This happened in 2014, why the hell is this being brought up now? It should be noted that NextDesk changed their name to Xdesk after this debacle years ago.
Also NOT published and considered in this flame throwing is Wirecutter's response. There is a clear agenda. I only know this fiasco because I spent hours looking for a standing desk yesterday.
- In terms of durability: laminate > bamboo > powdercoat. Powdercoat feels EXTREMELY nice, but it's made of compacted shards so not really lasting.
- Most use Chinese motors but they're not really an issue.
- Just get whatever is the cheapest from a common brand. Fully (Jarvis), UPLIFT, VertDesk are all good. Jarvis and UPLIFT are similarly priced but UPLIFT's bamboo table is thicker. Xdesk is personally too expensive for something I would go to Herman Miller or Steelcase for a similarly priced desk.
- The wobble at high heights for the ones above ^ exists but is in practice not really an issue (at like the maximum height where your arms would be at an uncomfortable position then). Personally, I only want a standing desk so I can adjust to a good height for my chair, so I would never use it to stand at 5' for hours at a time. BTOD produces good reviews on YouTube and their site but keep in mind they create the VertDesk.
"This happened in 2014, why the hell is this being brought up now?"
I just found out about it, and thought others might be interested. I have used The Wirecutter reviews to make purchasing decisions. For me, this incident just a few years ago makes me doubt their objectivity today.
Seems like Wirecutter's response didn't respond to things they didn't want to talk about. Looking at their standing desk guide now, they still haven't reviewed any of the newer xdesks. Kinda surprised Wirecutter got away with the better end of this.
The folks that made outdoorgearlab.com have always struck me as being very honest and real with their reviews. I've bought thousands of dollars of outdoor / climbing gear from their recommendations and generally agree with their assessment.
Q: Do companies pay you to review their gear?
A: No, we never receive money from companies for reviewing their gear.
Q: How do you get the gear for your reviews?
A: We buy all the products we review ourselves, at retail just like you, to help assure complete objectivity and independence in our ratings. We won't accept any free evaluation units from manufacturers.
Yeah, it’s a fantastic resource. I really only care about crampons when I need to buy a new pair and they are the perfect place to look. I didn’t know they were expanding!
About the only source of reviews I would believe isn't primarily paid advertorials is Consumer Reports, and those have to be filtered through CR's own particular set of biases. Even sites that aren't blatantly pay to play (and Wirecutter was pretty obviously in that camp basically from the very start) are usually compromised by being provided expensive hardware they could not economically review otherwise, and know that negative reviews will cut them off from the very thing that enables them to exist.
Picking signal out of the shill review background noise is really hard these days.
Fakespot can really help for the biggest sites with reviews [0]. Previous to using it, I just ignored Amazon reviews completely. But this does a really good job of cutting through the shit to get something approaching public sentiment. Half of my buying decision these days is actually whether or not the company has a history of buying reviews for their products.
And pushing for affiliate revenue, then changing your review, then lying that the new top pick does not have any affiliate revenue either is even worse.
(They claimed their new top pick also didn't have an affiliate relationship. But the way back machine archive showed that they were in fact linking to the new desk via an Amazon affiliate link.)
They are, but they've always claimed that the presence of an affilate link, or the percentage they got from it, didn't affect their recommendation and they would happily recommend the best product even if they got no $ from it. Anyone living in the real world knew that was 100% bullshit.
It's BS because no media company has ever operated its editorial fully independently of its revenue model, and if any has come close it's the old-school newspapers owned by fat cats, not startups reviewing tech products.
While they have been upfront about affiliate marketing, they haven't been upfront that a product that is shortlisted in their guides would be downgraded if it didn't have an affiliate program. Essentially no one would assume that a vendor having (or not having) an affiliate program would affect the relative ranking of the guide's recommendations.
All affiliate sites eventually become this way. As a data point from someone who owns a NextDesk Terra and a Jarvis Fully, though, I agree with the basic point of the article. The Jarvis is functionally equivalent to the NextDesk even though the NextDesk is clearly a more luxe and high-end product. I'd compare the difference to the Acura and Infiniti Q45 that I owned... both were great cars and totally reliable, and I crashed both of them badly and walked away unscathed, but the Infiniti was just one level higher in fit and finish.
IMO they have the same problem as most online review sites. The reviewers lack the industry knowledge needed to assess a product in isolation, so they end up with reviews where products are compared to each other. A review of dozen piece of trash products always ends with a recommendation even if they’re all a waste of money.
IE: Check out our review for the tastiest dog shit of 2018.
My guess is that affiliate revenues for automatic cat litter boxes are somewhat low. Judging by their behavior and response to these allegations, I'm inclined to think that, if the product was higher volume, they would go ahead and recommend it wholeheartedly.
I've bought a few things after reading their reviews, but since found a select few youtubers who seem more genuine (e.g. RocketJumpNinja for gaming mice).
