Hardware Unboxed quite frequently were doing spot prices for the entire time, and still do.
These days I would consider Hardware Unboxed to be a big channel.
Rating him as lowest tier in a world where digital foundry exists is deeply unfair.
His reviews are different, in they tend to be focused on build quality and the like. The benchmarks are canned, but they have to be for repeatability. His gaming tests might be average, but his hardware takes with power, heat, transients, build quality, etc are excellent. More importantly, he tries to do the right thing fairly.
Sure Steve did spot pricing. Show me where it was the basis of his conclusions. He plays both sides, like usual. Acknowledging all the realities then somehow not basing his conclusions on them.
And he doesn't play the games either. My perspective is that the old way of doing things, which is their testing methodology, needs to die. I don't care about their making money. I care about how hardware does in the games I play or intend to in the near future. Canned benchmarks and 60 second walking simulators don't cut it for me. I have tested too much hardware myself to accept that. What seems fine, can tank hard ruining the game experience by 20-30hrs in in some titles.
And I rank DF higher than GN for gaming tests. Despite all the Nvidia marketing dept. stuff they do. And Alex being part of their PR human caterpillar. Why? They test where
they actually play games. Richard earned street cred with me for the first time BITD, when he showed how once you hit Novigrad in Witcher 3 the i3 crapped the bed, and the i5 had some frame pacing issues. None of the others were playing the game to find that out and report it. His Spiderman CPU testing is excellent too. Who else told you a i5 12400 could dip below 60fps before that? If someone did, it wasn't HUB, GN, LTT, or any of the other automated script runners. HUB walks down the street, swings for a 30 seconds in that same area and calls it a run. Never going to hit those areas where the hardware starts to chug testing that way.
I don't expect everyone to agree with me. But GN sucks for gaming content, no matter how badly anyone tries to defend them. ARC was an outlier because it wouldn't kill revenue. All you have to do is watch Linus' vid from the other day where he talks about automating all their testing. He explains how being hot off the press is intrinsic to making money. Then gaslights about why its better for you, the viewer. It isn't and will never be in the present incarnation.
Again, not saying anyone has to agree with me. These are my views. I do think it is a bad thing, the cult of personality gamers get about reviewers. They don't need defending, they need their feet constantly held to the fire to keep them on task and constantly improving.