with a grain of salt.

Im not sure if he understands multithreading

[0kComputer]

On multitasking and multithreaded apps, they will shine like the sun, but how many of these are there? How many times do you encode a movie while typing a document, zipping your C drive, doing some heavy CFD work all while listening to a few MP3s?

Correct me if im wrong but isn't multithreading/multitasking pretty damn important considering all the background tasks/services that are needed just to keep an OS running?

This is not journalism

[maynard]

These are accusations of bribery and conflict(s) of interest against unspecified hardware review sites. Without naming the organization(s) and specific instances of bribery, with resulting proof, this is just irresponsible hand waving. Journalists are supposed to print facts. It's important to realize the distinction between whether bribery is taking place (possibly so), and whether this article in question backs up the assertion of bribery with documentation and quotable sources on the record. It does not. IMO: This article does NOT deserve this level of publicity, nor did it deserve publication. --M

Re:This is not journalism

[Lord_Dweomer]

I respectfully disagree. If they are not naming review sites, then nobody is being singled out. All the article does is serve to increase public awareness of the fact that on the internet, people may have a motive to not tell you the whole truth, or to sugar coat it.

This will encourage people to check with multiple sources, talk to people, and make product decisions for themselves, which is possibly one of the most important skills one can learn for surfing the internet.

Crux of the problem

[onyxruby]

Crux of the problem is fairly simple. If you want to get the newest shiniest hardware to review and get your review out right away you can only do so with pre-release hardware. The only way to get that is to play ball with the hardware co's. Why do you think so many sites were mum about the dual athlon mp boards until one day you had a couple dozen reviews all of a sudden? That's the day the NDA's all expired.

Without this hardware you have to buy your hardware yourself. Not only is this expensive, but by the time your review is out the ad value of your review of bleeding edge hardware is kaput. Unfortunately, these are the ones that do the most honest and best reviews. Pre-release hardware is often picked out from a large selection to make sure that the review site gets a good "sample". These reviews are also the least profitable for the review sites to do. It's a nasty catch 22.

"I take goods you send me for free & review"?

[sulli]

Consumers Union has the right policy:

We accept no advertising, and buy any products we test on the open market. We are not beholden to any commercial interest.

I'm sorry, some guy who writes reviews, even ostensibly fair ones, in exchange for free product can't stand up to this.

what if everyone's in on it?

[SuperBanana]

I'll read multiple reviews and, if available, end-user experiences as well before making a serious buy decision.

What good is reading multiple reviews if they're all crap? What good are end-user experiences posted on the net, if companies are posting fake reviews, which they are?

News flash- even if they're not getting "payola" (let's call it what it is- bribe money/gear), they're controlled quite effectively by hardware companies because everyone wants to be the first site with a review of Hot Product X to drive hits to their site to earn advertising revenue. Write something bad about a product, and that company will drop you to the bottom of the list.

Let's not forget that most of these guys litter their sites with advertisements for the very product they are reviewing, too. Bob's Extreme Hardware isn't going to be very happy if young Johnny says the PC case Bob just stocked is crap- and he's going to tell young Johhny that.

Why is any of this a surprise to any reasonably intelligent individual?

Re:Trust? On the net?

[badasscat]

I don't trust anybody.

I hope that includes Charlie Demerjian. This jumped out at me:

"here is the truth, if you are going to multitask and do and do anything that tasks both of the CPUs, one of those is going to be a game."

Bullshit. This drives me crazy on hardware sites, this supposition that the only reason anyone could ever want high performance in their PC is to play games.

At home, I use Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash, I run Windows Media Center for SDTV and DVD viewing, I do video encoding using various tools (Windows Media Encoder, Dr. Divx, and others). I often do all these things at the same time on the same PC, with a hacked version of Media Center that lets me log in remotely at the same time another account has the TV going.

I studiously avoid playing games on this system, because I'm asking it to do quite enough already - I've got another system that I play games on. But I would love a dual-core CPU for this thing, as it would help me out a lot.

Graphics professionals, photographers, multimedia content producers and other high-end users are, surprise surprise, a real market, and they spend even more money than gamers do. I don't see why that's so hard to grasp. I read the specific preview of Intel's dual-core CPU's that Charlie's talking about in his comment up there and I actually found it a refreshing change to find some real-world benchmarks that were not strictly based on playing Doom 3.

That said, I'm sure there is payola going on in the industry. But I worry more about the small sites that seem to give positive reviews to every single component they get sent for free than I do about sites that realize non-gamers are a legitimate group of users that require their own set of benchmarks.

Article is Flamebait

[Phatboy]

I'm sorry, but he states he was angry while writing this and you can tell. It's the epitome of bad journalism - he doesn't have any proof, nor make specific allegations, and those he does make seem insubstantial. For example, he flames a site that did "a review in full, or at least in half", which is quite probably Anandtech, the article of which makes it quite clear that it is only the first part.

His only criticisms of the review are that it was an exclusive (which the article makes clear) and that it doesn't cover gaming (although it is only the first part of the review). He himself admits that gaming is not the point of these chips, so why does he feel that Anandtech should have to focus on gaming is the first part of their article? Indeed, in their second part they do cover gaming and conclude that you should buy an Athlon 64 if you mainly play single-threaded games, a fact that would be obvious to anyone who regularly reads any hardware site.

I can't claim that the hardware review sites are all without bias, but compared to mainstream news, hardware reviews are some of the hardest to bias given the ease of doing standardised, repeatable benchmarks.

Re:Trust? On the net?

[Desert Raven]

this supposition that the only reason anyone could ever want high performance in their PC is to play games.

Agreed.

I don't play computer games, I don't even *own* any. None of my systems have ever had a game installed on them (yes, this includes solitare). All of my systems are used for work, and non-work related research. Yet, over half of my systems are dual-cpu. I multi-task, a lot. I often have graphics filters chewing away, or CDs burning, while I'm doing something else. On my servers, I want to know that if I need to compile something, archive something or do some other processor-intensive task, that there's enough processor power left to continue with the server's normal tasks.

I read reviews, but they account for less than 20% of the weight I give to my purchasing decisions. The only reviews I will pay close attention to are the *bad* reviews. They're so rare that one has to believe the product must have been truly hideous.

Re:Trust? On the net?

[lgw]

I just think it's funny that a guy who calls attention to his game collection in his sig is whining about people assuming he only uses his computer for gaming.

Graphics professionals are indeed a market, but professionals of any stripe generally use the hardware their company procures for them for that profession (I know I do). The gaming machine is the one you build yourself from parts. The gaming bias of the review sites makes a lot of sense in that respect.

It's the meta-information that's important.

[Matey-O]

Looking for Home theatre speakers? (I was) 160 people voting 4.5 out of 5 is better than 3 people giving a perfect 5. Looking for a cellphone? (I was) 0 noka6820sucks.com type websites is better than a half-dozen MotoV600Bites.com Buying a Camera? The user opinions that sound like they've used it should count more than the ones that said 'I bought 'competing product' because this camera didn't have blue LEDs A particular revew site's integrity will stand out against the rest of the other reviews. Beware when Gamersite X is giving a game a 98% when everybody else is giving it a 45%.

Say it ain't so!!!

[halepark]

You mean the media can be bought?!? I feel like I'm taking CRAZY PILLS!!

My experience with both links

[DigitalDragon]

When I went to Dan's homepage and clicked on one of the reviews, my antivirus program has informed me that there was a malware Javascript virus that tried to be executed. That certainly means that I am not going to his website ever again.

As for the main article, I am surprised how badly it is written. Poor language use and overall structure.