How we decide
Facts before opinions
A recommendation starts from a catalog of structured facts, not from prose. Each fact belongs to a specific product or a specific configuration of it, and carries the source it came from and the date we read it. A fact we cannot source does not get published, and a confidence score is not a source.
Unknown, conflicting and not-applicable are three different states, and none of them is zero. When two sources disagree, the disagreement is recorded and held back rather than averaged away.
The pick
For a need we have published a pick for, its hard constraints apply first — the port, the size, the budget. What survives is compared on the dimensions that actually decide the choice for that need. What comes out is a first pick, sometimes an alternative, sometimes a cheaper option that still qualifies. If only one product qualifies, you get one.
We do not test products. Where a claim comes from someone who did, it is attributed to them.
The route
The same plan can often be bought through several links. Routes to the same merchant are compared on what you get back; different offers on what you pay after cashback. What a link pays us never decides which product we recommend — how we are paid is on its own page.
Configurations, not model names
Two things sold under one name are frequently not the same thing: capacity, region and revision all change what you receive. Recommendations and prices are attached to the exact configuration, so the price you see is the price of the thing being recommended.
Prices are observations
Every price on this site was read at a moment we record. Past the window we consider it current for, it stops being shown as a price rather than being shown as an old one. Where a shipping cost or a tax is not known, we say the total is not known — we never treat an unknown cost as zero.
When we are wrong
There is one catalog and one current answer for each need, so a correction reaches every page showing that fact as soon as it is made — no page keeps quoting a number we no longer stand behind. Each fact carries the source it came from and the date that source was read, so you can check any of it yourself; where we stop standing behind a recommendation, we take it down rather than quietly reword it.