When you need to carry your bike by car, you want to do it as easily and securely as possible. That’s why we recommend the Küat Sherpa 2.0 as the best option for carrying two bicycles, as long as your vehicle accommodates a hitch receiver.
After researching some 220 bike racks and testing more than 75, we’ve found that the Küat Sherpa 2.0 offers the best combination of solid construction, ease of use, light weight, and a reasonable price.
Whether you’re going on a day hike with friends or tackling an ambitious backpacking route, you’ll need to wear a good pair of hiking boots to protect your feet and stabilize your ankles.
In the span of five years, we wore 47 pairs of hiking boots while trekking more than 1,200 miles and taking over 2 million steps across all types of terrain.
After all that, we’ve chosen the Salomon Quest 4 Gore-Tex Hiking Boots (men’s and women’s) as the best hiking boots.
Made of breathable and waterproof materials, they provide solid traction and support. And these boots have several essential features—including a wide toe box, sturdy heel protection, and a gusseted tongue—that allowed us to hike comfortably for miles.
Canopy tents go by a lot of names: screen houses, outdoor canopies, camping shelters, day tents, camping gazebos, patio shelters, portable shelters, and (our favorite) portable gazebos.
Air purifiers are fundamentally simple machines—little more than a fan and a filter—but a well-designed purifier can capture virtually all airborne allergens, such as pollen and mold spores, as well as bacteria, viruses, and smoke.
After testing more than 50 air purifiers in the past nine years, our measurements have proven that the exceptional Coway Airmega AP-1512HH Mighty is the best among them—powerful enough for a large room, quiet enough to sleep near, engineered to last for years, and inexpensive enough to set up in multiple rooms.
If you’re a hot sleeper, if you like a little texture to your sheets, or if you love linen clothing, you might love linen sheets. Cultiver’s Linen Sheets have been our favorites since 2018.
We’ve researched dozens of linen sheets and tested 25 over the better part of a decade, with the help of both linen lovers and linen skeptics.
Our top pick is comfy for most people, stylish, and pretty durable for a fabric that’s notorious for wearing out quickly.
We get it: Essential-oil bug repellents sound great. Who wouldn’t want to use a natural plant oil to keep bugs away? But after digging into the research and talking to two mosquito experts, we put essential-oil repellents firmly in the “do not buy” category. Simply speaking, there’s just no way to know how effective they are or for how long. In relying on them, you’re likely heading outdoors with a false sense of security that could put you at greater risk than if you were using nothing at all.
In light of diseases such as Zika and Lyme, the consequences of an ineffective repellent can be dire, so you need one you can trust. A repellent’s trustworthiness starts with EPA approval—a requirement that proves the repellent has been thoroughly tested to confirm that it’s safe and that it performs according to the specifics from the manufacturer. Essential oils have no such standardized oversight, so you’re basically on your own.
To learn more about the specifics of mosquito repellency, we spoke to Laurence Zwiebel, a professor of biological science and pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. Zwiebel has been studying insect behavior for almost 40 years, focusing on mosquitoes for the past 25, and specifically looking at how olfaction—the sense of smell—drives mosquito behavior.
We also corresponded with Leslie Vosshall, professor of neurobiology at The Rockefeller University. Vosshall has been studying insects for 30 years, with a focus on mosquitoes and repellency for the past 15 years.
I’ve researched and written guides to bug repellents, mosquito control gear, fly swatters, and ant control. Through that process I’ve spent at least 300 hours analyzing products, testing bug gear, reading dense studies on repellent and pesticide efficacy, and interviewing academics, manufacturers, and scientists at the EPA.
Essential oils are chemicals extracted from plants that are, according to the EPA (PDF), “responsible for the distinctive odor or flavor of the plant they come from.” You can think of them as the distilled essence of the plant. Studies into plant-based bug repellents, such as this summary from a 2011 edition of Malaria Journal, have shown that some of these oils can repel insects to varying degrees. Those most closely associated with repellency are citronella oil, eucalyptus oil, and catnip oil, but others include clove oil, patchouli, peppermint, and geranium. According to one analysis, “More than 3,000 EOs [essential oils] from various plants have been analyzed thus far, and approximately 10% of them are commercially available as potential repellents and insecticides.” The formulas we found are typically a mixture of multiple oils at very low concentrations, rarely above 3 or 4 percent each, mixed with water or other inert ingredients.
