I think the ICO is an effective investment channel in the moment. In order to invest, you should carefully study the ICO project that you intend to invest. Include: idea, team DEV, technology, community, roadmap, whitepaper ... You invest when you really understand it.
Not all the ICO's are intended to make the growth of Blockchain technology more easier to use and secure. Most just want the money.
I agree it is very hard to identify now which is legitimate or not , that's also the reason why china banned ICO's , there is only a few good ICO project but most of them just want to robbed money from people , sad but it is the reality
It's not that difficult to identify the legitimate projects to be honest. You just need to pay attention to how much work has been put into the project and it'll be pretty obvious. The bad ones just throw around a lot of fancy buzzwords, but make it obvious that the creators don't really understand anything.