Platinum is a marketing -Sales BS term, it designates nothing but the image they want you to have of the term Platinum, in hope you will remember platinum being valuable, and then mistakenly relating that to what they're hoping you'll buy from them. If you prefer the John Deere, you can always invent your own marketing name for it, maybe the Diamond Dazzler model John Deere, then it sounds better that the Platinum machine.
Consumer Reports rates the Ariens 30" model 921013 slightly better than the John Deere 30" Model 1695812, and it appears to be related to handling , which is usually something like one is more difficult to steer than the other. They test only brand new machines while they are new, so this result may not reflect how they compare over time, after the parts wear down a bit.
