In recent years, the acceleration of technology and its effect on the respondent perception of research have created a new trade-off in online research that operates alongside the familiar one of ‘cost, quality, speed.’ The ‘engagement, consistency, reach’ model illustrates how greater engagement requires sacrifices in penetration because less than fully adopted technologies must be employed… unless they are willing to sacrifice consistency by making available different versions of the research (e.g. Flash and HTML.) Equally, if a consistent experience is required along with high reach, a more basic experience is the price. This new trade-off is caused by our need to continually leverage new technologies, or the latest versions of technologies: which means earlier-adopting respondents can be given a better experience, but late adopters are excluded. What drives this need for change is the ever present threat that our research environments will be perceived as boring in the context of the increasingly engaging wider digital world. Since a slowdown does not seem likely, this new model may find a permanent home alongside the more established one.