VCRs Reviews

With DVD players outselling VCRs since 2002, professional review publications have stopped rating VCRs entirely, focusing instead on DVD technology. Consumer Reports no longer tests VCRs, nor does CNet.com, PC Magazine or other electronics publications. Rather, we found the most current coverage of VCRs at Amazon.com, where users are invited to rate their players.

Only two manufacturers are currently making standalone VCRs at all: Zenith and Daewoo. If you still want a new VCR to play your collection of VHS tapes, consider a combo player that includes a DVD player and VCR in one unit. These models are covered in the ConsumerSearch report on DVD players. Also available are combination DVD/VHS recorders, which can record and playback both DVD discs and VHS tapes. Those models are covered in our report on DVD recorders .

If you still want a plain-old VCR, you don't have many choices. You can still find a few models in stores for less than $50, but few of these VCRs are reviewed. Here, you're best off buying the cheapest machine you can find.

Other options for recording TVs shows are a DVR from your cable or satellite company or a DVD recorder , both covered in our other reports.  ... Continued

Our Consensus Report shows how many times products are top-ranked by reviewers included in our
All The Reviews Reviewed chart.

There's no longer any reviewer consensus when it comes to specific VCR models, and most are discontinued anyway. For this report, we looked for models that at least had some user feedback.