[regular]

I start with negative reviews, looking for well-written ones with specifics.

The fake ones are often absurdly easy to spot, with mindless cheerleading, lists of features regurgitated verbatim, and fully spelled-out product names. That's my favorite: ridiculously complete product names with taglines, practically only missing the (tm).

[maxbond]

I read the 3-star reviews myself. I find the negative ones on Amazon often received the wrong product (a concern to be sure but that's just the chance you take with literally every Amazon product), or misunderstood what the product did. And then I try to find details that are repeated across several reasonable-sounding reviews.

I've not had very much success with this approach, to be honest. I still just feel like I'm rolling the dice.