How we test

Have you ever wondered how we decide which products to test or how we decide which PC is the fastest available?

Our staff get hands-on experience, literally. We bring the products into our labs where we observe them, use them, and test them. Most of the products we review are provided to us on loan by their manufacturers, and once we've completed our review, the products are returned.

CNET Reviews occasionally acquires products under NDA (nondisclosure agreement), which means we will not disclose our findings until after a certain date and time. If the information is subsequently made public before the embargo lifts, we reserve the right to publish the information received under embargo. We have a firewall with our sister site, CNET News, to prevent these agreements from being shared internally with News reporters, though they may independently break an embargo due to their own reporting and sourcing.

Many companies whose products we review advertise with or have other business relationships with CNET Networks. We sequester our editors from those dealings and conduct our reviews independently, and we make every effort to perform fair evaluations of products.