I'm preparing to invest in a nice FDM (FFF) printer soon and of course I'm primarily interested in the physical features of the output parts- layer bonding, materials, texture, support structure and it's effect on surface finish. These are all properties of the actual output part, and I wish I could find a review, author, or organization that would evaluate the output part blindly on these merits alone rather than all the superfluous details of the machine itself (eg. interior lighting, interface, software, etc.). Not that machine details are totally inconsequential but at the end of the day pretty much the only thing that matters to me is the physical performance characteristics of my parts. I wish someone would do a review where the same file is printed on a collection of popular printers and the reviewer(s) only get the resultant part to base their entire assessment. Things like strength, accuracy, surface finish, and material matter to me, it doesn't matter so much how we got there. Sure there are some details like how big a part you can make or how long it took to make it that are relevant, but I'd like to take those out of the equation so that we can just talk about the result objectively.
The same double-blind testing of wines I found pretty revealing and I can't help but think we might see some similar results in this industry- or even better, a distinct winner in the "bang for the buck" category when we're just looking at parts. Tests could/should include destructive testing to evaluate layer strength and flex/toughness, heat resistance.
Anyway, if anyone has seen some reviews like this I'd LOVE to hear from you! Maybe we could organize a test here on the forum?