You've said a lot of things here, but I might have some suggestions for you. In a separate thread I talked about Wordpress, which is just one of several CMS' out there that can adequately handle the backend aspect of maintaining a site. The question is, what exactly are you looking for, and are you planning to maintain it yourself? I mention Wordpress because it sounds to me like it would do what you need it to, and not because I'm an evangelist bent on forcing everyone to use it. It's just that WP is pretty damned flexible and fits most use-cases.
Admittedly though, web design and development has changed drastically over the past 5-10 years or so. Jumping into the field
is a little bit different than it used to be. Wordpress is one of dozens of tools out there that will provide you with the functionality you need to achieve your goals, but in order to really take advantage of what WP has to offer, you've got to do some work.
You said community forum, are you referring specifically to a forum like AOD's? Are you looking to start a forum community with vbulletin or IPB?
Are you just looking for a way to publish reviews on various pieces of hardware? What is it that the Wix / Drupal garden sites don't do that you need them to?
It would be good to know exactly what kind of functionality you're looking for in order to give you a recommendation. But truthfully, most people who aren't interested in tackling all of the things necessary to put together a current, relevant web front usually hire someone to do their dirty work for them. I don't know if that's defeating the purpose of what you had in mind, but it would good to have some more details.
In the context of a blog, where you want to publish articles and associate them with categories, tags, etc, Wordpress would be right down your alley, and there are a couple different ways you can approach it.
Long story short, more details required. :)