Best home and garden products compared

This is the category where declarations are hardest to verify and where the difference between a good and a bad purchase shows up slowest. A mattress reveals itself after a year, paint after the second winter, a cordless tool after the battery has been through two hundred cycles.

We therefore lean on what can be documented. For mattresses: foam density in kilograms per cubic metre and spring count rather than marketing names for layers, plus the firmness scale the maker actually publishes. For paint: coverage per litre at the declared number of coats, wet-scrub resistance class and VOC content. For power tools: battery capacity in watt-hours instead of volts alone, whether the platform is shared across the range, and what a replacement pack costs — which for cordless equipment is often a third of the price of the tool.

Warranty terms carry more weight here than elsewhere, because they are the manufacturer's own statement about expected lifespan. A ten-year mattress warranty that excludes a four-centimetre dip is a different promise from a ten-year warranty that covers two centimetres, and that distinction decides more about long-term satisfaction than any single comfort rating.