Editorial policy

Brand neutrality

• We don’t accept payment for reviews, coverage or placement.
• Brands don’t see or approve a page before it’s published.
• Affiliate commissions don’t change rankings. If the best fit for a reader comes from a company with no affiliate program, we recommend it anyway. See the affiliate disclosure.
• The calculator and the wattage data don’t know which brands pay commissions.

Sources

We go to primary sources first: government data such as ENERGY STAR, the Department of Energy and the CPSC, standards from NFPA, manufacturer manuals and spec sheets, and utilities. When the only source for a figure is a retailer listing or a secondary page, we say so on the page and keep looking for a better one. Every guide lists its sources at the end, and every wattage figure names the source it came from. How we test explains how we use the data.

Safety content

Pages about carbon monoxide, backfeeding, home wiring and running a generator in bad weather follow stricter rules. Each safety statement cites the CPSC, NFPA, the CDC or the equipment manufacturer’s manual. We don’t publish step-by-step instructions for wiring a generator or battery into a house, because that work belongs to a licensed electrician and has to meet local code.

A licensed electrician or another qualified reviewer should check each safety page. Until that happens, the page says so at the top, and your owner’s manual and the cited sources take priority over our text.

What we won’t publish

Numbers we can’t source, test results from tests we didn’t run, or prices we haven’t checked. When a fact is missing, the page says it’s missing.

Updates and corrections

Guides show the date they were published or last updated. When we find an error, or a reader reports one, we fix it and change that date. If the fix changes a safety instruction or a recommendation, we add a note on the page saying what changed.

To report an error, email hello@lightsonlabs.comwith the page and, if you have one, the source that shows the right figure.

Who writes the pages

One editor, writing under a pen name. The about page says who that is and what they can and can’t vouch for.