About Connected Home HQ
Connected Home HQ publishes independent buying guides and reviews for connected home technology. This page explains how we work, what our scores mean, and how we make money, so you can judge for yourself how much weight to give our recommendations.
Who writes this
A small team, not a single named reviewer, and the byline says so on purpose. There is no invented expert here and no stock-photo headshot of someone who does not exist.
What we are: software and technical people who read specifications for a living, and who run smart homes of our own. Between us we have mounted the doorbells, checked the transformer voltage before wiring one, moved the mesh nodes around a house with thick walls until the dead zone went away, and lost an evening to a hub that would not pair. That is where our scepticism about protocol claims and marketing throughput numbers comes from. A spec sheet on its own does not impress us much.
What we are not is a lab, and we will not pretend to be one. We have lived with plenty of this category. We have not lived with every product on this site, and the difference matters. Where a recommendation leans on someone else's hands-on testing, it says so, and the "Why this score?" note tells you whose findings we are relying on and where reviewers disagreed with each other.
How we research
We are currently a research-led publication, not a testing lab. Our recommendations are built from manufacturer specifications, technical documentation, the published findings of reviewers who have had hands-on time with a product, and patterns in long-term owner feedback.
We do not claim to have physically tested every product we recommend, because we haven't. Plenty of sites imply otherwise. If a pick is ever informed by genuine hands-on use, we will say so explicitly on that product's page. If a page doesn't say it, assume it wasn't.
What our scores mean, and how we derive them
Scores are a single editorial rating out of 10, assigned by us. They are not an average of user reviews, and they are not a lab measurement we took.
They are derived from evidence rather than from a feeling. For each product we read the manufacturer's specifications, then the published findings of reviewers who did have the thing in their hands, and we look for what they agree on. Consistent praise counts. Consistent complaints count against, and they count against even when a product is widely loved and even when saying so costs us a recommendation.
Every scored product carries a "Why this score?" note on its page, setting out what pushed it up and what held it back. If we cannot write that note honestly, the product does not get a number. You should be able to disagree with our score and see exactly where.
Here is the scale we score against, so you can check our working:
| Score | What it means |
|---|---|
| 9.0–10 | We would buy this ourselves, and we struggle to fault it. |
| 8.0–8.9 | Excellent. It has flaws, but none that would send you elsewhere. |
| 7.0–7.9 | Good, but with a real flaw that rules it out for a whole group of buyers. |
| 6.0–6.9 | Worth it in a narrow case, and not otherwise. |
| Below 6 | We would not buy it. |
Two things follow from that, and they are worth being explicit about.
A score is about the product, not about whether it suits you. Fitness for a particular job belongs in the guide that recommends it. A robot vacuum whose brush tangles with hair can still be an excellent machine and a poor choice for a house with a dog, and we would rather say both things clearly than average them into one misleading number.
We only cover things worth considering, so most scores sit high. That is honest selection, not grade inflation. But it does mean a 6 from us is a real warning, and you should read it as one.
Read the trade-offs rather than the number. The number is a summary; the trade-offs are the useful part.
How we pick products
- We shortlist from the current market, not from whatever pays best.
- We favour products that hold up over years, with no subscription traps and no dead ecosystems.
- We say when a cheaper option is good enough, and when it isn't.
- Every product page carries a last researched date. Hardware moves fast; if that date looks old, treat the details as provisional and check the current listing.
Prices
Where we show a price, it is an approximate band: our own estimate of typical street pricing in your region, not a live figure pulled from a retailer. Prices move constantly and differ between countries. Always check the retailer listing for what you will actually pay.
Regions
Our guides are written for an international audience and avoid assuming any one country. Where something genuinely varies (bulb fittings, mains voltage, doorbell wiring, wall construction) we say so rather than pretending it doesn't. Product links point to the Amazon store for your region wherever we have a listing for it.
How we make money
We earn a commission when you buy through our affiliate links, at no extra cost to you. That is the entire business model: the site is free and we do not sell products ourselves.
Commission does not buy a recommendation or a higher score, and we link to products that earn us nothing when they are the right answer. You should not have to take that on faith, though. That is why this page exists, why every affiliate link is marked as one, and why we tell you what we haven't done as plainly as what we have.
Corrections
We get things wrong. If a specification, price band, or product link on this site is inaccurate, we want to fix it. Accuracy is the only thing that makes a site like this worth reading.