Why reviews from Tech Blogger doesn't matter to me

Why reviews from Tech Blogger doesn't matter to me

OK. I am a sucker for new gadgets.  Every new gadget that I am really excited about gets released, I am literally crawling the web for reviews from the best tech blogger out there.  After reading their reviews, I do determine if I should go to the store and check out the item before making that impulse decision to buy that gadget.  At times, it is hard to get a feel of the gadget as it is sold online and you have to go by on the face value.  After following the process religiously for quiet sometime, I have come to a point where I believe that the blogger, who have been reviewing the gadgets for quite a long time, never look that gadget from a user perspective, but from their own vision of what that gadget should have been. 

After reading reviews and that too tons of reviews from an expert, you kind of get what the expectation of the blogger was when he was reviewing the gadget. It shows in his reviews. The sad part is that a user who has followed the blogger/reviewer for quite some time gets it and can easily identify where the reviewer is coming from.  Also, today the hype surrounding a product doesn’t help. Every new tablet released that makes some noise is an “iPad killer”. Every new phone that gets released is the “mothership” phone.

Recently, I looked at the Kindle Fire and was blown away by what a device that is selling 66% cheaper than iPad can do.  It is by no means an iPad killer. For me, It doesn’t even compete with an iPad in any shape of form. iPad is in its own league and I don’t see any tablet that can come close to what it offers from an user experience perspective. The blogger across the globe (Silicon Valley to be precise …that’s where most noise comes from) started ranting about the device. Most blogger, even Walt Mossberg, was critical on how the page turn on the books was a little slower than the page turn on iPad’s iBooks.

But what Kindle Fire device does is pretty simple. You buy a book reader that does few more tricks then a standard 100$ book reader does. It does videos, music, browser, apps and read books. It has limited apps from amazon’s app store that you can load for casual gaming and it costs 200$. It has Facebook and Twitter and has a great browser to get around the web. Also amazon has done a smart thing by not really locking down the device. 

Obviously, a normal user would never go that route to do a “one-click” root and put an android market on it or Gmail on it. Yet, for 200$ it does satisfy what 80% of iPad owners use their iPad for. For me, it was clear Amazon created this tablet so that a user can buy products from Amazon. They don’t care about Android OS not being updated or it not being the latest OS. It really doesn’t matter to them as long as they keep that cost to less than $200 and am pretty sure, with kindle Fire 2.0 and 8.9 Kindle in the near horizon, that $200 tablet would get to $140 with living social ads!

Coming back to bloggers – I still read their reviews, but I have come to a place, where I can judge with much clarity about a product.