In the last year by coincidence I had to buy several quite expensive items that I either never bought before or bought last time quite a while ago. So, I wanted

In the last year by coincidence I had to buy several quite expensive items that I either never bought before or bought last time quite a while ago. So, I wanted reviews. That's when I learned just searching for reviews is pretty much useless now. It's all blanketed by marketing spam. What you do instead is find a place where real humans discuss the topic, and read it. Doesn't have to be reddit, though it often works. Pretty soon you encounter mentions of review sites that people mention. Once you see some site mentioned repeatedly, go there and search. Or, if they have sulky search - happens more often than it should - go to the search engine and search on that specific site. This gives much better results without wasting time digging through piles of crap.