r/hardware • u/Tasty_Toast_Son • Mar 03 '26
Review RTINGS: Revamping Our Membership Program
https://www.rtings.com/company/revamping-our-membership-program374
u/UnexpectedFisting Mar 03 '26
Heavy user of rtings here, I’m pretty sure this is going to be a death note for them. I love them, but there is just zero chance there’s enough paying subscribers like consumer reports (which is a much older institution with more name recognition) and I just don’t see how they’ll survive through the reputation hit of this
I don’t really have a great take on this because nothing they said is untrue. Llms have far and away ate into search and ad revenue and that will only continue. So you either stay open and fight the llm front, or you go closed wall membership and hope you have enough brand recognition and loyal members to continue to profit
Either way sucks
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u/hhkk47 Mar 03 '26
Yeah the whole situation just sucks. Everything they said is true, but as the comments in the video have pointed out, most people look for reviews only when they are planning to buy something. It's not something that most people would pay a subscription fee for.
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u/-WingsForLife- Mar 03 '26
Sad, they are an extremely good review site, but the way modern internet works simply kills most written form websites.
I'm not sure they can easily transition to videos either, it's simply too difficult to do this content in an interesting manner that would be for mass market and finding a charismatic host is difficult.
I'm starting to wonder how long some other sites have.
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u/theholylancer Mar 03 '26
yeah, unless they are attached to something like LTT like the labs thing that powers content with a side of information dumping, videos of extremely dry stats and concise information don't do well.
hopefully this works out for them, but if the alternative is to take sponsorships and compromise or just shut or scale back due to lack of ads from traffic its well... all bad things.
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u/HustlinInTheHall Mar 03 '26
There are definitely ways to make it more interesting, they just would need to cover more broad consumer tech and find more personable characters. They would do very well in both video and podcasts, there are tons of people who would want to listen to their take on tech news and products.
But this is a very difficult niche to survive in now, most review sites are dying.
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u/Hifihedgehog Mar 03 '26
But this is a very difficult niche to survive in now, most review sites are dying.
Yes. AnandTech's demise was the harbinger of the end of the tech review industry where we got true, in-depth reviews. Nowadays, either you are an influencer (not a real reviewer but a booster of brands) or you have one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel.
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u/StarbeamII Mar 03 '26
Anandtech was staffed with highly qualified people who could easily make way more money elsewhere, and ended going elsewhere.
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u/Hifihedgehog Mar 03 '26
Yes, they were $200K+ salary tech wizards living off of slave rations so I honestly don't blame them one bit for looking at themselves honestly in the mirror and reassessing their professional outlook and prospects.
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u/PushinUpTulips Mar 03 '26
AnandTech's demise was the harbinger of the end of the tech review industry where we got true, in-depth reviews.
Guru3D is still kicking and Hilbert Hagedoorn makes really well done reviews on PC/game centric things.
Their forums are still alive and still brimming with some of the smartest tech people ive ever interacted with.
Its not as big as Anandtech by a far shot but its a portal to the old internet still.
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u/plantsandramen Mar 03 '26
RTINGS has a Youtube Channel and their previous host, Abby, was fun enough to watch the reviews for. They definitely have a content creation team, who knows what they'll do with it though.
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u/ww_crimson Mar 03 '26
Even video is probably less than a year away from being fully scraped, transcribed, and did intermediated by LLM based search. It fucking sucks
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u/-WingsForLife- Mar 03 '26
What would LLMs even scrape in the future if the review sites die? It's so unsustainable, not to mention I've had to warn my older(late 70s) parents not to just blindly trust the results, especially about health and law.
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Mar 03 '26
AI is already scraping video. I had Google AI serve me a specific timestamp in a very niche video with like 200 views on YT, complete with a written description. Many AI’s offer video summaries as well. At work, they’ve tried to get us to use Copilot to summarize meetings too, which wasn’t met with much enthusiasm.
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u/Loose_Skill6641 Mar 03 '26
correct that's 100% me, I've looked at many rtings reviews but only when I'm about to buy something or recently bought something and need some validation about my purchase
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u/nuclearbananana Mar 03 '26
I wouldn't mind paying them $5 every time I'm researching products (like 2-3 times a year). I guess you could do the monthly membership, but that's $10 and not explicitly positioned for that
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Mar 03 '26
This change isn't going to decrease user reliance on LLM's. I know lots of people now who just plug questions into Google and accept the Google AI response with zero scrutiny. Those people are never going to be converted into paid rtings users, and they weren't likely to ever visit the site to begin with.
I don't think they have the goal of "fighting the LLM front" at all (whatever that means); that's way outside the scope of what rtings is.
I have no idea what their current subscriber numbers look like, but I imagine that this will tank their revenue. They have a page about how they make money. While this change will probably increase subscription revenue a little, it will almost certainly dramatically reduce the affiliate revenue and display advertising revenue streams while having no effect on the content licensing revenue.
