Video reviews vs text reviews

[Hursticon]

I use both, depending on the medium & the reviewer.

• I really like the Video medium as it can be a really entertaining & informative experience where creativity can often flourish.
• I also like Photo/Written reviews but these are far more dependant on the writer/photographer; there needs to be a healthy balance of informativeness & decent quality photos and plenty of white-space - I can't stand to look at "Walls of text".

[drahsrebu]

Text/image reviews only thanks

i feel as though text reviews are more thought out.....plus you can skip to the last paragraph

But for me i think it goes back to the days when youtube wasnt around, all you could find back then was text and image reviews. There is a certain amount of professionalism about it as well.

i have a few watched video reviews and some are pretty good, but my first choice is always text and pics

[Ode to a Grasshopper]

Text and pics please. Well written text and good pics.
I can read quite a bit faster than people (well, most people) speak, and I like to view the images at my leisure...while listening to music. Text reviews let me learn about the toy at my own pace and leave my ears free to enjoy my soundtrack du jour.

[Paulbot]

I prefer text too because I can read a text review much quicker than a video. I can read while I'm watching TV, or sitting on the train, or bored at work.

Text reviews don't chew up my mobile downloads and they don't buffer. I dislike video reviews because part of the joy with Transformer toys is that first transform. Watching someone else do it just feels wrong. I know that sounds silly

But for me i think it goes back to the days when youtube wasnt around, all you could find back then was text and image reviews.

There's definitely part of this for me too. I was always an avid reader of Dave Van Domelon's reviews back in in the 90s and still go to his site if I'm a bit iffy on a new figure.

[Lord_Zed]

I prefer text reviews with a smattering of pictures as some video reviews don't go fast enough or as stated before have poor public speaking skills, and I get bored quickly. I prefer entertaining ones like Vangelus reviews, not so much for his reviewing skills (though those are good) but for his ability to make the whole video interesting.

Also I find some video reviews show me to much. You see usually the only reason I check out a review is if it's for a toy I am interested in, but maybe a little uncertain and so I want a review to see if the toy has any major issues that could affect my decision. I don't actually want to see some geek transform the toy. transforming a new toy for the first time is one of the best parts of getting a new Transformer. I just want to know the toy is not a lemon.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

I think my opinion is void as i do video reviews lol

Oh, contrare good sir. I have done a few video reviews and that is part of the reason why I was thinking about this.

At the time I enjoyed doing them and editing them and then uploading them, but found my text ones would suffer and I was rarely in the mood to do both a text and video review.

However I have changed tack as after doing a group in a row and no text reviews, I really missed the photography side of things. So now I am less likely to video review something if I can type it up instead.

I dislike video reviews because part of the joy with Transformer toys is that first transform. Watching someone else do it just feels wrong. I know that sounds silly

Dave Van Domelon's reviews

I think the first transform is important as well, which is why I skip videos that do that, plus if I am thinking of buying it, I will transform it myself anyway. I want to know about articulation and general 'feel' more than how it Transforms.

Wow that Dave reviews page is... Spartan.

[GoktimusPrime]

I dislike video reviews because part of the joy with Transformer toys is that first transform. Watching someone else do it just feels wrong. I know that sounds silly

I can understand that. Watching someone transform a toy that you haven't transformed yet is kinda like being exposed to a "toy spoiler." Part of the fun of getting a toy and transforming it for the first time is 'discovering' how it transforms and marvelling at the engineering. If you watch someone else do it, then you already know what's coming. With text reviews, when you see the paragraph that talks about the transformation, you can just skip to the next paragraph and read on.

[Kazza]

I prefer video reviews as some videos can point out the flaws better than text can describe, i'm all about finding the physical weakpoints e.g. prone stress mark locations

[klystron]

Being a selective collector I do a fair amount of research on a potential addition to my collection.
Text based reviews are the best, coupled with quality photos showing whats important to enhance the text. I am also a big fan of pic-heavy reviews (think sibertron galleries) as its easy to get a good look at the figure and save some for further perusal.
Having said that, I often find that there will be some aspect/feature/gimmick/view/etc that is not captured or displayed so I use youtube video review/s to 'fill in the blanks.'
Does that make sense?
EG - there was a figure a little while back, that all I wanted to see was the underside of the alt mode. No reviewer showed or talked about it. I had to use a 20sec portion of a 9min video review to see the angle I wanted.

Short answer = both have merit

[Magnus]

I go with both media - text and image reviews for background, descriptions and detail shots, and video reviews for showcasing articulation, working gimmicks and transformations.

Image and text-based reviews allow for easy side-by-side comparisons - you can have two different tabs in a browser to go between images of different figures, and as has been stated before, it's easy to go straight to a particular aspect of the figure you want to look at.

Video has the advantage of showing how to move a part in 'real-time' or avoid stress points/breakage. A good example is MP Rodimus - having glossed over forum descriptions of its fragility when it was first released, I'm glad I saw Peaugh's video before mine arrived.