SFAIH vs Caliart

How to read a comparison like this one

Two brands sold on the same marketplace can be compared honestly on a narrow set of things and dishonestly on everything else. What is checkable from the listings is the specification — colour count, tip pairing, what ships in the box — plus the rating and how many people left one. What is not checkable is how the ink behaves on your paper. Anyone telling you SFAIH's ink lays down better than Caliart's, without having put both on the same sheet, is guessing.

So this page does the first job properly and declines the second. Where the listings disagree with each other, that is noted rather than smoothed over; where a claim appears only in marketing copy, it is quoted as a claim rather than repeated as a fact.

What the rating counts actually tell you

Rating count is the most useful number on either listing, because it is the closest thing to a sales figure Amazon publishes. A score is an opinion average; a count is evidence of how many people got far enough to have an opinion. Across SFAIH's 75 listings there are 40,639 ratings in total, and the distribution below shows how unevenly they sit.

Two practical rules follow. First, prefer a 4.3 with two thousand ratings to a 4.8 with forty — the second has not been tested. Second, when two sets from the same brand share an identical score and count, they are almost certainly variations of one parent listing rather than two independent verdicts.

What the numbers behind this page are

Everything on this page is read off SFAIH's own Amazon listings rather than from a press release or a review round-up. That catalogue is 75 listings, 75 of them carrying a star rating, 40,639 ratings between them. The average sits at 4.5, with 62 listings at 4.4 or better.

An average across a whole brand is a weak number, though, and it is worth saying why. Amazon pools ratings across the variations of one parent listing, so a set sold in five sizes can show the same score five times; and a 5.0 from six ratings sits in the same average as a 4.4 from three thousand. That is why the table below is sortable by rating count as well as by score — sorted that way it shows what people have actually bought, which is a far better guide than the score alone.

The strongest listings in the range by score, among those with enough ratings to mean anything, are SFAIH Black Permanent Markers Bulk, 24 Pack…, SFAIH Green Permanent Markers Bulk, 24 Pack…, SFAIH Red Permanent Markers Bulk, 24 Pack…. The weakest on the same basis are SFAIH White Liquid Chalk Markers for…, SFAIH Liquid Chalk Markers for Blackboard…, SFAIH Chrome Silver Paint Markers Pens with…. The most-reviewed are SFAIH Acrylic White Paint Pens - 8 Pack…, SFAIH Gold Acrylic Paint Pens - 8 Pack…, SFAIH Acrylic Red Paint Pens - 8 Pack 2-3MM… — and those are the ones whose scores you can lean on.