Wireless Thermometer Reviews for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLI

wireless indoor-outdoor thermometer

No matter what product you're shopping for at "The River," you can bet that you're going to find reviews of most of the available choices. Your problem, of course, is simple: can you trust the reviews? Most people here at the Antisocial Network think you should take them with a grain of salt; not least because the vast majority are written by people unqualified to compare two products. Why? Because they've only experienced one of them. Amazon has attempted to "help" consumers make a choice by hiring freelancers to write "best of" lists. Sadly, most of them are nothing more than an aggregation of the most highly-rated choices written by people who pretend to have "tested" the products. For example, read the bullshit called "Best Indoor/Outdoor Thermometers" published at Amazon.com by BestReviews."

We've seen similar claims of "expertise" before at the River, such as the time a freelancing woman told us all about men's cycling shorts. This time out, we note that the BR staffer who who posted this dreck claimed that,

"Our expert team has selected the best indoor outdoor thermometers out of hundreds of models."

What the selection process appears to have actually been is little more than selecting the highest-rated products at Amazon and then cherry-picking the most expensive to increase earnings from referrals. We first wondered about the quality of BR's putative "laboratory scientists" when we ran across this scientifically illiterate claim:

"How measurements are taken: Computer chips inside the exterior unit perform the measurements. For example, a thermoresistor determines temperature by measuring the flow of electricity through the chip. The flow speed changes based on the exterior temperature."

Most people call those "thermistors," guys, and electricity's "flow speed" does not change; the difference between input and output voltage varies with temperature because the device's resistance varies with temperature. Was this really written (or fact-checked) by someone who'd taken basic physics? We think not! and how about this padding:

"Indoor/outdoor thermometers consist of two different parts. One part is situated outdoors."

What a revelation! We'd have never thought that! And then there's this rather strange notion:

"A sharp display screen that you can see from a few feet away is important for your enjoyment of the system."

People don't generally buy an indoor-outdoor thermometer for "enjoyment," they buy them to be informed. And then there's this... concept:

"Temperature forecasting: Based on the data the indoor/outdoor thermometer collects aboute your local weather, some units can give you a prediction about upcoming temperatures."

Hell, we can give you a prediction about upcoming temperatures: it's probably going to be warmer during the day and cooler when it's dark. This is most likely a bastardized description of prediction algorithms based on humidity and barometric pressure records, not temperature. Or this padding:

"Some indoor outdoor thermometers use an anemometer to measure wind speed and direction."

What else would you use an anemometer for, BR? Snowfall depth? 

When you come right down to it, this "review" is little more than a pastiche of comments sucked out of real owners' reviews and the descriptions provided by vendors. Despite the claim to have "tested" hundreds of products (and to have bought all of them for testing, a laughable claim), our Dumbass of the Day clearly did little more than assign some creative writing and journalism grads to compile information from Amazon product pages and reviews. Fie on them.

¹ We found the same content published, FWIW, at bestreviews.com. While the article claim to have "tested" all the products, a glance through the list of staff shows exactly zero laboratory scientists and a boatload of "writers."

FAKE REVIEW - ELECTRONICS