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Content
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| Quality : |
18.0 / 20 |
| Quantity : |
11.0 / 15 |
| Entertain : |
13.0 / 15 |
| Updates : |
9.0 / 10 |
| Exclusive : |
5.0 / 05 |
| Download : |
4.0 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
60.0 / 70 |
| Navigation |
| Easy : |
8.0 / 10 |
| Features : |
3.0 / 05 |
| Design : |
3.5 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
14.5 / 20 |
| Other |
| Originality : |
4.0 / 05 |
| Hard Facts : |
3.5 / 05 |
| sub-total : |
7.5 / 10 |
Scoring Criteria New
New Update!
As of Aug 15th, 07, price of a site is no longer factored into the overall score/rank. |
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1. Original bondage collection.
2. High quality pics/vids.
3. Daily updates w/ archive.
1. Older content is rotated out.
2. Many more galleries than videos.
"An exclusive collection of high quality bondage pictures & videos." |
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Restrained Elegance has a lot background info into what the site is all about. Me, I'm always ready to welcome any bondage or bdsm site that specializes in original content. The fetish niches are so crammed with websites rehashing the same asian bondage pics and videos that it's crazy. Here the collection is the work of photographer Hywel Phillips with an emphasis on originality and exclusivity over sheer quantity. If you look at the site facts on the TBP listing you can see the picture galleries outnumber videos by about a 3 to 1 ratio. So photography is certainly Phillips's main medium but there's enough videos to balance out the content.
The member's area is a straightforward with the material organized in a section called "Index". It's easy enough to figure out and each gallery and video has a sample thumbnail, title, date, model names, # pics, description, and a quick link to a zip file download. While the organization is straightforward although there some things that are somewhat annoying The Index is one very, very long page which required crazy amount of scrolling, there's no separate section for the videos, and no categorization. They've got the descriptions so I think it would be helpful to members if there were niche categories and I'd definitely like to see the videos separated for easier navigation.
On the free tour Phillips doesn't hide the fact that he "gets accused of doing 'soft' bondage", a label that he disagrees with. I guess it all depends on perspective. He isn't gonna give you serious whipping, caning, and torture. Instead he does ropes, restraints, along with a bit of spanking and whipping. One thing that's not deniable is the sexiness of his models; these ladies would be hot in or out of the fetish scenarios. That's a great foundation upon which to build fetish content and his collection of models is as good as I've seen for a bondage site.
Finally now let me get to Restrained Elegance's #1 strength which is the content quality. The pictures are sharp and clear and the videos look awesome. I went with the WMV files although there are also High and Low quality Real Player formats as well. The pics can be viewed online or downloaded in zip files and the videos are only available as zips. The zip-only videos is one of the content quirks. The other is content rotation; apparently older bits of content are removed from the site after a period of time. Even thought everything is downloadable I'm never a fan of removing material from member's areas. One thing I'd like to see improved on is the quantity of content. That's not likely to happen if this rotation continues.
| 1st Follow-Up Review |
Review: 08-18-06 |
Some of the items mentioned in my initial review have been improved upon namely the adding of a videos section, non-zipped WMV files (for most vids), and page breakdown for easier browsing on the main content index/updates page. Each of these items helps make the site more user-friendly. Te nice quality content and sexy models remain the Restrained Elegance's key strengths and I also like how Hywel posts info about the site and new material right on the member's main page. It's clear he likes his site and wants members to like it as well. On the negative side the gap between the number of photo galleries and videos has widened substantially. I'm not sure if that's due to the content rotation system or what but it'd make things much more interesting if the videos section was bulked up.
Score increased from 80.0 to 80.5.
| 2nd Follow-Up Review |
Review: 01-30-08 |
Sometimes it's difficult to remember exactly what a site's infrastructure was like at the time of our previous reviews. Based on my prior remarks I believe Restrained Elegance has improved the setup with a model index which is alphabetical and links thru to all content that's online for any given model. The content rotation system seems to be in place still as I found some models had no content available at the time. Overall the original softcore bondage concept with beautiful models remains the core value of the site. They continue to have a lot of picture galleries with a lesser amount of video content. I haven't made a specific issue of update yet but those are added every day with a dated log available. The content rotation system is the only ding against the updates.
Score increased from 80.5 to 82.0.
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