Version 2.0 of Review Radar for Amazon is here, and it's the biggest update since launch. The headline feature: an adjusted star rating that shows you what a product's rating would really be if suspicious reviews were penalised.
The Problem with Star Ratings
Amazon's star ratings are an average. That's it. A product with 200 genuine 4-star reviews and 50 fake 5-star reviews will show a higher rating than it deserves. The fake reviews pull the average up, and there's nothing in Amazon's system to account for that.
Since Fakespot shut down in July 2025, there hasn't been a good way to see what a product's rating should be. Review Radar 1.x told you which individual reviews looked suspicious, but you still had to do the mental maths yourself.
Version 2.0 does that maths for you.
How the Adjusted Star Rating Works
Every review that Review Radar analyses gets a trust score. The adjusted star rating uses those scores to recalculate what the product's stars would be if suspicious reviews were penalised:
- Trusted reviews (80%+ trust score) keep their original star rating
- Suspicious reviews (20% or below) have their stars inverted — a fake 5-star counts as 1 star, and a fake 1-star counts as 5 stars
- Reviews in between are weighted proportionally on a sliding scale
- Uncertain reviews (trust score 41–59%) are excluded entirely — if we're not sure, we don't count them
- Recent reviews count more — a suspicious review from last week matters more than one from two years ago
The result is a star rating that reflects what real customers actually think, shown with Amazon-style star icons right in the product overview box.
The Product Overview Box
Version 2.0 adds a persistent info box in the top-right corner of Amazon product pages. It shows:
- Scan progress — a live counter as reviews are analysed
- Adjusted star rating — with filled, half, and empty star icons
- Total reviews analysed — including reviews scanned by other users
- Remaining quota — updates in real time as scans complete
The adjusted rating draws on reviews analysed by all Review Radar users, not just your own scans. If 50 other people have already scanned reviews for the same product, you'll see the adjusted rating immediately — before your own scan even starts.
It appears once 8 or more reviews have been analysed for a product, so there's enough data to be meaningful.
Smarter AI Analysis
We've refined the AI prompt to be fairer in two areas where version 1.x was occasionally too harsh:
Short Reviews with Genuine Detail
A brief review like "Fits my 2019 Honda Civic perfectly, no rattling after 3 months" is short, but it contains specific personal details that a fake reviewer wouldn't bother including. Version 2.0 recognises these as likely real rather than flagging them for brevity.
Vine Reviews
Amazon Vine reviewers receive products for free, which previously triggered our "incentivised review" flag. Version 2.0 judges Vine reviews on their actual content quality instead — a detailed, balanced Vine review with genuine observations is treated as trustworthy, while a generic Vine review that reads like marketing copy is still flagged.
Other Changes in 2.0
- 100 free scans per month — generous enough for regular shopping
- Cached reviews count as completed — previously analysed reviews load instantly and show in the scan progress
- Quota updates in real time — your remaining scans update as each review completes, not just at the end
Try It
If you're already using Review Radar for Amazon, version 2.0 will update automatically. If you're new, install it from the Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons. The free tier gives you 100 scans per month — no credit card, no sign-up.
The adjusted star rating is the feature we're most excited about. It takes the trust scores that Review Radar has always calculated and turns them into something immediately useful: a single number that tells you whether this product's rating is honest.