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The 3-year math on every pick

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How We Score

Every product on The Practical Choice gets a score out of 10. This page explains exactly how that number is built, and exactly where our evidence comes from, so you can check our work.

Where our evidence comes from

We are a research desk, not a test lab. For each article we read, and then link to:

  • The seller’s own page for price, specs and warranty, with the date we read it.
  • Certification and government databases: AHAM Verifide, ENERGY STAR, the EPA, the FTC EnergyGuide label, and the CPSC recall database, which we check before a product can appear in a list.
  • Independent measurements published by others, quoted by name with a link: RTINGS, HouseFresh, TechGearLab, Consumer Reports and similar. When we quote a measurement, we say who measured it. We never present someone else’s test as our own.
  • Owner reports: reviews on the seller’s page and public owner discussions. We quote at most two sentences, link the source, and only give a count when we actually counted.

Each article shows how many sources we read, the date prices were checked, and the independent sources used. The full list sits at the bottom of the article.

Five criteria per product type

Each product type (office chairs, air purifiers, air fryers…) has five criteria with fixed, public weights, written before we score the first product of that type. Two products of different types never share a score table.

The Practical Math: 3-year cost of ownership

Every pick shows what it costs to own for three years, not just to buy:

  • Price from the seller’s site, with the date we checked it.
  • Parts you keep buying: unit price x replacements per year x 3 (filters, bags, brushes, pads, brush heads).
  • Electricity: (watts at typical use / 1,000) x hours per day x 365 x 3 x the U.S. average residential rate. We state the hours we assume, and if a brand only lists maximum wattage we say so.
  • Subscriptions the product needs to work as advertised.

Optional extras stay out of the total and are mentioned in the text instead.

How picks are ranked

We rank by score. The highest score is our Best Overall pick whether or not we earn a commission from it. Labels such as Best Value and Best Budget follow written formulas, not opinion, and a script assigns them from the scores.

What we do not do

  • We do not test products in our own lab, and we never write that we did.
  • We do not use photos that suggest we ran a test.
  • We do not publish a number we could not read on a page we opened.
  • We do not let a commission change a score or a rank.

Keeping it current

We review every “best” list at least every 90 days, and each article carries a short “What changed” log. Mistakes are logged on our corrections page. Questions: admin@namhahamediallc.com.