About
I stopped writing for six years. Turns out I missed it.
I’m Ihab. I live in Dubai, I write about cars and about the gadgets that end up on my desk, and for six years I did neither publicly. The reviews I used to write were the kind I wanted to read: written after weeks with something, not after a launch lunch, and honest about the bits that turned out to be annoying.
This is that, restarted. Two sides — Drives and Tech — because those are the two things I keep buying and keep having opinions about. Everything here is tested properly or it doesn’t go up.
If a car or a product was loaned to me, I say so in the piece. Nobody gets to read a review before it’s published, nobody gets to approve a score, and no score has ever been changed after a phone call. If that ever stops being true, I’ll say that too.
How the scoring works
Out of five, halves allowed. The number is the last thing I decide and the first thing people argue about, which is fair. It reflects what the thing is like to live with, at its price, against what else you could buy — not how impressive the spec sheet is.
Some pieces have no score at all. News, opinion and long-term diaries print an em dash instead, because scoring them would be dressing up an impression as a measurement.
5
I would buy it twice. Rare, and I mean it when I give it.
4
Buy it. Small compromises you'll forget about in a month.
3
Genuinely good. Most things land here now, which is boring but true.
2
Something specific went wrong, and I'll tell you exactly what.
Getting in touch
Press releases, product enquiries and cars you would like reviewed go to press@ihab.ae. If it’s genuinely interesting it goes up, and if it isn’t I’ll tell you why.