Getting the best stabilizer boils down to how you use your bow. If you are mainly a woods whitetail hunter who shoots occasionally and will limit your field shots to 40 yards and in, you will do fine with a budget-friendly model in the 6- to 8-inch range. This won’t add much stabilization to the bow, but it will help thwart noise and vibration. This type of stabilizer is also a good choice for new archers. There's no sense dropping a ton of green on a stabilizer until you know how you feel about shooting a bow, and start formulating some plans for the future. On the other hand, if you are an experienced bowhunter who enjoys flinging arrows semi-regularly on the range, shoot a few 3-D tournaments each year or do some traveling to hunt, I recommend trying a longer stabilizer in the 8- to 12-inch range, and make sure the stabilizer is customizable. By this, I mean its weight. A stabilizer worth its salt will come with several one-ounce weights with padded spacers. Tinkering with out-front weight can lead to a better overall feel at full draw, and if you do your job and let the release fire the bow, a perfectly weighted stabilizer will help follow-through.  If you’re obsessed with accuracy—shooting your bow multiple times a week and looking to stack carbon at distances beyond 50 yards, a stabilizer is a must-have item. And a short, hunting model isn’t going to cut the mustard. You need weighted perfection that leads to extreme bow balance at full draw. For this, I recommend going with a front-and-back-bar system. In layman’s terms, this is a stabilizer with one arm extending in front of the riser, and another arm protruding behind the riser toward the string. Don’t worry about how the system looks or even feels at first. We don’t care about looks. We care about jaw-dropping accuracy at ranges close and far. This system’s job is to help your bow lock on target at full draw and stay there. Some testing and tinkering with weights and the angle of the back bar—how far down toward the lower cam and toward or away from the riser it’s angled—will give you a full-draw feel you won’t believe. It will settle your sight faster and shrink pin-float.