Yeah, the ad-funded model and how that supports reviewers seems to have damaged well structured and comprehensive independent review sites. It's all in videos or really low-effort stuff nowadays, and that makes it hard to draw conclusions without significant effort - and even then, considerable risk of drawing the wrong conclusions.
I think this affects far more than just coolers; it's simply that for categories that have few options (say, CPUs) it's easier to slog through all the youtube videos, and there still exist a few text-based reviewers.
But cases, ram, motherboard AIB versions, GPU AIB versions... even power supplies often - reviews are suprisingly sparse and hard to compare and rarely comprehensive.
YouTube is almost completely useless for reviews. You can't scroll the video, meaning you have to watch almost all of it to realize they're actually not evaluating the metrics you are interested in. One would think a video would make it harder for a reviewer to just parrot official PR, but alas...
The only time I ever find a YouTube review of interest is when e.g you are actually showing some physical characteristic of the product, which is almost never the case for PC components, but maybe the case in some portable devices (tablet PCs come to mind). Notice that on these types of physical aspect reviews the reviewer himself doesn't appear at all on the video. In most PC components "video reviews" you are simply staring at the face of the reviewer. They could literally do without the video at all (save for a couple of still images where tables are presented) and would still be as informative, if not more. Some could even do without the audio...
Have you actually looked at the GN reviews or are you just assuming this...
I agree that text would be nicer to have but man. Also there's chapters now at least, so if you don't care about the analysis you can just jump to the numbers.
> so if you don't care about the analysis you can just jump to the numbers.
I really disagree. See for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtVowYykviM . Does he measure idle power consumption ? It's impossible to tell from the chapter names. (Spoiler: he doesn't). Also whether he compares the performance of the 7900 sans X with the 7900X at similar power levels (Spoiler: he does, albeit only for 7950X and a minority of the benchmarks.) This is a video which is supposed to be about power efficiency, so it catches my attention; but most of it is about runtime benchmarks with only a couple power/efficiency comparisons early on. And after watching the full video, I cannot think of anything about the visuals that helped made his point clearer. A simple plain page with a couple of tables would have been at least as much helpful, or even more helpful, since it would have been searchable. If you disagree, can you elaborate what did you feel the video/audio provided over a static HTML page ?
No you're right that text would be better, especially when you're looking for specific things. I have a feeling though that we're in the minority with that unfortunately. What's sad, and what I had assumed was still the case, is that GN no longer uploads transcripts to their website.
I had the same gripe learning firebase with pretty great official tutorials, which would have taken half the time if I could just read them.
The automatic transcripts work fairly well which is how I cope with it.
I can think of a few others, including an offshoot of [H] called thefpsreviews.com but I've seen a lot of crappy, low effort "reviews" just in time for the "video cards are finally cheap" manufactured craze last year, which was last straw for me.
They have degraded significantly over the last few years. Up to around 2015 it was about my #1 reference source. It's how I found out about the fact many GPUs used to triple or quadruple their power consumption just because of an extra monitor being connected, and that AMD's HBM-based GPUs were at that point a surprising exception (when otherwise AMDs GPUs are usually the worst at it). These days however I have to take everything they measure with a grain of salt, and at some point I even had a discussion with a member of staff on the merits of having idle power consumption measurements at all. Something has definitely changed on their side.
Now, these guys used to deliver some quality stuff, including the big frame pacing thing that finally convinced the masses that no, fps number is not everything. One of the owners joined AMD and yeah, it's been dead for several years.
Can you really blame reviewers? Doing a comprehensive thorough review is hard work that has to meet a very aggressive deadline to maximize utility. Meanwhile youtube channels like LTT are printing money on low quality low effort content. Obviously you'd rather do that.
I'm not blaming anyone; it's just an observation that it's harder to find comprehensive reviews than it used to be.
I mean, stuff like https://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU-2020/2758 still exists, but I get the impression they no longer have the resources they once did to really fill it the way they used to; and similar things goes for other sites. I think the best option I know about that remains is https://www.techpowerup.com/review/, but they're much less in depth than what used to be available. It's still great to have such a broad set of reviews, mind you, and they're doing a great job. I get the impression there's much less funding for stuff like this, making the last few survivors all the more impressive.
> Meanwhile youtube channels like LTT are printing money on low quality low effort content.
I find this statement rather snarky and it is imho quite close to being against the HN Guidelines.
Anyway I also think it is wrong. Sure not all videos from LTT are high-quality well researched and contain thorough testing but when they are really reviewing a product they put a lot of effort into it. They are even in the process of building a decked out lab to facilitate proper testing.
An example of this is their review of the recently released Ryzen 7000 non-X CPUs. They tested 11 different CPUs in 9 different games and 14 productivity benchmarks and further testing with regards to thermals and power consumption. The whole 18 minute video is basically Linus explaining result charts for these various tests.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CTiRNnSg0jA&t=9s&pp=2AEJkAIB
I encourage you to watch this or any of the other hardware review videos and think about reevaluating your opinion. I don’t want to come across as a fanboy but it think your under a quite outdated impression and I think it’s unfair with regards the investment and change LTT is undergoing as of late.
Despite all the effort, benchrmak results are still not consistent. The other day I wanted to check how Ryzen 7600 compares to i13600k in code compilation. Ratio in time between these 2 processors reported by different authors were wildly different:
LTT: 129%
GN: 160%
Techpowerup: 105%
With results fluctuating up to 2 generational differences it is hard to make sense, despite all the authors effort. This leaves that kind of content more of entertainment rather than informational and from that perspective low effort doesn't bother me.
Presumably "compilation" is such a broad basket of activities that they each use a different workload. Have you looked at phoronix? They tend to cover that niche a little better, and will potentially have numerous compilation benchmarks.
I find it ironical that Phoronix used to be considered a rather bad reviewer like a decade ago (just Google around!), while nowadays it is probably one of the best. I mean, Phoronix has definitely improved, but not that much.
e.g. they used to be considered clickbaity, but for today's standards you might as well call them "mild".
I think this affects far more than just coolers; it's simply that for categories that have few options (say, CPUs) it's easier to slog through all the youtube videos, and there still exist a few text-based reviewers.
But cases, ram, motherboard AIB versions, GPU AIB versions... even power supplies often - reviews are suprisingly sparse and hard to compare and rarely comprehensive.