My Value-to-Price Ratio: 2.5 This product delivers on its promises, and really, that's no surprise. It's from Holmes, the industry leader in home and personal ventilation products. (We love their double window fan!) It comes with an activated charcoal filter and replacements are both cheap and readily available. An extra filter is also provided with the initial purchase. The suction is sufficient to take in the smoke from even multiple cigarettes as long as the cigarettes are resting on (or very near) the tray. The tray itself is dishwasher top-rack safe, and the material resists damage from contact with the lit end of the smoking material when "butting out" the cigarette or ... whatever. There is a very, very small amount of ambient noise, but you don't notice it once you are more than a few inches away from the device, and it's so slight that your ear quickly accustoms to it and filters it out. This ashtray does have a boxy, 5" square footprint, so it loses a bit in the design category, but other than that, it's a top-notch product in this category and at the low end of the price range. How do I calculate Value-to-Price Ratio? I'm glad you asked. First, value: I peruse both product listings for multiple products of the same type to determine the range of features a product of this type would or should have. Then I scrutinize user reviews to see which of those features seemed to be most important to most users. I then give a "Features" grade on a scale of 5 to 1 (Product meets all/most/some/few but hits the important ones/few or none of the user requirements.) I then give a 1 to 5 grade in two other categories: Design, and Safety. As I said, this product is a bit industrial in appearance and has a significant footprint that makes it more conspicuous than many users might prefer, so it lost a point for design. On safety, I do some research to see if there are any product warnings out on the web regarding the product or if any user reviews cite safety problems. Does the seller make the safety requirements clear? Was the product designed to anticipate and compensate for any potential usage risks? For value, I rank the product by price amidst its competitors that offer the same level of features or nearly so. Here again, I consult user reviews to see whether anyone felt "cheated" and why, or why someone was particularly satisfied with the purchase. However, price is the determining factor. I rank the product against at least five of its competitors (if available) and determine where its price falls in the range of highest (5) to lowest (1). So a product with a high value score, say 5, that falls at the lowest end of the price ranking will be 5 over 1, for a ratio of 5. The closer the ratio is to a value of 5, the better the value-to-price relationship for the consumer. The consumer got a great product at a fabulously low price! If a great product sells at the highest price, it gets a VPR of 1. Why? You got what you paid for, which is to be expected. The product does not deserve to be advantaged for delivering on its promises if it cost you the maximum price amongst its competitors to obtain the promised features. Is VPR ever zero? Yes. If the Amazon user rating nomograph, which appears at the top of every review page, shows a bicurdic distribution, an inverted normal curve, I suspect out of hand that something is wrong. An inverted curve means that most users either rated it 5 (or 4), or 1 (maybe 2). Few or none was in the middle (3). In statistical analysis, an inverted normal curve is a warning sign: Either the tester did something wrong, or bad data crept into the results. Sadly, the bad data issue is usually a signal that the data has been manipulated, either consciously or through unconscious factors. A seller who sees a product tanking in the reviews may start encouraging his near and dear to post positive reviews; a rankled customer might encourage friends and family to bolster his viewpoint by submitting negative reviews. Both of these things sound unlikely and a bit bizarre, but sadly, they happen every day. In these cases, I either decline to review, or I review frankly, and the VPR is automatically zero. You may choose to read that as "undefined". By no means does the VPR answer the question, "Is this a good product for me?" For that answer, the overall review score shown with the product listing, and the comments of individual reviewers, are the best way, and perhaps the only real way, to make that determination.
