Consumer Reports Choice As A Clear Winner Is. . .

[Mike_C]

I'm confused Consumer Reports doesn't have ads, do they? Not sure who they would be favoring.
I'm not saying the review is good, it seems more like an basic intro to home owners and newbies.
At least a Stihl, Husky, and an Echo were the top choices for gas saw. If a wild thing had been the top choice this thread would be 200 pages by now.

 

[HuskStihl]

So CR likes the MS 180 over a wild thing, eager beaver, Troy built w'ever and husky something? And anybody on AS cares?

 

[1Alpha1]

I'm thinking they got it right. :hmm3grin2orange:

 

[Philbert]

They also fall victim to 'feature bias' - they love the idea of some features, without really evaluating if they are that important in the overall scheme of things.

BTW - I really liked the STIHL tool-less chain adjustment feature; till I tried it. The more I used it the less I liked it. Still like the IDEA, but could never get the thumb knob to adjust as accurately on a used saw (with dirt, oil, saw dust, etc.), or while wearing gloves, as I could with a screwdriver. Harder to flip the bar. Harder to clean. Easy to lose the screw. More expensive to replace the side cover. . . .

They must have tested it in a clean lab with clean wood.

Philbert

 

[SMKS]

They can't even get stoves and Dishwashers right.

Ask the local appliance repair tech.

CR consistently rates their higher paying advertisers above others, simply out of review familiarity and access.

CR has no advertising. They actually buy all the item they test, they don't get them for free like some other testing organizations. CR also doesn't let companies advertise that they got a "recommended" rating or anything else about a CR rating. This is all done to try to prevent them from being biased by advertising.

I'm not trying to insult people here, but people on various forums (appliance, chain saw, whatever) always think they know better than CR. But you have to remember that CR is aimed at average homeowners, not the nerds that populate online forums (of which I'm one). People who populate forums generally look for different things than the average person who just wants to know which saws work well.

I am a CR subscriber. I just checked the ratings and there are very highly rated Stihl, Husky and Echo saws. Frankly, the scores on those brands are all close enough that it's clear the saws from those brands that they tested are all good saws.

The Craftsman, Homelite and other cheaper saws were relegated to a separate lighter duty category.

 

[griffonks]

CR has no advertising. They actually buy all the item they test, they don't get them for free like some other testing organizations. CR also doesn't let companies advertise that they got a "recommended" rating or anything else about a CR rating. This is all done to try to prevent them from being biased by advertising.

I'm not trying to insult people here, but people on various forums (appliance, chain saw, whatever) always think they know better than CR. But you have to remember that CR is aimed at average homeowners, not the nerds that populate online forums (of which I'm one). People who populate forums generally look for different things than the average person who just wants to know which saws work well.

I am a CR subscriber. I just checked the ratings and there are very highly rated Stihl, Husky and Echo saws. Frankly, the scores on those brands are all close enough that it's clear the saws from those brands that they tested are all good saws.

The Craftsman, Homelite and other cheaper saws were relegated to a separate lighter duty category.

Christ! Now I'm a nerd? I thought I was a redneck... Just sayin'

 

[SMKS]

Christ! Now I'm a nerd? I thought I was a redneck... Just sayin'

Don't worry, I'm right there with you. :beer:

Perhaps some of the people here would prefer to be described as "enthusiasts."

 

[Philbert]

But you have to remember that CR is aimed at average homeowners, . . .

But they make assumptions about 'average homeowners' which are not necessarily valid. And when you know about a product and feel that they are off base, you have to wonder about products you don't know much about.

So their 'objective' tests are often no more valid than a woodworking magazine that takes a dozen cordless drills, from their advertisers, and runs 100 lag bolts till they stall or die. Only really applicable to guys running dozens of lag bolts every day. It's really CR's opinion, which is much more subjective than they want you to believe.

Reminds me of the 'Myth Busters' guys who develop then chase their own criteria - I will watch it occasionally, but don't take their 'findings' as hard proof.

Philbert

 

[machinisttx]

I guess you could call me a "Stihl guy" but this means absolutely nothing to me. Those reviews always need to be taken with a grain of salt and usually are not related to any real world use or demands. I remember many years ago they savaged Troy Bilt tillers as being unsafe, they took one out and set the tilling depth adjustment for maximum tilling depth and dropped it in hard untilled ground. The tiller immediately jumped and took off being driven by the tines rather than the wheels. That was a case of pure operator negligence, nothing to do with the design of the equipment.

I think that is more correctly described as defective user syndrome....

I have two of the troy bilt "horse" tillers, both produced by Garden Way. Haven't seen one of the newer ones since MTD bought them out, but the other "troy bilt" models I have seen are junk.

