Sponsor: Arctic Liquid Freezer II ARGB on Amazon https://geni.us/8BokJIn HW News this week, we start with a discussion about Linus Sebastian's recent reply t...
But why does it even matter if they do it correctly or not? It’s still a water block that costs over $800. It’s a bad product at a fundamental level because not only is it a niche of a niche it’s wildly overpriced. No amount of testing is going to make it a good product. It was never going to sell well. I do not understand why people care so much about it.
The quanity-over-quality and QA errors are way more egregious than them shitting a product that deserves to get shit on. And as far as I can tell the auction thing is a single, isolated mistake of that nature. They do have a track record of making errors in their reviews. But what they don’t have is a history of auctioning off prototypes. It is a really weird thing to be so up-in-arms about. It was an accident and they are paying for it. What is the big deal?
That’s really missing the point. They were trying to sell the water block to rich people with more money than sense that, importantly, wanted the best of the best. By not reviewing it correctly, LTT screwed a small company over pretty hard. Linus then went on to say that he made this decision to save $100 to $500. He was unwilling to spend that kind of money to preserve the journalistic integrity of the channel.
The fact that he tried to make it look like LMG was going to compensate them for the block (replying only after the GN video was released) only makes it worse.
to preserve the journalistic integrity of the channel.
That’s also missing the point. That video was not a review. There wasn’t journalistic integrity because it wasn’t a journalistic piece. If you go into a for-fun video expecting a proper review process of course you are going to be disappointed.
If the argument is that it should have been a full review, then sure maybe it should have. But it wasn’t one, so it doesn’t make any sense to hold it to that standard when that was never the intention behind it.
The video is clearly about the water block. They describe their experience while building a computer with it and then give purchasing advice. Sure seems close enough to a review that they should be fair to the manufacturer. And their ethics should not go out of the window just because the didn’t put “review” in the title (when was the last time they did that anyway…).
It can be about the water block without being a review of the water block. The premise of the video is somebody with no experience doing water cooling (Adam) trying to build it. If the intent was for it to be a review they would have someone more knowledgeable do it. I completely disagree it is unethical to make a for-fun video messing around with it, unless they agreed to do something else in their emails with Billet Labs which we have not seen.
I also don’t believe they give any purchasing advice either but feel free to post a timestamp if you have one.
Literally just a dude. I don’t even have any skin in this game, I am just trying to understand why people are so angry and they have explained it (poorly) to me. I guess I will never understand. I genuinely don’t see much of an issue with what happened. Feels like to me the internet hate mob is unwilling to forgive an honest mistake.
I’m willing to bet most of the people who are angry already didn’t like LTT and are just bandwagoning rather than actually caring about the details. People just want to be angry and I find that annoying.
… That’s definitely not what is happening regarding the internet hate mob theory you have. A very large chunk of people who are outraged actually like or liked Linus and I’ve been seeing them express dissapointment over this behavior.
Can you explain exactly what you are confused on or having trouble understanding after watching the GN video and reading all of the comments that have replied to you so far? If so I might be able to help break down a timeline and highlight the issues in a simplified manner.
If you actually want to try I would genuinely appreciate it. But I don’t really want to waste your time. I have thought about it for some time and I honestly doubt there is any way I see the other side of this. I tried, I really did. Which is why I responded to so many comments but I guess my way of thinking about it is somehow so wildly different from other people. But if you do happen to have some time to kill I will try to write everything out. I apologize in advance for how long it is but I wanted to be thorough.
The main point of Steve’s video is to call into question LTT’s journalistic/reviewer integrity. The funny thing is I agree with literally like 95% of what he said. LTT has had a massive quantity-over-quality problem and things have been declining for years. But that said, the water block video was not a review. Objectively not a review. It’s not an opinion of mine it is a fact. So when all these comments say he “reviewed it poorly” or whatever that doesn’t make any sense. And Steve’s criticisms about their reviews do not apply either. Linus has frequently said different video types have different processes. They have reviews, unboxings, “showcases” (sponsored products), etc. which are all distinct categories of videos. To treat it like a review and try to hold it to the same standard as a formal review is arguing in bad faith.
Imagine you draw a picture of a cat, and then a bunch of people come along and say your picture of a dog sucks because it’s too cat-like. You never set out to draw a dog, so why would that criticism make any sense? Just because both have four legs and a tail does not mean they should be judged in the same way. Intent is really important here and people are just conveniently ignoring it. LTT makes these types of videos all the time. Is them using an air conditioner to cool a PC a review of the air conditioner? Or are they just messing around for entertainment? Another comment compared it to a super car because it is an expensive niche product, but I don’t buy that either. If someone shows off driving in a super car and then at the end says, “yeah that’s fast but the fact this exists is stupid, nobody should ever buy this,” I don’t think anyone would care, assuming of course it’s not a formal review of the car.
And on top of that, let’s say they did do a full, formal review. Every single number is correct and there are no errors. And then let’s also assume they give it back instead of auctioning it off just for the sake of this hypothetical. Now Steve doesn’t feature it in the video because the information is correct. LTT says the exact same thing-- $800 is too expensive for a water block and this product has no real buyers. Billet Labs has no customers and goes out of business quietly in the background. Nobody would care. People only care now because of the way it was done, but if the outcome is literally exactly the same, why does it matter at all? If it’s a bad product that deserves to be shit on it shouldn’t matter that they shit on it. And before you say something like “but what if they test it correctly and it’s actually good,” that will never happen because an $800 water block is always going to be a bad value. Other water blocks are in the $200-300 range. There is no world where this water block magically performs over twice as good as the others. It’s a genuinely bad product, and there’s no reason the company should be getting a pass just because it’s “two guys” or whatever. A bad product is a bad product regardless of who makes it. I just cannot understand why people care so much about this company. It’s like people prefer rooting for the “little guy” over actually examining the situation.
The funny part is LTT doing what they did actually gave Billet Labs more positive publicity than they would have gotten any other way, which I also said in one of my other comments and got downvoted to Hell for, even though now someone else has posted the same thing and it’s upvoted. In the end Billet Labs actually completely won here. This is the best thing that could have ever happened to their company.
