Whenever Consumer Reports weighs in on the automotive landscape, we're always eager to hear what its editors have to say. We value their opinions, not because we necessarily agree or disagree, but because CR plays it straight. And sometimes, amidst all the folderol spewed about new models in the pages of car magazines and on the myriad websites devoted to automotive minutiae, it helps to read someone write things like this: Overall, CR's testers found the CR-V is functional and easy to live with, if not particularly exciting to drive. The CX-5 Touring... is more athletic and engaging to drive, thanks to its agile handling, taut cornering, and responsive steering. Now this may strike most of you as nothing more than CR displaying its usually astute command of the obvious. But it reads that way for a reason – call it art imitating life. So when the mainstreamers read that the CR-V narrowly beat out the CX-5, it will not just reflect the reality of a market in which the Mazda brand lags well behind Honda, but confirm their worldview.

The Honda CR-V will continue to appear on the magazine's "Recommended" list, while the jury will await reliability reports before nominating the Mazda CX-5.air duct cleaning vacuum The sun will rise in the east and set in the west.air purifier hong kong sale To read CR's full press release, which also spills the beans on the June issue's head-to-head test between the Mercedes-Benz ML350 and BMW X5, as well as road tests of the Subaru Impreza hatchback and Kia Soul, scroll down. hunter air purifiers reviewsWe also have the magazine's video reviews of the crossover pair in video form, so have a look. FAMILY-FRIENDLY HONDA CR-V NARROWLY OUTPOINTS MAZDA CX-5 IN CONSUMER REPORTS' SMALL SUV TESTS Pricey Mercedes-Benz ML 350 and BMW X5 midsize SUVs improve, but fall short of class leaders

Honda CR-V InformationAll Model YearsOwner RatingsRecallsFor SaleBook ValuesDealersRebates & IncentivesPhotosVideosCompareMore Honda Cars and Trucks Compare the side-by-side against similar vehicles 2016 Hyundai Santa Fe SportReviews: 4 Riding Lawnmowers Under $2000 Fall is here, and soon leaves will be inundating your yard. We tested eight of the best two-stroke leaf blowers (all for under $160) to see which was the champ at blowing away debris. Craftsman 358.794774Craftsman 358.794774Engine Size: 25 ccDecibels (A-weighted): 95Airspeed/Volume: 215 mph/470 cfm*Weight: 14 poundsPrice: $145Likes: The Craftsman is one easy-starting blower. Set its automatic choke to Start, give its recoil handle one or two gentle pulls, and the engine roars to life. The choke lever moves automatically to the Run position. The blower has good vibration isolation and comfortable handles. It moves debris well, if not exceptionally.Dislikes: We didn't have trouble with the gap between the bevel gear and the line head, but it looks vulnerable.

Also, we think the Echo deserves a momentary stop switch (one that flips back automatically to run position). Instead, it has a sliding switch with two fixed positions that you have to double-check every time you start the machine.Rating: * * * 1/2* Volume in cubic feet (of air) per minute; Craftsman and Poulan Pro airspeed measured with narrow-nozzle accessory, not shown. Volume reading taken in vac mode. Echo PB-250Echo PB-250Engine Size: 25.4 ccDecibels (A-weighted): 92Airspeed/Volume: 135 mph/390 cfmWeight: 9.5 poundsPrice: $160Likes: The Echo was one example of how misleading air-movement numbers can be. It has low numbers, but it's highly productive. To us, that indicates that an airstream has to be more than fast or have high volume—it has to be shaped for maximum impact. We liked the Echo's long tube, which lets you direct its tip close to what you need to move. Also, the tube's S-shaped curve helps reduce the blower's tendency to twist, reducing user fatigue.Dislikes: We don't like the tool's sliding Stop switch or its upside-down purge bulb, which is awkward to pump.

