Review: Evaluation of a publication, service, company, piece of hardware, event, exhibition, or performance

Popular reviews are about movies, video games, musical compositions or books. Other reviews are about cars, home appliances, or computers. An event or performance like a live music concert, play, musical theater show, dance show, or art exhibition are commonly reviewed. legal case decisions by a lower court may be reviewed by a higher court. In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a rating to indicate its relative merit. Reviews are generally positive, neutral or negative.

A compilation of reviews may itself be called a review. The New York Review of Books, for instance, is a collection of essays on literature, culture, and current affairs. National Review, founded by William F. Buckley, Jr., is an influential conservative magazine. Monthly Review is a long-running socialist periodical. Metacritic creates an average score of published reviews called a metascore.

A user review is one written by someone for a product or a service based on his or her own experience with the reviewed product. Popular sources for consumer reviews are e-commerce sites like Amazon.com or Zappos. Social media sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp contain user reviews. E-commerce sites often have consumer reviews for products and sellers separately. Usually, consumer reviews are in the form of several lines of texts accompanied by a numerical rating. This text is meant to help shoppers make a decision about a product. A consumer review of a product usually has comments on how well the product meets a user's expectations. It talks about how well it does its job, how reliable it is and its quality for the price. Consumer reviews are also called word of mouth. Users also comment on how they were treated by a seller. They may comment on how dependable or trustworthy a seller is.