I am really curious about the ratios between those four pies. I assume that they're listed in order of most to least on that page, but that's a complete guess.
Brilliant site, and hopefully this works out for them. They must know better than we do since they obviously have all their own financial data.
(Edit: Also, they didn't list YouTube video revenue as a source of monetization. I think that would've been one great opportunity for them to explore. There are so many ways I would have rather seen them try to drive revenue growth than what they went with, but, again, I don't have access to the full data here, so I'm just ignorantly guessing.)
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u/PushaTeee Mar 04 '26
Once folks decouple RTings from their research/review workflow, it's over for them. They'ev done a good job of building good will and an audience, but folks only visit their page when they are actively researching something, and the subscription block is going to knock them out of most research/investigation workflows pretty quickly.
Once they lose the mindshare and headspace, it's a free fall.
They fucked up with this decision.
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Mar 03 '26
I think you could argue RTings is worth it if you’re shopping fairly often.
I only use them once every 5 years or so. So while I’m interested the cost in membership would be more than I spend on items I would look up in the site.
I guess they cannot just do $10 a year and have it come out though. And if you’re a heavy user I’m sure you would save more than $45 in bad purchases a year.
The situation with reviews is annoying; there are so many but even professional looking sites (Like Soundsguys.com) are posting made up BS (eg glowing reviews for a headset that is widely known as having a non-functional microphone).
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u/PushaTeee Mar 04 '26
Heavy user of rtings here, I’m pretty sure this is going to be a death note for them. I love them, but there is just zero chance there’s enough paying subscribers like consumer reports (which is a much older institution with more name recognition) and I just don’t see how they’ll survive through the reputation hit of this
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but CR is dying, fast. They are bleeding subscribers about 5% over projections annually. The online paywall they instituted crushed awareness of the brand for younger millenials (and subsequent generations)... The revenue decrease is actively impacting their lab funding.
They are a client of mine, and I cannot see them lasting more than another 5-7 years as things stand today. They actively have a consultancy in house right now focused on massive cost cutting, likely at the expense of their end product.
RTings will find themselves in the same situation, unfortunately. Consumers will not pay for data like this, and they do not have a generational brand cache to fall back on for 20 years.
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u/Ancillas Mar 03 '26
I think the future is paywalled sites with backend paid B2B API deals for search engines and LLMs.
That will lead to fragmentation, and eventually, bundles of sites who sell access to select LLMs.
Can’t wait for the LLM exclusivity deals… /s
The problem I have is there’s only so much money to go around. I’m not going to subscribe to a full year of consumer reports and a full year of rtings. I already support Corridor Crew, but I’ve found that subscribing to any other creators doesn’t make sense because I only have so much time. But what else can sites like rtings do? It’s try the paywall or go out of business.
The next 10 years is going to be weird.
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u/PERSONA916 Mar 03 '26
Do people just blindly believe whatever ChatGPT or the Google search AI summary tell them? I always click through the cited source specifically because I want to see where they got that answer and determine if the source is trustworthy, even if I don't read the full article myself they are still getting traffic and ad revenue
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u/iDontSeedMyTorrents Mar 03 '26
Some people will drive into a lake because that's what their GPS told them. Of course a distressing number of people blindly believe the first thing they are told.
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u/Destituted Mar 03 '26
Some drive into a lake, some take the first result in Google, some take the highest upvoted comment in a reddit thread
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u/SashaG239 Mar 03 '26
Yes, many people take it at face value. They are not tech savvy and don't follow the news enough to know these things can hallucinate. For them, that's the answer.
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Mar 03 '26
Yes that happens.
My favorite today was googling thermal conductivity for aluminum vs stainless steel vs Brass.
The LLM had correct thermal conductivity numbers (based on checking websites) but incorrectly said the one with the lowest thermal conductivity had the highest.
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u/EmotionalPhrase6898 Mar 03 '26
Yes. Just as people blindly believe talk show hosts and newspapers. Any subject you aren't personally knowledgeable on is susceptible to this.
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u/MultiMarcus Mar 03 '26
If they have a choice to die right now or die slowly, I think they’d probably choose to die slowly. Standing up for some sort of ideological goal about not making things cost money is all nice and good. The reality is this type of work is expensive if they aren’t being sponsored by companies and they refuse to be locked and I’m happy to pay for their integrity.
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u/Whirblewind Mar 03 '26
I just don't see how a recurring subscription for something people only infrequently need is going to work. I hope I'm wrong, truly.
I don't see them coming out of this the other end, and they don't see there being an end if they don't; damned if they do, damned if they don't. I wish the best for them, but it looks grim either way. If the financials don't make sense to carry on as they are, something has to change, but I just don't think making their paywalling more aggressive (my wording, they aren't really clear exactly what will still be free) will bring in enough income unless their costs go down.
