why you shouldnt trust newegg reviews

(off topic)

i was reading some newegg reviews one day and came across these two for the ZALMAN Notebook Cooler:

Quote :

Pros: Long discriptions in the specs sections.

Cons: The discriptions offer no useful information ie: what size laptop is it designed for?

Other Thoughts: I am currently shopping for a cooler for 15.4 Asus G1 which is 353 x 284mm. Will those "679 high capacity vent holes" support my laptop. It's nice to see they took the time to count the holes but forgot to measure the length and width of the darn thing.

and the following one:

Quote :

Pros: Don't rate a product without having it and with out doing research. Here are the specs off of zalman's website. - Weight : 1,195 g - Dimensions : 308(L) X 330(W) X 40(H) mm - Noise : 18.0 - 25.5 dBA ¡¾ 10 % - Input Voltage : 5V (Connects with Notebook USB Port) Fan - Type : Dual Centrifugal Fan - Quantity : Two - Bearing Type : Hypro Bearing - RPM : 1,100 - 1,500 rpm ¡¾ 10 %

Cons: Price is relatively high compared to the rest of the NB coolers.

Other Thoughts: Worth the money tho.

i know not all of them are this bad, but come on...link

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lol...found another: HIS Hightech Radeon X1650XT

Quote :

anyone know what PSU it requires???

Pros: need to know the psu this card requires

Cons: dont have any yet havent bought the card

Other Thoughts: can someone tell me what PSU this card requires before i buy this card thank you

link

Reply to drummerdude

you are bound to get a few nutty reviews no matter where you go, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't trust any from that site. Just look for the reviews that agree with each other, those ones are probably accurate.

Reply to 08nwsula

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814133125

Read the last entry. Lol, I love how five people clearly say its not for gaming, repeating themselves over and over. Then theres the one idiot who say "quadro4500 pwns hard @ css i pwn evry day with awp w/ dis card lol it roxors!"
-Ace

Reply to celewign

Sorry to double post, and get off topic, and not relate to newegg, but this comes to mind:
http://www.amazon.com/House-Number [...] 000H5VJSK/
You can even find one of my reviews in there!
-Ace

Reply to celewign

A lot of the positive reviews ARE fluff. The negative reviews, however, can be useful.

Reply to jsc

i guess all of them arent bad. but they mess up the overall ratings, so things can be deceptive. but there's always tom's to save the day.

Reply to drummerdude

The number 9 will never be the same to me again...

Reply to dj_taboo

Hey, I hate those cruddy Newegg reviews too. The other day, I ran across reviews in regards to the AMD Brisbane core Athlon X2 3600+

Quote :

Pros: Cheap price

Cons: Ran hot! I could start my computer and immediately go into bios hardware monitor screen and temps would be at 60c already! That's maybe 10 seconds with a cold start! Reset heatsink and tried the nice Opteron one, not much better. Easily hit 70c with any kind of load.

Other Thoughts: Seems some are having same trouble, bad batch maybe? RMA'd mine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] =100&Page=

Note: This guy said his "Tech level" was "High"; high in the sky if you ask me.... Its pathetic when people don't realize that a BIOS update was needed; some people didn't even touch the heatsink to see if the CPU was that hot!

Reply to PCKid777

In those public review forums, everyone is a tech expert. Like the previous poster said, expect fluff and expect idiocy. The overall can be a good hint as to the product quality, but thats it.

Reply to CompTIA_Rep

I read through most reviews (unless like 500 on one product) on everything on Newegg. You have to make the judgement of how well you think the person reviewed it is. Is there english and grammar good? If so, they probably actually did a 'real' review for the product.

I'm amazed at how many people RMA their stuff after little troubleshooting. Like the power supply I own, I was reviewing it again the other day and some guy RMA'd it twice because he couldn't figure out the 'server' connector split in two to be used as the P4 connector - even after 3 people including myself reviewed it saying the connector split in two and it was confusing. But the guy that gave it a bad review swore that it was at fault of the company and RMA'd it twice.

