I couldn’t find reviews worth trusting, so I started writing them.
Most reviews are either the sales pitch repeated back to you, or somebody’s first hour with the thing. They almost never tell you what you actually want to know, which isn’t “is this good” — it’s will this work for me, in my house, with my stuff.
So I started writing down what I learned about the things I bought: what the box promised, what it really did, and everything I only found out after paying. That’s what’s on this site. Every product gets the same questions asked of it, so you can put two of them side by side and actually compare.
I’m Mario L. Arredondo. My training as an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist is what led me here — it teaches you to test what you believe instead of asserting it, and to say how sure you are. It’s the same science behind my research and behind the systems I build for businesses. I see no reason a product review should be held to a lower standard than either.
In practice that means I notice the small stuff — the cable that’s too short, the port that never clicks, the setting you can’t find. Small stuff is usually what decides whether you still like something six months later.
Plenty of what I test isn’t made for me — so every file says who I had in mind while using it. A thing can be wrong for me and exactly right for you, and you can’t tell which from a review that never says who it was judged for.
Where I can measure something, I do. Where I’m guessing, I say so. That’s most of what makes this different.
Not everything annoying is a mistake. A battery latch that needs two hands so it never drops mid-job is good design, and I’ll say so. What I write up is the annoyance nobody decided on — the kind that’s there because no one checked. And separately, the kind that’s there on purpose, to suit the seller instead of you.
This bit is here for anyone who wants to check I’m not making the method up. Skip it if you don’t.
Two of them are about how people decide what to believe, and how memory quietly fills in things that were never there. That’s close to what happens when you read a product page — which is why this site tells you how sure it is, rather than just sounding certain.
Where I write about the research side — how people actually take up new technology, and why it so often goes wrong.
The day job. I build systems for small businesses so their staff spend less time on work a computer should be doing.
The formal version, if you want to see where I've worked.
Some products arrive free through Vine. There’s no obligation to be nice about them, and no seller sees a word before it publishes.
The rest I pay for at retail, like anyone else. Every file says which, at the top.
Links to Amazon may earn a commission. They sit after the findings and never change them — including when the finding is “don’t.”