Editorial standards

Independence

VietHoang.us is independently owned and run. It is not part of a publishing group, it has no investors with a stake in the products it covers, and it holds no equity in any brand or retailer that appears on the site.

Editorial decisions — what gets covered, who wins, what the score is — are made by the editor alone. No advertiser, affiliate network or partner has any say in them, and no one outside the site has a veto over publication.

No paid placement

Nobody can pay to be reviewed, to be reviewed favourably, to rank higher in a comparison, or to have a competitor omitted. There is no advertorial and no "sponsored review" format on this site.

If a piece of content ever is commercially arranged — a sponsorship, a paid partnership, anything where money changed hands for the existence of the article — it will be labelled at the very top of that article, before the copy, in language a reader cannot miss. It will not be mixed in with the ordinary reviews.

No pre-publication review by brands

Brands do not get to read articles before publication. They do not get to see scores in advance, suggest edits, request the removal of a criticism, or place conditions on coverage in exchange for access.

Where a factual question needs answering before publishing — a spec that is ambiguous, a feature that may be region-locked — the manufacturer may be asked that specific question. Their answer is treated as amanufacturer claim and attributed as one, exactly as described in the methodology. Asking a question is not the same as handing over the draft.

Supplied, loaned and gifted units

Most products covered here are bought at retail with the site's own budget. Where that is not the case, the arrangement is disclosed on the article itself, in the body of the page, using one of these:

A supplied unit changes nothing about how a product is judged, and accepting one never carries an obligation to publish. If a loaned product turns out to be bad, the review says it is bad and the unit goes back.

How affiliate links are marked

Buy links on this site are usually affiliate links. Three things are true of every one of them:

• They carry rel="sponsored nofollow" — andnoopener — so search engines and any tool inspecting the page can identify them as commercial links.
• They open in a new tab, so you do not lose the article you were reading.
• They are disclosed near the point of use, not only on this page, and in full on theaffiliate disclosure.

The price you pay through an affiliate link is the same as the price you pay without one.

Corrections

Getting something wrong is inevitable. Hiding it is a choice, and not one this site makes.

• Typos and broken links are simply fixed, without a note.
• Factual errors — a wrong figure, the wrong model, a mis-read spec — are corrected on the page, and the page carries a dated note saying what was wrong and what it now says.
• Changed conclusions — where a correction alters the verdict or the ranking — are noted prominently at the top of the article, not tucked into a footer.
• Articles are not deleted to make a mistake disappear. If something is withdrawn entirely, the page stays up saying why.

Who is accountable

Everything published here is written and edited by Viet Hoang, who is also responsible for the standards on this page. There is no anonymous byline: if you disagree with something, there is one person to take it up with, at hi@viethoang.us.

If this site ever fails to live up to something written above, saying so publicly is the appropriate response — and reporting it is welcome.