What's up with Reviews?


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What's up with Neowin Reviews? The majority of them seem to be done by Rich Woods. It's tiring and would be nice to have other staff review consumer tech. 

 

If it's just me, you can tell me to shut up :)

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Rich has some inside sources I believe so he's able to get new hardware pieces earlier; that's the main reason.

We used to have more writers with good inside sources but they have sense moved on to other opportunities.

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2 hours ago, Brandon H said:

Rich has some inside sources I believe so he's able to get new hardware pieces earlier; that's the main reason.

We used to have more writers with good inside sources but they have sense moved on to other opportunities.

 

I caught you in a spelling error! :laugh:

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3 hours ago, Brandon H said:

Rich has some inside sources I believe so he's able to get new hardware pieces earlier; that's the main reason.

We used to have more writers with good inside sources but they have sense moved on to other opportunities.

Really? Some of the reviews I have seen are pretty late compared to other tech sites. The reviews seems to come out generally after consumer release dates. 

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21 hours ago, tsupersonic said:

What's up with Neowin Reviews? The majority of them seem to be done by Rich Woods. It's tiring and would be nice to have other staff review consumer tech. 

 

If it's just me, you can tell me to shut up :)

I'd also love to see more staff do reviews. Neowin doesn't tell writers what to write though, and there's no centralized system that sends out review units to reporters. It's up to each person to obtain their own review hardware. I do pass them along to other reporters when I can, but the biggest issue is that I'm the only one in the United States that's willing to do reviews. PR is mostly regional, so if someone reaches out to me with a review unit and I ask if they can send it to Europe or something, we'll be told to reach out to Europe PR, and most of the time, the item never comes or it comes super late. Anyone else at Neowin is welcome to do reviews; all they'd have to do is reach out to their local PR. We do have a reviews claims system, so we can see what's already being worked on.

 

As far as being late, that might be the case sometimes. I think we do pretty well for a site our size. This week alone, we did three embargoed reviews, which are reviews that are published as soon as the company allows. Those include the Lenovo Yoga C930, Yoga Book C930, and the Samsung Galaxy Book2. For the month we've done five, with the additional two being the HP OMEN Mindframe and Google Pixel 3 XL. There also may or may not be another one next week. I'll have the Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro next week and yes, some sites have their reviews up already. Huawei gave devices to those that attended the event in London, which I was unable to attend because frankly, I was needed more here and couldn't spend a week in the UK (as awesome as it sounded!). But since I stayed here, I got to go to events where I could obtain the Galaxy Book2 and the RED Hydrogen One, so I'd say it worked out.

 

I also won't rush a review just to be first. There are some companies that will give you a day before an embargo, and I'd much rather be thorough than push out a weak review.

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What do you do with all your review units? 

 

You must have a pretty awesome spare room stacked with these!

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Just now, dipsylalapo said:

What do you do with all your review units? 

 

You must have a pretty awesome spare room stacked with these!

Mostly, I send them back. I hang onto some for future testing. For example, the Lenovo Miix 630 and Samsung Galaxy Book2 will be good for seeing how Windows on ARM performance evolves over time. The Google Pixel 3 XL is one of few devices I can use to test future Android betas. Otherwise, this stuff just takes up space. It sounds like a lot of fun until it gets unmanageable. We're also working with companies to do more giveaways. We're actually going to be giving away a Lenovo Flex 6 14 starting tomorrow. ANNOUNCED HERE FIRST

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