Imagine a world where every product category had someone dedicated enough to build a site like this and keep it up to date. I'd specifically love one for cameras, lenses, and for the analog shooters out there, film.
There exist countless sites for any product category in any language. With zero quality assurance or heart but filled with nothing but useless text and affiliate links.
Affiliate programs have destroyed this kind of web and Google happily suggests these sites as search results.
Only continues to get worse too. I get ads for AI copywriting services on my social media all the time. Out of curiosity I joined one of the groups for one specific software - just filled with people attempting to do affiliate marketing spam. Not even tech savvy people, just suckers who are following some stupid get rich thing.
It's interesting... his site has plenty of valuable info but only if you're knowledgeable enough of a photographer to identify what is his opinion vs. what's an objective criticism.
Yep, I know a small bit about photography and Ken's advice is better than most. One of the few places where you will hear that some product isn't worth the money, and here is a different cheaper one that's just as good. Or that here is one that is much cheaper and most people will never notice the difference. That's very helpful to the mainstream photographer, and very rare to see.
He is not the "Stereophile" type of reviewer, for example.
And this is such a good example of why single-person review sites are not the answer to the problem. The site is in theory most useful to people who don't know much about the topic. But to know that the site isn't credible, you need to know a fair bit.
One solution is things like Consumer Reports and Wirecutter, where you have an institution that does some quality control. But I wonder if there's something in the middle, like a few good reviewers clubbing together and certifying one another, such that there's a recognizable brand that they share, one with meaningfully high standards.
I've actually found some of Ken Rockwell's info on analog cameras (especially Leica & lenses) to be super helpful, but I can't speak to his digital knowledge. Also, his photography itself isn't great.
There's value but you can't just read one article. He contradicts himself. One post will rant about how digital means you don't need a tripod then another will be a glowing review of...a tripod.
I would recommend (not necessarily for your categories) https://www.rtings.com/ I use it mostly for monitors, mouse, keyboards, TVs. It does have amazon affiliate links but the test are pretty good (and standardized to allow comparisons) as far as I am concerned.
I would say true for most affiliate sites that are just aggregating the available options.
However, there are certainly sites, and perhaps this is one, where there is considerable credibility (actual interest and knowledge), research and effort that I have no problem with the owner being compensated for providing the resource.
Even if just providing a more intuitive and deeper method to narrow down options to fit a narrower use case (which vac has the longest cord!), then there is added value.
I'd prefer such a decentralized world, but heck, if Amazon provided such an accurate, detailed, garbage-free view into product categories I might start shopping with Amazon again.
GSMArena exists and I really like it. The one I personally miss the most is one for monitors. It's way too difficult to wade trough all the models and not get tricked.
This is pretty much the world we live in now. True aficionados who devote time to discovering, analyzing, and sharing actual quality -- not because they expect to make money from doing so, but simply because they like that category. Untold amounts of time have been spent on this exact thing over the past twenty years.
The problem is discoverability. Though there are more sites like this than ever before, it's hard to find any of them. Google has been thoroughly conquered by content marketing at this point -- if you search for any product category, the first dozens of pages are 100% long form commercial advertising now. They all have much larger budgets and way better SEO skills than the average aficionado.
