Its like that with any forums, I thought people in head-fi are more mature but all of them are the same, just because it didn't happen to them then it never happens. People with 15k post who trolls and live in this forum on the daily has more weight than us guys, because whatever they say "must be right", because if there stuff hasnt broken yet meaning "we are doing something wrong" because we dont have quantifiable scientific stress/engineering test "we are wrong"... I paid $1000 so I can spend my time stress testing a product? next time when I buy a Bugatti Veyron SS let me stress test my 2 million dollars car too. What a joke.
I remember purchasing back in the old old days a pair of GR07 due to the heaps of praises and super bang for your buck. I paid like $159 for them which was a really expensive purchase for me years and years ago for IEM and headphones overall. I was like 23 and that was a pretty sizable purchase after already having 2 other headphones.
I did it over the recommendation of joker. They were pretty good but I don't know if they were the gold standard of IEM. (This is what I said to myself when I heard them years ago) After only a few months of light use, (I would carry this thing with me in the case it came with and baby the product) it broke with no way to reach the manufacturer. All I heard was noise about how great the product was. Nothing pointing blankly about how terrible the quality was and its a known fact that vsonic products don't have great durability and QC. It's known now, but back then, I didn't hear any cons for it and thought I was imagining it. I never had things break on me that fast. My m50 and sennheisers HD25-1 ii are still standing and they are much older than the GR07 when I bought them. They work 100% fine even after owning them for more than 6 years now. It was only afterwards that people came forward and now the GR07 and vsonic are known to have issues. Its one of the reasons they replaced their cables to make them detachable just recently.
Same with the now Hifiman which people were also hyping. I almost fell for that too but I held out and dug deeper to people making their problems known. It was especially with the GR07 experience and the fact that I never was able to get a hold of anyone to claim any kind of warranty that I was more careful in the future. Im glad I never went the hifiman route because I have heard people complain everywhere about durability issues on all of their products.
With that said, there are some people that will stand by a product or gloss over the cons due to them getting the product for free. It is absolutely not the same when someone purchases a product for close to $1000 or even more and someone who gets it free. A small problem like material would probably get a small mention of, "I wish it werent made of plastic" to if you had to pay $1000 for it and felt that it was a cheaply made product I would be pretty pissed. After being pretty disappointed with and not really agreeing with reviewers I have learned to look at their reviews but I hold them to the lowest weight possible. Getting a product to review for free is not the same as investing $1000 into it and reviewing it.
Sorry its not the same thing.
Don't care about your disclaimer its biased the moment you took it in for free to review or took a big discount on it or ANY of their previous models or IEMS.
I remember purchasing the ER4PT (recent) due to the raves about it only to realize that it after I bought it that it felt like my ear drums were being poked out. It was that uncomfortable & painful. It was painful to put in and keep it in my ear after 5 minutes, but in reviews, only a few mentions of it may not be for everyone. As a reviewer who got it for free they might just say its briefly. I actually had to go back to the reviews after purchasing it and realized there was barely any mention of the fact of how uncomfortable the IEM were. If I were reviewing it as a paying customer, I would have left a 1 star review because I couldn't review it due to the uncomfortableness of it. If I am 'commissioned' to write this review, Id have to keep going and find other stuff to talk about, effectively glossing over the con of not being able to keep the IEM in my ear for longer than 5 minutes.
Point is, I tend to try to look at reviews from people who didn't get the product for free. Ill try to pull some objectiveness off the sound signature of the reviews of the 'professional' reviewers but their weight is very low to me. If I got free stuff, Id have the 4-5 star rating button on speed dial. Just my two cents. No offense, I still look to some 'professional' reviews to try to describe the sound but come time to look for them to talk about quality objectively and how they treat customers and warranty and customer service, sorry but you have no say in this because technically you are not a customer. My two cents.