For me it's simply the "I don't really want to think about this, but don't want to buy something bad" factor. I don't really care enough about TV to spend hours

For me it's simply the "I don't really want to think about this, but don't want to buy something bad" factor. I don't really care enough about TV to spend hours researching it, but I can probably rely on The Wirecutter to make sure I don't buy a POS. I might spend much more time researching a phone, on the other hand, and don't look at it too much. There's a lot of value in that offering, because there's a huge gap between "enthusiasts reviews" (Anandtech, for example) and "consumer" (Consumer Reports). One is done by enthusiasts for enthusiasts and the other is done by consumers for consumers. The Wirecutter seems to provide "by enthusiasts for consumers".