How We Vet
The honest version. What every product is held to, what “vetted” actually means, and why no brand can pay to sit at the top.
What “vetted” means here
We don’t use the words “tested,” “reviewed,” or “ranked” loosely. We use “vetted” because it is exactly what we do, and no more than that. We do not buy, own, or physically test any product on this site. Not the $200 blanket, not the $15,000 sauna. What we do is desk work done properly: we hold every product to the same class criteria, verify the manufacturer’s claims against its own documentation, weigh what actual owners report, and publish what we found along with what we could not confirm. If you want someone who has sat in the cabin, this is not that site, and we will never write as though it is.
Our 5-step process
- Research. We start from the manufacturer’s own specs and manuals, then place the product in its class and identify the units it actually competes with. Class decides what facts are required: a portable blanket and a 240V cabin are not held to the same list.
- Verification. Every price, warranty length, included accessory, and return policy is checked against the manufacturer’s own documentation before publication, and re-checked on a rolling basis. Where a brand publishes a number we cannot corroborate anywhere (irradiance is the usual offender), we say it is the brand’s claim rather than repeating it as fact.
- Owner evidence. We read long-form owner reports, repeat-customer reviews, and third-party lab results where they exist, across multiple platforms. If a brand’s spec sheet says one thing and 30 owners report another, the discrepancy goes on the page. This is the closest thing to use-experience we have, and we attribute it to the owners, never to ourselves.
- Comparison. Every product is held to the same class criteria as its peers, and gets a verdict with the facts behind it. There is no score and no leaderboard: a $200 portable sauna isn’t marked down for lacking a 240V heater; a $7,000 cabin that lacks one gets that stated plainly.
- Update. Specs and pricing change. We update product pages when we notice a change, when readers flag one, or on a rolling sweep, whichever comes first. Every product page shows a “last updated” date.
Category-specific criteria
Cold plunge
- Cooling capability. Built-in chiller vs ice-dependent. Minimum temperature reached. Time to cool from ambient.
- Capacity. Water volume and the user height it accommodates.
- Durability. Tub material, insulation, expected lifespan.
- Maintenance. Filtration, ozone, or manual water changes.
- Total cost. Sticker price plus electrical install, ongoing ice or electricity, and consumables.
Sauna
- Heat type. Traditional electric, infrared (near/mid/far), or hybrid, with the use cases each serves.
- Temperature and heat-up time. Peak operating temp and minutes to reach it.
- Build. Wood species (cedar, hemlock, fir, spruce) and weather rating for outdoor units.
- Electrical and install. Standard 120V vs dedicated 240V. Permit implications.
- EMF for infrared units. Independent measurements or third-party certifications, not marketing claims.
Red light therapy
- Irradiance. mW/cm² at a fixed distance: the single most important spec, and the most commonly inflated.
- Wavelengths. Specific nanometer outputs (typically 630-670nm red, 810-850nm near-infrared).
- Coverage. Treatment area. A targeted device and a full-body panel serve different jobs.
- Build and warranty. LED count, expected lifespan, manufacturer warranty length.
- EMF. Measured low-EMF builds vs unmeasured generic builds.
How we vet brands, not just products
A product spec sheet tells you what something does. A brand profile tells you whether the company behind it will still be there in three years to honor the warranty. Both matter, and at the mid-ticket price band, brand trust is often the heavier hesitation. At that price, the buyer’s friction is usually “is this company real, will the warranty hold,” not “is this the perfect spec.”
We carry a separate vetting layer for brands themselves, with shorter re-check cycles than product specs (brand-level facts go stale faster: acquisitions, warranty changes, support staff cuts). What we vet at the brand level:
- Identity. Year founded, headquarters, publicly named founders, current ownership (independent, acquired, or a sub-brand of a larger group).
- Manufacturing. Where products are actually made versus designed. OEM partnership versus vertical integration.
- Warranty and returns. Per-category coverage terms, transferability on resale, return window, who pays return shipping. The legal-fine-print version of what the marketing page promises.
- Trust signals. Independent third-party lab testing (EMF, VOC, electrical safety) with the lab named. Certifications with the issuing body. Press features with the publication and year.
- Customer review aggregates. BBB, Trustpilot, and on-site review counts across platforms, surfaced together so a 13-review Trustpilot result isn’t mistaken for the full picture.
- Gaps. What the brand doesn’t disclose. Anonymous founders, undisclosed manufacturing locations, missing certifications, short complaint histories on new BBB accreditations. Stated plainly.
Every brand we vet gets a page at /brands. The vetting is current as of the re-vet date stamped on each page. We re-check annually at minimum, and faster when an acquisition or warranty change lands.
What we don’t do
- We don’t take payment for placements. No brand pays to be included, ranked higher, or written about favorably.
- We don’t use marketing language as fact. “Medical-grade,” “clinical”, and “FDA-approved” mean something specific. We check whether they apply.
- We don’t claim experience we don’t have. We have not physically used any unit on this site, we say so here rather than burying it, and no page, verdict, or comparison is written as though we had.
- We don’t game the SERP with thin content. Every page exists to answer a real question, not to capture a keyword.
How we make mistakes, and what to do about it
We get things wrong. Specs change without notice. Brands rebrand SKUs. We mislabel a feature. When you spot something, email us at hello@thewellvetted.com and we’ll fix it and update the “last updated” date. We’d rather be corrected fast than be wrong slowly.
Affiliate relationships and rank integrity
We earn commissions from some of the products we cover. The same product can pay different commission rates through different channels (Amazon versus direct-brand affiliate, for instance), and at the mid-ticket band you’ll see comparable products sitting side by side with different conversion paths and different commission economics.
Our rule: when two products doing the same job sit on the same page, the page tells you why it points where it points, and the reason has to be buyer-serving (warranty, support, returns), never “we earn more.” Channel and commission do not touch rank order. A product’s commission rate has zero weight in our picks. The full breakdown is on our affiliate disclosure page.