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 don’t just review any old product (see ‘How do you decide which products to review’) so most of the products that we review are, at the very least, capable gaming products in their own right.

The Staff’s Choice Award is issued by our staff and it is given to products that are very unique (in a worthwhile way, so not ‘gimmicky unique’) and/or innovative and serve to ‘up the ante’ for other product manufacturers. The Staff’s Choice Award can also be given to products that are simply great on every front, delivering on all promises with no features or aspects that fall below ‘excellent.’

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; a product not getting this award does not mean that it is a bad product.

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.