My take on this is no they don’t. As long as they are truthful they only report on the quality of the product and prevent many people of spending a lot of money from losing it by buying something that doesn’t work.
If your product is shit your company does not deserve to be shielded from the backlash, this is the core of (classic) capitalism after all.
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The baseline of this entire discussion is that not all companies deserve to survive. You make a good product - you grow. You don’t make a good product - you adjust for the losses. There are no participation trophies there. Worst case scenario, someone will pick up on the same idea, and turn it into something actually good later on
No single bad review ever killed a product. Because we all know that some things are just a matter of opinion, user error, etc. Opinions are like assholes: everyone’s got one. If I’m interested, I’ll read several positive and negative opinions.
But if your product is bad enough to warrant several bad reviews, that’s on you. Should’ve done better research, should’ve made a better product.
This video clearly wasn’t “opinion” or “user error”.
He put in heaps of work and throughly documented an extensive list of major problems, many of them are individually bad enough to sink the product. Put them all together… ouch.
On the other hand, he did have some positive things to say. There’s scope here for this to be a good product. They just didn’t make it happen. I think where they went wrong was creating a standalone device. It should be an accessory to a phone — similar to a pair of ear buds. You don’t put an entire operating system, cellular connection, screen, voice assistant, etc in an ear bud. You put all of that on the phone and link the two with bluetooth.
He does excellent reviews and stuff in general.
I actually watched it before the ‘controversy’ and I think it certainly was a fair assessment. He clearly states the goal of the product and where it falls short. None of his criticism seems unreasonable.
Clearly, it’s trying to be an always-online communication, assistant and logging badge. Like a Star Trek commbadge on steroids. In theory, that’s a product that I’m very interested in. But when features are structurally unsound or actively annoying to use, well, I’m going to stick with the phone I’ve got.
Ironically, his ‘bad review’ got me interested to see what a version 2 will be like. Assuming they make it that far.
Well, Ralph Nader certainly was the catalist and voice that spelled the end of the Corvair and Pinto many years ago.
Entities like LTT have a very large audience and the opinion they put forward tends to influence a large crowd. Dishonest reviews about an emerging startup could ruin their customer basis.
Well, this is MKBHD who has an even larger audience
Or, to use your example, reviews that don’t understand the product or play it for laughs. 😅
Product is an input, reviews are an output.
If your product can be killed by bad reviews you’re either bad at making the product or bad at marketing the product. Managing a launch, including the relationships with reviewers, is part of shipping a product.
Now, that’s for consumer goods. For artistic works it’s a bit of a different beast and you can get a lot of other factors and definitely, by design, a lot more subjectivity. But if you’re shipping cars and computing devices… yeah, no, this is a weird fixation to have. I’m guessing it’s because it’s the first time when whatever mismanagement happened becomes noticeable, so you can have the false impression that something was fine until the bad reviews told you it wasn’t, but that’s not how that works.
Although I’ll say I’ve often owned and very much enjoyed products that don’t review well. Computing device reviews in particular tend to focus on specific aspects, just because they’re the easy A/B comparisons between the dozens of similar things they ship. The effect is sometimes only very general use devices get good reviews, so more specialized or targeted devices get worse marks just because they’re not competing on the same areas. You see this a lot with gaming phones, and it stands out to me on a lot of the new PC handheld reviews, too. So if you ask me whether reviews can homogeneize a product and end up making every phone look the same? Maaaybe. Over time. Eventually. For most of the market, perhaps, but not all of the market.
Otherwise no, that premise is nonsense.
I feel like in most cases if a product has such bad reviews that it kills the company that made it, there’s a good reason for that.
Of course there are exceptions, and it is expect that a reviewer that they do their due diligence to make sure they’re giving an honest, accurate, and reasonable review, but no company should be shielded for being told their product isn’t good if it isn’t.
I gave a keyboard wrist rest a 3 star review because the pad is this weird shape that gets narrower in the middle. From the images on Amazon, it looked like it was more or less rectangular. Rounded ends but with a consistent width throughout. The seller started harassing me to change my review to 5 stars. I reported them to Amazon. The emails from the seller stopped, I haven’t bought something from Amazon since.
