In any given year there are hundreds of bows available, and only a few of them get reviewed, particularly considering the overlap. On that basis the mags can be forgiven for picking the ones their reader's will most likely be obsessing about. In most cases those aren't going to be bad bows.

Saying something bad about a bow isn't necesarily any more objective than saying something good. A lot of the more technical information in the better written articles is irrelevant anyway. You might find some of it so because you have a very different draw length; don't trust the synthetic stats part; don't care all that much about efficiency one way or another within a range of 1-2%, and so on.

One of the problems with bows is that there isn't, and isn't likely to be a way of assessing accuracy, or shootability. There is the Hooter, but what that means to someone stuck holding the bow is hard to say (I am sure it could diagnose quality).

I like it when a reviewer relates a bow to a trend. Why do we need short bows? Why do we need fast bows? or whatever. Also if they tell me when a product is hot. I may not want it, but it helps you seperate the top five options or whatever.

Norb did a great Q2 Q2XL review last year that said a lot, and gave you a sense why the two close models existed.