How we test, review and rate on TechRadar

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are constantly updated and maintained – regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it’s on our radar.

We have assembled a global team of some of the finest technology journalists on the planet, who are not only experts in their field, but are the same people we write our reviews for: those who want to know about and use the latest and best technology.

Our editorial independence is backed by the weight of the UK’s largest technology publisher, Future Publishing, which means we can tell you what we think of a product, without fear or favor.

Our reviews guarantee

This is our promise to you:

  • We do not take payment for product reviews. Ever.
  • We select products for review based on what we believe our readers would want to know.
  • We’ll tell you what we think, not what advertisers want you to hear.
  • We say it as we see it. Our expert reviewers love technology and want you to love it too. If it’s garbage, we’ll warn you off.
  • If a product doesn’t meet our high standards, we’ll tell you why. 
  • We’ll test products in real life, with a minimum acceptable number of days of testing required before we write our reviews to ensure every product is thoroughly tested.
  • If you think we’re not living up to our promise, please email the editor in chief and we’ll endeavor to put it right.

Our review scoring system

We use a familiar five-star scoring system, in order to keep things recognizable and simple: the more stars, the better. 

We rate our products on a number of criteria depending on the specific attributes of a product type, and we add a score out of 5 for each:

Design – How does the product look and feel? Is it well built or cheap to the touch?

Features – Does it have the features and functionality that we expect/want?

Usability – How easy is it to use and get the most out of? Are the controls in the right place and is the interface logical?

Performance – How well does the product work? Do all the features perform as they should?

Value – Is the launch price good value when weighed against the other criteria?

Overall review ratings

Scoring system

Our review awards

TechRadar has four product awards:

Four award logos which can be assigned to TechRadar reviews

(Image credit: TechRadar)

Great Value award

The Great Value award is given to products that represent excellent value for money are thus worthy of consideration. This is not awarded alongside an Editor’s Choice or Best in Class award, as excellent value for money is part of the criteria for those awards.

A product that scores 4-stars or above is eligible to be considered for the Recommended award. While the product may be lacking in certain areas to stop it being awarded five stars, it still demonstrates enough quality to be wholeheartedly recommended.

Editor’s Choice award

The Editor’s Choice award goes to any product that gets a 5-star TechRadar review in accordance with our reviews guarantee.

Best in Class award

This award goes to the best product in any major reviews category.

Our hands-on reviews

We headline two different types of article with the word “review” – “hands-on reviews” and “full product reviews.” It is important to distinguish between them.

“Hands-on reviews” are a journalist’s first impressions of a piece of tech based on spending some time with it. It may be just a few moments, or a few hours. The important thing is we have been able to play with it ourselves and can give you some sense of what it’s like to use, even if it’s only an embryonic view.

We use the word “review” here partly because we are giving a real opinion based on using it, and partly because readers increasingly use the word “review” in Google searches when looking for these early views about a product.

However, hands-on reviews are not the same as full product reviews. Our full product reviews are always based on the finished release product, which has been thoroughly tested and benchmarked and will always contain a full verdict and score.

Our reviewers

Our reviewers are specialists, each with expertise in a particular technology. We combine expertise from our network of specialist websites and magazines, and our own TechRadar reviews team.

Specialist expertise

Because our writers are specialists, they are constantly in touch with the communities they report on. That means our experts are able to rate products against others of the same type. TechRadar commissions our reviews directly from these experts, from our own team of writers, as well as other experts when needed.

What this means is if you see a review of a home theater system from, you know it’s been reviewed by an expert in home theater, not mobile phones.

How we test

We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are constantly updated and maintained – regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it’s on our radar.

We emphasize real world testing over labs, because that’s where products get used. However, we benchmark every product that sells on the basis of specific performance indicators.

Find out more about our testing procedures: