Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed today I'm gonna discuss a few things that we normally avoid talking about on the main channel mostly because it's stuff that we don't really want to get bogged down by but as the AMD and Intel battle continues to heat up and perhaps we'll see the same thing between ambien and video soon I felt there were a few things that we probably should address recently I revisited the core i5 7600 K and Verizon v 1600 and in that video I focused on gaming performance looking at newly-released titles and the results were interesting where is the 7600 K once ran rings around the Rison processor today it struggles in a number of titles for the most part that content was well received the video has a healthy like to dislike ratio and generally speaking the feedback was excellent however as always with these comparisons there was those that got a bit upset believing Amy had paid for the content to be produced you know the usual shill comments and all that noise I know you guys often say things like Steve you don't need to explain yourself we trust you and your work speaks for itself and yeah I really do appreciate that but we still like to address this sort of stuff from time to time that said on the main channel we don't usually talk about the goings-on in the industry too much and that's because it's either taken the wrong way or it just creates too much drama obviously we expose the Intel principle technologies Fiasco and we were the first to do so closely followed by our good friends over at gamers Nexus who created some excellent content on that subject as well we've been hard but fair on in video recently with their strange sampling behavior and silliness with drivers but that's all stuff that affects you more directly obviously you'll see misleading paid-for benchmarks and you'll also notice when certain media outlets who normally provide day 1 reviews don't the things we don't really talk about is the stuff that we're often accused of like paid reviews which we know happen in this industry but obviously we don't take part in them as an example we were approached late last year to put together some paid Intel reviews not buy-in told directly but rather a marketing agency that represents them it's possible the agencies are being used as a scapegoat when doing this but who knows if Intel's even aware we certainly don't have evidence that they are anyway we declined to the lucrative offer without getting too much information but we know the most recent example was for paid core i7 79 80 XE and obtained reviews and sadly we know a few youtubers did take them up on the offer thankfully though they did disclose the sponsorship though I'm not entirely sure viewers knew exactly what they are watching and what the requirements set by the marketing agency were basically all the paid offers that we've come across have conditions such as you can't talk about competing products in fact you can't mention competing brands at all in the case of the 79 ad XE content there was to be no mention of thread Ripper or AMD you can't say anything negative about the product and it suggested that any potential negatives such as high price tags should be justified to the audience the reviews usually need to be submitted for approval to make sure they're projecting the right message these companies aren't after lukewarm recommendations so you won't get a well-balanced conclusion that notes the cons and pros rather message is buy this because well just insert some reasons and that makes paid reviews pretty obvious to spot now don't mistake positive reviews as paid reviews rather look for reviews that omit obvious flaws and act like the product or brand has no competition worth mentioning now we'll just say this level of scrutiny for a pre-roll ad is fine as that is obviously paid advertising and very different from a paid review that said we still do our best to vet advertisers and because of that we do knock back something like 10 times more offers than we actually accept on that note Hardware canucks put out a tweet earlier this month talking about this very issue basically they were concerned by the large volume of paid review requests or offers I suppose they weren't requesting to do paid reviews just to make that clear there was companies offering to pay them for reviews so hopefully that makes that clear and they were quite alarmed by this as it suggests it's common practice for these companies to pay for reviews it was good to see a major player in the tech YouTube space shedding some light on this issue you're just also mention that I know others such as gamers Nexus have also talked about this problem on occasion as well so hats off to them today we've only discussed this issue with our patreon members on the monthly live streams and quite a few members have been pushing us to bring this issue to the main channel now I don't expect this information to change too much but it is our hope that the more we can educate viewers about these issues the less likely they are to occur it's probably also worth keeping in mind for some viewers spitting the dummy over opinions that you don't necessarily agree with and screaming shil doesn't help in fact all it does is dilute the issue and help those who are really lining their pockets with dirty review money get away with it the good news is I believe the vast majority of tech media on YouTube do provide honest reviews at least those focused on core PC hardware you know the kind of content that we create I can't