Hah, three years later, and I just posted again about the need for warranty comparisons factoring into the grading.

If you are looking at a 3yr exchange warranty vs a 1 year depot, and trying to figure out its value, I like to think about a refurbished item on discount but with only a 90d warranty.

• Do you trust the item won’t break down in the shorter covered period of shorter vs longer warranty.
• If it does, how much does it cost in time and money to get a replacement.
• Is there a deductible.
• Do they cover shipping.
• Do they send replacement first and have you use that box to ship old one back.
• Do they have a ‘lemon’ policy (multiple bad units back to back).

And this of course spans all your covered product categories. Having just dealt with replacing a barely-used gaming mouse (from a name brand), fairly annoying process, without that mouse for weeks – and the replacement came and works, but still not at the expected level. Many products you don’t know how important warranty is until something dies, and having resources like CR that also chart quality problems and complaints over time is important data to have. Look at car buying, would you buy a car that has a history over past few years of increased problems?

First, appreciate RTINGS over the years.

Second, the AW-DW is now on sale $100 cheaper than the -DWF (both are on sale..). So at the lower price, it’s once again king of the hill.

Third, can you guys PLEASE INCLUDE BASE WARRANTIES in your reviews and comparisons? Dell’s 3yr advanced exchange (replacement first, both ways shipping free, no ded) monitor warranty is top in the industry, and has an rough value of at least 10% of msrp. I’d argue closer to 20% when you factor working direct with dell and not Asurion or other third-party extended warranty companies. LG warranty should be similar – but it’s NOT! 1yr ‘depot’ warranty actually makes the LG models look much worse on paper, even at very competitive pricing. Even a single year of advanced exchange has significant value.