The thing is, there is no way to ascertain the level of competence of the person writing the review. Is this someone really knowledgeable, or is it some dumb ne

The thing is, there is no way to ascertain the level of competence of the person writing the review. Is this someone really knowledgeable, or is it some dumb newbie? Sometimes it's easy to tell, but other times it's very hard. Then there's also the issue of reviews with an "agenda" - self-explanatory, no need for me to say more. One thing that seems to work is to see someone I know using a gadget, to actually see that gadget being used, and talk to that individual briefly about the gadget. The info I get this way seems quite a bit more trustworthy than online reviews. Of course, this could also be an artifact of the way we form opinions. Another empirical observation: on Amazon, a significant amount of negative reviews is typically an indication of a real issue. But the absence of negative reviews doesn't say much. Positive reviews do not appear to be quite as relevant-information-rich, unless there's an extremely large amount of them.