The answer is – it depends:
- I think that when buying certain items, you should do research (monitors – research; video camera – research; hard drives, power source, media player, motherboard, processor, video card – research) if you’re not a professional / expert in that field.
- On the other hand, there are items which you should definitely check out yourself (mouse, keyboard).
- At other items, you may do research or buy by checking things yourself – head phones; loud speakers; computer case (perhaps monitor&video cameras, if you’re a professional working with graphics);
How to do research?
- Look online – find reviews (the more products tested, the better), find different sources (the more varied the sources, the better), find recent articles (the more recent, the better);
- See for yourself (for video cameras, photo cameras, web cameras – look for online videos);
- Ask:
- Find out where an expert in buying that sort of product would be and ask him – usually specialized forums are a great resource;
- A shop owner (the more specialized the store, the better – so, for buying a tripod, I’d definitely go and ask someone from F64.ro;
As a conclusion, if you’re an expert, or you buy some things which clearly affect your interaction (mouse, keyboard), you should check things yourself; on some areas where you can use other people’s experiences and get a good understanding of a product (like microprocessor or SSD disks – what’s SSD? – performance), you should trust other people’s past experiences; there are some products where the final answer is not clear cut (sound, video?).
My solution:
- I actually outsourced the decision for the combination of motherboard, memory, processor, SSD disk to (what I consider to be) an expert in the field (Google him); the alternative would be research on not only the components themselves, but how well they fit together (this is very hard to know based on Internet research only, it’s painfully difficult to find the optimal experience on this; outsourcing is best, at least on major things – “Get a X or Y processor; your motherboard should be A or B; you need about Z GB of RAM);
- I did rigorous research on the Internet prior to buying speakers, monitors, video camera, DVD writer, hard drive; and when I mean “rigorous” I mean I’m pretty much very advanced at that field; it’s really easy to become an expert with two hours of work on a field on the Internet;
- I tested the mouse & keyboard myself and bought them on site.