It doesnt work that way... otherwise I agree with your sentiment.
Which doesn't work in what way?
When running a website there are bills to pay. Bills are paid with money. Advertisements are a source of revenue. They can be of the more obvious kind (banners & the like) or the less obvious kind (like articles or reviews that recommend various products).
Now comes the tricky part. Recommending a product can be either shilling/advertising, or it can be genuine. What determines that is if the product was actually and properly tested. When W1zzard recommends a graphics card at the end of a review, I consider that to be a genuine and honest recommendation because the review also contains data to back up his claims. When Darksaber recommends a case, there is no data to back it up. Sometimes it is actually the contrary -- he recommends cases that we know are crap. I don't know about you, but when someone recommends a product that has been proven to be terrible, I call it advertisement.
it is good enough. I didnt call this an unboxing, I implied it was closer to being an unboxing than it is a review. You should lobby to change the name to reflect what is and what isnt in the content since you disagree with it being called a review because a few select elements you think are missing.
I (and possibly others) already have suggested changing the category to "unboxing" (or something similar).
Oh, and those "few select elements" are -- as I have already stated -- very important.
If you dont like the review as is, I dare you to step up and do better. Its easy to bash or complain content you get for free, its harder to be grateful.
@W1zzard considers all suggestions so why not ask for "thermals" be added to reviews instead of bashing?
First of all, "if you don't like it, do it better" is a very spurious argument. Can I use it the next time someone criticizes a company? How about Microsoft? People love to hate Microsoft. If you don't like Windows, make your own operating system.
Yes, the content is in a way free, but just like any other website that relies on some kind of advertisement and sponsorship deals, you need traffic and users. So TPU is actually dependent on us, the users.
And I would like to return your dare. Don't worry, it will require virtually no effort from you. I dare you to answer the following question with "yes" or "no": will you consider W1zzard's graphics card reviews to be "good enough" if he stopped doing benchmarks, thermals, noise and power consumption?
you could try reaching out to their FB page and ask there