I don't always buy new things, but when I do

With some products I find it hard to pick a right one as all of them have honest reviews of it being shit and loads of AI generated reviews saying it's awesome. Last time this happened was when searching for an affordable cat GPS tracker. Even the expensive ones turn out to be shit.

Amazon pro tip: if you find something that has lots of good reviews, sort them by Recent. Those ones are the reviews by the people who were suckered in by the initial dump of 5 star fake reviews and you’ll probably see a lot more honesty from those people.
Even better: run Fakespot on the listing to see if it detects manipulation or fake reviews.
Best: don’t use Amazon to buy things.
- Another approach is to use 3-4 star reviews. These have a higher chance of being human and often contain common problems.
  
  Online reviews are a total crapshoot even when they are written by actual people, because people are fucking idiots.

Better than my experience.
Want thing. Search reviews, particularly from forums where I know they are likely to be real people and not bots or shills. Everything says it's awesome. Buy it. It's shit. Look up the problem. Now the reviews say it's shit. What the fuck, man? Feels like I am slipping through multiple universes just by making any kind of online purchase.
- Dude this is so true, I'm starting to think that when searching for a product you need to start by looking what are the negative points about it.
  Then if they are inexistent or don't bother you and only then you start looking about the positives, because the positive aspects everybody talk about, now the negatives...

Check your local library, your library card might give you access to Consumer Reports. They don’t have reviews on everything, but I always make a point to check before a significant purchase.
- How relevant is CR outside the US? (Setting aside that I didn't find anything fitting for my current search.)
  
  Not sure honestly, it might be most relevant to Canadians? I’m not sure how much overlap the US and the rest of the world has when it comes to the kitchen gadgets, bikes, cars, appliances, etc that they review.

I hate researching appliances. Literally every brand and model has a ton of haters (often with tragic stories of how the appliance caused thousands of dollars in damages). There's no way to research an appliance and come out with any sort of objective view point on it.
Sure there's high level takes (Samsung bad, speed queen good), but then if you dig deeper into those off the cuff statements you realize even that isn't true.
So I've generally just said fuck it and gone with whatever.
- Appliances are a nightmare
  For one there’s the “hidden conglomerate” thing. Like oh I’m not buying Maytag anymore! They’re shit! I’m gonna buy whirlpool instead! Or jennair! Or kitchenaid! Or amana! But it doesn’t matter because those are basically all whirlpool
  Then the actual appliances: very often you’ll find that they are basically the same thing with only tiny differences cosmetically. Like kitchenaid and Maytag will sell an oven that is the exact same, like you can swap parts between them, they fail in the same way, but they look different because the kitchenaid has different plastics to finish, basically, and maaaybe a few differences in the control board to add some “luxury” features. So it looks nicer (arguably) but is functionally the same and has a similar failure rate (they may filter better quality parts to the “luxury” models, doubtful), and costs 30-40% more
  With the way capitalism has gutted shit even a lot of the old sentiment about brands is useless. The only real sentiment that is viable is that yes, buying commercial appliances for your home is going to get a product that is built to last longer and stand up to more abuse (like certain speed queen models). But then it’s like “oh well nice now I’ll spend 3-5x as much and get something hideously ugly so that my house ends up looking like a laundromat or bodega. And even then, there are shitty commercial appliances that fail quickly
  
  Some appliances aren't even made by established brands anymore.
  Examples from my recent experience: kitchen scales for baking and exhaust fans for bathroom. Just Chinese crap everywhere. Nothing from global brands or even local brands in these categories.
  
  Kitchenaid is kinda crap now. I bought one of their more powerful model stand mixers (DC motor model) at one point and it... visibly struggled to mix dough. Researched it and found this: https://www.americastestkitchen.com/equipment_reviews/2593-the-best-stand-mixers
  Returned it, saved up a bit of cash and got the Ankasrum, much happier with it.
  I consider kitchenaid mixers to be overpriced cake/cookie machines at this point. They can handle cold butter and thats about their only advantage over ankarsrum, and even then other (cheaper) mixers do that fine.
- Any time I need to buy something, I check if rtings has it as a category. If not, I give up and just buy something from a known brand with a long enough warranty and decent seeming specs, whatever they are.

I just saw this in German.
- Nobody expects ze German memequisition
  
  Now dies is ein surprise.
- Was it more funny?
  
  The accent in my head helped.
  
  My dog has no nose!
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeMnPyusuBE
- Yes. And if it wasn't for my French and Spanish being more rusty than iron in saltwater I would've posted this in the correspondent communities, too.
  I'm afraid this is quite multiculturally relatable.
  
  Iron in saltwater isn’t rusty. It’s iron.

It's a disaster out there right now when it comes to decent review sites.
Google is absolutely complicit in this, if not entirely to blame. Their search ranking has over the years pushed to the top all the low effort listicles that are full of sponsored Amazon links and no actual reviews, and a lot of the real reviews have disappeared due to traffic starvation.
And now those top sites are often just AI nonsense that steal content from whatever few other sites actually exist. Nonsense "reviews" just spouting the product specs, from people who have never even put their hands on the product for real.
My personal go to these days (although I wish it wasn't) is youtube.
There's still a load of nonsense listicles on youtube, but with a bit of searching you can usually find some actual person who is genuinely knowledgeable about the product category, and has a bunch of different ones actually in their possession for real, that they can compare and give honest opinions on.
- Check out Wirecutter. It’s been my go-to site for most purchases outside my wheelhouse for years. I like how they break down their findings, like pros/cons, budget picks, and picks depending on what kind of user you are (take record players, for example: are you interested in the format, but don’t want much fuss? They’ll have suggestions for an all-in-one setup. Or are you an audiophile looking to upgrade specific parts? They’ll cover that as well). They also include advice from experts in the field of whatever they’re reviewing, which I find useful.

It's worse. When you manage to find honest reviews, the reviewers for all products on all brands are only complaining that this is the worst version of the product ever, and you can't cross compare them.

If that's the case, then the product is probably 💩 and not really useful.
Best to move on to one that has genuine usage reviews/recommendations, even if it costs more.

"The top 10 best (thing) of 2025!"
- Last updated: 31 December 2024

Always nice to buy something super niche. You search YouTube and there's 3 50min videos from random nerds who have devouted all their lives on that topic
And I'm using the word 'nerd' here with the highest respect
- Unfortunately, these nerds (in the negative sense) make it often almost impossible to find "decent enough" stuff. Try finding any information about the "pretty good, but not unreasonably priced" bracket in almost any niche. Almost impossible. Unless audio equipment costs at least one kidney, it's essentially worthless, instead of buying a sub 1000€ knife, honed by japanese virgins, you should better kill yourself, and denim that doesn't require 400 elaborate steps to break in is literally worse than Hitler.
  
  You just reminded me of the last time I was looking at replacing the speakers on my PC with something nicer. I opted to just keep using my current ones and not touch the worn out physical volume knob anymore lol.
  
  Fair enough lmao

A sequel to “I heard about a video so I searched it online but every video I click on is just some form of reaction video”

Glorified sales people & scammers/paid reviews*

I used to look for videos on youtube and often times people would unbox, use and compare competitive products.
Now those videos are made by people who never owned the product, with advertisement footage the manufacturer stole from the company that originally produced the proper version and with "experience reviews" + "opinions" taken from regular first wave reviews.

The music gear market is particularly bad at this.

I hate it so much, but worse than that is just when i can only find reviews in portuguese, 90% of brazilians reviewers don't know how to review a product and it pisses me of so much