I haven't read CR in a long time, but in my youth I fondly remember CR basically being pornography for test engineers.
Pick a product category, define measurands, develop physical test methods, and report results. You could often nitpick the measurands (do I really care about heat ramp time for a hair dryer?) but it was always fun to see the distribution and outliers.
Somewhere in the early 2000's it felt like they changed their model from test engineering to customer surveys, I presume for cost reasons. They had relied on surveys for truly subjective stuff like food, but it really started to proliferate beyond. I know they kept their much-lauded test track for car evaluations but almost everything other category started to feel survey based.
If they brought the test engineering back I'd resubscribe in a heartbeat. Break out the bowling ball dropper for mattress testing!
I feel like Nestle in particular draws heat for two reasons:
1) They are a global multinational and don't demonstrate much sympathy for local environmental issues
2) They are specifically bottling water, which seems wasteful as a practice in general, adds minimal value, etc.
I can't speak knowledgeably about #1 -- Nestle's track record probably speaks for itself -- but I do wonder about #2.
If a Anheuser Busch or Coca Cola wanted to open a manufacturing plant in Michigan consuming 576,000 gallons a day going to beer or soda, would it garner the same criticism? I feel like while there would still be discussions about rates charged for a public resource, the community at large would view beer or soda as a legitimate product for water, as opposed to bottled water.
Pick a product category, define measurands, develop physical test methods, and report results. You could often nitpick the measurands (do I really care about heat ramp time for a hair dryer?) but it was always fun to see the distribution and outliers.
Somewhere in the early 2000's it felt like they changed their model from test engineering to customer surveys, I presume for cost reasons. They had relied on surveys for truly subjective stuff like food, but it really started to proliferate beyond. I know they kept their much-lauded test track for car evaluations but almost everything other category started to feel survey based.
If they brought the test engineering back I'd resubscribe in a heartbeat. Break out the bowling ball dropper for mattress testing!