How We Choose Products

Most product guides in this category claim to have tested everything. Ours does not, because we have not. This page sets out exactly what we do instead, so you can judge our recommendations on the same basis we make them.

What we do not do

We do not run in-house lab tests, instrumented trials or long-run comparisons. We do not have a test house, a thermal camera rig or a bench of metered outlets. Where you see a wattage, an accuracy figure or a temperature range on this site, it is the manufacturer's published specification, and we say so.

What we actually do

• Start from the mechanism, not the product. We work out what physically causes a given energy loss — aux heat firing at the wrong outdoor temperature, standby draw on an entertainment centre, a bypass around attic insulation — and only then ask which product addresses it.
• Compare published specifications. For each candidate we compare the specifications that determine whether it solves that mechanism, including the ones buying guides usually omit, such as emissivity adjustment on a thermal detector or whether aux lockout is user-accessible on a thermostat.
• Check install reality. Whether it needs a C-wire, an electrician, a neutral in the box, or a particular panel configuration. A product that will not fit your house is not a recommendation.
• Run the payback maths. Estimated saving at a stated energy rate against purchase price. If it cannot justify itself in a reasonable period, it does not make the list, regardless of commission.
• Read the failure reports. Aggregate review patterns are useful for reliability and for the failure modes owners actually hit, even though individual reviews are not evidence of performance.

Where our numbers come from

Savings and efficiency figures are taken from published sources and attributed where they matter. The ones we lean on most:

• ENERGY STAR for certified product performance — for example, its stated average for smart thermostats of roughly 8% of heating and cooling costs, about $50 a year.
• US Department of Energy guidance for building-envelope and setback savings.
• Manufacturer specification sheets for device-level figures such as standby draw and measurement accuracy.

Where a figure is a vendor claim rather than an independent result, we label it as one. Where we cannot source a number, we leave it out rather than estimate it.

The published figures we work from

Where a page on this site estimates a saving, it is built on one of the figures below unless it says otherwise. We publish them here so you can check our arithmetic rather than take our word for it, and so you can see how much smaller the honest numbers usually are than the ones marketing quotes.

Measure	Published figure	Source
Smart thermostat	About 8% of heating and cooling bills, roughly $50 a year	ENERGY STAR
Air sealing plus insulation	15% of heating and cooling costs, or about 11% of total energy costs	EPA / ENERGY STAR
Duct leakage	20–30% of the air moving through a typical duct system is lost to leaks and poor connections	ENERGY STAR
Real-time energy feedback	0–19.5%, averaging 3.8% across nine pilots	ACEEE, 2012
Where home electricity goes	Air conditioning 19%, space heating 12%, water heating 12%, lighting about 6%	EIA, RECS

Two things follow from that table, and both are worth saying plainly because most sites in this category do not.

Percentages are of a category, not of your bill. Saving 15% of heating and cooling is not saving 15% of what you pay. Heating and cooling is roughly a third of home electricity, so the same measure is a much smaller share of the total — which is why a headline percentage and the number on your bill rarely match.

Averages hide enormous spread. The ACEEE range runs from zero to nearly 20% for the same intervention. A household already setting back its thermostat, or one with a tight envelope, has far less to gain than the average implies. Where a page can tell you that you are in the group with little to gain, it says so.

How this site is made

EcoHome Intelligence is an AI-assisted research site. We say that plainly because you should be able to weigh it when you read a recommendation.

• Research and drafting are AI-assisted. Comparing dozens of specification sheets, cross-checking DOE and ENERGY STAR figures and drafting the write-up are done with AI tooling. That is what lets a small operation cover this much ground.
• A person selects the products and reviews every page before it publishes. The picks are not automated. Nothing goes live unread.
• No claim of first-hand testing. An AI cannot install a door sweep or hold a thermal camera, and neither of those things happens here. Where a figure exists it comes from a manufacturer specification or a published source, attributed.

We think this is a better deal than the alternative. Most guides in this category claim hands-on testing of every product they list, which at the volume they publish is rarely plausible. We would rather tell you the method and let you check the maths.

How we are funded

EcoHome Intelligence participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you buy through one of our links we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Commission does not determine what we recommend or how we rank it, and products that fail the payback test are excluded whether or not they pay well.

Corrections

If something here is wrong — a specification we have misread, a figure that has moved, a product that has changed — tell us and we will fix it. Email hello@ecohomeintelligence.com.