Quality of WHICH reviews of kitchen appliances

katejo

I am considering temporary membership of the above as I need to buy several kitchen appliances soon and want to see independent quality reviews.

Have you tried these? Was it worthwhile? In the past I have always bought Hotpoint and have had a good experience. I know that the original Hotpoint was sold off to a firm in Italy and have seen recent grumbles about them but so far I have not had any problems myself.

poppy10_2

Which reviews are pointless, written by people who don't know what they are talking about, and usualy skewed by influence from certain manufacturers.

Just read the free reviews online.

This is a good place to start:

http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/buying-advice/all-appliances/2633-what-is-in-a-name.html

namecheck

Agree with Poppy10.

(In the past I have bought one or two things on Which's recommendation - and been disappointed).

shirlgirl2004

I too agree with Poppy. I bought a child's car seat because it was highly rated by Which it turned out to have a serious design fault which reduced its safety. I also note they don't actually test the safest car seats on the market because the manufacturers don't offer insentives for doing so. I don't see why car seats would be any different to appliances.

katejo

shirlgirl2004 wrote: »

I too agree with Poppy. I bought a child's car seat because it was highly rated by Which it turned out to have a serious design fault which reduced its safety. I also note they don't actually test the safest car seats on the market because the manufacturers don't offer insentives for doing so. I don't see why car seats would be any different to appliances.

But if they don't test the 'safest' seats (or good value cookers, washing machines etc. ) how does one know that they are the safest ones?

cddc

They do group tests but they do not test every model from every supplier. Their opinions on appliances are quite fair in my opinion. But only on those thay have tested. It may well be that the ones you are after are not ones they have tested!

chrisw

Miele and Bosch always come top for kitchen appliances. Panasonic and Samsung for tvs.

PeggyAnn_2

I don't agree. However I do accept that you shouldn't blindly follow the advice.

We all have our different ways of deciding what to buy but here's what I do.

For me reviews are just a starting point and I look at several sites.

My first point of call is Which as they don't sell domestic appliances so they're completely unbiassed and independent - unlike a lot of advice out there. Which also actually test the items in their labs. Additionally they do reliability and customer satisfaction surveys of the various brands with a large enough sample size to be significant. Not all brands are good across all types of appliances, and the difference is smaller with some types of appliance than others.

I find their very useful explanation of the various features combined with their ratings allows me to draw up a short list of appliances that both give me the benefits I'm looking for together with good performance, plus good reliability and after sales.

Importantly though this doesn't always tell you how the appliances perform long term and some of the quirks. So I then look at the customer reviews that Which now do, although there are relatively few of these. However if you combine these with other review sites (such as Reevoo) you get a huge amount of data. With this I can usually knock a good proportion of the appliances off the short list.

This filtering usually gets me down to less than a handful of appliances on a new short list. Then it's a matter of weighing up the pros and cons, but it often comes down to price.

So for me Which membership is well worthwhile. And all for the minimal cost for a trial of £1 that'll almost certainly pay for itelf.

fwor

Many (most? all?) public libraries have a Which subscription, so you can view the magazines, and also possibly the online service, though at mine I think you have to pay for the internet access to get to the latter.

I don't place a huge amount of value on their reports - because their buying criteria seldom match mine very well - but some of the stuff they publish is still useful and interesting.

namecheck

fwor wrote: »

Many (most? all?) public libraries have a Which subscription, so you can view the magazines, and also possibly the online service, though at mine I think you have to pay for the internet access to get to the latter.

I don't place a huge amount of value on their reports - because their buying criteria seldom match mine very well - but some of the stuff they publish is still useful and interesting.

I was going to suggest this. Certainly not worth paying for a subscription (IMO).

katejo

fwor wrote: »

Many (most? all?) public libraries have a Which subscription, so you can view the magazines, and also possibly the online service, though at mine I think you have to pay for the internet access to get to the latter.

I don't place a huge amount of value on their reports - because their buying criteria seldom match mine very well - but some of the stuff they publish is still useful and interesting.

I did look at copies in the library once but think it would be easier to search for the more recent reports online particularly as I want to check several different appliances. If the library now has online access, I would have to pay for the online time. Think i might do as Peggyann suggests and have a trial membership to narrow down my search.

One thing that really puts me off any appliance is when it is only available online so I can't go and look at it in a store.