Digital Camera Ratings at CNET

Where to go to Find Digital Camera Ratings

Finding good digital camera ratings can be hard because the camera companies and stores want the ratings to be good and they want the cameras to sell.  It is hard to know what information to trust, and what information may have been paid for by the companies that make or sell the cameras that you want to know about. 

One way to help you get the most out of your research is to stick to the facts rather than relying on ratings anyway.  If you know what kind of camera you are looking for and what features you really want or need, you can use your knowledge to narrow down the range of cameras and select by a preferred brand or a good price.  Sometimes, though, the price is right because the quality is not the best.  So how do you know if the camera is a good one or if it is worth much less than you are paying for it? 

A favorite method of determining the real value of the camera is to ask the consumers instead of the professional reviewers.  Stay away from the digital camera ratings sites and instead focus on sites like Amazon.com that allow their customers to comment on the books and other products that they sell on their web site. 

To be sure you are getting an unbiased review, make sure that the reviewer has other posts elsewhere if it is possible to check, and make sure that they don't read like an advertisement for the camera.  You should be able to get relatively good information by listening to what other people who have bought the same camera thought of it, making it easy to choose your new camera from among those that ranked highly among other consumers. 

Sometimes popular opinion is flawed, of course, and the bad review about a particular feature might have come from someone who simply didn't understand how that feature was supposed to work.  You can get your best reviews from popular opinion as long as you take that opinion with a grain of salt and don't let them convince you if your experience is different.  You can even give backby adding your own reviews of products that you own and use.

Digital Camera Ratings at CNET