The Online Photographer

The "Top Picks of the Year" issue of Consumer Reports (CR), November/December 2023, arrived in the mailbox a little while back. I don't subscribe to any paper magazines except The New Yorker, but you get CR as a paper magazine if you pay for access to the website. This issue features full rankings on cooking appliances—oven, ranges, and cooktops—as well as "The Best Cameras from Our Tests."

Cooking appliances did not fare so well. CR looks askance at cooking appliances. Microwaves especially—the pages for microwaves were full of light green (merely good) and yellow (middling or neutral) bars. With few dark green bars (the best rating) to be found. According to CR, the best microwave you can buy, a standout in a sea of mediocrity, is the Panasonic NN-SE7-85S.

So I was almost...well, proud when I came to the Mirrorless Cameras page. Solid dark green bars almost all the way to the bottom, and an unbroken string of those black checkmarks-in-circles that mean "CR Recommended." That's not the only page; there are seven more mirrorless cameras on the page before this one (all CR Recommended) and 13 more on the following page. All of the latter are the lighter green for "good," but even the lowest-rated camera they listed—the Olympus OM-D M10 Mark IV and 14–42mm—did not fall so low as to earn a yellow bar, the meh rating. However, 11 of 13 at the bottom of the list did fail to win the coveted Recommended checkmark.

I know, I know—we don't need no stinkin' CR to choose our cameras. We are way past that. I was just kinda proud, as I say—according to CR, our whole category be boppin'. We strong. They don't like microwaves. They do like cameras.

Top recommendations overall? The Fuji X-T4 (whut? Right, 4) with the 16–80mm OIS lens is No. 1, and the Fuji X-T4 is in second place as well! Paired with the 18–55mm OIS. That seems a little out there, but hey, their house, their rules. The Nikon Z6 with 24–70mm S rounds out the top three (they recommend the plain Z6, but I linked to the Z6II. You can search out a non-II if for some reason you really have to have CR's third-best camera recommendation).

I'm almost right there with them—my top recommendation, for people who do not have a camera at all and want one—which includes virtually not one single person reading this—is a Fuji X-T5 body (Amazon agrees with me; it's their Top Pick too) with the 35mm ƒ/2 Fujicron as a first lens. I'd actually prefer the ƒ/1.4, but that's not a mainstream recommendation any more. I prefer the X-T5 because it has the World's Most Perfect Viewing Screen (IM Hmbl. O) and the 40-MP sensor for great big prints. The X-T4 has the flip-out screen (an anomaly in the X-T[x] line) and the (slightly) older 26-MP sensor which is merely wholly adequate for 99.9% of everything your might ever want or need to do with it. I ought to do an X-T5 vs. Z6II shootout sometime. Who else cares?

But the Fuji X-T4 is the Honda Accord of cameras. Or rather, the Hyundai Santa Fe Hybrid of cameras (that's CR's top pick in vehicles over $30k).

That's random
Oh, and, the weirdest thing the entire issue calls out? Features, even, picture and all? The Kohler Moxie BT showerhead, which they rate highly for its performance as, ahh, well, a showerhead. What makes it weird? It's got a speaker in it. Because naturally. And you thought the folks at CR were all practical and fuddy-duddy and buzzkill! They sing in the shower too.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Kirk W.: "That takes me back to about 1983, when, inspired by my uncle Stu with his Minolta SRT-101 and my eighth grade science teacher’s patience with us as we learned how to thread film on to developer tank reels (shout out to Mr. Jacobsen!), I was in search of my first 'real' camera. I dropped my hard-earned berry picking and haying income on the top-rated Consumer Reports camera, the Pentax ME Super. I remember poring over that list for hours, even pre-internet, being dazzled and paralyzed by the range of choices. There were Nikons and Canons and Minoltas and Olympuses of course, but I can still remember some more obscure brands as well, such as Topcon, Konica, and Ricoh. Looking back now, that was not the ideal way to buy into a camera system, but it did work out. The camera still works like new (at least the last time I ran some film through it) after decades of use and abuse. And it will still be ready to go long after my current magic digital cams are obsolete."

robert e: "Actually, I think we camera geeks do need a 'stinkin' CR'...to help us recommend gear suitable for non-geeks (or for when we want a more casual, forgiving or incognito camera)."

Niels: "My parents always selected larger household acquisitions based on the CR equivalent in my country. They chose the best rated item within their budget—and often that meant buying at a lower price than they originally expected. I think it served them well—I never heard them complain about purchases done this way, although they were generally quick at complaining about a lot of other things.

"When I left home, my mother gave me a subscription to the magazine, but I could never use it the way they did. My compulsive behaviour of researching the life out of anything that I plan to purchase prohibits me from just picking from a list, although it could have saved me much energy it seems: for my first full frame mirrorless camera, I ended up buying a Nikon Z6 with the 24–70mm S—and I am very happy with it! I would never have thought my preferred product would be at the top of such a list. Maybe my requirements aren't as special as I think?

"I should possibly revise my behaviour, although I'm afraid it would violate my nature."

David Dyer-Bennet: "My first SLR was chosen largely as a result of the Consumer Reports rating. In 1969 (bought late in December).

"It was a Miranda Sensorex, and it was not a very good choice for me. I largely liked the quirks, like a removable pentaprism, a bottom-weighted meter (the sensor actually on the mirror), and a front-mounted shutter release (it was considerably easier to hold really steady for vertical shots that way) [Burt Keppler of Pop Photo also liked the front-mounted shutter releases. —MJ]. But it didn't have the range of lenses, especially fast telephotos, that Nikon did. I think Pentax or Nikon would have been better choices for me at that time. (With access to hindsight, definitely Nikon.)

"Of course, as I figured out later, they are rating cameras for, gosh, 'Consumers,' as it says on the cover, and even then I was not anything like a normal consumer of cameras.

"They are the only consumer testing outfit I've encountered who have any understanding of statistics and quality control and such (they get multiple samples through normal distribution channels and test those). But the things they choose to measure and the priority they assign to various things is very much consumer-oriented."