As for the auction thing, my main issue with people’s response to it is that it’s just a single isolated mistake that happens to be tacked on to the rest of the stuff. How do you go from sending an email saying you will return it to auctioning it off? It’s insane that that happened but it could have been any number of things. I imagine the people responsible were wearing too many hats and were mainly focused on LTX planning. They probably already deal with dozens of companies on a daily basis and now they were also dealing with vendors/sponsors/etc. for LTX on top of that. It’s not unthinkable that things just got too hectic and miscommunication happened. People make mistakes. Should LTT own up to the mistake and work to make sure this type of thing never happens again? Absolutely. There should be proper chain of command for items like this. I imagine that’s what they’re implementing now. But what is so bad about this? It’s not evil, it’s not malicious, it’s a mistake that as far as I can tell happened one time. This isn’t a pattern of behavior like the errors in reviews are.
From what I’ve seen it’s the auction that broke the camel’s back, when in isolation it’s not really that big of an issue. It’s only because it’s surrounded by the other issues brought up that makes it another mistake on the pile and therefore the pile bigger. The thing is, it’s a mistake that affects 2-3 people. Billet Labs. The errors being made in reviews affect millions of people. It is way more important, but the Billet Labs thing is what I see the most comments about. That’s what my main confusion is about. Why is there so much focus on Billet Labs at all? Billet Labs is like 10% of Steve’s video, the other 90% is dedicated to the reporting/review errors. It doesn’t make any sense to me. At the end of the day it’s a small company making a dumb overpriced product vs. the largest tech review channel constantly misleading millions of consumers with bad numbers/data/processes. But here we are on a thread where people are almost exclusively talking about Billet Labs.
What? They put it on the wrong card when the correct card was provided by the manufacturer. The manufacturer confirmed to them the incompatability. If the premise of the video is “idiots do something wrong and act like it’s the part’s fault because they felt personally slighted and have an ego driven response”.
It wasn’t, if they had the correct and compatible part, it may have been an entirely different experience to them, and that part was provided to them by the manufacturer.
We don’t even know if a lay person with instructions and the right part would have issues, because the original unforced error by LMG was so egregious. No matter what you have to see how this isn’t fair to anyone, especially not the target consumer of this device. It might even paint it in a very negative light through the fault of the people making the video, entirely. The manufacturer did everything they could.
Then when called out they double down on the ego hurt response, twice. Saying nothing would change when they never even tried to use it device appropriately. Then they add insult to injury by never even giving the part back.
FYI - selling the prototype (LMG were aware this was a one of a kind proto) ensures that no other reviewer can have an easier time installing on the right hardware, no one can ever prove Linus wrong because the part is gone and they won’t say to who…
FYI - selling the prototype (LMG were aware this was a one of a kind proto) ensures that no other reviewer can have an easier time installing on the right hardware, no one can ever prove Linus wrong because the part is gone and they won’t say to who…
Considering that it was also auctioned at an event where competitor companies were present, they could have well auctioned off the company’s prototype to a competitor of theirs, which would have been the worst case scenario for Billet. (I don’t think it ultimately happened that way, but that was a real risk in the auction).
Recently LTT built a $100k PC desk for a Minecraft streamer. Sometimes the over the top engineering/materials (and thus cost) around something is the entire point. If they gave it a fair shake, and still called it a bad product, and then returned it. There wouldn’t be an issue. It being a bad product isn’t the issue.
Then what is the issue? If the outcome is the same why does it matter? The video it was featured in wasn’t even a review, the premise was someone who has zero experience in water cooling trying to install it. I feel like most people didn’t even watch the video.
Sure do love the hivemind downvoting instead of answering my question. I am genuinely asking, what is the issue? I really don’t understand why it has so many people this mad. To me it seems like people were expecting a review when that wasn’t the intent of the video.
The video it was featured in wasn’t even a review, the premise was someone who has zero experience in water cooling trying to install it
So sick of this shit. Reviewing something and then hiding behind “it’s not a review bro!” You know damn well the criticisms extended beyond just that. Linus straight up just said it was a bad product outright. THAT’S A REVIEW.
The issue is that they stole a prototype they were entrusted to care for. Agreed to return it, but then didn’t. Got mad when they were kindly asked to return it. Put it on auction, sold it to someone for charity. Potentially unintentionally facilitating corporate espionage. Then got mad when they were publicly called out.
This is not the first time even. They have lost, misplaced or destroyed other’s properties before.
And now they want to project LMG and their new concept, Lab, as a beacon of consumer protection journalism. They have to make a choice. Either they are an entertainment company, or a serious tech review magazine that tests technology to provide consumers with accurate info to make purchase decisions. They can’t be both, the jank and fooling around of one doesn’t work nicely with the journalistic ethics demanded of the other.
“They” didn’t agree to return it. Someone responding to an email did. Linus himself and the other 100+ employees probably had no idea the thing even existed. It is really on the person who responded to the email and the planners of the auction which is probably 2-3 people at most.
Got mad when they were kindly asked to return it.
Where? That did not happen until after the video was published.
Put it on auction, sold it to someone for charity.
Which was an accident, which is being paid for.
This is not the first time even. They have lost, misplaced or destroyed other’s properties before.
Do you have any examples? And if that is the case maybe Billet Labs should have done more due-diligence before giving them a supposedly very important prototype. Linus is literally known as the guy who drops things.
And now they want to project LMG and their new concept, Lab, as a beacon of consumer protection journalism. They have to make a choice. Either they are an entertainment company, or a serious tech review magazine that tests technology to provide consumers with accurate info to make purchase decisions. They can’t be both, the jank and fooling around of one doesn’t work nicely with the journalistic ethics demanded of the other.
Fair enough but I disagree. I think you can have for-fun videos and serious videos mixed together. However they should definitely be more clearly labeled as such, or maybe even keep them on different channels completely.
“They” didn’t agree to return it. Someone responding to an email did. Linus himself and the other 100+ employees probably had no idea the thing even existed. It is really on the person who responded to the email and the planners of the auction which is probably 2-3 people at most.