Any insect repellent containing DEET or picaridin must undergo extensive, consistent testing under the EPA's product-performance test guidelines, the result of which is a legally binding label on the bottle. That label includes the ingredients, the time of protection, toxicity information, and specific instructions on use and disposal. The tests give you a clear understanding of the repellent, as well as an underlying assurance that it’s safe for use on adults, children, or animals. The EPA categorizes essential oils as a “minimum risk pesticide,” so they don’t undergo this testing. Without it, you can’t confirm what’s in the bottle, whether it’s safe for use, or how effective it is. This also leaves the door open for misleading marketing claims. As Zwiebel told us, “I am very concerned about the lack of regulatory oversight and the ability to disinform or in some cases completely misinform consumers. There is a lot of mayhem out there in the field.”
The extent of the EPA’s involvement in essential-oil repellents is minimal. The agency requires that manufacturers list the ingredients and their concentration levels, that there be no misleading statements on the bottle, and that the repellent “may not bear claims to control rodent, insect or microbial pests in a way that links the pests with any specific disease.” In other words, an essential-oils label can say that the substance repels mosquitoes and ticks, but they can’t say it will protect you from Lyme, Zika, or any other vector-borne disease. EPA-approved repellents, such as those containing picaridin or DEET, can clearly state that they offer protection from those diseases. Big difference there.
One thing very few essential-oil labels indicate is how long the repellency will last—a crucial piece of information if your goal is to protect yourself from disease-ridden insects. Even armed with a knowledge of essential oils and an understanding of their concentration within a repellent, there’s still no way to know what kind of protection you might be getting (or if you’re getting any at all). Zwiebel explained, “These essential oils can be more or less effective depending on how they’re prepared, how pure or not pure they are.” He continued, “You really don’t know what you’re buying.”
To be fair to essential-oil manufacturers, there’s no clear process for them to earn the EPA’s badge of legitimacy as a bug repellent. These oils aren’t classified as pesticides, so they don’t merit testing under the EPA’s protocols, which are the single standard that judges repellency against disease vectors. Ironically, a big part of the appeal of essential oils—their relative safety—is exactly what excludes them from joining the big leagues of the EPA-approved repellents, and that’s unlikely to change until the EPA revises its own standards. In the meantime, we can only go on the science available, and that research leads most experts to dismiss oils as unsafe bug repellents for the same reason we discourage people from using them: uncertainty.
Because there’s no idea how effective an essential-oil repellent is, they offer little more than a placebo of security, and that can have severe consequences. Vosshall explained, “People think they are being protected from biting insects and ticks with these products and they are not protected.” She continued, “If these people are in areas where ticks are spreading Lyme and other related pathogens and mosquitoes are spreading Zika, malaria, dengue, yellow fever, west nile, and chikungunya they have the potential to be bitten and infected.” She told us that under no circumstances would she ever recommend an essential-oil repellent. Zwiebel also has little confidence in their effectiveness: “I certainly don’t buy any of those products,” he told us. An article in The New England Journal of Medicine, in a similar conclusion, notes, “Alternative ‘natural’ products generally fail to live up to their reputations for greater safety and effectiveness and offer their users a false sense of security.” Last, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends picaridin, DEET, or another EPA-regulated repellent. No essential-oil repellents make the CDC’s list. (Oil of lemon eucalyptus is a plant-based EPA-approved repellent but is not an essential oil, a distinction that both the CDC and the repellent summary from the Malaria Journal make.)
Even if essential oils were subject to the EPA’s efficacy-testing guidelines, all indications are that they would fall short of repellents containing picaridin and DEET. Essential oils are just not that great at repelling mosquitoes and ticks.
A major problem is the fact that essential oils are very volatile, meaning they evaporate quickly. In 2002, researchers tested seven essential-oil repellents against DEET, publishing the results in The New England Journal of Medicine. Aside from a soybean-based repellent that offered 95 minutes of protection, “all other botanical repellents we tested provided protection for a mean duration of less than 20 minutes.” A 2005 study published in the journal Phytotherapy Research compared the repellency of 38 essential oils and found that none of them, even when applied at the very high concentrations of 10 percent and 50 percent, prevented mosquito bites for up to two hours. (You can expect even less of the repellents we looked at, which had multiple oils with a concentration of roughly 1 to 4 percent.) Another study, this one published in BioMed Research International, states that “insect repellents with citronella oil as the major component need to be reapplied every 20–60 minutes.”
