Best products of the year

475+ top picks and great buys

Consumer Reports magazine: November 2012

Consider this special section—available to subscribers as a PDF —the ultimate buyer's guide. A supreme cheat sheet. The best electronics, appliances, and other products among the thousands our secret shoppers bought throughout the year and that our testers rigorously tested. (The whopping bill was $4.1 million: $1.6 million for products and $2.5 million for cars.)

All of the products we list are recommended, which means that they performed well in our labs, and where we're able to assess a brand's reliability, we believe the brand to be reliable. We've also included many choices in each category, so you're bound to find at least a few that meet your needs. (In some cases, most but not all recommended models are listed because of space constraints.)

In the middle part of each page in the PDF, we highlight CR Best Buys across a range of prices. CR Best Buys perform well in our tests and are of exceptional value. Enjoy!