We are a small team of hardware engineers who got tired of seeing good ideas fail on the PCB. So we started reviewing designs the way we would want ours reviewed.
PCBReview is run by a small group of senior hardware engineers. We have worked across consumer electronics, medical devices, automotive, and industrial systems — at large corporations and at scrappy startups.
We started this because we saw a gap: design review is one of the highest-leverage things you can do before ordering boards, and most teams either skip it, do it poorly, or have no access to senior judgment.
We wanted to offer that judgment at a price that makes sense for startups and solo developers — without the overhead of a full consulting engagement.
"We review designs the way we would want our own reviewed: looking at what the circuit is actually trying to do, not just whether the rules pass."
All submitted designs are treated as confidential. If you need a signed NDA before sharing files, just mention it when you reach out.
Before opening the files, we read what you are building, what it needs to do, and any specific concerns you have. Context shapes the review — a motor controller has different failure modes than a BLE sensor node.
Power tree first. Then signal flow. Then interfaces. We do not use automated checkers as the primary tool — we read the schematic the way a technician debugging a fault would read it.
Every critical component gets its application circuit compared to the manufacturer's reference design. This is where most subtle errors hide: wrong capacitor values, missing bootstrap circuits, wrong feedback resistor ratios.
Every finding gets a severity rating, a specific reference (net, component, pin), an explanation of why it is a problem, and a concrete recommendation. Not "check your decoupling" but "add 100nF X5R 0402 on the VCC pin of U3, within 1mm of the pin."
A board respin costs money. But more than that, it costs time — weeks of delay while you wait for new boards, debug the issue again, revalidate. For a startup, that can mean missing a funding milestone. For a freelancer, it can mean a client relationship.
Most design errors are not exotic. They are things a second pair of eyes would catch immediately: wrong footprint on a connector, missing pull-up on a reset line, decoupling placed on the wrong side of a via. The problem is that when you have been staring at a schematic for two weeks, you stop seeing it.
We are that second pair of eyes. We have no stake in the design looking good — we only care that it works.
Describe your project and we will get back to you within one business day with a fixed quote. No commitment needed. For questions, reach out at info@pcb-review.com