Rating: * * * * 5 Best Pergola Plans & Inspiration Busted Old Horseshoe Gets a New Life as a Sweet Knife The Top 5 Metalworking Tools You Should Have Make Your Own Mini Hydraulic Press and Start Crushing Things Watch a CD (Sort of) Cut Through Wood The 6 Best Workwear Jackets to Keep You Warm and Dry The Best 6-Foot Ladders For All Your Indoor Needs Watch a Wrench Get Beaten Into a Homemade Tomahawk A Scroll Saw Built Entirely From Found Parts How to Straighten a Board Edge Without a Jointer Should You Buy These New High-Voltage Cordless Power Tools?From the August 2014 Issue of Car and Driver Like its spirit animal, the massive, majestic American buffalo, the American-made Mercedes-Benz GL450 is ideally suited to the wide-open spaces of our vast continent, where it can roam widely, consuming a vast amount of natural resources. Like the buffalo, the GL once ran with huge herds—in this case, of full-size SUVs across North Ameri­ca.

Times have changed for these mechanical bovines from when nearly a million Ameri­cans bought them every year. In 2013, the class managed only about 350,000 sales. But the GL is a survivor. This second-generation GL, which arrived for the 2013 model year, has been outselling the Cadillac Escalade and Lincoln Navigator combined. To check the health of the dominant member of the luxury-SUV class, and because we have children and junk to carry (and junky cars to tow), we ordered up a 2013 GL450 and immediately headed out on the buffalo traces that we call interstates. And, for the sake of extending our buffalo metaphor beyond all reason, we specified the company’s Dakota Brown Metallic paint. We chose the 450 version, with its 362-hp, twin-turbo 4.6-liter V-8, because it sits at the fat end of GL sales. The optional ­diesel would have been more efficient. The upsized V-8 of the GL550 would have proven unnecessarily quicker and also thirstier and more expensive. And the 550-hp GL63 AMG is just crazy.

Starting at $64,805, the GL450 seemed not gallingly expensive by full-size luxury-SUV standards. Somehow, though, we managed to pile $26,040 in options onto our three-row family truckster, bringing the total bill to a staggering $90,845. But hey, you didn’t expect us to go without chrome door-handle inserts and hood-fin covers, did you? By the way, those shiny bits cost $225. Other arguably unnecessary or frivolous items included illuminated running boards, a chromed exhaust, and 20-inch wheels for $1340; heated rear seats for $620; a heated steering wheel for $225; pano­ramic sunroof for $1090; black leather seating surfaces for $1620; heated/ventilated front seats for $570; power-folding second-row seats for $400; and that brown metallic paint for $720. Functional options included Mercedes’ $2800 Driver Assistance package (active blind-spot assist, active lane-keeping assist, and radar-based cruise control); its $1290 Parking Assist system with cameras that provide a 360-degree view of the vehicle’s surroundings;

the $2900 Active Curve system (active anti-roll bars to snub body roll); a $550 towing package; $1290 curve-illuminating headlights with adaptive high-beams; and an $1800 On/Off Road package (two locking differentials, six transmission settings, and adaptive dampers), which really only ever saw use on road. Possibly, by now you’ve divined that our truck was loaded to the hood-gills. Oh, and because the GL would serve as our road-tripper of choice, we felt that the $1950 twin-screen, rear-seat entertainment package was critical to long-term mental health. To say the GL450 hit the ground running is to massively understate the case. In the bronze bus’s first two months, we covered more than 10,000 miles visiting (on separate trips) Kentucky, New York, South Carolina, and Virginia, in addition to commuting to and from the office. And we were smitten. The logbook filled with kind words about the long-term comfort of the seats and a highway ride so soothing that it was almost narcotic.

A few of us even began to feel comfortable with the radar-directed cruise-control system that, on long slogs, relieved operators of the tedious business of maintaining a set speed and a safe distance from the car ahead. Carolyn Pavia-Rauchman: I love the fact that the back-up-camera system sees not just to the rear but also to the sides. Jeff Sabatini: Seat fold-down functionality is great. Call me bourgeois, but after years of owning minivans with complicated folding mechanisms, I like simple, one-button/one-lever seats. K.C. Colwell: One-hundred-dollar fill-ups with a 500-mile highway range is pitiful. Don Sherman: The silly [column-mounted] shifter is growing on me. Hopefully there’s a salve for that. Mike Fazioli: An amazingly unintuitive DVD entertainment system. That was the curious thing about the GL: Nobody really enjoyed driving it as we would a car. The steering is superlight and artificial feeling. The body rocks fore and aft in day-to-day traffic.

