B2C equivalent of STH?

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

tim_othy

New Member
Sep 18, 2017
11
2
3
63
I'm looking for one or more independent hardware review sites similar to STH but focussed on the pro consumer as opposed to business user. Is there such a site? Too many PR regurgitators in the consumer space and those that publish reviews invariably have holes in the reviews where the product is less than stellar, but the reviewer doesn't mention it.
 

Stephan

Well-Known Member
Apr 21, 2017
920
698
93
Germany
For what products exactly? Youtubers like Dave2D are still half impartial but that could really change from one moment to the next.

I usually use terms in search engines like +forum (Bing) or "forum" (Google) to force forum entries to the top. People on forums are not paid and opinions there can IMO be trusted much more than reviews on Amazon. Not that this works perfectly lately, because search engines have gotten worse and worse, forcing you to click more. So that they can display more ads, which I will never see. Instead of you finding the one relevant link you want at #1 which you click and are gone. Classic user hostile capitalism. Worst offender: Amazon (again).

Some more random thoughts why reviewers are pretty much useless for me, and might be for you...

I like to select products with github repos i.e. open source. Or where somebody else has demonstrated tinkering interest, so that product has to have something to justify it, even if you don't know yet what it is. Bought recently a handful of Tasmota plugs from Delock. Just pure Tasmota on them already, no problem flashing later Github releases or fight the vendor trying to lock you out with chip fuses. Back in 2018 I bought two Roborock S50 vaccuum cleaners because somebody opened a repo called "Valetudo" which let me use the robots a 100% without (Chinese ugh) cloud involvement. Pretty good privacy.

Sometimes I buy nothing, because all products suck, or suck for the money. Most stocks come to mind.

Sometimes I use a product from 30 years ago, like the keyboard I am typing this on, a Dell AT102DW "bigfoot" with SKCM orange switches and a very classic "thock". Because they don't make them like they used to.

Was looking for a new phone to replace an aging LG G3, bought a Pixel 5 because one guy (Proton AOSP) wrote a patch for the kernel, which abolished nearly all CPU speed steps. Ugh why? Because he measured all of them with his own software and determined which MHz steps were most efficient with regard to battery charge to get work done. Turns out, most steps are superfluous. Also GCam, easy unlocking etc. Well, that was the device for me then. How many reviewers will tell you this? None, because 99.99% of audience would either not understand it, leave after listening to you bored to the bone for 3 minutes, or worst, break the phone by the 1000s if your outlet is large enough, causing all kinds of turmoil for the manufacturer. And later you, the reviewer, because you just lost another source of new stuff to review.

Was looking for a laptop to replace my T60p from 2006 back in 2019. Read on some blog by a mid-aged geek that he had bought this Acer Swift 1 and its been the best laptop he ever used. Mindful he had been using computers for 30 years like myself, I hopped on Amazon (8 GB version was their exclusive) and bought it. Initially I looked at 3kUSD models. But coil whine, bad displays, everything but not durable alcantara etc. made me reject every single model. Later I upgraded the T60p one final time with a 64-bit capable Core 2 Duo, 180 GB SSD, better Wifi card, new fan, and funnily, Windows Server 2019 runs on the device. Once you find a bunch of drivers that work with the hardware and that OS. The Aopen 1557 I had before the Thinkpad didn't even remotely last that long.

Wanted a scanner to get rid of most of my paper archive (invoices, medical, etc.). So I went to the Linux SANE website and looked around which scanners were best supported on Linux, 600dpi+, two-sided scanning, autofeeder, USB or network, bonus if compact. Found out with a curl+awk script to sift through the 100s of models that I wanted a Canon DR-2580C. Perfect support, all buttons work etc. Of course long EOL. Setup a search on ebay and local classifieds and got lucky, found one new in box for cheap! Complete with Acrobat 8 license and 5 kg of handbooks in 10 languages. Them Japanese. So I went totally overboard and wrote a Linux bash script to scan pages to PDF/PNG/JPEG/TIFF at 600dpi b/w or 300/600dpi color, discard empty pages automatically, justify and prettify with scantailor-cli, OCR and tag PDF subject and keywords using ocrmypdf.

I know what you are thinking. "Wow Stephan, with all that cr@p, whatever happened to simplify your life?" Good point. Have I told you about the little used Laserjet m551dn and 3rd tray I bought for really cheap on ebay... 1200dpi without tricks, cheap aftermarket toner, ... ok ok. Well I run a business so stuff is needed and also used.

Well let me know what you think.