Yeah for sure, would be nice if Amazon told us how many sales it got and whatnot, but sadly they won't but the reviews give a good idea. Also depending on your strategy and goals you want a niche that has products with specific names and model numbers. That's so that you can try rank for a bunch of individual products, it's really good for a niche that has lots of new products coming out, as assuming it's a low comp niche, once they come out not many people target them because A) They probably don't know about it, B) It will show 0 searches a month for like 2 months despite people searching for it.
So that's just one benefit, but again it's all specific to what you want to do. For me the above points work perfectly for my niche, though by the time I have money to throw at a larger project many of those smaller things won't matter as much haha.
Also if you ever want to chat via skype for no particular reason other than I enjoy chatting with people about these things and discussing it, feel free to add me, same name here.