Tell me you’ve never had a position of actual authority without telling me you’ve never had a position of actual authority.
No, go away. You obviously have no interest in reasonable conversation. As you are willfully ignoring already mentioned facts and arguments from the video in order to be contrarian and hard headed. I will not indulge you.
LMG is the company that did these things. Billet was under the impression they were talking with a representative of LMG, for which all that they agreed with, was binding. If someone, an individual, failed at their job to fulfill their agreements with Billet, then LMG, the company, failed. If Linus wants to be taken seriously and have LMG considered a big adult company, they better start acting like it. And that starts with taking responsibility and owning up to their mistakes responsibly. Not letting their CVO and owner go on idiot circular incoherent rants.
Mate, it’s a prototype, their first product. If that design works well and will be mass produced the price goes down. With possibly a budget option released later that actually makes sense to buy.
A lot of companies started with the luxury version of a product and then later offered budget versions after showing everyone they could deliver.
Linus not only dissed them (after “testing” the product on the wrong GPU) but also sold off their only prototype. Otherwise they could have sent it to another reviewer to do a proper test.
You wanna talk about poorly run businesses? Why are they sending out their prototype if they only have one and it’s so important? At least make two of them.
They didn’t only have one Prototype but this was their best and most recent one, you also generally don’t copy prototypes until you are 99% to completion. Additionally they trusted LTT to send the Prototype back in a timely manner once they were done testing, as you would expect from any company with even a speck of professionalism.
I’d guess in the time the Prototype was away they either worked on other things (Packaging/Manufacturing/Marketing Solutions for the final release?) or went on a planned short Vacation.
Buddy are you trolling just for the sake of trolling or is that an genuine POV of yours.
If you are genuine then hear me out.
When a small company makes a prototype it is 1st to test, iterate and perfect. The 2nd job of a near perfect prototype is to promote the company to investors and hopefully garner money for the next step ie perfecting the process to make a finished product.
A small company notwithstanding even a big company like Nokia makes a single prototype to begin with and then replicate it to perfect the production process.
The second job is especially important for a startup who put all their money to make a prototype. The reason they gave it to LTT was for promotion. LTT dissed the company that the product is not viable but didn’t highlight that the concept of perfected and made cheaper can become a viable option for water cooling. On top of that they sold it without permission, under the guise of charity, which I doubt even happened.
I would love to see them pull something like this with any of the big companies. That is an sure shot way to corporate suicide.
If they can’t think of pulling something like this with a big company they should have thought twice before doing it with a small company.
When your defense of LMG boils down to “anyone would be stupid to trust them with something important”…
And yes, it was stupid to trust them and I hope no one else does going forward. But it doesn’t change that LMG were the ones to screw up and did so in so many ways it’s comical. Either they don’t know what they are doing, don’t care, or some combination of the two.
It’s not a water block that costs $800 though. It’s a prototype water block that they estimated the cost of producing to be around $800 given R&D, labor, materials, etc.
It was never meant to be a production ready product, and it should never have been treated as such.
The issue with the auction is due to the fact that they sent Billet numerous emails claiming to have prepared it to be shipped back, including one in which they said they would send tracking info shortly. They didn’t know it was being auctioned off until afterward. And Linus didn’t contact them about compensation until 3 hours after GNs video went live.
These are facts, backed by actual evidence which you can see for yourself in GNs latest HW news.
The product costs over $800. I’m not talking about the prototype. And sure “they” sent Billet multiple emails. That means one person sent the emails and then failed to follow up on them. The 100+ people at the company are not responsible for what happened, the 2-3 people that should have dealt with it are.
And Linus didn’t contact them about compensation until 3 hours after GNs video went live.
Okay? But he is compensating them. That is all I said.
Sure, but people are acting like Linus himself is somehow directly responsible for it, some people even acting like it’s intentionally malicious, when it’s more just lack of oversight.
Billet estimated the cost of the prototype to be $800. They never sent them a product.
Linus said “they agreed on compensation” and yet billet has stated they never responded to his offer, that he sent literal hours after GN posted the main video. Linus lied here. He can say he is compensating them all he wants, but there has not been any agreement made between the parties involved. They didn’t want payment, they wanted their fucking prototype back.
And he did not lie, he said agreed to compensate them which he did do. That doesn’t require an agreement between parties, he decided he would do it which is objectively true.
They didn’t want payment, they wanted their fucking prototype back.
They can make another one with the money. It’s not like they took the CAD files. It’s a manufactured piece of copper. It can be rebuilt.
Because that’s literally their whole job. Their justification for testing something on hardware it wasn’t intended for is that they (LTT) didn’t want to spend the money on their end required to do their job properly.
It’s not about the product in question. It’s about their clearly inadequate processes and considerations, prioritizing profits over accuracy. Kinda terrible for a company trying to break into the whole accuracy market with their testing and data.
That video was not a review. So no, in this case that was not their job. Their job was to entertain. I agree they have inadequate processes and are prioritizing profits over accuracy for their reviews. But that is not relevant to the water block video.
A review isn’t a conclusion. It’s an overview of a product. A slapstick video where you throw together a system to review something and fail to even use the right graphics card when you HAVE IT ON HAND is just assinine in terms of being lazy and not doing your job right
But the video is not supposed to be a review. Literally the whole point is for it to be asinine entertainment. Their job for that video was to entertain not to do a review.
Well Linus argument doesn’t hold much water. If the product is so fundamentally flawed in his mind, then why even bother with it? If you as a reviewer can’t even give a proper opinion and spend an other 500 dollars on it, to give your audience a good review. Then don’t spend the extra 1000 dollars or more in editing that video.
His looking at views to show his sponsors, but forgets that the audience is the first thing that generates those views. Still a viewer of the main LTT channel, but Shortcurcet was fast out of my subscription list.
And as a non English native speaker, please don’t but the corrections on subtitle height, it a hassle.
If the product is so fundamentally flawed in his mind, then why even bother with it? If you as a reviewer can’t even give a proper opinion and spend an other 500 dollars on it, to give your audience a good review.
For fun. For entertainment. That is the point of the video. He wasn’t making that video “as a reviewer” he was making it as an entertainer.
