Where Are The Stars in My Reviews?

You might have come here once or twice to see reviews of various hardware devices or software applications. In fact, if you pull up a list of posts tagged as review, you’ll find quite a few of them.  We’re big fans of anything new and interesting and want to get our thoughts about them out there as quickly as we can. But, one thing you may have noticed is that there aren’t star ratings attached to the reviews you see here. Why’s that? Well, let me explain.

The star rating is perfect for stuff like movies. I hit a movie page at IMDB and immediately see if people like the movie based on a star rating out of ten. It’s that instant gratification that makes me want to see a movie (or pass it up). The star rating attached to technology tends to also be great for an instant look at what we think of a product – but the product itself tends to be more nuanced as far as what it does, who it might appeal to, problems you’ll see and any other interesting details.

For that reason, the “Pros” and “Cons” idea seems to work best with hardware and software because the little things are what might sway you one way or another to want something. You can’t know in a star rating that there isn’t a memory slot in the Nexus 7, right?

What are your thoughts on star ratings? Would you like to see them in our reviews on the blog?