About SME Awards: who writes it and how the numbers are made
SME Awards is a small comparison site about ordinary things in a flat: kettles, dining chairs, mattresses, table lamps. Every item covered here was bought at UAE retail price, carried home, and used for at least 60 days before a word appeared on the site. No manufacturer supplies review samples to SME Awards, and no brand has been shown a page before publication.
Who writes SME Awards?
One person writes every page on SME Awards, working from a flat in Dubai. Background: 14 years in facilities and fit-out procurement in the UAE, which mostly meant reading spec sheets and then finding out what a spec sheet leaves out. Buying furniture for a flat repeated that experience at domestic scale.
Writing on SME Awards follows one rule: describe what happened and attach a number. A kettle that took 3 min 38 s gets that figure rather than the word fast. A chair that produced a numb thigh after 40 minutes gets the 40 minutes, the seat depth of 470 mm and the front edge radius of 4 mm that caused it.
How does SME Awards test each item?
SME Awards holds every item for a minimum period before publishing: 12 weeks for kettles, 60 days for dining chairs and table lamps, 12 months for mattresses. Instruments include a stopwatch, a 5 kg kitchen scale, a sound meter read at one metre, a 3 m tape measure, a digital angle gauge and a light meter.
| Category | Instruments | Minimum time before publishing | Repeat readings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kettles | Stopwatch, 5 kg kitchen scale, sound meter at 1 m, citric acid descaling log | 12 weeks | 5 runs per boil figure, median published |
| Dining chairs | 3 m tape measure, digital angle gauge, timed sitting sessions | 60 days | 2 measurement dates, 8 weeks apart |
| Mattresses | Steel rule, 1 m straightedge, supplier spec sheets | 12 months | Hollow depth checked every 3 months |
| Table lamps | Light meter at 400 mm, tape measure, one identical 806 lumen bulb across all lamps | 60 days | 2 dates, 10 weeks apart |
Repeat runs matter more than single readings. Kettle boil times come from five runs, and the published figure is the median rather than the fastest. Light meter readings get repeated on a second date at least ten weeks later, which catches a paper shade that has yellowed and lost output.
How does SME Awards make money?
SME Awards carries no affiliate links and has never sold a sponsored placement. Nobody pays to be listed and nobody pays to be removed. Every price on the site is the amount actually paid including 5 per cent VAT, at a UAE shop or a UAE online store, with the purchase month stated on the page.
Running costs come out of a household budget and stay small: a domain, a static host and the items themselves. Total spend on tested items to August 2026 is roughly AED 4,900, of which the mattresses account for AED 3,650.
How are corrections handled?
SME Awards publishes corrections at the foot of the affected page, carrying the date and the previous figure, rather than editing a number quietly. Two corrections have appeared so far, both on kettle noise readings taken with a phone app before a dedicated sound meter arrived in March 2026.
Send a correction, a disagreement or a measurement to post at smeawards.ae. Replies usually take two or three days.
Which subjects does SME Awards not cover?
- Items never bought and never used, including anything assessed from a photograph or a data sheet.
- Large appliances, because a flat cannot hold three washing machines for a side by side comparison.
- Price tracking, since UAE retail prices move weekly and a static page cannot follow them.
Reviews live on SME Awards in August 2026: three kettles, five dining chairs, five mattress specs, four table lamps.