How We Test
The evidence behind every recommendation, the scoring rubric, and an honest account of what this site does not do and will not claim to have done.
Updated
Every article on this site carries an evidence basis, stated at the top of the page before anything else. There are three, and they mean exactly what they say.
The three evidence bases
Hands-on. We bought or borrowed the product and used it. Nothing in the current catalogue carries this label, and when something does, it will say so here first.
Research-based. We read the specifications, the manufacturer documentation and the warranty terms, then reasoned from those against the situation the reader is in. We have not tested the products. Most guides on this site are this.
Spec-comparison. We compared published specifications directly, without adding an interpretive layer. The hardware tier lists are this.
Where measured numbers come from
Where a measurement matters to a decision, we link to the laboratory that took it rather than restating the figure. That is a deliberate choice with two reasons behind it.
The first is legal: the major benchmark hierarchies are proprietary, and several of them explicitly forbid reproducing their data.
The second is more important. A number reproduced without its methodology is worthless. A frame rate means nothing without knowing the test system, the settings, the driver version and how many runs were averaged. Sending you to the source keeps the number attached to the method that produced it.
The scoring rubric
Where a guide scores products, the scores are on a ten-point scale across dimensions chosen for that category — build, adjustment and value for a chair; sound, build and value for headphones. They are editorial judgements derived from specifications, warranty terms, published measurements and design, and they are labelled as such.
They are not measurements. A score of 9 for build means the evidence available points to a well-made product, not that it survived a drop test we conducted.
How products get into a guide
A product must exist in our fact store before an article can reference it, and each record holds its specifications with a source URL for every value. Until a human has confirmed those values against the manufacturer or the retailer, the record stays unverified — and any article referencing an unverified product is stamped noindex and kept out of the sitemap by the build itself.
This is why the site sometimes shows fewer guides than have been written. That is the gate working, not a fault.
What we will never do
- Accept payment for a review, a placement or a score.
- Claim hands-on testing that did not happen.
- Publish a specification that does not carry a source.
- Quote a price, because prices go stale and stale prices mislead.
- Reproduce another publication’s measurements as though they were ours.
Corrections
If a figure here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say that we did. See contact .