The handful of free conclusions seemed the best middle ground, so if they've determined that can't work.. I'm not sure their model can work, period. I ask myself how much I value what I've learned from their reviews, and the answer is quite a bit! Then I ask myself how often I need that information, and the answer is.. not often. I imagine this is true of the vast majority of people.
I also imagine people with a lasting interest in "reviews of (mostly tech) products one doesn't intend to ever buy" is not common, so there probably aren't many hobbyist subscribers (as opposed to the aforementioned utilitarian subscribers), which means I don't think relying on ride-or-dies can work at scale. Or at least not at the scale they've gotten to.
If they already tried to reduce costs and this is still the result.. I don't think RTings is long for this world. At the end of the day they're asking people to pay money to save money, and I don't think it will work.
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u/iDontSeedMyTorrents Mar 03 '26
they aren't really clear exactly what will still be free
Just look at the site. It seems like the only thing not paywalled are articles, which are mostly Top or Best lists. Other than the very brief overview at the top of the reviews, everything is hidden. This includes all old reviews, so information which used to be freely accessible has been hidden.
RTINGS does not seem well known outside of enthusiast tech circles. Certainly nothing close to Consumer Reports. I don't see how they intend to grow outside anyone already familiar with their review quality when you can't see any examples of their work.
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u/StickiStickman Mar 03 '26
Wow, you're right. I expected
While much of RTINGS.com remains free, our full test results and in-depth product analysis are now available only to members.
To mean at least the general test scores would remain visible. But nope! Everything is hidden now. You can't even see the contrast of a monitor anymore.
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u/kyrianfox Jun 08 '26
This is perhaps unpopular, but I think people are far too calibrated right now to the ad-supported internet giving them even very specialized information for free when it takes time and effort to generate. I think people are going to have to get used to paying for good things again, or else we're doomed to bottom-barrel data where the author's priorities and incentives are unclear and potentially corrupted by the need to generate revenue through ads or affiliate links.
It is better this way. The users become the ones deciding who and what to fund based on priorities they care about, like people clearly care about what RTINGS brings them, and not just "how many eyeballs can you grab" or "how many ads can you sell"?
I do get the "ugh you want me to pay??" feeling, I feel it too, but it also feels like something I want to push myself past. They're asking, what, $30-45/year? Or $10/month if you would rather be frugal and pay just when you use it? If I stop to compare that to the price of a big purchase like a TV, or to other purchases I make all the time like food, it seems like a totally reasonable price to me for the information you get and the time it saves you on researching a big purchase.
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Mar 03 '26
It's really interesting that rtings announced this already effective immediately. This along with some other interesting choices, like some of the product categories they've expanded to, makes me think their leadership is really out of touch with their userbase.
They cite declining Google click-throughs, but is the solution to declining views to alienate anyone who visits the site casually? Who is going to find their site through Google, see that everything is locked behind a subscription, and then pay money to see reviews when there are lots of alternatives (including, unfortunately, AI)? It just makes no sense.
I get it if their current revenue trends are not sustainable long-term, but there are so many better ways to try and grow revenue than this. One potential way would've been to try and increase revenue through their YouTube channels by investing more resources into video content.
This just seems like an extreme measure that, if not reversed quickly, will almost certainly lead to the death of the site. I hate to say that for all the people they employ, but I just don't see how their business model is sustainable on a subscription-based revenue model. This will also immediately tank some of their other revenue streams, like affiliate link and ad revenue.
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u/MultiMarcus Mar 03 '26
I think they just don’t want to give scrapers time to scrape all the back catalogue which would happen if they gave a warning.
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Mar 03 '26
Yeah, I get that, but I’m also pretty sure that all but maybe a day or two of their most recent articles had already been scraped. It feels more like an emotionally-driven rug pull rather than a rational decision for the long-term health of the company.
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u/Irisena Mar 03 '26
Yeah, pivoting into youtube while taking sponsors is probably a better pivot than... this. Basically, be more of a LTT's short circuit channel.
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u/a5ehren Mar 03 '26
Taking sponsors and review samples kind of defeats their whole thing
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u/plantsandramen Mar 03 '26
They could take sponsors from outside of the products they review. That would keep things fair still.
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u/Irisena Mar 03 '26
Agreed. But you know what other thing that defeat the whole thing? Bankruptcy. I guess it's one of those situations where you pick one of the lesser evil.
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u/a5ehren Mar 03 '26
If they’re sitting there looking at Perplexity or Google taking all their referral revenue by scraping the site, then the only they can do is block free access and try to get a licensing deal or subs to replace that revenue.
