No the appliances here are completely different for the most part. Many brands are different from those in Oz/UK, and the brands that are the same are marketing different models made in different places. Another place to check is Reviewed.com, but remember that all these sources are limited and should only be one component of your decision to buy an appliance.

This post was edited by hvtech42 on Tue, Jul 1, 14 at 1:06

This forum was my only other reference, beyond CR magazine, when I was searching for appliances, for our kitchen remodel. The "Search" feature here at GW forums is very helpful, too. Most of my questions were already answered in previous discussions, so this was most helpful to me.

Which source do you trust more, Reviewed. com or Consumer Reports?

They both reviewed the same fridge, but reached strikingly different views about the fridge:

http://refrigerators.reviewed.com/content/whirlpool-wrs325fdam-refrigerator-review

Reviewed's title of their review was "great fridge, and a great value".

But, in CR's July 2014 issue, that same fridge was singled out as one of the worst fridges they tested as it received an overall score of 40 or less out of a possible 100.

Whatever. You should never put your eggs in one basket, and online reviews (personal and professional) should play a small role overall in the decision you make eventually. Unless you can't find any good reviews at all. The OP was asking for places besides CR, and I gave one. They didn't seem to like the fridge THAT much, only giving it a 6.9/10. I have owned several of the appliances reviewed there, either currently or formerly, and I have to say I agree with their findings for the most part. And, unlike Consumer Reports, they actually WRITE about the appliances which is much more helpful than a bunch of different colored dots, a seemingly random score out of 100, and a few bullet points of pros/cons. At least with Reviewed.com you know why it got the rating it did, so if you disagree with the way they came to their conclusion you can just ignore it.

Consumer Reports trashed Wolf ovens, Miele dishwashers, and Bluestar ranges. You cannot tell me those are poor performing appliances.

So, if only online reviews only play a small role, what else are you looking at before you eventually decide which appliance you'll end up buying? What's your decision buying process like?

The scary thing about that CR is that there's no dots or bullet points to give me an idea of why CR hated it so much. Its like not knowing why is more worrisome than if CR had given that poor score rating that explained the score.

From reading Reviewed.com's review, I think CR probably dinged it for the fluctuation in temperatures between the different levels in the fridges. But, Reviewed didn't seem to think that was that major of an issue because they still said it was their Editor's Choice so I'm worried that there's other things to worry about too.

That was the fridge I thought I was going to buy, and probably will still buy despite CR's trashing it. When I looked at the average of their online scores of customers who bought it at various retailers, the scores seem high enough.

The reason online reviews should play a small role is because they are not reliable. User reviews are all over the map for pretty much every appliance out there. I don't trust Consumer Reports because whenever I've used an appliance in real life that they've tested, I've disagreed with their findings. Plus, on multiple occasions they've given the same appliance under different brand names completely different ratings. This demonstrates that either they have a bias they aren't telling us about, or their testing is unreliable.

You should definitely look at online reviews before buying. If they are all negative and complaining about the same problem, I would avoid that product. But if there are a mix of positive and negative and the complaints aren't all the same, I wouldn't take the product out of consideration. If you stop considering something because it has any negative reviews at all, you will never find anything to buy.

Buying appliances today is a crapshoot. There is a point where you need to stop overthinking and just pull the trigger based on the looks, price, and features you want.

CR is useless for the serious cook. I cannot at all understand how they got their reviews for serious cooking equipment like BlueStar. It makes me thing they faked it. Agree with the comments about online review. But if you see a near uniform # of neg reviews (or positive ones), I do think that has some credibility.

Cnet does some appliance reviews.

The Which and Choice evaluations are sometimes of use to Americans, as some appliances sold in the UK and Australia respectively are very similar to those sole in the US. The model numbers will always be different, as appliances in both of those countries use 50Hz rather than 60Hz electricity, differently sized gas and water connectors, and must meet different building and electrical codes, and sometimes 230 rather than 120 volts. But the basic design is often otherwise similar. It will be up to you though to figure out what the corresponding US model is, or if the US models have any significant feature deletions. Foreign-market appliance reviews are most useful for brands that are popular overseas but not in the US.