Comment by lolinder
9 months ago
Between the rise of fake "30 best X" articles that this discusses and the widely-documented problem of fake reviews on places like Amazon, I've increasingly found myself back to leaning on brand loyalty again. Picking based on brands I trust rarely gets me the "best value" item and certainly doesn't get me the absolute global maximum "best overall", but it's turned into the only reliable way to choose something in a finite amount of time that I will reliably not be disappointed with.
There's obviously always the risk that just because a brand was good a year ago doesn't mean it's still good, but I've found that the rate of decline of most good brands is substantially lower than the SEO-spurred rate of decline of the quality of internet publications that purport to provide unbiased reviews.
> I've increasingly found myself back to leaning on brand loyalty again
You’re making me realize I too have been doing this for a while now. At least when satisficing instead of maximizing … and honestly I’m less and less interested in maximizing.
These days when making a purchase I go to a friend group who knows their thing (podcaster friends when looking for a microphone, for example), ask what brand they use, then I go to that brand’s website and buy the highest-line product that I can afford. There’s little to no google searching involved and next to zero awareness of any ads.
Ask a friend in the know and buy that. Done.
If there are no friends in the know, I ask anyone who uses a thing that solves my problem “Hey do you like your <thing>? What do you like about it?”. If they say yes, I go buy that. Life is too short to spend in the quagmire of ecommerce and friends.
Amazon always shows me the best household brands, classics like FINDYURT and ZUKESEYAKAMERICAUSA. They list classic product models like 'Kitchen Knife 8" Chef Kitchen 9" For Cutting For Vegetables for Fruits For Meats Pro Knife Shank With Accessories Blade Kitchen Knife.' <3
Reminds me of one of my favorite YouTube videos, possibly of all time:
https://youtu.be/nQpxAvjD_30?si=QHThBTZs3bvz5oFP
Brand loyalty also goes for review sites itself. Sure I find myselfnsometimes getting frustrated if I look into a new product category (like best CD Ripping drive as of 2024 until I find the related forum post ). But I typically I rather first skim through the URL to see some sites I remember (notebookcheck, tomshardware, Chinagadgets.de, or whatever ) that I am loyal to until I get disappointed. This works because they are testing different products and I am kind of loyal. How loyal can I ever be to a site that only sells air purifier tests. How many times in my life do I need this test? I agree in this case it is even easier to be more loyal to brand because they probably sell more things than just air purifiers.
Yup, it's why I shop at Costco. They do a good job of making sure everything on the shelf is actually decent, so I don't have to google "<product> reddit" in store.
This is why I bought a Brother printer when I needed a color inkjet. Brother is known for no-nonsense laser printers, but not inkjet. I bought it anyway because I just trust the brand for keeping things simple feature wise. There are better inkjet options from Canon and Epson, but they both nickel and dime you on the ink, have DRMed ink cartridges and what not. I traded off better quality prints for peace of mind.
Yes this, I've found product reviews looking distinctly dodgy for quite a few years now, while the article is about something I would see as a bit niche, electronics reviews have been in a hole for a while. I noticed some sites have been using amazon reviews for a long time.
I still prefer for the most part, to buy some electronics from brick and mortar shops, at least then I can see the products in action, and I will seek out and travel to specialist shops for things like audio gear, they'll usually match online prices and let you try things out.