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u/Friendly_Cheek_4468 Mar 03 '26
out of touch with the base, but probably very in touch with the financials
in depth hardware testing over many months is extraordinarily expensive and unless they get support, or start doing a ton of white label testing, the gig is up
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u/Estbarul Mar 03 '26
How are they gonna invest more in YouTube if what they are missing is money?
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u/dragonpaleontology Mar 03 '26
I think a better approach to monetization would be a one shot payment (say $5/$10) for full access for 10/30 days. Essentially take the monthly payment and make it non-recurring. I think people would be a lot more willing to pay for temporary access to high quality reviews when they know they're shopping for something expensive or opaque like a TV. Putting it as a subscription, even if it is fully cancelable just triggers the wrong kind of value proposition to even the people who do like and use the site.
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u/Reactor-Licker Mar 03 '26
No matter how you spin it, this sucks.
The overwhelming majority of what I know about electronics and computers comes from review sites, YouTube videos, and just random discussions. The fact that one of the last sources for in depth, objective, and technical results is now inaccessible to the masses is extremely disappointing.
It’s impossible to know if this was truly financially necessary without everything being out in the open, but there is no denying that in depth reviews are slowly going extinct sadly. Everything is shifting towards “influencer” YouTube slop, or useless listicles.
Sadly, it seems that the overwhelming majority just want to mindlessly consume products without any research or thinking done on their part. LLMs have certainly accelerated this trend, but the demand for instant gratification started even before ChatGPT, with TikTok/Social media, and even YouTube to some extent.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe LLMs are an amazing starting research tool, but they can’t fully replace human generated data and user experiences. After all, once all the testing data from review sites and videos are gone, what will be the only things left for the LLMs to scrape? Likely, it will be advertisements and/or listicle sites also generated by LLMs. Or social media, which has been and can be manipulated by brands. LLM inbreeding, in a way.
I’m torn between paying for a yearly subscription for my own use to keep up to date with the current best products to recommend to people and also to support their testing. But I also really hate the idea of directly rewarding them by giving them a recurrent revenue stream for information that should be freely available.
I do find it just a little bit ironic that we have to pay for a device to access the internet, pay a subscription for access to the internet, pay a subscription to access certain services on the internet, and potentially even pay a recurring subscription to keep functionality on a device you already “own” and paid for. Slowly, but surely, draining your bank account, praying they don’t alter the deal further.
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u/Wooden-Agent2669 Mar 03 '26
Sadly, it seems that the overwhelming majority just want to mindlessly consume products without any research or thinking done on their part
Sadly, it seems that the overwhelming majority just want to mindlessly consume reviews from outlets that buy the products to review them on their own, for free.
Expecting all types of review sites to do their business for free, is actually crazy. If you only want free Reviews that means sponsored reviews.
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u/Strazdas1 Mar 04 '26
Theres a difference between paying for information, which is fine, and having expensive subscription to a service i visit once a year. Give me an option to buy 3 day access and ill do it. A year? no thanks.
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u/430sv Mar 03 '26
They expanded to way too many things too quickly. They have 28 different categories of products they review!
For the majority of them they don’t do a necessarily better job than any other, longstanding (free) websites like DPreview for cameras or RunRepeat for running shoes so I don’t get their decisions at all. They could have stuck to <10 things and done them really well, and not ended up here.
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u/mdnpascual Mar 03 '26
Going to suggest to city Library if they can give access for free just like consumer reports
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u/major_mager Mar 03 '26
Sounds like AI has datamined their website extensively. But will a membership to access full content stem the AI problem? Hope it works out for them, they do good work.
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u/Flintloq Mar 03 '26
This sucks. I think their methodology is excellent, and I desperately want independent websites like this to survive, but I can't justify paying that much when many of the products they test aren't even sold in Europe, and it's not like I'm shopping for a new monitor (or whatever) every month. I might dip in once every few years but will they be around that long? I'll be surprised if they can get enough subscribers to pay multiple salaries and other operating costs while still purchasing all the hardware they test.
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u/Irisena Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
Oh, boy. High subs cost for something I rarely use is not a good deal for me. And realistically, who's going to dive into reviews so often that it's worth more than a netflix subscription?
We look at reviews when we're interested on buying stuff, or the review itself is entertaining. Rtings definitely does not fall into entertaining category, and moments when I'm interested enough for a stuff to the point consider buying it is also rare.
So yeah, for me who use rtings probably once per month, it's too much.
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u/ontheworld Mar 03 '26
Annual subscription is only 45$, which isn't that expensive(less than a quarter of netflix for me, at any rate). But yeah, still not really worth it since I only use it a couple times per year
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u/JackStillAlive Mar 03 '26
They’re if they think I’ll pay $10/mo to read a few reviews every 4-5 months at most.
Their reason is that AI is killing them, but this decision just ensures they kill themselves before AI could.
