Skip to content
GEAREDGAMING

The honest core of this site

How we research and score

Every claim we make about a product rests on this page. If we get this wrong, nothing else we publish is worth reading.

We do not run a testing lab. We don't have one, and we're not going to pretend we do. When a number in one of our reviews came from someone else's lab, we say whose lab it was and we link to it. When we couldn't verify something, we say that too — in those words, on the page.

What we actually do

We research. Specifically, we work from:

  • Published manufacturer specifications — treated as claims, not facts. We write "Logitech rates it at 8,000 DPI", not "it does 8,000 DPI". The difference matters.
  • Primary technical standards.When we tell you the Steam Deck's SD slot caps at ~104MB/s, that comes from Valve's published hardware spec and the SD Association's published bus specification — both linked on the page, both checkable in thirty seconds.
  • Third-party lab measurements — outlets like RTINGS who buy the units and measure them properly. We cite them by nameand link them. Borrowing someone else's credibility with attribution is honest; implying their measurements are ours is not.
  • Aggregated owner reviews — treated as evidence, but weak evidence. A recurring complaint across thousands of buyers is a real signal about comfort or reliability. It is not a substitute for a specification.

What our scores are, and what they are not

Every product carries five metric scores out of 10, and an overall score that is simply their mean. These are judgements from documented research. They are not lab measurements, and we will never present them as such.

We publish the rubric because nobody else in this category does. If you can't see what a number is made of, the number is decoration.

Audio (headsets, earbuds, IEMs)

Positional accuracy
Can you place a sound in space? The metric that decides a gunfight.
Footstep clarity
How well quiet, broadband movement cues survive the headset's tuning.
Mic quality
Will your team actually want to hear you?
Comfort
Clamp force, weight, and whether it's bearable with glasses.
Value
Performance per dollar at its LIVE price — so this one moves.

Handheld accessories

Compatibility
LCD vs OLED vs ROG Ally vs Legion Go. The most common source of returns.
Build quality
Materials, tolerances, and which part fails first.
Performance
Real throughput against the device's actual bus limit — not the number on the box.
Portability
Size and weight, for a device whose entire point is leaving the house.
Value
Performance per dollar at its LIVE price.

Peripherals (mice, keyboards, monitors)

Sensor / panel / switch quality
The core component, judged against what a human can actually perceive.
Build quality
Materials, cable, stabilisers, stand — the parts reviews skip.
Ergonomics
Shape, size and grip fit. The thing that decides whether you keep it.
Features
Buttons, hot-swap, adjustability — weighted by whether you'd genuinely use them.
Value
Performance per dollar at its LIVE price.

Why our scores can change without the product changing

The Value metric is computed against the product's live price. So when a mouse drops 30% in a sale, its Value score goes up and its overall score moves with it — even though the mouse is identical.

That is deliberate, and it is honest. "Is this worth the money?" is a question about the money, and the money changes weekly. A static score pretending otherwise is simply out of date and not admitting it.

How the prices work

  • Prices come from the Amazon Product Advertising API, refreshed on a daily schedule.
  • Every price is stamped with the date we fetched it. The most recent refresh was Jul 14, 2026.
  • If our price data is more than 48 hours old, the number disappears.The button falls back to "Check price on Amazon". We would rather show you nothing than a figure that has rotted.
  • If a product has no buyable offer, we say so and show no price — rather than quietly leaving last month's number on the page.

This is the part we are proudest of, and it is genuinely unusual: the competing pages in our categories hand-type their prices, and those prices are frequently months out of date. Ours are wrong for at most 48 hours, and then they vanish rather than lie.

How we choose which products to cover

  • Real, currently-sold products only.Every product on this site was resolved against Amazon's live catalogue. We do not write up a product from memory.
  • No product we could not research gets a score. No research, no number.
  • Buyer-first, always. If the cheaper option is good enough, we say so — even when the expensive one pays us more. You will find this happening throughout the site, and it is not an accident.

What we will never do

  • Write "we tested", "hands-on", "in our testing", or "we measured" — because we didn't.
  • Invent a price, a rating, a review count, or a specification.
  • Publish a customer testimonial. We have no customers; we sell nothing.
  • Let a commission rate change a ranking. Where a merchant pays us nothing, we still link them and we say that we earn nothing there.

Who writes this

Reviews and guides on Geared Gaming are written and edited by Stephen V., editor of Geared Gaming. The site is published by Type 5 Marketing LLC. Every review follows the method on this page.

Tell us we're wrong

If something here is factually incorrect, we want to know, and we will fix it within 48 hours with a visible correction note — see our editorial policy. Contact us.