The best ones write in depth reviews, describe their thinking process and fairly weigh pros / cons.

Ultimately it’s imo more about avoiding bad products than it is about noticing whether a product is great. Criticaster collects all professional reviews to get to an average critic score, which will more quickly and more accurately get you to a satisfactory product than any other approach.

I feel like we're on a completely different internet or if you're just scraping up a lot of spam based on word count ... ?

I regularly consume articles by whathifi, wirecutter, rtings, etcetera. Do you consider all of those spam?

What do you base purchase decisions on?

See this one

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47170041

for a long time whenever you did a search for "Best X" Google always sent you to a short list of spammy review sites. Google kicked most of them to the curb but for some reason left the Wirecutter.

Before Google decided to hand the keys to Forbes though there was a vibrant market in competitive spammy sites for topics like that but at one point Google decided that Forbes and The Wirecutter should win all the time so since then we've had uncompetitive spammy sites and no way you can make a better spammy site and win market share.