I have a micro niche site in the tech-sector and I am currently in the process of writing a top 10 list for products of my niche. Would it hurt my search engine ranking, if I copy the specifications of each product from a different website? I don't know how I should rewrite them... Or would you just leave them out completely?
What the biggest sites out there do is change the text only slightly. Yup, what you're looking to do, several big sites already do. They just "spin" that description to avoid the dup content shenanigans.
You can copy technical specs, but try adding unique text as well as it is somehow different to other sites.