Sellers that demand or worse make up 5-star reviews are the ones who sell shitgarbage products and need to go out of business. Seeing 6 5-star reviews that all say “Great product! Would purchase again!” pretty much means the product will give you glans cancer and the doctors are going to have to cut off all the nerves that make it possible to orgasm.
I want to see a product get negative reviews by idiots. That’s how you know the product is good and the source is genuine.
Give an example: I bought a little inverter that works with my power tool batteries. It can deliver 110V60Hz AC at 150W from a drill battery, plus it has USB ports. I’ve run a desk lamp from this during a power failure, or charged my cell phone. Works fine. I knew it was legit when I read people’s reviews saying “Doesn’t run my hair dryer. 0/10.” Because there’s plenty of idiots in the world who don’t know how electricity works.
For tech stuff, the best reviews to read are always the 1 or 2 star reviews, since you can see if the people complaining have legit gripes or they’re just idiots who bought the wrong thing for their task.
5 star reviews are mostly worthless, they have a strong likelihood of being fake, or for people who only ever post 5 or 1 star reviews. A product with fewer 5 star than 3 star reviews will likely make me shy away, if for no other reason than the dissenters are drowning out whoever the vendor hired to fake reviews for them. That’s noteworthy.
4 star reviews are more worth reading. There is a set of folks who thinks 5 stars should be reserved for extremely good exceeded expectations, and merely “as expected” should not get top marks. These are more likely written by people who bought the product and care about what they’re talking about.
3 star reviews will have actual good consumer information in them. “I was looking for a box to hold my Shark Model no. 24352097ASDF0872RSD vacuum cleaner accessories in, and this box does okay but the wide brush attachment thing doesn’t fit anywhere.” Okay, if I have that model of Shark, I know this might not be the box to buy for my vacuum accessories. It’s not that the box is a bad box, it’s just this isn’t the correct use case. Thanks fellow citizen!
2 star reviews are almost never written because you seldom dissatisfy a customer below the middle of the scale without completely pissing them off.
1 star reviews come in a wondrous variety. Anything from “product never arrived” which you’re warned is wrong to leave in the product review because so many of these platforms are designed to separate the product, seller and delivery service for maximum customer violation, but okay. You’ll get “Product wasn’t as advertised at all, ordered a coffee grinder got a salad shooter” which can sometimes happen when dropshippers misuse the listing sub-options menus. You know how if you order a T-shirt from Amazon you get one listing on which you select size and color from drop down menus? Or Duct tape: 1 pack, 2 pack, 5 pack? I’ve seen sellers who probably don’t speak English as a primary language market completely different products like this, which leads to dumb shit like reviews for several different items mixed together. If I see a lot of 1 star reviews, and many of them are “soldering iron did a terrible job curling my hair” I take that as a good sign, because the seller feels legitimate enough to let those remain up. Illegitimate sellers can’t tolerate low review scores and will try to have them removed or hidden. Or, you see a pattern of “flashlight power button quit working after 3 months” in which case you know to legitimately avoid this flashlight because it legitimately isn’t well made.
The problem on Amazon, especially for all these dropshippers that all sell mostly the same products: if you don’t have the best rating, nobody will buy your shit. So here it might indeed kill the company. Or at least this listing.
Which…fine. Don’t build your business on a faulty model.
Ackchyually
This is the core of markets and markets have existed long before capitalism.
Sssssshhhhhh! You’re scaring the Americans!
I was saying this over on YouTube… it’s his responsibility to report tech developments accurately and responsibly, because today’s tech developments are tomorrow’s history. Future nerds need to know the score! Scooty-Puff Junior suuuuuuuucks!
A plurality of negative reviews kill those companies that make bad products. And that’s a good thing. Wheat from the proverbial chaff as it were.
Comcast is a great example.
Good. Make better products and support them after you made them.