Well then he shouldn’t have given a buyers recommendation. Some of Linus video’s don’t make any sense, like everyone can install a swimming pool at the back of their PC? Those balls to the walls videos are still the most fun to watch, as it’s original content, and maybe something they should stick to more often.
But don’t give a buyer recommendation about a small company, if the testing is done in a bad way.
Part of his rambling reply to the GN video was a comment that he was ‘looking out for the consumer’ and they didn’t want to recommend buying it. It was part of his justfication not to use the thing correctly.
I haven’t exactly watched Linus’ videos about it but here’s how I understand the situation:
They deemed the product a “nobody should ever buy this for any reason” because of two things:
1: The cooler was for a 3090TI, by all accounts an “old” card
2: The cooler is priced at 800$
Of these 2 factors both have issues. For starters the “product” they tested was only a prototype, there is a 4090 Version coming that would be more appealing to the market. Second and most important: the cooler is apparently aimed at an incredibly niche market. A market so niche in fact 800$ for a cooler isn’t considered expensive. Just as an example: the product stack they themselves compare against is about as expensive as their own cooler block. They are not as egregiously overpriced as LTT claims. In fact given their selling point of “Only one cooler block” I’d argue they actually have a competitive product here. Can’t be sure though as I’m not well versed in the custom loop market.
Now under these circumstances giving such an absolute statement of “nobody should ever buy this” suddenly seems a tad bit unfair. No this cooler isn’t for the masses but by refusing to retest and not considering the market this cooler is aimed at LTT has done a disservice to the people potentially interested in this who will now be subconsciously steered away from it.
What Linus did is essentially review a Super Car. But instead of Gasoline he filled the tank with Diesel (not exactly the best analogy but the closest I can think of), then took it out for a drive. Claimed the Performance was shit for the price and that nobody ever should buy this for any reason at all. For a product like this it doesn’t matter that average Joe shouldn’t buy it, that is obvious from the get go but by not doing this properly LTT essentially robbed the intended customer base of an objective take on it.
Honestly, the prototype as it stands is a product no one should buy. But it is also a product only 1 person could buy (and that was a mistake…). It is a very expensive for what it is and anyone that has that kind of money to spend on a cooler is going to want the latest graphics card, not the last years model. So as a product for the 3090TI it really does not have any real market.
But it is only a prototype. And if they made one for the 4090TI instead it would have a niche market again. Development of these things takes time and they are only a very small company - no telling what they will bring to market in the future but I think it would take less time to adapt what they learnt from this prototype to one for the newer cards wont take as long. Maybe they might even need to target the next gen as their first actual market.
Either way, the conclusions that LTT made from their botched testing are useless. No performance improvement at all when used incorrectly does not tell us anything. If they had tested it correctly, and found a slight improvement in performance then it means they are on to something for the niche market they are going after. Which I assume is people with lots of money that want to squeeze the most performance as they can out of their system. Even if this version is not worth it for anyone that can afford it as you can get better performance with the newer card, what they actually release might be if it targets the current gen cards at the time of release.
But they still have to start somewhere with hardware they can get their hands on to actually do some R&D on their product ideas so a prototype being made for the 3090TI does make sense even if the product targeting that now does not.
Either way no good conclusion can be drawn from LTTs review but that also wont stop their review from hurting the company potential future customers. So is really a shitty thing for them to have done all round.
What harm was done exactly? If anything this is one of the greatest things that could have possibly happened to their company. They’re getting more positive publicity than a good review would have given them from this controversy.
And I am autistic, so congrats for figuring that out I guess. I have a hard time relating to other people. What I am supposed to do? I can’t magically feel the way you do and this whole thing is based on feelings rather than any actual tangible damage being done. In my mind if you make a mistake, apologize, and pay for it you should be good to go assuming they don’t have the same issue again in the future.
And sociopathy is not a simple lack of empathy it is a specific set of symptoms. Stop diagnosing people over the internet. It’s doubtful you have a degree in psychology and if you do you would know that’s unethical which is ironic considering the LTT discussion of ethics.
Relating to other people can be challenging if it is not something that comes to you naturally.
Let’s say this happened to you personally. Maybe you saved the last of your money to take a chance and make something you wanted to be proud of, maybe Linus was someone you looked up to, maybe you worked countless days to design and redesign to get it perfect. How would Linus’s initial response make you feel?
Let’s say you give him the benefit of the doubt on the initial review. You wait, and try to work with him to get things set right, and you don’t get a resolution. And then this happens. And you see his response where he still does not apologize or regret how he handled it.
How would you feel now? You put a lot of effort into all of this, to be shamed and belittled and have negative things said about your product and efforts for everyone to see.
If none of that would make you sad or upset, then you are able to shrug off a lot more than most people. Empathy is going to have to be something that you recognize you don’t have, but still have to be able to show sympathy, because you don’t want to invalidate the feelings of others. Try to understand their perspective if possible.
This is exactly the problem LTT is having, thinking they know better then the consumer. If the only metric is value/money then Apple, Ferrari
, Hermes, etc… Would not exist.
They really need to take a step back and rearrange their priorities as a company.
Transistors at a point were a thousand dollars each. If you know anything about historic pricing for computer components you would know that anything new will be inordinately expensive because of the cost of custom components, new assembly processes, and custom tooling.
The big deal is they didn’t admit to having accidentally auctioned it (the alternative is they knowingly did so despite requests to return it), and in the same breath talked about how they offered recompense (implying that it came before the video calling them out when it didn’t), and firing back on justified criticism as if they’re the victim
Oh, and all while claiming they own up to their mistakes even in the face of consequences.
They bulldozed a smaller company without a hint of empathy. He doesn’t consider that maybe the price could have come down or the performance (when properly used) would be worth it to a small segment of overclockers - even in the supposed mia culpa Linus takes several shots at the product he basically buried
But why does it even matter if they do it correctly or not? It’s still a water block that costs over $800. It’s a bad product at a fundamental level because not only is it a niche of a niche it’s wildly overpriced. No amount of testing is going to make it a good product. It was never going to sell well. I do not understand why people care so much about it.
