The reviewers, reviewed
Review sites do not mark alike. Some rarely go below four stars; others keep their top marks for a handful of phones a year. This page shows how each publication scores, measured on the fairest basis available: the same phones, scored by other publications.
Right now Notebookcheck is the most generous, scoring phones 9.4 points above what other reviewers give the same phones. The Verge is the toughest, 9.7 points below.
| Publication | Phones scored | Average score | Against other reviewers, same phones |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notebookcheck DEPercentage with a word rating (e.g. good, 86%); many reviews translated from the German edition | 12 | 83 | +9.4 |
| Engadget USShown as x/10 (policy: 1–100); Recommended 80–89, Editors' Choice 90+ | 9 | 84 | +5.9 |
| CNET US10-point score; Editors' Choice (unverified) | 32 | 82 | +3.5 |
| PCMag USStars out of 5 in half steps; Editors' Choice | 11 | 83 | +3.2 |
| TechRadar UK1–5 stars in half steps; Editor's Choice (5 stars) and Recommended | 67 | 82 | +2.5 |
| SmartWorld ITScore out of 10 | 71 | 81 | +2.2 |
| Android Central USStars out of 5 in half steps; Editor's Choice | 82 | 81 | +1.9 |
| Trusted Reviews UKStars out of 5; Recommended and Highly Recommended | 323 | 78 | +1.8 |
| Pocket-lint UKStars out of 5 (read from the article; not in page data) | 11 | 82 | −0.0 |
| PC-Welt DEStars out of 5 (unverified) | 96 | 77 | −0.4 |
| Tech Advisor UKExpert's Rating, stars out of 5; Editors' Choice | 109 | 78 | −0.5 |
| Digital Trends USCategory scores out of 10; Editors' Choice award | 13 | 82 | −0.8 |
| Tom's Guide US1–5 stars in half steps; Editor's Choice and Recommended awards | 41 | 78 | −1.7 |
| Android Police USScore out of 10; Editors' Choice | 40 | 77 | −3.3 |
| Wired USScore out of 10 | 29 | 74 | −5.9 |
| The Verge USVerge Score out of 10 | 46 | 71 | −9.7 |
All scores are converted to a 0–100 scale first, so 4 stars out of 5 is 80. Average score is simply the mean of every phone score the publication has given. The last column is the telling one: for each phone a publication has scored, its score is compared with the average from other, independent publications for that same phone, and the differences are averaged. A site that only reviews flagships will have a high average score without being generous; this column corrects for that.
None of this makes a generous reviewer wrong, or a tough one right. It is why the consensus score on this site is not a simple average: each score is adjusted for its publisher's habits before it counts. The full method is public.
Too few shared phones to compare yet: Expert Reviews, Phonandroid. Publications that give awards or verdicts without a number are not listed.