A product needs to be either of two things before being considered for review:

• a product that is widely used in the pro scene, and thus obviously relevant to our readers by virtue of that or
• a product that isn’t very popular in the scene, but looks like a very high quality product regardless.

We always review products that we believe are going to be worthwhile to look at, so we don’t just review any product that we set our eyes on. If it looks like it’s quality and it meets one of our criteria we will review it. Of course, we are not ruling out the occasional outlier as well.

In general, review products are sent to us by the manufacturer and then thoroughly tested by our reviewers. We either contact the manufacturer ourselves or the manufacturer might contact us to ask if we’d be interested in reviewing (a) certain product(s). For more info please check our Policies.

Our reviews are written by experienced gamers with decades of experience in competitive gaming, including some stints on the professional scene. Our reviewer receives the product(s) and tests them in a variety of scenarios. This includes regular gaming, as well as more in-depth specific tests to check for factory defects or performance issues.

Important to note is that all of our reviews are written with (competitive) gaming in mind. Daily use outside of gaming will be mentioned, but isn’t usually the focus of our reviews.

We offer two different ‘badges of honor’ for products that we reviewed; the Pro’s Choice Award and the Staff’s Choice Award. It is possible for a product to be both Pro’s Choice and Staff’s Choice, in which case it will have the two badges displayed on the review.

A product getting the Pro’s Choice Award simply means that that product was the most used product in its category for a certain game for a certain quarter of a year. We constantly track what gear the pros are using and update our guides accordingly (every week, even) and every quarter we make a list of what product has been number one for the longest time in each game that we analyze.

These products are then awarded the Pro’s Choice Award for that quarter. Products can be the Pro’s Choice for multiple games, as well as earn the Pro’s Choice Award for multiple quarters.

The Staff’s Choice Award is an award issued by our staff. This is given to products that are very unique and/or very innovative and serve to ‘up the ante’ for other product manufacturers, or in some cases to products that are simply great on every front, delivering on all of their promises without offering any drawbacks.

Staff’s Choice Awards are given after voting (the reviewer of the product has veto rights though) but aren’t considered to be the be all end all; no product we review is objectively bad (see: ‘how do you decide which products to review’) so a product not getting the award doesn’t mean it’s a bad product.

In short: The Staff’s Choice is more of a fun award, and a way to reward exceptional/innovative products, while the Pro’s Choice awards indicate what kind of gear the professionals are using across their games. It’s possible for products to earn a staff badge as well as a (or multiple) Pro’s Choice badge(s).

Hit us up on Twitter or in the comments of one of our reviews and we’ll see what we can do. We definitely listen to community feedback, and if a product fits our criteria we will do our best to arrange a review for said product.

All of the comment replies on reviews are made by the person who reviewed the product. This way we can ensure that people’s questions get answered by the person with relevant expertise, and not by someone who’s just guessing or reading a specsheet. This is the same across the entire website; if you comment on a player page or pro list that certain settings or gear are out of date it will be read and updated by the person who can immediately change that. Our community is the key for us, so direct contact with the relevant people is of paramount importance.

We answer all comments, so feel free to hit us with any questions you might have. If we accidentally missed your comment feel free to post it again or let us know on Twitter.