Capability, data handling and price, assessed on identical task sets across providers.
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Nothing published until testing is finished.
We run every assistant through the same fixed task set — summarisation, reasoning, code, retrieval and refusal behaviour — and record the outputs so the comparison is reproducible. Data handling is weighted equally with capability: what is retained, what trains the model, and what a business tier changes.
Four assistants judged on output quality, data handling, pricing transparency and how easily you get your content out again.
Our pick
OpenAI Assistant Pro tier
$200 / month
Price check pending
Written down before any product is considered.
We write down what would make a product the right pick — and how each criterion is measured — before we look at what is on sale.
Anything we state about a product comes from our own testing or from the manufacturer's published documentation, linked on the page.
We rate each category against published criteria using manufacturer data, independent test reports, user reviews and price data. We do not claim our own hands-on tests.
We do not print a price we have not verified, and we do not treat an RRP as evidence of a discount.
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The full process is documented in our review methodology and testing process.
Manufacturers now market local model execution as a headline feature. The honest version is narrower: it changes latency, privacy exposure and battery behaviour — not capability across the board.
Retention, human review and training use are three separate settings. Most people assume one switch controls all of them.
"Agent" now describes everything from a scripted macro to a model with access to your inbox. The difference matters most when something goes wrong.
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