About Pickr

At the time (and largely still to this day), Australia’s search engines would invariably provide results from overseas and international reviewers, which didn’t generally relay the same experience as what local would see.

With different mobile networks and often different specifications, a phone review from one part of the world may not have matched up to one found in Australia, and so Pickr was initially built to serve Australian reviews and give customers searching for a new phone a way to change the way they choose: by comparing phone reviews and specifications in the one environment.

Created in 2016, Pickr initially began as a phone comparison system. Built on the idea that local reviews weren’t easy to find, the original Pickr system served as a way for users to check phone specifications and reviews across Australia, providing not just a way to make their own comparisons, but to see what Australian reviewers had to say. Local reviews matter when it comes to specific product categories, particularly when there are local technology considerations, such as phone networks and environmental situations, making finding them important.

Over time, that has largely changed. Depending on how Google’s system is working at the time, Australian product searchers may find technology reviews relevant to their interest, though it can vary wildly, thanks in part to a large amount of updates Google is making to its system, which may or may not work as well as the company intends.

The goal was to help you change the way you choose phones, but it grew beyond one category.

Moving beyond just comparison

Around August 2016, Pickr pushed into writing its own news and reviews. Its founder, Leigh Stark (written as Leigh :) Stark), has been a technology journalist since 2007, and started releasing news and reviews across the site, eventually seeing other writers pop up on the site over time.

Pickr now serves more than just the phone comparison, and caters its content from news, reviews, analysis, buyer’s guides, and more on its regularly updated website, which typically sees at least one story a day, and often more.

Pickr aims to help people research with content and information written by humans and only humans. It’s not that we don’t believe in AI — we write a lot about it! — but we believe content for people is typically best when it is written by people, which makes it more helpful and easier to relate to. What’s more, everyone writing at Pickr is experienced with technology and has typically been writing in the technology journalism scene for a number of years, as well.

An award-winning approach to technology

Throughout that time, Pickr released The Wrap, Australia’s fastest technology round-up, a podcast that aims to provide a week’s worth of technology in the space of five minutes, or just enough technology you can get into in the space of time it takes to either order or drink a cup of coffee.

For over five years, The Wrap provided a five minute look at the world of technology, sticking to the five minute time limit as a principle because so many of us only have so much time for tech. In a world where everything is competing for time, five minutes seems like a solid amount to wrap it all in. Special episodes were also produced, covering topics that transcend the weekly round-up, such as understanding password scams and security issues, how you can fix your WiFi at home, and exploring government issues such as “My Health Record” that had popped up in technology in Australia.

In 2019, The Wrap received an award at the Australian technology journalism awards, The Lizzies, voted as Best Independent Media, and was one of the top four technology-related podcasts across the country at The Australian Podcast Awards. In 2020, Pickr and The Wrap received the award of Highly Commended at the 2020 Lizzies.

In 2023, The Wrap was put on hiatus, though may be restarted in the near future.

Pickr’s awards and commendations

Appearing on TV and radio

In 2019, Pickr began appearing outside of just the website, lending expert commentary on TV and radio with occasional appearances.

However, in 2024, things were stepped up significantly, as Pickr’s Leigh Stark made his way to regular appearances in the radio world, with weekly technology commentary on several radio stations.

As such, Pickr can now be heard across Australia, with information aimed at providing technology assistant and news throughout the country. You can find his regular appearances updated all the time on the site, with regular spots on ABC stations across Australia.

Pickr’s “Betterment” program

As part of an effort to improve how technology reviews, news, and tech journalism is seen, Pickr runs regular research and design to better the website so it’s not “just another” technology website.

Regular additions and changes are made to Pickr as part of its “Betterment” program, where the publication takes a look at how the website could be made easier to read for audiences, and to see where journalism is going next.

Some of the efforts from Betterment to date include:

• The removal of advertising on Pickr
• Typographical changes to improve readability, and
• Testing out AI-based audio readings in the author’s actual voice

Part of what makes Pickr different is that it’s trying to evolve product reviews beyond simply writing great reviews. That’s important, but so is methodology and explaining “why”.

Pickr isn’t just a tech blog. It’s a tech publication designed to help with your research, and we do it with some features unique to this publication, custom built for its coverage.

Helpr

Choice is great, but too much choice can make picking something really difficult. What do you go for when everything is pretty great?

It’s a problem reviewers also struggle with, so Pickr has developed a world first approach literally designed to help.

Pickr’s “Helpr” tool is a system designed to surface products ranked as good, better, and best from an assortment of categories, with a budget filter you can modify based on how much you want to spend. The products loaded into Helpr come from actual reviews data and detailed methodology, so you can rest assured that the products you’re being shown and recommended have actually been reviewed by real people.

Nothing is sponsored or paid for, either. This is just a system to bring great gear to the top, and make it easier for you to research and then pick what you want.

Personalised benchmarks

Benchmarks are great for detailing how much faster something is, providing data to explain it. The problem is that benchmarks don’t usually make sense comparatively to what you might be using. It’s difficult to put yourself in the shoes of the review, and may not explain why an upgrade could make more sense.

That’s one of the reasons Pickr has been working on a unique concept: personalised benchmarks.

The idea lets you insert your phone into a set of benchmarks to explain just how big of an update you might be seeing. It means every phone review on Pickr from 2026 onwards will support the ability to pick your phone and add it to a benchmark, seeing just how it relates to a new device.

To make this work, there’s a custom system that takes in performance benchmark data gathered over the past six years of reviews, while also including data from Pickr’s bespoke battery benchmarking app Battery Bench, which works on iOS and Android.

If you have an iPhone from the iPhone 11 onwards, you’ll see benchmarks relative to new reviews, and there are quite a few Android devices in there, as well. You’ll only need to set it once, and then it’ll automatically load your phone’s scores for every phone review you read where it’s supported (provided you’re using the same browser and aren’t incognito).

The aim is to make it easier to see how your phone relates to one you might be thinking of upgrading to, both in performance and battery life. It’s a world first feature we hope pushes technology reviews further, and helps make Pickr one of the best technology review websites in Australia and beyond.

Going beyond the blog

Pickr’s Betterment program makes changes several times throughout the year, and will make a small announcement every time something has been added, so you can be sure to try features out to see if it improves the website and its experience for you.

The goal is to go beyond the blog, and introduce more ways to improve how people pick products based on experience and expertise, and using data where possible.

About Pickr’s creator

Leigh :) Stark has been working as a technology journalist since 2007, appearing at publications and media outlets such as the Australian Financial Review, Popular Science, APC, PC & Tech Authority, Technology & Business, CyberShack, GadgetGuy, and more.

His work has been seen across nearly every medium, including print, TV, online, radio, and the web, and his addiction to technology is noted regularly through just how much time he spends talking about it.

Contactable on Bluesky through @Leighlo, through Mastodon at @Leighlo, via LinkedIn, or over email, he’s more than happy to answer any questions about gadgets and technology, and even provides tech support for one or two celebrities. You can even find him on TV from time to time, as well as on other podcasts.

Leigh :) Stark lives in Sydney with his lovely science writer wife Nic, and his beautiful daughters Emma and Elly, who often appear in test images for phones and cameras, as well as their dog Daisy, which also make appearances in the images.

As a technologist, you can typically ask Leigh for advice, and he’s all to happy to provide it. He signs off radio with “happy to help” because he is.