How we evaluate crossbows and crossbow gear

Most crossbow coverage ranks on speed because speed is the number makers print largest. This site ranks on cocking effort first, because the reader it is written for arrived here because of a shoulder, their age, or a season that just opened to crossbows — and for that reader a bow they cannot draw is not a bow.

1. Cocking effort and whether an aid is needed. The force left after the cocking aid does its work. A rope cocker publishes 50 percent reduction; an integrated crank publishes 5 pounds. Those are not variations of the same experience.
2. Cocked width. Whether the bow swings in a ground blind. Published figures on this site run from 1.3 to 15 inches, and most review sites omit this entirely.
3. Speed, and the kinetic energy it produces. Enough for the game, and the point at which it starts constraining your target and broadhead choice.
4. Noise. Both the shot and the cocking stroke, which is the one that ruins more hunts.
5. Total carried weight. What hangs off one shoulder on the walk in.
6. Trigger quality and what the package includes. A bow with a calibrated scope and a cocking aid included can be better value than a cheaper bow without them.
7. Price to capability. Scored against what the figures justify, not against a price bracket.

Accessory categories use their own axes on the same principle: cocking aids lead with published effort reduction, scopes with published fps range, bolts with straightness and weight sorting, targets with published speed rating.

Three sources, and we distinguish between them on every page.

• Live product data and pricing from the Amazon Creators API. Every ASIN on this site was resolved through a live catalog lookup during the build, and every price comes from a scheduled refresh of that same source. Currently 102 products carry a resolved ASIN and 102 are showing a live price, verified October 6, 2026.
• Manufacturer-published specifications, taken from the maker’s own product data. Where a maker publishes no figure, the row on our page reads “Not published” — there are currently 71 such rows across the site, and every one of them is a figure we could have guessed and did not.
• Independent third-party testing, cited by name. Where someone has measured something we have not, we name them. The one accuracy figure on this site is Outdoor Life’s 2025 independent testing of the TenPoint Turbo X.

We have not put a season behind every product on this site, and we do not claim to. Mike M. runs this site and does the evaluating himself. Where he has handled a product, the page says so in those words. Where the assessment rests on published specifications and the record of a product in the field, the page says that instead.

That distinction appears per product, not as a blanket disclaimer at the bottom of a page. A review that reads “assessed on manufacturer specification” means exactly that.

We would rather be the site that admits what it has not done than the site that invents a test lab. A ranking built on published figures, arithmetic you can check and independent testing we cite is more useful than an unverifiable claim about ninety days in the woods.

Every product carries a rubric score out of 10 on four to six axes, plus an overall. Those are our editorial judgments about how each product performs against the priority order above, based on its published specifications.

They are deliberately never emitted as structured data. You will not find review-rating structured data anywhere on this site, because marking an editorial score as a product review rating would contradict the paragraph above. The visible score is content; it is not a claim to have measured anything.

Prices are pulled from a live data layer and expire on their own. If the refresh stops for any reason, every number on the site disappears after 48 hours and the buy buttons fall back to “Check price”. The failure mode is silence, not a stale claim.

No price is ever typed into a page by hand. There is no price field anywhere in this site’s content model, which means a stale number cannot be authored in even by accident. Every price on the site carries the date it was verified.

String & Stock earns a commission when you buy through our links, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Where a manufacturer or retailer program is genuinely better for the buyer — better price, better stock, better warranty handling — we would route there instead, and at launch every link on this site goes to Amazon.

Commission rates do not influence rank order. No manufacturer pays for a placement, and none sees a page before it publishes. The full statement is on the affiliate disclosure page, and our independence rules are on the editorial policy page.

• A product is discontinued or stops resolving to a buyable listing.
• A maker publishes a figure it previously withheld. Several products here score below their reputation purely because their listings publish nothing; that changes the moment the data does.
• A sustained price change that moves a product’s value score.
• A pattern in owner reports pointing at a reliability problem.
• A newer model that supersedes a pick.
• Independent testing that contradicts our reading of the specifications.

Email contact@stringandstock.com or use the contact form. Corrections get priority over everything else in the inbox.

If you report a specification that does not match the manufacturer’s own figure, we will check it and correct the page. Corrections are noted rather than silently edited — a page that changes a factual claim says so and says when.

87 pages across six sections: the bows themselves, cocking aids, scopes, bolts and broadheads, targets and cases, and the specification guides that sit behind all of it. Everything is organized around one buyer — the hunter adding or switching to a crossbow — rather than around the manufacturers.

There is no testimonials section on this site, and there will not be one unless we have real, attributable reviews to publish. There are no fabricated reviewer names, star ratings or quotes anywhere here.