The shortlist: what a product must clear first
Before anything gets scored, it has to earn a place on the shortlist. Here's what every product has to clear:
- 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 link verification is built into how this site publishes:
- 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 ships stale. A guide cannot be updated unless every product link in it has passed that check recently; anything older than our freshness window gets re-verified first.
- The whole catalogue is re-swept regularly with an automated check of 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 four things from 1 to 10, and the scorecard sits under each pick so you can see the working:
- Capability (35%): 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 (25%): ports, features and compatibility for the use case - the things that let one product cover more situations.
- Build and portability (20%): materials, form factor and travel-friendliness - GaN designs, foldable plugs, braided cables, brand build quality.
- Value for its tier (20%): 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 fined 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.
Because every product here has already passed the shortlist, scores cluster towards the upper half of the scale; the weighted total (to one decimal place) and the scorecard are there to separate strong options within it, not to rate them against the whole market. A budget pick can outscore an overall pick when its value is exceptional - the scorecard shows why. We revise scores whenever we update a guide.
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.
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