AnandTech, mainstay of computer hardware reviews, closes after 27 years

Few '90s tech sites other than Ars Technica are still operating here in 2024, and today, there's one fewer. AnandTech, a staple of CPU and GPU news and reviews since 1997, will stop publishing today, according to an announcement from Editor-in-Chief Ryan Smith.

"For better or worse, we’ve reached the end of a long journey—one that started with a review of an AMD processor, and has ended with the review of an AMD processor," wrote Smith, referring to reviews of AMD's K6 and Ryzen 9000-series chips, respectively. "It’s fittingly poetic, but it is also a testament to the fact that we’ve spent the last 27 years doing what we love, covering the chips that are the lifeblood of the computing industry."

The site's current owner, Future PLC, will keep the AnandTech archives online "indefinitely" and will continue to manage the site's forums, Smith wrote. Several AnandTech staffers will continue to publish articles at Tom’s Hardware, another '90s vintage technology site that continues to publish today (AnandTech and Tom’s have both been owned by the same company since 2014, though they retained separate sites and branding).

Media headwinds

Smith wasn't specific about exactly why the site was closing, but he implied that the shutdown was a financial decision on Future's part.

"[T]he market for written tech journalism is not what it once was—nor will it ever be again," wrote Smith. "There is still more that I had wanted AnandTech to do, but after 21,500 articles, this was a good start."

Ars Technica founder and Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher, familiar with the challenges of keeping a late-'90s technology website relevant and profitable, largely agreed with Smith's assessment.

"The market for tech journalism has changed," Fisher said. "Technology is now thoroughly mainstream when compared to the late '90s. Big Tech advertisers are just as happy now to market their products or services on lifestyle websites as they once did primarily on tech sites. Furthermore, whatever the cause (mostly 'growth at all costs' thinking), Google no longer sends the traffic it once did. This is especially true for tech buying advice (reviews, explainers, etc.), which AnandTech excelled at providing. Reader culture has changed, too. In-depth explainers and long-form reviews are costly to produce but result in ever-dwindling audiences. Google AI Overviews then 'helpfully' summarizes your content, and you get even less in return."

Perhaps not coincidentally, much of the audience for in-depth PC component reviews has migrated to Google's YouTube, where big channels like Linus Tech Tips and Gamers Nexus traffic in meticulous component reviews that owe a clear debt to AnandTech's rigorous methodology and endless seas of bar charts.

AnandTech's closure comes just a few days after Gannett announced that it was shutting down Reviewed, another technology-focused site founded in 1997. Camera review site DPReview, founded in 1998, was nearly closed down last year, but it was saved at the 11th hour when Amazon was able to sell the site to Gear Patrol.

In the spirit of full disclosure: AnandTech wasn't my first paid writing gig, but it was certainly the first one of any note and the first where I did any serious review work on hardware (like the very first touchscreen Kindle) and software (like the Windows 8 Consumer Preview).

Site founder Anand Lal Shimpi began AnandTech as a 14-year-old "armed with very little actual knowledge" (in his own words), and by December 1999, it had become noteworthy and authoritative enough that CNN Money described it as a "megahot computer-review site." Shimpi's family remained involved in the site for years after its founding—when I was freelancing there in 2011 and 2012, the person I sent my invoices to was Anand's mother.

Although best known for its PC component reviews, the site also did in-depth reporting on Arm processors during the early smartphone era, and AnandTech was one of the few outlets publishing in-depth firsthand technical information about early Apple Silicon processors like the Apple A4, A5, A6, and the 64-bit A7. When Shimpi left AnandTech in 2014, it was to start a new position at Apple.