BJN
I don't want to be a kill buzz but mag articles are usually placed as the mag survives on Advertisement dollars isn't about to give any Advertising client a bad review. PESSIMISTIC!
But I will admit that I read reviews of products I have bought hopefully to reaffirm my purchase decision ! LOL
While it has been almost a year since I bought a mag. And about 30 years since my first over the years I observed a trend; last few years any review tended to be favorable.
Go back 10 or more years the reviews while still favorable would point out professional buyer shortfalls in greater detail and were a bit more choosey for want of a better term.
It is good X3 is getting a mention nonetheless !
This was an attitude I ran into often when my main work consisted of doing reviews. People would wonder why my reviews were generally favorable, even though there were often negative comments about specific features.
The answer is remarkably simple. Magazines don't pay all that well, so reviewers can often pitch particular products they want to review as a perq. Which scenario is more realistic:
"Hey, I just saw this really amazing plug-in at NAMM. I'd love to check it out. If you haven't slated a review for it, I want to do it!!"
or
"Hey, I just saw something at NAMM I thought was pretty stupid. Can I please spend a month of my life learning it and writing about it, only to likely never use it again?"
Another issue is that for me, reviews aren't about whether I like something or not. The object of a review IMHO should be to describe a product with such accuracy that someone can make an informed decision about whether it's something that would interest them or not. In that context, I think it's more helpful to identify good products and review why they're good in case their feature set would be useful for the reader.
I have done reviews where some people thought it was a really negative review (because I accurately described something that didn't fit their needs) while others thought it was a really positive review - because I accurately described something that
did fit their needs. To me, that means I succeeded in writing a useful review.