How We Evaluate Products

What we actually do

No spectrophotometer. No environmental chamber. No panel of volunteers whose sebum production we track weekly. Claiming otherwise would be easy and it would be a lie, and a lie about method contaminates every conclusion drawn from it.

So here is the work instead, which is less impressive and more useful:

Read the specifications properly. Absorbency tiers, lens materials, ingredient concentrations in the order they are printed, device clearances and the specific indication each one is cleared for — not the indication in the marketing copy, the one in the labeling.
Convert prices into a unit that can be compared. Cost per day for consumables, cost per ounce for skincare, cost per unit for incontinence products. Sticker prices in this space are structured specifically to prevent this comparison, and a pack that is 20% larger at 10% off costs more per unit than the one beside it.
Read the return and cancellation terms in full. A generous return window and a three-click cancellation are part of what you are buying. A subscription with a two-shipment minimum costs more than its listed price.
Look at the shape of the complaints, not the average. A product sitting at 4.2 stars with fifty reviews saying "leaked at night" is telling you something the 4.6 average is hiding.
Say where the evidence stops. When a question can only be settled by using the product for a month, we say that instead of inventing a verdict.

What we refuse to claim

These are hard rules, not preferences. They exist because the categories we cover are full of claims that are technically legal and practically misleading.

No invented test results. If we did not measure it, we do not report a number for it.
No efficacy claims for medical products. A device cleared by the FDA for snoring is described as such. We do not extend that clearance into "treats sleep apnea," because it does not.
No diagnostic framing. We explain the difference between ordinary snoring and sleep apnea because that distinction determines whether shopping is the right next step. We do not offer a checklist that lets a reader diagnose themselves.
No "clinically proven" without the citation. If a brand makes that claim and publishes the study, we will describe the study and its limits. If it does not publish one, we say the claim is unverified.
No rankings purchased by commission rate. See below.

The affiliate firewall

This site is funded by commissions. That is a real conflict of interest.

Pretending otherwise would be worse than disclosing it, so here is how it is contained. Commission rate is not an input to ranking. When products are ordered, the ordering is by fit for the use described and by cost per use, and a 20% product does not outrank a 4% one because of the rate. We have published guides where the recommended product pays us nothing, and where the cheapest correct answer is a store brand we have no relationship with.

Disclosure is above the content, not below it. Any page with affiliate links carries a strip directly under the header, before the first word of the article, in addition to a note at the end. Both are there before you click anything.

No paid placement. Brands cannot buy a position in a guide, a "best of" slot, or a mention. There is no sponsored tier. Nobody sees an article before it publishes.

How often guides are revisited

Stale is worse than absent.

Pricing and product lines here change constantly, and a guide that quotes last year's price is worse than no guide at all because it borrows the authority of having been written. Each article carries a last-updated date in the header. We revise on three triggers: a product is discontinued or reformulated, a price change is large enough to reorder a ranking, or a correction is warranted. Substantive edits are noted in the article rather than made silently with the date reset.

Corrections

Being wrong is recoverable. Being wrong quietly is not, and being wrong while a reader makes a purchase decision on it is the worst version of the three.

If something here is incorrect, say so and we will fix it and note that we did. Email [email protected] with the page and the specific problem. If you are a manufacturer and believe a specification is misstated, include the source document or the labeling and we will check it against what we published.

Who writes this

Mara Ellison is the editor. Mara spent eleven years buying home medical supplies for a regional home-care agency before starting Best Deal Health. She writes about products that people buy out of necessity rather than enthusiasm, and she is unreasonably particular about absorbency ratings and return policies.