Geeze, this ended up sounding like I am lecturing...PLEASE dunna take it as such, I am being ironic and just teasing a tiny bit, but am really trying to help you feel more confident in teaching yourself. EVERYONE can do it.
sooooo, here is what I wrote and please, it's not a lecture or scolding, just me being kinda-sorta direct, it's how I have always learned best hope it comes across as I hoped. Just forgive be because I might have been toilet trained at gun point, k?
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Why is everyone always looking for some magic info resource to decide everything for them? There is nothing out there which will give you definitive info on what to buy. The permutations and needs are simply too vast. What is total crap for me might be perfect for someone else. It is that simple and nothing replaces developing the patience to read and roll the dice now and then and sometimes picking a clunker which you might be able to return or sell off at minimal loss.
One sign can be looking at the resale market for a given device. If it is vibrant or there are few for sale then it can be a good sign the device is solid. But the best suggestion I used to tell clients is buy nothing more recent than the previous generation. Of course that's not as reasonable with the slate device market given it's in the embryonic state right now. By Oct-Dec there will be some more obvious choices.
Best you can do is either compile a list for yourself, which, btw you can add to the device matrix here on MR and contribute to the common good of site users. Or you can search for someone else to do the work for you. Either way works and one is passive with the other more proactive.
If it helps there was a saying back in the early days of Byte Magazine. It went something to the effect that you read EVERYTHING and let it digest then once you began understanding the ads in the magazines you had gotten to where you knew what questions to ask and had the ability to make better choices. Mind this was before the web was anything close to what it is today and there were two userbases, CompuServe users (more tech oriented people) and the AOL Cacophony of random noise not too different from what Apple is trying to do with the iOS devices. We tech folks LOVED the separation of that part of the herd. It was once AOL tore down the walls around their garden and unleashed those users on the web that it began to go downhill. And that was because so many of those unfortunate souls had never been educated like they should have been and were suddenly left outside nekkid on a rock to fend for themselves overnight.
So, ask your questions but also use the tools like Google, Yahoo and even Bing to search for info. Then once you begin to read past the rhetoric and blindly loyal users you'll know what to do.