Chuck Gould wrote:
Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:

JohnH,

There is one, It is called called Powerboat Reports. It does a decent
job of not only reviewing the product but doing follow up with boat
owners.

http://www.powerboat-reports.com/

The biggest problem I have seen is a limited number of reviews for each
product category.


I haven't paid much attention to Powerboat Reports in the last few
years. Is it still about an 8-16 page newsletter? When I last read it,
it seemed to be very New England oriented. Anything built in New
England was pretty good and got reviewed. Stuff from elsewhere was
generally ignored.

Powerboat Reports accepts no advertising (unless that has recently
changed). Any magazine relying strictly on subscription income is going
to have very limited staff and resources to work with. They probably
don't have the capacity to print a greater number of reviews.

It would be hard to develop a meaningful number of follow ups with
actual owners for a lot of boats. As you know, with some of the larger
boats a sales volume of a few dozen a year isn't too bad. Subtract the
90% sold to people who don't subscribe to a particular magazine, and
now you're down to 5 or 6 boats. Take out another 50% who won't bother
to return the survey, and you're reading a whole lot into 3, 4, or 5
responses about a boat.

The Consumer Reports model is different than anything a boating
magazine could even begin to attempt to do. When they review a car, for
instance, they go out and buy one (anonymously) off a retail dealer's
lot. They give it to a staffer to drive back and forth to work for
several months, etc etc etc etc. When they look for comments from the
public, they're trying to collect comments from a universe of perhaps
100,000 units sold. Big difference. You wouldn't see any articles about
boats if boating magazines were expected to write a check for $750,000
to buy a new 42-foot WhatKnot just to do a boat review..........

And that's one of the reasons you will see a limited number of reviews
in a publication like Powerboat Reports; There is no "relationship"
with an advertiser, and a lot of manufacturers simply don't make their
boats available for testing by anybody who just happens along to ask.


Chuck,
I have to agree with your assessment of Powerboat Reports, due to it's
limited market size for subscriptions, it is limited as to how many
products and how detailed their reviews can be. but they still do a
decent job of the products they do review.

I actually found their reviews to be more valid than Consumer Reports,
because they are boaters reviewing boating products. Consumer Reports
often totally miss the mark with their "Best Buy" category, often
endorsing a product that really should be at the bottom of the list for
a number of reasons. If a mfg'er has a QC problem, and CR samples a
well built product, it can get a very high rating, even though it is not
representative of the average product . Other times, they identify
product features that are not really important to the average user,
skewing the results of their test. I think both mags do a decent job,
but I have never had the confidence in CR results to pay for their
magazine or purchase a report online.

--
Reggie

That's my story and I am sticking to it!