The quanity-over-quality and QA errors are way more egregious than them shitting a product that deserves to get shit on. And as far as I can tell the auction thing is a single, isolated mistake of that nature. They do have a track record of making errors in their reviews. But what they don’t have is a history of auctioning off prototypes. It is a really weird thing to be so up-in-arms about. It was an accident and they are paying for it. What is the big deal?
That’s really missing the point. They were trying to sell the water block to rich people with more money than sense that, importantly, wanted the best of the best. By not reviewing it correctly, LTT screwed a small company over pretty hard. Linus then went on to say that he made this decision to save $100 to $500. He was unwilling to spend that kind of money to preserve the journalistic integrity of the channel.
The fact that he tried to make it look like LMG was going to compensate them for the block (replying only after the GN video was released) only makes it worse.
That’s also missing the point. That video was not a review. There wasn’t journalistic integrity because it wasn’t a journalistic piece. If you go into a for-fun video expecting a proper review process of course you are going to be disappointed.
If the argument is that it should have been a full review, then sure maybe it should have. But it wasn’t one, so it doesn’t make any sense to hold it to that standard when that was never the intention behind it.
The video is clearly about the water block. They describe their experience while building a computer with it and then give purchasing advice. Sure seems close enough to a review that they should be fair to the manufacturer. And their ethics should not go out of the window just because the didn’t put “review” in the title (when was the last time they did that anyway…).
It can be about the water block without being a review of the water block. The premise of the video is somebody with no experience doing water cooling (Adam) trying to build it. If the intent was for it to be a review they would have someone more knowledgeable do it. I completely disagree it is unethical to make a for-fun video messing around with it, unless they agreed to do something else in their emails with Billet Labs which we have not seen.
I also don’t believe they give any purchasing advice either but feel free to post a timestamp if you have one.
You sure are going to unusual lengths to (poorly) defend this behavior. Maybe there’s something you should be disclosing about who you really are.
Literally just a dude. I don’t even have any skin in this game, I am just trying to understand why people are so angry and they have explained it (poorly) to me. I guess I will never understand. I genuinely don’t see much of an issue with what happened. Feels like to me the internet hate mob is unwilling to forgive an honest mistake.
I’m willing to bet most of the people who are angry already didn’t like LTT and are just bandwagoning rather than actually caring about the details. People just want to be angry and I find that annoying.
… That’s definitely not what is happening regarding the internet hate mob theory you have. A very large chunk of people who are outraged actually like or liked Linus and I’ve been seeing them express dissapointment over this behavior.
Can you explain exactly what you are confused on or having trouble understanding after watching the GN video and reading all of the comments that have replied to you so far? If so I might be able to help break down a timeline and highlight the issues in a simplified manner.
If you actually want to try I would genuinely appreciate it. But I don’t really want to waste your time. I have thought about it for some time and I honestly doubt there is any way I see the other side of this. I tried, I really did. Which is why I responded to so many comments but I guess my way of thinking about it is somehow so wildly different from other people. But if you do happen to have some time to kill I will try to write everything out. I apologize in advance for how long it is but I wanted to be thorough.
The main point of Steve’s video is to call into question LTT’s journalistic/reviewer integrity. The funny thing is I agree with literally like 95% of what he said. LTT has had a massive quantity-over-quality problem and things have been declining for years. But that said, the water block video was not a review. Objectively not a review. It’s not an opinion of mine it is a fact. So when all these comments say he “reviewed it poorly” or whatever that doesn’t make any sense. And Steve’s criticisms about their reviews do not apply either. Linus has frequently said different video types have different processes. They have reviews, unboxings, “showcases” (sponsored products), etc. which are all distinct categories of videos. To treat it like a review and try to hold it to the same standard as a formal review is arguing in bad faith.
Imagine you draw a picture of a cat, and then a bunch of people come along and say your picture of a dog sucks because it’s too cat-like. You never set out to draw a dog, so why would that criticism make any sense? Just because both have four legs and a tail does not mean they should be judged in the same way. Intent is really important here and people are just conveniently ignoring it. LTT makes these types of videos all the time. Is them using an air conditioner to cool a PC a review of the air conditioner? Or are they just messing around for entertainment? Another comment compared it to a super car because it is an expensive niche product, but I don’t buy that either. If someone shows off driving in a super car and then at the end says, “yeah that’s fast but the fact this exists is stupid, nobody should ever buy this,” I don’t think anyone would care, assuming of course it’s not a formal review of the car.
And on top of that, let’s say they did do a full, formal review. Every single number is correct and there are no errors. And then let’s also assume they give it back instead of auctioning it off just for the sake of this hypothetical. Now Steve doesn’t feature it in the video because the information is correct. LTT says the exact same thing-- $800 is too expensive for a water block and this product has no real buyers. Billet Labs has no customers and goes out of business quietly in the background. Nobody would care. People only care now because of the way it was done, but if the outcome is literally exactly the same, why does it matter at all? If it’s a bad product that deserves to be shit on it shouldn’t matter that they shit on it. And before you say something like “but what if they test it correctly and it’s actually good,” that will never happen because an $800 water block is always going to be a bad value. Other water blocks are in the $200-300 range. There is no world where this water block magically performs over twice as good as the others. It’s a genuinely bad product, and there’s no reason the company should be getting a pass just because it’s “two guys” or whatever. A bad product is a bad product regardless of who makes it. I just cannot understand why people care so much about this company. It’s like people prefer rooting for the “little guy” over actually examining the situation.
The funny part is LTT doing what they did actually gave Billet Labs more positive publicity than they would have gotten any other way, which I also said in one of my other comments and got downvoted to Hell for, even though now someone else has posted the same thing and it’s upvoted. In the end Billet Labs actually completely won here. This is the best thing that could have ever happened to their company.
