Yes, they make money from affiliate links, but they also provide accurate reviews, so why should you care? Do you honestly think it's only possible to write an accurate review if you're not being paid? It's not like they're being paid by the makers of the products, so there's no reason for them to be biased.

I'm not sure how you would create something like the wirecutter with out making money somewhere so I'm all ears for ideas on that.

With that in mind I like the affiliate link model because arguably they can choose any product (in their case the 'best' one) instead of cutting deals with the companies directly (i.e. introducing competition in who pays the most).

They don't always recommend products they make money off of. Plenty of their products (especially in the Sweethome version) are recommendations they won't make money off of.

They're probably the least biased reviewers out there at the moment and take it very seriously.

I see this as win-win-win. For wirecutter, they make money. For the manufacturer and retailer, they make sales. For me, I can get a short list of probably good products in crowded fields to make a decision and price compare, from a site that doesn't take days to load because of tons of ads.

Maybe I wont get the best USB power adapter for my car, but I'll be able to choose from a small menu of them, and will probably get something good. And I can skip reading through hundreds of amazon reviews, many of which are totally irrelevant.