Most buying guides read as though someone used all twelve products. Almost nobody did. We would rather tell you where our knowledge actually comes from, because that is the only part of a review you can't check for yourself.
So Legit articles come in two tiers. They are labelled on the page, they are never blended, and the stricter rules apply to both.
We confirmed the product is real before we wrote a word about it
This covers most of what we publish. For every product in a research-verified article, we open its live retail listing and confirm four things:
- It exists. A real product from the brand we say makes it.
- It is currently sold. Not discontinued, not a dead link, not a listing that has quietly become something else.
- It is described accurately. What we say about it comes from the listing itself, not from memory or from another site's summary.
- It is the product, not an accessory for it. A replacement filter is not the purifier; a case is not the headphones.
What we never do: invent a product, invent a model number, invent a price, invent a star rating, or invent a review quote. If we can't verify something, it doesn't go in — and a category award goes unawarded rather than handed to the nearest thing that almost earns it.
Something we actually bought, with our own money, and still use
Occasionally we write about something we genuinely own. When we do, it appears in a clearly-marked first-person block, and that block names the specific unit the experience covers. First-person voice never spreads to the other picks in the same article.
Right now that list is short, and it should be. It is:
- Bose QuietComfortTwo pairs — a QuietComfort 35 II owned since 2017, and the current QuietComfort Headphones bought to replace its microphone.
- AirPods Pro 3Owned and in daily use.
- Cuckoo air purifierBought in Korea and running in a multi-pet home.
If an article doesn't carry that block, nobody here has held the product. We would rather have three honest first-hand accounts than twelve invented ones.
How the Legit Value Score is calculated
It is computed, not assigned. Nobody types a score. Every product carrying one gets it from the same four measurements, weighted the same way, taken from its own live listing at the moment we verified it.
- Feature coverage — 25%. How much of what this category talks about the listing actually evidences, measured against the other products in the same guide.
- Use-case fit — 25%. Whether it evidences the specific thing the guide is about, rather than simply listing many features.
- Verified reception — 30%. Amazon's own star average and rating count. We cite those numbers as Amazon's, never as our verdict, and we adjust for how much evidence stands behind them: a 5.0 from three ratings does not outrank a 4.6 from twenty thousand. (Ratings are pulled toward 4.1 until a listing has roughly 150+ ratings of its own.)
- Value for money — 20%. Where it sits on the price ladder of its own guide. We read the price and never print it — prices move, and a printed one becomes a lie the week after. It reaches you as a word: value pick, mid-priced, or premium.
The score is relative, and only within one guide. "Best of these eight, judged the same way" is something our evidence supports. "4.2 out of 5 in the world" is not, because we do not test, and any cross-category constant would be invented.
Where you will not see a score. If any one of the four inputs could not be read from a listing, that product gets no score at all rather than a partial one — a number that quietly means different things for different products is worse than a blank. And a guide with fewer than 3 scoreable products carries no scores anywhere in it, because a price ladder of two rungs ranks nothing.
Best Bang for Your Buck goes to the product returning the most quality for where it sits on that ladder — and only when one genuinely leads. If the field is too close to separate, the award is not given, the same way a category winner is not.
What we do not do
We do not run a lab. We don't have a sound-isolation chamber, a particle counter, a dynamometer, a calibrated colourimeter or a wear-test rig. We do not measure decibels, CADR, torque, lumens or battery life ourselves.
So when you read a number in a Legit article, it is a manufacturer's stated figure or a published third-party result, and it says so. We will never present a manufacturer's figure as though it were our own measurement. That is the line, and the two tiers above exist so you always know which side of it a given claim sits on.
We also don't take payment for placement, and no brand sees a review before it publishes.
Why Legit lives inside DopamineKart
DopamineKart is about not buying. It's a simulator for the urge — the engineered, endlessly-optimised pull toward another thing you won't remember next month. You get the rush, you keep the money, and the junk stays out of your house.
Legit is the other half. Because sometimes you do need the thing. When that happens the answer isn't to buy carefully-nothing, it's to buy honestly and buy once: the pair that lasts nine years, not the pair that's cheapest this week. Same instinct, opposite direction.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, we want to fix it rather than defend it. Email corrections@dopaminekart.com and tell us which article and what's wrong — it reaches us, and it is the same address every Legit article uses. Substantive fixes get noted on the article itself.