Quote:
Originally Posted by MechR
Aw, that's bull****  What good is a report missing the Nook Touch's most direct competitor? 
Excuse my Kobo-user persecution complex. |
Frequently when there's a product update or missed publishing deadline, Consumers Reports will publish something later or update it online (or both). The online Consumer Reports has listed the Kobo eReader touch edition slotted in below the B&N Nook Color and ahead of the B&N Nook 3G and Wifi variants, and so the Kobo really didn't do all that poorly. Now granted, that puts it below the B&N Simple Touch, various Kindles, and the Sony PRS-950, but most of the ones above the Kobo have newer display technology, longer battery life, in some cases bigger displays, etc., and the Kobo technically comes out best at its price point, at least in ad-free models.
And I have to say, this all seems to me reasonably accurate, while I often might quibble with ratings on products I'm familiar with or have experience (professional or otherwise), Consumers Reports seems to have gotten eReaders about right. And there's a lot of them now, all sorts of different features, trade-offs, etc. They do seem to take the Kindles down a notch, for File Support, which agrees then with some of the discussions here (the whole ePub vs Amazon thing). I do wish that the eReader makers would bury the hatchet and support each others' formats, the format wars seem so VHS vs Beta disruptive to the marketplace. Now, I might not have dropped Kindles for it, just seems to me different sides of the same coin, but the features and trade-offs are all at least listed in Consumers Reports, that then allows you to make your own trade-offs. And you can be reasonably certain that CR, because they take no advertising, wasn't worried about rating something low costing it advertising revenue. I've seen just that happen in other magazines that tried to rate products. Advertising influence is pervasive, as a publisher it's hard to ignore, knock a product from a big advertiser, lose revenue. I've seen some web sites pop up that show a lot of skill and in depth knowledge on a particular area, they might because of passion or focus build more expertise than CR, but frequently they then lose it as they end up in advertising or recommendation deals, human nature is to do what benefits you financially. If you want unbiased ratings, best to just stay with resources like CR that don't sip from the well.
And what about the accusation that CR is controversial to make more magazine sales? Well, mostly, I'd say not. Most of the time, CR is pretty boring, if it didn't have info on products you were considering buying, you'd probably not by it. Not sure there's anything too controversial about eReaders, anyway. But let us look at the most recent CR controversy, you can read about it at NYT:
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2011...sumer-reports/
Essentially, they took the Honda Civic down a couple of notches. Certainly that got a lot of press. I think that's partly because for so many years Honda had been at or near the top of the heap, so for a lot of years, Honda sold a lot of Civics because CR rated them highly. Now, I own a Honda, I like them, would I agree? Maybe not, but Honda has gotten more expensive, it's at the top of the segment price wise, and to some degree they and VW have stripped down models to try and compete on price, and it appears both got somewhat caught out. The competition (Korean and domestic) has gotten better, at the price points. I know this somewhat from rentals. But at least CR rates all the various models, and subject to some interpretation, lays it all out there for you to see. Agree or disagree, different criteria or whatever, that's something that not a lot of other places do for you.
So ultimately, as consumers, we have to all decide, who are we going to believe? I know it's hard to do, we all want to believe news sources that agree with what we think as individuals. It's nice to get an affirmation that we're right. Makes us feel good. But I submit that we should instead seek out sources that we disagree with. Listen to why they arrived at different conclusions. See what their reasoning and trade-offs were. If then our reasoning still holds up to external and differing opinions, then fine. If we learn a little something, so much the better. If we are adaptive and keep an open mind, hopefully we then make the ultimately "right" decisions, and really that's for the best.