Posted on October 20, 2009 by Fiona Hilliard

In the latest instalment of our  ‘Reviewer Reviewed’ series, this week we thought we’d turn our attentions to Review Centre.

Review Centre is a site that does exactly what it says on the tin – you’ll find it’s a talking shop for just about anything you can think of rating or indeed, slating.

So let’s start with the layout of the site. The design is simple and straightforward, with the brand’s logo contained within a white-on-purple speech bubble. The tagline “speaking from experience” is located on the top right hand corner. The welcome message describes the site as “a community for real people, just like you.” This instils confidence in the visitor, in the same way as  TripAdvisor do.

This week, the site editor has chosen to give precedence to the Canon EOS 50D camera in its Review of the Week section.  A look at the Review Categories section reveals that you can review anything on the site – even Christmas. But not really – when you click on it, a drop down menu reveals critiques of everything from Christmas Breaks and Christmas Entertainment to Christmas Food and Drink and Christmas Gift Ideas. And there I was imagining people rating Christmas against Easter, Birthdays, Valentines Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day…sadly it wasn’t.

Anyway, with only 60 odd shopping days left until Christmas, I delved into the category of Christmas Markets. Perhaps unsurprisingly, for a Hansel and Gretel led industry, the reviews have an international flavour to them. You can compare and contrast Christmas markets in Germany, the UK, Belgium, Czech Republic and Poland.

I took a look at the Munich Christmas Market review and found some very useful information about its offerings. The reviewer in question, “Frosteee” gives a good description of the food, drinks and local attractions on offer. There’s also some good information relating to the downsides of Munich as a destination. The reviewer says it’s not the cheapest of destinations and is quite difficult to get to, with “fewer direct flight available than you may expect.” This is definitely something that is likely to put me off travelling to a destination, especially if I need to book car hire as well. As a review written by an average Joe, it was well worth my while reading.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the aforementioned Review of the Week section.  Being in the market for a new camera at the moment, I have to say I wasn’t blown away by their top pick for the Canon EOS  review. It gives just a short 81-word description of the camera’s best points, using tired adjectives like “amazing”. It would have been nice to read something a little more in-depth, especially for those contemplating a purchase worth around £720 (€790).