Jesus fuck Linus. Half the reason you are popular is because people trust your statements; and you are just flushing that away.
+1, I never understand how influencer is a thing. They are basically getting paid by selling you stuff, its a conflict of interest.
But why does it even matter if they do it correctly or not? It’s still a water block that costs over $800. It’s a bad product at a fundamental level because not only is it a niche of a niche it’s wildly overpriced. No amount of testing is going to make it a good product. It was never going to sell well. I do not understand why people care so much about it.
The quanity-over-quality and QA errors are way more egregious than them shitting a product that deserves to get shit on. And as far as I can tell the auction thing is a single, isolated mistake of that nature. They do have a track record of making errors in their reviews. But what they don’t have is a history of auctioning off prototypes. It is a really weird thing to be so up-in-arms about. It was an accident and they are paying for it. What is the big deal?
I haven’t exactly watched Linus’ videos about it but here’s how I understand the situation:
They deemed the product a “nobody should ever buy this for any reason” because of two things: 1: The cooler was for a 3090TI, by all accounts an “old” card 2: The cooler is priced at 800$
Of these 2 factors both have issues. For starters the “product” they tested was only a prototype, there is a 4090 Version coming that would be more appealing to the market. Second and most important: the cooler is apparently aimed at an incredibly niche market. A market so niche in fact 800$ for a cooler isn’t considered expensive. Just as an example: the product stack they themselves compare against is about as expensive as their own cooler block. They are not as egregiously overpriced as LTT claims. In fact given their selling point of “Only one cooler block” I’d argue they actually have a competitive product here. Can’t be sure though as I’m not well versed in the custom loop market.
Now under these circumstances giving such an absolute statement of “nobody should ever buy this” suddenly seems a tad bit unfair. No this cooler isn’t for the masses but by refusing to retest and not considering the market this cooler is aimed at LTT has done a disservice to the people potentially interested in this who will now be subconsciously steered away from it.
What Linus did is essentially review a Super Car. But instead of Gasoline he filled the tank with Diesel (not exactly the best analogy but the closest I can think of), then took it out for a drive. Claimed the Performance was shit for the price and that nobody ever should buy this for any reason at all. For a product like this it doesn’t matter that average Joe shouldn’t buy it, that is obvious from the get go but by not doing this properly LTT essentially robbed the intended customer base of an objective take on it.
The big deal is they didn’t admit to having accidentally auctioned it (the alternative is they knowingly did so despite requests to return it), and in the same breath talked about how they offered recompense (implying that it came before the video calling them out when it didn’t), and firing back on justified criticism as if they’re the victim
Oh, and all while claiming they own up to their mistakes even in the face of consequences.
They bulldozed a smaller company without a hint of empathy. He doesn’t consider that maybe the price could have come down or the performance (when properly used) would be worth it to a small segment of overclockers - even in the supposed mia culpa Linus takes several shots at the product he basically buried
Mate, it’s a prototype, their first product. If that design works well and will be mass produced the price goes down. With possibly a budget option released later that actually makes sense to buy.
A lot of companies started with the luxury version of a product and then later offered budget versions after showing everyone they could deliver.
Linus not only dissed them (after “testing” the product on the wrong GPU) but also sold off their only prototype. Otherwise they could have sent it to another reviewer to do a proper test.
But why does it even matter if they do it correctly or not?
Because people with a case of the give a damns would give a damn.
Well Linus argument doesn’t hold much water. If the product is so fundamentally flawed in his mind, then why even bother with it? If you as a reviewer can’t even give a proper opinion and spend an other 500 dollars on it, to give your audience a good review. Then don’t spend the extra 1000 dollars or more in editing that video.
His looking at views to show his sponsors, but forgets that the audience is the first thing that generates those views. Still a viewer of the main LTT channel, but Shortcurcet was fast out of my subscription list.
And as a non English native speaker, please don’t but the corrections on subtitle height, it a hassle.
Because that’s literally their whole job. Their justification for testing something on hardware it wasn’t intended for is that they (LTT) didn’t want to spend the money on their end required to do their job properly.
It’s not about the product in question. It’s about their clearly inadequate processes and considerations, prioritizing profits over accuracy. Kinda terrible for a company trying to break into the whole accuracy market with their testing and data.
It’s not a water block that costs $800 though. It’s a prototype water block that they estimated the cost of producing to be around $800 given R&D, labor, materials, etc.
It was never meant to be a production ready product, and it should never have been treated as such.
The issue with the auction is due to the fact that they sent Billet numerous emails claiming to have prepared it to be shipped back, including one in which they said they would send tracking info shortly. They didn’t know it was being auctioned off until afterward. And Linus didn’t contact them about compensation until 3 hours after GNs video went live.
These are facts, backed by actual evidence which you can see for yourself in GNs latest HW news.
That’s really missing the point. They were trying to sell the water block to rich people with more money than sense that, importantly, wanted the best of the best. By not reviewing it correctly, LTT screwed a small company over pretty hard. Linus then went on to say that he made this decision to save $100 to $500. He was unwilling to spend that kind of money to preserve the journalistic integrity of the channel.
The fact that he tried to make it look like LMG was going to compensate them for the block (replying only after the GN video was released) only makes it worse.
Recently LTT built a $100k PC desk for a Minecraft streamer. Sometimes the over the top engineering/materials (and thus cost) around something is the entire point. If they gave it a fair shake, and still called it a bad product, and then returned it. There wouldn’t be an issue. It being a bad product isn’t the issue.
How is it even possible to use the wrong GPU when the correct one is in the same box. That makes it seem malicious rather than foolish.
