Readers' Choice and Business Choice Surveys: Methodology

We email survey invitations to PCMag.com community members, specifically subscribers to our What's New Now mailing list. The surveys are hosted by Alchemer (formerly SurveyGizmo), which also performs our data collection. Each person who completed the survey and indicated they wanted it was entered into a drawing to win an Amazon.com gift card valued at $100.

Respondents are asked only to rate products and/or services that they actually use. The respondents are asked several questions about their overall satisfaction with the product and its reliability, their likelihood to recommend the brand, as well as experiences with technical support and repairs within the past 12 months.

Because the goal of the survey is to understand how the manufacturers compare to one another and not how one respondent's experience compares to another's, the 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?"

Scores are on a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 is the best. Any scores represented as a percentage, in general, lower is best.

A blank in a table indicates that we do not have enough survey data to give the company a score in that column—we had less than 50 responses to that question for that manufacturer or product, and fewer responses would not allow statistically valid comparisons.

The Readers' Choice and Business Choice Awards are based on a subjective determination by PCMag.com's editors, taking into account all of the ratings for each manufacturer.

Net Promoter Scores are based on the concept introduced by Fred Reichheld in his 2006 best seller The Ultimate Question, that no other question can better define the loyalty of a company's customers than "how likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" This measure of brand loyalty is calculated by taking the percent of respondents who answered 9 or 10 (promoters) and subtracting the percent who answered 0 through 6 (detractors).

For more, read PCMag's Best Brands.

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