Testers who wanted something for goal planning really liked the prompts and the feeling of accountability that the Panda Planner Classic gave them. “It says ‘Exercise’ here, so I feel like I would have to exercise so I could fill it in,” one tester told us. They also preferred the layout, overall look, and cover…
Category: Tech Reviews
Reviews of new tech gadgets, software, and tools, with an emphasis on how they can be used for coding..
The Best Lap Desk
If you want something bigger, sturdier, and more sophisticated-looking than our picks, and you don’t mind paying a hefty premium for it: Consider the Cooper Desk Pro XL. It has a removable laptop rest at the bottom of the work surface, as well as legs that let you adjust the height and angle for improved…
The Best Camping and Outdoor Labor Day Sales From REI
Whether you use it indoors or outdoors, our favorite headlamp is reliable and bright enough to light the way in most situations. On top of its easy-to-navigate buttons and long-lasting battery life, it features a bright beam with the choice of two beam shapes and two colors.Other things to know: You have to experiment with…
The Best Laundry Detergent
In December 2019, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that would “prohibit the sale of cosmetic or cleaning products containing 1,4-dioxane.” The bill came as a result of contaminated drinking water (1,4-dioxane) in Long Island. It will be enacted by the end of 2022, banning sales of products with trace concentrations of 2…
The Best Travel Strollers
A good travel stroller can make the difference between a jaunty vacation and a miserable slog.We researched dozens of travel strollers, tested seven on a variety of trips involving planes, trains, buses, and cabs, and concluded that the Uppababy Minu V2 is the best option to keep parents and tots happy. Unlike most travel strollers,…
Don’t Try to Declutter Your Whole Life
Just like the mere presence of clutter, figuring out how to overhaul and reorder your life can be downright overwhelming.Rather than trying to tackle an entire room, we recommend starting small by focusing on specific, contained areas that you frequent regularly (like the refrigerator or a crowded closet). Keeping these high-traffic spaces tidy can give…
The Best Bluetooth Audio Receiver for Your Home Stereo or
These days most mainstream audio electronics have Bluetooth connectivity built in. But if you have older home-audio gear, such as a beloved stereo receiver or a set of powered speakers, there’s a chance that either it lacks Bluetooth connectivity altogether or its Bluetooth reception is poor. That doesn’t mean you have to scrap your system…
Why the Black Diamond Spot Has Been Our Top Pick
If you think the Black Diamond Spot 400 headlamp is a necessity only for campers and climbers, think again.Our pickAn easy-to-use, bright-enough option with long-lasting battery life and reliable performance, year after year.What makes this headlamp so great is how easily it crosses over from specialty climbing gear to fixture of everyday domestic life. It’s…
How to Buy the Best Induction Cooktop
If you’re looking for an easier, safer, and more efficient way to cook, it’s time to consider induction, which relies on magnetic properties to heat instead of a hot coil or a live flame.Once regarded as an outlier, induction cooking is catching on thanks to increased scrutiny surrounding the future of gas stoves, kitchen-design trends…
The Best Carpet Cleaners
Imagine six mud-covered, diaperless toddlers and an adult in a white-carpeted room. Serve the kids sugary drinks, peanut-butter-and-Nutella sandwiches, and chocolate ice cream with caramel syrup. For good measure, give the tots some colorful slime to play with, hand the beleaguered parent a bottle of red wine, and then step away for a couple of…
The Best Business Card Printing Services
Your business card is key to making a lasting first impression when meeting potential new clients. Moo delivers the best looking, most premium-feeling business card you can buy online—an impressive memento for your brand.We spent dozens of hours researching, testing, and comparing some of the most highly regarded business card makers out there. In addition…
The Best Ladders
If you’ve never bought a ladder, brace yourself for an eye-popping price tag. But keep in mind that the durability, stability, and general assurance of safety make it worth investing in a ladder as good as the Gorilla GLF-5X Fiberglass Hybrid Ladder or one of our other recommendations. After comparing three dozen models and testing…
The Best Garden Hose and Hose Reel
Garden hoses are unremarkable when they work well, but if they underperform, they’ll drive you insane.After several years of testing—washing cars, gardening, pressure-washing driveways, and doing other hosey home chores—we’ve concluded that the Continental Commercial Grade Rubber Hose (50 feet) is the all-purpose garden hose we’d invest in.It isn’t perfectly kink-proof, but its sturdiness and…
The Best Needle-Nose Pliers
Our pickThe thick jaws of the Kleins make them the perfect tool for grabbing, twisting, and snipping wires (or reaching for a toy behind the couch). They’re pricy, but we feel they’re worth it.They’re not cheap, usually costing more than $30, but our test crew unanimously chose the Klein J203-8 pliers because they were a…
The Best Precision Screwdriver
Our pickUnlike nearly all other multi-bit precision screwdrivers, the Megapro 24-in-1 has an ergonomic handle, a spinning cap, and excellent bit storage.As a kitchen-drawer tool, the Megapro 24-in-1 Multi-Bit Precision Screwdriver offers a large and useful set of bits, a teardrop handle that is both comfortable and functional, excellent bit storage, and a spinning cap…
Choosing the Right PlayStation 5
Our pickThis version of the PS5 has a disc drive so you can watch UHD Blu-ray movies, as well as play new, or used PS5 and PS4 game discs. The rest of the features and hardware are the same.If you have a big collection of physical PlayStation 4 games, if you want to watch 4K…
