The shortlist: what a product must clear first
Before anything gets scored, it has to earn a place on the shortlist:
- Compatibility: does it work with your kit, and is it actually made for the UK? A charger with a folding EU plug or a hub that only shines on one laptop doesn't make the cut.
- Specs vs marketing: we prioritise real standards - USB-C Power Delivery profiles and PPS, HDMI and DisplayPort versions, Thunderbolt and USB4 bandwidth - over headline claims. Plenty of "100W" chargers only deliver 100W on one port at a time; we read the spec sheet, not the box.
- Reliability signals: warranty terms, brand track record and known failure modes. We stick to a shortlist of proven names with UK support (Anker, UGREEN, Belkin, ESR, INIU, Baseus, Cable Matters, Apple, Amazon Basics and similar).
- Value: price-to-feature trade-offs, not just the cheapest option on the page.
- Use-case fit: every pick names who it's for - travel, desk, gaming, multi-device households - and, just as usefully, who it isn't for.
Every link is verified against the live listing
The quiet failure mode of affiliate sites is a link that lands on the wrong product: a listing that was replaced, renamed or hijacked since the guide was written. We treat that as a hard error, so we check every link before you ever see it:
- Before a guide goes live, every recommendation is checked against the live Amazon UK listing so the product title matches the exact product we describe - brand, wattage or capacity, and model.
- Nothing goes out stale. If a link has not been checked lately, it gets checked before the guide is touched, not after.
- We re-check the whole catalogue regularly, every product link on the site. When a product is discontinued or its listing dies, we replace the pick and rewrite the guide around a verified alternative rather than leaving a dead recommendation up.
How we score (the SPP Score)
Every pick carries an SPP Score out of 10. This is our own editorial score. We work it out from a fixed rubric applied to each product's verified specifications and intended use. It's not an Amazon star rating, and it isn't taken from or matched to customer reviews.
The rubric scores the product on four things from 1 to 10, and a fifth mark rates its fit for this guide. The scorecard sits under each pick so you can see the working. The four product marks belong to the product and are the same in every guide you meet it in; Fit is set per guide. Together the product marks carry 70% of the total and Fit the other 30%; the share of the total each mark carries is in brackets:
- Capability (24.5%): real output, capacity or bandwidth for the job. For chargers that means wattage; for power banks, capacity and output; for hubs and docks, port selection and data speeds; for cables and adapters, the link standard actually supported (a Thunderbolt 4 cable and a charge-only cable are different tools).
- Versatility (17.5%): ports, features and compatibility for the use case - the things that let one product cover more situations.
- Build (14%): materials, form factor and travel-friendliness - GaN designs, foldable plugs, braided cables, brand build quality.
- Value for its tier (14%): how well it fills its role as the overall, budget or premium pick. A budget pick only earns a top value score when it beats the overall pick on raw capability - "cheap" alone is not value. A premium pick is not penalised for sitting at the top of the range either: it earns full value when its extra capability justifies the step up, and drops a notch when it does not.
- Fit for this guide (30%): how well this pick answers the question in the title, for the reader that guide is written for. It is set per guide, so the same product can carry a different Fit mark in two guides, and the reason is printed under every scorecard.
Because every product here has already passed the shortlist, the scores sit in the upper half of the scale: the total and the scorecard are there to separate strong options from each other, not to rate them against the whole market. Four marks rate the product; the fifth rates its fit for this guide. The total is exactly the weighted mean of the five printed marks at the weights above, so you can check the arithmetic yourself. No two picks on a page ever share a score, so the order is always clear - and the size of the gap is worth reading. A pick at 9.5 or above carries a short What keeps it off a 10 line, because at that level you deserve to know exactly what is missing; below that, the honest lows live in the scorecard and the cons. Nothing here scores below a 7: a product we would rate lower than that would not be on the page at all. We revise scores whenever we update a guide.
The badge leads; the score supports it. Our Best Overall pick is the one we would buy for most people at its price and size, and it carries the top score in its guide because fit is part of the score. A premium pick is often the more capable product, and the four product marks show exactly where it is stronger; its Fit mark says how much of that the guide's reader actually needs. A Best Budget pick can top its page when it genuinely fits the brief better than the overall pick, and the page says so.
What we deliberately leave out
We don't display prices, star ratings, review counts or stock claims. Prices and availability change hourly and a stale number is worse than none; ratings belong to the retailer, not to us. Check the product page on Amazon UK via any of our links for the current price, availability and reviews - our job is the part that stays put: what the product actually is, and whether it's the right pick for you.
An honest note on hands-on testing
Not every item is physically tested in-house - no honest small site can claim that across a whole catalogue. Where we cannot test directly, we lean on documented specs, standards compliance, known platform quirks and each brand's reliability record - and we say so plainly rather than implying a lab we don't have.
The exceptions are marked. A product we own and use carries a Hands-on badge on the comparison table and beside its score, with a note on what our own use confirmed. Owning something can only move two of the four product marks - Versatility and Build, the two things use can actually prove - and the note says what moved and why. It never changes Capability, which is what the specification says, or Value, which is about the job the pick is doing on that page, and it never adds a bonus on its own. A product we own can still lose to one we have not handled.
Links: About • Disclosure • Privacy