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A Reasonable Ratings System


[Update: This has been redacted. There's a new, more reasonable rating system in place now.]

Shoppers usually have to consider how much they’re willing to sacrifice quality for a lower price, and how much more they’re willing to spend for greater quality. For any given product, consumers’ desires form something like a normal distribution.

the Bell curve--a normal distribution

At the extreme left are the skinflints willing to risk embarrassingly low quality to save money; on the extreme right are the fanatics willing to unload their wallets for 3% better performance. Usually, though, people aren’t all that extreme: most people will gladly pay a little more for a clearly superior product–but not a lot more for a marginal improvement.

We try to make recommendations that are reasonable for as many consumers as possible. We look for reasonable maxima, those “sweet spots,” of price, quality, and performance, so that our recommendations always meet or exceed our readers’ expectations.

We know that our choices are not all equally reasonable, however. Home electronics are constantly changing and shifting and advancing, and no DVD player can reasonably be given the same proud recommendation as the reliable motorcycle that’s been around for 20 years and is still being produced and sold in large numbers.

So we rate our product listings on a very reasonable 5-star scale. The best rating of 5 stars is the most inclusive (95% of shoppers), and each lower rating acknowledges that another segment of the consuming population may prefer to do their own shopping. Note that we’re not necessarily rating the specific quality or performance of the products in isolation, but rather their reasonableness, which also includes price, availability, interoperability and other aspects of the consumer experience.

The Ratings


The consensus. Beyond best-in-class, and probably been that way for awhile; there are simply no close seconds. These products are the passion behind Reasonable Goods. If you find a five-star product unreasonable, I may have to find you unreasonable, and I’m sure others will agree.


Best-in-class. There’s no reason not to buy this item, but there are probably competitors and you might be able to save a few bucks getting a reasonable deal on another product, or spend a few more bucks and get something much more reasonably suited to your needs. There isn’t an ultrareasonable item in this category, but you will not be disappointed with this purchase. You or one of your friends probably has one of these already. We’ve tried some of the other ones, and this one is still the most reasonable unless you know you want something else, in which case, go shopping!


A fine choice. Nothing in this category really stands out as exceptional, at least nothing at any reasonable price point. For many consumer goods, the product makes and models change so frequently that it’s difficult to predict the long-term quality of any one item. You will probably find this item reasonable, and we try to mention the downsides in case any one of them is a dealbreaker. You aren’t going to find anything any more reasonable for much cheaper.

[I cut "moderately reasonable" (two stars) and "not entirely unreasonable" (one star), which just lopped off half-sigma-sized chunks of the bell.]

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