Our cost figures, calculators and guides are only useful if you can trust the numbers. Here’s how we research and maintain them.
How we research and rank products
For our trending-product guides, the goal is a clear, honest pick you can act on. Every guide follows the same process:
- We shortlist on real demand. We track UK search and retail signals (Google Trends, seasonal spikes and retailer best-sellers) and only cover products with genuine buyer intent and UK availability.
- We do not test products. We have not bought or used the things in these guides, we take no photographs of our own, and no guide on this site says otherwise. Every roundup carries a box stating it. The section below sets out what we publish instead, and why we think it is worth more than a testing claim we have not earned.
- We cross-check what the maker publishes. We weigh manufacturer specifications, running costs we derive from published wattages at the current Ofgem cap rate, and a wide read of verified owner reviews, discounting suspicious or incentivised ratings. Where a maker publishes nothing we can compute from, we print no figure and say so.
- We judge on what matters. Performance, value, running costs, noise, size and reliability, weighed for different needs and budgets. We say plainly when something isn’t worth buying. Price is part of that. A cheap product is covered on the same terms as an expensive one, and where a £25 item beats a £150 one for most people the guide says so.
Editorial independence
Look Into is owned and funded independently through Whito Ltd. No brand pays to be featured or to rank higher, and a commission never buys a better placement. We earn a small affiliate commission only when readers choose to buy through our links, at no extra cost to them. If a popular product isn’t good enough, we tell you.
The unstated limit
Every product verdict has a limit: the part the reviewer’s own work could not settle. A test in a climate chamber cannot tell you how a machine sounds in your bedroom. Two weeks with a heater cannot tell you whether it survives a second winter. The limit always exists. What almost never happens is a review stating it.
We call that gap the unstated limit, and closing it is the one thing on this site that we do and our competitors do not.
What we found, 5 September 2026
We read 15 product-review pages ranking in UK search for best dehumidifiers UK and best electric heaters UK: national consumer titles, magazine brands, affiliate sites and one retailer. Each was scored on four things a page either states or does not — that it tested the products hands-on, how many units it tested, what the test involved, and what the test could not tell you.
Thirteen of the fifteen claim hands-on testing. Three say how many units they tested. One says what its testing could not tell you.
The one is Tom’s Guide, on a dehumidifier rated by its maker for 4,500 square feet: “We tested it rooms up to 700 square feet… So while we can’t say it can definitely handle 4,500 square feet, it seems quite likely.” That sentence costs the page nothing and tells you exactly how far its evidence reaches. It is the only one of its kind in the sample.
Two further things are worth knowing about the other fourteen.
Four of the thirteen pages claiming hands-on testing name nobody who did it. The sharpest case is BritBrief, which states both a unit count and a full protocol — “We tested 12 electric heaters”, with a digital thermometer at intervals, an infrared thermometer for surface safety and a power meter for consumption — and attaches no name to any of it. A protocol with no person behind it cannot be questioned, corrected or held to account.
One of the fifteen is the retailer of the product it ranks first. Vortex Air’s guide says each dehumidifier “was tested in real British homes over several weeks”, names no tester and carries no date. The Vortex Air 20L, which the same site sells, is number one.
The most transparent of the small sites is the one claiming the least. HomeGadgetPro makes no testing claim at all, stating instead that its guides are “based on real Amazon UK product data, verified customer ratings and independent research”. That is the same method we use, described accurately, and it is a better disclosure than most of the pages above it in this table.
The full sample
| Page (read 5 Sep 2026) | Claims hands-on test | States how many units | States what the test involved | States a limit of its own test | Named individual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Which?, electric heaters | Yes | Yes — 10 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Which?, dehumidifiers | Yes | Yes — 85 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Expert Reviews, dehumidifiers | Yes | No (“dozens”) | Yes | No | Yes |
| Ideal Home, dehumidifiers | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Ideal Home, electric heaters | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| Tom’s Guide, dehumidifiers | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| T3, dehumidifiers | Yes | No | Partial | No | Yes |
| Tech Advisor, heaters | Yes | No | Partial | No | Yes |
| Trusted Reviews, electric heaters | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Mumsnet, electric heaters | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| BritBrief, electric heaters | Yes | Yes — 12 | Yes | No | No |
| Vortex Air (retailer), dehumidifiers | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| JustBuyNow, dehumidifiers | Yes | No | No | No | No (username only) |
| HomeGadgetPro, dehumidifiers | No — states it uses listing data | — | — | No | No (“editorial team”) |
| Energy Guide, electric heaters | No | — | — | No | Yes (author, not tester) |
| Look Into | No, and says so | — | Yes | Yes, on every guide | Yes |
Every quotation above is verbatim from the page on the date given, and every column records only what a page does or does not state. None of it is a claim about whether the testing happened — we cannot know that, and that is rather the point. Pages change; we will re-run this audit and date the result rather than quietly amending it.
What we do instead
We do not test products, and we have never claimed to. That leaves us a choice: borrow a testing claim we have not earned, or publish the two halves of our evidence that are actually checkable. We do the second.
- What each verdict rests on. Where a figure comes from, and the date we read it. A manufacturer’s published wattage at a stated temperature and humidity is a weaker claim than a lab measurement, and a more useful one than a lab measurement you cannot trace.
- What the guide could not check. A box at the foot of every guide, listing the things that guide does not settle — long-term reliability, real-room noise, whether the maker’s own figures are honest.
The box goes on every guide, including the ones it makes look weaker, because a disclosure you can switch off when it is inconvenient is not a disclosure.
Why we publish it
A testing badge is cheap. “Tried and tested”, a tester’s name, a photograph of a box in a hallway — any site can add all of it in an afternoon without buying a single product, and on the evidence above, plenty have. When a signal costs nothing to send, it stops carrying information, and a reader has no way to sort the pages that did the work from the pages that typed the words.
A stated limit works the other way round. It is cheap for us, because we simply describe what we did and did not do. It is expensive for anyone bluffing, because writing down what your testing could not tell you means either admitting how little you did, or making a second claim that can be checked and caught. That asymmetry is the whole point: it is a signal that is easy to send honestly and hard to fake.
If competitors copy the box, the outcome is a market where reviews declare their limits, which is a better market to read and one our figures survive. We would rather compete there.
Where our figures come from
We base costs and rates on authoritative public and industry sources rather than guesswork, and we cite them on the page. Depending on the topic, these include:
- Government: GOV.UK, Ofgem, the DWP benefit and pension rates, and local-authority charging guidance.
- Industry and trade bodies: e.g. the Homecare Association, MCS, and the Energy Saving Trust.
- Established market data: e.g. carehome.co.uk fee data and reputable consumer research.
How we keep them current
- Every figure is dated, and we note the year it applies to.
- We review key figures at least once a year, and sooner when rates change, for example the April benefit upratings or a new Ofgem price cap.
- Costs are presented as guides and averages; real prices vary by location, supplier and individual circumstances.
How our calculators work
Our calculators use the typical UK averages and assumptions stated on each tool. They’re built to give a realistic estimate to help you plan, not a quote. Always get written quotes for your specific situation.
Independence and corrections
Our research is produced independently of any commercial relationship, see our Editorial Policy and How we make money. If you spot something that looks out of date or wrong, please tell us and we’ll review and correct it.
Last reviewed 5 September 2026.