Interpretatie, objectiviteit en vergelijking met andere beoordelingen

Waarom ik met deze tests begon: Slechte beoordelingen in tijdschriften en verspreidde informatie op websites en forums

De eerste tests, van fietspompen en fietsverlichting, waren geïnspireerd door de slechte tests in vnl. Duitse en Nederlandse tijdschriften waar ik me in 2007 nogal aan ergerde, maar ook beoordeling op internet van fietsspullen waren niet al te best (overigens, een vroege versie van de zadelervaringen pagina stond al veel langer op een ander deel van mijn website). Mijn tests die ik sind 2008 op deze website heb staan geven een voorbeeld over hoe zaken behoren te worden aangepakt, (enigszins) wetenschappelijk en redelijk diepgaand dus! Hiervoor is in de meeste gevallen echt geen dure apparatuur nodig. Deze pagina's waren eigenlijk bedoeld om bv. de redactie van het blad 'Fiets' een voorbeeld te geven, maar ook de lezers van het forum van dat blad (http://forum.fiets.nl), maar redactie noch de lezers van het forum toonden enige interesse. Met wat moeite kan er een goede database van informatie worden samengesteld van bv. minipompen zoals ik voorstelde, maar men is liever lui dan moe (vanwege o.a. de desinteresse op dat forum kom ik er niet meer). Hoe het wel moet kan u bv. zien op http://www.mtb-news.de/forum/ waar de Duitsers er weer goed tegenaan gaan. Nou ja, sommigen. Ook daar wemelt het van de ondeskundigen en de 'bullshit artists' (mensen die doen alsof ze ergens iets vanaf weten, of zelfs veel van af weten, maar er eigenlijk geen verstand van hebben; Je weet pas dat iemand een 'bullshit artist' is als je je dieper in de materie stort).

Wat betreft de Duitse bladen, die meestal diepgaand zijn, daar ben ik ook niet tevreden over (*), en ik zal voorbeeld geven: Ergens eind jaren 90 dacht ik er aan een roldynamo op mijn fiets te zetten. In een exemplaar van Tour rond die tijd stond een artikel over zelfbouw verlichting, zoals met accu (die in een bidon werd behuisd) en ook roldynamo's kwamen aan bod. Van de Union roldynamo werd gezegd dat er mensen zijn die dat ding zoveel gebruikten dat het rolwieltje versleten was. Uiteindelijk heb ik er nooit één gekocht, wat maar goed ook is. Die mensen van Tour hadden zelf nog nooit een roldynamo gebruikt, tenzij misschien bij mooi weer, en de mensen die erover vertelden dat deze dynamo bevalt, ook niet, wat gezien de problemen die ik heb meegemaakt met deze roldynamo in mijn verlichtings test wel duidelijk is, want kritiek over die dynamo las ik niet. Dus die mensen van Tour hebben die roldynamo echt niet serieus getest. Tour diepgaand? Ik dacht het niet. En dat is dus geen recent probleem, dat was toen al zo. Ook bij andere recente bladen valt het me zwaar tegen. Ik ben al jaren van mening dat tijdschriften op allerlei gebied door het internet grotendeels overbodig zijn, en dat geldt ook bij fietstijdschriften. Af en toe koop ik er een, maar echt nuttig is dat eigenlijk niet. Tijdschriften zullen moeten gaan veranderen, of ze worden totaal overbodig...

Toevoeging 2008-11-18: (*) Misschien is er toch nog een goed Duits blad, nl. 'Aktiv Radfahren'. Dit ben ik al verscheidene malen tegengekomen op het web met goede informatie, en de recente lampentest is veelbelovend. 'Tour' blijft me teleurstellen...

Toevoeging 2010-7-15: Voor meer over het probleem van slechte tests, maar dan veroorzakt door corruptie, zie mijn analyse en commentaar over een bericht op bikeradar.com (dat bericht is niet de enige aanduiding dat zulke corruptie bij tijdschriften plaatsvindt): Opmerkingen over reviews op bikeradar.

