How We Review Products

Every product we cover goes through the same evaluation process, regardless of commission rate or affiliate network. Here is exactly how it works.

The 5-Minute Product Check

Every review opens with a fast, consistent snapshot: what the product is, what it’s marketed for, key ingredients or features, monthly cost, subscription terms, refund policy, and our verdict — with Evidence Level shown directly alongside the verdict, not buried further down the page.

Evidence Level: two ratings, not one

We rate evidence on a five-point scale — Strong, Moderate, Preliminary, Limited, or Insufficient/Unknown — and we score it twice: once for product-specific evidence (research on the finished formula itself, which is genuinely rare across this entire category) and once for ingredient-level evidence (research on individual components at comparable doses, which is far more common). Conflating the two is a common sleight of hand in supplement marketing — borrowing the credibility of unrelated ingredient science for an untested finished product. We state both ratings explicitly. A product built on strong-evidence ingredients with only preliminary product-specific evidence isn’t automatically a red flag — that’s the normal state of most supplements — but we say so plainly rather than letting one rating imply the other.

Our Product Score

Every reviewed product receives a single overall score out of 10, built from seven weighted criteria:

• Formula and Product Quality — 20%
• Evidence and Research — 20%
• Transparency — 15%
• Value for Money — 15%
• 50+ Friendliness — 10%
• Ease of Use — 10%
• Consumer Policies — 10%

Evidence and quality together make up 40% of the score, deliberately the largest share — a product can’t score well purely on convenience or price. 50+ Friendliness is scored as its own category, separate from Ease of Use: Ease of Use covers day-to-day usability any adult would care about (pill size, taste, dosing frequency), while 50+ Friendliness covers what matters specifically because you’re older, or shopping for someone who is — label clarity, how simple the ordering process is, subscription-term clarity, cost predictability, and whether customer support is reachable by phone.

What never affects the score

Commission rate, affiliate network, or how well a product tends to convert never factor into the score. We apply the same rubric the same way to every product we cover.

How often we recheck

Every review shows a Last Reviewed date and a Last Price Checked date. We recheck pricing, refund terms, and product availability periodically and update the review when something material changes. See our Evidence and Sources Policy for how we source and verify claims.