It’s tool “award” season, with various accolades being celebrated by marketers everywhere.
I saw a post today, where an outdoor cordless power tool brand was celebrating being “named” as a “finalist” for an innovation award. But isn’t EVERY paid entry a “finalist”?
Another tool brand sent me a press release, asking if I would post about their products being “recognized” as being award-winning. Nope, sorry.
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It’s funny, how many tool brands will send me hyped-up drivel about the “awards” they “won,” but not about the actual tools being “recognized.”
Are their products even “recognized” if the brand is PAYING to be in the running, which at times seem like single player contests?
Another brand touted awards that were given to products that have yet to be announced, and haven’t started shipping to retailers yet. The same company has in the past celebrated having won awards for tools that were cancelled before production.
I asked them when more information about their “award-winning” tools that don’t seem to exist yet will be available. It has been 8 days and no one has gotten back to me.
One company asked if they can sponsor ToolGuyd coverage about the awards their products received. I flatly told them that everyone has a price and mine would be astronomical.
I looked over the results of one of “awards” that are happening right now. Two very similar products, both copycats of a novel product that has already been on the market for years, won awards in different categories.
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With many tool and industry awards, companies pay for entry, and often it seems those are the only candidates for awards or recognition. That sounds like “pay to play.”
What was the criteria for winning? In some cases, it’s clear that tools were never tested, especially for products that fail to reach production or retail shelves.
Was there any competition? This is the big one. Without transparency, “judges” can collect a mountain of entry fees and create new categories to maximize the number of winners and the potential for repeat paid entrants the following year.
Maybe there are some innovations that do deserve recognition.
But this type of approach just seems scummy to me.
Have you noticed that no one talks about paid entry fees? How it’s not clear whether any paid entrants didn’t win any awards or recognition.
Marketers run with it, slapping various badges on their websites, retail product images, packaging, and even investor materials.
A DIY brand: “the pros have spoken.”
Several brands are celebrating awards from different programs right now. I have tested some of those tools, and while some look great on paper they do NOT deliver when it comes to actual performance or innovativeness.
I don’t blame the folks who run these awards programs – everyone has to make a buck somehow.
Every year around this time, I lose respect for the brands that hype things up, as if they weren’t just paying to be listed in a directory somewhere, and the right to use meaningless badges in product marketing materials.
When you can’t tell when awards are actually earned from when they’re bought, that’s a problem. A little transparency would go a long way.
Even when publications claim that products were “rigorously tested,” I am filled with doubt when I see what they say about products I’ve tested myself.
I am also surprised about how few people give much thought to “awards.” No one asks questions? An industry friend once told me about an encounter at a trade show where a product rep brought up an innovation award the brand had “won.” The brand rep didn’t know there was an entry fee, and they weren’t aware of any competition for the “award.”
Home Depot once gave an “innovation award” to their own Husky products!
I’ve seen one instance where a brand celebrated what seemed to be AI-generated ranking that simply regurgitated the brand’s own “best” marketing claims.
With all of the shadiness I’ve seen, I feel that tool awards are meaningless. It’s too difficult to tell which are earned and which are bought, and so I assume they’re all bought in single runner races.
Tool awards mean nothing to me if i) nobody discloses whether paid entry was required, ii) you can’t see how many other products (if any) were in the running for the same award, and iii) the products were never tested or it’s unclear whether the tester or judge was experienced enough in the category to declare any winners.
Wayne R.
It’s almost impossible to use the internet to find out about things I know little about – if there’s something to sell.
It’s all degenerated into mindless hucksterism, and I figger AI’s just going to eventually make it all so slick that it’ll be impossible to separate honest insights from opportunities to sell something.
At least today it’s fairly easy to pick out.
NoDak Farming
You can use AI to do research for you, and give you a report. In this way, it works well to help diagnose mechanical issues with machines or vehicles. But it can also help find a product that aligns with what you’re looking for. The trick is to use a full paragraph to explain what you want it to do.
If you want to research a type of tool or appliance, you just have to tell AI what kinds of information you’re looking for. If the tool is to be used everyday in a commercial or industrial setting, you’d want to include that. Then you could go on to say you want it to research industry specific web sites and magazines. And even if the tool is only for home owner use, you still want to tell it to research online forums. You have to tell it that you’d like to know the consensus of the people that are discussing that type of product online. Then you have to mention that you’d like be given at least two or three options and you want to be told how those compare to each other.
