Some good opinions here and no doubt we should trust our own ears but there are many who do not have good dealers close to where they live to personally audition gear.
I think some of the online reviewers have limited value, but what often is the greatest problem is #1, a lack of technical knowledge, and 2, no long term reporting that can give a clue to reliability, among other things. Like many of you, my system is largely tube based although rather modest with a Conrad Johnson LS17 preamp and some Quicksilver Mid Mono Power Amps, both with vintage quality tubes.
Recently, I was thinking about diving into the world of 300B based amps. No local dealers had any 300B amps to audition, despite living in a city of 3 million population. So I did a google search which took me to, among many reviews, some you tube reviews of 2 very inexpensive ChiFi amps, available from Amazon, or direct from China, and these 2 amps had universal praise from you tubers Guttenberg, Thomas and Stereo, Jay’s Iyagi, and Steve Huff.
Thankfully, another you tuber, Skunkie Designs, who has extensive technical knowledge, posted about some serious circuit deficiencies in those amps that were creating both performance and reliability issues as well as showing the mods to correct the issues.
I’m sure there are many people who were lured into buying these amps and regret it. So theres the good and the bad of it I guess.