I've subscribed to CR for 40 years and will continue to do so. In that
time I've learned to recognize their bias which is really trying to
judge something relative to some constant benchmark. In judging a
sports car it might be judged as having a harsh, rough ride or for
transmitting road feel into the steering wheel. Probably very true
relative to Cadillac DeVille but if you want a high performance sports
car you know that and don't care. In auto reliability ratings I think
their methods are sometimes statistically suspect but the worst problem
is that they rate the number of problem areas or problem events without
any regard for the cost or inconvenience associated. They have so much
invested in their reliability numbers that it has become the chief
determinant on the worthiness of a car.
Well, I think that's all balderdash and a pox on many of their other
tests and methods. And a pox on their attempts at social engineering
instead of product testing. But I'll keep buying the magazine because,
after filtering out the bias and what I don't care about, there's still
a lot of very good info in there that I can't get anywhere else. It's
another large set of data points which I choose to heed sometimes. At
some point during every year I'll save enough on something to have
justified the cost of the magazine.
Chuck Norcutt
Winsor Crosby wrote:
> CR has gotten a little better I think, but they have always
> represented Joe Average in their approach to testing. Decade after
> decade a low priced Chevy four door sedan was picked as the ideal car
> with no clue about what enthusiasts might care about. The OM cameras
> were down rated because their controls were different than others.
> Different is bad and difficult. Sometimes they just lack of knowledge
> of features and the market place as with their computer tests. I might
> take their advice for an ordinary household item, maybe. Remembering
> that dog of a best buy vacuum cleaner I bought on their recommendation.
>
>
>
> Winsor
> Long Beach, California, USA
>
>
>
>
> On / December 19, 2007 CE, at 10:35 AM, Chris Crawford wrote:
>
>> I remember years ago when the OM system was still in production seeing
>> consumer reports articles on 35mm cameras and lenses and they always
>> rated
>> Olympus lenses as average to below average in sharpness, with Nikon
>> and
>> Canon always getting the high ratings. I had Nikon and Olympus stuff
>> at the
>> time and remember thinking that CR must be biased or crazy cause I
>> didn't
>> see any superiority in the Nikon lenses I had compared to my Olympus
>> equivilants (the 50mm f1.8 was one in particular I remember that CR
>> didn't
>> like from Olympus).
>
>
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