A: The GearLab Baby mission is to create clarity around the entire decision-making process for baby products. A core element in that mission is to publish the world's best reviews of the products needed in the first year of a baby's life. Equally important though, is our goal to provide reliable and objective information on how to choose the right products for you and your baby, health and safety issues, and to provide educational support to new parents. Learn more in our About GearLab Baby page.
Q: Do companies pay you to review their gear?A: Never.
Q: So how do you make money?A: The revenue to fund GearLab Baby comes from the support of readers like you. When you decide to buy a product that we've reviewed, click on the links which will take you directly to the retailer, such as Amazon. If our readers choose to make a purchase, the retailer will contribute a small portion of the sale to help support this site. If readers return their purchases because they are unhappy or feel the recommendation is bad, we make nothing. There is no incentive for us to pick inferior products; our focus is on helping you choose wisely, and purchase products which result in long-lasting satisfaction. Your support provides GearLab Baby with crucial funding to continue in our mission to make the lives of parents and their babies easier in their first year of life.
Q: How do you get the gear you review?A: We buy gear for our testing ourselves, directly from retailers, just as you do. We won't accept any free evaluation units from manufacturers. We prefer to make our own careful selection of which products qualify as finalists for our hands-on reviews, and then go through the same shopping process you do to buy them.
Q: How do you choose what to review?A: We do extensive research in each category as well as speak directly with parents.
Q: How many products do you compare in a side-by-side review?A: We typically test 10-20 products side-by-side in each review category.
Q: What is your review process?A: First, we do extensive research to determine which products in each category will be the finalists. We then buy those products, typically 10-20 in each category, and begin the testing process. We do everything ourselves from taking the products out of their boxes, to set up, to determining key testing metrics for each category, to testing and review. We look at each category individually to determine what the best testing strategies are. While the specific tests we perform vary by category, we attempt to document the specific tests we used in the "How We Test" section of each review category. Our review editors use the products themselves with their own babies, and may also solicit detailed feedback from our volunteer testers, typically moms and their infants, who agree to try out multiple products side-by-side and give us additional comparison feedback.
Q: What is your motivation to give an objective review?A: Our motivation lies in our belief that babies benefit when parents make more informed decisions on baby products. We find there are substantial differences between products, but knowing which is best takes a focused testing, research, and comparison effort that most new parents simply don't have time for. Sometimes those differences relate to health and safety concerns, which are a key focus for us, and sometimes it's just finding the best product to fit your budget. To assure objectivity and accuracy in our reviews and ratings, we test all the finalist products in each category at the same time, side-by-side. Because we buy the gear ourselves, we do not have any incentive for bias towards one manufacturer's gear over another.
Q: Who tests the gear and where?A: We perform initial tests on most of the gear hands-on here at our GearLab Headquarters first, and then hand off to a GearLab Baby Review Editor who has been assigned responsibility for the relevant category. Our Review Editors then perform a series of tests on each product side-by-side as part of the rating and comparison process. Our Review Editors will test with their own babies, and also often utilize multiple volunteer testers, typically Moms and their babies who agree to try multiple products and provide feedback from their use experience (we reward such volunteer testers by letting them keep their favorite). All of this testing is used to inform our ratings and commentary on each product. Prior to final approval of our reviews, the products are returned to GearLab Headquarters and, using a quality control process described and led by Dr. Spurrier, we perform final tests to audit and confirm the feedback and ratings from our testers.
Q: How long does each review take to complete?A: It varies somewhat by category, but as a general rule of thumb it takes about 2-6 months to complete the kind of detailed reviews we do.
Q. What other websites are you involved with?You might also enjoy visiting our sister sites, OutdoorGearLab, which reviews outdoor activity gear, and TechGearLab, which reviews consumer electronics products. All the GearLab sites use a similar side-by-side comparison review process and rating platform that you find here.