Hi Mur, I've done the star rating when I've done grouptests for Trail and to be honest it does my head in as I know from feedback a lot of folk will not read the full reviews, they'll scan the star rating, read the top ones to see why they're good and the bottom ones to see why they're rubbish.
Most reviews are based a mix of personal opinion and general product assessment and star ratings weight the review too heavily on the side of opinion. So I try to give a sense of what the kit is like in the text and leave it up to folk to decide themselves without saying what's best. You can probably tell what my favourites are but that still doesn't make them the best ones there
But, looking through the review and thinking about it, everything in the review would have got 3 or 4 out of 5. The difficulty is that most gear is "okay", it's just personal preference that makes better or worse than okay unless it's a real dog and no one's yet to send me anything rubbish for on here, Which I would kinda like to be honest! I just need the sole to peel off one of these trail shoes I have on test...