About Novice Links

Novice Links is a small network of product review sites, one category each, whose reviews are written from the manufacturer's published specifications rather than from using the product.

Why the sites are separate

Each category has its own site because the questions differ. A mattress review turns on firmness, layer heights and the trial period; a printer review on pages per minute, duty cycle and the cost of a cartridge. A site that covered both would be shallow on each. Keeping them apart lets each site's editor know one category properly and write its reviews against the questions that category's buyers actually ask.

Who writes this

Each site names its editor on its own about page, and that name is the point of accountability for what the site publishes. Those are pen names, and every site says so plainly rather than implying a masthead that does not exist. What stands behind the work is not a credential; it is that the method is written down, applied the same way to every product, and honest about its limits.

What we do not claim

We do not use the products we review. No site in this network has had a review unit, a sample or a loan, and no page will imply otherwise. Everything published is a reading of what a manufacturer states about a product, written for someone deciding whether that product fits their home.

That has real limits. A manufacturer's figure can be optimistic, measured under conditions it does not state, or simply wrong, and a review written from it inherits the error. Where a figure is implausible for its category, the review says so; where a listing omits something, so does the review. The process catches what it can catch.

Where the sites came from

For their first two years these sites reviewed whatever appeared under a category search, which meant accessories, parts, cases and consumables were reviewed alongside the products. In September 2026 every site was cut back to its subject: those pages are no longer indexed, each site gained an editor, a methodology and a contact address, and the reviews that remain are the ones that were about the product. The number pruned is stated on each site's about page.

Contact

Corrections are welcome, and a specific one — a product, a figure and what the listing actually says — is the most useful thing anyone can send. Contact details are here; a question about one category is answered faster on that site's own contact page.