Like I said, you have to be willing to type out a paragraph, but in the end you can get a helpful report, made just for you. I recently used AI to help a friend that had a plaguing problem with his semi truck. In cases like this AI can save untold money and time. And you can do this with any of the free AI apps available for your phone.
Stuart
AI is inconsistent and only as good as the source material, which can be quite poor. Garbage in, garbage out. Modern generative AI can produce convincing-sounding chatbots. But what it actually outputs can be far from reliable or accurate.
MM
Exactly.
I very rarely want AI input on anything, but Google now gives AI summaries for many searches whether you ask for it or not. I see it make major fundamental mistakes on a daily basis–I notice when it has totally misunderstood the question or confused the question with something else and given information that is flat-out wrong. But then I have to wonder: If I see it screw up so often, and on very simple things, how many times is it screwing up in situations where I am not knowledgeable enough to catch it? And that is very dangerous. The whole point of doing research is to learn or confirm things you don’t currently know. If the research isn’t trustworthy then it’s just the blind leading the blind.
Jared
I use AI now on a daily basis in my job. While your concerns are real, you can also get it to do substantial, usable work.
One of the things I do often is answer complex questions on topics in which I might have a limited background. I certainly wouldn’t just ask AI and then repeat the answer – but I might ask it, see what it says and then start my research based on the responses.
There’s no time when I just use the answer AI produces without checking and editing it. Maybe that will happen someday, but certainly not yet.
Sometimes I use it the other way around – I research and come up with an answer, then ask AI if there’s anything I’ve missed. It’s not always right, but it can come up with things I overlooked at times (and that’s useful).
What AI model you use has a significant impact too. I’m mostly using ChatGPT 5 “thinking”, which is slow, but much more likely to be accurate. It’s not a very good writer no matter how I prompt it. Regular #5 is much better at reproducing a writing style and tone – but then it hallucinates way more often.
Scott K
Adding “-ai” to the end of a Google search turns off the automated AI summaries/results.
Goodie
I am going to show my age a bit in a story from 1998. I took a class on network protocol design in college. The prof (who was amazing) had a great joke. “The internet is like New Jersey. Prior to the early 1990s, it was a beautiful garden state. There were experts, it was a place of academic research. Then the mob moved in and it’s never been the same.” It got a laugh from the class then, and the internet has only devolved further since then.
Much apologies to New Jersey for the joke. I lived in the Hudson Valley for a while and enjoyed NJ. There are lots of nice towns there, and people were genuinely friendly, in a way that is very particular to NJ.
JBC
I suspect few if any of your readers, particularly those who perform their due diligence before committing to a tool purchase, fall for these marketing tactics.
However, as a regular Joe homeowner/DIYer, I’m curious what professional associations, publications, etc. offer legitimate awards based on extensive research and real-world usage that we can trust in categories such as Tool of the Year or Most Innovative Tool and so on? Thank you Stuart!
Jared
I don’t think there are any. You’re better off reading Stuart’s reviews, checking TTC rankings, etc.
Problem is, those are kind of niche information sources mostly followed by enthusiasts. I could see an “award” appearing more approachable and recognizable to someone who isn’t familiar with the industry – especially when the company itself puts it front-and-center.
Travis
You ever hear of consumer reports. That was what everyone went to to find out if it was good
Brad
I swore by CR for a long time, right up until I came across a CR write-up about a particular product category that I happened to know inside and out. It was obvious that their ratings revealed not only severely flawed methodology, but also that absolute novices were doing the testing. Since then I have read more and more of their articles with a close eye to what little they explain about their processes, and each time I come away less impressed. I’m now convinced that Consumer Reports is to product reviews as US News & World Reports is to law school rankings: just marginally more useful than no ratings at all.
TomD
I still laugh that anyone decided “flushing golfballs” was a useful measure of toilets.
Maybe flushing cookie dough.
Ben
Counterpoint / devil’s advocate to TomD’s comment about flushing golf balls – my guess is that they were trying to replicate what might happen should a curious, momentarily-unsupervised toddler decide to flush a toy.
MM
Regarding the “golf ball flush” sounding silly. I can see this argument from both sides. From a customer’s perspective it sounds weird: why would anyone care about flushing golf balls?