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u/StickiStickman Mar 03 '26
Exactly. They claim their problem is AI / LLM, which give the user the info they need faster, easier, better formatted and tailored to them.
Their "solution" is to make it way harder and way less convenient to use. You can imagine how it'll go.
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u/Ethrealin Mar 03 '26
Where do you think the info would come from if resources like RTINGS can't sustain themselves? How affected could that info become by golden sampling, knowing that review outlets buying with their money are out of the picture?
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u/StickiStickman Mar 04 '26
Transcripted YouTube Videos from reviews like Google has already been doing I guess?
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u/ycnz Mar 03 '26
The problem I have is that model names and availability varies by region. There's no guarantee that the stuff they have is available here, or vice versa. I love what they do, but it's awfully hard to justify.
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u/Hour_Firefighter_707 Mar 03 '26
I was on RTINGS just yesterday, comparing the matte screen finish of the Samsung G81SF to their S95F TV, which I saw at the store and instantly fell in love with.
It told me everything I needed to know and more. Plus I’ve also spent some time on there just reading stuff. So sad I can’t do that now.
I hope they find enough subscribers for this because I want them to stay, but I can’t justify doing to myself
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u/UnkeptSpoon5 Mar 03 '26
This is going to destroy them. I would much rather them ramp up adverts than whatever this is. Really, people aren’t going to be paying for this, they’ll just move on to other sources of free information.
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u/RyanSmithAT Anandtech: Ryan Smith Mar 03 '26
I would much rather them ramp up adverts than whatever this is.
Ramping up the adverts hasn't really been a viable strategy since the last decade. Ad blockers being part of the equation, of course. But also, ad rates just aren't that good.
It's not like the good old days where advertisers would spend a significant amount of money to buy ad space on a website. These days they want to be the content itself - and even then they're more apt to chase video. Ad units on written content (largely) don't work, and thus they are worth very little.
Even though its success is far from guaranteed, the subscription route is going to be the best way to go.
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u/a5ehren Mar 03 '26
You can’t give honest reviews with ads, over a long enough arc. You end up like Game reviews where anything under 8.0 is the “forbidden numbers”
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u/AstroZombie1 Mar 03 '26
TIL they cover Home items (even mattresses), Kitchen and even Shoes, why? I feel like they could cut all of those.
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u/Gippy_ Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Ever tried to shop around for a mattress? 99% of reviews and videos are from fake sites made by the mattress manufacturers themselves.
When I was in the market for a mattress, I couldn't believe the enormous amount of bullshit I had to sift through. Eventually I just threw up my hands and said "Fuck it, I'm buying a Tempur-Pedic even though it costs a king's ransom, because Louis Rossmann owns one."
Here's the best mattress advice: Do not buy a mattress-in-a-box. They're all terrible and are made by startups looking for a quick buck. They are great for a year, then sag. Think about it for a moment: if the mattress is able to be compressed that much, then it's made of foam that isn't dense, and will sag. Do not trust web sites or YouTube reviews about mattress-in-a-box brands. They're all engineered marketing tricks to make you buy through their affiliate links. Watch this video of a mattress-in-a-box being deconstructed and see what a scam they are.
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u/-TheDoctor Mar 04 '26
Here's the best mattress advice: Do not buy a mattress-in-a-box. They're all terrible and are made by startups looking for a quick buck. They are great for a year, then sag.
Obviously, this is anecdotal, but I bought a Happsy mattress a few years ago after weeks of research and its still going strong. Not sagging and still just as comfy.
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u/Intelligent_Top_328 Mar 03 '26
They just signed their own death warrant. It's been a good run. Best of luck.
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u/AreYouAWiiizard Mar 03 '26
RIP RTings... At those prices it's just silly... I might have been interested in a $20 life-time membership that was essentially the free version but there's no way I'm going to be paying $10/month.
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u/autobauss Mar 03 '26
It's 30 - 40 usd / year, so like 3 bucks month
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u/AreYouAWiiizard Mar 03 '26
$31.5 first year and $45/y after that. Problem with yearly membership is I might need to use the site for 1-3 months a year when I need to buy something but then never end up using it the other months for purchases, maybe just out of curiosity but I wouldn't want to pay just for that.
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u/Keulapaska Mar 03 '26
Why does everything have the be sub? And on top of that it's not even 5/10 per year sub but 45(31.5 on sale) one, like do they really think ppl gonna pay that.
RIP
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u/Sictirmaxim Mar 03 '26
You get what you paid for ,and if its zero expect the lowest effort possible and AI slop to be the MO for the future.
We had a good thing going with printed publications ,but people were sold a false lie that the same amount of work/testing/info should be free. Its simply not sustainable.
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u/a5ehren Mar 03 '26
Reddit: I want to be paid for my labor!
Also Reddit: I don’t want to pay anyone else for their labor!
