I'll confirm your anecdote RE: using other websites for curated reviews. I recently needed a new router; instead of wading through the innumerable search results on Amazon, I simply chose Wirecutter's recommendation.
In Europe (mostly the German and English speaking parts) there's a search engine for "stuff", formerly only computer-related things, that is often used for this: http://geizhals.de/
Their unique features are curated filters (boatloads of them, extremely handy to narrow choices down) and accurate, non-fake reviews and ratings.
This removed 95 % of the annoyingness in buying hardware for me: 1.) Define requirements 2.) Apply filters on gh 3.) Check reviews for the few resulting choices 4.) Buy.
