Really..?
I thought the recommended badge cheapened the conclusion. There are sites, like Madshrimps, that give these badges to every product that comes across their desk. They never met a free piece of hardware they didn't like.

It seems like a good cross marketing idea. Asus gives SPCR a product to review. The product earns a badge. Asus hopefully updates this particular product page to include the SPCR badge which links back to the review page.

However, unless the badges are exclusive to truly outstanding products, they have little meaning at all and SPCR's reputation gets tarnished in the process.

Well maybe its a bit big... maybe it would be nice to swap it for the normal watermark on review pictures.( for ones on the rec. list.)

A SPCR recommendation is the real deal. Those other sites recommendations don't mean crap.

There are two awards we've introduced.

SPCR Recommended and Editor's Choice. These have been applied retroactively to some products. The Antec CP-850 is an Editor's Choice, for example.

The recommended tags will go to products that will end up in the recommended pages. These pages often get neglected, so the tags will help.

The EC tags are new and reflect a new way that the recommended products will be grouped -- just two grades for each product range -- EC and R. The EC products will be the best of the best, a small group, rather than a single "best" (which was always difficult to justify) or to rank them in some linear progression (also difficult to keep straight due to complex parameters in many cases).

I've avoided this "award" thing for >7 years due to my desire to keep quick dumbed-down assessments out of SPCR. The reality, tho, is that a huge number of people merely scan the first and last pages. So be it. Those who read the entire review will continue to benefit from our comprehensive analysis, but if you don't have time/inclination, then the new award tags will help.

It's true that sample suppliers will be very happy, and maybe some advertisers too. That's not a bad thing, imo. Our standards won't change; we're still about the most persnicky, picky, critical review site around. More than a few sample suppliers have expressed the importance & challenge of impressing SPCR.

As long as SPCR keeps being SPCR. It might end up bringing more review samples.

i think this is a really cynical view on the stamps of approval. I mean..it's basically accusing spcr of inching closer to selling out. I don't think that's whats going on. Do you really think mike and staff would slap this on a product that was loud or poor quality (to name some examples)?

If you answered no to that question, then the stamps of approval do have meaning to you whether you like them or not. And like mike said, a lot of people (myself included) don't always have time to read through every page of the review.

Since you are going to keep the awards, I'd like to offer a couple suggestions.

1. Include silentpcreview.com in the graphic in an easily read font
2. Update the blue 4-letter logo. It just looks dated and unimpressive.
3. Gold border for EC? Silver border for R?

You can get this done cheaply by holding a short (30day) contest where members submit their designs for a chance at relatively inexpensive spcr schwag.

If the award is to honor quality and excellence, it should resemble those traits itself.

care - to place - a bet on that? We most definitely do not hand out a recommended tag to a product which does not deserve it, and at the same time, a product which doesn't get a recommendation isn't necessarily crap. These recommendations are categorized; they are for our readers, if you see a product with a "high end" recommendation, it's most definitely expensive but you'll get performance in return, one recommended for value might not be a top performer but gives a high bang for the buck. there are also plenty of products which don't stand out performance/price wise but might be a new approach, they should be put in a different spotlight if they deserve it. Scroll through this page and if you only look at the "tags" you can see which product will fit closest your goal, in one glance you get the conclusive thoughts without reading the whole review;

our aim of these tags is exactly to negate what you are stating here. Awards are Worthless
[quote]It boils down to the fact that many hardware review sites, big or small, are handing out “Editor Choice Awardsâ€

Since there's no poll, I'll just put in plain words that I like this change. Those little tags make it easier to discern between the Good and the Best. No tag? No interest.

Including numeral values in reviews is good so people can still compare the products, but I absolutely adore the overhauled Recommended Power Supplies list! The change made it that much easier to use, as one glance is enough to tell you what is at the top of the charts without making absolute distinctions between the models. This, in my opinion, is good because the differences can often be subtle or even subjective. No more complaining about why Product A only got an 8.5 and Product B a 9.0!

It's more efficient for reviewers, more efficient for the readers. I think this serves us all best.

Glad to know someone likes it!

It's impossible to keep up the numeral values.
Let's say product A got a 9+ a year ago, and now there's product B that tops it, you're pretty much near that 10 to scale it in there (no product is perfect).

One option is to scale all the numeral values down, but that would probably mean some retired PSU's will drop below a certain value which isn't warranted, or that some older PSU's will drop below a certain value ("I can have my brother's PSU but it's only a 7, so I'm better off bying a brand new one which got a 9").

The other option is to just drop the numeral values, keep the list up to date, and add the tags "recommended" and "editor's choice" - over time, some will drop from the latter category to the first, but it's much more manageable. If you need more info, you can always read the full reviews.