People who say equipment needs breaking in - NOPE. If it doesn’t sound good out of the box, for me at least, it never changes. That said hotel rooms are notorious for being hard to setup properly and many just don’t have the time. I know I have done some, where audiophiles got together, at a hotel, and setup their own equipment in the rooms. It made me appreciate how hard it is.
As far as reviews, they used to be more up or down before. I mean even car reviews are like that now. An example, I remember going on a business trip to Nottingham UK, and on the way back home trip, bought an English car magazine. It was full of positive and negative reviews, like the Kia Rio. The title of the review was, ’Her name is Kia Rio and she is crap’.
I feel the audio magazines are more to sell the public to the manufacturers, rather actually selling us on the products, anymore. Same with the youtube reviews.