For honest reviews, there are a lot of issues. Back in the day PC Magazine used to have reviews that were not very honest. They would be sent product to test, that was clearly curated by the vendor to be the best of the best. Think PC comparison where the vendor would tie test 1000 machines and send the fastest one in for review.

So it is an issue of you have to find a trusted source. Consumer Reports advertises that they buy everything they test off the shelf. Although I suspect car dealers in the area of CR get prescreened cars.

I personally trust Toms Hardware for many issues.

Also I look at Amazon 1 & 2 star reviews. People will complain, and I look for common comments. Of course you have to dodge the crap reviews that complain about delivery issues or (my favorite) the advanced book that was not a good introductory book.

On the human web. Usually during my gadget research I would use Small Web lens in Kagi search You can also access searching a portion of this directly through https://kagi.com/smallweb UI without Kagi account. Note that human web is well "small" and the coverage would usually be around latest gadgets but at least it will be unbiased. Even Academic lens is sometimes useful, as some tech get coverage in whitepapers like for example electric toothbrushes.

My secondary source are three star reviews on Amazon. While 1 star and 5 star are being gamed by abusers, three star reviews tend to still have wealth of useful information.

Read the review carefully.

Often something will get 9/10 but the benchmark charts/measurements or mention of a relevant flaw will be included. Therby allowing reviewer to inform you whilst still maintaining a positive relationship with the manufacturer.

I think most top YouTubers are genuine. People follow them because they share honest reviews. If they lied they would lose their followers.

i recently started writing music, service, and product reviews as a way for me to sharpen my critiquing and writing skills.

here is one i wrote for my robot lawnmower: https://mfelix.org/reviews/mammotion-luba2/

maybe these will help folks, maybe they won’t. i don’t really care. it’s fun to write.

On sites that require the tech reviewer to pay to submit.

I always look for reddit threads on the product.

Me too. My current workflow is using a search engine then typing the keyword "product name" + reddit.