My take on this is no they don’t. As long as they are truthful they only report on the quality of the product and prevent many people of spending a lot of money from losing it by buying something that doesn’t work.
If your product is shit your company does not deserve to be shielded from the backlash, this is the core of (classic) capitalism after all.
There’s a YouTuber who does gun reviews that I watch occasionally, and I wish other reviewers were like him. He pays for them with his own money, and Patreon money. If the gun is very popular he’ll do a short video and label it initial thoughts, and then eventually he’ll do a review after he’s shot 1000s of rounds with it over weeks and months. If he notices something wrong, he’ll look online to see if anyone else has similar issues and mention things like “I have an original model, which has problem X, manufacturer Y has since addressed this, and fixed it, and the community agrees it is no longer an issue. So look out for the first year release of X if you want to buy.” Overall he does an excellent job of separating his opinions from selling points.
Yes I tend to like this but I wasn’t able to put it into words as well as you weee - someone who doesn’t just spout off their experience as if it’s the only one, but takes the time to understand if this is something that is only affecting them or if it’s the specific unit they have, etc.
Techmoan is the same way when he reviews a product and I’ve always respected his reviews a lot more because of it.
For phones, there is Smoorez, if he still does, what he was doing a couple of years ago.