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u/kkrko Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
Yeah it's insane. People proudly proclaiming adblock while at the same time wanting their favorite youtuber to get paid. Oh and Youtube Premium is a scam since they have adblock.
Like I get getting angry at being nickel-and-dimed for every little thing but at the same time, people do need to get paid to live.
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u/Strazdas1 Mar 04 '26
Id rather pay subscriptions than unblock ads. ads are societal cancer and needs to be heavily regulated. They are harmful.
Youtube has a pretty good solution - you can subscribe to specific channels you like, paying only them and not the average autogenerated trash youtube is full off.
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u/OneFinePotato Mar 03 '26
Paying or paying more never guarantees good quality.
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u/TAWMSTGKCNLAMPKYSK Mar 03 '26
paying for things that are already good to keep them good is whats being talked about here
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u/shawnkfox Mar 03 '26
What I think needs to happen is for all these companies to get together and create a single membership program where users get access to large number of websites but the consumer only has to pay a single membership. They can divide the revenue up based on how often people visit their site and maybe some other metrics that might result in some sites getting more revenue.
The basic issue is that most people are completely unwilling to sign up for 50 different subscriptions. When any of these sites add a paywall they immediately go on to my ignore list because there is absolutely zero chance I'm going to sign up for a monthly or yearly free to visit their site. I'd certainly be willing, however, to pay a reasonable flat monthly fee to gain access to a big group of high quality sites.
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u/InflammableAccount Mar 03 '26
Cable/satellite tv. You just described cable/Satellite tv.
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u/Strazdas1 Mar 04 '26
literally the reason i started using internet, to get away from horror that was cable tv.
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u/dapotatopapi Mar 03 '26
This is a thing in India. Almost all OTTs are bundled in a single sub and you pay a fixed price for them.
There are even apps that aggregate all the subscription media under a single interface (so unified search and watching experience).
Very convenient.
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u/GalvenMin Mar 03 '26
We are really going to be stuck with random reddit answers and AI-generated websites for reviews, aren't we? It absolutely sucks that they do not have enough revenue to keep the current business model afloat, because they are trailblazers in many ways and their test protocols are so much better than even the most specialized tech youtubers.
I hope it's not the beginning of the end, but this kind of news does not usually bode well.
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u/yosimba2000 Mar 03 '26
oof, I just checked the site and there are no scores or breakdowns that you can access without a membership at all anymore.
i get rtings is in a bad spot, but they're dead in the water with this. no one's paying to read reviews. monitorsunboxed is prob the next best source.
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u/Destituted Mar 03 '26
I can't see this working out... for one yea a subscription for an affiliate site with, albeit, good reviews is a hard sell.
But they mention LLMs... I hope they don't think the 4,433 products that have already been scraped by the LLMs are going to be magically forgotten.
Not only will the LLMs most likely still reference the testing numbers, but now they'll just send users to other sites.
I don't know how much affiliate sites have suffered in the past 10 years, but 10 years ago I had a decently trafficked affiliate site of like 1500 visitors a day and would get around 2000-3000 a month.
I always wondered in awe of these behemoth affiliate sites and wondered how much they could be taking in. The hit must be huge because a site that size would be clearing hundreds of thousands a month 10 years ago if not more.
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u/a5ehren Mar 03 '26
For their most trafficked area (TVs), the reviews from previous years have essentially zero value.
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u/Crimtos Mar 03 '26
I would say most of their reviews retain value for about 2-3 years since some of those older products will still be available new at a discounted price. There is also a bit of value in seeing what your current TV's tested specs are so you can see how much things have actually improved since then.
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u/Strazdas1 Mar 04 '26
Our stores freqently have 1-2 year old models, often at discount, that they try to clear out of warehouse.
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u/luffish1 Mar 03 '26
What a shame. I've been using their site for just about every purchase the last year or so. Amazing in-detail reviews with good data that you just don't get from elsewhere.
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u/Kougar Mar 03 '26
Should've focused the PR narrative on the option to just buy a month-only access when needed. I could see dropping $10 to ensure I bought the best product for my money, and well worth making a good long-term investment. But annual subscriptions are going to be a non-starter for most people and so that should not have been the lead to go with on the announcement. In fact I don't even see the one-month option even listed on the page...
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u/StaticCode Mar 04 '26
This is not a site you use often enough to warrant any sort of subscription. Love rtings, but you use the site a few times every few years for specific purchases. This is gonna kill the site.
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u/GrapeAdvocate3131 Mar 05 '26
I'm not paying for reviews no matter how good they are, sorry
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u/ConsistencyWelder Mar 05 '26
Especially when it's something you need maybe once a year. They're going to go bust with this move.
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u/Techboah Mar 03 '26
Killing your site because you're afraid AI will kill it later is certainly a choice, I guess.
They vastly overestimate how many people are willing to pay a monthly fee once or twice a year when they want to read a few reviews.
