Editorial Review Standards
At GearJunkie, the primary goal of our buyer’s guides and gear reviews is to help you find the right product for your outdoor pursuits.
Whether you’re looking for the best tent for a summertime backpacking trip or the perfect pair of trail running shoes for the Leadville 100, our team of experts has you covered. That’s because, yes, we have hiked those trails and even run those 100-mile races.
Although finding the best products is a fairly complicated process, our review guidelines are simple:
- We never accept payment for a favorable review. Period.
- Be fair to both the customer and the brand.
- Use the most knowledgeable experts in the field to assess products.
- Write our buyer’s guides to pair consumers with the products that will work best for them.
GearJunkie Reviews: How We Do Them
GearJunkie’s review process is ongoing and constantly evolving. But at the outset of 2021, this is how we choose the products we recommend and how we evaluate new products coming to market.
Every GearJunkie buying guide starts with a thorough research phase. We spend hours seeking out the newest and top-rated products. This includes reading customer reviews, scouring the web for trustworthy gear reviews, and reaching out to brands for intel on the newest releases.
From there, we whittle down the potential candidates to the final 10-15 products for testing. To qualify for the list, a product generally hits one (or all) these factors:
- Readily available to buy
- Highly rated by customers and online reviews
- New to the market
Once we have the gear in hand, testing begins. We start by laying out the key testing considerations. These vary based on the particular piece of gear (packed size is important for backpacking sleeping bags whereas comfort is king for the best slippers). Once we’ve agreed on the key considerations, it’s time to take each item into the field.
Our experts put each item to the test looking at durability, value, and overall ease of use. We also factor in things like sustainability, recycled content, and labor practices. When possible, we test for months on end to truly get a feel for how well the piece of gear lasts and performs. We then rate and review each item and decide how it should rank.
Basically, we’re looking for the standout gear — the stuff that we rave about and recommend to our friends and family. And we promise we’ll do our best to recommend only the products we love. Because ultimately, we want you to be able to enjoy the outdoors with the right gear. We’re here to help you find it.
About GearJunkie Product Ratings
GearJunkie’s product rating system combines the most important performance attributes of any product into an easily digestible numeric rating.
90-100: Excellent; highly recommended
The absolute best products on the market (less than 10% of products we test meet this criteria)
60-80: Good; recommended
Solid, reliable products with only minor drawbacks
30-50: Fair; consider with caution
Products with notable drawbacks that may still work for specific use cases
10-20: Poor; not recommended
Products with significant drawbacks or flaws
Why You Can Trust GearJunkie
At GearJunkie, our ultimate goal is fairness – to you, our readers, and to manufacturers. To this end, we will not accept payment for positive reviews.
GearJunkie receives (and buys) hundreds of products for testing from manufacturers yearly. Most are used hard and either returned to the manufacturer or kept for long-term testing.
The receipt of a product for testing in no way guarantees a positive review, and GearJunkie editors have a strict policy of objectivity, including identifying any flaws or weaknesses and good points in every product we review.
GearJunkie does publish occasional sponsored articles, which are paid advertising and are marked as such. Sponsored articles comprise less than 10 percent of all content on GearJunkie, with the majority of our coverage based on traditional editorial and journalistic practices.
How GearJunkie Makes Money
GearJunkie supports its work through advertising and affiliate links. You will see advertisements from our partners displayed around our stories and photographs. Affiliate links are links to products. When you click these links and purchase products, we make a small commission.
Neither advertising nor affiliate links affect our editorial team’s decisions to write about products, include them in buying guides, or review them. Our primary goal is to provide the best news, reviews, and buying guides possible. Ultimately, we exist to help you, the reader, better understand the world of outdoor recreation and the gear that gets the fun done.
