BDG Product Review Standards
At BDG, we want to help you find the best products for you through our product reviews — the products you’ll love so much, you’ll want to recommend them to your own circle, too. Our team of editors across beauty, fashion, entertainment, parenting, gaming, tech, gear, and lifestyle are constantly trying the latest and greatest products, plus asking the industry’s leading experts what they use, so you know that if you read a product recommendation on a BDG site, it’s been vetted and approved.
How We Recommend: Research
Though we’ll recommend products that we personally have tried and found work for us, we know that our readers aren’t homogenous — what works well for one tester might not work for everyone, for instance. That’s where research comes in. We do extensive research when making recommendations to ensure that all skin and hair types, bodies, budgets, and lifestyle factors are included and represented. This might mean reading and sifting through hundreds of reviews online, or reaching out to our large roster of experts for their recommendations. Our goal is that when you shop on a BDG site, you’ll always find something that speaks to you.
Our Testing Factors
There are set factors we take into consideration for products we test and/or recommend, including price point, accessibility, size and shade range, efficacy, durability, sustainability, and prioritization of diversity and inclusion. We take all of these standards into consideration when recommending brands and products, and will rate and/or recommend them based on a combined result of all of these different criteria. If a product or brand falls short of one of the above criteria, we will be transparent about it.
For beauty recommendations specifically, we may also take into account additional factors such as ingredient quality, scientific innovation, irritation, scent, and packaging.
How We Find Experts And Testers
We make sure our reviews and recommendations come from a place of trust and authority, whether it’s from the tester’s own experience and expertise, or we’re interviewing additional, independent experts who have professional and/or scientific expertise in an area (think: board-certified dermatologists, professional fashion stylists and makeup artists, and more) because we want to hear about the qualities they think we should consider when we’re reviewing a product. Inclusivity is also a pillar of any review we publish; we take care to ensure our testers represent a range of experiences and identities, as well as skin tones and body and hair types.
How We Test Products At Home
We test our products in real-life settings, with real-life use applications — whether that means applying a night cream before bed or throwing on a sports bra that we’ll wear from our workout to brunch. Home testing also allows us to determine whether our products stand the test of time — do the clips on that nursing bra, for example, break after a few wears? Does that pair of hiking boots actually have good traction?
We also outline the parameters of our review in each individual review: For example, if we’re reviewing a fitness tracker, we may score it on battery life, design, how water-resistant/sweat-proof it is, and the types of health features it tracks. We also take into account qualitative factors, such as what we liked and didn’t like about the item, and whether it worked the way we wanted it to.
There may be instances where products that we review are, after the time of publication, subject to a recall or change in the manufacturer’s recommendations for use. Please check the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for updated information about the products we review that you may purchase.
Why You Should Trust Us
Product reviews are written and conducted by writers and editors with years of experience in our fields, and/or have personal firsthand experience with the situation the item is being tested for. You can learn more about the staff editors of BDG brands:
Not only do we document our first-person experiences with the product, but we may also interview third-party experts to provide additional information and context about the product and/or solution the product is trying to help solve. All reviews go through BDG’s standard rigorous editing process, which includes fact-checking and editing by specialist editors before publication.
We may review products that are sent to us gratis by the company for purposes of review, as well as products that we purchase ourselves. In either case, it is up to our editorial discretion whether to test and publish a review of a product, and any resulting review always 100% reflects the opinion of the writer or editor.
While we may receive an affiliate commission on products we recommend, everything is independently selected by our editors based on our own positive experiences or extensive research.