As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Consumer Reports - Yay or Nay
Monolithic_Dome
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This is TV-related but seemed to have wide enough impact to go in its own thread.
Anyway, I'm shopping for an HDTV and I'm looking at picking up a subscription to Consumer Reports. I remember picking up an issue at the library when I was looking for a stereo or something in high school and it was very informative and thorough. They've got some preview-y content available for free, but to get the full reviews you need to subscribe, which is 26 bucks for a year.
Basically the hook is that they accept no advertising, so their reviews are far less biased. And, subjectively, they are way less bullshitty than say CNET.
Anyone used CR? Found the subscription worth it? I'll probably have a few more big-ish purchases within the next year (Stereo, possibly a car) so it might be worth it to me even if I don't get 26 bucks worth of information on HDTVs from it.
Anyway, I'm shopping for an HDTV and I'm looking at picking up a subscription to Consumer Reports. I remember picking up an issue at the library when I was looking for a stereo or something in high school and it was very informative and thorough. They've got some preview-y content available for free, but to get the full reviews you need to subscribe, which is 26 bucks for a year.
Basically the hook is that they accept no advertising, so their reviews are far less biased. And, subjectively, they are way less bullshitty than say CNET.
Anyone used CR? Found the subscription worth it? I'll probably have a few more big-ish purchases within the next year (Stereo, possibly a car) so it might be worth it to me even if I don't get 26 bucks worth of information on HDTVs from it.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Monolithic_Dome on
0
Posts
mom had a subscription and we used it to help during car buying back in november. Some good guides
I work for a paint company. A very large one. We make a lot of paint, and are basically considered the high-end paint company.
Consumer reports does an interior paint report every so often. Our top of the line paint ALWAYS finishes last.
Whats weird? They have many value brands of paint that you can buy at wal-mart or independent paint stores rated higher.
The kicker? We make those paints. They sure as shit aren't better than our top of the line in-house brand.
tl;dr: Take Consumer Reports with a grain of salt. They don't publish their testing criteria. Their results don't match industry standardized independent testing.
And maybe you think that industry tests are more thorough, but for non-tech stuff I doubt you'll find a better side-by-side comparison on all aspects of a product than Consumer Reports. Testing done by a company is always going to leave out their weak areas and product reviews from consumers are often inadequate because they don't get the experience of testing out every product side by side.
That's because they're not in it for the best quality-wise, but the best overall value. If your premium paint only performs 50% better, but costs 3x as much, they're going to mark it down heavily because the increased performance doesn't justify the expense.
I had a subscription last year, and its caught what killed PCMag. Every other issue was about TVs and/or electronic gear. Yes, lots of people are buying LCD TVs, but they're still buying vacuum cleaners and coffee makers too.
The short version is for LCDs, Sony or Samsung; for plasma, Panasonic or Samsung is the way to go.
The new Toshiba line, from which I bought, came out in February. The new Samsung line came out in March. (I was pretty much torn between these two). I loved the thoroughness of their reviews, back when I was still planning on buying the older models, but they have no info on these new ones so I had to make my decision on my own. So unless you plan on buying last years models from an internet site, CR won't help you until they update their reviews.
I'm sitting on purchasing an HDTV right now, just waiting for the rebate check.
$1500 for Samsung A550 (Came out only a month ago)
46" 1080P
5MS
30,000:1 Contrast
Amazon
Link?
that was easy
www.avsforum.com
The Audio/Video Science forums.
Appreciate it.
No thanks, I don't deal with that bunch of fanboys.
out of curiosity, fanboys about what? They've got people who are fanboys about EVERYthing. Go see some of the lcd vs. plasma arguments - Or the hd-dvd vs. Blu-Ray - or a lot of stuff. I have noticed zero fanboyism there and thats where I learned how to choose my next tv (Samsung A650 myself, after the Wedding).
It... it's full of fanboy. On all of those subjects.
Walerian: Why are you going for the 6 series over the 5? The only difference is 120hz, right?