Season 1 in preparation.Rankings will be published after measured runs are complete. The pilot snapshot is available with its caveats.Pilot results
Skip to content
PCBBench

Proposed format · voting is not live

PCB Arena

Automated checks establish specific properties, while engineering review can examine tradeoffs outside those checks. PCB Arena is a proposed format for comparing two anonymous boards from the same brief. The interface below is an illustration; voting is not available.

Brief · USB-C powered BLE sensor, 2 layers, ≤ 50×50 mm, ESP32-C3 + BME280, JLCPCB assembly
Board AModel hidden until you vote
TopBottom3DSchematicDRCBOM
Board BModel hidden until you vote
TopBottom3DSchematicDRCBOM
A is betterTieBoth unacceptableB is better

Proposed protocol

  • Same brief, two models. Candidate pairs would share a brief and pass the required automated gates before review. The pairing and evidence policy must be published before voting opens.
  • Inspect, then vote. Voters can flip layers, open the 3D view, read the schematic, see the DRC report and the BOM before choosing. Both boards reveal at the same moment, so render speed cannot bias the vote.
  • Engineers only. Voters verify professional experience. Votes are weighted by agreement with a gold set of pairs with known answers, and voters below the bar are dropped.
  • Ratings. Bradley–Terry with bootstrapped 95% intervals and ranks with uncertainty. Style control removes the pull of cosmetic features like silkscreen density and board color, the way LMArena controls for answer length.
  • No preview gaming. Every variant a lab submits is listed, a model needs 1,000 votes to rank, and anything below that is marked preliminary.

Join the first panel

Interested in helping evaluate this format? Email us with a line about what you design.