Editorial policy

How products get considered

Two filters, in order.

1. Is anyone searching for it? Our coverage follows real demand rather than whatever is easiest to write about.
2. Can it be evaluated? This site works by converting published specifications into watt-hours. A product whose pack capacity and voltage cannot be found on the manufacturer’s site, its listing, or its replacement-battery page cannot be assessed the way we assess things — so it does not get ranked. We would rather leave a gap than fill it with guesswork.

No manufacturer can buy consideration, and nobody has ever asked. If they do, the answer is no and we will say so here.

How picks are ranked

A ranking here is an editorial judgment over published specifications, price and coverage. It is not a test result. The criteria are written out on each roundup under “how we picked”, so you can see what was weighted and disagree with it.

Three rules apply to every roundup on this site:

• Every roundup names at least one thing to skip, with the reason. A list that recommends everything on it is not a recommendation. If we cannot find a reason not to buy something, we have not finished looking.
• Zone counts and capacity figures are reported together. More heating zones on a smaller pack is a downgrade dressed as an upgrade, and reporting either number alone would obscure that.
• Missing specifications are stated, not filled. “Not published by the manufacturer” and “not derivable” appear throughout this site and are doing real work.

Commercial independence

Volt Wool earns affiliate commission on purchases made through its links. That is the only revenue this site has, and we would rather explain how it is structured than assert that it does not matter.

• No manufacturer relationships exist. No free product, no sponsorship, no paid placement, no advance review copies. Nothing to lose by criticizing a product.
• Commission rate never affects ranking. Where a product we consider better earns us less, it still ranks higher. Where a link earns us nothing at all, we say so on the link rather than quietly dropping the product.
• Prices come from a live feed, not from us. We cannot make a product look cheaper than it is, because we do not type the number.
• Safety and care content carries no product links at all. The safety guide and the washing guide ship with no buy buttons, deliberately. Bolting a sales pitch onto advice about burns or medical devices would compromise both.

Corrections

When we get something wrong: we fix it, and we note the correction and its date on the page. If the error changed a recommendation, we say what changed and why.

Silent patching is forbidden here. Quietly editing a wrong number out of a page and moving on is the easy option and we are not taking it — a visible correction record is worth more than an unblemished one.

Spotted something wrong? info@voltwool.com. A manufacturer specification we have missed is just as welcome as an arithmetic error.

Update cadence

Accuracy decays, so revisiting is part of the job rather than an afterthought.

• Prices — continuously, from the live feed. A price older than 48 hours disappears on its own rather than waiting for us.
• Product availability and discontinuations — quarterly, and before the October peak. Recommending a discontinued product is a visible failure.
• Roundup rankings — quarterly, and before the October peak.
• Battery specifications and derived runtimes — every six months. Manufacturers revise packs mid-generation without announcing it.
• Air travel and lithium rules — every six months. FAA, TSA and carrier policy all change.
• Safety and medical-adjacent pages — every six months.
• This page and the methodology — annually, or whenever the method changes.

The dateModified on a page changes only on a substantive edit, never for a cosmetic one. Inflating a freshness signal is itself a trust violation, and it would corrode the one honest signal we have.

What we will never publish

• A claim to have tested, worn or owned a product we have not
• An invented credential, expert panel or medical reviewer
• A fabricated review, testimonial, rating or review count — this site has none at all
• A price we cannot source live
• An estimated wattage or a runtime borrowed from a similar model
• A medical outcome claim, or a clearance on a medical-device question
• A tracking link for an affiliate program we have not joined