Ty for this, @MDB. You are a wonderful contributor here and certainly have been used to keep my head on straight!
That said, I do subscribe to CR’s and took a look at the reviews. Before this place and before getting my feet wet by following you guys, Dr. Cliff and others, I found CRs reviews confusing. Now, that I know more, I find them too broad and general and therefore very lacking. How do you review an entire brand on something so specific like the ability to hear voices in a noisy environment and give one rating for the brand’s entire lineup? You have so many different hearing needs and so many different types of HAs within each brand. It’s true they rate Costco well in value because you’re getting the P90 sibling (KS10) for a third of the price and they do REMs, which is good, but the Jabra and the Phillips are different than the KS10. Yet, they review the entire store as one rating.
If I were ignorant, I would think that Costco was the proverbial “cat’s meow”. It’s good but it isn’t all that. There are other great HAs out there that are better for some people than the KS10, Jabra or Phillips or whatever else Costco carries.
Another reason I find this review lacking is that you can’t get a good handle on what you need simply by looking at CR. They have some good things to say but this topic is far more extensive than what you can get from CR. It’s not like car ratings. LOL. More 1 is good for me and lousy for someone with a different need and a different pocket book.