The number‑one thing our members ask us is simple: can you review more products?
We’ve listened and are starting a trial that will let us cover more of the market using predictive scoring.
It’s a robust system that uses our years of test data to give scores to similar products from the same brand, even if we haven’t yet put them through the test lab.
It’s important to know that all the expert, independent test results you rely on from us won’t be changing. Our lab testing remains at the core of what we do, and we know it’s what our members value. This isn’t about cutting back in any way – it’s us working to give our members more.
We’re still testing as many products as we can across each category and prioritising the ones that our market research tells us you’re most likely to consider. Predictive scoring will let us include more of the products you might look at when you’re shopping. This new approach also lets us share our insights quickly when an established brand releases a new product to the market.
How does predictive scoring work?
Our prediction tool uses a modelling technique called beta regression to estimate how well a product will perform based on how products of the same brand, type and price band have performed in past tests.
For each product category, we also consider key specifications of that model that could influence performance – things like motor power, battery capacity or screen size.
We will estimate scores for all the key aspects of our test, such as ease of use, as well as the overall score they feed into.
We will only publish predictions we have high confidence in, based on consistent results across multiple similar models that we have tested. That means, for example, we won’t make predictions about products from a brand that’s new in the market, because we won’t have enough data to base an estimate on.
We will never award our Consumer Recommends Tick to a model that only has a predicted score.
Like things the way they are? No problem
We’re clearly marking which product scores are based on tests and which are predicted. We’ve also updated our filter options, so you can choose to view only tested models if you prefer.
We’re making this change because we think it’ll be more helpful for more people – but if you’d rather ignore it and keep things the way they were, you easily can.
How can I check out predicted scores?
We’ve picked two of our most popular product categories, washing machines and TVs, to trial predictive scoring on. We invite you to have a look at how it works and let us know what you think.
If our members like having more products to compare, we will start rolling out predictive scoring across more product categories.
Let us know what you think
We’re really excited about the potential of this trial. As far as we can see, nothing like this has ever been attempted by a testing organisation, and we think you’re going to be impressed if you give it a try.
If you’d like to let us know what you think about our predictive scoring trial, please email us at [email protected]. If you want to help us on our mission to educate and empower shoppers to buy the best products, you can become a member or donate today.
