Reviews are What Hi-Fi?’s bread and butter.
The brand has evolved immensely in its 50-year existence, but at its heart, it’s still fundamentally a buying guide – a magazine you buy or a website you visit when you’re considering purchasing a new TV, turntable, soundbar or amplifier (or CD player, AVR, projector, speakers… I could go on).
It will hopefully come as no surprise to learn, therefore, that we take reviewing incredibly seriously.
We also approach it differently from most, if not all, other publications.
The most fundamental difference is that we always review as a team. One person leads the testing and ultimately produces the words, of course, but once they’ve done the bulk of the testing, they will invite one, two or more of the other members of the What Hi-Fi? team to join them in the test room for a second-look/listen session.
The lead reviewer explains their findings and demonstrates them using carefully chosen test material. The second-lookers are there to question, challenge and validate those conclusions, ensuring no important detail has been overlooked.
That might sound as though we don’t trust our reviewers, but that simply isn’t the case: even I, with my 19 years of reviewing experience, am grateful for this process.
I was thinking about that this week while I was testing Sony’s unusual Bravia Theatre Trio home cinema system. I had spent two days listening to it, feeding into it all of my favourite test discs, trying various placements for the speakers, and experimenting with every one of the advanced settings.
I knew I liked it, too. A lot. But I had also identified a couple of minor flaws in its delivery – a slightly exaggerated echo to some dialogue and a rare buzz from the centre speaker – and, try as I might, I just couldn’t resolve alone how much of a problem they were. Was this a five-star product, or were these niggles enough to drop it to a four?
Most reviewers would have no choice but to make that judgement call alone, but I had the tried and tested What Hi-Fi? reviews process to back me up.
Both Ketan Bharadia (Technical Editor) and Lewis Empson (Senior Staff Writer) joined me in our dedicated test room (another rarity in the reviewing biz) for two hours of testing and discussion before we, as a team, settled on a score and an approach for the review: yes, those niggles were worth noting, but they were minor against all of the Bravia Theatre Trio’s many, many strengths, and so it would be getting a coveted five-star rating.
As with all of our reviews, ‘my’ Trio review was checked by Ketan before it was sent for subbing, too, to ensure what I had written reflected what we discussed in the test room. Again, not because my colleagues and I aren’t trusted, but because our reviews are What Hi-Fi? reviews – not the opinions of one writer working in isolation.
There are lots of other ways in which we approach reviewing differently to most – our dedicated testing facilities, using real-world content rather than measurement data, benchmarking against best-in-class price rivals – but I think it’s this mantra of testing as a team that really sets us apart.
And even after 19 years of reviewing products, it's a process I wouldn't want to be without.
📺 What I’ve been watching: The Boys, Season 5
🎶 What I’ve been listening to: Stay by Marley Carroll
⚡ Here are some of my favourite articles from the last few days:
Not sure about needing to test as a team, however if it works for you folks then it works.
Let's not forget, most of us listen to music alone, in grand isolation and for those times when we don't, it's normally at an event of some kind and whether or not the musical presentationn is up to a certain standard is not the primary thing on people's minds.
Also not too sure about products with obvious flaws getting 5 star reviews.
Anyhow, keep doing what you are all doing and I'll keep having a read of what appeals. I don't read everything of course.