I got my hands on several years’ worth of Consumer Reports Buying Guides, and thought it would be useful to compare the 2006 and 2016 editions to broadly examine how consumer technologies have changed and stayed the same. Incidentally, the 2006 Guide is interesting in its own right since it provides a snapshot of a moment in time when a number of transitional (and now largely forgotten) consumer technologies were in use.
Comparing the Guides at a gross level, I first note that the total number of product types listed in the respective Tables of Contents declined from 46 to 34 from 2006 to 2016. Some of these deletions were clearly just the results of editorial decisions (ex – mattresses), but some deletions owed to entire technologies going obsolete (ex – PDAs). Here’s a roundup of those in the second category:
- DVD players (Totally obsolete format, and the audiovisual quality difference among the Blu-Ray player models that succeeded them is so negligible that maybe Consumer Reports realized it wasn’t worth measuring the differences anymore)
- MP3 players (Arguably, there’s still a niche role for small, cheap, clip-on MP3 players for people to wear while exercising, but that’s it. Smartphones have replaced MP3 players in all other roles. The classic iPod was discontinued in 2013, and the iPod Nano and Shuffle were discontinued last month.)
- Cell phones (AKA “dumb phones.” The price difference between a cheap smartphone and a 2006-era clamshell phone is so small and the capabilities difference so great that it makes no sense at all to buy the latter.)
Consumer Reports recommended the Samsung MM-A700 in 2006 - Cordless phones
- PDAs (Made obsolete by smartphones and tablets)
- Scanners (Standalone image and analog film scanners. These were made obsolete by printer-scanner-copier combo machines and by the death of 35mm film cameras.)
Here’s a list of new product types added to the Table of Contents between 2006 and 2016, thanks to advances in technology and not editorial choices:
- Smartphones
- Sound bars
- Steaming Media Players (ex – Roku box)
- Tablets
As an aside, here are my predictions for new product types that will appear in the 2026 Consumer Reports Buying Guide:
- 4K Ultra HD players (Note: 8K players will also be commercially available, but they might not be popular enough to warrant a Consumer Reports review)
- Virtual/Augmented Reality Glasses
- All-in-one Personal Assistant AI systems (close to the technology shown in the movie Her)
- Streaming Game Consoles (resurrection of the OnLive concept)–it’s also possible this capability could be standard on future Streaming Media Players
- Single device (perhaps resembling a mirrorless camera) that merges camcorders, D-SLRs, and larger standalone digital cameras. This would fill the gap between smartphone cameras and professional-level cameras.
It’s also interesting to look at how technology has (not) changed within Consumer Reports product types conserved from 2006 to 2016:
- Camcorders. Most of the 2006 models still used analog tapes or mini-DVDs, and transferring the recordings to computers or the internet was complicated and required intermediary steps and separate devices. The 2016 models all use flash memory sticks and can seamlessly transfer their footage to computers or internet platforms. The 2016 models appear to be significantly smaller as well.
For a brief time, there were camcorders that recorded footage onto internal DVD discs. - Digital cameras. Standalone digital cameras have gotten vastly better, but also less common thanks to the rise of smartphones with built-in cameras. The only reason to buy a standalone digital camera today is to take high-quality artistic photos, which few people have a real need to do. Coincidentally, I bought my first digital camera in 2006–a mid-priced Canon slightly smaller than a can of soda. Its photos, which I still have on my PC hard drive, still look completely sharp and are no worse than photos from today’s best smartphone cameras. Digital cameras are a type of technology that hit the point of being “good enough for all practical purposes” long ago, and picture quality has experienced very little meaningful improvement since. Improvements have happened to peripheral qualities of cameras, such as weight, size, and photo capacity. At some point, meaningful improvements in those dimensions of performance will top out as well.
- TV sets. Reading about the profusion of different picture formats and TV designs in 2006 hits home what a transitional time it was for the technology: 420p format, plasma, digital tuners, CRTs, DLPs. Ahhh…brings back memories. Consumers have spoken in the intervening years, however, and 1080p LCD TVs are the standard. Not mentioned in Consumer Reports is the not-entirely-predictable rejection of 3D TVs over the last decade, and a revealed consumer preference for the largest possible TV screen at the lowest possible cost. It turns out people like to keep things simple. I also recall even the best 2006-era digital TVs having problems with motion judder, narrow frontal viewing angles, and problems displaying pure white and black colors (picking a TV model back then meant doing a ton of research and considering several complicated tradeoffs).
DLP TVs were not as thick or as heavy as older CRT TVs, but that wasn’t saying much. They briefly competed with flatscreen TVs based on LCD and plasma technology before being vanquished. - Dishwashers. The Ratings seem to indicate that dishwashers got slightly more energy efficient from 2006-16 (which isn’t surprising considering the DOE raised the energy standards during that period), but that’s it, and the monetized energy savings might be cancelled out by an increase in mean dishwasher prices. The machines haven’t gotten better at cleaning dirty dishes, their cleaning cycles haven’t gotten shorter, and they’re not quieter on average while operating.
- Clothes washers. Same deal as dishwashers: Slight improvement in energy efficiency, but that’s about it.
- Clothes dryers. Something strange has happened here. “Drying performance” and “Noise” don’t appear to have improved at all in ten years, but average prices have increased by 30 – 50%. I suspect this cost inflation is driven by induced demand for non-value-added features like digital controls, complex permutations of drying cycles that no one ever uses, and the bizarre consumer fetish for stainless steel appliances. Considering dishwashers, clothes washers, and dryers together, we’re reminded of how slowly technology typically improves when it isn’t subject to Moore’s Law.
- Autos. This section comprises almost half of the page counts in both books, so I don’t have enough time to even attempt a comparison. That being said, I note that “Electric Cars/Plug-In Hybrids” are listed as a subcategory of vehicles in the 2016 Buying Guide, but not in the 2006 Buying Guide.
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