Methodology

Every measured score on this site comes from the same process. No exceptions, no shortcuts, no review units with strings attached.

The rules of the bench

• Retail-bought units. We buy hardware the same way you do. If a manufacturer ever supplies a unit, the review says so in the first paragraph.
• Repeated runs. Storage and capture benchmarks are run multiple times and we report the median, not the best run.
• Logged thermals. Sustained-load temperature is recorded for every storage review because throttled speed is the speed you actually get.
• No sponsored scores. Affiliate commissions never touch the verdict. The Chaser Index is calculated before affiliate links are added to a page.

The Chaser Index

Each reviewed product gets a single score out of 10: the Chaser Index. It weights measured performance first, then thermals, then price-per-result in Australian dollars. A 9 is not a feeling, it is a spreadsheet.

Provisional scores

Until a product completes the full bench run, its Chaser Index is published as a provisional score: weighted from verified manufacturer specifications, architecture, and AUD price per result. Provisional scores are labelled as such wherever they appear, and convert to measured Chaser Index scores when our bench data is published. We never present a provisional score as a measurement.

Corrections

Hardware prices and firmware change. If we got something wrong or a product changed under us, the article gets updated with a visible updated date. Spot an error? Tell us and we will fix it.