Personally I think there are two main issues here. With respect to people reviewing gear they purchased and then reviewed, it needs to be a treated as a critical review and most people just don’t care to take the extra work to do that. They are usually excited one way or another about the gear and write the review accordingly.

For gear that was provided for review (like all the mags), I think there is a hesitancy to negatively review gear due to the implication that they may not continue to have good relations with the companies.

For me its the aforementioned 1st gen Trango Cinch – it was impossible to lower someone with that thing due to the tiny handle. I also have a particular screw locking biner (can’t remember brand/model) that always sticks the way it was designed.

Shoes are so personal though, I guess they’d be hard to objectively say good or bad except in the case of poor manufacturing quality. With the main companies these days though, we’re usually assured of quality product.

I was thinking about the double ropes after your comment on my blog last night, Luke. We’ve climbed on those doubles a few times now, what kind of review would I give them?

Well, they seem to be perfectly fine. They didn’t blow to pieces when we rapped on them. They haven’t been shedding thread or behaving poorly. I couldn’t think of a single bad thing to say about them. So, should everybody buy these exact doubles? Probably not, and that’s because you can do better if you want to spend the money and if it matters to you (lighter weight, bi-pattern, dry coating, etc).

Would that be an honest review then? “They haven’t killed me yet, but that doesn’t mean you should buy them!”

I have decided that I don’t have a specific point here. I guess I look at the list of links up there and wonder why I should even read them. I know they’re all going to like their purchases, everybody is going to recommend the gear, and we’ll all go home happy. Maybe, instead of reviews, we should just start calling them “recommendations.”

Also when I find a has a flaw in a piece of gear it can be hard to find something better. Or if there is something better it is prohibitively expensive, as I mentioned before.

Luke – For the most part I agree, but I also think that a) no piece of gear is perfect for everyone and b) I have found the occasional peice of crappy gear (ex. first generation Trango Cinch)

Its hard to have a “good” negative review. Most seem to err on the side of ranting instead of being informative.

But, it got me thinking again. How often do we see negative reviews? If you just read gear reviews, you’d think that every new toy is full of awesome. Surely, that’s not the case, is it? Maybe all reviews are positive because all gear is good? Or maybe we just don’t want to admit it when we’ve spent money on crap?

Nice! Didn’t see that in my reader when I compiled this. I love both Miura’s myself!

http://dreaminvertical.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/sweet-gear-la-sportiva-miura-vs/

Enjoy!