If your company sounds scammy and you say it can do things it can’t, I hope your company burns before you burn customers who believed your lies
The reviewer should be truthful and fair. If that means trashing a shitty product then that’s how it should be. Not calling out shitty products hurts the consumer and means the reviewer is doing a bad job.
He didn’t even trash the product — he just accurately described it.
I hate this nigga
I’m legitimately shocked there are people defending the garbage Humane AI Pin, which leads me to think a lot of the criticism levied at MKBHD is made up by a PR firm working for the company. I already hated the god damn thing because it gave you hallucinations on demand. But watching his review and The Verge’s review, its an overpriced gimmick that has a camera on all the time, and does nothing a smartphone can’t already do. They didn’t ask for bad reviews, they made a godawful MV–sorry, shitty product. Now they’re gonna reap the whirlwind.
A smartphone is just better in every way imaginable. I also don’t have my phone hallucinating all the time either, so I have that going for me.
I’m also gonna say the obvious quiet part out loud: He’s black and they’re targeting him first. Not The Verge, not Engadget, him.
I’d think a bigger difference is he’s a single YouTuber, the Verge and Engadget are actual companies with $ and man power.
They seem to think he is single at least…
No, he’s mentioned he has a team. He may be the final say on a product, but there’s people under him shaping what he gets.
I respect MKB for the hustle and his success, but he’s not a one man band.
What are we supposed to do? Give bad products good reviews so the poor little million dollar startup doesn’t get its feelings hurt?
If we were talking about dishonest, malicious reviews, I’d understand.
That’s not the case here though, not only is Marques’ review honest, multiple reviewers reached the same conclusion as him.Go make an actual good product instead of whining on Twitter.
Is this about the Humane thing?
In his video, he mentions the Humane review - but also the Fisker car review which was equally scathing.
Just watched the whole video (and the car one afterwards). I think if MKBHD is being disingenuous, as one of the most influential reviewers, he would’ve been the first to be called out (based on the facts he’d got wrong in the video instead of conspiracies.) that didn’t happen so I’d say it’s safe to assume the problem stems from the product itself, at least in these cases. Anyway, great watch.
So I am not a fan of the reviewer pictured for the same reason I don’t like Doug Demuro’s car reviews.
From what I see, they have very limited time with a product, and can tend to not understand it fully, and then add into their reviews tiny nitpicks that many people wouldn’t even notice on their own.
It seems like they look for something to complain about and that then goes viral as if it’s a huge issue with the product.
While I don’t think it necessarily “kills” a company or product, I think their reach is oversized for the low quality review they do.
There’s a YouTuber who does gun reviews that I watch occasionally, and I wish other reviewers were like him. He pays for them with his own money, and Patreon money. If the gun is very popular he’ll do a short video and label it initial thoughts, and then eventually he’ll do a review after he’s shot 1000s of rounds with it over weeks and months. If he notices something wrong, he’ll look online to see if anyone else has similar issues and mention things like “I have an original model, which has problem X, manufacturer Y has since addressed this, and fixed it, and the community agrees it is no longer an issue. So look out for the first year release of X if you want to buy.” Overall he does an excellent job of separating his opinions from selling points.
Yes I tend to like this but I wasn’t able to put it into words as well as you weee - someone who doesn’t just spout off their experience as if it’s the only one, but takes the time to understand if this is something that is only affecting them or if it’s the specific unit they have, etc.
Techmoan is the same way when he reviews a product and I’ve always respected his reviews a lot more because of it.
This guy literally says he spends a week or two with each vehicle while demoing, same as car and driver does for their reviews. He’s not looking at it for 5 seconds then picking it apart.
Even if he does spend 2 weeks with them, he frequently talks about stuff he is out of his depth on.
Just because he had access to interesting cars doesn’t make him a good car reviewer. If I want to see what the inside of a Lamborghini Miura looks like, sure he’s probably got a video of it.
If I want to know anything about a modern car that I may purchase though, he’s one of the last people I’d look to.
