Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
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NYT Wirecutter is good, though they don't fully respect money and like to recommend stuff with crazy pricetags. Consumer reports has limited products but deep data. For kitchenware, cult flav and prudent reviews rock. America's test kitchen is decent too.
For random crap not listed on any of the above I just Google "best X". Click the top few articles and reddit threads. Specialty subreddits (like for vacuums) where they exist and buy it for life are especially valuable. Look for the things that get recommended by multiple sources and good reviews on online storefronts. For some product categories video reviews can reveal things written ones can't.
Also remember the rule on how many things you look at. I'm sure I'm butchering the details, but a study was done a while back that showed people got the most valuable ratio of time invested to quality of purchase when they researched something like 60% of options. By this point you typically have a decent idea of what is and isn't good and can make an educated decision without digging deep on every possible option. I typically narrow down to a top few options pretty quickly and only dig deep on those.
Edit: Also, consider your friend group. If you have a friend who you know often does deep research in their shopping and/or is deep in the specific world you're shopping for, shoot them a text. I've saved many hours of research consulting with friends who already did the research. And if the product category is a hobby of theirs they are often ecstatic to spend time with you teaching and offering personalized recommendations.