Toevoeging 2010-12-31: Een voorbeeld hoe slecht de tests in Tour worden gedaan: Tour 2011-1: Fietsverlichtingstest

Samenvattend:

Criticism on newsgroups, forums etc.

The rest of this page is a long story with examples of problems I had already encountered since ca. 1996-1997 in discussions on newsgroups, where people do not respond properly, either logically or by being crude and making totally nonsensical statements. I made a page with explanation of argumentation problems that you will encounter too if you engage in discussions, which is fairly short, but still has examples.

Objectiviteit en weten waar je het over hebt

De rest moet nog vertaald worden naar NL.

What I write in my tests/reviews is objective in the sense that from principles there is good reason to say something is bad or good, e.g. the user interface of especially Sigma bike computers and the beam shape of in particular the Cyo RT headlamp is bad, not because I 'feel' this, no they are bad and there are lots of objective reasons for that. That some people like these computers or headlamps that I criticize is no reason to say that my arguments nor conclusions are biased. On the contrary. The whole point of my tests is that almost no one properly tests and even less so explains.

So when someone on the forum of the Dutch magazine 'Fiets' posted a message not long after I posted about the problems I had with the vibration of the SON28, in which he said "this hub works fine without vibrations and that the person who complained about it probably just spun the wheel by hand" I got annoyed because in ALL my posting everywhere I give lots of details and arguments. This inane message was by a guy who cannot even understand that the details I gave implies that I am not someone who just "spins a wheel by hand", and in such cases I am not going to be friendly in my response. Such people are bullshit artists, which is a term describing people who barely know anything about a given subject but declare their limited experience as 'this is how it is'. They only pollute forums with their disinformation. Besides my reviews, forums are generally the best source of information (and not magazines!), but there you have the problem of deciding whose information is valid. You can only recognize bullshit artists once you know a lot about the subject matter...

Forums where bullshit artists are not so much a problem are most German language forums, candlepowerforums.com and the mtbr forums (They are kept mostly in check there by people who do know what they are talking about). Elsewhere it's really pathetic, also because of fanboys and people who feel the need to defend their purchase of an expensive product (esp. in case of the SON28).

With bicycle saddles it's more complicated in some sense than with bicycle lighting as each saddle's suitability depends on the sit bone width of the rider and the riding position. This means, as I state from the start, that this is a limitation in my tests. I don't know a bunch of guys similarly critical to myself (which I mean in the sense of observant about all details, not in the sense of being negative) but with different sit bone widths, who can try out all the saddles as I do, and report on them. So, my reviews on saddles are subjective only in the sense that the saddles are tested by someone (me) who has a specific sit bone width.

Comparison of my reviews with other reviews

If you compare my reviews with those in magazines, then you have to keep in mind that magazines almost always do a very poor job of reviewing. This isn't my opinion, this is a fact. Further on I comment on some postings on a forum where some people say my conclusions are subjective because they differ in some cases from other reviews. That is so absurd, it's like reading a piece by Kafka.

• It is first of all ridiculous as with that reasoning only reviews that are similar are 'unbiased'. If all other reviews are similar, they are not 'unbiased', but simply 'similar' (or on might say 'average'). Those are quite different concepts... It reminds me of measurements by Millikan of the electric charge e, which was in fact too low. Later researchers only got slightly different outcomes by fiddling with the data because they thought Millikan must be right. This meant published results kept increasing a little bit over time... See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment. I have no respect for 'authority figures' so if I think someone is wrong, I will say it immediately. And that's what I did for example with Peter White who gave me a bullshit story that vibrations with the SON28 would be gone by tightening the skewer. Of course he never responded to my explanation that what he said was wrong...
• Second of all, not agreeing with other (poorly done) reviews is the whole point of why I made these web pages with reviews of bicycle components. I explicitly stated that and gave examples from the day I made them!