And even when freshly applied, they’re not as strong as picaridin or DEET. Zwiebel, the olfactory expert, explained that a mosquito interprets the world through multiple, sometimes hundreds, of chemical receptors. He likened these receptors to the giant cluster of microphones facing a politician at a podium. The majority of these receptors are tuned to odors, but others sense taste, heat, and humidity. Depending on the species, there can be a lot of them, “hundreds, in some cases.” According to Zwiebel, Anopheles gambiae, the mosquito that carries malaria, has “79 odor receptors, 34 ionotropic receptors, a host of gustatory receptors, heat receptors, humidity receptors.” Through these varied lenses, Zwiebel explained, the smell of a human “is not just one odor, it’s not just one molecule.” He continued, “There's actually many, many molecules that activate a whole range of receptors.”
Repellents work by blocking these receptors so a mosquito or tick can’t find you. Essential oils, as Zwiebel explained, “only block a small, discrete number of receptors.” What makes things even trickier is that receptors are different even between closely related species; Zwiebel said he wasn’t convinced that an essential oil that might work for one species would work across a range of others. Repellents such as picaridin and DEET, on the other hand, block a much wider number of receptors on a more consistent basis, as research like Vosshall’s confirms. This offers repellency across many species.
Given what’s at stake with tick and mosquito bites, we recommend using a repellent with a 20 percent concentration of the active ingredient picaridin, supplemented with a permethrin-based repellent used at least on your shoes for tick protection. Both are EPA approved, and their labeling offers specific instructions on the ingredients, the application, and the duration of effectiveness. If you choose to use DEET, which we also endorse, we prefer a 25 percent concentration. After our full review of essential-oil repellents, we agree with the authors of the 2011 study from Malaria Journal, who write that with essential oils, “[t]here is a need for further standardized studies in order to better evaluate repellent compounds and develop new products that offer high repellency as well as good consumer safety.”
We tried out a number of popular essential-oil repellents, and with all of them it was impossible to know how much repellency to expect, and for how long. Testing them also gave us insight into another potential drawback (or a positive, depending on your tastes): They have extremely strong odors. As Zwiebel put it, “you end up smelling like a rotten fruit basket.” We much prefer the nearly odorless picaridin formulas that we’ve tested. Mosquitoes aren’t the only ones who rely on olfactory cues when deciding who to hang out with.
DoTerra’s TerraShield takes ambiguous labeling to a new level. The words “bug,” “insect,” and “repellent” are oddly absent from the marketing material and the label. Instead, you can find vague references to “outdoor protection” and “environmental annoyances.” There is no indication of how much to apply, how often, or even if the substance is a repellent at all (we’ve reached out to DoTerra for comment).
US Organic Anti Bug Spray, Sky Organics Organic Bug Spray, and Nantucket Spider’s Natural Deet-free Bug Repellent have all gone through independent lab testing, but there is still no official recommendation on how often each one should be applied for full coverage from mosquitoes and ticks. US Organic’s testing demonstrates a repellency lasting at least four hours, but the testing protocols are very different from the EPA’s, so it’s impossible to know how the spray would function under the same circumstances that picaridin and DEET are tested under. In other words, that “four hours” is not necessarily the same as the “four hours” indicated on an EPA-approved label. The US Organic and Sky Organics repellents both have high concentrations of soybean oil (40 percent and 23 percent, respectively), which proved to be somewhat effective in the 2002 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, but there are other studies that disagree.
The Amazon page for Mexitan’s Skedattle All Natural Anti-Bug Spray states that the formula is “16 TIMES AS EFFECTIVE as DEET bug repellents.” What does that even mean? That it lasts 16 times as long? That it blocks 16 times the number of receptors? It’s likely we’ll never know. We reached out to the company multiple times via email and did not get a response.
We also came across Greenerways Organic Insect Repellent. Like the others it doesn’t have EPA certification, so there is no way to tell how effective it will be against ticks and mosquitoes.
