In general you should take online reviews of anything with a grain of salt. Because everyone’s experiences vary.
I’ll speak to many examples because I’m interested in a lot of hobbies – guitar, audio equipment, electronics, video games, movies
Guitar/Amp reviews are like reading or watching someone else’s opinion about a piece of clothing. I feel guitars and amps are highly personal to people and you really have to try out a guitar and have it in your hands, and then play that amp with it in front of you to really know if you like it or not. A person’s review of a guitar or amp is really just going to be colored by that person’s own personal preference of that sound. And the level of comfort and playability is completely dependent on person. You have to really feel the neck in your hands, it’s not something easily described online or through a video. Guitar/Amp reviews are sort of trustworthy – if their preferences match yours.
Speaker/Headphone reviews are even more subjective because everyone hears differently and has different ears. These are amongst the least reliable reviews online. Someone might prefer a v shaped or harman sound signature, others might prefer neutral etc and then you have people like Amir from Audio Science Reviews who only measures the device and bases his judgment on that and doesn’t tell you how it sounds at all, or people like Crinacle who use a graph to judge everything. Definitely do not trust the majority of reviews for speakers and headphones or other audio equipment like amps, dacs or cables. Try it yourself.
Electronics reviews of things like laptops and phones are fairly reliable because reviewers like Dave2D and Marques Brownlee thoroughly review the device usually and will go over all the functions that matter. This co-relates highly to how people use the device so in general yes electronics reviews are usually quite trustworthy if they review the device thoroughly
Video Game reviews are more of a mixed bag because bigger sites like IGN and Gamespot do not thoroughly review games they just play through them quickly to get a rating so that they can move on to the next game. Smaller sites like Noisy Pixels and Destructoid are generally better in this regard and are more thorough and/or reviewed by fans of that game’s genre. Trust smaller review sites more than bigger review sites for video games.
Movie reviews are similar to video games – the bigger sites like Rotten Tomatoes just aggregate critics views and alot of those critics might be viewing the movie with a different lens than the common audience or might not even care much for those movies because they got a lot of movies to review and want to just quickly give an opinion and move on. So with movies it’s similar Trust smaller movie review sites not Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.
Food reviews are the most unreliable because everyone’s tastes in food vary! Food might be the most subjective topic out of all these! Definitely do not trust Yelp reviews because everyone’s tastes and standards in food is completely different. “Great food” for some might be “bad” for others and vice versa.
