I don't know how to say this in LessWrong jargon, but it clearly falls into the category of rationality, so here goes:
Consumer Reports is a nonprofit. They run experiments and whatnot to determine, for example, the optimal toothpaste for children. They do not get paid by the companies they test the products of.
Listening to what they say is a wayyy better method of choosing what to buy than trusting your gut; you have consumed so many advertisements and they have all taken advantage of your cognitive biases and reduced your ability to make good decisions about buying stuff, skewing you towards buying whosever ads were most targeted and most frequent.
As far as I can tell, they care about your online privacy and will not scoop up all your data and sell it to random data brokers.
Another useful heuristic is that electrical devices that have been UL listed[1] are typically better quality than ones without. This is particularly relevant for cheap/disposable items like light bulbs where the cheapest ones tend to expire long before the expected lifetime of the actual LED. (I'm looking at you 'bargain' Walmart LEDs that died after less than a year of regular use!)
Note that UL is a for-profit organization. I have never heard anything bad about it but perverse incentives could create conflicts of interest in any number of ways in the future. I hope there is someone monitoring that sort of thing.
Or other organizations that test for standards of quality and/or safety
ah