 

[7sleeper]

I do 't understand why everybody is complaining?! The 180 is in my eyes an excellent saw for their described area of use. They wanted a saw for garden work and the evtl. after storm cleanup where usually branches are lying on the ground! No one mentioned year round firewood duties or storm fallen 300 year oak trees. Personaly I believe that most homeusers would be better setup with a quality handsaw(no old gas issues etc.) but as we all know no one nowadays knows how to use a handsaw.

7

 

[CoolCat44]

When you read the hole article, 9 points to a possibility of 10 were given for the excellency of the fuel cap desing by Stihl.
Really

 

[olyman]

CR has no advertising. They actually buy all the item they test, they don't get them for free like some other testing organizations. CR also doesn't let companies advertise that they got a "recommended" rating or anything else about a CR rating. This is all done to try to prevent them from being biased by advertising.

I'm not trying to insult people here, but people on various forums (appliance, chain saw, whatever) always think they know better than CR. But you have to remember that CR is aimed at average homeowners, not the nerds that populate online forums (of which I'm one). People who populate forums generally look for different things than the average person who just wants to know which saws work well.

I am a CR subscriber. I just checked the ratings and there are very highly rated Stihl, Husky and Echo saws. Frankly, the scores on those brands are all close enough that it's clear the saws from those brands that they tested are all good saws.

The Craftsman, Homelite and other cheaper saws were relegated to a separate lighter duty category.

personally,,ill go with what Joe kidd said...

 

[Doug Fir]

Tighten a chain every 15 minutes????????:msp_scared::msp_scared::msp_scared::msp_scared::msp_scared:

They say that because they are recommending a saw with a tool-less chain tensioner. That system sucks. The chain becomes loose quite easily. It didn't occur to them that there is something wrong if you need to tighten the chain every 15 minutes. Why didn't they simply talk to someone who is experienced with chainsaws?

Most of their reviews are useless. I once bought one of their top-ranked dishwashers. It kept breaking. Because I fixed it myself I was able to see how it was designed and built. A complete POS! I had to fabricate replacement parts myself to avoid the thin, brittle plastic that the manufacturer used in key stress points. Of course Consumer Reports couldn't be bothered to talk to independent appliance repair technicians, just like they couldn't be bothered to talk to anyone who knows a bit about chainsaws.

In short, they are complete idiots.

Doug

 

[mikefunaro]

I actually worked at Consumer Reports the summer between high school and college.

A lot of what people are saying is correct.

For most products they have a "definition" of what the ideal product is. They will have a definition or a set of standards or expectations which a chainsaw should meet, and it all comes down to how those boxes are checked off. And not necessarily the bigger picture.

I could write pages about the benefits and downsides (many more downsides IMO) of this process and this outlook.

The first thing is overall their selection of products is frequently poor, and occasionally blind to what people actually need, what they buy, and what makes the most sense. They have supposed market experts in each product area, but they can get transferred around. For a while when they were doing backpack blowers they were only reviewing a couple of them with very different displacements and the husky model they were testing was a specialized 356 bx low noise model. With something like a push mower they will just run it over a certain size square and count the number of missed blades of grass. But there isn't a good overall how does it work, how does it handle, etc.

The same sort of poor quality review process came through in vacuum cleaners year after year. Find someone who has a miele canister, they usually love it. Expensive but quiet, powerful and lasts forever. However they would never rate them all that highly. They wouldn't excel at picking up huge piles of sand in one pass, or they wouldn't clean the same area as quickly. They would only rate the stock vacuum head (no belt driven agitator/beater bar) and then compare it to other machines that included a vacuum head with an agitator.

The reliability component supposedly comes through the user reviews and mail in cards but it doesn't really work all that well IMO.

The opinions are often short sighted. A guy who sits in a BMW with an iDrive system for 2 hours laments that it's confusing and took a while to set up. Fine. But if you just spent 50 grand for a luxury car that you're going to use a lot, what does it matter if it takes 2 hours to set up ONCE and then remembers all of your settings and responds to your voice etc.

In the long term hundreds of reviews from customers who have used the product for a long period of time will always prove better than a short exposure to the product from a group of "experts". A lot of the time a product can be best holistically while not cutting the fastest, weighing the least, etc.

Paint is another big thing. Painters and smart homeowners buy higher end paints like benjamin moore and sherman williams because they are better. They apply better, look better, last longer, cover better, have better components and chemicals in them, etc, etc. So telling me to save $8 on some crap from k-mart because it's almost as good in a few limited tests--so what?

 

[SMKS]

The same sort of poor quality review process came through in vacuum cleaners year after year. Find someone who has a miele canister, they usually love it. Expensive but quiet, powerful and lasts forever. However they would never rate them all that highly.

In the most recent vacuum test the top rated upright is a Miele and in the canister tests one of the highest rated models is a Miele.

