I do think JKM strikes me as a bit shill-y at times, something I am always on guard against in a hobby so prone to burying yourself in gadgetry that you never actually bother to do any real woodworking (is that just me, or anyone else?) but I'm not sure how the test could have been more fair given what he examined. It was a nearly perfectly made testing apparatus for what he wanted to explore that removed many variables that doing it by hand would have left.
I agree that nothing is perfect, but having an objective chart of "brand x removed y grams of test material before being used up" and comparing that against the overall cost is about as objective as one can be.