The Best Bidet Toilet Seat or Washlet
People have strong opinions about washing their butts, but one thing is for sure: The Toto Washlet C5 is better than any other bidet seat at dialing in your exact preferences—pulsating or oscillating stream, warm or cool water, high or low pressure.Thanks to the C5’s unique, intuitive controls, you’ll find it’s just as easy to…
Five Steps to Safely (and Legally) Fly a Drone
Flying drones is a visceral thrill: Zipping through a gap between buildings or swooping among trees along a coastline not only makes for great footage but turbocharges your heart rate, too. And thanks to more reliable GPS coverage, advancements in camera tech, and drone makers’ focus on anti-collision sensors and software, it’s easier than ever…
The Best Meditation Apps
Life can be unpredictable, overwhelming, and just plain difficult. It’s often hard to find balance and easy to lose focus. That’s when a good meditation app can help. After talking with three experts, researching 21 apps, and testing 18 of them, we think Headspace offers the best experience. Its courses are organized and simple to…
The Best Smart Sprinkler Timer
If you’ve found yourself dashing through a rainstorm to stop your in-ground irrigation system from running needlessly, consider a smart sprinkler timer, which can save you the hassle—and a ton of wasted water—while keeping your greenery and gardens thriving. (Note that these devices are variously referred to as smart sprinkler timers but also irrigation controllers…
The Best Women’s Razors (for Every Body)
Our pickThis classic Venus is one of the easiest razors to grip and maneuver, and its three-blade design keeps the blades remarkably free of hair. Its refills can be found in most stores.The unassuming Gillette Venus Original does a clean and efficient job of removing body hair. Half of our testing panel named the Original…
Five Tips to Declutter Your Home Office
The cliché of a clear space leading to a clear mind has some research behind it: The messier your space is, the more easily you’ll be distracted by all of the visual stimuli around you. I’ve found this to be true in my own life: I’ve worked from home and from the road for over…
The Best Wi-Fi Routers
If your router is more than a couple of years old and is struggling to give you fast speeds or dropping connections altogether more often than not, a new router or a mesh-networking kit will improve your Wi-Fi’s range, stability, and speed all over your home.Over the past five years, we’ve spent hundreds of hours…
The Best Toaster
It’s a familiar story. You finally splurge on an expensive toaster, hoping 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 costly!Unfortunately, no matter how much you spend, toasters aren’t made to last like they once were.…
5 Cheap(ish) Things to Put in a Home Fitness Corner
When it comes to at-home fitness, carving out a dedicated space for movement can make the difference between a workout completed and a workout skipped. As a personal trainer and a lifelong athlete, as the writer of some of Wirecutter’s fitness guides, I know first-hand how powerful (and empowering) it can be to exercise in…
The Best Bed Pillows
Our pickA longtime favorite among our testers, this pillow has moldable, customizable filling that offers firm support for back- and side-sleepers. What it doesn’t have: the lingering chemical smell we’ve noticed in some other shredded-foam pillows.This customizable down-alternative pillow is softer than shredded foam, so it’s better for stomach-sleepers who need less loft than the…
The Best Hiking Socks
That’s why we spent 25 hours researching 65 sock options. Then we took to the trails of Vancouver, British Columbia, hiking for more than 75 hours, 160 miles, and 350,000 steps in 18 pairs of socks.Eventually we determined that the women’s and men’s Darn Tough Light Hiker Micro Crew Light Cushion socks are the best…
The Best 4K Projector
Our pickThis laser 4K projector delivers a big, bright, beautiful image and has almost all the features you need—except 3D support.The Epson Home Cinema LS11000 offers a combination of high-end performance and features that you won’t see in any other 4K projector priced lower than $5,000. These days it’s not hard to find a bright…
The Best Fantasy Sports Apps
Fantasy sports take the impulse to armchair-manage your favorite team and turn it into a dare: You think you’re such a tactical genius? Okay, then draft the players, choose who plays each week, and see how you do. Do you have a better game plan than Bill Belichick? Is your baseball IQ on a par…
The Best USB Flash Drives
Even as cloud storage and wireless file transfers become more common, sometimes the best option for moving files is to put them on a USB flash drive. The cheapest drives can leave you waiting an agonizingly long time to transfer files—or worse, they can malfunction mid-transfer and leave you where you started.After spending more than…
This $10 ‘Carbage Can’ Made My Car Less Disgusting
I have an embarrassing confession to make: I used to treat my car like a trash can.Whatever I could crumple and throw into the front passenger footwell of my battered, clanking Subaru Crosstrek, I would. Crinkled receipts, balled up fast-food wrappers, empty plastic coffee cups, even used tissues—my car was extremely gross, but I just…
The Best Medical Alert Systems
For older adults and their loved ones, a medical alert system with on-call emergency operators can give peace of mind—whether it’s providing support after a middle-of-the-night fall or simply getting help from a neighbor, friend, or family member. After consulting with experts and testing 14 devices, we recommend the Medical Guardian Home 2.0 for a…
The Best Baby Gate
The ideal baby gate is easy to breeze through while carrying a bag of groceries, but at the same time is an impenetrable obstacle to a toddler.After talking to four childproofing professionals and installing and testing 20 baby gates, we think the best one for most situations is the Cardinal Gates SS-30 Stairway Special. (And…