Most tech reviews are written from a spec sheet and a weekend. This page explains how the reviews on this site are actually produced, so you can decide how much weight to give them.
Minimum 30 days, in a working household
Nothing gets a verdict here until it has run for at least 30 days in normal use — in a real house, on a real network, alongside all the other hardware already installed. Some categories take longer. Wearables get a minimum of 45 days because sleep and recovery data needs a baseline before it means anything.
Every review tells you how long the product was tested, in the article itself. A first-impressions post and a month of daily use are different things, and you should be able to tell which one you’re reading before you act on it.
Bought at retail unless noted
Most of what gets tested here was bought with my own money at the same price you’d pay. When a manufacturer supplies a review unit, that is stated in the review itself, near the top, not buried in a footer.
A supplied unit is never returned in exchange for a favourable verdict, and no manufacturer sees a review before it publishes.
Affiliate links never change a verdict
This site earns commission on some outbound product links, including as an Amazon Associate. That funding pays for the hardware that gets tested. It does not influence what gets recommended.
The practical test of that claim is simple: plenty of reviews here end in “don’t buy this,” and those pages carry affiliate links too. If commission drove the conclusions, they wouldn’t.
What gets measured
Where a claim can be measured, it gets measured rather than described. Standing desks are loaded and tested for stability at full height. Smart home devices are run on a live network with the automations already in place, because compatibility only means something in context. Wearables are compared against each other on the same body over the same nights, not against their own marketing.
Where something can’t be measured — comfort, build feel, whether a thing is pleasant to live with — it’s described as a judgement, and labelled as one.
Corrections
Firmware changes, and products change with it. When an update materially alters a verdict, the review is updated and the change is noted with a date rather than quietly edited. If you think something here is wrong, tell me — corrections are published, not buried.
Last reviewed: August 2026.