Stereophile's 2021 products of the year

I agree entirely regarding sensitivity and impedance/phase angle

This is why I always try to show Stereophile speaker impedance vs -phase angle graphs when recommending an amp for anyone.
Instead of just blindly saying get this amp it's the best.😵

Cheers George 

Didn’t Stereophile lose its credibility when JA became editor in chief over 20 years ago? Lol, how many class A and class A+ components can you have? Perhaps the advertiser’s wallet is the limit. J/k ;)

Stereophile is awesome.  Not perfect, but a very good mag.  

As for their "best of" issues, of which there are more than one per year, I am indifferent.  The reason they do so many of them is because it sells magazines.  There are many budding audiophiles who need resources for buying and upgrading gear.  Stereophile and other magazines provide this resource.  And, yes, publishing IS a business.  And it's a very difficult business to make money at, especially in the internet age.  
I hate to think of Stereophile and TAS going out of business.  The quality of the writing and the personalities of both magazines are very interesting for me.  Compare these two to some of the British mags sometime.  The integrity of the U.S. mags is much higher IMO.

There is definite value in the stereophile reviews but you have to be careful with matching components for compatability and synergy.  this is why they list the associsted components which i like.  
the other thing is that there is an unwritten rule with the class system that people fail to understand- the term "within its competitive price range"
the KEF example affirms this, the LS50s are class A products within their price range because they overperform at their price vs the competition.  The Reference products do not in my opinion and therefore the class B rating.  
I believe you can look at this within every cagetory.   Why they do not make it official rather than "between the lines" is probably a can of worms they do not want to open...

another value as mentioned is that well reviewed products retain their value better and sell faster if you are inclined.  
i just sold some items and could not believe how quickly they sold.