Methodology v2

How the YearsIn Score works

The score answers one question: will this still be working in a few years? It is built only from verified owners reporting over time.

  1. 1. Only verified owners count

    Every owner proves they have the item with a timestamp photo, which we review by hand. Reports without a photo are shown separately and never enter the score.

  2. 2. Only time we followed counts

    The clock starts when an owner adds an item to YearsIn, not on the purchase date they tell us: an item added at three years old counts from year three on. A month counts once the owner has confirmed it, with the photo, at a check-in or by reporting that the item ended. Past gear added after it ended is shown as a report but stays out of the score. This keeps the score hard to fake, and keeps it from looking better than it is, because broken things rarely get added later.

  3. 3. Durability: what share is still working

    Only a breakdown counts as a failure. Selling, gifting or losing an item is not held against it; it simply leaves the calculation at that point. Each month of an item's life is judged by the owners we followed through that month (survival analysis, Kaplan–Meier with delayed entry). We read the result at 24 months, or at the longest age our data covers, and say so on the page.

  4. 4. Satisfaction: the latest rating

    Each owner's most recent star rating, so opinions after years of use count, not first impressions.

  5. 5. Small samples are pulled toward the category

    One happy owner shouldn't make a perfect score. Until an item has plenty of owners, its numbers are blended with the average of its category. The more owners, the more the item speaks for itself.

  6. 6. The score

    70% durability and 30% satisfaction, on a scale from 0 to 100. Scores compare items within a category; a 90 for a knife and a 90 for a laptop are not the same thing.

When there is no score

An item gets a score once all three are true: at least 10 owners are tracking it, they have tracked 120 months between them, and its first year is tracked, with at least 3 owners followed through each of its first 12 months. Owners tracking it are verified owners who added it while still using it. Until then, the item page shows how far along each of the three is and what owners have reported.

What changed in version 2 (November 2026)

Version 1 counted every month since the purchase date an owner gave us, and every month up to today. Version 2 counts only the months we followed and an owner confirmed. Scores appear later this way, but every month behind them is backed by an owner.

Independence

Brands cannot pay to change, hide or remove a score or a report. Shop links on item pages may earn us a commission; that never affects the score. When we change the formula, the version number above changes and this page explains what changed.