Do reviewers keep "Review Products"

[MajorTawm]

Hi, we are having this little discussion with a friend where He says that companies give away products to review and they are free and reviewers keep them, I told him this is not the case, he specifically mentioned the titan x and said that NVIDIA was giving away Titan X's like if they were candy's.

Can someone help us settle this debate.

From what I know most reviewers get to review the unit and then they have to send it back to the company, on very few cases they give it away for free.

[Air]

Yes, reviewers do keep products in most situations. One PC tech YouTuber, JayzTwoCents, has an entire rig built out of review hardware.

Although, no, companies don't just hand them out to too many for nothing. For one, the reviewer must have a sizable following and, also, I believe(and don't quote me on this) that they're pretty much required to publicly review the product in most cases. They give them out for attention to the product, at least in terms of separate hardware, as opposed to software(software is completely different in this realm).

[Rove]

I have heard of reviewers keeping the product yes. Some have said so in reviews, for example mentioning that the hardware they are testing versus was left over from a previous review, sometimes years ago and also thanking companies for providing the hardware.

Some reviewers may have a different agreement where they have to send it back, but what is a company going to do with used copies of it's own products in small batches that it can't sell as new? Would probably just be not worth the effort for them but maybe they put it on Ebay.

You probably don't just get free stuff by saying "Hi I'm a reviewer" however.

It probably works more like you buy stuff and get famous writing reviews until you get a chance for them to offer you free stuff. Or if you work at a big company then maybe they approach the hardware manufacturer on your behalf in return for a contract.

Big reviewers often have to sign agreements which may include non-disclosure clauses time limited (till release date) or unlimited and likely also include other obligations including publishing the review.

So these days you can't even call the critics independant. Not in PC hardware.