Our ratings explained

About this page

Reviewers for Ride On contribute ratings for bikes and gear, to give you a snapshot of a product’s worth

Ride On's reviewers test bike products by putting them to use in the way they’re intended. Products are then judged on the basis of:

Function: how well does the product do what it’s supposed to do? This takes into account ease of setting up, ease of operating and ease of maintaining the product.

Materials: What is the product made from, and will it last?

Construction: How is the product put together, and will it be durable?

Appearance: How does the product look?

Value for money: Is the product worth its price?

Each category is scored on a scale from 4 (excellent) to 1 (poor), and the total score is reduced to a score out of 4.

See table below for details.

 

 

Function

Materials & components

Construction

Appearance

Value for money

Excellent
(4)

 Functions very well High quality. Durable. Goes above and beyond expectations Solid. Will withstand intended use over time A pleasure to look at Well worth its price. Might be costly but will pay itself back over time, or cheap and still great value for what you get

Good
(3)

 Functions well Suitable. Appropriate for intended use Reliable. Will last for some time It looks good Worth its price

Average
(2)

 Mostly functions as intended Lesser quality Slightly inferior to competitors in the range Passable Price is too high for what you get

Poor
(1)

 Fails to function as intended Low quality Unacceptable Ugly, inappropriate A waste of money

 

Reviewers add up their points and submit this score to Ride On. The Ride On editorial team divide the score by the number of categories ranked (usually the complete five, unless the editorial team deems a category to be redundant for the purpose of review) to achieve a final rating out of 4.

A product with a rating of 4 is EXCELLENT.

A product with a rating of 3 is GOOD.

A product with a rating of 2 is AVERAGE.

A product with a rating of 1 is POOR.


These ratings are published in Ride On.

On occasion, a reviewer deems a product so outstanding as to be worth singling out for further recognition. In these cases, a Ride On Recommends tag will be attached to the review.

 

Note: Ride On staff and reviewers do not keep any products beyond the review period.

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Why is the rating out of 4?

We decided to make the score out of 4 because it means there's no middle ground, such as a 3 out of 5. This obliges our reviewers to decide if the product is on the good side of the scale or the bad side and not sit on the fence.

Why the decimal places in the final score?

When a score out of 20 is divided by 5 to produce a score out of 4, the result is often a score with decimal places. We found that if these scores are rounded to the nearest whole number or even to the nearest .5, many scores become the same. See the following table for an example

 

  Out of 20 Out of 4 not rounded Out of 4 rounded to .5 Out of 4 rounded to whole number
Product 1 17 3.4 3.5 3
Product 2 16 3.2 3 3
Product 3 15 3 3 3

Why not display the scores for each category?

We would love to give you that level of detail (even just to show off the trouble we went to to obtain it!) but we simply don't have the room on the page. How to do the subject justice with limited pages is something we struggle with in every article, and the product reviews are the same.