And the lazy throttle calibration can lead to graceless departures from a stop. But hey, you don’t expect a buffalo to be able to dance the waltz—at least not well. And, in its element, which is to say covering many miles quickly and quietly on interstates, the GL was a supremely evolved conveyance. Powertrain performance was never a concern. The 5855-pound GL450 got to 60 mph in 5.9 seconds at the beginning of its stay with us, and dropped an insignificant tenth of a second to 5.8 seconds after 40,000 miles. The quarter-mile remained a steady 14.4 seconds from beginning to end. That’s as quick or quicker than is necessary, strictly speaking, for such a vehicle. Never once did any complaint about the seven-speed automatic make it to the logbook. It swapped gears smoothly and eagerly enough. Braking performance was good, too, considering the weight of the thing. It posted a 70-to-0-mph stop of 179 feet on its first test and improved by 10 feet on its final one. What those braking numbers don’t tell you is that the GL’s mushy brake pedal meant that drivers sometimes misjudged the vehicle’s decelerative performance and found, halfway through a stop, that they needed to add more braking force in a hurry.

Adding to the impression that the anchors might be a bit overmatched by the heft, we suffered three bouts of vibration under braking. At 11,592 miles our dealer replaced the rear rotors. At 15,154 miles, we returned to our dealer for fresh front rotors to quell the returning vibration. When the shakes came back again at around 30,000 miles, we hoofed it back to the dealer for another new pair of front rotors and pads. All of this was under warranty and cost us nothing. But it did mean we had to make a couple of unscheduled visits. The only time the braking system actually cost us money was on our second front-rotor replacement when the dealer deemed our rear pads to be excessively worn and not covered under warranty. New pads, wear sensors, and labor totaled $493. We made another unscheduled dealer visit at 18,458 miles because the chrome trim on the driver’s door was peeling off. A new piece was fastened. But the same strip of trim separated and flew off on the expressway just before the 40,000-mile mark.

We also managed to break the release handle on the second-row seat. All of the above was covered under warranty, as was the hood-release lever that we tore clean off the underside of the instrument panel at around 38,000 miles. The only faulty trim bit that we actually were on the hook to pay for was a wiper-arm cover that was liberated from the vehicle by an automatic car wash. That cost us $22. Erik Johnson: This is all the engine you need in this beast. The GL550/GL63 are overkill. Austin Lindberg: If my body didn’t need to expel liquids and the GL didn’t so frequently need to take on liquids, I could drive forever in comfort. Eddie Alterman: More rattles than a Babies “R” Us. John Phillips: The low-washer-fluid warning is something that would scare NASA. Mike Sutton: Probably the best winter machine I’ve ever driven. It’s pretty much invincible in all the snow, ice, and muck of the Snowpocalypse. The brake system’s weaknesses concerned us a bit.

The rest of the issues were minor nuisances. We were perplexed, though, by the vehicle’s occasional electro-psychotic episodes. Apropos of nothing, the GL’s massively complicated electrical systems would just take a break. Sometimes the rear cameras would fail to function. Sometimes all of the electronic safety nets would throw their tiny silicon hands up and refuse to do anything but warn us that they were inoperative. Thankfully, cycling the ignition always set things straight. The dealer could never find a fault with the vehicle, possibly because the GL had gone back on its meds in the intervening time. But it was frustrating. On one occasion, we hopped in the GL on a particularly frigid morning to find its battery completely dead—that would be when we yanked the hood-release lever off the SUV. A jump from a kindly woman in a rusted-out Ford Windstar got us moving again. The GL required five scheduled service stops for the 40,000 miles, totaling $1886. The 40,000-mile service alone (including an oil change; tire rotation; fuel, air, and cabin filters; and a brake-fluid flush) cost us a hefty $678.