See my review of the review of bicycle lighting in Tour as an example of how badly most reviews are done. This has always been my experience of magazine reviews in various stints that I read them in the last 15 years...

Well, except for the lighting reviews in Aktiv Radfahren (at least from 2010 and earlier, the latest test from end of 2011 is questionable), but then, Olaf Schultz takes part in those tests/reviews (see his website http://www.enhydralutris.de/Fahrrad/Beleuchtung/Beleuchtung.html, in German; if you read German you will understand why, as this means the tests have a good basis...). He restricts himself mostly to measurements, but makes some notes as do I, for example that Supernova lamps don't get anywhere near to what the manufacturer promises (I explain a bit more why this is so), and about reflectors he notes for example that some design decisions are a 'more is better' choice which is not good (see his section on the Philips SLD/Saferide 60). This is no different from me but I include more factors, such as light colour: No, bluish is not good, purplish is unacceptable. Reasons are given on these webpages (see for example Annoyances caused by lamps). Etc., etc. etc..

Examples of invalid criticism about my reviews of bicycle lighting

On a US website (bikeforums.net) there a bunch of people who don't know what they're talking about, but act as if they do, which resulted in this section. Lack of knowledge in itself is no problem, but if such people make it look like I don't know what I'm talking about or I am nitpicking, then I will harshly criticize them.

Here are some examples of silly behaviour on that website:

1. In January 2011 I read a few postings by people who thought my reviews are subjective (in particular because I don't like the SON28 dynamo hub). As an argument they gave that my conclusions differ a lot in some cases from other reviews. But as I explained earlier, that's the whole point of my reviews, it was and still is explicitly stated on my webpages that almost all other reviews are worthless, and I gave details of why most other reviews are bad since the start of my website, not just on the index page for the tests, but in the review section (later the separate review page) of the SON28 where I question why nobody else talked about vibrations of the hub! So, this is simply nonsense by people who only look at a few things and then form an uninformed opinion.
   
   I look at all the good and bad points that I can find/think of, then give a conclusion depending on those good/bad points, and in various cases of headlamps for example I leave it open as to how good or bad lamp is, compared to others, because some are better suited to specific uses. My conclusions can only be interpreted as subjective by someone who doesn't take all the good and bad points into account. But these people can't see that.
   
2. Some time later there was a thread on the same forum about the Philips SLD vs. B&M Cyo. I will give a few examples of the mistakes these people made:
   1. Not making the distinction between Cyo-Nahfeld and Cyo-sport. The beam shape and light intensity differ a lot between those 2 and that is mentioned just about everywhere, including on B&M's website. So why don't they know that?
   2. Using a battery to power dynamo headlamps to compare their brightness which is wrong, no, pointless even for dynamo use, as dynamo headlamps have converter circuitry to give a higher current than 0.50A to the LED which is designed to work on dynamos (AC, 0.50A), so you won't get the right impression running on a battery. B&M warn about using batteries in the instructions, that doing so is at your own risk, although they do say it is possible; With the Philips SLD it's also possible but brightness differences between them vary on the how the circuitry deals with DC. Note that even though you can use dynamo powered headlamps on a battery this is obviously not optimal, it's better to modify them to bypass the internal driver.
   3. Not reading the accompanying text to beamshots. This is necessary as beamshots do not tell the whole story! (due to dynamic range limitations, perspective over-accentuation of the near field, and accomodation of the eye to the brightest light source i.e. a lamp can look good on pictures but be bad in practice if the near field is illuminated too brightly). I explicitly mention such problems on the Cyo-RT review page (where I describe how the Cyo-RT's beam shape really is) and the problem of perspective over-accentuation is an important part of the E3-pro-StVZO review page!
   Yes, when making all those mistakes one can get to a different conclusion than me about dynamo headlamps, but a wrong one!
   
   One guy made a comment about my dislike of the Cyo RT's beam that I "don't understand shaped beams". This guy either didn't check the link to my website (which means he's an idiot), or he did check the link and has to have seen how thorough my review and my website is (in which case he's also an idiot). This is the same type of bullshit artist as the one on the Dutch forum who said I "probably just spun the wheel by hand".
   
