How We Rank
Short version: we do not test products ourselves, and we say so. What we do is collect public Amazon data for a defined set of products, apply one formula to all of them, and publish the result along with the data it came from.
We do not test products
We have no lab and we do not take products apart. Any page that tells you a product was “tested” by us would be lying. Everything on this site is built from public Amazon listing data and public customer reviews.
Where the data comes from
For every product we record its Amazon title, image, star rating, review count and stock status on the date shown at the top of each list. Review themes are counted from real customer reviews, and each theme we publish carries the sample size it was drawn from, so you can judge how much weight it deserves.
How the score is calculated
The score out of 10 is a fixed formula, not an opinion. It is the product's Amazon star rating doubled, plus a small bonus for review volume that maxes out at half a point, capped at 9.9. Nothing scores a perfect 10. The same formula runs on every product on this site, and the inputs are printed next to the score so you can check it.
How our commercial relationships affect the list
We earn a commission when you buy through links on this site, at no extra cost to you. Those commissions come from affiliate programmes run by the brands and by third-party networks, not from you. That relationship affects the list in two ways, and we would rather you heard it from us:
- Which products we consider. We start from brands we have an affiliate relationship with. That means our lists are not a survey of everything on the market.
- Where they sit. Products we have a commercial relationship with are listed first. Products we earn little or nothing from can still appear, lower down, when leaving them out would make the comparison misleading.
No brand can pay to change its score, to be moved up, to receive a badge, or to have a competitor removed.
The three named picks
The first three slots on a list are named picks rather than formula order, and each one has to win a measurement we can point at:
- Best Overall — the highest score, by the formula above, among the products we can link.
- Popular — the highest purchase volume, taken from Amazon's own “bought in past month” figure shown on each card.
- Best Affordable — the lowest price among the products we can link, as of the last price check. We do not print prices, because they change; the timestamp on each card tells you when we last looked.
If a product stops winning its measurement, the badge moves. Everything below the third slot is pure formula order, and the reason for each badge is recorded in the page data so it can be checked against the numbers on the card.
Prices
We do not print prices or discount percentages. Amazon prices change constantly and a stale number is worse than none, so every button sends you to the live Amazon page to check the current price yourself.
When we are wrong
If a product is discontinued, out of stock, or the data on a page is out of date, tell us on the contact page and we will correct or remove it. Each list shows the date it was last rebuilt.