I am in the military and have moved every few years for the last 29 years. For a while now I have used Consumer Reports to help me relatively quickly find a good value appliance. Our washer died shortly after our most recent move. The dryer was similarly as old so I decided to just replace both. 

Using CR I found the highest rated combo set was a score of 81 and cost about $2000. But the second highest score was 79 and cost about $1100. That was enough for me to look at them and realize that the cheaper set was perfectly fine for our use case and we saved a decent amount of money.

I am close to military retirement and starting on design for my timber frame home. I plan to use this same process for as many things as I can. But CR does not have reviews for things like heat pump water heaters, ductless mini splits, etc. Is there a similar type of website that has comparisons like CR does but for home mechanical stuff?

For completeness, but probably doesn’t matter, my home will be at 5900′ near Lake Tahoe so I think right on the edge of 6B for climate zone.