To determine "Our Picks," we combine research from a wide gamut of leading technical review sources, actual owner experiences from public review forums, and our own evaluation of the products and their features. Our goal is to select products that we believe will provide you the best ownership experience, with solid underlying functionality, expected long-term reliability, and intuitive operation.
Occasionally, we recommend products that are new to market or not yet released. In these cases, actual ownership experience is not yet available. However, we take into account a manufacturer's past history of reliability and will update our recommendation if the product does not live up to our expectations.
We also fully recognize that not everyone's needs are the same. There rarely is a "best" product on the market, just the product that is best for you. Therefore we provide a range of choices, offering varying features and price points, to help you find the one that best matches your lifestyle.
Finally, we make our decisions purely on the merits of the products. We never, ever, ever recommend products in Our Picks because we're being paid to or because a company is giving us free samples. That would be unethical for us as journalists, it wouldn't serve the needs of you, our audience, and we just don't do it. Period. If a product is recommended, it's because we believe it deserves to be.