Who writes and tests this
MyGearCheck is written, built and tested by Jamey Weber, Front-end developer and founder of FusionStudios. The site is a project of FusionStudios, and it is deliberately not anonymous. Every competing tool in this niche is, which is exactly why putting a name on it is worth something: if a page here tells you your controller is drifting, you should be able to see who decided what counts as drifting.
If something on this site is wrong, tell me. Corrections get made, the last-updated date on the page moves with them, and where a dataset changes the version number moves too.
Why it exists
When a key stops registering or a meeting app cannot hear you, the first question is always the same: is it the hardware or the software? MyGearCheck exists to answer that in seconds. A browser sits at a useful point in that chain. Everything below it, the switch, the cable and the driver, either delivers an event or does not. Everything above it, the layout, the application and any overlay, can only change what that event means. Splitting the problem at that line is most of the diagnosis.
How we test
Every tool was built against the browser API it names on its own page, and verified by hand on real hardware before publication. The specific combinations checked, and nothing beyond them:
- Chrome and Firefox on Windows 11, with a wired mechanical keyboard, a wired mouse and a USB webcam.
- Chrome on Windows 11 with an Xbox-layout controller over USB, for the gamepad test and the standard mapping.
- Safari and Chrome on iOS, for the touch behaviour and the full-screen fallback.
Not verified by us, and therefore not claimed anywhere on the site: behaviour on macOS, behaviour on Linux, and behaviour with controllers other than the one above. Where a page describes a DualSense or Switch Pro button layout, it says explicitly that this is a positional translation of the specification rather than something we measured.
What these tools cannot tell you
This is the part most tool sites leave out, and it may be the most useful thing on this page. A browser is a limited instrument, and saying where the limit sits is more useful than implying there is none. One honest limitation per test:
| Test | Its main limitation |
|---|---|
| Keyboard Test | Cannot prove n-key rollover, because the OS and the browser can each drop keys before the page sees them. It can prove keys are being dropped. |
| Key Code Viewer | Reports what your browser does, not what another browser would do. A key the OS claims first never arrives at all. |
| Mouse Test | Cannot measure polling rate. Browsers coalesce pointer events per frame, so any page claiming a precise figure is measuring the browser. |
| Touchpad Test | Cannot tell a trackpad that will not scroll horizontally from a driver that has horizontal scrolling switched off. |
| Gamepad Test | Cannot see battery, rumble, gyroscope or adaptive triggers: the standard mapping carries buttons and axes and nothing else. |
| Microphone Test | Cannot report absolute sound pressure in decibels. There is no calibrated reference in a browser, so any decibel figure would be invented. |
| Webcam Test | Cannot report a sensor's native resolution, only the resolution the driver negotiated for this stream. |
| Speaker Test | Cannot tell which physical speaker plays a channel once the OS has applied its own routing or upmixing. |
| Dead Pixel Test | Detects nothing by itself: it shows pure colours and the judgement is yours. It also cannot defeat a night light or colour profile sitting between the page and the panel. |
| Monitor Test | Measures nothing. Every pattern is a visual aid, and response time and input lag both need external equipment. |
| Screen Info | The refresh rate is an estimate from counted frames, not a hardware reading, and browsers cap frames on battery and under load. |
Each test page carries a fuller version of this table, alongside what that test does measure.
How facts get onto this site
Three rules, and they are the reason some pages that would obviously attract traffic do not exist here.
- No invented specification, release date, system requirement or benchmark. A figure that cannot be traced to a source or derived from arithmetic is not published.
- Hardware ages, so anything specification-shaped carries a visible last-checked date and a source link. A stale table presented as current is worse than no table.
- Anything predictive is written as a prediction with its basis attached. Whether a particular fix will work on your device is a forecast, not a fact, and it is phrased that way.
The clearest consequence: there is no table of dead-pixel warranty thresholds per manufacturer on this site, even though it would be among the most searched things we could publish. Those policies differ by region and by product line and change without notice, and we could not keep one verified. The warranty guideexplains the standard the thresholds come from and sends you to your own manufacturer's policy instead.
Privacy, stated plainly
No test sends anything anywhere. There is no analytics that records a result, no server to receive one and no account it could be attached to. You do not have to take that on trust: open your browser's Network tab, run a full microphone or webcam test, and watch that nothing goes out after the page itself has loaded. The privacy policy lists every third party that loads at all.
The full test suite
There are also 12 troubleshooting guides, two free reference datasets, an open JSON API and embeddable versions of every test.