All in all a fairly good test, but I know they took a beating in the next issue's "Letters from the readers" section.
Seems like they "Cherry Picked" a lot of the lathes, you are correct Frank, why did they pick the Grizzly lathe that they did, and why was a middle weight Oneway not included etc etc. They gave their answers, but they were fairly lame, it really seemed to me that they were dead set on having the Mustard be the top dog, no matter what, and I think they were surprised at how well the Nova lathes did.
They set their prices at $1200 to $3200, just high enough to exclude the Grizzly clone of the Jet, and low enough to exclude anything near the Mustard, but, what about the Oneway 1224, or the Vicmarc VL200, both easily in the range and top drawer lathes, why where they not included?
I'm sorry but while the info etc is very good, and the method of testing is very fair, the selection of the lathes they picked was not.
Some other things, one hit against the Rikon is the handle for tightening up the tool rest, OK, it is a bit flimsy looking, but for a few bucks, you can get a much better one, so instead of pointing out this is a negative, why not tell the readers to just replace this one bad thing? I do respect Fine Wood Working, but sometimes their tests seem designed to push a certain product, might very well be an unfair accusation, but it is meant more as an observation.