Wirecutter is owned by the New York Times Company and explicitly says they don’t get paid by manufacturers (except through affiliate links to Amazon) and recommendations are purely based on editorial testing. NYTCo really can’t afford to lie about editorial independence, particularly for something that’s not even their core business.

Quote from their site: > We work with total editorial independence. That means nothing appears on the site as a recommendation unless our writers and editors have deemed it the best through our rigorous reporting and testing.