From family vacations to action sports, ski holidays to beach holidays, diving, hiking, skating and more, an action camera is the best way to share your adventures with your friends and the world. We think the GoPro Hero10 Black is the best choice for most people. It has excellent video quality, an integrated mount, ridiculously effective image stabilization, and more. Its overall performance is among the best in its class, and it’s very easy to use. Although our upgrade pick, the newer and more expensive Hero11 Black, has an improved image sensor, most people won’t notice the difference between the two.
If you’re a bird stalker who is generous enough to leave out food, you typically only know when birds have visited because of the carnage left behind: the drained feeder, the mess of seed hulls, and an unimaginable amount of bird poop.
Instead of camping out with a pair of binoculars to spy on your feathered friends, get an up-close view with a smart bird feeder.
Bug zappers kill bugs by the thousands. But there’s a problem: They kill the wrong bugs. They are ineffective against mosquitoes and other biting flies, and their otherwise indiscriminate killing can disrupt pollination and generally throw the environment out of balance. Plus, the force of their electrocution can spew a mist of disease-ridden bug parts out into the air. All of the mosquito experts we spoke with and every relevant university extension office we could find unanimously condemned bug zappers. To keep an area free of bugs or to prevent yourself from getting bitten, there are much better alternatives.
Android phones vary widely in both price and user experience, from just a couple hundred dollars to well over $1,000, and from unbelievably frustrating to unbelievably impressive.
After spending hundreds of hours testing Android smartphones, we think the Google Pixel 7—which sits in the sweet spot of competitive pricing and great hardware—is the best Android phone for most people.
It offers outstanding software and camera performance, and it costs much less than other high-end handsets. It will receive guaranteed software updates for longer than most Android phones, too.
My three kids—ages 10, 7, and 5—have fiendish appetites for fresh watermelon. Until recently, whenever summer hit, my husband and I felt like we were spending way too much time standing at the kitchen counter, knife in hand and juice dripping onto our toes, endlessly cubing the fruit.
I was tempted to hand the knife over to my oldest kiddo, but while he’s pretty good at chopping some things, a rolling seedless behemoth can be challenging, even for adults. So one night, I broke down and ordered a melon baller.
A good sleeping pad can transform hours of tossing and turning in the wild into a decent night’s sleep. We slept on 15 different sleeping pads during our first round of testing, and we tried an additional 10 pads in our most recent round—carrying them on a total of seven car-camping and backpacking trips.
We concluded that the Therm-a-Rest LuxuryMap Sleeping Pad is the best choice for car campers and the Sea to Summit Ether Light XT Insulated Air Sleeping Mat is the most supportive pad for backpackers. If you’re looking for a budget option or a sleeping pad for two people, we’ve got you covered for those, too.
Whether you’re a longtime electric vehicle owner or you’re still waiting for your first EV to leave the factory floor, you should consider investing in a Level 2 charger for your home.
Most modern EVs ship with a Level 1 charger—these tend to be small, portable, and slow-charging, thanks to their 120-volt output. But a 240-volt Level 2 charger is the fastest way to juice up an EV at home, adding four or more times as many miles per hour of charge.
They’re also more likely to have premium features, such as a power cord that’s long enough to reach across a two-car garage or a wide variety of installation options.
After 28 hours of research and 85 hours of testing, we found that the United Chargers Grizzl-E Classic is the best at-home charger for most EV drivers, whereas Tesla drivers should stick with the Tesla Wall Connector.
A packed lunch can provide a pause and nourishment during a hectic day. Compared with eating out, it can also be healthier, time-saving, and more affordable. A lunch box should be durable, easy to clean and carry, and hold enough food to satisfy your appetite. Ideally, it should also make a meal feel like a pleasure, not an obligation. We’ve been reviewing lunch boxes since 2016, and we’ve found that different meals require different vessels. In 2021, we focused on bento boxes, lunch bowls, and insulated lunch boxes. After testing 28 of them, we chose eight that fit a range of lunchtime needs.
A good Chromebook can do almost anything a regular laptop can do, and the best ones can feel better to use than their similarly priced Windows counterparts.
After testing most of the Chromebooks released over the past nine years and testing 15 models so far in 2023, we recommend the Acer Chromebook Spin 513 (CP513-2H-K62Y). It’s an exceptional laptop, with the best combination of features of all the Chromebooks we’ve tested: fast enough performance, an excellent screen, and long battery life.
