Get the Scoop Before You Buy Mac Gear– A Guide to the Best Mac/Tech Review Sites

Before you make your next Mac purchase, big or small, it is best to check out the latest reviews and hear from experts and consumers alike to make sure you make the best decision. In this article we’ll cover 5 of the best websites for reviews, but there are many more and doing a quick Google search pulls up many other websites that might have reviews geared towards a particular niche.

cNet
cNet is an awesome website to find reviews on any electronics – not just Macs. It is a good place to start if you are looking for your next digital camera, printer or other digital device. They offer a good mix of reviews with an expert’s opinion, a product rating, and many times even a video review, as well as consumer’s opinions. Another nice part of cNet is they link to their Shopper.com price comparison engine, so you can get an idea of the prices at the same time.

To use, you want to get to the Reviews section. Once you get there, you’ll see a search field towards the upper right hand of the page. Simply search for what you’re looking for. Looking for a Macbook? Type “Macbook”. ‘Looking for a printer? Type “printer”, and so on. From there, you can sort the search results by relevance, popularity, rating, review date, or price. You should see those options listed next to “Sort By”, just above the search results. Clicking on a search result brings you to the review page where you can read all the applicable info.

If you just want to browse the site to see what's good, go down the page a ways and browse by clicking categories, narrowing down as you go. Once you get a list of products, you can sort by Editors' Ratings to get an idea of the best products.


Macworld
Macworld is the place to start for Apple products and mainstream software. They offer relatively easy to understand, while quite in depth reviews, a price comparison to help you land the best deal, and even lab tests which can provide real world performance testing in different applications if you are looking for a bit more technical information. Just as cNet, they offer reviews of accessories as well, but they are a bit more hit and miss because they are not as comprehensive as cNet. You also can't get a list of products to compare by criteria as you can on cNet.

Macworld also has their content in a variety of formats. The reviews are great, but Macworld also has first look articles and news items relating to products that are a bit less detailed. This can be confusing, so keep looking until you find a review or a "round up" of a category of products. When Macworld does a formal review, they will give the product a rating of 0-5 mice.

Start here in the Products section and browse by categories.


Amazon
Amazon is probably the best place for consumer’s reviews. This goes not only for Macs and tech gadgets, but almost every product in your life. Although they don’t offer an expert’s opinion, there are usually tons of individual reviews from people like you or me, which is usually more than enough to convey the quality, or functionality of a product. Like cNet or Macworld, they offer all kinds of software and accessories reviews as well as just Macs. And fortunately, they provide some of the most competitive pricing on the web.

At the top of Amazon’s homepage, you see a search field which works like cNet or Macworld; just search for what you’re looking for and click on the search result you wish to read more about.

You can also browse through categories by moving your mouse over the Product Categories tab right at the top center of the page. You'll notice a lot of criteria in the left column to sort and filter their products as you go. Once you get to the product page with all the info (it's a lot!) go to the bottom and you’ll see a list of customer reviews with their personal rating. These are pretty helpful to get the average users opinion.


Apple
Another unexpected source of consumer reviews (on items other than Macs) is the store on Apple's website. The reviews are much like Amazon's but obviously, the scope of products is much smaller, yet bigger than you would imagine. If they carry what you want, you can get some reviews straight from Apple consumers.

All Your Review Belong to Us
A good site to see reviews from several publications like Macworld alongside those of MacAddict, macHOME and MacUser UK is MacReviewZone. It's not a site to browse to find products, but if you know what you are looking for, you can find a collection of professional reviews on it. Use the search function to get where you want to go.

Last tip: make sure to check the dates of the reviews as well as the versions of products covered on the sites above. Sometimes websites serve up out of date information that could give you the wrong impression.

These sites should be able to deliver both professional and consumer opinions about Apple products and related devices and software. Hopefully you will now be able to buy with the confidence that you know what you'll be getting. Good luck!

Kevin Schaefer is a hobbyist photographer and can be found on the internet at KevinSchaefer.net.


Have you found other great sites to get reviews on Mac gear? Share your opinions and tips in the Comments section below?

DIG DEEPER

cNet Reviews

Macworld Reviews 

Amazon Home Page (MFM)

Apple Store Website

MacReviewZone

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