Here comes a reflection after a few years of review reading. In a strive to give a measure of how good or bad a product is you often see ratings on a scale from 1-10. Both professional an private reviewers do this. And here’s my question: Have you ever seen a rating below 7? 5 anyone? NO, every bloody review starts att 8 and most ratings ar 9 or above, often in 0,5 steps. Why is this? It’s totaly pointless! Does anyone have their first steel racket in mind when they review a high end product. If they do, why? My suggestion is to use a rating from 1-5 (no half steps, but maybe an extra plus or minus) 1. bad 2. ok 3. average 4. good 5. very good This I can understand. What say YOU?
I think this rating system give a better reflection of a racket review. This words are easy to understand. I think if a review is normalized. It's easier to compare different rackets or close rackets from different companies. If everybody would do it with this chapters: 0. Pricing Rating 1 to 5 1. first impression (paintjob, feeling by holding it, bending the shaft) Rating 1 to 5 2. Setup (string tension, string type) 3. Warmup Rating 1 to 5 4. Overhead shots (clear, bh clear, smash, drop shot, bh drop shot) Rating 1 to 5 5. Net play Rating 1 to 5 6. Defence Rating 1 to 5 7. Game time (Type: singles / doubles) Rating 1 to 5 8. Overall perfomance Rating 1 to 5 (calculated by sum the points from chapter 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 and divide them by 6) 9. Compare it with other rackets in your stock I think if this system will be use, some rackets wouldn't be overrated anymore. What do you think?
There's another thread discussing this exact same point somewhere... I think the argument is that people wouldn't have bought the racket in the first place unless they were fairly sure they'd like it, and therefore they're bound to give it a high score (people generally don't review rackets they don't own). Plus they likely don't have much to compare against, apart from other quite similar rackets (not many people will own both a superlight racket, and a super-heavy racket). What bothers me though, is when people take into account the racket specs, price, etc. They'll give a head-heavy 3U racket "8/10" for defense, because they think it's good for such a heavy racket. If you consider a superlight 5U racket would get a "10/10" and a head-heavy 2U racket would get a "1/10", NO 3U racket should EVER be getting more than about "5/10" on defense. It just makes the scores totally meaningless.
Yea, just as I thought. Most things has been discussed before. This time I didn't do my research properly. Sorry! Your points are valid Sketchy. And there are more problems to add. Reviewing a product is not easy. Time is one problem. What was the best last year isn't the best this year. And just think of all the products to come. Price is another problem. Should a product be measured with or without the price in mind? And whats good for me is probably not as good for you. People are different by default. Our experiences differ and it is impossible to be absolutely unbiased. But that's not bad as long as you know who is writing and what that person stands for. But back to my mainpoint. What does the figures really mean? In a scale from 1-10 everything above 7 has to be considered as very good, and I have never seen anything below 7. I have played with a lot of rackets but none of them has been very good at everything. Not even close.
The problem with the 1-10 or 1-5 scale is that the midpoints of 5 and 3 respectively are considered the boundary between good and bad. I think that no racquet that people will discuss on this forum can be considered 'bad' so no ranking would fall below 5 or 3. And as new racquets are released that surpass the old ones a ranking of 10 doesnt work anymore either. I just use reviews to see what people think of the build quality, if they find it breaks easily, then I will find another racquet that is similar and doesn't break.