gali

A discussion recently lead me to consider the merits of facts and experience when reviewing or talking about a product or subject. A review without any facts could be considered little more than meaningless opinion, and a review where the author has never touched the product may have little credibility. Obviously, any good review has room for both, but is there merit in leaning one way or the other?

The reviews here at Gali are designed to be focussed on personal needs, and how technology can be applied to do every day tasks, with a clear bias towards my personal life. I’m not arrogant enough to consider that this means every assessment of every product is right for everyone. Different people have different requirements, and if anyone finds that their needs line up with mine and they find one of the articles on Gali useful, then the site has done its job. That said, if the reviews didn’t contain any facts, and simply spouted made up nonsense about products that may or may not exist, then if I was lucky it might pass as some kind of entertainment. It certainly wouldn’t be a gadget blog.

Lists of facts can be useful. When in the market for a product where several possibilities are available, each with subtly different specifications, a means to compare the different details factually, without paragraphs of analysis and opinion, can be incredibly valuable. A number of online shopping web sites provide services where similar products can be compared, listing specifications next to each other in tabular form so that it is easier to see how they differ. When well implemented such that these tables include the specifications that a customer actually cares about, these tables can make a quick initial comparison a lot easier than running around a local store with a scrap of paper to take notes.

Of course, many of these facilities leave a lot to be desired. Many lack sufficient detail, list irrelevant information that wouldn’t influence many, list incorrect information, or simply seem to just show the details where the products are identical. I remember one site of note that quite happily informed me that a Playstation 3 would play Playstation 3 games, an Xbox 360 would play Xbox 360 games and a Wii would play Wii games, and this (along with the colour of the console) was the defining comparative feature. I guess it was accurate, but not useful. In general, however, just having a few details that differ and are accurate can often be a good guideline to creating a shortlist of what to buy.

The problem is that choosing a product can rarely end there. Occasionally, something that meets the numerical specification requirements laid down by the customer will actually do just fine. If you happen to just need a spoon to eat a tub of ice cream with (an example  you would come to value the first time you don’t have a spoon), then as long as it’s spoon shaped and clean, you’re probably going to be happy.

More often than not though, determining whether a product does the job you need it for can be subject to actually using it. A new smartphone’s software can contain small quirks that annoy or small conveniences that are a wonder. The latest release of an operating system might put options you’re used to in obscure places or features that previously took hours to configure suddenly just work first time. A new laptop’s processor speed being bigger does not necessarily mean it’s going to outperform laptops with lower processors thanks to the variety of other factors that affect PC performance these days. There are small details that come to the surface only from use, and the fact many technologies these days are so complex or vast in scope that it would be impossible to create a concise and useful list of facts to compare quickly. These combine to make a review that focuses on the experience of using a product invaluable.

In order to fully research a product, reviews that combine fact and experience, along with raw data about the product, will most likely give the best picture about whether that product is good for you. It’s vital that multiple reviews be sought though, to see where different reviewers agree, and to give a broad perspective of the bigger picture so that it’s possible to separate the opinions based on facts, and opinions based on the personality of the reviewer.

And that’s where the reviews based in experience can break down. As we move further from the extreme of entirely fact based analysis, the opposite end of the spectrum approaches. The authors of this sort of content is perhaps best described as a true ‘fanboy’ of a product or brand. This sort of content is more likely than others to contain bias that may not be truly based in fact. Reading a fanboy’s review should therefore be done with caution, but I don’t think they should be totally ignored as obsessive madmen. Within the ravings of a fanboy there is probably some good material – after all, to become a fanboy in the first place, they have probably gained extensive exposure to a product and therefore have some worthy content to put across to the reader.

In conclusion then, if you are short of time, the best reviews to read are clearly those with a strong basis in fact and experience. Content written by someone that clearly lacks one or the other is going to leave you with less than a perfect picture. If the experiences of others matter, then reading from a range of sources – or at least from sources you’ve learned to trust from previous reading – is definitely worthwhile. If you’ve got all the time in the world though to choose which product you are going to spend a lot of money on, then picking from the broad spectrum of styles of writing would always yield the best look at the bigger picture.

And of course, if you’re on a budget, that may define which product you have to buy anyway.