Yeah, that’s a pretty shit way to do a review.
“I cannot recommend the iPhone, because the USB cable that came with our unit was defective and we could not power it on. Rating: F”
Reviewing a broken unit doesn’t tell the reader anything about the product. It’s lazy and harms both the manufacturer and the reader who’s expecting fair reviews.
Lazy work by that writer and the editor who approved it.
It does expose quality assurance problems. Products shouldn’t be defective out of the box. It happens: you send it back and get it replaced. But the reputation is damaged already.
Sure, it’s a thing to note. I see these things mentioned in reviews regularly, but it’s just “we had a problem with x, but it was covered by the warranty and they sent a replacement.”
Reviewing the product as if the broken screen is part of the product is lazy and unprofessional. Not to mention, kind of besides the point for most users who are likely plugging it into a smarthome system so the information is readily accessible from their phone or smartwatch.
Ironically, because of this post I looked at some other reviews (who’s screen had zero issues) and they were all positive. Especially about the integrations with other open source projects in the home automation space.
I’ve looked at adding air quality monitoring to my system, there’s a lot of modules available, but unless you want to build them into a Raspberry pi and write your own integrations your choices are pretty limited (and often tied to proprietary, cloud-based, products).
$200 to have all those sensors professionally assembled, with a case and software support for the FOSS ecosystem is pretty good. Even if it didn’t have a screen at all.
How can a monitor with no display be recommended over one that had a broken display?
I can provide at least 2 reasons. First, one with no display was designed with that in mind. The screen may be a vital part of the product and without it is functionally useless, e.g. a laptop. Secondly, even if it’s not that vital, you’re paying for functionality you aren’t getting.
That said, if this is an issue covered under warranty I’m not even sure why it was that big of a factor even if it’s critical to the product. Definitely worth mentioning in the review but these types of reviews almost never test the longevity of the product so it’s difficult for them to say their experience is typical or that the screen won’t last long.