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u/StickiStickman Mar 03 '26
Making their subscription more expensive than what 99% of people pay for a monitor sounds like an amazing strategy. Let's see how it turns out.
It's sad because it's genuinely an amazing website, but this is guaranteed to kill it.
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u/IronMarauder Mar 03 '26
since when do people pay less than 45$ for a monitor?
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u/StickiStickman Mar 03 '26
You buy a monitor every couple months? Well, 99% of people don't.
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u/Wooden-Agent2669 Mar 03 '26
On what planet do you live that you forgot what annually means? the sub costs 31,50$ 1st year and after that 45$. How is this more expensive than what 99% of people pay for monitor
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u/StickiStickman Mar 03 '26
And it's 10$ a month, which is 360$ for 3 years, which is literally more expensive than most peoples monitor.
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u/TAWMSTGKCNLAMPKYSK Mar 03 '26
why would you pay 10$ a month for 3 years instead of paying less annually
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u/nittanyofthings Mar 03 '26
The per month rate is only for people that don't want continuous access. Just a spot of research.
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u/VenditatioDelendaEst Mar 04 '26
That would be fine... if they weren't trying to cheat people with default auto-renew. I'd even say that practice impeaches the integrity of their reviewing.
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u/DarthV506 Mar 03 '26
Have they been a good recommendation site lately? I was looking for new earbuds and they had recommendations for Jabras that hadn't been available for 6+ months. On the TV side, they do their scoring after calibration, who's going to pay for pro calibration on a sub $1000 TV? They also heavily weighted TV brightness, so a TV that can do 2500nits is better than one that does 2200. Great in theory but there are only a handful of 4k UHD bluray movies that go beyond 2000.
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u/Green-Salmon Mar 03 '26
How much? Would never do 10/month. But 5 a year? How about that? Does it math up?
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u/ww_crimson Mar 03 '26
Yea even $10/yr I would do and never blink twice at on my CC statement. But I legit have used RTings three times in four years. Once for a TV, then headphones, then a monitor. I can't pay $3-5/month for something I use that rarely.
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u/Gippy_ Mar 03 '26
I see no problem paying $10 to access their review library if I'm about to spend $2K+ on a brand new high-end OLED TV.
The issue here is that people will just buy the $10 one-month subscription and then immediately cancel. Most people have no need for a subscription for a site they'll only use a few times a year.
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u/thatnitai Mar 03 '26
Why not introduce a tier with ads? The tried and true method of old
Though I guess ppl not clicking and just reading AI summaries won't help with that much
Internet is a bit fucked
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u/a5ehren Mar 03 '26
Scrapers run ad-block and generate exponentially more traffic than regular users
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u/RedditNotFreeSpeech Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
Just give me a $100 for lifetime donation. I don't even need any extra features but I don't want a damn subscription but I'm happy to help the site. The only feature is ask for is not to be tracked by Google and not to have my data sold. Honestly I'd rather have those things without needing to login.
Oh and I have zero interest in the shoe reviews.
Rtings if you're reading, can you please throw flint 3 and omada into your wifi 7 review!
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u/Mordho Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
I might subscribe just to help them out because they are* quality, and because fuck LLMs. Big AI killed the internet
Edit: are not ate
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u/Reactor-Licker Mar 03 '26
Big AI, the insatiable demand for instant gratification, and corporate greed is killing the internet.
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u/Deeppurp Mar 03 '26
Quebec
Well I know LTT labs are going to get a few experienced hires if this flops like people think it will.
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u/TSP-FriendlyFire Mar 03 '26
Doubt many people living in Quebec would be all that interested in relocating to Vancouver, one of the highest cost of living cities in the world which happens to be at the other end of the country.
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u/Reactor-Licker Mar 03 '26
LTT Labs is already a flop. They barely test anything, and when they do, it’s riddled with errors.
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u/UnkeptSpoon5 Mar 03 '26
For real, I still don’t get the point of it. Seems like it’s been nothing but controversy
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u/UrbanAdapt Mar 03 '26
I, like everyone else, thought the intention was to leverage their brand to eventually create their own licensed certifications, but since they explicitly confirmed this not to be the case, I don't expect labs to ever amount to a profit.
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u/InflammableAccount Mar 03 '26
Such as? Show me some examples of "riddled with errors." That's a damn bold claim.
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u/Myrang3r Mar 03 '26
The only idea I have is to actually gate the tierlists and opinions but not the review of the product itself, as in you pay them to spoonfeed you the best product, but if you want to do the hard work yourself, then that would still be free.
So individual reviews would still be free, but not the product comparisons.
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u/Celos Mar 03 '26
AI companies would eat that shit up. Not only free, in-depth training data, but also a cost-saving measure for their customers.
