Do reviews of 'bad' products really kill off companies? Not according to one famous tech YouTuber and we absolutely agree

Product reviews are the staple far of any tech publication or channel. Visitors expect them to be entertaining but also informative, and the vast majority of folks always don't want things sugar-coated or misleading. They want the truth, no matter how painful it is, but is honesty really damaging to the company that made the product? Popular tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee doesn't believe so, as he explains in a recent commentary, created on the back of the negative feedback he received for one of his latest reviews. 

For all of us at PC Gamer, whenever we review a product, no matter how expensive or unique it is, we always try to be as fair and as honest as possible. Sometimes that means we end up saying some things that put the item in a very negative light, but it will always be explained and, more often than not, backed up with hard evidence. But do such reviews significantly affect the product's vendor? Does giving a string of laptops, for example, a low score result in the business' finances nosediving?

With millions of visitors passing through PC Gamer's pages, are we morally obligated to ensure that we put the best interests of any company ahead of ensuring the reviews are well received by hundreds of thousands of people? Of course not—there's a world of difference between being openly dismissive of a product, purely based on who made it, and giving something a low rating because it's fundamentally poor.

We live in a world where algorithms favour gurning faces, all displaying mock outrage or shock, and I think it's fair to say that a good number of tech reviews tend to err on the side of overdramatisation, especially those which are in a video format. Sometimes that's entirely intentional by the reviewer but occasionally it comes about by a lack of experience.

In the case of Marques Brownlee, he's been reviewing tech for a long time, starting in his teens about 15 years ago. A couple of days ago, he posted a review of the Humane AI wearable computer, a device