AnandTech used to be great and their incredibly in-depth reviews and interviews still are second to none. And Dr. Ian Cutrass has been at the head of that.
But they have a skeleton staff there, to the extent that the website has declined a lot. There’s being first, being timely, and then being so far behind that you give up on reviewing something because it is no longer relevant.
And I think their interest in depth and detail got to the extent that they have started to cater to a niche within a niche. I don’t think that they have that long left.
Indeed. Everyone knew this was inevitable after it was sold but it’s still sad to see AnandTech fade away from what it once was.
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Hifihedgehog
(Hifihedgehog - Waiting for Surface Pro 10!)
3
The writing was already on the wall as soon as they started doing sponsored articles within the last year or so. With Anand gone, GPU reviews MIA, and Ian resigned, I have not much reason left to read their content.
I would differ slightly and say they are not a niche of a niche, though. They are largely considered the definitive source and last word for technical deep dives. Unless they find someone who can speak to technology like Ian Cutress could, it will mark the end of an era in tech journalism.
If anything else, Ian was one of the only ones in the room during press Q&A’s who asked the hard and worthwhile questions that the rest of the tech press wouldn’t. Without him, I fear the rest of them will now just default to throwing softballs that do not cut to the heart of the technology.
Definitely unfortunate though Anandtech’s decline really started when Anand himself went to work for Apple.
I’m already missing their genuinely deep dives in to things like new chip architecture. Their coverage of Alder Lake for example is a pale ghost of what they did for example with the first Intel Core I chips.
Sadly, I guess the “reviews” of sites like The Verge are what gets the clicks today. And those as well as sites like Engadget and CNET are just riddled with bias and opinions presented as fact.
I’ve been reading some of the early reviews of the new Samsung S22 Ultra for example and they are noticing that the battery life is not that great.
But what just amazes/appalls me is that for example both Engadget and Tech Radar are blaming the siloed S-Pen eg. “it draws power whenever it’s in the silo”
That just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the newer S-pens work.
At this point I can’t think of a consistent review site as even places like Notebook Check or Toms hardware have all had a precipitous decline in quality in the last couple of years.
EDIT; Spoiler alert: Our initial tests of the 8CX gen 1 indicate the lower battery life is real, but likely a lack of tuning with firmware and Android more than anything.
Agreed. NotebookCheck is turning into a place for sponsored articles and general tech news—whatever they deem popular, currently lots about EV auto and anything crypto related.
Reading is hard; people want to be entertained by YouTube while “learning”.
Both reading and thinking* are hard. And in that regard, I wonder if site traffic may have been partially to blame. Speaking for myself, there are days when I am so insanely busy that I can do no more than visit a site and lightly skim the content. If enough people were doing that, it would eventually show up in the site statistics and might eventually make someone like Cutrass wonder if it’s worth writing in depth articles that no one really reads.
At work we have a saying: “There’s no substitute for actually thinking about the problem…!”
[quote=“SteveS, post:7, topic:491”]
At work we have a saying: “There’s no substitute for actually thinking about the problem…!”[/quote]
I often have clients react with surprise when, after providing them with my initial thoughts on a particular issue, I indicate that I will have to think about it. It is as if taking time to think about a problem or situation is inconviencing them and preventing them from receiving an instant solution, which they often expect to follow a brief phone call.
Boy this is so true. Especially in our case with new customers that are referrals from existing ones. They are often literally shocked when we meet with them and then tell them that we need a bit of time and research before we can provide them with what we believe is the better solution.
Our CEO, bless him at times even has been willing to walk away rather than provide a less than optimal solution because he knows that down the road it’s both more work for us and will also lead to a dissatisfied customer in the end.
Now of course we do get the benefit in some cases of being essentially the only option for what they are looking for, but still.
I do the same with my engineers asking them, especially when they provide an immediate response to “marinate on it a bit more” and then get back to me. And it’s fine if they change their mind or still think their first idea is best.
Sadly, especially with new/younger employees they some times think it’s that I don’t trust their judgement.
Oh man - this one really struck a nerve - obviously it is a consultant’s nightmare. Especially new clients think “If they can find their answers with Google in 10 minutes, why can’t you?” Oftentimes they don’t realize what they think they want to do has internal conflicts and inconsistencies that don’t register at first glance…worst of all, my younger collogues tend to agree with their young buisness client friends, that the old guy is just wooling-around on the problem until they come to the realization that this might just come back and bite them on the *** down the road…
I’ve been reading Anandtech for so many years and it will be sad to see it go. We’re left with The Verge and Engadget, which have both changed over the years (not for the better). I’ve actually been banned from both of them due to saying it as it is.
Anandtech, when Anand was there, annoyed the heck out of me. The blatant Apple love never seemed to end and, when he left, it did seem to return to a neutral stance. Thankfully. Hexus.net vanished the other month. Shame. It seems that standard tech journalism is fading, only to be replaced with paid for reviews and ‘influencers’ highly rating products, only for other smaller channels to provide ‘real’ information about the faults and features. Heck, look at GoPro products. You have all the main channels screaming that it’s ‘OMGz awesome dude’, then the week after the following videos stating the issues of overheating etc. Grrr.
I think you’re being a bit harsh on Anand - yes, they liked Apple gear, but not to a fanboi level. Besides, Apple gear has busted the performance marks long before M1. Look at all the years that Dell has TRIED to make the XPS 15 a direct competitor for the MacBook Pro 15/16. And I did mean to emphasize “tried.”
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Hifihedgehog
(Hifihedgehog - Waiting for Surface Pro 10!)
15
I have to agree here. Anand Shimpi was perfectly valid in his assessment of Apple A series, especially in his final review of the A series, the titular A7. Then, he was comparing the A7 in the iPhone 5S to the ARM market and even Bay Trail, and the numbers speak for themselves. A7 left them in the dust much of the time and made short work of them without skipping a beat.
Then and even now, the rest of the world of ARM was a good generation Apple behind in IPC and performance efficiency. Anand was many things during his tenure as editor-in-chief but among the various hats he wore, a fanboy he was not. That is precisely why his site had the following that it had. It was pure unadulterated straight-shooting technical analysis of system performance that was completely free of affixation to pretty RGB colors and petty brand loyalties that still plagues the brainiacs in tech journalism today.
My ‘view’, incorrect or correct, was based upon articles that featured laptop battery life. Sure, I do admit and agree that Apple does and did have amazing tech, but nearly every review harked on about Apple battery life, then went silent once ‘a’ Windows oem beat the mac times. It just annoyed me no end. The same happened to various staff at the PC Pro magazine (man, I miss reading that every month).
…hence, why Apple hired him. Then again, I’m only a lowly I.T. dude and not the previous owner of a successful tech page.
Wasn’t questioning your view Damian - just I saw it differently. To this day I’ll take Apple estimates of their battery life over Windows OEMs any day - MS says I should get up to 16 hours based on typical usage at 150 nits with auto-brightness and adaptive color disabled. I like my SP8 a lot, but half of that is the reality.
Hey dstrauss, I’m cool. It’s all okay. My ‘view’ might have been tempted by Apple envy. They were and are still amazing machines. Blimey… 16 hours from a SP8? Mine seems to last a few hours. Not even close to 16. (Cries interally)
