11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
unbiased reviewing
Date of Review: Nov 2, 1999
Consumer Reports sets the standard in the field. To make sure they remain objective, they accept no advertising and no favors--if CR wants to review something, be it a can of paint or a luxury car, they buy it through normal retail channels. Then they test it, using standard, published techniques. Cars, for example, are driven on highways near the organization's headquarters, and along a special test track. For an ongoing study of deck stains, they've painted a bunch of boards and are letting them weather.
Where complete objectivity isn't meaningfully possible--such as whether one kind of vanilla ice cream or cereal tastes better than another--they ask dozens of people to compare the products anonymously.
One particularly useful aspect of CR is that they consider both price and quality. When something scores well at both, they flag it as a "best buy" or "best value." When reviewed products change, the magazine publishes updates.
Another virtue is that they make comparisons that are difficult for the individual shopper. For example, when they compare knit shirts, they look at several different brands, both those sold in stores and those available only through catalogs. They check not only fit but how well the products stand up over time--do they shrink, does the color fade or darken, does the cloth wear out unusually fast?
The only real flaw of this magazine is that it rarely considers the possibility of reducing consumption: the whole system is set up to help you find the best breadmaker, rather than to analyze whether you might do as well to bake bread the old-fashioned way. In their defense, I'll note that they will compare that breadmaker to what you can buy at the supermarket, and offered their own chicken soup recipe when they rated packaged soups.
The target audience is middle to upper-middle class, with children. If you don't have or want a car--I don't--you'll skip at least a quarter of the average issue, and almost all of one issue each year. Nonetheless, what it does rate that I might buy--furniture, appliances, insurance and mutual funds, vacations, and yes, chocolate ice cream--are worth the money, and the inside cover "Buying It" page of particularly absurd or questionable packages and advertising is always entertaining.
