YES. Exactly! I would say you need to be generally skilled at least. Not because you are not going to be able to understand every aspect of a yoyo, but because it will prevent you from having opinions biased by your lack of skill. Both Tom and T have bashed on competition oriented yoyos in the past, while they are unable themselves to play the yoyos to their full potential.
Video yoyo reviews are kinda dead for me now. I still watch them, but i know what it’s being said is merely one fraction of the whole experience on the yoyo. I’d say even Yoyojoe’s commentary (who os one of the most skilled player who do reviews) is plain and redundand sometimes. And let’s not talk about Brandon. There was a time when he would label anything that’s not similar to a draupinir ar “boring” or “standard”