Some of the WireCutter’s picks were fairly terrible, which makes sense: testing diverse categories of products is too expensive for affiliate links to cover. I’ve gifted dashcams on their recommendation that shot beautiful QHD but had MTBF measured in single digit months. The TP-Link C7 Archer was kind of a turd and within a stone’s throw of a decent router price-wise.
To be fair, MTBF is not something you can measure in a reasonable time for these kinds of review sites. Far better for this kind of thing is niche-specific youtube channels.
But in any case, what you're asking for here is a prediction of your future satisfaction with a product. It's a non-trivial problem even for the most innocuous purchases.
Will I like Lysol or Clorox wipes more? Who knows, and the reviews aren't going to beat first-hand experience in any circumstances.
I’ve written extensively about this recently, but these days with $300+ “gaming” routers using crappy sweatshop software on whatever Atheros router SoC, many users would be much better served with legit SMB routing / switching / wifi systems that are available for around the same price.
I mean this is a known thing in general; the best kitchen supply stuff you can buy is often stuff intended for commercial use, because it quite literally goes through the wringer with near-constant usage over long periods of time.
The problem is finding a place that sells commercial things to individual buyers. That, and sometimes what a commercial kitchen needs is vastly oversized for a regular house; you're probably going to set off your residential fire alarm very often with a massive commercial range designed for woks, for example, unless you also upgrade the ventilation, etc.
I switched to Unifi access points and a wired router and switch and am much happier with the result.
The consolidation of router, switch and access point means you can't upgrade individual parts. It's the modern equivalent of the TV-VCR combo and most consumers don't realize they actually can be separated.
I didn’t know what good Wifi until I switched to using some TP-Link Omada equipment.
If you run your own controller, you can set up a small network (router, PoE switch, and AP) for less than $300. Hardware controller is ~$90. A controller isn’t strictly necessary, but I don’t recommend doing a standalone setup.
Downside? It’s business class equipment and you need some idea what you’re doing. It’s not plug-n-play. Also, it’s layer 2 only. If you want mDNS across vlans, you’ll need to run a reflector. (Not difficult. It’s built into avahi.)
I'd love to read what you've written. So far, my research into commercial Access points hasn't really been that fruitful. I refuse any cloud based management interface. For the router, I use mikrotik which has been great but I returned the access points from them that I tried. In the end, my access points are Asus home routers because they were the best I found.
I've got the A7, which I believe is the same thing except it has some sort of ability to enable Alexa control for something or other.
Mine has worked great. The only issues I've seen are (1) the traffic stats don't count IPv6 traffic, and (2) there is something odd that sometimes goes on when a connection ends that can result in packets from the LAN side showing up on the WAN side without the LAN-side IP address being replaced with the WAN-side IP address.
The first is a bit of annoyance, and the second as far as I saw didn't actually cause any problems.
My experience with NYT product reviews is pretty awful. I wish I could be more concrete. Tried to look in my history but I could have sworn at least one article was just effectively, "top 10 most popular on Amazon", with quotes from user reviews. Maybe I'm getting my sites mixed up.
I believe you're thinking of The Strategist, which is through New York Magazine. That's basically their thing, to summarize Amazon reviews for you and filter through a product category based on that. I also don't really see much of the value in it, but I suppose I can see how someone might.
Bought a pair of audio-technica headphones based on their review. Sound quality was as described but it was so uncomfortable I returned it 5 minutes after picking it up. It was described as comfortable for long wear but it had a hard band with little padding and was uncomfortable for any duration.
Comfort is a pretty subjective thing. Your experience, while valid, is merely a single data point and it would be quite premature to disregard the review or even the whole outlet based on it.
I find Wirecutter and Consumer Reports are pretty reasonable for product categories where I just want a reasonable choice and don't necessarily have deep knowledge and preferences myself. And, yes, it's worth reading why they picked something. But if I were buying an interchangeable lens camera or a computer I might read their recommendation but I'd look elsewhere also. For a sprayer for a hose? I'm sure their recommendation is fine.