It’s hard to find a cheap computer with a screen that’s nice to look at, a keyboard and trackpad that are comfortable to use—or just not terrible—and fast-enough performance that won’t leave you waiting for apps and tabs to open.
Whether you need a computer for your child to use for schoolwork and entertainment, or you want to save some cash and keep a laptop out of a landfill by resurrecting an old one, you have a few options.
Smartphones and tablets may have taken over much of people’s screen time, but there’s still a need for a real computer sometimes—and for most people, that means a laptop. For school and office work and tasks like creating spreadsheets and editing video, there’s no good substitute for a decent keyboard and a big screen. But exactly which laptop you should get depends on how often you’ll use it, what you’ll use it for, and (of course) how much money you can afford to spend on it.
Gone are the days of paltry vegan options pushed to the fringes of the ice cream aisle, frostbitten and forgotten. This may be a vegan ice cream golden age, with more brands and fully stocked shelves than ever before.
But whether you’re vegan, lactose intolerant, environmentally conscious, or just into anything the frozen dessert world has to offer, you may already know that not all vegan ice creams are created equal.
We picked 35 of the most promising, widely available pints and put them to the test. Our favorites are delicious in their own right, and they’re free of any of the off flavors or textures that can be the bane of lesser vegan ice creams.
College is expensive—including tuition, housing, and textbooks, not to mention food and other miscellaneous costs—so students need a reliable laptop that’ll last for years of taking notes, writing papers at 3 in the morning, and editing slides for a group project. But choosing the right laptop can be more challenging than writing a thousand words on Proust.
Lots of laptops cost less than $500, but it’s hard to find a cheap one that doesn’t totally suck. We’ve researched and tested hundreds of cheap Windows laptops and Chromebooks over the years to find decent models, and we also have advice to help you shop smart when prices change and our picks go out of stock.
As a member of the Wirecutter Deals team who comes from a long line of coupon clippers and bargain hunters, I’m not a splurger by nature. (In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s against my DNA to pay full price for anything.) But I’m particularly stingy when it comes to products I consider basics, like dish soap, condiments—even medication.
So of course, I balked at the hefty $25 price tag on Fresh’s Sugar Lip Treatments. I distinctly remember reading about their benefits in Wirecutter’s guide and thinking to myself, “Yeah, but who on earth would spend more than three bucks on a lip balm?”
Turns out, it’s me.
In the past year, my kids (ages 9, 6, and 4) have started coming home from birthday celebrations and other events with goodie bags. You may be familiar with them too—Mary Poppins–esque sacks overflowing with candy and flimsy, single-use toys that bring joy for barely a moment before becoming trash. Listen, I’ll take the joy! But I also wondered if there might be a better way to approach these party favors—surely it’s possible to find goodie-bag contents that aren’t destined for the landfill. With input from some of my Wirecutter colleagues and fellow parents and caregivers, we made it our mission to round up and test fun, good-quality (but not too pricey) items that won’t feel like clutter—including books, art supplies, activities, tasty treats, and more.
A car parked under the sweltering summer sun becomes oppressive inside in a matter of minutes. In fact, temps can get lethally hot before you know it, which is why experts say no matter what you do, you should never leave humans or animals unattended in a car.
But there are some things you can do to make it a little easier to get in your car on a sweltering day. Parking in a shaded area, cracking your windows, and covering your front seats with a light-color towel are all free tips that can help slow the temperature increase inside your vehicle. We also tested a few cheap(ish) items that will get you in and driving sooner.
For many people, going to the movies these days involves a walk from the kitchen to the couch, rather than a trip to a commercial cinema. So investing in a good TV and sound system makes more sense than ever.
The use of a soundbar is the easiest, most affordable way to get a cinematic surround-sound experience at home, and the Polk MagniFi Mini AX’s excellent sound and simple setup make it our favorite all-purpose choice—though we have additional picks that suit different budgets and performance priorities.
Google’s first foldable phone isn’t quite a home run, but after spending a week with the Pixel Fold, I have to admit: I love it. It’s well built, the hybrid tablet/phone experience works almost exactly how it should—aside from some minor software hiccups—and it takes the best selfies of any phone I’ve ever used. However, similar to rival foldables from companies like Samsung, the Pixel Fold is extremely expensive, and most people shouldn’t spend $1,800 on it when other phones offer a great experience for much less.
