How we evaluate
Good Picks Guide publishes structured comparisons built from manufacturers' own documentation. This page describes what we actually do — including the things we do not do.
We have not tested these products
Nothing here is a hands-on review. We do not run a lab, we do not score products, and we do not publish ratings or star ratings. What we publish is the manufacturer's own information, read carefully, organised so that two products can be compared on the same terms, and written up so the trade-offs are visible. Where a number comes from a measurement, it is the manufacturer's measurement, and we say so.
Official sources first
Every published figure is read on a page the manufacturer controls: the product page, the specification sheet, the support documentation or the owner's manual. We use search engines to find those pages, not as a source in themselves. We do not take specifications from other publishers, retailers, forums or review sites.
When a manufacturer does not publish something, we leave the field empty rather than fill it from a secondary source. Several products on this site are missing details for exactly that reason.
Facts are recorded with their conditions
A specification is often true only under conditions stated somewhere else on the page. A battery figure may apply to one size of a device; a health feature may require a particular phone; a price may be for one finish. We carry the condition next to the figure instead of leaving it in the small print, because the condition is frequently the part that decides the purchase.
Comparisons do not pick a winner
Our comparisons set out where two products genuinely differ and which questions decide between them. They do not declare an overall winner, rank products, or award a “best overall”. Two products that suit different people are described that way. Where one product simply does not do something the other does, we say so plainly and explain what it means in use — an absent feature is a difference in category, not automatically a fault.
Prices
We publish the manufacturer's list price, not a promotional price, because promotions expire and would leave the page wrong within days. Where a product's cost has more than one part — hardware plus a membership, for example — we show both, since comparing one against the other on the hardware price alone would be misleading.
Health and regulated claims
Several products we cover include health features that are regulated, age-restricted, limited by region, or explicitly not intended for diagnosis. We reproduce the manufacturer's own wording for those limits rather than paraphrasing it, and we keep requirements separate from medical disclaimers: whether a feature needs a particular phone affects whether to buy, while whether it is a diagnostic tool affects how to read the result. We never present a signal, a score, a trend or an alert as a diagnosis.
Affiliate relationships do not shape conclusions
Some outbound links earn us a commission. That relationship does not decide what we write, which products we cover, or how a comparison comes out. Products are researched and published before any commercial arrangement exists, and several products on this site currently carry no affiliate link at all — they are published anyway, with a link to the manufacturer that earns us nothing. Commission rates are never shown to readers and play no part in the editorial work. The commercial side is described in full in our affiliate disclosure.
Images and provenance
We only publish product imagery we are permitted to use. Several manufacturers restrict their photography to non-commercial use or require written permission, and in those cases we publish the product without their imagery rather than use it anyway. Where an image carries a manufacturer's marketing claim, that claim stays in the image; it does not become a fact in our text.
Corrections and updates
Products change, prices change and documentation is revised. When we find that a published figure no longer matches the manufacturer's current page, we correct it. If you spot something wrong, tell us which page and which fact through our contact page and we will check it against the source.
What we do not claim
- We do not claim to have tested, worn or measured any product.
- We do not publish ratings, scores or review verdicts.
- We do not claim editorial independence through any formal mechanism beyond the practices described on this page.
- We do not claim completeness: a product's absence from this site means only that we have not covered it yet.