The worst was the Pioneer XW-SMA4-K bluetooth speaker they recommended. Obsolete just a couple of months after I bought it, and performance was just ok. Had to hook it up to a timer to reset it at least once a week or else it'd stop showing up on Airplay.
There was something else I bought (can't recall which) that I was disappointed with, so when I was looking at treadmills and security cameras, I looked at their reviews more carefully. Trying to corroborate their positive reviews elsewhere turned me off their conclusions.
Agreed, their bluetooth speaker reviews were lackluster. Ended up getting a UE Boom 2 after researching it myself and have been very happy. But for their other guides like travel gear, bluetooth headphones, monitors I've generally been happy with their picks. I usually pick the upgrade option when possible.
In my case I found a very detailed review on Amazon that compared it to a few competitors. I suspect UE makes good speakers overall though. For the UE Boom 2, it's sound quality was significantly better than the Anker speaker I tried and supposedly only 2nd to the Bose Soundlink Mini which is 2x the price and not waterproof.
If it is a standard affiliate program he is after, why does he not just say that in the email?
I don’t think there is anything wrong for Wirecutter to say “hey, we make money from affiliate sales - do you guys have a program we can sign up to?”. That’s totally cool. But he does such an awful job of saying that and makes it sound so much worse.
Up front: Our writers and editors are never made aware of which companies may have established affiliate relationships with our business team prior to making their picks. If readers choose to buy the products we recommend as a result of our research, analysis, interviews, and testing, our work is often (but not always) supported through an affiliate commission from the _retailer_ when they make a purchase. If readers return their purchases because they’re dissatisfied or the recommendation is bad, we make nothing. There’s no incentive for us to pick inferior products or respond to pressure from manufacturers—in fact, it’s quite the opposite. We think that’s a pretty fair system that keeps us committed to serving our readers first.
The most important thing to us is the trust we have from readers. If we were to recommend something because we are biased or lazy, readers like you wouldn’t support our work. We also invite you to fact-check our pieces, which carefully outline the time, logic, and energy spent researching, interviewing experts, and testing the gear. Often, this takes dozens—sometimes even hundreds—of hours. Each guide plainly lays out all the evidence for why we made our picks so you can judge for yourself."
I think the distinction that this is affiliate marketing for the retailers -- not the product manufacturers themselves -- is an important one to make. Also, I think their path of separating business from editorial is entirely sensible for a NYTimes company.
That being said, reviews (and review sites) always fall under "buyer beware" in my mind (I once read a 1 star review of a DVD player stating that it gave it 1 star because it wasn't a VHS player...seriously).
I don't think getting affiliate revenues is necessarily a problem, however, there is an inherent conflict of interest considering that different retailers pay different affiliate rates and some manufacturers sell direct and pay higher affiliate commissions.
Also, getting a commission on sales encourages the reviewers to select more expensive options.
I usually like Wirecutter reviews. But I do find that they sometimes seem to favor more expensive options when cheaper alternatives are nearly the same or better. (Even their budget pick tends to be high and sometimes I think the budget pick should be the overall pick).
You will see a lot of products frequently at the top of review lists (not just Wirecutter) that are not sold on Amazon. These are usually sold at a premium direct from the manufacturer and a higher commission can be paid. (15-25%)
The thermapen thermometer is one of these. They will always link directly to thermoworks website, who is the sole distributor in the US. I'm sure they pay a higher commission than Amazon's 8% for comparable but cheaper alternatives like the javelin.
For tech products I always presume that "pay to play" is a component of the reviews from a review source. Even if it's not explicit the large brands buy a lot of the advertising and will get some 'editorial compensation' almost certainly.
This doesn't mean the reviews are worthless though. By checking several sources of reviews for the same product type one can often get a sense of which are really the top products. After all, a review site would look pretty bad if it really promoted a dog product that no other reviewer liked. What does often get over looked though are the really good products from small suppliers.
Also NOT published and considered in this flame throwing is Wirecutter's response. There is a clear agenda. I only know this fiasco because I spent hours looking for a standing desk yesterday.
- In terms of durability: laminate > bamboo > powdercoat. Powdercoat feels EXTREMELY nice, but it's made of compacted shards so not really lasting.
- Most use Chinese motors but they're not really an issue.
- Just get whatever is the cheapest from a common brand. Fully (Jarvis), UPLIFT, VertDesk are all good. Jarvis and UPLIFT are similarly priced but UPLIFT's bamboo table is thicker. Xdesk is personally too expensive for something I would go to Herman Miller or Steelcase for a similarly priced desk.
- The wobble at high heights for the ones above ^ exists but is in practice not really an issue (at like the maximum height where your arms would be at an uncomfortable position then). Personally, I only want a standing desk so I can adjust to a good height for my chair, so I would never use it to stand at 5' for hours at a time. BTOD produces good reviews on YouTube and their site but keep in mind they create the VertDesk.
https://thewirecutter.com/our-response-to-nextdesk/