I think there are a couple of reasons that you don’t see alot of negative reviews.
Most yoyos are actually pretty good!
As long as its not a cheap dollar store junker, behind the scenes on every yoyo some clever people have worked hard to engineer a quality product. Even if you are reviewing a $3 Duncan Imperial there are alot of good things to say about it.
I’ve got 4 different metals in my collection right now and every single one of them plays differently, but each of them are a quality product that I would give a positive review for.
Negative reviews get negative responses
Almost every time I’ve seen a review where someone does mention something they don’t like about a yoyo, the following posts argue against whatever the reviewer said. Take “Vibe” for instance. If a review says a yoyo has bad vibe, almost certainly will you find a comment claiming that the yoyo is fine and that the reviewer just needs to practice their throw. I think reviewers have a tendency to claim the things they don’t like are just “Preference” because preference is harder to disagree with.
Also
Words like floaty are not supposed to describe a yo-yo’s physics or some measurable quality of a yoyo. It’s used as a subjective term that describes what it feels like to play with the product. If you want an objective rubric, floaty is not going to be on it.
If you absolutely must have scientific descriptions for subjective movement you can use Laban movement analysis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laban_Movement_Analysis
There’s a lot to be said for this. The effect is starkly obvious in the world of audiophiles… transmitting a digital signal along a cable, all you get are zeroes and ones at the other end. You could us a coat hanger. But a certain type of audiophile will give a glowing review to their ultra-expensive cables, with “better sound quality” as an indicator.
Story changes when you’re talking about an analog signal. But for the digital part of the path, it doesn’t matter.
The shorter the better, and balanced whenever possible, as well as triple shielded.
(Yes, it can make a HUGE difference, speaking as audio professional, not some money-loaded audiophile with more money than brain cells).
In some cases with audio, costing more isn’t the issue. It’s about the right product for the job. It often does equate to price, but I’ve done more and better with less than some have done with “no budget limitation” projects. This isn’t a preferences thing, it’s a matter of “who knows their gear and can get the most out of it” thing.
When it comes to digital, we have to take into consideration clocking, jitter and chipsets, as “not all are created equal”. Some simply transport the signal cleaner. In most cases, provided a third-party digital clock to reference to is usually more critical than anything else.
YoYo is much different. As long as the features someone needs are in the yoyo, the rest is down to preferences only.
I’ll be more than happy to point out any flaws or things I don’t like on any yoyo I have, provided I am reminded what I didn’t like about something, biases aside.
Hey I was just speaking from experience with audio equipment and basic knowledge that cables act as a resistor, and the longer the distance the more it starts to cut out the highs.
This is true, and I hope we both agree weight and mass are two different things. but anyone can argue that because of a specific weight distribution the object would seem like its mass is centered. So the weight distribution really plays the bigger part.
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^ also most people wouldn’t want to say bad things about a yoyo they just spend 70$ or more on, because that would just feel wrong wouldn’t it.
Whilst I agree that “float” isn’t very quantifiable or even measurable in terms of physics, I think that it is useful when describing how a yoyo feels. I’ve tried a fair few throws and I definately know what I think “float” feels like in my mind, and I personally don’t like it.
So if I read a review that says “this is the floatiest throw eveeerrr!” then I can at least assume that I won’t like how it plays. I’m not saying that there’s any science behind “floatiness”, but when describing how something “feels” or “plays” then it’s going to be difficult not to use any buzzwords.
“Float” may simply mean “it plays like -insert other yoyo here-”. I didn’t like how “floaty” my Chief felt, and therefore if someone says a new throw is floaty, that simply to me means it will play like my Chief, which I wouldn’t be a huge fan of…
What I do agree with is how generally un-useful reviews are. There are yoyos that have received great praise that I didn’t really like, whereas there are others that not everyone loved all that much that I think are perfect for me. It’s such a personal thing…
95% of new $80+ yoyos on the market today will be decent. The only really useful reviews are the ones telling us which 5% aren’t.
Digital over the cable is digital.
I need to write more yoyo reviews…