It got me thinking about how much money is lost in business because the customer improperly RMA's and warranties products without proper troubleshooting.

Reply to Fulmar

I only look at the negative reviews. I look for people who give reasoning. I love the ones where people will say it is bad because they didn't receive sata cables with an OEM hard drive though... those people are awesome.

Reply to DavidB

best reviews to look for are the negative ones, for sure. Unless they say something like "OMGZZZZ AMD SUXX0RZ INTEL RULEEEEEZZZZ" or "ATI PRAWNSSSS NVIDIA!" etc etc.

Also look for ones without grammatical/spelling errors.

Reply to quantumsheep

i like to read the lowest reviews, then google the product and see a pro review... then i cross reference the bad with the bad

Reply to crazypyro

Take it with a grain of salt read alot and draw your own conclusions...and yes the egg is not the guardian to all products...I think I have 2 # 9's in the shed....I'm comfortably well off 8O

Reply to Ninjaz7

When I use newegg reviews it helps to 'sort by helpfulness'. It's like a review of the reviews. This typically works better with more popular components that have a higher quantity of reviews.

Reply to daverimer

I usually look for stuff with LOTS of reviews - quality by quantity, if you will.
And I usually ignore the motherboard reviews unless there is a lot of bad reviews. I've noticed some people will post several times if they have to rma a product, nearly identical bad reviews, 3 in a row? It's one Pi$$ed off kid.

Reply to utaka95

I look for 1) high numbers of reviews and 2) consensus.

This is the fracking internet! EVERYTHING on the internet is structured just like Newegg's reviews.... even Tom's forumz. You will always get opposite opinions on just about every topic. But if newegg has 200 reviews and 90% are good, you get believe that the item is good. If newegg has 5 reviews .... you really can't trust the concensus as the sample is just not big enough to turn the bogus reviews into noise.

I can tell you that every single item that I have purchased at Newegg with more than 40 or 50 reviews has pretty much matched the consensus of the reviews.

What you can't trust is a guy who says that you cant trust them. (S)he is a sampling of 1 that throws out a sampling of 2 to make his case for 100s of thousands of reviews on a website. What he needed to do is to find one product with 100 reviews that falsely represented the item in question. THEN, he could make the blanket statement not to trust the reviews. I could pick ANY item with a lot of reviews... no matter how good... and find one lame idiot review in the bunch. Do I believe the one lame idiot review... or the 85% other more reasonable reviews? So the reader weighs all opinions and makes a choice.

Reply to rdhood

Quote :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814133125

Read the last entry. Lol, I love how five people clearly say its not for gaming, repeating themselves over and over. Then theres the one idiot who say "quadro4500 pwns hard @ css i pwn evry day with awp w/ dis card lol it roxors!"
-Ace

I don't even understand what he's trying to say there. Help! 8O

Reply to dsidious

Well, considering there are a ton of morons on newegg that consider themselves "reasonably technical" or better, then write a review that shows that they don't know D!k about computers, what do you really expect?

I just look at a few positives and negatives to see what people say, discard the idiotic ones, then go to a reputable site to find better reviews of the products I want.

Reply to hergieburbur

I ran across my favorite type of post on newegg a while back when I was doing a build and needed a floppy drive for raid drivers.

This is a prime example, though only one of many.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 10&Page=15

Roland's two reviews are the ones to look for. He bought a floppy drive, plugged it in backwards, and then called the drive a piece of ****. He then reviewed a second time to retract his first review after he figured out his mistake.

I feel old when I read the number of reviews from people that don't know how to plug in a floppy drive. I suspect that the majority of the RMA's and poor reviews of floppy drives are caused by this same mistake.

Reply to mphelps

Quote :

I read through... Is there english and grammar good? ...

So, knowledge of the english grammar and vocabulary is directly connected to being a computer hardware expert and the ability to write good reviews? Look at yourself: It is "their english" not "THERE english"...!

I am a foreigner myself and find this kind of comments pretty ignorant. But then again, what do you expect...

