CR provides you with cursory reporting to get you started, but I place little credence on CR for any substantial reporting or real benchmarking. Those aspects take time to develop over a product's life cycle. Actual owners of a product will provide you with better feedback

CR takes into account the best for the buck, that doesnt always mean that it is the best choice for quality and so forth. I think Miele gets pushed down to the bottom due to the price of the FL, not because it is a bad performer or has reliability issues. The ability for a washer to get a load of clothes clean, goes way beyond the design of it. Owners can take a perfectly good washer, and ruin its performance by not using it properly as stated over and over in these forums.

I've seen obvious, glaring errors in CR's reports regarding what features and settings are on particular machines. In one case I brought an error to their attention, and I never saw that a correction was made.

I stopped putting too much credence on CR when I used to work for Frigidaire back in the 90's. CR rated a Westinghouse washer number 3, a Gibson washer 6th, and a Frigidaire washer 10th.

There was only one problem with this ranking...

Other than the printing on the console they were identical machines. Same cycles, same controls, motors, etc.. Even the same price range.

It tore me to the core.
After that I stopped believing in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny.

I think they factor their idea of "value" into a lot of their reviews. In paint, for example, they always seem to rate Behr as the top brand. As a paint nerd, I can say that while Behr is a fine product, there is no way it outperforms certain formulas of premium paint brands.

People who are really into different things that CR rate always complain about them...if we are talking about cars, tv's or washing machines...they are not going to tell you what product is the best for the enthusiast...they are going to tell you the best product taking into account the average user (price, easy ,etc...)

CR publishes a clear criteria for how they arrive at their ranking for appliances. Their criteria and yours may not be the same - they consider all that criteria equally you may not - some criteria may be more important to you than others. Reliability is not a criteria for most major appliance rankings (the reliability info is provided in a side bar - when they rank appliances they usually only consider how it performs not its projected reliability as they do with cars). Their rankings do not consider price but their recommendations do. I'm not suggesting it is perfect or to follow their recs but if you are interested in an aspect of their criteria you won't get a better comparative list than theirs. Things like ease of use are so subjective that you may find you just don't agree but my experience is that when CR say something cleans well (or doesn't) or is quiet (or isn't) they are correct. It's a tool not a directive.

CaryScott,

You bring up an excellent point and the very reason I would not place any credence on CR's reporting. The Miele products we purchased require proper setup including, but not limited to: water pressure, water levels, extended drying times with just air owed to geographic location weather conditions, etc. CR doesn't even take that into accountÃI don't even believe they understand or even know about these aspects, therefor, their reporting is flawed regarding these models of laundry equipment. This is the reason Miele strongly request, but does mandate, that you have an approved installer do your installation.

Potential customers are by far better off following forums of interest, receiving feedback from actual users, feedback from people who service the machines, and feedback from people in the industry than they are some magazine that professes to provide valued information. But, I am not biased as I have no place for JD Powers, and the others either. I don't purchase my vehicles based on any magazine.

I don't do German appliances but CR does capture what Miele does well in their dishwasher criteria (I have a couple of kitchen issues around but no laundry - sorry):

at least some of the functions you mention in relation to drying are part of energy efficiency of which they get an Excellent for their dishwashers and they also get Excellent for cleaning

the exact thing the you allude to in terms of set up, water pressure and levels would be reflected in ease of use in which they score just good (well below the top ranked Kemmore)

CR rankings capture what is good about Miele but as mentioned above they also consider other issues that might be a concern to average consumers. Most people who have problems with CR rankings are too worried about the rank and not how the product scores in the individual criteria areas. The problem is failing to use the information they provide critically. I think the information they provide is of invaluable assistance to any consumer.