The short version

This site is ad-supported. The ads you see on these pages are how we keep the lights on. We also have a small number of affiliate links — three, to be exact — which we'll name below. That's it. There's nothing else.

We don't take Amazon money

Most product-recommendation sites run on Amazon affiliate links. We don't. We dropped Amazon on purpose. It pays almost nothing on the things we cover (it pays zero on the basic phones we write about most), and it quietly pushes sites toward recommending whatever's in stock and clickable today rather than what's actually good. We'd rather just tell you the truth and point you wherever the truth leads — including the used market, the free option, or "don't buy anything."

The three affiliate links we do use

When we link to one of these, and only these, we may earn a small commission if you buy. It never costs you extra, and it never changes what we recommend:

• The Light Phone — because we'd recommend it anyway, and the people who want one already know what it is.
• Crutchfield — for turntables, speakers, and hi-fi gear, because they're a genuinely trusted place to buy audio.
• B&H Photo — for film cameras and photography gear, for the same reason.

If a link on this site isn't to one of those three, we earn nothing from it. When we send you to eBay, Facebook Marketplace, a thrift store, a brand's own site, or tell you the thing you own is fine — we make no money at all. We do that a lot, on purpose.

Our one rule

Money never decides a recommendation. If the cheaper thing is better, we say so. If the free thing is better, we say so. If you shouldn't buy anything, we say that too. We'd rather lose the sale than lose your trust — because trust is the only thing this site actually runs on.

If you ever catch us breaking that rule, tell us. We mean it.