Godai-kun's Full Review: Consumer Reports Magazine Subscription
I subscribe to Consumer Reports, and will probably renew my subscription when it runs out. There is not question that the magazine tries hard to provide objective information about a wide variety of consumer products. I have found, however, that there are times when it is better to take their reviews with a grain of salt, especially in the advent of alternate information sources such as Epinions.
Perhaps it has occurred to you, as it has to me, that usability of some items under CR's laboratory conditions may not be the same as usability out in the consumer's home. Take televisions, for example. Consumers rates them based on a variety of criteria including sharpness of picture, quality of sound, and the ability to pull in a weak station, however all of these are based upon the single standardized set of parameters that they use in their lab tests. Maybe you or I don't have an identical antenna, or if we do, we are located in a different geographical terrain, or in an area with a different density of television signals. In any of these cases, the set that CR rates the best might not work as well - or alternately, a set that CR rates somewhat less well might outperform the "CR Best Buy".
The situation is even worse when you start to consider products for which performance is no longer the main criteria - flavor is. No matter how carefully trained the CR experts are, and how objective their findings, they simply don't take into account the single most important factor - individual preference. Perhaps I LIKE the "slightly burned" flavor that they downrated a given coffee for. And maybe I don't find the "floral overtones" that they loved in another brand nearly as alluring. Different strokes for different folks.
Furthermore, nearly every product can have little manufacturing defects which pop up from time to time. How are we to know that the sample which they tested for one product had an unusual defect which abnormally lowered its overall rating? A normally good but not excellent product might appear to be better than it is in such a situation, or a superlative product might be disappointing.
It may sound as if I am putting down CR's reviews, which are after all their stock in trade. Actually I find them very useful. A product that is rated noticeably lower than others in its category will, in my experience, tend to be overall a worse product in performance as well. And those which significantly outperform others in their category will likely be of better quality. But where, as is so often the case, there are several items clustered together, with a small to moderate difference between their ratings, I have often found there to be discrepancies between my personal experiences and the ratings.
In my experience, personal opinion by the people who are actually using the product will eventually be more useful than the most careful objective analysis. So I use CR to create a "short list" of brands, models, etc. from which to select, and then turn to friends' opinions, personal experience, and places like Epinions to help me decide which brands or models to actually try.
Bottom line: CR is a cheap resource for helping consumers decide about what products to buy, but should be balanced by input from other sources.
Definitely read it - most libraries have a subscription - but it's well worth paying for, since subscription prices keep their work afloat.
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Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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