Hi...
I have been in the gun buying and shooting "business" for 40-some years.
I have subscribed to and/or bought off the shelf almost every gun-related magazine at one time or another and long ago narrowed the number I needed to have down to one...Handloader.
I can not remember ever seeing a review in a magazine that called a firearm as "bad" or even had anything derogatory to say about a reviewed gun. There may have been a "qualifier" buried deep in the article but I can not recall a single instance of that happening, either.
I wait until I can handle any firearm at a LGS before I pass judgement. i don't write reviews, though. I pass judgement by whether or not I open my wallet. If a firearm is poorly finished, I simply won't buy it. If I do buy a firearm that doesn't function properly, it goes back to the LGS I bought it from or gets traded off. In 40+ years of firearms experience, I have bought exactly one handgun that was substandard in my opinion. That was a Taurus DA .357mag revolver (don't recall the model number, at the moment) but it simply was terribly inaccurate and spit lead out of the cylinder gap. I had bought that handgun from a co-worker without shooting it first and the LGS I did the transfer at said that it could take months to send it Taurus and they might not even make it right in his experience. I traded it and a couple of hundred dollar bills for a Dan Wesson .375SuperMag that just happened to be sitting in that gun shop's used gun case at that point in time.
That experience didn't completely sour me on Taurus handguns but I have been "very" careful about examining their products since. I have since bought exactly one taurus handgun...a used DA .44spl stainless adjustable -sighted model...it is a perfectly serviceable firearm that is dependable and accurate. A much better example of a Taurus handgun than the previous revolver I owned for a very short time. How dependable you might ask...well, it is one of about 4 handguns that I carry concealed for self-defense, so I am willing to bet my life and more importantly, my family's life on it.