   There was another phenomenon shown in that thread, namely the showing of loss of authority. It's funny how some people whom I contradict say they know what they are talking about because they have been posting there for a long time and/or have ridden bikes for a long time. That is in no way correlated to knowledge... It's a common problem, not limited to cycling, where some people treat a forum as their own, think they know the facts just because they post a lot there and feel they have a certain authority there. Those who feel they have some authority feel threatened by others who do know the facts, and who contradict them. Such people are even worse than simple bullshit artists.
   

And yet, such people think (some say, others imply) I don't know what I'm talking about or that I'm a nitpicker... Well, those people who don't properly read and who are obviously not critical will think that. If it weren't so sad, I could be laughing about it. From the responses to my posts it's clear there's no point in wasting my time there any further.

And yet others, despite reading my criticism here do the same again, sad!

Ah yes, and another few examples here, of SON28 fanclub members on google groups: http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. Two noteworthy posts are:

• By 'Kelly Sleeper': who makes a bunch of mistakes and misinterpretations:
  • "the author indicated that higher speeds the hub was had less drag", which I do NOT say about any dynamo hub, and obviously not, as that is imposssible...
  • "Many of the reviews and statements are based on 2007/2008 evaluations. Check the dates.", I agree you should check the dates! Then you will see that he's talking bullshit! Why doesn't this guy follow his own advice?
  • That I am "rather smug in the retaliation of other blogs or what not". Smug? No, I can see the humour in people not understanding what I write then saying I don't understand the issues or that I am biased because they feel hurt I don't like the products that they bought. But most of all I am annoyed at people like him who cannot read, don't do effort to understand what I write, and don't know what they are talking about, as evidenced by the mistakes he makes. That I am harsh in my criticism about people like him is entirely justified.
• Then we have the one critical comment that is a little bit interesting by "Michael Richters":
  • He says testing hubs in isolation is needed. Well, loose testing can be useful like lumen/lux measurements of a light beam, but he doesn't understand that loose testing is not required to get the same result (or in fact more results, as you need a reference of what loose vibrations mean, what they result in, which frequencies matter, etc.! Lumen/lux values also don't mean anything in isolation, they are ony useful in a supporting role in a review/examination) as in-bike testing. The essence is to get a relative strength of vibrations and see how they annoy in real use, when they disappear in the road shocks. This also means taking into account handlebar, grips, road surfaces. Testing a hub in isolation is not needed if you control the other variables. I can go into more details about tests done, different tyres, etc., but this website is already very big. I cannot write it all down. If this guy thinks he's writing about something I haven't thought of or taken into account in my considerations, experiences and measurements, then he is badly mistaken.
  • Then he says that the vibration depends on each bike. Oh, whoopty doo, that the vibration depends on each bike is something I said since 2008 on my website. It seems he hasn't properly read my website or deliberately writes this despite having read what I write about this, thus making it look as if this is something I don't mention on my website. However, this doesn't mean the SON28 will be near vibration free where others are not. The jolts of the SON28 are stronger, there is no way around it. I can go into more detail, number of poles, vibration peak width, etc. but I won't because it's pointless arguing with such people.
  • He makes a ludicrous claim that tests should be done blind to avoid knowing which one it is. I have no stock in any of these companies, I say it like I feel it. If he doesn't believe that and that I can feel the differences then he should go read magazine reviews because they are really great, in depth and unbiased.
  • He makes a false requirement for being objective, namely that multiple wheels would need to be built with different rims. This is nonsense! If you want to examine the influence of the wheel mass on vibrations you just build a wheel with one rim, and use multiple tyres of various masses. I write in my discussion of the vibrations issue that mass of the rim, tyre are an influence, but that does not mean that you need to test with different rims because what's important is total mass of tyre+rim, esp. because rims/tyres are close together. It seems he has just copied those factors I mentioned, then says those factors all need to be tested which is untrue, which shows he doesn't understand the issue.
  • He also says "and regardless of claims of objectivity, the author's observations are just as subjective as anyone else's". Ah yes, written by someone who makes ridiculous requirements for being objective, and false requirements for being objective (the different rims + testing a hub in isolation). Because it's not necessary to test a hub in isolation, he doesn't in fact give any real arguments why my dynamo hub vibration tests are subjective, which means that what he says reduces to 'he is subjective because I say so'. How drôle. So this Richters guy is just another guy to avoid, like those guys on bikeforums.net...

