Hey guys,
I saw a thread here the other day on BIFL referencing CR that showed a lot of confusion about what they do, as well as misinformation on what their results mean. As a lifetime subscriber, I wanted to set some things straight for a community who could probably get a lot of use out of their work.
What Consumer Reports is
Wikipedia: "Consumer Reports is an American magazine published since 1930 by Consumers Union, a nonprofit organization dedicated to unbiased product testing, consumer-oriented research, public education, and advocacy." What this means in practice is these guys are dedicated to reviewing consumer products with no monetary bias.
Why Consumer Reports is awesome
CR, the organization, is structured so that they have no stake in their reviews money-wise. They accept no outside advertising in their magazine, buy all their products the same way you or I do with secret shoppers, refuse all kinds of "free samples" or kickbacks, and go above and beyond preventing even the impression there might be a conflict of interest. For instance, CR will not allow a manufacturer to advertise a positive review. CR has even gone to court to keep it that way.
In an age of paid reviews, "brand partnerships", and other BS, this impartiality is something really special.
Their reviews are well-researched, and performance measurements come from their own in-house tests. For instance, a microwave's speed and cooking evenness would be evaluated with their own equipment and tests. When they measure gas mileage, they actually run the car through simulated city and highway driving, instead of just accepting the EPA estimate. And in every magazine, in addition to reviews, they have several long-form articles about various topics ranging from how to save on healthcare to yearly price trend fluctuations of refrigerators.
The limitations of CR
Lets start with cars. Cars are tough to review. You can get a pretty good idea of fit and finish, as well as performance, (which they do do a good job of), but getting long-term in-house data on expensive things with a long life is pretty damn hard. So they outsource that. They conduct voluntary surveys of their subscribers, getting several hundred thousand results yearly. This is great if you're looking for trends like, "Which brand produces the most reliable cars"? or "What year did brand X totally cheap out in the fit an finish?" or even "Which models would their owners most likely buy again?" But... knowing that a specific model year might have a particular defect not specified in a recall? They do break out reliability based on problem area, but something that specific might not show up.
And that brings us to the major limitation of CR. Their reviews are awesome, and impartial, yes, but they're also pretty cursory, especially of certain products where there already exists a lot of depth of knowledge. Cars are one, but so are computers and smartphones. No one at CR is a computer geek who is going to do a teardown like the iFixIt or notebookcheck guys. However, if you're a baby boomer who doesn't know what RAM is, their reviews are still very helpful. I still read them myself; they're more of a starting block than an end-all-be all.
Tl;Dr
Consumer Reports is an excellent resource if you want to know really quick a lot more than the average bear on what is a good deal and what is not. What blender is going to break right away and be noisy to boot, what is going to cost way too much but last forever, and especially(!) the one that costs half as much as the top of the line but works just as good. If you happen to have more knowledge in a particular area, like you're into computers, or are a car guy, maybe you can dig down deeper than CR ever would, so you can take the reviews in those areas with a grain of salt. But that, in my humble opinion, does not mean that CR is a bad resource. On the contrary, I think it's one of the best, full stop.
More on CR: Consumer reports wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports Info on Consumer's Union (the mobilization arm of CR, these guys fight for net neutrality, lower drug prices, and more) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Union
Their website: http://consumerreports.org
Submitted April 10, 2018 at 04:06PM by l2blackbelt https://ift.tt/2qnmRZI
