Editorial policy

Independence

• No sponsored placements. No brand can pay to appear on this site, to rank higher, or to be described more kindly. There is no rate card and no negotiation.
• No review samples. We do not accept free products from manufacturers.
• No pre-publication review. No brand sees our copy before you do.
• Commission does not affect rank. Where a cheaper product is the better buy, it ranks higher — even though it pays us less. This happens constantly on this site and it is the clearest test of whether we mean any of this.
• We label links that earn us nothing. See the affiliate disclosure.

Language we have banned ourselves from using

We do not have a testing lab. Accordingly, the following phrases are banned across this entire site, and if you ever find one, it is a bug and we want to hear about it:

• "We tested…"
• "Hands-on"
• "In our testing…"
• "We measured…"
• "Our lab…"
• "We spent 40 hours with…"

What we write instead: "we researched", "we compared the published specs", "RTINGS measured X — here is what it means for you", and, when it is true, "we could not verify this claim".

Sourcing standards

• Cite by name and link.Never "tests show…" with no attribution — that is laundering someone else's authority.
• Never cite a source we did not actually read. If we could not access something, we do not cite it, and we say so if it matters.
• Manufacturer claims are claims.We write "Razer rates it at 8,000 Hz", not "it does 8,000 Hz".
• Distinguish measurement from opinion. A lab number gets an attributed citation. Our read of what it means for you is ours, and is written as ours.
• Owner reviews are evidence, but weak evidence. A pattern across thousands of buyers tells you something real about comfort and reliability. It is not a substitute for a specification.

Corrections — within 48 hours

If we publish something factually wrong, we will correct it within 48 hours of being shown that it is wrong, and we will leave a visible correction note on the page saying what changed and when.

We will not quietly edit a page to make an error disappear. If you find one, email Info@gearedgaming.com — including to challenge a ranking or a score. We would rather be corrected than be wrong in public.

Update cadence

• Prices: daily, automatically. And if a refresh fails, the price disappears rather than going stale. See /methodology.
• Roundups: reviewed every 90 days. Products get discontinued, and a roundup recommending a dead product is worse than no roundup at all.
• Guides: reviewed every 6 months, or immediately when a fact changes.

We do not bump dates dishonestly

The "Updated" date on a page changes only when the content actually changes.Re-stamping an untouched page with today's date to look fresh is a lie told to a search engine at the reader's expense, and it is widespread in this industry. We don't do it.

We publish no user quotes, and no fake ratings

You will not find glowing quotes about us on this site, because we have no customers — we sell nothing. Any site in this business that shows you praise for itself is asking a question worth asking.

The scores you see are our editorial scores, from the published rubric, attributed to a named editor. They are not aggregated user ratings and we do not present them as such.