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they're pretty consistent. unlike most tech reviews, there's things which have to be present to be considered repairable. eg: is everything glued down? are screws accessible? are there a bunch of different screws with obscure heads? is there a publicly available repair manual? etc.

also iirc their scores are determined by committee rather than a single individual

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Okay, I would have figured 8/10 is impossibly high for fixed ram.

The score is not a qualitative measure on how serviceable a product is compared to it’s peers, rather, the score reflects how simple it is to service items that are able to be serviced. If the ram is not swappable, it’s simply not counted in the score as it’s integrated with the main board.

I have here, a brick. It has won 100% of the swimming races that it has participated in. It is therefore a very good swimmer.

Not sure this is true — then every device by definition gets a high score, singe the display or batter is simply “not able to be serviced” on devices with poor repairability.

They have also gone back and changed scores in light of more recent information. Like parts-pairing in more recent iphones decreasing its score months after the initial review came out, despite the part seeming easy to swap. I appreciate that.

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