Method
We answer one narrow question and try to answer it well: what does this device require in order to work? We are not a review site. We do not rank on performance, taste, or value — only on independence from the vendor.
The ladder
| D0 No Radio | No radio at all. It cannot phone home. |
|---|---|
| D1 Local Only | Speaks only to hardware you control. |
| D2 Cloud-Optional | Full function with the router off. |
| D3 Liberatable | Cloud-bound as sold; a local path exists. |
Core function means the thing the device exists to do. A refrigerator's core function is refrigeration, not the door screen. A video doorbell's includes showing you who is there — so a doorbell needing the cloud for video is not cloud-optional no matter how well the chime works offline.
Devices that require a cloud or an account for core function, gate hardware behind a subscription, or whose vendor has remotely removed a feature from units already sold are rejected outright and do not appear.
Evidence
Every claim carries a source, an evidence class, and the date we read it.
| A Primary | Manufacturer manual or spec sheet, FCC equipment authorization filings, firmware release notes, photographed teardowns. |
|---|---|
| B Corroborated | Home Assistant and ESPHome device databases, Zigbee2MQTT and Z-Wave JS indexes, iFixit, detailed community reports. |
| C Weak | Vendor marketing, retailer bullet points, undated forum comments. Never sufficient on its own. |
A tier requires one Class A source or two independent Class B sources. Where we cannot meet that bar, the field reads unknown and the device may not be listed at all. An empty field is a correct answer; a guess is a defect.
One check does a lot of work: any device sold in the US containing a radio must hold an FCC equipment authorization. No intentional-radiator grant is strong evidence there is no radio to begin with.
Decay
Every record shows when it was last verified, and that date greys and then reddens as it ages. Evidence older than 18 months does not support a tier and the record is re-checked or withdrawn. Devices that stop being sold are marked discontinued, never deleted — the historical record is part of the point.
How this is made
Research is agent-assisted and human-reviewed. Language models find candidates and gather sources under a fixed procedure; a script rejects any record that fails the evidence rules; a human reviews every change before it publishes. We say so plainly because you would work it out anyway, and because the method is checkable: every source is linked, so you can verify us rather than trust us.
Money
Nothing on this site is paid placement. There is no advertising today. If retailer links ever carry affiliate codes they will be disclosed on the link itself, not buried in a footer. No commercial relationship will ever affect a tier — that is written down here before there is any revenue to tempt us, so it is a standing commitment rather than a later defence.
Device data is published under CC BY-SA as devices.json. Take it.
Checking us
Every claim above is sourced and dated so you can verify it rather than trust it. If you want to run the same checks on a device we have not covered, the method is written up in full — the FCC lookup does most of the work and takes about two minutes.
If we have something wrong, support@dumbindex.com, and here is what we commit to doing about it.