Readers’ Choice and Business Choice Surveys: Methodology



We email survey invitations to PCMag.com community members—specifically, a subset of subscribers to our What’s New Now email newsletter. The surveys are built by editors using Alchemer, which also performs our data collection. Each US-based person who completes a survey can choose to be entered into a drawing to win an Amazon.com gift card valued at $250. For select articles covering products and services used outside of the US, we employ panels of appropriate respondents pulled together via third parties such as Alchemer. Respondents are asked to rate products and services they use. We’ll ask several questions about a respondent’s overall satisfaction with brands’ products or services and to rate specific features.The goal of the survey is to understand how manufacturers compare with one another and not how one respondent’s experience compares to another. Thus, category averages are based on the average of each manufacturer’s rating, not the average of every respondent’s rating. In all cases, the overall ratings are not based on averages of other scores in the table; they are based on reader answers to the question, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your device/service?” for that brand.Scores are on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is best. A blank in a table indicates we don’t have enough survey data to give the company a score in that column. That is, we had fewer responses to that question for that manufacturer than our set threshold, which we try to reach to allow for statistically valid comparisons.The Readers’ Choice and Business Choice award winners are based on a subjective determination by PCMag editors. They take into account all of the ratings for each manufacturer, particularly readers’ overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend the brand or product.For other data collected in our survey, read The Best Tech Brands, The Best Broadband Internet Service Providers, and The Best PC Vendors for Tech Support.

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About Ben Gottesman

Contributing Editor

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About Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

I’ve been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally for over 30 years, more than half of that time with PCMag. I run several special projects including the Readers’ Choice and Business Choice surveys, and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, plus Best Products of the Year and Best Brands. I work from my home, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.
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