We are born with pretty good 1:1 bullshit detectors, and exceptionally credible people easily earn my trust. Aggregated review platforms like rotten tomatoes and Amazon are just garbage.
The more reviews that go into a rating, the more effort has to be made by bad actors to influence the score. And the higher the possibility that someone with integrity will reveal the scheme.
He measures TDS which I admit is one way to judge a water filter but people may have other considerations they have to consider such as are they looking to filter fluoride, bacteria, etc? Some of the poorly performing filters that fared badly in TDS filtering filter these other items much better/or handle the material better(not filtering fluoride).
Also small nitpick, he used one of the manufacturer's free provided TDS meters instead of buying a independent meter(the TDS meter was provided by the winning product). I know because I got the same meter provided free with my Zerowater meter. It seems accurate when I compare it to an independent meter but if you know that it was provided by the manufacturer it is not a good look.
Now this is the only video I have a gripe with because I have done a lot of independent research on water filters before seeing this video so these things popped out to me...but what about his other videos? I am not and cannot be an expert on all the different items he reviews so what else is he not testing properly or leaving out?
The first thing I will say is that water filters are not Todd's core competency. He usually tests motor oils and tools, so water filters are certainly out in left field for him.
He can't test every dimension of a product, partly due to lack of time and partly because he can't cheaply/easily test every scenario. TDS is mainly what people buy water filters for. Yes, SOME people want to filter flouride and bacteria but these are uncommon. (Flouride because it's generally safe to drink in municipal tap water, and bacteria because most water has flouride or comes from a sterile well.)
Even I would like to see him do more in-depth testing of some tools, but he does a good job overall of testing whether most products stand up to the maker's claims and whether they survive typical use. (It's surprising how many do not.) I'd personally like to see teardowns and subjective assessments of build quality along with more punishing longevity tests but I know that is asking quite a lot on top of what he already does.
Plus, the YouTube Recommendation AI demands weekly uploads and a constant stream of engagement from your viewers, or else your channel gets sent straight to the dark, sweaty backlot of obscurity and your funding along with it.
No, he's not. Wirecutter is in fact extremely useful and reliable, in my experience. This one dude is not 100x better than that. Perhaps in some cases he's slightly better, sure. He is obviously not "orders of magnitude" better.
That's something you don't get with aggregators.
If you take the natural choice of base, e, then "orders of magnitude" would only imply Todd to be 7.39 times better, which he is in many cases — for example, by measuring the self-information of reviews — and he may even cross that threshold in the aggregate.