Doing the Research
Read a product page for what it declines to mention
Marketing pages are assembled by people who know the product completely. What they leave out is chosen as carefully as what they…
Doing the Research
Reading reviews, spotting sponsored coverage and testing claims yourself.
20 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 1 of 2
Doing the Research
Review scores cluster near the top, and the reason is structural
Almost every product scores between seven and nine out of ten, which makes the scale nearly useless. The compression comes from how reviewing works rather than from dishonesty.
More in Doing the Research
Doing the Research
The vocabulary of disclosure, and what each phrase actually admits
Sponsored, gifted, affiliate, ambassador and partner describe different commercial arrangements. Knowing which is which tells you…
Doing the Research
Affiliate economics decide which products get covered at all
The most consequential bias in product journalism is not what reviewers say. It is the invisible filter deciding which products are…
Doing the Research
Telling a tested review from a rewritten specification sheet
A great deal of published reviewing is a specification list with adjectives added. The differences between that and genuine testing…
Doing the Research
The shape of a rating distribution says more than the average
A four-star average can describe a consistent product or a lottery. The histogram is published on most listings and almost nobody…
Doing the Research
Repair communities know things no review can tell you
Reviewers see products new. Technicians and owners see them at year six, which is the only place information about longevity…
Doing the Research
Read the manual before you own the thing
Manuals are published online for almost every product and are written by engineers rather than marketers. They contain the…
Doing the Research
Certification marks: which ones were tested and which were declared
Some marks mean an independent laboratory tested a sample. Others mean the manufacturer signed a statement. They look similar and…
Doing the Research
Comparison sites are inventory dressed as judgement
A comparison table looks neutral because it is a table. What it contains was decided by which retailers pay to appear and which…
Doing the Research
A return window is a testing window, if you use it deliberately
The days after delivery are the only period in which a product can be evaluated at no cost. Most people spend them setting the…
Doing the Research
This site does not test anything, and that shapes what it can tell you
There is a real division of labour between explaining how to judge a product and measuring one. Confusing the two is how bad buying…