About · FAQ
How we score robots, what the scores mean, and how we keep money out of them.
How fair a robot is to own: can you repair it, will it keep working, does it stay yours, and what does it really cost over the years. It adds up five areas to 100 points: repair & parts (30), support & warranty (20), ownership & independence (20), cost of ownership (20) and privacy & security (10). The full Standard.
Because that is a different question, and mixing the two hides the one we care about. The Fair Standard keeps performance separate: when we show it, it will come from cited third-party tests and will never feed into the Fair Score.
A Fair Pick needs 75 points or more and no red flags. The highest score in our first batch is 57, for the Husqvarna Automower 405VE NERA, which also has a red flag. 11 of the 20 robots carry at least one red flag: eight have no replacement battery available in Spain, and three need the maker’s cloud to work. Four reach “Listed”; the rest don’t meet the Fair Standard yet.
No. Every score rests on documents we cite. This batch has 558 citations behind its criteria: 478 manufacturer documents, 28 manufacturer statements, 33 independent tests, 2 teardowns and 17 owner reports. On top of those come 123 parts and price listings from brand stores and retailers. Owner reports never raise a score on their own. If a score ever relies on our own test, the source list will say so.
No. Every score on the site is a draft “in review”. Before an assessment is published, a second person must check it, and the database won’t publish one that the same person assessed and reviewed. Published scores are rechecked at least every six months, and whenever a firmware, warranty or parts policy change is reported.
The brand doesn’t publish what the criterion needs, so the robot scores 0 on it. We don’t guess, and we don’t claim the worst: a red flag needs evidence that the problem exists. A brand can raise its score by publishing the information. Everything that isn’t disclosed.
That gap is ours, not the brand’s: information that may exist but that we haven’t finished reading. It scores 0 until we have, and we fill it before publishing.
No. Brands can’t pay for a review, for placement or for a rescore. Affiliate status, commission rates and brand relationships are not inputs, and products without an affiliate programme are listed on the same terms.
Not today: there are no ads and no affiliate links on the site. When we add retailer links, some may earn a commission. The people who score robots don’t see offer or commission data, and money never touches a score.
It is our first market. Prices are in euros from Spanish retailers or the brand’s Spanish or EU store, warranties are compared with Spain’s 3-year legal guarantee, and a part only counts if it can be bought for delivery to Spain. Other markets will get their own assessments later.
Yes, openly. Every score records the version of the Standard it was made under. A change to criteria or weights gets a new version and a public changelog, and existing scores are recomputed rather than mixed. Changelog.