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BettaScore says owners cite reliability twice as often as YouTube reviewers
BettaScore said a comparison of YouTube reviews and Reddit owner threads across hundreds of products found owners mention reliability, durability and support about twice as often as reviewers.
- New headline Was: “Reviewers rarely talk about reliability. Owners bring it up twice as often”
- Our desk filed its story
- bettascore.ai is now reporting this
BettaScore, a product-ranking site, said Tuesday that Reddit owners mention reliability, durability and customer support about twice as often as YouTube reviewers covering the same kinds of gadgets1.
The company said it compared opinions on 657 products in 19 categories, then reported category shares for 14 of them where reliability was treated as its own topic1.
Across those 14 categories, it said 7.8% of reviewer opinions and 17.0% of owner opinions were about reliability, durability or support, based on 6,900 YouTube opinions and 3,567 Reddit opinions1.
The largest gaps it listed were self-cleaning litter boxes, where it counted 3% of reviewer opinions and 39% of owner opinions, and robot vacuums, 1% versus 18%1.
Laser engravers, robot lawn mowers and robot pool cleaners also showed large owner-reviewer gaps, BettaScore said, while tennis ball machines were the only listed category where reviewers mentioned the topic more often1.
When owners did bring up reliability, 70% of those opinions were negative, it said, compared with 15% among reviewers who mentioned it1.
The company said reviewers and owners talk about apps, software and connectivity at similar rates, 8.2% versus 9.4% of opinions, but 21% of reviewer app opinions were negative versus 71% of owner app opinions1.
As examples, it said the Glowforge Pro laser engraver ranked last of nine in its set after owners criticized a paid software subscription and an internet requirement, and that the Eufy FamiLock S3 ranked last of 20 smart locks, with all 10 of its sources Reddit threads about the app and a firmware update1.
BettaScore said most reviews are made in the first days or weeks with a new unit, too early for many failures, and that owners are more likely to post when something goes wrong1.
It said an AI model labeled each opinion's topic and sentiment, that mixed topics were left out of the headline figures, and that some YouTube reviews are sponsored without a reliable way to separate them1.
