They're not great either these days. They're pretty much in the business of affirming their readers preexisting viewpoints with a little bit of actual content sprinkled in.
I find that reading amazon reviews worst first looking for failure modes to gauge a product's limits is more productive.
I always got the feeling that their car statistics were so divorced from reality that they’re recommendations are worse than useless: they seem to genuinely recommend outright bad cars now.
That doesn’t work at all anymore for many products for two reasons:
1. Astroturfing
2. Redditor incompetence.
As it turns out, Reddit doesn’t know shit about a lot of large purchases. Reddit thinks that pottery barn makes some of the best furniture and that I should buy from them, rather than negotiating and buying from a top furniture maker like Hancock and Moore.
I ended up with a furniture set which is at least 3X better for the same price by ignoring what idiot redditors told me to do.