The opinions are often short sighted. A guy who sits in a BMW with an iDrive system for 2 hours laments that it's confusing and took a while to set up. Fine. But if you just spent 50 grand for a luxury car that you're going to use a lot, what does it matter if it takes 2 hours to set up ONCE and then remembers all of your settings and responds to your voice etc.

iDrive was pretty widely lamented, especially when it was first released. Not just by CR.

I'm not going to say CR tests are perfect, no tests are. They all have limitations. But they do some head-to-head testing on a lot of products that is far more extensive than what you'd find anywhere else. If you look at things like appliances or tires, CR tests way more models than any enthusiast could ever use on their own.

Shoppers still need to determine their own needs and consider that when reading reviews or tests from any source.

 

[mikefunaro]

In the most recent vacuum test the top rated upright is a Miele and in the canister tests one of the highest rated models is a Miele.

I'm not going to say CR tests are perfect, no tests are. They all have limitations. But they do some head-to-head testing on a lot of products that is far more extensive than what you'd find anywhere else. If you look at things like appliances or tires, CR tests way more models than any enthusiast could ever use on their own.

Shoppers still need to determine their own needs and consider that when reading reviews or tests from any source.

Cancelled my subscription pretty much as soon as I stopped working there so I wouldn't know re the changes...

What I do know is the basic miele design hasnt changed much over the last 10 years, which tells me maybe their tastes have. The $200 all plastic kenmore vacuums couldn't keep winning forever.

 

[Hddnis]

My experience with Consumer Reports is that they are so useless that they reach the level of entertaining.

When I was needing a new washing machine I knew what I wanted, based on experience and some reading online. But the salesman tried to talk me into another model and said "It is really highly rated by Consumer Reports." I said "Then I don't want that one for sure." He laughed and said "Yeah, it isn't a very good one." I didn't think it was funny that he had just tried to sell me a product that he knew was inferior, but no matter, I already knew what I wanted and I was just there to pick it up, the salesman was an expensive formality in that case.




Mr. HE

 

[justtools]

Consumer test reports on chainsaws always are worthless and misleading....:msp_rolleyes:

Would you feel the same IF husqvarna had won?

 

[Philbert]

OK, Read the whole article and related ratings. Here are some of their criteria:

The (model X) is part of the chain saw test program at Consumer Reports. In our lab tests, chain saw models like the (model X) are rated on multiple criteria, such as those listed below.

Cutting speed: How fast a saw cut through a 10-inch-square oak beam.

Safety: Consists of kickback intensity, the potential for burn due to inadvertent contact with the muffler, and storage safety--how well protected the cutting chain is from accidental contact during storage.

Ease of use: Based on engine-starting convenience (the average number of pulls to start), primer and choke location and operation, and the ease of adjusting the cutting chain’s tightness, checking and adding fluids, and accessing the air filter and spark plug.

Objective comments about their review (based on some saws that I own!):

- They claim that the Makita UC4030 was the most expensive corded electric saw they tested, although, they note earlier tests for a few STIHL saws that cost more, and a similarly priced Husqvarna.

- On several saws they note "Lacks a durable blade cover" - this is apparently why the Echo CS400 scored lower than the CS352. They do not mention that this is a $6, replaceable part.

- They don't note that saws like the Echo CS400 can come with the 18-inch "blade" as they tested, or with a 16-inch bar.

- They comment on the battery life of the Oregon CS250 battery saw, but don't note that it is available with different amp-hour batteries.

- They lament the lack of vibration dampening on electric and battery saws, even though these saws vibrate much less - different than if they mounted them in a test fixture and actually measured the effective vibration of all of the saws.

- Saws scored lower if they did not have see through fuel or oil level indicators, which are really more of convenience features, and should not be rated the same as performance.

Note that these are not durability tests over extended use, but they do give credit for saws with longer warranties (wonder why Home Depot rents Makita electric saws instead of their higher rated WORX saws, even if the WORX saw has a longer warranty?).

They do not talk about maintenance or the availability of parts and service for some of the lower priced saws.

They do not discuss fitting the saw to the test (really? using a battery saw to cut 10X10 oak timbers and being disappointed?).

Similarly, they do not discuss expectations for use: e.g. 'the MS180 is good for limbing tasks, but don't expect to cut a 30 inch log with it', or something about the deceptive practice of some retailers to sell some saws with bars longer than they should have, or with skip tooth chain to make up for an under powered powerhead.

They also seem to limit the discussion on saw storage to whether or not it came with a case or bar scabbard ('durable blade cover').

Philbert

 

[BluntForgedEdge]

Here's an article from Popular Mechanics, though I think published last year (2012):

Echo, Husqvarna, Jonsered, Solo Stihl Chain Saw Review - Best Chainsaw Review - Popular Mechanics