While I agree that Consumer Reports is generally accurate, one must read the reports in depth, as has been stated earlier.

I owned several appliance stores in the 70's and 80's. Many customers would bring in CR looking for the recommended appliances. We would find many of the reasons CR rated an appliance as "Best" as laughable. Often they would give the "Best" rating to units that we recognized as the biggest pieces of crap on the market, but when we read the report in depth, we would usually see why they rated it so high. It's just that their reasons were not based on criteria we found to be relevant. And many times we knew that the expected life span of the particular appliance they applauded was only half that of another unit. Or because it had a dispenser for canned beverages they found it superior. Because it used $3.00 less electricity a year it was considered "Best". Of course, you would probably be replacing in six or seven years instead of thirteen or fourteen, or more. On one occasion that I recall, they rated a refrigerator the "Best Buy". We were in the process of dropping that brand of appliance at that time because the exact unit they recommended had a forty percent failure rate by the second year of operation. That failure rate was not just in our experience, but was in the industry at large. The company no longer produces appliances under that brand name. This type of recommendation error is not typical, but I have found it often enough to make me take CR reports with a grain of salt.

Consumer Reports can be a valuable tool, but by no means should everything they report be considered the final word, or should one rely on them exclusively. Read the reports carefully to see if they are relevant and check other sources for more info.

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Mike

2000 SL500 22,000 miles
1981 300CD 188,000 miles
1979 450 SEL 266,000 miles
2005 Cadillac CTS 25,000 miles