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Insider Picks published a guide to the best media streamers. Part of that guide is a "BI Rating," a ten-point scale aimed at providing a rough estimate of our own opinions mixed with those of other media streamer reviewers across the web.
Here's how we came to those BI Ratings, and the media streamers we chose in general.
Much like the process we use for our other buying guides, the media streamers included on the list aren't necessarily the six highest-scoring ones overall. We chose those six based on a mixture of feedback from professional and user reviews across the web, and our own hands-on experience.
Once we narrowed our original shortlist — which consisted of around 10 relatively well-received streamers — down to six, we then assigned them a BI Rating, which takes various sources' opinions into account.
Those sources include CNET, PCMag, TechRadar, Digital Trends, Tom’s Guide, and The Wirecutter.
We took the opinions of many, many other streamer reviewing outlets — as well as user reviews on Amazon — into account as we made our picks, but we felt these six were knowledgeable and updated enough to give us the fairest general score possible. Device preference is always subjective, but professionals generally tend to agree when something is good or bad.
To get the numerical value for a specific media streamer, we did the following:
- Multiplied its star rating on CNET, PCMag, Digital Trends, Tom’s Guide and/or TechRadar by two, wherever applicable.
- Added our own BI Rating out of 10.
- Took the resulting sum and divided it by the number of sources that reviewed the media streamer in the first place. The Amazon Fire TV Stick was rated by six of the above sources (including us), for instance, so its total review score at this point in the process was divided by six.
- Added 0.5 points to the resulting number if The Wirecutter gave the media streamer positive feedback, if applicable.
- Rounded the new resulting number to the nearest whole number.
So, going back to the Fire TV Stick, it received scores of 8 (4 x 2 from CNET), 9 (4.5 x 2 from PCMag), 6 (3 x 2 from Tom’s Guide), 8 (4 x 2 from Digital Trends), 9 (4.5 x 2 from TechRadar), and 8 (out of 10 from us). The resulting 48 was divided by 6 to get 8. Had The Wirecutter recommended it, we would’ve added 0.5 to get 8.5, which would’ve then rounded to 9. It didn’t, however, so we stuck with a final BI Rating of 8 out of 10.
Like any system that tries to distill personal opinion into a number, this has its flaws. Our personal score often differed from the BI Rating by a number or two, and some media streamers on the list weren't formally reviewed by some sources. And it's not like we're not going to highlight any low-scoring devices in a buying guide.
However, ratings make things simple, so if we were going to have one, we wanted one that reflected the ideas of many tastes, not just our own. Again, device preference is mostly a subjective thing, so it seemed right to include as many insights as possible.
These buying guides are by no means static, and we plan on updating them in the future. We may always update our BI Rating metric as well, but for now, we hope that clears up any potential confusion. Thanks for reading.