uptotown started with a frustration most shoppers know too well: you search for a product review, click through to a site that claims to have tested it, and within two paragraphs you realise they've just reworded the manufacturer's spec sheet. No photos of the actual product. No mention of how it feels after a week. No honest opinion on whether it's worth the money.
We thought that was a problem worth solving. So we started buying products, putting them through real use, and writing up what we actually found — good, bad and everything in between. That was the beginning of uptotown.
The internet is full of product reviews. The problem isn't quantity — it's quality. Most review sites pull from secondary sources: press releases, Amazon listings, other reviews. The product never leaves its box, if it was ever in one to begin with. That's not a review. That's content written to rank on Google.
We do it differently. We go out and find the products people are actually searching for, we buy them, and we put them through a rigorous testing process. Every item is unboxed, used in real conditions, and stress-tested over time. We document the pros, the cons, the faults — and then we give you a straight answer on whether you should spend your money on it.
We want to be more than just a rating out of ten. We want to show you how a product actually works, what it looks like in real life, and whether it holds up past the first week. The goal is to give you genuine peace of mind before you click buy — because there's nothing more frustrating than spending your hard-earned money on something that turns out to be rubbish.
We're a small team based in the United Kingdom. Every review is written by someone who has personally used the product — we don't outsource our testing and we don't publish content for the sake of filling a page.
Our ambition is to grow uptotown into a genuine powerhouse for honest product guidance — starting with the UK and expanding internationally as we grow. We want to build helpful, trustworthy guides in a space that's become crowded, noisy and, too often, misleading.
Fair question. uptotown is completely free to read and always will be. We make money through referral links: when we link to a product and you choose to buy it through that link, we may earn a small commission from the retailer. The price you pay is exactly the same either way.
This model lets us keep the lights on without putting reviews behind a paywall or cluttering the site with intrusive ads. And it never influences what we write — if a product isn't worth recommending, we won't recommend it, regardless of whether there's a referral link attached.
Got a question, a suggestion, or a product you think we should test? We'd love to hear from you. Head over to our contact page and drop us a message.
If you're a brand or retailer interested in working with us, we have advertising options available. We're always open to partnerships — as long as they don't compromise our editorial independence.