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Reviewed.com Testing and Reviewing Methodology

At Reviewed.com, our mission is to empower consumers with information that can help them make better and more informed buying decisions. We believe that the best way to produce independent, fair and accurate reviews is to use standardized scientific method testing procedures to examine the performance of the products we test. Too often, technology product reviewing is mired in uninformed analysis, performance conclusions based on unstandardized testing, and extreme bias towards the companies being reviewed. All of our reviews are produced by an independent staff of product experts. We follow a strict church and state separation policy between our advertising and editorial departments and bar any contact between members of the editorial staff and the advertising staff. We also ban our editors from accepting any gifts or press junkits from the companies they cover. In addition to these ethics policies (which you can read in our ethics statement), we follow strict standardized testing methods which are outlined below:

Testing Philosophy and the Scientific Method
We strive to follow the scientific method as close as possible in our reviewing and testing procedures. This includes gathering measurable evidence using objective and unbiased procedures which are easily repeatable and reportable for every product. Our reviews combine a variety of test procedures which are designed to comprehensively test every aspect of the performance of devices, from basic things (such as how quickly you can dial a number on a cell phone) to more complex aspects of performance (such as how well a camcorder captures color, for instance). This comprehensive testing approach means that are our reviews are among the most reliable, fair, comprehensive, and in-depth available.

Reviewed.com Labs
Our reviews are based on tests carried out in the reviewed.com test labs, which are equipped with the latest test equipment; we don't use any information or test results supplied by the manufacturer to produce our scores. Our reviews are written by the editors of reviewed.com, who are all experienced, accomplished writers who understand the latest developments in their fields, and understand what impact these developments can have on the products being reviewed.

Cell Phone Testing
To test cell phones, we use a Head and Torso simulator and a professional electro-acoustic analysis program to test the sound quality of the calls that the phone makes. This equipment (which is the same as the manufacturers use to test their products on the production line) allows us to do detailed analysis of the frequency response of cell phones, examining how they respond to different frequencies on both incoming and outgoing sound. This means that we can judge the audio quality of a phone precisely. Most people test cell phones by making a couple of phone calls to their friends; we do a detailed scientific analysis of the sound quality using professional equipment.

Digital Camera Testing
For digital cameras, we use a professional image analysis program called Imatest that can analyze images to detect how much detail is captured, how accurate the colors are and how much noise the camera introduces into the photos under a variety of lighting conditions. By capturing the images under precisely controlled conditions, we can draw scientific conclusions about how the cameras work and compare them. We use all of these tests (and more) to come to an overall conclusion on how good a camera is at taking photos.

Camcorder Testing
Camcorders undergo a similarly through testing regimen, using a variety of tests that examine the quality of the images they capture in extreme detail. We take a lot of test video in a variety of conditions (including different lighting levels) and examine how well the camcorder captures and stores the video. We also test how well features such as image stabilization work; for this we use a custom-built shake emulator that produces a standard amount of camera shake. This allows us to draw direct comparisons between the different types of stabilizers, providing you with information on how effective these features are.

Printer Testing
Printers are also reviewed in the same scientific, comprehensive manner, with our reviews team looking at the speed of printing and all aspects of the quality of the prints produced. We look at the color gamut (how wide a range of colors a printer can reproduce), the dMax (the density of the black in prints) and the accuracy of the colors. To judge the accuracy of the colors in a print, we use use an EyeOne Pro spectrophotometer, which analyzes the color in prints and evaluates how different it is from the original.

Non-Tested Precedent Based Product Analysis
For those areas of a product that cannot be simply analyzed with a test, our expert reviewers and editors use a comparative method of analysis. Every section that is analyzed using human observation instead of scientific testing is done so by comparing that product to other products on the market. The scores that are produced in these subjective sections are precedent scores, based on the scores of previous products. This means that our testing regimen is comprehensive, covering the performance of the product, how easy it is to use and how well it will fit in with user's lifestyles. We review the entire product, not just aspects of it.

Fair and Equal Treatment of All Products
All of this testing is for one aim: to provide you with accurate, scientifically valid information about how well a product performs the tasks for which it is designed, regardless of the cost. We do consider the cost of a product in our final conclusions, but it doesn't enter into our testing process: a $100 printer or cell phone goes through the same set of tests as a $600 one.

In-Depth Reviews with Lab Results
We do not publish the full results of our lab tests on Reviewed.com because we find most users are not interested in seeing them. However, for those users who want to see our lab results, they are readily available. The reviews you see here on reviewed.com are shorter versions of the reviews published on our niche sites (such as WirelessInfo.com, CamcorderInfo.com, DigitalCameraInfo.com and PrinterInfo.com). If you click on the in-depth review link on any reviewed product, you will be taken to a longer version of the review which includes graphs and charts of the testing procedure, as well as an item by item breakdown of every score the product received.

You can read more about our independence and ethics policy as well as our reviewing philosophies at Reviewed.com by reading our Ethics and Independence Pledge.

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