I keep seeing people swear by the NY Times' Wirecutter and they do have a much more upfront set of standards for reviewing products, but I've actually been pretty underwhelmed by the recommended buys from them. Still, I respect that they're trying. Wish that Consumer Reports was more easily available now too.
My unscientific feeling is that Wirecutter's gotten worse: less rigorous testing (particularly for reliability), more arbitrary reasoning behind their choices and what things are dealbreakers, more products excluded. A lot of things they seem to basically just pick some popular brands, talk about Amazon reviews, etc.
They also seem to have a much broader range of things covered now, so I think the strategy was to go cheaper, faster, wider.