Despite these 2 guys having read my criticism of invalid arguments, they do exactly the same. And in doing so they confirm exactly the problem on forums/newsgroups etc.: Bullshit artists.

Update 2013-1-3: Kelly Sleeper emailed me that I criticized him on an 'obscure website' rather than on the groups. Uhm, yes, that is this website, the website everyone in the bicycle lighting business reads... And I did post via google on that google group but perhaps something went wrong with the posting? It says 'All new members are moderated'. Perhaps the moderators didn't let my postings through? I didn't check as I didn't read that group any more as it seemed pointless due to various factors I explain on this page). In any event, he criticizes me for supposedly only writing my criticism here, but he did the same as what he criticises me for. He criticised me/my website on some group (a truly obscure source that I only happened to stumble on) and he did not email me about that. So what the hell is he criticising me for? Even if I hadn't posted on google groups then it would have been no different than what he did. He says I'm a coward for evading discussion posting on my website only. LOL. If anything will tell you this guy is a BS artist, this is it. It should be completely obvious to anyone reading my site that I do not evade any discussions with anyone, but I also have no intention of wasting too much of my time (see the rest of this page and the others on the problems you can have on some forums: if there is for example the problem of authoritarian BS-artists then I won't visit that forum any more as then it's pointless to discuss antyhing). I have criticized various people and companies directly, in forums where they post, or via email. I do not evade anything, and that I do so is another ludicrous interpretation he makes. He also claimed what he says was 'opinion based and accurate'. Wrong! False statements are not opinion, they are just wrong. The view he still has that I'm smug is also wrong, as should be clear when reading my website and this page. Then he says I use a lot of space to attack him personally without ever addressing the actual opinion. Uhm wake up please! I quoted 3 of his statements which I criticised. I also mentioned that this type of posting by him is an example of how people give disinformation, and thus that he is a bullshit artist, yes, but I didn't 'use a lot of space to attack him personally'. So this guy, in his email does exactly the same thing as he did in that posting on google groups, writing nonsense. Note: I am willing to discuss anything (contrary to what mr. Sleeper claims) but am not interested in such inane responses. In his email he again displays no reading comprehension e.g by 'missing' the fact that I countered 3 of his arguments, and this made me think of a comment I heard when I saw a TV programme while visiting someone: It is the TV programme 'Storage wars' and one of the guys said about how to respond to someone else's bidding: "There is no strategy against crazy".

I've experienced the same things in Linux newsgroups in the 1990s. Such people are often, similar to many SON28 owners, like religious fanatics. There is no point arguing with them, and they in fact never give any real arguments, just say that people who disagree are wrong, don't know what they are talking about etc. The reverse is of course the case in both situations.

Btw., I talked with someone from a trade magazine not long ago and she said there was a discussion to make a forum open to all, and there was strong opposition to it, exactly because of such issues...

And btw2, someone wiser than most people told me about this problem: "The problem as it always is, is that you should never argue with a fool as observers may not know which is the fool". LOL. He is right, but I try it sometimes, as I dislike that some people give disinformation. Not necessarily about me, but about the subjects at hand in general.

Actually, I wrote something comparable about similar issues some time ago to someone else, though I wrote this in quite a different context, namely:

So, a developer for FreeBSD used an interesting line as a tag, which became more clear as I got older. It's relevant to this situation but others too (such as nagging), and makes fun of it:

'Never try to teach a pig to sing, it just makes you look stupid and irritates the pig.'