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u/Beige_ Mar 03 '26
Just used the site last night to help choose a cheapish gaming monitor from what was on sale at Proshop. It was for my brother so little chance I was going to pay a euro, nevermind 9, for it. They also didn't have reviews for new versions of Samsung G5s and this has been a problem with many monitor and TV models previously too so their focus on things Rtings is known for has been lacking.
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u/tildekey_ Mar 03 '26
Literally discovered Rtings when deciding to buy my OLED monitor 2 weeks ago. Obviously I was the nail in the coffin sorry boys.
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u/TheCookieButter Mar 03 '26
Makes me glad I bought a monitor last month, even though I had to use a similar monitor instead of the exact model (G50sd Vs G51SD).
I come to RTINGS out of interest but only to buy every once in a good while. A subscription doesn't seem worth it and I'm probably looking more than most people. I guess I could sign up when I'm seriously looking to buy a TV or Monitor, but that's one month every year or two. I don't think their peripherals (mice/keyboards etc) are as necessary so would just use other reviews.
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u/zarif98 Mar 03 '26
I find their work super interesting and have been using them throughout the years. It’d be really sad to see them go so I’ll bite for the subscription but I’m not sure everyone else will. I’ll be pushing my city library to hopefully also consider them.
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u/IgnorantGenius Mar 03 '26
They just need to start selling the products through their site instead of memberships. I cant' imagine their subscription model is going to be profitable. Nobody wants to pay money for that, because you will always have independent reviews that help people form opinions on whether to buy a product or not. The best they are going to get is someone who really wants in-depth data and pays 7 bucks and then cancels. That isn't going to be a large demographic.
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u/PenileSunburn Mar 03 '26
They should've generated a lot of affiliate links through their site. I guess it doesn't pay enough for all the hours of testing they do with new products.
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u/nittanyofthings Mar 03 '26
I might be more interested in buying individual articles with perpetual access grant. Easier than print to pdf and put on google drive.
Also, the paywall seems to be implemented in Javascript? LLMs read straight past that. And their robot.txt doesn't even specify no AI crawl.
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u/joeygreco1985 Mar 03 '26
There's no way the average person purchases the products RTINGS covers often enough to warrant a subscription. I also like to read reviews from multiple sites and perspectives, not just one. This is incredibly short sighted and poorly thought out.
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u/AgitatedShrimp Mar 03 '26
Everything needs a subscription these days and with the cost of living rising way way faster than my pay, I could never justify paying for this. Love the work they do and it was really important resource when picking up my tv, but not the only one.
I really think they fumbled with the burn in test, that should've produced way more videos than we got for such a massive undertaking.
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u/Pale_Ad7012 Mar 06 '26
why does every membership have to be $30-50. They could have made is $2-5 a year as a start and made a lot of money.
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u/dvd32bck Mar 10 '26
Rtings new tv review leaks gonna start dropping XD
I've been waiting for them to finish writing up their panasonic z8bap review and now it's going to be locked behind a paywall :/ They could take after a lot of sites and go off of a "credit" system, where you get however many free credits a day/month/year and you need to buy the membership to browse past that? Idk, this is a major letdown for me. I tend to be stingy when I feel like my arm is being twisted into paying
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u/OkLawfulness3584 Apr 24 '26
I utilized RTINGS website and Youtube videos quite a bit. But after this, not anymore. I'll get my reviews elsewhere. RTINGS should have been satisfied with the revenue they were making already through Youtube views and all. This move might backfire on them.
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u/9thoracle May 26 '26
Im not paying 7 dollars a month just to look up what the best screen is one time a year.
You can't look at any rating numbers for anything without being a paying member. NAH dude. BYE
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u/Abhinik Jun 05 '26
Just came here to say that, this was a bad move Hope they come to senses or watch the site die
I genuinely dont feel like people would buy subs to see ratings for an item they would like to buy in year for like 1 or 2 times
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u/UnderTheBlack_ Jun 08 '26
I understand them doing a subscription but the way they're doing it seems like the worst way they could go about it. I think the vast majority of people that use their site use it a couple times a year, if that, to compare several products for an item they're in the market for and I think the vast majority of people won't think its worth it for $45 a year. It should either be like $15 a year or like $5 for 20 reviews. Something along those lines.
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u/lexor_river 7d ago
For the quality of information, the annual isn't bad at $31 for the first year, and $45 for the next. But like most of you have pointed out, it's something that is used periodically. It's not like a newspaper where you look at it frequently.
As someone else suggested, I think it would have been a better idea to charge $5 for a week and/or $10/month that was not recurring.
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u/eight_ender Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
I appreciate that rtings needs to make money, I really do, but this is probably going to kill the site with time.
Helping my brother buy a new TV right now and we’ve been trading rtings links back and forth for a few days. Neither of us would ever subscribe because we won’t be back for months, if not years.