This page explains exactly what happens between a product arriving at our door and a score appearing on this site. It is deliberately specific, because “we tested it thoroughly” means nothing without detail.
1. We buy it ourselves
Every product is purchased at full retail price from Amazon.ca or a Canadian retailer. We do not accept loan units. This costs us money and slows us down, but it means no brand can pressure us, delay a publication, or ask for a review to be pulled.
2. A minimum of three weeks in real use
Three weeks is our floor, not our target. Floor-care products get a minimum of 20 cleaning cycles across hardwood, tile, low-pile carpet and at least one messy real-world event. Power stations get a full charge-discharge cycle plus at least one simulated outage. Dash cams run through day, night, rain and snow driving.
3. We measure instead of guessing
- Floor care: suction at the brush roll, debris pickup by weight, noise in dBA at one metre, runtime to auto-shutdown, water consumption per square metre.
- Power: usable watt-hours delivered (not nameplate capacity), recharge time, idle drain over 30 days, inverter efficiency at 50% and 100% load.
- Audio and video: lumen output in calibrated modes, contrast at 10% and 100% white, sound pressure level at reference volume, frequency response.
- Security and networking: throughput at 3m, 10m and through two walls, notification latency, night-time image quality at 10 lux.
Where a number cannot be measured in a home setting, we say so rather than repeating a manufacturer claim.
4. Canadian conditions are part of the test
We test through a Canadian winter wherever the product allows it: salt and grit on entryway floors, -20°C cold soaks for outdoor batteries and cameras, basement humidity, condo-sized floor plans and Canadian hydro rates for anything that runs continuously.
5. Scoring
Every review carries four subscores, each out of 10: Design & Build, Performance, Ease of Use and Value for Money. The overall score is their weighted average, rounded to one decimal. Value is weighted more heavily for products under $500, and performance more heavily above $1,500 — because that is how buyers actually judge those price points.
We do not round up to be generous. A 7.4 stays a 7.4. Anything scoring below 7.0 is not recommended, and we will say so in the headline.
6. Review and update cycle
Reviews are revisited every six to nine months, or sooner if the price moves more than 15%, the firmware changes materially, or reader reports suggest a reliability problem. The “last tested” date at the top of each review is the date we last re-checked the unit on hand.
What we will not do
- Publish a review of a product we have not physically used.
- Accept a sponsored placement inside a review.
- Hide a defect because a product is otherwise good.
- Rank products by commission rate. Ranking is by score; commission plays no part.
Questions about our method? Email [email protected].