- Joined
- Feb 29, 2012
- Messages
- 785
I have a laptop right here and it has not 3rd party sticker attached to it. Do you have pictures of these certificates?
I think your original question was about
available with verified 3rd party testing
not "certificates", so maybe I misunderstand the level of documentation and evidence chain tied to a specific part you or others are proposing for HRC tests.
However, for your laptop, yes, if you know what type of CPU is in it, you can view 3rd-party test results for its performance. For example, the last PC I built used an i5-6500. A site such as UserBenchmark writes a testing program, distributes it, and publishes the crowdsourced results for a specific processor. So I can view the aggregate results of that processor's performance before buying, as at https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Intel-Core-i5-6500/Rating/3513. (Interestingly, I can also test my own processor to see how it compares after purchase, so this example isn't really 1:1 for HRC where there's special equipment needed.) From there it's just a question of how much you trust the third party... Is crowdsourced performance data good enough? Would you prefer Consumer Reports secret shoppers bought 30 of the CPUs and tested them all themselves? Or does NIST need to get involved and verify them with government backing?
Note that I don't really have a strong position one way or the other for the specific case of knife blade HRC testing. I bought two of the M390 Delicas the day they were released, sight-, review-, and testing-unseen, because I do trust Spyderco to get it right.
My point is simply that consumer goods do exist with documented, 3rd party confirmation of the performance of the product run. Which I think is what F FiveToes was suggesting, not certificates tied to tests run on specific, individual products.