:x :x

Reply to Hyggelik

I used to work at a major UK component supplier, and I can tell you, most people who RMA something are cockmongers.
So many stories... the one that probably best springs to mind is someone who bought an 8800GTX for a Shuttle system, realised it wouldn't fit, and sawed about 4" off the back of it. Obviously thought the card wouldn't be needing all that silicon - nVidia were just "playing safe" :lol:

Reply to pseudopeon

You shouldn't trust any reviews...
But hey, they make for a really good laugh sometimes!

(from cnet when I was researching cameras):

Quote :

Something is wrong with the flash. You get a lot of photos with eyes shut, using red eye reduction or not.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Canon_Powe [...] &tag=uolst

Never knew the flash was supposed to make eyes stay open...

Reply to nobly

There are a LOT of idiots in the world

Reply to hergieburbur

That is why you need to be an educated consumer. Never purchase anything based upon one review. Do your home work and decide for yourself. "Buyer beware". "A fool and his money are soon parted". And yes I have been that fool before. :wink:

Reply to caamsa

Quote :

I'm amazed at how many people RMA their stuff after little troubleshooting. Like the power supply I own, I was reviewing it again the other day and some guy RMA'd it twice because he couldn't figure out the 'server' connector split in two to be used as the P4 connector - even after 3 people including myself reviewed it saying the connector split in two and it was confusing. But the guy that gave it a bad review swore that it was at fault of the company and RMA'd it twice.

It got me thinking about how much money is lost in business because the customer improperly RMA's and warranties products without proper troubleshooting.

yeah i had a problem on a home built and after three months i rma,ed
the mobo.
i wanted to make sure what the problem was.
even asked msi to let me know what they found.
they didnt though. just sent me a new one.
it was an msi k8n neo 4 sli mobo.
the new rma.ed one, well it was buggy too.

Reply to sirheck

My favorite ones are when someone gets a defective product(or they can't figure out how to work it) and they rate it 1 star and rant about how it didn't work...umm hello how can you review it if it didn't work? With any product you'll have a few bads ones, but that pisses me off so much when I see the waste of space of someone reviewing something they haven't even tested out yet. I also love how everyone rates their tech level high and 95% of the people that put it as that have no idea what they're talking about.

Reply to jt001

Quote :

...someone who bought an 8800GTX for a Shuttle system, realised it wouldn't fit, and sawed about 4" off the back of it.

Don't like that one?
Had someone buy a 8800GTX with the pre-installed waterblock (the BFG one) - and they didn't have a watercooling system... You can guess what happened when they plugged it in with the excitement :roll:

Reply to pseudopeon

Quote :

...someone who bought an 8800GTX for a Shuttle system, realised it wouldn't fit, and sawed about 4" off the back of it.

Don't like that one?
Had someone buy a 8800GTX with the pre-installed waterblock (the BFG one) - and they didn't have a watercooling system... You can guess what happened when they plugged it in with the excitement :roll:

hmm who would have guessed

Quote :

My favorite ones are when someone gets a defective product(or they can't figure out how to work it) and they rate it 1 star and rant about how it didn't work...umm hello how can you review it if it didn't work? With any product you'll have a few bads ones, but that pisses me off so much when I see the waste of space of someone reviewing something they haven't even tested out yet. I also love how everyone rates their tech level high and 95% of the people that put it as that have no idea what they're talking about.

that sums everything up. you dont even need to own the item to do a review.

also they should make you take a quiz to find our your tech level. this eliminates stupid people or the ones that dont use google.

Reply to drummerdude

dewd, I don't think you have seen some of the 965 presler reviews, half them talk about it being twice as fast as most conroes on the market, and then some even take the liberty of saying how they compared it to the x6800, and showed it was faster :lol: I actually like newegg's reviews for the most part, I just don't pay any attention to main hardware (especially cpu and ram) reviews since I already have better information, or can simply find actuall benchmarks and reviews, but for things like accessories, they aren't a bad idea to check out for say a hdd, since most are accurate there

Reply to I_Love_Tacos

Quote :

Is there english and grammar good? If so, they probably actually did a 'real' review for the product.