And just because he’s a normal person and says he’s not a professional does not make him a bad reviewer. He’s a normal person who notices normal things we would all find annoying. I pick out things similar to how he views things so his views are definitely useful. You can latch on to anyone you want, but having a real person look at an object and find faults we all would hate is exactly the right person to review something.
What?
Doug Demuro goes over every single weird little feature in the cars he covers. What does he not fully understand? But I also don’t conder his videos true reviews, I’m not in the market for 90% of the cars he shows, and I doubt many people are. It’s entertainment, and for car enthusiasts it’s fun to see a breakdown of a cool car.
As for MKBHD, I would say his smartphone reviews are some of the only ones worth watching on YT. He uses them for weeks as his main device and I’ve never seen him shy away from speaking his mind. Again, he’s an enthusiast and his nitpicks are probably irrelevant to a lot of users. But that’s exactly why I like his reviews, it’s a different perspective that I wouldn’t get anywhere else. Low quality? My brother MKBHD puts more effort into his b-roll shots than most channel put into the entire review.
I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this but reviewing anything boils down to “how many things can I find wrong about this product”. If I want all the gushy features and crap I would just watch the press release.
Doug Demuro has some different style of videos. He has his old school vids where he shows off interesting aspects of mostly older videos and now he’s also doing reviews of new cars. The second type is the one I’m referring to.
Doug did a review of a VW ID.4 in which he complained about how the infotainment system is “slow” and that got blown so out of proportion I do believe that it affected their sales significantly.
With MKBHD I agree with what you’re saying, and low quality was the wrong way to describe them. It’s more that they are noticing little things that the general population would mostly not notice or care about but then that becomes the whole story of the device.
It’s not that I think it doesn’t have a place, it’s just that these enthusiasts opinions get blasted wide and far by other media and it’s frequently not taken in the context in which the video is created. They (other media) will latch onto a nitpick and proclaim the product to be doomed.
It’s one thing to go looking for an enthusiast deep dive, and it’s another to amplify these complaints to the level that is done currently.
My point is basically that I think there is some validity that enthusiast reviews are able to affect the market too much. Not that these people shouldn’t make their videos, just they should not be taken that seriously and amplified by other media.
It’s not the content creators fault, but I do think it affects sales more significantly than it should.
It’s a reviewers job to be honest; if the product is bad I appreciate them calling it out, no matter how small an issue is.
I’m not going to defend YouTubers that don’t know I exist, and honestly I don’t watch Doug that often anymore. But from what I can see even the new vehicles he reviews are niche and/or expensive as hell. The VW ID4 starts at $40k for only ~200 miles of range. Compared to iqoniq, mach-e, or the new Chevy EVs it’s just a bad value all around. Also, I genuinely think a snappy infotainment system is a necessity. I won’t even consider a Tesla since it doesn’t support carplay or android auto. Do the majority of people hold that same opinion? Hell no, but I still think it’s absolutely relevant to a review. Now, I could totally see your point of a review killing a company/product if the reviewer has a larger reach than the company. An example would be LTT’s “review” of a super niche waterblock from billet labs. But if you think one review tanked the sales of a car from one of largest conglomerate of car manufacturers then you’re woefully overestimating the reach of YouTube videos and online media.
Now humane is a bit of a different story, and the negative reviews are certainly not helping sales. But MKBHD’s video is a very honest explanation of his experience, and it shows how many things were promised but not delivered. If they didn’t want bad reviews, they should have delayed the product until it was ready.
You have a valid point that clickbait articles do more harm than the actual reviews, but again, I don’t think it’s the reviewer’s fault or problem. Most of these sites are full of other clickbait nonsense, and just like NYpost I’m not going to them for factual information. If the general public are being swayed by these articles, I don’t think they were seriously in the market for whatever product is being dragged through the mud. Most of what MKBHD and Doug reviews are premium products with premium prices, in my opinion they should scrutinized accordingly.
I think bad products fail on their own and the reviews and media accelerate that failure. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but blaming the media for a company’s bad decisions solves nothing.
FYI, Id.4 gets much closer to 300 miles of range. VW has always underestimated their efficiency, even on gas/diesel cars imo.