From the opposite side–the guy in the lab working on the study–it has a lot of things going for it that might not be obvious to the end customer. Lab tests like this need to be consistent first and foremost. Golf balls are great for that: they’re a known size and one can easily count how many are being used. They’re also economical because a small number of them can be re-used many times over. In the event of a clog there’s not much mess involved to fix it and get back to testing. Compare to cookie dough: first there’s the problem of ensuring it’s the same consistency. That is an entire study in and out of itself. It can’t be reused. When it clogs it is messy and time-consuming to unclog. It is not a good medium for testing efficiently.
So then there’s the question of what good is testing with golf balls when other things are actually being flushed? First and foremost the study should have checked to see if golf balls were a reasonable correlation with other kinds of flushability. Perhaps that means a few tests might be done with messier materials. But if you can establish that the same sort of trends exist with golf balls and waste, then you can skip the waste and use the easier material for your study instead.
Richard Miller
I share your sentiment about CR. I consider them useless.
Katie
CR has changed over the years. I had good luck with them for a long time, but then bought some of their highly rated items and got burned.
And when I knew about a thing, it seemed they were not up to speed.
I think they do a good job with cars because it is based on feedback from people who own the cars. But since buying a car is something that most people don’t do every year, you’d only subscribe occasionally.
Sadly, it’s because so many people go to product reviews on sites like Amazon that has put too much pressure on their business model.
I do use Amazon reviews when I purchase small stuff. The negative ones, if there’s a consistent problem. So reading/scanning the negative reviews for a pattern of problems can be helpful. But the glowing reviews are a lot like the “Awards”. I think the Fakespot (AI based, I gathered) helped a bit, but also missed the boat. It’s gone now, I think
Bonnie
Personally I just don’t see the value in a “tool of the year” to begin with. Like how are you usefully comparing a cordless rotary tool to a really nice wood-handled shovel? Or a tablesaw. Or a magnifying light, etc.
Innovation is a maybe, but even then it’s just some meta thoughts about a tool rather than a recommendation that it’s actually good or useful.
Wayne R.
“Doc” on YT’s Last Best Tool has called Year’s Best Pliers a few times over the last couple of years. One guy’s opinion and demonstrating why he says that (with comparisons) is certainly useful to me.
What’s not useful are the anonymous got-no-skin-in-it reviews, I agree.
Bonnie
I don’t give them much thought because I assume they’re all worthless to begin with. At most I might consider a wirecutter recommendation, only when I’m coming *from wirecutter* though, rather than seeing it slapped on the tool’s store listing. And even they’ve been diluted and aped so much at this point they’re no longer a simple trusted source.
Katie
Wirecutter has been hit or miss for me. Good source of info about gifts sometimes, though.
S
It’s not just tools unfortunately.
Last weekend, on a hunt for some project parts on Amazon, I ran across a brand that had “2025 red dot award winner” emblazoned right in the product description. For a product that was about 4 times higher cost than most competing products in the category.
Turns out, the “red dot award” is a design-only award, and has little bearing on the functionality of the product.
So I can spend more, and if it fails, at least it looks cool?
Jason Watkins
Sounds like we need a first ever “Toolguyd.com Readers Choice Awards”
MtnRanch
The wine industry has run this scam for many, many years. Check the “San Francisco International Wine Competition” where vintners pay to enter and almost everyone wins an award. Multiple “Gold Medals” are given out in each category.
This is why I’m so appreciative of Stuart’s honest reviews.
John Barnhill
I really like the tool reviews from Fine Woodworking where they bring in most competitive tools in a category and have a combination of scientific and user based criteria. I remember a dust collection system review where they weighed the collected material down to the milligram.
Katie
When I first started woodworking I relied heavily on their reviews and never had a clunker. Then I found Toolguyd and the same held true here. Except, I can be subject to “tool lust” when I hear about a new feature. The latest is a drill that will shut down rather than torque your wrist. For those of us with wrist problems that is very tempting. It was dewalt I think, but I’m going to try to find it again ahead of the holiday sales.
EBT
Its like “JD Powers Awards”.
Did you know that JD Powers solicits surveys out to people, e.g. bought a new car, that the first page of the survey is about “the car” and the rest is about non-related (3 pages of questions). And that JD will then “extort” their results to the “car maker” with “our survey shows 99% satisfaction with “your car”. So pony up $500K and we’ll give you “permission” to print out ads and posters of “JD Powers Award!”.
Worse is doing a search for the lead wording, “Best Rated Table saw..” etc. and if you see “The Spruce” as the site in the top 5, its a AI-written tabloid, ad-payload junk site.
So yeah, that time of year…
Tip: I like the pro tool review guys.