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Methodology

Every guide starts from what owners and buyers wrote, kept on file with its source, and every quote is checked against it. Below is where that evidence comes from, the checks every quote passes, how a guide is put together, and what the site has gathered so far.

The record, counted

Counted from the archive when this page was built.

Guides published
27
Buyer reviews
538
Sources archived
119
Picks ranked
135
Picks with specifications on file
130

Three kinds of evidence

Where each one enters, and how it is checked.

Owner reports

What owners write about a product in public discussion communities once they have lived with it. Every thread a quote comes from is archived: a full copy is stored with its address. The fetcher reads each site's robots rules and paces its requests, and communities whose terms do not allow this use are left out.

Checked: a quote is kept only when its words are found, exactly, in the archived copy of its thread. Before a guide reaches a person for review the check runs again, and a thread that has disappeared takes its quotes with it.

Buyer reviews

Reviews on a product's own retail listing, by people who bought it, written in the United States, the market this site serves. Reviews pasted or read from a listing are marked verified when the retailer marks them so, and then only verified purchases are used. A product's top reviews read through a product-data service carry no such mark: they are captioned as buyers' reviews and never called verified. Either way the listing is archived as it came.

Checked: an excerpt is accepted only when its words are found, exactly, inside that reviewer's own review in the archive. A review that reached us machine-translated is marked “(paraphrased)”, and an excerpt that names a price is not used. A listing whose archived copy is more than 30 days old has to be archived again before its guide passes its checks.

Specifications

Sizes, materials and capabilities, entered by hand from manufacturer documentation, or taken from the product's own page or listing as the seller states them, with any price removed.

Kept on file: the guides do not print specifications as a table. A guide draws on them when it describes a pick; where a page states nothing, it describes what is usual for that kind of product and that market.

The rules every quote passes

Each quote rule is a check the code runs, not a promise.

  • Owner quotes are copied, never composed. They are real people's words, taken from the archived copy, never edited, tidied or shortened for effect, and attributed only to the person who wrote them.
  • Word for word, twice. A quote's words are checked against an archived copy of its source when the quote is taken and again before a person reviews the guide.
  • Marked when it is not exact. A quote that is not word for word, such as a buyer review that reached us machine-translated, carries “(paraphrased)” wherever it appears.
  • At most six under the top pick and four under any other, one per person. A lower pick always shows fewer than the top one. Under each pick, the quotes closest to 40 words come first. A quote is chosen to fit, never cut to fit. A pick with no quote to show carries a short note on what to expect instead, never set as a quote.
  • Captioned by kind. A discussion quote carries the name its author posted under; a buyer's review carries the buyer's name and “Verified buyer” when the retailer marked it a verified purchase, or “Amazon buyer” when it came from a product's top reviews, which carry no such mark.
  • No prices in the quotes. An excerpt that names a price is not used, and the guides are written not to name one: the retailer shows what something costs right now.
  • Printed as written. The writing around each pick draws on the quotes, the product’s own page and what is known of the market, and the page prints it as it was written.

Awards and badges

A pick's award label names the job it does best in its guide. Its badges come from a fixed set of eight, and nothing outside it is ever drawn:

  • Most recommended
  • Value for money
  • Owner favorite
  • Built to last
  • Easiest to live with
  • Great for beginners
  • Least upkeep
  • Quietest

Each pick’s award and badges are chosen when the guide is written, and the page prints them as chosen.

How we rank

In a guide built from owner discussions, the order follows owner consensus: position one is the pick long-term owners agree on most strongly, not the newest release, and never the one a brand would like to see there.

In a guide built from product listings, the editor sets the order and the guide says so. In a guide built around a product the editor placed first, the other picks follow the stated rule, and the guide says that too.

How a guide is put together

The same steps for every guide, in this order.

  1. A question. The editor names a kind of product and who it is for.
  2. Sources. For a discussion guide, public threads where owners talk about that kind of product are found and archived. For a listing guide, the editor chooses the products, and each listing is archived as the retailer shows it.
  3. Quotes. Excerpts are taken from the archived copies and kept only when their words are found there exactly.
  4. The writing. The introduction, the verdicts, the buying guide and the answers are drafted from those quotes, the products’ own pages and what is known of the market, and printed as written.
  5. The checks. Every quote is matched against its archive again, every discussion source has to still be there, a listing archived more than 30 days earlier is archived again, and code checks what a page needs to be built: every section present, and every product linked and pictured.
  6. A person. Nothing publishes itself. A person reads and approves every guide before it goes live, and can take one down at any time.
  7. Afterwards. A guide can be read against its sources again at any time, and the day someone does is recorded with it.

Corrections and removals

Every quote is stored with the thread or listing it came from, so a claim can always be traced back. If you wrote something we quoted and want it removed or attributed differently, tell us and we will act; we do not ask you to prove it is yours beyond what is reasonable.

Found a specification that is wrong, a pick that no longer makes sense, or a link that goes to the wrong product? Those are the corrections we most want to hear about. Write to support@truevaluepick.com or use the contact page. A corrected guide is published again with a fresh date.

What we refuse to do, and who pays for this site, are set out once, on the About page: who pays for this.