Poll – Video Reviews!
After the funny as hell video review at poeghostal.com a few days ago I thought I would ask: What do you think of video reviews? The poll will run for a week — in the right sidebar on computers, down below on mobile devices — and then . . . well, then we’ll see what you guys think.
I watch some video reviews, but I personally prefer written reviews with photos.
I found that Doc Thomas video review of Rattlor a bit jarring. Sometimes (mostly humor) in text format (think X-Entertainment) don’t really come off that well in video format (think Matt of XE’s new site, Dinosaur Dracula).
A toy review site that does it well is TJ over at http://kumastyledesigns.com/
He does great video review – but also includes a series of great photos and a writeup. Compare that to pixel-dan.com’s video-only reviews. Sometimes I just don’t have the time or state of mind to sit through a video review, and I’ll just go elsewhere. However, having both like TJ does provides a nice balance.
I tend to stick to sites that don’t do many video reviews. I don’t know why I don’t like them but I enjoy words and pictures for some reason. I almost never watch video reviews.
Turquoise Version recently brought up the same topic, so if you don’t mind I’ll just copy what I said over there:
I really, really, am not a fan of video reviews. There are a couple of exceptions, but even the best video reviews out there are a few minutes longer than I care to watch, so I just tend to skip to the end.
I well written review, or even a short and concise review, accompanied by some in-focus pics sprinkled in there is definitely the way to go.
I also want to give some advice to those who are doing video reviews. Write down what you’re going to say before you make the video.
If you don’t think that’s important, watch one of your posted video reviews and take the time to type a transcript of it.
If you find that reading the review comes across as disjointed or oddly paced and with little structure, then it is very likely your audience heard it that way too.
Though I do enjoy and follow some video reviewers, I prefer the written review. Not only is it easier to view during work hours, so many reviews are really long. I agree with Blayne in that TJ’s reviews are great, but they have a full write-up associated with them. If I don’t have time to watch a 30 minute video, I can read all of the information with them. For something like a transformer review, I don’t necessarily need to see how to transform them in order to make my decision. I’d like to read the review and if I needed to see the transformation, I could look at the video.
My favorite vid reviews are by Barutazaru (Thew’s Awesome Transformers Reviews). They are short, funny, and still packed with good information. I’d recommend them to anyone.