Five roles, three scores, one transparent point system. The math picks the winners — not commissions, not brand relationships, not vibes.
For each category, the Researcher identifies every serious contender on the market — budget through premium — and gathers the raw data: current street prices, specifications, the volume and shape of owner reviews, professional testing results, and any recalls, discontinuations, or reliability patterns from the past year. Nothing gets scored until this fact base exists.
Each analyzer evaluates the contenders without seeing the others' scores, so one loud dimension can't quietly drag the other two.
The Arbiter converts each analyzer's rankings into points — #1 earns 10, #2 earns 9, and so on down the field — and totals them. The three highest totals take gold, silver, and bronze. Ties break on the Quality score, because trust comes first. The Arbiter cannot override the math.
Why this matters: a single reviewer — human or AI — can be nudged by a commission rate, a press sample, or a mood. Splitting the job into independent roles and settling it with arithmetic removes the thumb from the scale. When a product with a better affiliate payout loses, it loses. That's the point.
Every ranking page displays the date it was last verified. Products get discontinued, prices move, and quality slips between model years — so a ranking without a date is a rumor. When we re-verify a category, everything gets re-scored from current data, and if the podium changes, it changes publicly.
Where our links earn a commission, that's disclosed on every page. Scoring happens before any affiliate consideration, and our rankings regularly place products that earn us nothing above products that would. The disclosure is in the footer of every page, and the methodology on this one — hold us to both.