Have You Been to the Face-Off?

When we first started the site three years ago, we always used to talk about our favourite feature: our Product Face-Offs.  But then we figured that you'd probably got the hang of how to use it.  Maybe we were wrong though?

Perhaps it isn't enough to assume that everybody from the handful of readers back in 2007 to the thousands of you that check in every weekday now has managed to find this feature and work out how to use it?

How it works

The Face-Off is part of the site where you can compare the raw results of our tests in pictures.  We don't add any comments, just a few pointers to help you understand how the tests work—which is always the same from one product to the next.  There are dozens, and in some cases, hundreds of results available for you to inspect, and you can compare any two you like.  Depending on the products in question, there are between ten and twenty different tests for you to choose from.

The most popular by a long way are the camera face-offs, but there are another ten that we regularly update, covering camcorders, CPUs, graphics cards, media centres, monitors, printers, TVs, projectors and webcams.

By default, you can compare the two most recently tested products in each category, but you can switch things up by making a new manufacturer on the left and right:


Doing that updates the next list, which contains the models.  Take your pick:


Once you've picked your two products, you can choose the test you're interested in:


Underneath the results, you won't see our comments or our final scores, because we respect your right to form an opinion yourself based on the same data as we did, but we do add some simple explanations to help make sense of what you're looking at.

For example:

Making Comparisons In this test This is an enlargement of the first picture and resized for a 4 x 6'' (10 x 15 cm) print at 300 dpi. We use a tripod, P mode and the lowest sensitivity. What should I look for? Can you read the text on the olive oil bottle? Is the drawing on the front of the book clear?

The hard part is choosing which models to compare, especially now that there are so many cameras (591) and TVs (345).  But we deliberately include everything we've ever tested, because the Face-Offs serve two purposes:

• helping you choose between two new products and,
• comparing your current product with something newer to see how much progress has been made since your last investment.

That's why we also try to stick to the same tests as much as possible.  We are still, however, sometimes forced to modify them to keep up with advances in technology.  We always explain what we're changing and why, like we did with the cameras earlier in the summer.  And even if some of the tests do change, that doesn't mean that the old ones don't provide useful information about the equipment that we used them for.

Here's an example comparing the Olympus Mju 840 (from way back in 2008) and the Canon Ixus 300 HS from just last week:

All of the Product Face-Offs on DigitalVersus:

• camcorders
• CPUs
• graphics cards
• media centres
• monitors
• printers
• TVs
  
• projectors
• webcams

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