How We Research & Rank
Our methodology, explained honestly.
Researching a purchase is harder than it should be. Whether it's a home battery, a laptop, or a pair of headphones, you can spend hours trawling through articles, spec sheets, and conflicting reviews — and end up more confused than when you started. HomeTechLAB exists to cut through that noise.
How we produce our guides
Every guide on HomeTechLAB is researched and drafted with the help of AI, then reviewed and edited by a human before it's published. We do this deliberately. AI's real strength is its ability to read across a large number of sources at once — manufacturer specifications, official UK pricing, the relevant UK regulations, and a wide range of genuine user reviews and expert write-ups — and summarise them into one balanced view. Our aim is to save you that legwork and give you a fair, UK-focused starting point.
What we research
For each guide we draw on multiple sources, including:
- Manufacturer specifications and official product information
- Official UK pricing and availability (in GBP, from UK retailers and installers)
- UK regulations and schemes where relevant — for example MCS certification, DNO/G98/G99 rules, VAT treatment, and the Smart Export Guarantee
- A wide range of real-world reviews from people who actually own the products, alongside reputable independent and expert reviews
Where a product attracts overwhelmingly positive or overwhelmingly negative feedback from real users, we say so — that consensus is often more useful than any single review.
Our Owner's Sentiment Score
For many products we show an Owner's Sentiment Score out of 10. This is not our own hands-on test score — it's our assessment of what real owners think, drawn from an average of genuine reviews across multiple independent sources (retailers, specialist communities, and reputable review sites), never from any single source alone.
We show roughly how many reviews inform it and when we assessed it, because both matter. Where feedback is overwhelmingly positive or negative, or where owners repeatedly raise the same specific issue, we say so. Where a product is too new or too niche to have enough genuine reviews, we won't force a score — we'll simply say so.
How we rank
When we rank or compare products, we weigh value for money, specifications, warranty and support, UK availability, and the balance of real-world feedback. We do not rank products based on any commercial relationship. We currently carry no affiliate or paid links; if that ever changes, it will never influence our rankings, and we'll tell you clearly.
Keeping guides current
Technology, prices, and availability change constantly. Using AI lets us revisit and update our guides far more often than we could by hand, so the information stays as accurate as we can keep it. We also remove products that are discontinued or whose manufacturer is no longer trading — for example, we recently removed GivEnergy from our home battery guide after the company entered liquidation, as we don't believe it's right to recommend a system you may no longer be able to buy or get supported.
An honest word on what this site is — and isn't
We're not a testing lab. We don't physically test every product, and we never pretend to — where our assessment is based on research rather than hands-on use, we say so. Everything on HomeTechLAB is our subjective opinion, offered to help with your research — not a statement of fact. Even with the best intentions we will sometimes get things wrong. Please treat our guides as one part of your own research on the way to a purchase, and always check the current details with the retailer or manufacturer before you buy.
Spotted something wrong?
We want to correct mistakes quickly. If you think we've got something wrong or out of date, please get in touch — we read every message and will update guides where needed.
Reviewed and edited by Tom Barrows, Editor, HomeTechLAB