I guess we shouldn't trust any of your reviews.

Reply to kukito

Quote :

I read through... Is there english and grammar good? ...

So, knowledge of the english grammar and vocabulary is directly connected to being a computer hardware expert and the ability to write good reviews? Look at yourself: It is "their english" not "THERE english"...!

I am a foreigner myself and find this kind of comments pretty ignorant. But then again, what do you expect...

:x :x

Well, if you really want to get it right, try "English grammar", "their English", lowercase i in "it" after a colon, and don't follow a punctuation mark with another. But never mind that, I'm just being picky, sorry. Your English is great for a second language and way above the average I see in forums. Lots of people spell "grammar" badly, for example.

There might be a direct connection, I think. I majored in Computer Science and among my colleagues the ones with the best grades in general were also the ones with the best knowledge of English. OK, English was our second language, so maybe the data is flawed, but still... If I asked my former colleagues to review something and I took the advice from the best worded ones, they would probably be written by the same guys who got A+ in programming or microprocessor design.

Reply to dsidious

Quote :

Is there english and grammar good? If so, they probably actually did a 'real' review for the product.

I guess we shouldn't trust any of your reviews.

Thanks for a good laugh guys! Gee, two weeks ago I saw a review for a Star Wars book at amazon. The review was well written, good grammar, etc. Too bad the book will only be released in July. I would say that was not a real review...

Reply to dsidious

Quote :

dewd, I don't think you have seen some of the 965 presler reviews, half them talk about it being twice as fast as most conroes on the market, and then some even take the liberty of saying how they compared it to the x6800, and showed it was faster :lol: I actually like newegg's reviews for the most part, I just don't pay any attention to main hardware (especially cpu and ram) reviews since I already have better information, or can simply find actuall benchmarks and reviews, but for things like accessories, they aren't a bad idea to check out for say a hdd, since most are accurate there

Well, at least newegg doesn't remove the reviews they don't like. I can't be 100% sure of this, but it's pretty obvious considering all these weird or idiotic reviews they did accept. Future Shop for example removes any review that would discourage somebody from buying. I have posted several good reviews and several bad reviews on their site in the past year and it's amazing how only the good ones were there the next day.

Reply to dsidious

Have to disagree there. newegg did NOT post one of my reviews on their product. It was a laser printer toner, but (according to the manufacturer) they mailed me an 'international' version of the toner, which does not fit the USA version of the printer. That was about a month's worth of hassle.
So I figured I'd write a review stating as such to warn others, but that never made it up there....

Reply to nobly

My favorite newegg review of all time... It was for an anti-static wrist band, they gave it 3 eggs.

"Pros: Good conductor

Cons: To test conductivity I plugged the aligator clip into the wall socket. Now the wrist band is a part of me, which is fine becuase of its sleek design. That really hurt though.

Other Thoughts: Don't test it the way I did, you'll be ok. "

Reply to MAK-Daddy32

Don't forget all the people that haven't figured out Google and ask questions in the review sections.

Pros: It looks cool and i want it.
Cons: I haven't bought this yet. :cry:
Other Thoughts: How do i get this top of the line whatchamacallit to work on my 7 year old junk pc? :?:

Reply to dj_taboo

No, some of the reviews magically disappear, but generally I haven't seen them delete reviews spreading fud, perhaps they like the free marketing

Reply to I_Love_Tacos

Quote :

Something is wrong with the flash. You get a lot of photos with eyes shut, using red eye reduction or not.

Actually, this could be legit - I have the same problem with me and my own camera, a Minolta F100.

A good flash can meter the exposure in real time, crappy ones don't meter at all. Some mid-level flashes pre-meter (just before taking the actual picture) with a lower-level discharge. Kind of a "pop-POP" flash. It's so subtle and quick that it's hard to notice.