really speak for other tech type media such as guys that cover gadgets or mobile phones because I don't really follow those channels and I don't know too much about them but I really do feel for the type of tech we look at media coverage has never been better and I've been doing this as a full-time job now for almost 20 years I'm sure there are some that'll disagree claiming something along lines that YouTube influences just cash in when and where they can and tech journalism is dead but stop and think for a moment last year in video tried to pull one of their dirtiest tactics yet an ice AMD out of the GPU space with their geforce partner program how do i CP a once well-respected tech site and i guess they are still well respected to his day the site's just no longer in operation anyway hollow CP first broke the news on in videos GPP plans it was some great work by kyle and the gang but i feel ten years ago it would have gone largely unnoticed nvidia would have steamed ahead with their plans and gamers would have suffered today though I believe largely thanks to youtube there's a much wider audience for PC tech content with so many big channels reporting on the GeForce Partner Program Nvidia simply couldn't get away with playing dirty and the program was quickly scrapped to avoid major blowback this was a massive win for PC gamers everywhere and honestly bass um what these companies have gotten away with in the past I really didn't think it would happen and despite the GP PU in shortly after that Fiasco we've got another one from Intel with principal technologies this came a week or so before the embargo was set to be lifted on independent third-party reviews but we dealt with that one quite swiftly and thankfully everyone else piled on to help stop yet another dirty tactic for the most part AMD has been pretty clear of any drama recently we did stomp on them for the misleading Radeon erics 560 branding which saw our X for 60s become 5 60s but they did address that quickly pleading it was a misunderstanding with retailers and we're certainly nothing like the principal technologies report or GPP but you can rest assured if aim D pull any crap like that we'll be all over it so by now most of you know we review products individually on their own merit I don't consider if it's an AMD Intel or nvidia product or any other brand for that matter a brand really has no bearing on the review what I do focus on quite heavily actually very heavily is value even for high-end products in my mind they still have to make sense for example the core o 999 ok is technically a better product than the rise in 720 700 X and I've said so in the past so I certainly don't deny that however I'd never buy for coralline processor for $500 u.s. when you get the rise in 720 700 X for just $280 or the non ex model for half the price of the core oh 9 I simply can't justify spending around 70% more for the Intel CPU especially when you still have to buy a cooler on top of that so realistically you're looking at around another hundred dollars to get the most out of the core I 9 now if you don't agree with us weighing our reviews so heavily towards value then that's fine but it doesn't make us wrong it just means we might not be the review outlet for you I certainly won't argue with you if you declare the 99er okay as the best desktop CPU because it's the fastest and you don't care about anything else other than performance that's fine but as I said that's not how we evaluate products and this is why I concluded my 99k review by saying the core i7 8700 K is still the best gaming CPU for almost a 50% increase in price you're looking at maybe a 5% increase in performance a you don't game at 4k I should also mention that AMD has never once approached us for pain reviews not AMD or some sort of marketing agency acting on their behalf so in all my years that's never happened once directly or indirectly they have done the occasional promotion not with us we don't take money from AMD or Intel but as an example they have done ad deals with tech sites and other youtubers for their game bundles so obviously there's no problem with them doing that same thing with Intel if they wanted to run some pre-roll ads to promote their products or even sponsored bill videos in our opinion that's fine again we don't do either of those things but I have zero issue with other media taking up such offers it's really just the paid product reviews that are the issue so next time before accusing someone of being a shill when you see a benchmark result that you don't necessarily like or an opinion that you disagree with ask yourself is it really paid for content I realize I'm only speaking to a vocal minority here but as I said earlier you're really making it easier for those who do accept paid reviews to get away with it if everyone is a shill no one is a shield I guess that's what I'm trying to say anyway it's something to think about again we don't expect this information to change too much but based on what our patreon members said it seems like quite a few of you will find this information interesting and appreciate us talking about it so openly so hopefully that is the case and if you have any more questions feel free to drop them in the comment section below and we'll do our best to answer them and if you enjoyed the video be sure to the like button subscribe for more content and if you appreciate the work with your horror box then consider shilling for us on patreon thanks for watching I'm your host Steve I'll see you again next time