Ironically, by not understanding that the listener separates the sound of the speaker from that of the room, he undermines his own reviewing capabilities. He mistakenly says "the room affects the sound of the speaker", and suspects that because his reviews are limited to a certain room and speaker placement this limits their applicability. I think he is being overly pessimistic about that.
What is more pertinent is that a compact two-way, ported passive speaker can only ever achieve a certain level of fidelity, and this asymptote is approached when the speaker is designed competently. The reviewer's most important task is merely to suggest whether such a speaker is competently designed or not.
What will never happen is that such a speaker will approach the sound of a competently designed large three-way speaker. Or one that incorporates DSP and active amplification. The 'legacy' two-way speaker cannot hit some hitherto unknown singularity in the passive, ported two-way permutation space that suddenly transforms it into the perfect high fidelity transducer, so reviewers shouldn't use language that suggests it does.
The speaker's design is what tells you most about how it will sound, and there is no point in approaching a 'legacy' configuration as a blank sheet of paper where 'anything could happen'. It can't; it can only be asymptotic to a certain level of performance.
Oh, and reviewers should never resort to saying that a speaker is 'fun' as a euphemism for crap. Just say it's crap.