That might be so they don't get sued...
Ya gotta possess it to assess it?
My own two penn'orth, as a cheapskate who has far too many budget centrepins, is roughly this: For carp and pike, a tough reel is better than a fine one, and possibly the most important feature is a smooth rim that won't burn your thumb when you try to stop an angry lump. This is vexatious with pike, as in the winter, a wooden or plastic reel is less horrid to hold than a metal one. Aerialites can be handy then, and are very cheap at the moment.
For lake work and ponding, for tench, crucians and such, just use any old centre pin you like; how pretty it looks in your trophy shots is as valid a criterion as any, you're unlikely to be trying to Wallis cast. Unless you find a shoal of rudd; no matter how you feed, they always seem to drift away from trouble, don't they?
Fast-flowing rivers give the spoke'n'pillars jobs their chance to shine; line peeling off an Aerial is a fine sight to behold, as long as it's someone else's; the angler is supposed to be watching the float.
Moderate and slow flows are the acid test. Pillars soon put "corners" in the line, and on a modern rod with lots of small-diameter rings, they soon start arguing about who shall pass through which ring first, like minor aristos at the Sun King's court arguing over precedence. So I reach for a round-arboured reel. One of my very best is a Speedia with a 3-D printed plastic arbour, otherwise, I tend to use Rapidexes if the wind will be blowing across my body to the rod, Trudexes if it's the other way, or calm. I have freer-running reels, a Hardy Conquest (modern 3-handled version) which is very smooth, but has no compensating drag, and a couple of cheap bearing reels which have the same disqualification; I have cheaper reels, notably Aerialite center-pins (as opposed to "Swimming reels" with the T-bar nut) and a Shakespeare "Lincoln" (unbelievably free-running) for when I'm desperate enough to brave the cold; I have lovely wooden Slater-latches, and knock-offs thereof, which I use because they look good on cane; but I could do without them all if I have my two best Speedias and an ample supply of Raps and Trudies.
I laid out £7.50 on a "Black Zero" in a Dragon Carp sale, and couldn't believe how nice it was to fish with (no drag, though). You sometimes fluke a bit more than you paid for!
If someone could make a Rapidex clone with with a removable bottom bar to the cage, which would make Wallis casting feasible, that would be the only reel I'd need. Not that I'd get rid of the others...
The two smoothest reels I ever held were a Browning Revolver and a Sowerbutts' with a telephone latch - not even a "proper" centre-pin! Both had that "where's the motor?" feel. I'd be scared to take one to a nasty, earthy river bank.
---------- Post added at 19:37 ---------- Previous post was at 19:36 ----------
Oops- typing while Iain posted. Most illuminating post, that, Thank you!