How a Ranking Gets Made
Build the full shortlist, not a convenient one
For every category we start from the complete field available to UK buyers — every mainstream wallbox, every well-listed cable or accessory — not just the products with affiliate programmes. If something ranks poorly here, it was compared and lost.
Work from primary documentation
Manufacturer spec sheets, installation manuals, warranty terms and firmware release notes, cross-checked against OZEV approval lists and UK wiring-regulation requirements. Marketing pages get treated as claims; manuals get treated as facts.
Read owner experience at scale
We analyse review histories in the hundreds and thousands — Amazon UK, Trustpilot, owner forums — looking for the patterns single reviews can't show: reliability complaints that cluster after month six, app updates that broke scheduling, support that stopped answering. Recurring themes move rankings; individual anecdotes don't.
Judge safety kit strictly
Anything that carries current gets held to a harder standard. Granny chargers without a stated RCD type and temperature protection don't get ranked, whatever their star rating. Cables need IEC 62196 compliance and UKCA or CE marks to appear at all.
Price against what you actually get
We re-check prices when a guide is written or updated and date-stamp them on the page. A product that's excellent at £90 can be a poor buy at £140, so verdicts state the price they were made at.
What We Don't Do
- No paid placements. No manufacturer has ever paid to appear, rank higher, or soften a criticism. Nobody gets to see a review before you do.
- No review samples. We don't accept free units from manufacturers, which keeps the incentive problem out of the building entirely.
- No hands-on lab claims. We're a research operation, not a test bench. Where a claim needs physical testing we haven't done, we say so and cite who has.
- No stale pages left ranking. Money guides get re-checked when prices or the market move; every guide carries its last-updated date in the header.
Money pages also carry a dated "checked" stamp under the headline. That date means someone here went back to the supplier or the retailer and read the figure again on that day, and corrected the page where it had moved. Where a company publishes nothing we can read, the stamp says the page was reviewed rather than that a price was checked, because we won't imply a verification we didn't do.
How We Make Money
Three ways: Amazon affiliate links, Awin affiliate links to EV Cable Shop, and, since 29 September 2026, Awin affiliate links to Pod Point. When you buy through any of them, we get a small commission at no extra cost to you. EV Cable Shop links appear where its own-brand cable or accessory is a genuine alternative to the branded product beside it; they are a different product, not the same one relisted. On accessories the commission is broadly the same whichever product you pick, so it has no pull on those rankings: we earn much the same whether you buy our #1 or our #5. Chargers are different. Pod Point is the only wallbox maker that pays us, so a Pod Point order is worth more to us than any other charger. That is why the charger ranking was settled before the Pod Point programme began, and why the Solo 3S has stayed fourth. Pages that earn nothing (like our statistics page or grants guide) get the same effort as pages that do. If we ever add another revenue source, such as installer referral fees, we'll disclose it here first.
Corrections
If we've got a spec, price or eligibility rule wrong, tell us. Factual errors get fixed as soon as they're verified, and material corrections are noted on the page. Being independent is worth little without also being accurate.
See it in practice: the best home EV chargers ranking and the EV accessories guide both follow this process end to end, including the date-stamped prices and the "what to skip" calls.