Before the article officially begins, Xiao Lei would like to ask readers a question, will you be affected by some so-called "authority" on your own idea of buying electronic products? In the first two years, Xiao Lei's personal answer was "yes", after all, in the eyes of Xiao Lei at that time, the conclusions produced by these "professional institutions" controlled by "professionals" were definitely more authoritative than their own ideas.
But the time has come to 2022, and Xiao Lei's answer has changed from yes to no, not because the authority of some institutions has declined, but because there are too many "authorities" in the market, and the confusion of views cannot provide reasonable suggestions for Xiao Lei. Moreover, there are also many "authoritative institutions" that are quite suspected of advertising.
Take a hot search on Weibo as an example, a big V blog said that the Voice and Image Recognition Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the results of the performance test of domestic noise-canceling headphones, and only two noise-canceling headphones have obtained A-level certification.
However, some netizens said after querying the information that the reason why there is no mainstream noise reduction headphones in the list is that these manufacturers have not taken it to be inspected at all, and according to the certificate, it is strictly an innovative evaluation A-level is not noise reduction. Simply put, this is just an advertisement purchased by a certain brand, but most netizens also found the imprecision of this news at the first time. Does this mean that the so-called authorities are no longer able to influence the buying desires of most consumers?
Authority no longer authority?
Turning the time back to 2020, I believe that many readers should remember that almost all mobile phone manufacturers at that time could not avoid how many points their products achieved in the DxO test link when introducing the imaging capabilities of the new machine, so as to obtain the affirmation of consumers and the market.
The reason why mobile phone brands are willing to take the initiative to hand over products to testing institutions is indeed running for high scores. This is actually not difficult to understand, no matter how mobile phone brands spend money on publicity, rather than mobile phone advertising, we as consumers are actually more willing to believe in an objective and independent third-party testing agency, although this kind of agency is not necessarily objective, independent and third-party.
But with the passage of time, many digital enthusiasts have found that these so-called independent evaluation agencies are not as professional as they thought, but have a bit of a "money to do things" flavor. Take DxO's most famous mobile phone image evaluation as an example, although in the official website introduction, DxO will carefully list each test item and sample comparison, but the weight of each small item is unknown, but also let the total score of DxO fluctuate with the preferences of manufacturers.
The most obvious is the 2019 list ranking, when Huawei took out its own imaging flagship P30 Pro and scored a high score of 112 points, but with the S10 also scored 112 points, Huawei P30 Pro raised the score to 116 points on the grounds of retesting. Half a year later, this operation was repeated again, when the score of Xiaomi CC9 Pro was equal to that of Huawei Mate 30 Pro (4G version), the Mate 30 Pro 5G version pulled the score up by two points in the way of additional testing, and its weight and professionalism are self-evident.
In addition, when the iPhone 12 Pro Max was released, DXO said on social media: the telephoto of the machine was upgraded from 52mm to 65mm, supporting 5x optical zoom, although it was upgraded, it was still not as good as the 100+ mm lens of some friends.
DxO's operation of only comparing focal lengths is really confusing to Xiao Lei, after all, some people like the 52mm focal length, some people like 85mm, which vary from person to person. And it is not that the longer the focal length does not mean that the shooting experience is better, such as the A device uses a 1/2.5 inch + 55mm focal length, the B device is a 1/3.5 inch + 85mm focal length, in the actual shooting, A's picture quality must be much better than B, which should not be a conclusion given by a professional organization.
Xiao Lei does not deny the professionalism of DxO, but DxO's repeated coincidence scores and retest operations have to make Xiao Lei feel that there is no inevitable connection between DxO's test results and scores, and the scores only serve major mobile phone manufacturers.
The weightless weights result in DxO lacking a complete and consistent evaluation system, because the phones on this list are very different from hardware to software to imaging styles. While it's true that DxO's test is professional enough in some respects, the scores and so many coincidences used for publicity make it increasingly difficult for Ray to admit that this is a scientific test that has led to conclusions.
The coincidence of scores again and again brings about the continuous testing of manufacturers, and we all know that the biggest benefit of DxO's fee-based testing and coincidence score is to greatly increase the frequency of the manufacturer's testing, and the frequency means revenue.
Moreover, the current DxO, with the manufacturer's marketing needs to cooperate too seamlessly, so that in the DxO rating list, the manufacturers have really entered the situation of you competing for each other and taking the lead. If this increase is too large, it will destroy the balance of DxO, after all, under the situation of a monopoly, DxO has lost its marketing significance to other companies, and no manufacturer other than the champion is willing to send it for testing.
In addition to DxO, like what DisplayMate screen evaluation agency is the same, the same example, two years ago DisplayMate to the Samsung Galaxy S10 screen gave an A+ rating, two years later DisplayMate to the iPhone 13 Pro Max A+ rating using Samsung screen, can we think that the S10 screen and the iPhone 13 Pro Max as good? Does this also mean that Samsung's screen technology is at a standstill? The answer is clearly no.
In order to survive, this type of institution is more inclined to the requirements of large customers on some indicators, which is understandable, but this cannot be a reason for its upside down and loopholes. Although most digital enthusiasts today understand that these institutions have long ceased to be professional, it is inevitable that ordinary consumers will be "misled" by this.
Can the so-called "professional" represent the average consumer?
But then again, can the data given by the testing agency really replace the real user experience? In my opinion, the answer is also no. Different users have different requirements for digital products, such as Xiaolei's requirements for telephoto lenses are quite high, and Xiaolei's colleagues are more concerned about the white balance consistency of multiple cameras, the test results of these institutions are only the performance of hardware quality, and the score only stipulates the upper and lower limits of these mobile phones, but the real score for mobile phones is the user himself.
For another simple example, whether from the rankings given by DxO or various evaluation agencies, the ranking of the iPhone has always been low, which is of course due to the fact that its hardware part is too far away from the Android flagship, and the gap is pulled apart in the night scene, telephoto and other parts. But does this mean that the iPhone's camera is crushed by the Android flagship? No, on the contrary, most consumers on the market, including Xiao Lei, prefer the iPhone's photo experience.
One vivid example after another tells us that a user's favorite is not necessarily the one with the highest hardware quality and the best test score. Many times, users don't need a good set of data, they just want a piece of product they like. And such differentiation will only increase in the era of more and more wholesale so-called evaluation agencies. The value behind these scores given by evaluation agencies is getting lower and lower.
Sacrificing the consumer experience in exchange for so-called "high scores" does mean putting the cart before the horse.
Xiao Lei does not deny that these so-called authoritative institutions do not have any need to exist, since they can make manufacturers willingly pay for testing, naturally because they have a certain degree of authority and professional testing links. But in the current situation, the so-called "professional score" is just a hypocritical product based on money transactions.