Dr. Elliot Reyes

Dr. Elliot Reyes runs Reelist’s What’s Actually Worth It — the gear desk for people who want to enjoy a great picture and great sound without being separated from their money by a spec sheet. He approaches home theater the way an engineer approaches any claim: skeptically, and with a level meter.

His governing belief is that most premium gear is theater — that a great deal of what you’re asked to pay for is placebo dressed as performance, and that a few genuinely well-engineered products are worth every cent precisely because they’re rare. He’ll walk you through the one TV setting quietly sabotaging your expensive panel, explain in plain terms why a length of “audiophile” cable can’t do what its price implies, and cheerfully point you toward the $180 soundbar that embarrasses systems costing ten times more.

He has no loyalty to brands and no patience for pseudoscience. If a difference can’t survive a fair test, it isn’t a difference.