Whatever happened to the Gold Star rating?
Dear What Hi-Fi Sound and Vision
Scanning through a few old mags the other day, WHFI used to give award winners gold stars. At the same time I looked at the first test you gave to the Cyrus CD6SE, and the review writer concluded: "The CD6SE is a landmark product that redefines the performance level at its price point. If we could award more than five stars, we would."
That got me thinking: If a product is really exceptional for its price bracket like the ATC SCM11s, Caspian M2 etc etc could you not reintroduce and award these products with the gold stars?
Exceptional: five gold stars; excellent: five red stars; very good: four red....
Thanks, pp
Andrew Everard:I think, as I seem to recall we decided at the time, that the use of stars of many colours was felt to be just too confusing.
and I think there were some concerns about colour-blind readers getting confused
Indeed.
The gold stars were only ever used in the Buyer's Guide, to highlight Award-winning products.
However, reader research showed that they confused people (they thought it was a super-high rating). Add in the fact that Award winners typically get dethroned faster these days - due to product churn - you'd have the potential of a regular, red, five-star product actually being better than the gold-star previous Award winner (still in the Buyer's Guide).
So we dumped the gold stars and added the Best Buys page (since also here online) for a snapshot of some of our favourite products.
I like the expression "product churn" Clare, it conjures up all sorts of strange images. Maybe it's just me, though...
I think, as I seem to recall we decided at the time, that the use of stars of many colours was felt to be just too confusing.
Consulting Editor, What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision/whathifi.com Audio Editor, Gramophone