How we test
Most review sites imply hands-on experience they do not have. We would rather tell you exactly what we know and how we know it, even when the answer is 'we have not used this one'.
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The three labels
Every guide, review and comparison on this site carries one of three labels, at the top of the page, before you read a word of the recommendation.
Tested Tested
We bought, borrowed or already owned the product and used it for its actual purpose. A page cannot carry this label unless it records when it was tested, the setup it was tested in, and at least one original photograph. Those three fields are mandatory — the site will not build without them.
Tested does not mean laboratory conditions. It means a real car, a real garage, and a real problem, described specifically enough that you can judge whether it resembles yours.
Researched Researched
We have not used the product. The assessment comes from manufacturer documentation, specifications, manuals, and the physical constraints of the problem. Where we say something works, we are reasoning from how the thing is built — not from having watched it work.
Researched pages are useful for narrowing a field and for understanding what actually matters in a category. They are not a substitute for hands-on experience and we do not present them as one.
Community-tested Community-tested
We have not used it, but there is a consistent, specific body of owner experience we consider credible — typically from marque forums and owners' clubs where people report the same failure or the same success across years. We say where the reports come from.
Why this matters enough to build it into the software
A label is only worth something if it cannot be applied casually. So these rules are enforced by a build check rather than by good intentions: the site refuses to compile if a page claims to be tested without the evidence fields, if prose on a non-tested page says "I used this" or "in my testing", if a recommendation has no stated limitation, or if it offers no alternative.
The same check rejects hard prices in the text. Prices change weekly; a number written in an article is wrong within a month and quietly misleads everyone who reads it afterwards. We link you to the merchant instead.
What every recommendation has to answer
- What specific, annoying problem does this solve?
- Does it work in normal use — not in ideal use?
- Is it worth the money, the clutter and the look of it?
If a product cannot survive all three questions, it does not go on a list. That is also why several of our guides recommend doing nothing, or doing something free, before they recommend buying anything.
Scores
Reviews carry a Fix score (how well it solves the problem) and an Ugly score (how much it offends the eye). These are deliberately separate and never averaged. A device can be a 9 for usefulness and a 9 for ugliness at the same time — that combination is more or less the reason this site exists.
Where the money comes from
Affiliate commissions, disclosed on every page that carries a link. Commission rates play no part in what gets recommended or in what order. The full arrangement is set out in our editorial policy and affiliate disclosure.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we would rather know. Tell us and we will fix it and say that we did. We do not change publication dates to make old pages look fresh; when a page is substantively updated, the updated date changes and the reason is recorded.