The Wirecutter
The Wirecutter (part of The New York Times Company) is lists of the best gadgets and gear for people who quickly want to know what to get.
Features
- Reviews and Recommendations
- Product Reviews
Tags
- review-sites
- Recommendations
- Online reviews
- tech-reviews
- Customer Reviews
- reviews-and-news
- review-site
The Wirecutter News & Activities
Recent News
Recent activities
Enfinnit added The Wirecutter as alternative to Enfinnit- dbriggs replied to a comment / review on The Wirecutter
- dbriggs updated The Wirecutter
AnnaK added The Wirecutter as alternative to 2Bison
MyNick added The Wirecutter as alternative to Brainy Buyer
Featured in Lists
A list with 88 apps by dbriggs without a description.
What is The Wirecutter?
The Wirecutter is a list of the best gadgets—such as cameras and TVs—for people who don’t want to take a lot of time figuring out what to get. It was founded in September 2011, and it became a part of The New York Times Company in October 2016. The Sweethome is our version of The Wirecutter focused on home goods like bedsheets, blenders, duct tape, and screwdrivers. Everything we choose is an award winner, and we don’t focus on presenting you with anything but the things we love.
Consider them billboards for electronics and everyday things. The point is to make it easier for you to buy some great gear quickly and get on with your life.
The choices we make here with our team take weeks or months of research and testing, including interviews and data from the best editorial and user sources around, as well as the help of engineers, scientists, and experts. Most of the items we choose here aren’t top-of-the-line models that are loaded up with junk features or overpriced; most of the ones we pick are of the “great enough” variety, because this is generally where our needs and the right prices smash into each other.
In the end, all our work ends up in the same place: These are the same gadgets we’d recommend to family and friends, and these are the same gadgets we’d choose for ourselves.
Jacqui Cheng (editor-in-chief) and Brian Lam (founder)
The Wirecutter information
Developed by
thewirecutter Licensing
Proprietary and Free product.Alternatives
10 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
Comments and Reviews
Wirecutter has gone downhill since its purchase by the New York Times. The new Wirecutter both charges a subscription ($40 / year or $5 / month) and takes a commission on the products that they review. Compare this to the old Wirecutter, for which another reviewer on AlternativeTo, @sondrak, wrote, "[N]o subscription required." Or compare this to Consumer Reports –– which has never taken any commissions or advertising. The New York Times wants its readers to pay twice.
At the top of each guide on Wirecutter, I see a search box with an animation. The text in the animation changes, "Show me the research on...", "How can we help?" "Help me decide on..." etc. Nobody likes animations distracting us from reading. I wrote to the New York Times, but they have ignored my email for a month. Their autoresponder says, "[W]e can’t always respond. [...] We know sending messages like these can feel like shouting into a void[.]"
The political leanings of the New York Times have biased the editorial judgment of Wirecutter. Sometimes they explicitly recommend products because they come from black-owned businesses. To a liberal, this is affirmative action, but to a conservative, this is technically racism. Either way, skin color != product quality. Can anyone recommend an alternative?
Another issue, the commenting feature requires third-party cookies: "Comments are disabled because they require cookies and you’ve opted out of cookies for this site."
What Happened to Wirecutter? Longtime fans have turned against the product-recommendation website. An evolving internet may be to blame.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/08/wirecutter-recommendations-worse-new-york-times/675075/
Thorough reviews and careful testing, with no subscription required. Easy to find the best quickly.
The Wirecutter does a great job of utilizing the inverted pyramid style from journalism. Its competitors are generally awful, full of fluff and constantly burying the lede. Note that the Wirecutter makes money through referral links through retailers (mostly Amazon), although it doesn't take money from manufacturers.