However, it seems the time delay between the two flashes is exactly that of my blink reflex action. The first "pop" makes be blink, so my eyes are closed for the real "POP" that takes the picture.

If I try not to blink, then I look all wide-eyed weird. 8O

This doesn't seem to be a problem with other cameras, even ones that do the pre-metering. My Mom's Canon, for example, is noticably slower, so I think I'm done with the blink.

So, I'm justified blaming the camera for my closed eyes! It's just me, though, everyone else is normal.

Reply to mbmcavoy

Not sure if anyone has quoted this one yet...

Quote :

Man. To bad they didn't make this in SLI. Just think 2 of these puppies runing HL2 or UT2007 when it comes out in 3840x2400 MANNNNN. Be awsome!!!!

Whoa... What a complete moron

Reply to seryth

Quote :

My favorite newegg review of all time... It was for an anti-static wrist band, they gave it 3 eggs.

"Pros: Good conductor

Cons: To test conductivity I plugged the aligator clip into the wall socket. Now the wrist band is a part of me, which is fine becuase of its sleek design. That really hurt though.

Other Thoughts: Don't test it the way I did, you'll be ok. "

What a monkey-clunge... :lol:

Reply to pseudopeon

I think this is one of the best threads I've seen on THG...

It's unbelievable how many morons post reviews... :lol:

Uhhh...

Reply to Paul_gren

Of course, the reviews on the 'Egg are skewed toward the negative. People are more likely to submit feedback if they had a problem then if everything worked as advertised. So even when a product has a ton of negatives I still trust my own judgement.

I also love it when people write something completely ridiculous and then rate their technical knowledge "high"

Reply to cb62fcni

Quote :

I also love it when people write something completely ridiculous and then rate their technical knowledge "high"

Candidates for management. If we didn't have to tolerate people like this, life would be so much better !

As to the reviews, in general I find them helpful. Particularly those on heatsinks as I've had just a few too many that were far to difficult to install. Also I get the feeing that bad parts are sold in "runs" and reviews might help prevent the purchase of these parts.

Reply to photographer

Quote :

Part Of New system

Reviewed by: Rob

Just ordered this along with
BFG 680 MOBo
BFG 8800GTX OC2
OCz SLI DDR2 PC2 8500 Mem
BFG 800W PS
Logitech G15 Keyboard
Antec 900 Gaming Case.
Think I've gone a bit OTT with the BFG stuff but I'm sure it will rock, cant wait to see what this Kentsfield can do.

just pulled this off overclockersuk its a review of the qx6700
this guy must be trying to extend his e-penis
there are quite a few useless ones on there ill try to pull some out

Reply to yakyb

I look for hardware incompatibilities on Newegg.com. Some are correct.
The machine keeps rebooting with this card...
I don't trust fully the opinions on how good a product is unless there is a large consensus.

Reply to evongugg

this is Review of OCZ sli 8500's ram

Quote :

Gamers Read this

Reviewed by: TANK

I play games semi-professionally, I am part of a team and recently our boss man cracked a deal with OCZ to sponser our team. Can't say the name but we are one of the top Gaming teams in the UK and travel across europe and States. I manage to incorporate this product because I have a conroe running quad core and needed the parts to run 1066plus. Easy for these little beaut's and not just that they tallyed up with my board because the SPD is set specially to work at an optimized level of performance. SLI zone is where I found out that the board and VGA are on the compatibility list, and is an awesome site to check out before building any PC. I haven't mentioned anything about the certification on the actual heatspreader, Mainly because it says exactly what it should, and speaks volumes in my eyes, these work with the Nvidia cards, I am lucky to have an 8800VGA, not sure if you will be as lucky, as the 8800's are very hard to come by.

this was replied with by

Quote :

Good modules, shame about the gimp above who reckons 8800's are hard to come by....lol

Reply to yakyb

Look at me! I just dropped £3000 on kit I don't really know how to use!
or
Look at me! I just pretended to drop £3000 on kit I don't really know how to use!

Reply to pseudopeon

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