Reference · In force since 2026-04-02

Editorial policy

Seven clauses. They apply to every report, guide, comparison and certification we publish, and to every member of staff regardless of which side of the business they sit on.

1. 01

   Products are purchased or returned

   We buy test units at retail wherever they can be bought at retail. Units that can only be loaned are labelled on the review and shipped back within 30 days of publication, at our cost. No test unit stays in the office.

2. 02

   No sponsor previews before publication

   No manufacturer, sponsor, retailer or agency sees a report or a verdict before it is public. There is no fact-check copy, no embargo review and no approval step. Errors are handled after publication through the correction log.

3. 03

   Sponsorship cannot be conditioned on coverage

   We will not sell a sponsorship that is tied to a review, a verdict, a placement or a publication date. If an offer arrives with those terms attached, sales declines it and the offer is recorded internally. Money buys space, never a verdict.

4. 04

   Sales and editorial are separated

   Commercial staff do not attend scoring meetings, cannot see a result before publication and have no route to request a change. Testers do not see affiliate rates, sponsorship pipelines or lead-generation revenue by brand.

5. 05

   All paid content is labelled and is not a review

   Sponsored articles carry a hi-vis bar reading PAID CONTENT · PRODUCED FOR [BRAND] · NOT REVIEWED, are excluded from rankings and buyer's guides, and never carry an editorial verdict. The components that render a review cannot render on a sponsored page.

6. 06

   Certification is pass/fail against public criteria

   A manufacturer can pay to run the protocol on a pre-release unit. The criteria are published in advance, the result is pass or fail, and a fail is published as readily as a pass. Certification is a test result, not an endorsement and not a ranking position.

7. 07

   Corrections are logged publicly

   Every post-publication change to a stated figure or a verdict appears in the correction log with the date, the original wording, the corrected wording and the effect on our conclusion. Corrected text is struck through in place, never quietly replaced.