As for the auction thing, my main issue with people’s response to it is that it’s just a single isolated mistake that happens to be tacked on to the rest of the stuff. How do you go from sending an email saying you will return it to auctioning it off? It’s insane that that happened but it could have been any number of things. I imagine the people responsible were wearing too many hats and were mainly focused on LTX planning. They probably already deal with dozens of companies on a daily basis and now they were also dealing with vendors/sponsors/etc. for LTX on top of that. It’s not unthinkable that things just got too hectic and miscommunication happened. People make mistakes. Should LTT own up to the mistake and work to make sure this type of thing never happens again? Absolutely. There should be proper chain of command for items like this. I imagine that’s what they’re implementing now. But what is so bad about this? It’s not evil, it’s not malicious, it’s a mistake that as far as I can tell happened one time. This isn’t a pattern of behavior like the errors in reviews are.
From what I’ve seen it’s the auction that broke the camel’s back, when in isolation it’s not really that big of an issue. It’s only because it’s surrounded by the other issues brought up that makes it another mistake on the pile and therefore the pile bigger. The thing is, it’s a mistake that affects 2-3 people. Billet Labs. The errors being made in reviews affect millions of people. It is way more important, but the Billet Labs thing is what I see the most comments about. That’s what my main confusion is about. Why is there so much focus on Billet Labs at all? Billet Labs is like 10% of Steve’s video, the other 90% is dedicated to the reporting/review errors. It doesn’t make any sense to me. At the end of the day it’s a small company making a dumb overpriced product vs. the largest tech review channel constantly misleading millions of consumers with bad numbers/data/processes. But here we are on a thread where people are almost exclusively talking about Billet Labs.
What? They put it on the wrong card when the correct card was provided by the manufacturer. The manufacturer confirmed to them the incompatability. If the premise of the video is “idiots do something wrong and act like it’s the part’s fault because they felt personally slighted and have an ego driven response”.
It wasn’t, if they had the correct and compatible part, it may have been an entirely different experience to them, and that part was provided to them by the manufacturer.
We don’t even know if a lay person with instructions and the right part would have issues, because the original unforced error by LMG was so egregious. No matter what you have to see how this isn’t fair to anyone, especially not the target consumer of this device. It might even paint it in a very negative light through the fault of the people making the video, entirely. The manufacturer did everything they could.
Then when called out they double down on the ego hurt response, twice. Saying nothing would change when they never even tried to use it device appropriately. Then they add insult to injury by never even giving the part back.
FYI - selling the prototype (LMG were aware this was a one of a kind proto) ensures that no other reviewer can have an easier time installing on the right hardware, no one can ever prove Linus wrong because the part is gone and they won’t say to who…
That’s weird right?
Considering that it was also auctioned at an event where competitor companies were present, they could have well auctioned off the company’s prototype to a competitor of theirs, which would have been the worst case scenario for Billet. (I don’t think it ultimately happened that way, but that was a real risk in the auction).
Recently LTT built a $100k PC desk for a Minecraft streamer. Sometimes the over the top engineering/materials (and thus cost) around something is the entire point. If they gave it a fair shake, and still called it a bad product, and then returned it. There wouldn’t be an issue. It being a bad product isn’t the issue.
Then what is the issue? If the outcome is the same why does it matter? The video it was featured in wasn’t even a review, the premise was someone who has zero experience in water cooling trying to install it. I feel like most people didn’t even watch the video.
Sure do love the hivemind downvoting instead of answering my question. I am genuinely asking, what is the issue? I really don’t understand why it has so many people this mad. To me it seems like people were expecting a review when that wasn’t the intent of the video.
So sick of this shit. Reviewing something and then hiding behind “it’s not a review bro!” You know damn well the criticisms extended beyond just that. Linus straight up just said it was a bad product outright. THAT’S A REVIEW.
He didn’t say it was a bad product in anywhere in the video. Maybe you should watch the thing you are trying to criticize.
The original video is clearly a review and he clearly criticizes the product for being hard to install even though he is of course installing it incorrectly and not using the materials the company provided. He states unequivocally it’s a bad product here: “It’s a bad product. It’s bad because it makes absolutely no sense and nobody should buy it”.
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While not saying out right that it is bad, he is certainly implying it and clearly telling his audience that they should not buy it.
At 32:42 of the video of the original report.
https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc
I am on mobile and can’t figure out timestamps.
Just add &t=32m42s at the end of the link
Like this: https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc&t=32m42s
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/FGW3TPytTjc
https://piped.video/FGW3TPytTjc
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
The issue is that they stole a prototype they were entrusted to care for. Agreed to return it, but then didn’t. Got mad when they were kindly asked to return it. Put it on auction, sold it to someone for charity. Potentially unintentionally facilitating corporate espionage. Then got mad when they were publicly called out.
This is not the first time even. They have lost, misplaced or destroyed other’s properties before.
And now they want to project LMG and their new concept, Lab, as a beacon of consumer protection journalism. They have to make a choice. Either they are an entertainment company, or a serious tech review magazine that tests technology to provide consumers with accurate info to make purchase decisions. They can’t be both, the jank and fooling around of one doesn’t work nicely with the journalistic ethics demanded of the other.
“They” didn’t agree to return it. Someone responding to an email did. Linus himself and the other 100+ employees probably had no idea the thing even existed. It is really on the person who responded to the email and the planners of the auction which is probably 2-3 people at most.
Where? That did not happen until after the video was published.
Which was an accident, which is being paid for.
Do you have any examples? And if that is the case maybe Billet Labs should have done more due-diligence before giving them a supposedly very important prototype. Linus is literally known as the guy who drops things.
Fair enough but I disagree. I think you can have for-fun videos and serious videos mixed together. However they should definitely be more clearly labeled as such, or maybe even keep them on different channels completely.
Tell me you’ve never had a position of actual authority without telling me you’ve never had a position of actual authority.
No, go away. You obviously have no interest in reasonable conversation. As you are willfully ignoring already mentioned facts and arguments from the video in order to be contrarian and hard headed. I will not indulge you.
LMG is the company that did these things. Billet was under the impression they were talking with a representative of LMG, for which all that they agreed with, was binding. If someone, an individual, failed at their job to fulfill their agreements with Billet, then LMG, the company, failed. If Linus wants to be taken seriously and have LMG considered a big adult company, they better start acting like it. And that starts with taking responsibility and owning up to their mistakes responsibly. Not letting their CVO and owner go on idiot circular incoherent rants.