This tells you that you should consider whether there is a point in doing something, or of continuing to do something, such as to try to persuade people about your point of view, or try to get them to do something. At some point you should realise that if it didn't work after trying for a while, it will never work...

And btw3, just FYI: I don't write this commentary because I feel offended, nor do I comment about this on those forums for that reason (in case I think there might be some point), no, I do this to set the record straight, to give proper information first of all and not let others get mislead. I was annoyed enough by bad reviews in the past that did not give me good guidance on buying something, that as I said earlier on this page, I started these reviews. There was no commercial motive involved for making the reviews, I am simply interested in improving matters, this is also why I make suggestions to manufacturers. I try to set the record straight in a few other fields as well, to give counterbalance to actually-biased people. E.g. about cameras on the dpreview forums. In the case of cameras: I have made no reviews and the various review sites such as dpreview.com, imaging-resource.com, dcresource.com, photographyblog.com do a fairly good job. Each has some weak points but this is incomparable to the huge weaknesses in reviews of bicycle equipment in magazines and most websites. But there is a lot of mistrust on lots of forums about reviews, esp. if they do not praise a certain camera highly enough. Setting the record straight is also why further on I have a section on 'suspect material', which I should expand a bit perhaps as it's not really enough, but to be honest, it is really difficult to give simple criteria, as you almost need to be an expert to judge if someone else knows what he's talking about...

Rebuttals to criticism about my reviews of the Cyo RT and SON28

The Cyo RT headlamp is a very poor lamp: very dim, and has a very bad beam shape (for psychological reasons, as I explain on my review page). The beam shape made me irritated and I have seen references to other people not liking it for similar reasons which are related to this bad beam shape: The very strict trapezoidal shape gives a feeling of driving in a tunnel, which is in some sense claustrophobic (hard to explain properly, but try any other lamp and you should be able to feel this too).

If anyone doesn't think it's a bad lamp, fine, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a bad lamp for the objective reasons given. Such people probably didn't use better headlamps or they are not critical. Note also the example I give on the review page of the E3 pro StVZO about the Philips SLD which has too much light close by: This is like an annnoying background noise. You may not consciously notice it but it can annoy subsconsciously. And I notice all these sorts of issues with all lamps. That others don't notice or don't care doesn't mean I am subjective, but that they are doing a poor job reviewing.

I don't like the SON28 hub dynamo because of the vibrations. Whatever mechanical superiority it has over other dynamos is just about moot. I suppose I haven't explained this consideration well enough, but I thought it was obvious. This is because all dynamo hubs are pretty good in quality, Shimano's and Sanyo's top dynamos are almost as good as Schmidt's dynamos, they last for many years in bad conditions. The slightly smaller drag compared to the Sanyo or Shimano dynamo hubs is just about irrelevant for me (see the calculations) and the price difference makes it an uninteresting proposition to buy one for the longer warranty. What the SON28 has that they don't, is the pressure equalizing system, which btw. can fail in various circumstances. Do you need that pressure equalisation system? If not, then what remains to decide between dynamo hubs is how it looks and how nicely it works. And then we get to the subject of vibrations, which in the SON 28 are the worst of any dynamo hub I tested. This results in a hub that is mechanically the best, and it was electrically the best until SP introduced its series 8 dynamo hubs (I'm assuming here that the SP efficiency values are correct), but as a product it definitely isn't the best. I give some more comments about these issues and other reasons why some people recommend the SON28 (which are: outdated information and the need to defend their own purchase of an expensive product) on the page about vibrations with dynamo hubs.