No-show socks are the unsung—and unseen—heroes of many a stylish ensemble. Neatly tucked inside a sneaker or slip-on, they leave ankles breezily exposed while protecting feet from the stinky, blister-inducing indignities of going sockless.
But finding the right pair isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Subpar versions have a maddening tendency to creep down, bunch up, pinch, squeeze, and make your feet sweat. We pounded the pavement in dozens of no-show socks, ultimately landing on five comfortable, incognito picks that suit a variety of tastes, budgets, occasions, and shoe types.
A thoughtfully chosen housewarming gift can help a new house become a home, but the last thing anyone who has just packed (and unpacked) all their earthly possessions needs is stuff for stuff’s sake.
Our surefire formula for success: Choose a gift informed by what you knew about your recipient before they received the keys to their new home, then go for something useful, delicious, or just plain beautiful that they’re unlikely to get for themselves.
When I became a mom, I quickly realized that the only thing nearly as precious as my bundle of joy was how little time I suddenly had to socialize. Like many new parents, I struggled with that duality—until I started figuring out some parenting strategies that allowed me to take care of my baby while also taking care of my need for grown-up interaction.
The adage “you get what you pay for” is as true today as ever, but with a few exceptions—one being sleeping bags.
You simply don’t need to overpay to get a bag that’s comfortable and functional, whether for car camping, backpacking, or camping with kids.
After performing more than 110 hours of research over 3 years, considering 250 models, and dragging 41 bags through the wilds of California, Hawaii, and Colorado, we think the REI Co-op Siesta Hooded 20 Sleeping Bag is the best for basic camping.
Online framing services offer an easy way to frame art. The results look nicer than off-the-rack frames and generally cost less than the work of custom shops.
After researching 13 services and testing five, we think Framebridge delivers the most consistently attractive and well-made frames for art and photos.
You could easily spend thousands on a fishing rod and reel, but most casual fishers (and even some experts) would be happier with something more versatile and less expensive.
After interviewing experts and spending over 80 hours testing spinning rods and reels, we’ve determined that pairing the Ugly Stik GX2 rod with the Daiwa BG spinning reel makes the best all-around fishing outfit without breaking the bank. This combo compares favorably to outfits costing twice as much.
If your TikTok For You page looks anything like mine, you’ve heard of the Ninja Creami—an ice cream blending machine that fans claim can turn basically anything into a delicious frozen treat in minutes.
After spending 20 hours researching bird feeders, browsing through hundreds of options, and talking to five experts (including the man who wrote the National Audubon Society’s guide to bird feeding in North America), we recommend the Droll Yankees 18-Inch Onyx Mixed Seed Tube Bird Feeder with Removable Base as the best all-around bird feeder for most people.
A new generation of inexpensive mini amplifiers has made it possible to put together a stereo speaker system for about the same price as you’d pay for a good wireless speaker. Whether you’re building a system for your desktop, den, or dorm, we think the Fosi Audio BT20A is the best way to get started in affordable stereo sound. Combined with a good set of bookshelf speakers, the BT20A can deliver sound quality that even audio enthusiasts will respect.
A photo printer is the final step of your digital darkroom, capable of transforming your image from an idea into a tangible, gallery-worthy art piece that can last a lifetime.
For photography enthusiasts who are looking to create professional-quality prints at home, we recommend the Epson SureColor P700.
It’s empowering to have a freezer full of ingredients and premade meals. You can throw a fresh-tasting dinner together without taking a trip to the store. You can bake homemade cookies a few at a time, defrost an emergency brownie or two, and toast fresh bagels. And in the dead of winter, you can draw on summer’s bounty of basil, berries, and stone fruit. Plus, freezing food is one of the easiest things you can do to minimize food waste, save money, and reduce your environmental impact.
Independence Day is often associated with parades, barbecues, and fireworks, but many retailers also use the holiday as an opportunity to try to dazzle you with sales—and unfortunately, only some of them are spectacular.
Using meticulous research and pricing standards, the Wirecutter Deals team has sifted through the sales to find those that offer the best bang for your buck.
Lush fiddle-leaf figs. Beachy palms. In the forest of faux, all is possible, or so it seems. As it turns out, even the prettiest options online tended to be underwhelming in real life.
