25 Most Popular Items Our Readers Are Buying Right Now
You can even grab a few of them on sale, including top-rated kitchen, home, and tech products
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We test and evaluate more than our fair share of products here at CR. And more often than not, a few pop up on our radar because of their popularity with our readers.
Unlike fad purchases, these particular items have merit. They’ve either been rigorously tested and approved in our labs or thoroughly vetted in our editors’ homes, where they’ve gone through the rough and tumble of real life.
What follows are the standout favorites, according to what our readers are buying.
Kitchen Tools
Kitchen Mama Oven Mitts
An oven mitt is easily one of the most helpful tools in the house. The question is, are you getting the most out of yours? If you’re only using it to pull stuff out of the oven, then the answer is no. An oven mitt is an excellent gripping aid in general, and our expert’s favorite material for multi-use oven mitts is silicone. It provides a better overall grip than fabric, making it useful for opening stubborn jars and containers.
As seen in: 10 Grips, Handles, and Gadgets for Hands That Need Some Help
Henckels Premio 8" Chef's Knife
Henckels has been making knives in Germany for nearly 300 years, and its expertise in design is on full display with this 8-inch chef’s knife. The Premio’s handle is contoured with no sharp edges, resulting in a knife that’s extremely comfortable to hold. It also excels at force transmission from handle to blade, which means you don’t need to exert as much effort when cutting.
As seen in: Best Chef’s Knives
Oxo may be a favorite brand for kitchen gadgets, but the company also produces sturdy cookware. The Oxo Tri-Ply Stainless Mira Series set excelled in our tests for cooking evenness, speed of heating, and evenly simmering tomato sauce. Four eggs cooked consecutively with oil slid out easily. This set also showed excellent performance in our handle stress test.
As seen in: Best Cookware Sets
Cuisinart makes several top-performing drip coffee makers in Consumer Reports’ ratings, including the currently available Cuisinart PerfecTemp 14 Cup Programmable DCC-3200 and similar Cuisinart PerfecTemp DCC-3200CP. You can expect excellent brew performance for the best-tasting coffee from these machines. They’re very convenient and easy to use, and the carafes are easy to hold and pour from. Each of these models brews 14 cups. As a coffee maker brand, Cuisinart earns an excellent score for owner satisfaction in CR’s member surveys, meaning owners of these coffee makers are likely to recommend their models to friends and family.
As seen in: Best Drip Coffee Makers
The Oxo Brew Conical Burr Coffee Grinder is a fantastic grinder all-around and one of the more budget-friendly models that did well in our tests. It receives strong scores in grind performance, making it a good choice for any brew method you want to use. It also earns a very good rating for convenience because of its clearly marked and easy-to-use controls. Our testers also found it extremely easy to clean, thanks to its removable hopper. This Oxo is a bit noisy. It features 15 grind settings, a 12-ounce bean hopper (one of the largest in our ratings), an auto-stop feature, and a timer.
As seen in: 21 Great Gifts for Coffee Lovers
The one-speed 650-watt Cuisinart Pro Custom 11 DLC-8S receives excellent scores for slicing and shredding and very good scores for chopping, but it showed middling results in our grating and puréeing tests. It has an 11-cup capacity and lever controls. There’s a three-year parts warranty, and the motor is covered for five years.
As seen in: Best Food Processors and Food Choppers
Bed and Bath
The Plank by Brooklyn Bedding Premium Shredded Foam pillow impressed evaluators in every test, surpassing the Coop, which had held the No. 1 spot in our ratings for years. It offers top-tier support for both back and side sleepers, which, along with its firmness and height, is expected to remain unchanged with use. Because it excels in our breathability assessment and has cooling properties, sleepers can expect a comfortable surface that helps regulate their body temperature throughout the night. This newcomer to our ratings is adjustable, allowing you to remove, add, and reposition the filling to suit your needs. This pillow is not machine-washable.
CR Digital and All Access members can save 32 percent with our exclusive CR Sleep Week savings. You’ll just need the coupon code 5628FNWDT3YX.
As seen in: Best Pillows
According to our tests, this Siena Essential Premier Hybrid provides superb support for back sleepers in particular, whether big, small, or in between. Side sleepers should sleep well on it, too. Despite costing around $500, this mattress handily aced our durability test, and it’s quite good at minimizing motion transfer. It has a medium-firm feel, rating a 5 on our firmness scale.
