Bigger is better. No, wait, bigger is worse. Well, which is it?

Apple’s newly supersized 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the jumbo, 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus are a marked departure for the company, which has clung to the same, small screen size for years. It has gone so far as to publicly deride larger phones from competitors, notably Samsung, even as their sales grew to record highs.

Tech reviewers over the years have tended to side with Apple, in general saddling reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note — a 5.3-inch device that kicked off the phablet push in 2012 — with asides about how big the darn thing was. To be fair, I’m one of them; I called the 6.3-inch Galaxy Mega “preposterous” last year. I also think the iPhone 6 Plus may be more phone than most people will be comfortable with, although the skyrocketing sales seem to point otherwise.

But does Apple have something special? Can its phones succeed where others have … well, already succeeded? And more importantly, are tech reviewers being fair when they review the iPhone 6 Plus? Here’s what some of them said today, compared with how they reviewed earlier phablets and big phones from the competition.

Related:iOS 8 Review (new features so subtle, there’s an app to help you find them)

Jonathan Geller spun 180 degrees thanks to Apple. But he’s decent enough to admit he was wrong.

TechCrunch wasn’t sure how it felt about phablets at first. But larger iPhones have clearly convinced them.

Related: One size fits all for Apple’s fresh but familiar iPhone 6

Lauren Goode is singing a very different song – and is willing to admit it. So too Walt Mossberg, who called the 5.3-inch Note “gargantuan” and the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 as “terrific.”

For David Pogue, a 4.8-inch Samsung was great, but so big it needed to be ridiculed. A 5.5-inch iPhone “doesn’t seem bigger than the iPhone 5,” however. He’s clearly adjusted to the scale.

Looks like The Guardian had a change of heart, err hand? At least they’re not above admitting it.

Ed Baig stuck to his guns: Phablets in general just aren’t going to work for everyone, regardless of who makes them.

CNet’s reviewer said the Note was a really, really big phone, but a great one. The iPhone is a great phone but a really, really big one.

At first, The Verge was obsessed with the sheer size of the Note. Today size isn’t the same factor it once was.

Galen Gruman gets the award for consistency — and bluntest statement about the sheer size of modern phones.

We can’t very well call out other publications without quoting ourselves. Here is what our Mobile Editor Jeffrey Van Camp thought of the Galaxy Note and iPhone 6 Plus.