How do you find the best products to buy for everything?

you know the option that's 1.5x the price of the other options and has the most bland, grown up branding imaginable? yeah it survives because it's better quality than everything else.

Unfortunately all of the most reliable places for that are either dead or co-opted. Those that still exist are buried under an avalanche of AI best of lists. I don't think there is a simple way to find the best of really any product.

Like any other signal, the options have been found out and probably, mostly, reduced to noise. But Wirecutter and Consumer Reports claim to test things and recommend. The latter needs a subscription, but you may have one through your local library.

For electronics, rtings was quite good last I used it. Some categories are free, but they are (or were) quite open about letting you sub, find what you want, then cancel after the month. It was nice that most of the data was objective stuff presented in tables you can filter by. But many data points are definitely subjective ratings.

https://youtube.com/

There's also a recommendations community here !recommendations.world

It's not active enough to be all that useful. But hey, the more people that subscribe, the closer that is to changing.

consumer reports used to be the best but now companies come in and out and are bought out and change hands so often its less so.

Rtngs used to be good, now the way they simp for big companies is crazy bad now.

they changed their scoring system to favor big companies ( burn in tv issue hidden, adware in tv are not ranked) reliability is not a factor anymore as Samsung garbage tv are ranked 9 while they literally last 6 months.

First i determine what quality of product i really need so I can shop in that range. Do i need a modern high performance mountain bike, an entry level quality bike, or just a cheap mass produced bike thats good enough for my needs?

Then i do extensive research often reading multiple reviews and articles. I look for whats mentioned most frequently and what isn't mentioned, also for how consistent things are between reviews. I'm sure some of what i encounter is marketing or bot comments but some may be still legitimate as well.

I also look for guides on what to consider if its something I'm new to so i can compare any stats included with the product. The material and quality of the product can be a big factor as well, generally the better the product the more likely they are to brag about its construction. Are they bragging about a certain reinforcement, weight reduction, or power level?

Looking at the reputation of the retailer can be useful as well. A shoe store with 4.8 star reviews is likely to have better quality and selection of shoes than wal-mart. Sometimes you can sniff out the quality brands this way then find those brands for a better price somewhere online.

Going to a brands website can sometimes give you a hint. Are they proud of their products, have easy to access support and lots of details/downloads available or is all the information vague or poorly translated? A quality brand is more likely to have a quality website but this isn't always the case, especially for niche products that are being produced by small time businesses like specialty equipment.

Easy if you live in Germany! I go to test.de, search for what I‘m interested in, and pay them 4,90€ to access the test results.

They‘re a foundation, originally founded by the German federal state, and the only way they make money is by selling access to test results.