[Timberwolf]

I went through this with power tools. What I found was products would end up with three broad classes of negative reviews, segmented mainly by price:

* Expensive tools would have gripes about price or lack of inclusion of accessories. If I bought something in this category it would be problem-free, but so far in excess of what I need as a hobbyist/DIYer that it was comical, e.g. a circular saw that could happily saw my car in half when all I'm doing is building bookshelves.

* Cheap tools would have a consistent pattern of reviews mentioning one or more specific failures that occurred during normal use - e.g. belt sanders that swallow belts or drills where the chuck quickly comes loose. If I bought something in this range, I'd experience exactly the same failure myself.

* Finally, mid-price tools would have the same number of poor reviews as the cheap ones, but the scenarios described would be abusive or unrealistic expectations: people complaining that they couldn't use an orbital sander on concrete tiles or fit enormous router bits to something consumer-grade.

The realisation I wish I'd come to earlier is that stuff in the last category is fine, particularly when it comes to a tool I only use occasionally. Stuff here does exactly what I need, gives good results, and doesn't result in me paying for power I'm never going to use. I guess that's part of the problem with online reviews - needing to get to the level where you're analysing them in depth to differentiate between "it broke because it's badly made" and "it broke because I was doing something completely crazy with it".