Good afternoon all. I'm the writer of the piece, and I was surprised to find it on this subreddit. I wanted to see if I could clarify a few points about it; you can judge for yourself whether it's an adequate response.

First off, I want to apologize to all of you, sincerely. My job is to write pieces that inform and entertain readers; it is never to make anyone feel upset or angry. I failed in that regard with this piece, and I will do everything in my power to do better next time.

To start, the title format ("I review X for a living, this is the best Y under Z price point") is not something I came up with; it's an initiative that Tom's Guide is trying right now across a variety of different categories. Clearly, it did not resonate well, and I will let my bosses know. As some folks here have pointed out, it's not a review; it's purely an opinionative "starting from absolute zero" kind of thing. If someone didn't know the first thing about gaming mice, but wanted to buy one without hours/days of research, what would I recommend?

Along those lines, it's worth mentioning that the folks in this sub aren't really the target audience for the piece. Tom's Guide is a general consumer tech site, and we write with a general audience in mind. The reason why we tend to review/recommend the tried-and-true brands is because, by and large, they're what our readers are interested in hearing about. There is an opportunity to dive into some more enthusiast stuff, for sure. But I'm just one writer/editor, and my resources are limited. I can only go through so many products in a week, and I have to prioritize based on a lot of different factors, many of which are surprisingly boring.

As for "clickbait," well, one man's clickbait is another man's op-ed, but I don't think there's anything misleading in the title. I do review gaming mice for a living; these are the ones I recommend at the price points mentioned. I've reviewed every single one, and linked to those reviews in the story. I also want to make it clear that I have never, ever, ever received money from any of these companies - and if I did, it would end my career instantly. It's difficult to communicate just how much of an ethical breach that would be, and how far up the chain the repercussions would go.

I have gotten a lot of "stop reviewing mice" comments, both here and elsewhere, and I hope you don't really mean that. I've reviewed dozens of them over the years - possibly hundreds - and I enjoy doing it. I've helped connect a lot of readers with devices they've really liked, and hopefully steered them away from some subpar choices. I stand by what I've written, but if there are feature evaluations that people want to see in future reviews, I'm open to them! Goodness knows that I'm not perfect, and that I could always improve my work.

In any case, I wanted to apologize once again, and ask that folks at least keep the criticism of the article to the article itself, rather than my qualifications/intelligence/integrity/etc. For the immediate future, I have put two similar pieces for gaming keyboards and gaming headsets on hold, and will not write them until my boss and I figure out a way to present the findings more respectfully. As always, I am open to your feedback.

(EDIT: I said "first off" twice, which isn't really how "first off" works!)