About · method
How we decide what to recommend
Most gift guides are written once and never checked again. This one is built around a data layer that runs every day, so the advice changes when the prices do.
1 · Price tracking
90 days, every day
We record the listed price of every tracked product once a day. A discount only counts as real when today's price is within 2% of the lowest price in that window. Anything else is reported as a thin discount or a price that was raised first.
2 · Ownership cost
The second year counts
Where a monthly plan is required we add 24 months of it to the sticker price and publish that number next to the product. A cheap robot with a permanent subscription is not a cheap robot.
3 · Privacy
Scored in plain language
Each product gets a score from 1 to 5 based on microphone behaviour, camera use, account requirements and whether the privacy policy states a retention period. A toy with a camera in a bedroom cannot score well.
4 · Durability of the company
Who is behind the server
Cloud toys depend on a business staying alive. We note the support record, the age of the app, and whether the maker has changed hands, because a toy that bricks is worse than a toy that was never bought.
Verification
How a price gets on this site
Every number we publish comes from a recorded daily price for a specific product listing, not from a screenshot and not from a seller's claim about its own discount.
- 1We track the same listing every day and keep the raw history — currently a rolling 90-day window, one point per day.
- 2"At 90-day low" means today's price is within 2% of the lowest price recorded in that window. Nothing else earns that label.
- 3"Priced up first" means we can see the price lifted shortly before the sale, so today's discount is smaller than the badge suggests.
- 4Two-year cost is the tracked price plus 24 months of any subscription the product requires to work.
- 5Products we have not tested are labelled price watch and say so on the page. We do not publish a verdict we have not earned.
Money
How the site is paid for
Affiliate commissions. When a reader buys through our link we may earn a percentage, at no extra cost to them.
- 1Brands cannot pay for a ranking, a badge or a mention.
- 2We publish products we advise against, by name.
- 3Sponsored placements are not sold on this site at all.
- 4Every outbound purchase link is marked as an affiliate link.
Corrections
If a price, subscription term or privacy detail is wrong, we fix it and note the change on the page. Vendors who believe an entry is inaccurate are welcome to send documentation through the contact page; they do not get to rewrite the verdict.
The radar
One email a week. Only the drops that are real.
We check prices every 24 hours and send a single message when something actually falls to its 90-day low. No roundups, no affiliate spam, unsubscribe in one click.