As seen in: Best Innerspring Mattresses
The Waterpik Aquarius is one of the few water flossers in our ratings that’s powered by plugging it into an outlet; the handset attaches to the base unit with a cord and doesn’t hold a charge. The large tank is removable, which makes it a breeze to refill. Keep in mind that the plug-in design means that this device will probably end up on your countertop, with the larger tank capacity taking up about 5x4 inches. Still, it’s fairly quiet, and it earned top marks in our tests for ease of use.
As seen in: Best Water Flossers
Babo Botanicals Moisturizing Oat & Calendula Bubble Bath & Wash Duo
You might find this gentle body wash in the baby section, but it’s a great option for adults, too, earning it the Top Pick for scented options in our recent evaluation. It has a light, nutty scent of a clove-studded orange, and may leave the faintest scent on the skin if you use enough of it. “I love the scent. The citrus is just right in this one!” says CR editor Ginger Cowles. Our evaluators also found this body wash to be highly moisturizing, with no irritation afterward.
As seen in: Best Body Washes From Our Tests
Vacuums and Carpet Cleaners
The corded Shark PowerDetect HZ4002 offers top-notch cleaning for bare floors and pet hair, and performs above par on carpets. It features an auto-detect mode that adjusts the brush roll speed to the surface, transitioning efficiently between carpets and hard floors. It also has two brush rolls, one with rubber fins for optimal contact with surfaces and a soft roller to capture small particles. It can be converted into a handheld vacuum, making it easier to clean stairs and tight spots in your home. It also pulls apart for compact storage, allowing it to stand on its own and take up minimal space. In our member surveys, Shark corded vacuums earn a top-level mark for predicted reliability and a decent mark for owner satisfaction.
As seen in: Best Vacuums
The bagless Shark PowerDetect AZ4002 offers strong cleaning performance and convenient features. It’s stellar at cleaning bare floors, making it the ideal vacuum for kitchens, bathrooms, and hardwood floors. It also earns near top-level scores in our carpet cleaning tests and automatically adjusts the speed of the brush rolls according to the type of floor. And unlike some vacuums that can clean only when you move them forward, this one picks up debris moving both forward and backward. One bonus is that you can detach the pod, making it portable and convenient to use in small spaces, although overall, it’s on the heavier side (17 pounds) for bagless uprights..
As seen in: 8 Best Compact Vacuums for Small Apartments
The iRobot Roomba Max 705 might be slightly more expensive than some other robots, but it’s the highest-performing one we’ve tested, which may be a reason to lay out the cash. It’s quiet and does well in every cleaning test we’ve thrown at it. It’s also outstanding at vacuuming up pet hair and excels at cleaning carpets, with a feature that increases suction power when it detects carpet. This vacuum is also better than many other robotic vacuums at navigating spaces and avoiding obstacles.
As seen in: Best Deals on Vacuums
The Bissell ProHeat 2x Revolution Pet aces our drying tests and demonstrates strong performance in cleaning—plus, our testers find it very convenient to use. It scores a little less well for noise, but it’s as quiet as the carpet cleaners in our ratings get. Its hose length is just short of 7 feet, good for stairs and larger homes) and cover similar square footage per tank of solution (39 square feet). It also has carrying handles and separate tanks for clean and dirty water.
As seen in: Best Carpet Cleaners
Home Goods
The Blue Pure 311i+ Max is available at a discount for CR members. It’s terrific at removing dust, pollen, and smoke, but expect a bit of noise. It’s easy to use and is designed for use in a large space of 350 to 650 square feet. CR members find Blueair air purifiers to be highly reliable, and they’re very satisfied with their purchases. The ComfortPure, while it doesn’t score quite as well in our tests, is designed for large rooms, and it’s also on sale.
CR Digital and All Access members can follow these links to the Blue Pure 311i+ Max and ComfortPure 3-in-1 Air Purifier, add to cart, and then use the code CONSUMER30 at Blueair’s website (through Jan. 19).