How to recognise suspect material (on websites, in postings, in magazines)

If you want to counter arguments I give on my website, then please don't refer to 'reviews' with obviously bogus values. For example I've seen an article about bicycle lighting that includes a table that says you can cycle at 50 km/h with 500 W and 30 km/h with 130 W. That's ludicrous for considerations about bicycle lighting as this only works on a time trial bike with an aero suit while sitting in a very deep time trial position. These values are far too low for calculations for normal bicycles with wider tyres, fenders, sitting up more upright etc. This means any views, or data, in such articles are very suspect. You can apply this reasoning everywhere. Someone who gives several obviously bogus values doesn't know enough or doesn't do any proper research/calculations.

Brand loyalty?

I have no brand loyalty, and brands I like or dislike are treated the same with respect to a review of those lamps. I do add my notes of what I think of how firms act/respond and for example I say about the E3-pro-StVZO headlamp that the conclusion for me is different from my review conclusion, because I don't buy from companies such as Supernova who behave in the manner as they do. I also have criticism about Philips in how they respond to email etc., but this is a problem you will encounter with all large companies: The larger a company, the less likely you are to get a (meaningful) response. This is true in all fields, not just bicycles... Trelock is even worse, they never replied to emails I sent with questions about their products.

I also don't care which country a firm is from. Philips may be Dutch, but the Philips bike lamps are German designed (by the German automotive section of Philips) and made in China (as almost everything in the world these days ;-)) so if anything they are mostly German, then Chinese, then Dutch. I don't favour a Dutch brand, in fact, I think most Dutch brands that make bicycle lighting are producing mostly rubbish (headlamps in particular) that I don't even consider reviewing. Well actually, I told some Dutch makers of lamps that I think their taillamps are not just bad, but antisocial because they shine their light as in a point source which annoys following traffic a lot and makes estimating distance impossible. These people should know better after decades of being in this business, therefore they deserve harsh criticism.

What makes a good review?

The criticisms about my reviews are not just from end-users for various reasons as explained on this page and on the overview page about discussions on forums, but there is also puzzlement by manufacturers as to why I dislike certain headlamps/taillamps (even though I name the reasons on my website everywhere, but I guess this is caused by selective reading...). This is not surprising in some sense, as they need to do proper testing (which most of them do NOT seem to do), otherwise they would know why I criticize a product. My review criteria take a lot of factors into account, far more than any other review I have seen, but all are necessary:

• Human-senses factors are physical, psychological and physiological. End-products are NOT for robots, but for humans, therefore human factors are what you need to look at. Many of the factors I include can not be found in any other reviews because those people do not do proper comparative testing, nor are those people critical enough.
• Physical factors for parts of the product that are not or barely related to an experience by human senses, namely things like efficiency and for dynamos: power production. For these parts measurements are needed. These factors are usually dwarfed by the human-senses factors... (power output in most dynamos is similar, and efficiency doesn't matter much regarding speed loss, so what you're left with is the issue of vibrations).
• Measurements are NOT a review! Measurements are only a supplementary part that can give some indications as to why one lamp is better than another. But you don't need them to see that that one lamp is better than the other. For dynamos, power output measurements are important in case of multiple LEDs or USB devices, efficiency is hardly an issue for most people as you can see in the calculations on my main bicycle lights page. So with dynamos some measurements are important in some cases.
• Comparative sections between the device being tested (headlamps, taillamps, dynamos, whatever) and other devices are important to identify the differences in devices and to be able to give advice as to which device is better in which circumstances.

For more on the interpretation problems and factors involved in determining the good and bad points of a headlamp and taillamp, see these pages:
-> Camera: Interpretation of beamshots (This is important because beamshots do not show what human vision sees in reality).
-> Headlamps: Lots of issues (e.g. why lux ratings are important for headlamps with cutoff).
-> Taillamps: Lots of issues (what you need, want, don't want etc.).

Send your comments!

From the above it should be clear that I am not interested in infantile comments such as what many SON28 owners like to spout on forums, who say I am biased, but don't give any proper arguments.

But if you disagree with something I wrote in a review, or have another viewpoint, and you are serious about discussing it, then I am certainly interested. Send me an email and with viewpoint/arguments and I'll think about it...

Last modified: Tue Feb 19 20:33:23 CET 2013