The Best Ring Lights

If you’re a streamer, a vlogger, or someone who’s on video calls a lot for work, good lighting is essential. Without it, you can look grainy, out of focus, or even shadowy—like an anonymous witness in a true-crime show. A ring light is a simple tool whose diffuse glow can bring you out of the dark and make you look more professional. After testing eight of the most popular ring lights across a variety of sizes, we’ve found that the Neewer 14-Inch LED Ring Light is the best option for most people: You can use it while you’re sitting or standing, it offers a wide range of color temperatures (from very warm to very cool), and it comes with a remote so you can control the light from afar. No other ring light we researched or tested was as easy to use, versatile, and feature-rich.

Where to Buy N95s, KN95s, and Surgical-Style Masks You Can Trust

Although vaccinations are now widely available, recommendations and regulations are continually in flux, and masks will likely remain a part of people’s lives for some time. And even though medical-style masks were all but impossible to find early on in the pandemic (when most were reserved for front-line workers), they’re now much easier to get—and, in some cases, they’re your best bet for the most-protective face coverings. Still, separating the good options from the bad can be tough. In the past several months, we’ve tried 37 models and confirmed their filtration claims with government agencies or our own lab testing performed in collaboration with Colorado State University. Here we recommend legitimate N95, KN95, and surgical masks you can buy from trusted retailers now.

The Best Toaster

It’s a familiar story. You finally splurge on an expensive toaster in the hope that it will make the toast of your dreams every day without fail. But after a few years, the machine starts getting spotty—or goes kaput. This is frustrating and downright discouraging. Unfortunately, no matter how much you spend, toasters aren’t made to last like they once were. That’s why we recommend the relatively inexpensive Cuisinart CPT-122 2-Slice Compact Plastic Toaster. After toasting mountains of carbs in 23 toasters over the years, we think the Cuisinart offers the best balance of performance, quality, and features without asking you to overspend. We can’t guarantee it will toast evenly over time or last for decades (few modern toasters do). But we do think you’ll get your money’s worth.

The Best Floor Lamps Under $300

A great floor lamp can transform the dimmest corner of a room into the most inviting space to read, relax, or work in—an illuminating punctuation mark of a room’s decor. Over the past few years, we dedicated more than 60 hours to researching hundreds of floor lamps under $300, narrowing down the options to 28 models and then assembling, inspecting, and pelting them with basketballs to simulate the inevitable accidents that happen at home. While we recognize style is subjective, we’re confident our picks—for task, console, tripod, tree, arc, and rod lamp—will complement a wide variety of interior spaces.

The Best USB Hubs

It’s an ugly truth of using modern computers: The rush toward thinner and lighter designs has meant sacrificing the number and types of ports on everything from MacBooks to all-in-one desktops. If you want to plug in anything with a connection other than a USB-C cable, the most efficient option is a USB-C hub, which provides multiple types of ports in a relatively compact package. Our favorite hub is Anker’s PowerExpand 8-in-1 USB-C PD 10Gbps Data Hub. In addition to having all the right ports, it’s one of the very few hubs with an HDMI port that supports a proper 60 Hz refresh rate on 4K monitors so that animations and movements on screen are nice and smooth—almost every other hub maxes out at 30 Hz, which results in a frustratingly laggy experience.

The Best Cloth and Disposable Masks for Kids and Toddlers

Kids are superheroes for enduring the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have the gear to prove it. Masks remain a must-have in schools, at doctors’ offices, for travel, and—depending on where you live and other factors—in many other situations. Over the past year, we’ve looked at more than 100 cloth and disposable masks for kids, pored over scientific studies, talked with health experts and researchers, assessed filtration efficiency in independent lab tests, and tested finalists with a panel of 10 kids, ages 2 to 11.

Why We Love the Toto C5 Bidet Washlet

A lot of Wirecutter’s recommendations make plenty of people happy, but we can’t usually say a pick will be something everybody loves. One exception: bidets. More specifically: the Toto Washlet C5. This seat costs hundreds of dollars more than the good-enough toilet seat you’ve been using your whole life, yet virtually nobody regrets investing in the Toto. What the deuce?