How We Review
Our correspondents are fictional. Our product research is not. Here is exactly how that works.
The short, honest version
Snorbo.co does not test products in a lab, because Snorbo.co's writers are fictional characters and fictional characters cannot hold a blender. What we actually do — the human-and-machine editorial operation behind the bylines — is synthesis: for every product we recommend, we read the professional testing (publications that do put hours on the products), aggregate verified buyer reviews, and reconcile the two into a genuine cross-source consensus. We read the testing so you don't have to.
The facts in every product card — prices, specs, strengths, trade-offs — come from that research. The personality wrapped around the facts comes from our staff, about whom the less asked, the better.
The house rule: correspondents do not receive evaluation units
Following an incident, Snorbo Co. correspondents no longer receive evaluation units. We are not going to elaborate on the incident. The policy means what it says: no writer on our masthead claims to have personally tested, worn, tasted, or operated the products they cover. What they do instead is read what actual users and expert testers report, and respond to it in whatever way their nature permits. When Osgood Bingley-Fell tells you a kettle holds an E-flat, he is transcribing what reviewers describe. The E-flat is his. The description is theirs.
What a recommendation means here
- The sources are real. Articles list the expert and user-review sources they synthesize. If we call something the best at anything, the claim traces to that research, not to a feeling.
- The product cards are sacred. Every pick appears in a plain structured card — name, price, specs, where to buy — visually separate from the character's prose. However strange the voice gets, the buying information stays legible.
- The editorial office pushes back. When a writer's framing gets too persuasive (a recurring issue in our indulgences desk), an editor's note punctures it and states the plain recommendation.
- Affiliate interests are disclosed everywhere, and currently earn us nothing — see the full disclosure.
Why the fiction, then?
Because product writing does not have to be beige. The characters are a point of view — several, technically — and a point of view is the one thing a review can offer that a spec sheet cannot. You are free to read Snorbo purely for the buying advice; it will hold up. The rest is for the readers who look at footers.