Why Consumer Reports Rocks
Call me old fashioned, but I love Consumer Reports.
I know I exist in the same domain as my 80 year old Grandfather, but hear me out. In the age of paid endorsements disguised as honest reviews and social media manipulation we only have so much we can trust. I mean the new method for searching for honest reviews has come down to tagging "reddit" onto the end of the search request. Our best method of finding the truth of product reliability and utility cannot be the same website that produced the poop knife story - nsfw.
That is why Consumer Reports exists. It started as a print magazine that has morphed into a digital medium that also produces way underrated YouTube videos. While there are occasional debates into their neutrality and bias to legacy products, no one has displayed their rigor in testing consistently (with perhaps the exception of the occasional YouTube channel).
Below, some examples:
- Testing snow tires by sending a car flying across an ice hockey rink and measuring stopping distance
- Putting toilet paper into stress testing including using a magnetic stirrer to see how well it breaks down
- Testing the Samsung Flip smartphone by opening and closing it 30,000 times with a robot
Consumer Reports may not be perfect, but I will stand by using it as the final bulwark of truth in the age of mass AI Amazon reviews and fake influencer drop shipping posts.
Go to your local library, pick up a Consumer Reports, and enjoy.