Still, if you’re willing to manage expectations, we found a few good options for a faux money tree, fiddle-leaf fig, bird of paradise, palm, and monstera.
On hot days, few things are as satisfying as reaching into your freezer for a homemade ice pop—but only if you can extract that ice pop in one piece. Having a popsicle mold that’s easy to fill, store, and remove treats from makes all the difference. After researching dozens of popsicle molds, testing 31, and making almost 200 ice pops over the years (as well as eating enough of them to give a whole army a brain freeze), we’ve found that the Tovolo Classic Pop Molds make the most consistent and easy-to-eat pops of all the molds we’ve tried.
A comfy place to sit and eat is essential to any home. To find out what makes a good dining table, we interviewed a master furniture restorer, an interior designer, and four more industry experts and looked at hundreds of tables online and in person.
Our buyer’s guide will help you determine the right size, shape, and style of table for your space, and what the table’s material and construction can tell you about its longevity. We also recommend 11 tables that we think offer an exceptional combination of quality materials, solid construction, attractive design, and a good price.
For older adults, choosing a cell phone is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. We spoke with people in their 70s and 80s who couldn’t wait to try out the latest smartphones with high megapixel cameras. We also spoke with people in their 60s who favored the simplicity of more-basic phones.
It’s always disappointing to reach for that steak you placed in the freezer weeks ago only to find it looking more like an icicle-coated Jack Nicholson from The Shining than anything remotely edible.
A good vacuum sealer staves off freezer burn and keeps food fresher longer. After we sealed meat, nuts, crackers, and fruit, and then tested the bag seals over the course of several months, we concluded that the Anova Precision Vacuum Sealer Pro offers the best combination of powerful suction and useful features.
Whether you’re searing meat, stir-frying vegetables, or quickly reducing a pan sauce, a good skillet is an indispensable workhorse in the kitchen.
After more than 90 collective hours of research and testing since 2014, we still believe the tri-ply All-Clad D3 Stainless Fry Pan with Lid 12 Inch is the best skillet for your money.
It’s a durable pan that heats extremely evenly. No other pan gets the kind of raves this All-Clad model receives from professionals, enthusiasts, and home cooks alike. Yes, it’s expensive, but it will last you a lifetime, making it a great value.
If you want basic light bulbs that look great and will save you money in the long run, there’s no reason not to choose LED bulbs—they look as good as incandescents and are far more energy-efficient. We recommend the standard dimmable Feit Electric line of A19 bulbs. For general-purpose lighting, look for soft white LED bulbs, available in 60 W and 40 W versions. And for a whiter, cooler light for working, get Feit’s daylight LED bulbs, also in 60 W and 40 W versions. The Feit bulbs also function well with dimmer switches, neither flickering nor buzzing, and their color accuracy brings out the best in your decor, furniture, and food, improving the ambiance of your entire home.
Treat yourself or someone you love to terrific PJs—a comfy, well-made pair can be downright restorative. Since 2018, we’ve spent countless hours lounging and sleeping in nearly three dozen sets of pajamas and snooze-worthy sweatpants in as many inclusive women’s, men’s, and unisex sizes as we could find.
The current generation of Xbox consoles presents what might seem like a confusing choice: the $500 Xbox Series X and the $300 Xbox Series S. The two are based on a similar foundation, and they will play all of the same games for years to come. But the Series X and Series S each target a different level of graphics performance, and they take different approaches to physical media, as the Series X supports discs while the Series S is digital only. With that in mind, we’re here to help you figure out which Xbox you should buy—or if you need to buy one at all.
Forget about being cooped up in the living room for your next movie night. If you’re fortunate enough to have a backyard, why not spread out on the lawn and enjoy an outdoor theater?
Although you could just project an image against a wall or garage door, a good screen helps to produce cleaner, brighter, more accurate video. We tested two popular outdoor screens and one DIY screen option to learn what you can expect from each.
As streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ grow in popularity, many people are dumping their expensive cable and satellite TV subscriptions. For those who still want to watch the occasional live event or local programming without adding subscription costs, a great indoor TV antenna such as the Antennas Direct ClearStream Flex is the simplest, most dependable way we’ve found to pull in dozens of TV channels for free.
