Every unit that arrives on our floor goes to the same bench, in the same order, run by the same two people. It is not a glamorous process and it adds four days to the time between a delivery arriving and a product going live. It is also the reason our return rate sits at 2.1% against an industry figure roughly four times that.

The twelve points are boring on purpose: power draw at idle and at load, hinge and port cycling, button travel, screen uniformity, radio range at eight metres through one wall, thermal behaviour after forty minutes, and the four that are specific to the category.

When something fails we do not quietly return it to the distributor and move on. The failure goes into a public note on the product page, and if the same fault shows up twice in one batch the whole batch is pulled. Three products were delisted this way last year.