Although awareness that You Tube uses a sound compression format is salient, common sense needs to prevail.
Of course it's going to sound different in person. 
Individual location acoustics, setup, operator and vid compiler. Nevertheless You Tube can still be useful if you take all of this into consideration, view multiples, and use discernment in evaluation.
First thing I'd suggest you should do is to at least give yourself the best chance of hearing the clip as intended. Even if it was recorded with superb fidelity, listening through laptop speakers? Really?!!! Hopefully laughing with you as I truly don't mean to offend, but that's quite beyond funny -if you think about it.
A set of studio monitor speakers e.g. Swissonic, KRK Rokit, PreSonus Eris et al are invaluable, or at the very least a set of quality high fidelity stereo studio headsets. I have both, but have to say that buying my PreSonus studio monitors was definitely one of if not the the most worthwhile GAS purchase since I started playing guitar. Just WOW! What a difference. My recommendation to everyone into guitar recording, listening to originals in trying to perfect that cover, viewing reviews etc, would be to prioritise buying a pair the moment your budget permits.
Re You Tube comments. Everyone's a self-annointed expert critic, moi included.
Again discernment required to sort out the wheat from the chaff, and there's a lot of chaff. One of the things about anything aural, particularly tone, is that like personal taste and appeal in musical genres and musicality in general, it's extremely subjective. Behind the mask of You Tube anonymity, in some people this brings out extreme expressed perspectives through intolerance of others' opinions, which if you think about it is more frequently due to immaturity or a flaw in their personality than it is down to anything else. And don't forget for a moment the influences of successful brand and segment marketing elitism or even silly misplaced buyer pride. It all needs to be taken in to acount.
Ultimately, on balance I find You Tube reviews, unboxings, audio demonstrations etc useful in general. BTW like you, and many here from what I observe, I'm older too and so suffer from presbycusis.
