Hi, everybody. I'm the one who wrote the article on Wirecutter. Thanks for your feedback here, it's helpful. To answer a couple of your questions:
1) Yes, Wirecutter gets much of its revenue from Amazon affiliate links. We're very open about that. We couldn't afford to do what we do if our revenue were based solely on networked ads. If you look around on the site, you'll see that we work with other affiliates as well, and we've even recommended products for which we didn't have an affiliate relationship.
2) TMK, none of the ukes we tested were clones. I don't have the samples handy right now, but as I recall, the only ones that looked at all similar were the Oscar Schmidt and Cordoda concerts, and the Oscar Schmidt (at least the sample we got) had inferior tuners. Of course, some of them likely came from the same factory, but that's the way of the world these days.
3) I tested models that either got great reviews somewhere on the web, and in general that I was able to get samples of, although we bought a couple we felt were important to include but weren't able to get a response from. Eventually we will do an update on this article, so if there are any models you think we should test, please let us know in the comments section of that article.
4) We decided to limit the price to $120 because dealers (even McCabe's!) told me $100 is about the max that a beginner would normally spend on a uke.
Thanks for reading the article!
---BB