Linus, is this you?
You got me. It’s me, Linus Sebastian. you guys know I love the Twitch emote AYAYA so much I use it as my username.
Mate, it’s a prototype, their first product. If that design works well and will be mass produced the price goes down. With possibly a budget option released later that actually makes sense to buy.
A lot of companies started with the luxury version of a product and then later offered budget versions after showing everyone they could deliver.
Linus not only dissed them (after “testing” the product on the wrong GPU) but also sold off their only prototype. Otherwise they could have sent it to another reviewer to do a proper test.
You wanna talk about poorly run businesses? Why are they sending out their prototype if they only have one and it’s so important? At least make two of them.
They didn’t only have one Prototype but this was their best and most recent one, you also generally don’t copy prototypes until you are 99% to completion. Additionally they trusted LTT to send the Prototype back in a timely manner once they were done testing, as you would expect from any company with even a speck of professionalism.
I’d guess in the time the Prototype was away they either worked on other things (Packaging/Manufacturing/Marketing Solutions for the final release?) or went on a planned short Vacation.
Or more digital design for tweaks and simulations, waiting to validate against the prototype when it came back
Buddy are you trolling just for the sake of trolling or is that an genuine POV of yours.
If you are genuine then hear me out.
When a small company makes a prototype it is 1st to test, iterate and perfect. The 2nd job of a near perfect prototype is to promote the company to investors and hopefully garner money for the next step ie perfecting the process to make a finished product.
A small company notwithstanding even a big company like Nokia makes a single prototype to begin with and then replicate it to perfect the production process.
The second job is especially important for a startup who put all their money to make a prototype. The reason they gave it to LTT was for promotion. LTT dissed the company that the product is not viable but didn’t highlight that the concept of perfected and made cheaper can become a viable option for water cooling. On top of that they sold it without permission, under the guise of charity, which I doubt even happened.
I would love to see them pull something like this with any of the big companies. That is an sure shot way to corporate suicide.
If they can’t think of pulling something like this with a big company they should have thought twice before doing it with a small company.
When your defense of LMG boils down to “anyone would be stupid to trust them with something important”…
And yes, it was stupid to trust them and I hope no one else does going forward. But it doesn’t change that LMG were the ones to screw up and did so in so many ways it’s comical. Either they don’t know what they are doing, don’t care, or some combination of the two.
It’s not a water block that costs $800 though. It’s a prototype water block that they estimated the cost of producing to be around $800 given R&D, labor, materials, etc.
It was never meant to be a production ready product, and it should never have been treated as such.
The issue with the auction is due to the fact that they sent Billet numerous emails claiming to have prepared it to be shipped back, including one in which they said they would send tracking info shortly. They didn’t know it was being auctioned off until afterward. And Linus didn’t contact them about compensation until 3 hours after GNs video went live.
These are facts, backed by actual evidence which you can see for yourself in GNs latest HW news.
The product costs over $800. I’m not talking about the prototype. And sure “they” sent Billet multiple emails. That means one person sent the emails and then failed to follow up on them. The 100+ people at the company are not responsible for what happened, the 2-3 people that should have dealt with it are.
Okay? But he is compensating them. That is all I said.
That’s not how businesses work.
Those 2-3 people were acting as employees of the company, executing business for the company. The company is responsible for those actions.
You can’t just hand-wave it away as “our employees suck at their jobs”.
You hired them. You authorized them to do those jobs. You are responsible for the manner in which they were done (or not done)
Sure, but people are acting like Linus himself is somehow directly responsible for it, some people even acting like it’s intentionally malicious, when it’s more just lack of oversight.
Billet estimated the cost of the prototype to be $800. They never sent them a product.
Linus said “they agreed on compensation” and yet billet has stated they never responded to his offer, that he sent literal hours after GN posted the main video. Linus lied here. He can say he is compensating them all he wants, but there has not been any agreement made between the parties involved. They didn’t want payment, they wanted their fucking prototype back.
You already have incorrect information. That is the cost of the actual product not the cost of the prototype.
And he did not lie, he said agreed to compensate them which he did do. That doesn’t require an agreement between parties, he decided he would do it which is objectively true.
They can make another one with the money. It’s not like they took the CAD files. It’s a manufactured piece of copper. It can be rebuilt.
Because that’s literally their whole job. Their justification for testing something on hardware it wasn’t intended for is that they (LTT) didn’t want to spend the money on their end required to do their job properly.
It’s not about the product in question. It’s about their clearly inadequate processes and considerations, prioritizing profits over accuracy. Kinda terrible for a company trying to break into the whole accuracy market with their testing and data.
That video was not a review. So no, in this case that was not their job. Their job was to entertain. I agree they have inadequate processes and are prioritizing profits over accuracy for their reviews. But that is not relevant to the water block video.
Nah, I am not buying that. They gave an opinion based on data they collected. That is a review, even if they don’t call it that.
What about the video was formal? It is two people dicking around with water cooling for 20 minutes it’s not a formal review.
Because people with a case of the give a damns would give a damn.
But it has zero effect on the outcome? It is over priced regardless of whether or not it cools well.
A review isn’t a conclusion. It’s an overview of a product. A slapstick video where you throw together a system to review something and fail to even use the right graphics card when you HAVE IT ON HAND is just assinine in terms of being lazy and not doing your job right
But the video is not supposed to be a review. Literally the whole point is for it to be asinine entertainment. Their job for that video was to entertain not to do a review.
Did you downvote your own comment? How do you have zero upvotes?
Well Linus argument doesn’t hold much water. If the product is so fundamentally flawed in his mind, then why even bother with it? If you as a reviewer can’t even give a proper opinion and spend an other 500 dollars on it, to give your audience a good review. Then don’t spend the extra 1000 dollars or more in editing that video.
His looking at views to show his sponsors, but forgets that the audience is the first thing that generates those views. Still a viewer of the main LTT channel, but Shortcurcet was fast out of my subscription list.
And as a non English native speaker, please don’t but the corrections on subtitle height, it a hassle.
For fun. For entertainment. That is the point of the video. He wasn’t making that video “as a reviewer” he was making it as an entertainer.