The reason I don’t think I’m overestimating Doug’s reach is that I was constantly seeing people parroting and citing his review after it came out. All anyone seemed to talk about was how bad the infotainment system was. While the infotainment system was kinda a dog until you make some settings changes, it was in no sense bad enough to warrant the kind of hysterics that people were having over it. I’ve definitely seen worse systems in other cars I’ve driven - especially considering CarPlay and android auto function perfectly fine and speedy. The car is not above criticism, but it seemed a lot of people were taking his word as gospel and/or becoming obsessed with a fairly minor detail.
I’ve never heard of humane before this and I wasn’t talking about that review specifically, but I’ve seen reviews before (I believe they were phone reviews, but it’s been a while) from MKBHD where I felt some minor thing was being blown out of proportion or where he didn’t seem to understand that some people may appreciate something being done a different way than he expected and therefore I quit watching his videos because they didn’t appeal to me.
In my opinion, both reviewers I’ve mentioned here tend to have some hot takes that garner way too much traction, and I can understand that frustration if you’ve created a product that they then trash. I’m not saying that it’s their intention to do so, but I do think it can be irresponsible to present things the way they do - especially since these reviews remain live much longer than a software cycle might.
VW has always underestimated their efficiency, even on gas/diesel cars imo
Maybe they underestimate the MPG rating but did you forget the massive diesel scandal? They lied about the efficiency of their engine and exhaust system to the point where they had software counteracting testing procedures.
Do you own an id4 or something? Like why do you care about the public perception of a company? People who actually are in the market for a new car are bound to test drive it first, and they can decide if the infotainment system is good enough for themselves. My point is: lots of talk from people who are nowhere near buying any car let alone a $40k+ id4. If I purely listened to the internet’s opinion I wouldn’t own half the shit I enjoy on a daily basis.
MKBHD and his team are by no means perfect, watch their podcast and you’ll quickly see the gaps in their knowledge. If you haven’t watched him in awhile I can understand you position a lot better. He’s come a long way in the past few years, and while I never found his reviews to be bad, his current work is top quality. For instance: a lot of his smartphone reviews revolve around the camera performance. At the end of the year he does a big comparison between a bunch of phones. Between that and the yearly smartphone awards, I think he does a fine job at summarizing the software improvements over the first year of ownership.
Of course every big content creator has a legion of annoying fans, again LTT almost killed a 2 man company from a single botched video. I’m not here to defend any community, just that these two reviewers that you seem to have a gripe with do better work than 90% of others.
I’ve owned several VW’s including diesels and yes, currently an id.4. I am a fan of VW cars, but I don’t really care about the perception of the company - I like the cars but it’s really more that I like my local dealership and find their cars superior to others at the same price point.
The reason I brought this specific incident up was because it’s easier to remember, but I find Doug fairly frequently was misinformed about things. It was fine when he was just showing off stuff he thought was interesting, but once he started reviewing cars currently for sale, it really jumped out to me that he’d just be ranting about stuff he just didn’t understand and was not a reliable reviewer. The only reason I kept tolerating him for a while was that he has access to interesting old cars I wouldn’t be able to see otherwise, but as far as the new stuff, he was unqualified imo.
I do agree with your point that most people would do test drives, etc, but this came at a time when these cars were not available on lots and many people began canceling their orders based on the perception of the car which seemed to be widely based on Doug’s review. I just happened to luck into one being at my dealer, and was able to test drive it, but at the time they were very hard to find and most peoples orders had not yet been delivered. It definitely hindered sales and was totally blown out of proportion.
That said, VW should have handled the response to it better - they basically just ignored it, and that’s on them.
I also remember the diesel scandal quite well because I was just about to sell my diesel beetle when the story broke and the price plummeted.
Thankfully between my dealer and VWoA they made it right, so it didn’t turn me off from them completely. What became known the following year was that it was not just VW, but almost the entire automotive industry engaging in similar tactics, but that was not nearly as widely reported.
As far as MKBHD, that makes sense, and it could be just an outdated opinion I have of them based on much older reviews.
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