As seen in: Best Air Purifiers
The low price for the Comfort Zone CZ499R is a bonus for a space heater that boasts top-notch performance. The small model’s controls are easy to use, and it also comes with a remote. Its fan can run at multiple speeds. It’s a Green Choice appliance, meaning it has a low environmental impact. One caveat is that the CZ499R received an unimpressive score in our hot-surface test. This means that touching the heat exhaust outlet can cause pain or a burn when it’s operating at its highest setting, an important consideration for households with kids or pets. But it does have a tip-over safety switch that shuts off the heater if it’s knocked over.
As seen in: Best Space Heaters for $100 or Less
The Dreo HM524S, designed for rooms 300 to 599 square feet, earns top marks in all of our tests, including moisture output, convenience, noise, energy efficiency, humidistat accuracy, and performance using hard water. The humidifier is programmable via an app, and features include an aroma diffuser, a night-light, and a top-fill design. You can set its timer for up to 12 hours. When it’s switched to sleep mode, its ambient lights will turn off so your sleep isn’t disturbed.
As seen in: Best Humidifiers
The Greenworks 2600602 power snow shovel packs a serious punch for such a small tool. At a mere 15 pounds, it can go places you’d never bring your full-sized snow blower, like up a flight of stairs or onto an elevated deck. That makes it the perfect companion to a larger machine or a good fit for anyone in an area that seldom sees more than a few inches of snow.
As seen in: Best Snow Blowers
Tech
Skylight Calendar Max
The Skylight Calendar is the wall display that our evaluators said they want hanging in their homes. It has a robust set of features, but its core calendar feature is straightforward for people of many ages to use. You can invite multiple calendars to sync to Skylight, such as work and personal calendars, and each gets its own customizable color, so users can assign their favorite ones. The Skylight can be mounted horizontally or vertically. Events show up immediately, whether you’ve added them directly to your Skylight display or to the Skylight app or your calendar app. The device’s Magic Import feature is a nifty tool that can grab events from your email, a PDF, or a screenshot, and import them directly to your Skylight so you don’t need to do so manually. It has a parental lock feature, too, that prevents your child from adding, deleting, or modifying events or chores.
As seen in: Best Digital Wall Calendars
The AirPods Pro 3 are Apple’s top-of-the-line earbuds, and they’re packed with features. New functions include live translation and a workout mode that allows you to leave your Apple Watch at home. Like the AirPods Pro 2, the noise-canceling wireless earbuds offer a clinical-grade hearing test and the option to turn them into an over-the-counter hearing aid, too. They sound good (although a few earbuds, like Sony’s WF-1000XM5, perform even better). And they offer a better fit and improved noise-canceling tech compared with last year’s Pro 2s.
As seen in: Best Noise-Canceling Headphones
Anyone looking for a top-performing 65-inch OLED TV should consider this model, situated just below the G4 flagship series in LG’s 2024 lineup. It delivers great picture quality, high dynamic range performance, and sound, and supports up to 144Hz gaming.
As seen in: Best TVs
If you have the occasional print job that requires crisp and colorful images, you can always just email your file to the print center at a home office superstore. But if that’s impractical, consider a tank model. The Epson EcoTank ET-3958 uses only about $4 worth of ink a year, according to our estimates, compared with $100 or more for a regular inkjet that relies on cartridges. The ET-3958’s overall performance earns a recommendation from CR. Expect high-quality text and accurate scans, although printing may be slower.
As seen in: Best Printers
Baby
Caboo Bamboo Baby Wipes
CR and Made Safe partnered to analyze the ingredients lists for 15 brands of baby wipes and determine which are best for human and/or environmental health. As one of our top choices, Caboo Bamboo Baby Wipes are biodegradable, and their ingredients pose no known risks.
As seen in: How to Choose Baby Wipes Without Harmful Chemicals
Naturepedic Classic Organic Cotton Crib Mattress - Lightweight 2-Stage
We evaluated the materials in 12 crib mattresses to help you find the safest and most sustainable options for your baby. The Naturepedic Classic Organic Cotton Crib Mattress is one of our top choices.
Earth Mama Belly Butter
If you’re looking for a stretch mark cream, this body butter by Earth Mama makes the list of our Top Choices for products with ingredients that are safe to use during pregnancy.
As seen in: How to Choose a Pregnancy-Safe Stretch Mark Cream
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