“It’s a bad product. It’s bad because it makes absolutely no sense and nobody should buy it”
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That’s on the WAN Show, that’s not part of the video. Separately made comments are separate.
Well then he shouldn’t have given a buyers recommendation. Some of Linus video’s don’t make any sense, like everyone can install a swimming pool at the back of their PC? Those balls to the walls videos are still the most fun to watch, as it’s original content, and maybe something they should stick to more often.
But don’t give a buyer recommendation about a small company, if the testing is done in a bad way.
Link to me where in the video there was a buyer recommendation.
Part of his rambling reply to the GN video was a comment that he was ‘looking out for the consumer’ and they didn’t want to recommend buying it. It was part of his justfication not to use the thing correctly.
I haven’t exactly watched Linus’ videos about it but here’s how I understand the situation:
They deemed the product a “nobody should ever buy this for any reason” because of two things: 1: The cooler was for a 3090TI, by all accounts an “old” card 2: The cooler is priced at 800$
Of these 2 factors both have issues. For starters the “product” they tested was only a prototype, there is a 4090 Version coming that would be more appealing to the market. Second and most important: the cooler is apparently aimed at an incredibly niche market. A market so niche in fact 800$ for a cooler isn’t considered expensive. Just as an example: the product stack they themselves compare against is about as expensive as their own cooler block. They are not as egregiously overpriced as LTT claims. In fact given their selling point of “Only one cooler block” I’d argue they actually have a competitive product here. Can’t be sure though as I’m not well versed in the custom loop market.
Now under these circumstances giving such an absolute statement of “nobody should ever buy this” suddenly seems a tad bit unfair. No this cooler isn’t for the masses but by refusing to retest and not considering the market this cooler is aimed at LTT has done a disservice to the people potentially interested in this who will now be subconsciously steered away from it.
What Linus did is essentially review a Super Car. But instead of Gasoline he filled the tank with Diesel (not exactly the best analogy but the closest I can think of), then took it out for a drive. Claimed the Performance was shit for the price and that nobody ever should buy this for any reason at all. For a product like this it doesn’t matter that average Joe shouldn’t buy it, that is obvious from the get go but by not doing this properly LTT essentially robbed the intended customer base of an objective take on it.
Honestly, the prototype as it stands is a product no one should buy. But it is also a product only 1 person could buy (and that was a mistake…). It is a very expensive for what it is and anyone that has that kind of money to spend on a cooler is going to want the latest graphics card, not the last years model. So as a product for the 3090TI it really does not have any real market.
But it is only a prototype. And if they made one for the 4090TI instead it would have a niche market again. Development of these things takes time and they are only a very small company - no telling what they will bring to market in the future but I think it would take less time to adapt what they learnt from this prototype to one for the newer cards wont take as long. Maybe they might even need to target the next gen as their first actual market.
Either way, the conclusions that LTT made from their botched testing are useless. No performance improvement at all when used incorrectly does not tell us anything. If they had tested it correctly, and found a slight improvement in performance then it means they are on to something for the niche market they are going after. Which I assume is people with lots of money that want to squeeze the most performance as they can out of their system. Even if this version is not worth it for anyone that can afford it as you can get better performance with the newer card, what they actually release might be if it targets the current gen cards at the time of release.
But they still have to start somewhere with hardware they can get their hands on to actually do some R&D on their product ideas so a prototype being made for the 3090TI does make sense even if the product targeting that now does not.
Either way no good conclusion can be drawn from LTTs review but that also wont stop their review from hurting the company potential future customers. So is really a shitty thing for them to have done all round.
Removed by mod
What harm was done exactly? If anything this is one of the greatest things that could have possibly happened to their company. They’re getting more positive publicity than a good review would have given them from this controversy.
And I am autistic, so congrats for figuring that out I guess. I have a hard time relating to other people. What I am supposed to do? I can’t magically feel the way you do and this whole thing is based on feelings rather than any actual tangible damage being done. In my mind if you make a mistake, apologize, and pay for it you should be good to go assuming they don’t have the same issue again in the future.
And sociopathy is not a simple lack of empathy it is a specific set of symptoms. Stop diagnosing people over the internet. It’s doubtful you have a degree in psychology and if you do you would know that’s unethical which is ironic considering the LTT discussion of ethics.
Relating to other people can be challenging if it is not something that comes to you naturally.
Let’s say this happened to you personally. Maybe you saved the last of your money to take a chance and make something you wanted to be proud of, maybe Linus was someone you looked up to, maybe you worked countless days to design and redesign to get it perfect. How would Linus’s initial response make you feel?
Let’s say you give him the benefit of the doubt on the initial review. You wait, and try to work with him to get things set right, and you don’t get a resolution. And then this happens. And you see his response where he still does not apologize or regret how he handled it.
How would you feel now? You put a lot of effort into all of this, to be shamed and belittled and have negative things said about your product and efforts for everyone to see.
If none of that would make you sad or upset, then you are able to shrug off a lot more than most people. Empathy is going to have to be something that you recognize you don’t have, but still have to be able to show sympathy, because you don’t want to invalidate the feelings of others. Try to understand their perspective if possible.
This is exactly the problem LTT is having, thinking they know better then the consumer. If the only metric is value/money then Apple, Ferrari , Hermes, etc… Would not exist.
They really need to take a step back and rearrange their priorities as a company.
Transistors at a point were a thousand dollars each. If you know anything about historic pricing for computer components you would know that anything new will be inordinately expensive because of the cost of custom components, new assembly processes, and custom tooling.
The big deal is they didn’t admit to having accidentally auctioned it (the alternative is they knowingly did so despite requests to return it), and in the same breath talked about how they offered recompense (implying that it came before the video calling them out when it didn’t), and firing back on justified criticism as if they’re the victim
Oh, and all while claiming they own up to their mistakes even in the face of consequences.
They bulldozed a smaller company without a hint of empathy. He doesn’t consider that maybe the price could have come down or the performance (when properly used) would be worth it to a small segment of overclockers - even in the supposed mia culpa Linus takes several shots at the product he basically buried