Editorial Policy
Xpecialify is an independent publication. We are not a retailer, a manufacturer, or a marketing arm for anyone. This page explains how our guides are produced, how we make money, and how to tell us when we get something wrong.
What we do
We write guides about lightsabers and Star Wars gear — electronics tiers, character hilts, blade colors, display, dueling, and how to choose by intended use. Our goal is narrow and practical: help a reader who is trying to decide between two or three options make a better decision than they would have made on their own.
We do not review things we have not researched, and we do not publish a guide just because a topic has search volume.
How we research
We do not own a warehouse of test units, and we do not claim to have personally handled every product we write about. Instead, each guide is assembled from sources that can be checked:
- Manufacturer specifications — soundboard versions, blade types, emitter and hilt dimensions, materials, and stated electronics features.
- Published product data — retailer listings, current pricing ranges, and what each configuration actually includes.
- Owner feedback — reviews, forum threads, and community discussion, used to find failure points and quirks that specifications do not mention.
- Direct comparison — where two products are commonly confused for one another, we lay the differences out side by side rather than describing each separately.
Where a specification is unclear or a manufacturer does not publish it, we say so rather than guessing. Where sources disagree with each other, we say that too.
How we use AI
We are upfront about this because you would find out anyway. Our research process is assisted by AI tools: they help us gather and organize source material, structure long comparisons, and draft. Every published guide is then reviewed and edited by a human before it goes live, and the editorial judgements — what matters, what is worth warning about, what to recommend — are made by people, not generated.
AI is a research and drafting aid here, not the author of record. When we cannot verify a claim to a source we can point at, we cut it.
How we make money
Xpecialify is reader-supported through affiliate commissions. Some links on this site are affiliate links: if you click one and buy something, the retailer pays us a small commission. This costs you nothing — the price you pay is the same whether you use our link or not.
This is the only way we make money. Specifically:
- We do not sell advertising space or sponsored posts.
- We do not accept payment for coverage, placement, or a positive review.
- We do not let a commission rate determine what we recommend or how we rank anything.
Where a product we recommend has no affiliate program available, we still recommend it if it is the right answer. Where a product pays well but is not the right answer, we say so.
Our full disclosure of the affiliate relationships on this site is on our Affiliate Disclosure page.
Corrections
Products change. Soundboards get firmware updates, versions get discontinued, prices move. A guide that was accurate when we published it can go stale.
If you spot something that is wrong, out of date, or that we have described unfairly, tell us and we will fix it. Corrections are made to the article itself — we do not quietly delete a page to make a mistake go away.
Contact us at our contact page with the article URL and what you think is incorrect.
Independence
Xpecialify is not affiliated with, associated with, authorized by, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with Lucasfilm Ltd., The Walt Disney Company, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. Star Wars character names, likenesses, and properties are trademarks of their respective owners.
We are also not affiliated with the retailers and manufacturers whose products we write about. They do not see our guides before publication, and they do not have input into them.