Affiliate disclosure
You should know how a site makes money before you trust what it tells you to buy. This page says it plainly, which is also what the Federal Trade Commission requires.
Last updated
The short version
Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. If you click one and buy something, we earn a small commission from the retailer. You pay exactly the same price. The commission comes out of the retailer’s margin, not out of your pocket.
Where those links are
Affiliate links appear on the buying guides under our gear section, and occasionally inside an article when a product is directly relevant. They are never hidden. Every one is marked in the page code as a paid link, and every page that carries them shows a notice above the first recommendation, not tucked away at the bottom.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. We may join other retail affiliate programs, and this page will list them when we do.
What it does not buy
No retailer, brand or manufacturer pays us to appear in a guide, to rank higher in one, or to receive a better verdict. Nobody sees a recommendation before it is published. We do not accept payment for a positive review and we do not run sponsored posts dressed as editorial.
When a product is the right answer and it has no affiliate program, it still gets recommended. When the honest answer is that you should not buy anything yet, that is what the page says, even though it earns nothing.
Prices and availability
We do not print prices on our recommendations. Retail prices move constantly, and a figure written into an article is wrong within a week and misleading for as long as it stays up. Follow the link and the retailer will show you the current price.
Stock, delivery estimates and bundle contents are the retailer’s information, not ours, and can change after we publish.
Advertising
Separately from affiliate links, some sections of this site carry display advertising. Those units are labelled as advertising. Advertisers have no influence over our editorial content, no advance sight of it, and no way to buy their way into it.
The buying guides and the tools on this site carry no display advertising at all. On a page whose whole job is to help you decide what to buy, mixing in ads from whoever bid highest is a conflict we would rather not have.
Questions
If anything here is unclear, or you think a link is not disclosed properly, tell us and we will fix it. Our full method for writing and checking a page is in the editorial policy.