1. Impact: How powerful is the magic?  What kind of response will it get from the audience?  These are the kinds of questions we answer on each DVD, magic trick, book, or new effect we review.

2. Practicality: We'll let you know how practical the magic is... what the set-up "hassle-factor" is, and how complicated the set-up is.

3. Value for the Money: If you're like most magicians, you don't have unlimited money to spend on the magic you buy -- so you want to get the best bang for your buck.  That's why we rate each DVD, magic trick, book, or effect in terms of the value for the money spent.

4. Quality & Workmanship: For "hard goods"... we'll let you know whether the props are well built, the gaffed cards look real or fake, etc... for DVDs, books, and videos, we'll let you know whether the video was shot with high quality lighting and editing -- or if it's pretty shoddy.

5. Clear Instructions: Although this is a minor factor in many magic releases, it's still nice to know whether the product has crystal clear instructions... whether printed or video.

6. Originality: This is important for a lot of magicians -- especially magicians who invent magic tricks.  So it's nice to know the level of "originality" that's been brought to a project.

7. Who's It Best For?: This factor is a huge deciding factor... after all, if you only do walk around and close-up magic, you don't want to be buying things that'll take up all your pocket space and has a  reset time of 15 minutes!

   We also take into considering whether you're performing for a living -- or if you're a casual performer.  We also look at what venues the magic will be best suited for.