Affiliate disclosure
The Tested Hub is reader-supported. When you click an Amazon link on our site and buy a product within 24 hours, we earn a small commission from Amazon at no extra cost to you. We are participants in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program.
Affiliate links on our site are marked with rel="nofollow sponsored" — the technical signal Google requires for affiliate content. Every review page also carries a visible disclosure box at the top.
Editorial firewall
We have a written editorial firewall: our writers and editors do not have access to affiliate-revenue data while writing or editing reviews. This means:
- The reviewer who tested the product doesn't know which products earn us more.
- The "Top Pick" or "Editor's Choice" verdict is decided on merit, not commission rate.
- Section ratings and overall scores are reconciled across two independent editors before publication.
This isn't a perfect system — no editorial policy is — but it's the strongest practical guard against affiliate-driven bias.
No sponsored content
We do not accept payment, free product, "review samples," PR loaners, or any consideration in exchange for coverage. Period. We've turned down meaningful money to keep this rule. If a brand contacts us about coverage, the answer is the same: buy us your product through Amazon like everyone else, and we'll review it on our schedule.
How we acquire products
Every product we review is purchased at retail from Amazon, with the same checkout flow you'd use. We never accept manufacturer-provided units. We use a separate corporate Amazon account so the unit is not hand-picked by the seller.
If a product breaks during testing, that's our problem — and a useful data point. If our long-term unit fails after publication, we update the review.
Updates and corrections
Reviews are not static. Every published review carries a visible "Updated" date and an update log at the bottom listing every meaningful change. We update reviews when:
- A new generation of the product is released
- Firmware updates change measured performance
- A recall, defect, or durability issue emerges in our long-term unit
- The retail price changes meaningfully
- We find a factual error
If you spot a factual error in any review, email editorial@thetestedhub.com. We will correct the error and add a dated entry to the update log noting the correction.
Conflicts of interest
Our writers occasionally have prior professional relationships with companies in their coverage areas. When this is the case, the writer either recuses from reviewing that company's products, or discloses the relationship in the byline of the review. Recent and current relationships are tracked in each writer's profile.
How our rankings work
Our "Top Pick", "Runner-up", "Best Budget", and "Skip" verdicts are decided collectively by our editorial team based on:
- Lab measurements (battery, ANC, performance, durability)
- Real-world testing notes from at least 30 days of use
- Long-term reliability data from prior generations and similar products
- Value relative to alternatives in the price band
Verdicts can change. If a product we previously recommended drops in our re-testing, we'll update the verdict and note the change in the update log.
Why we don't aggregate user reviews
You'll notice we don't have a "user reviews" section on The Tested Hub. There are two reasons. First, Amazon already aggregates user reviews on every product listing — our job is to add the missing layer: hands-on, expert testing. Second, user-review sections on independent sites are notoriously gameable; running one well requires moderation resources we'd rather spend on testing more products.
Reach us
Editorial: editorial@thetestedhub.com
Press: press@thetestedhub.com
Privacy / data: privacy@thetestedhub.com