Best Early Black Friday Deals Under $25

The KitchenAid Gourmet 4-Sided Stainless Steel Box Grater features four sides for grating, shredding, slicing, and zesting, along with a convenient 3-cup container that fits neatly inside to catch your grated or sliced ingredients, making prep and storage a breeze.

If you want a microwave popcorn maker, this BPA-free model was our favorite from our evaluations. It’s glass and dishwasher-safe. But note that it works only with microwaves with a turntable.

The Sweet Alice grinders operate differently from other sets we’ve tried. When you invert them, as you would with a manual pepper grinder, the mills automatically starts up. They have soft LED lights that beam toward the area you’re seasoning. And the high-volume reservoirs are attractive, too: You can see right inside the mills. We appreciated the even grind, even on course settings, and found them to be quite easy to fill.

They are also the most difficult grinders to clean, though. It also doesn’t have labeled settings; instead, you can click through several to see gradual differences. This is less exacting, although you can definitely tell whether you’re getting coarse or fine.

This budget-friendly butter crock has a retro look, akin to something you’d find in an antique shop. It’s dishwasher-safe and comes in a plethora of colors, including robin’s egg blue, classic red, sapphire blue, and white.

The 22.5-watt Anker Nano Portable Charger aces our tests and is petite enough to easily slip into a bag or even pocket. It has enough juice to charge an average smartphone battery from empty once or top it off a few times, and its two USB-C ports can charge two devices simultaneously.

This compact, budget-friendly charger can be handy to toss in your kid’s backpack, especially if they need something that connects via USB-C. It’s roughly the size of a credit card and has two USB-A ports as well as a USB-C port, so it can charge three devices simultaneously. Iniu claims it can charge a pair of AirPods Pro over 10 times on a single charge and an iPhone 13 nearly twice.

This budget stylus is compatible with nearly every iPad made after 2018, and it is the most impressive non-Apple stylus we evaluated. Our tester, a professional illustrator, said it felt like drawing with a real pen on paper, and drawing felt like "a dream." It offers palm rejection and tilt support. It’s easy to turn on—just double-tap the top—and it doesn’t require pairing with your iPad. Plus, it attaches to the iPad magnetically, reducing the chances you’ll lose it.

This pen is actually $4 less than its October Prime sale price.

Want to spend even less on a new stylus? This model from Digiroot might be a good option. It’s worth noting that our testers suggest this one is better for simple tasks like note-taking and doodling but not so much for detailed drawing because it lacks pressure sensitivity.

If you’re looking for a low-cost way to improve your sleep, a new eye mask could be the perfect option, and this one is at the best price we’ve ever seen. Ginger Cowles, CR’s managing editor of new audiences, spotted this deal on her favorite, which happens to be the most popular sleep mask CR has tried:

"Gone are the days where I can just plop down and sleep without any preparation. I’ve reached the age where I need multiple products for a good night’s rest. My Coop pillow, a light comforter, ear plugs, and the Mzoo Sleep Mask are my go-tos. The Mzoo is a game-changer. My husband insists on working late nights in bed with his computer screen light powered up so high it practically burns my retinas. When I’m wearing this mask, it’s a nonissue. It blocks 100 percent of the light, stays on all night, and doesn’t get caught in my hair. Awesome mask. Stock up while it’s on sale and give them as gifts."

This Eucerin Advanced Hydration SPF 50 spray is a solid performer with broad-spectrum protection. Its tested SPF comes close to its labeled SPF 50. Like the sunscreen above, it also has that plastic fragrance-free aroma, and it left a slightly draggy film on the testers’ skin.

Although hard to close, these are very sturdy bags, and make a great option for parents with toddlers who have a penchant for throwing their snacks.

Of the four powdered products we tested, Bar Keepers Friend removed knife scratches from ceramic plates best. It also had the longest list of surfaces it is safe to use on, including boats, sporting equipment, and vinyl siding.

This dish soap produced rich suds and had an elevated, herbal scent like no other we tested. It is also available in an easy-to-dispense 16-ounce bottle.

Tub O’Towel Heavy-Duty Cleaning Wipes are big enough for heavy-duty cleaning and reusing. Dried-up sweet potato, milk, hot sauce, and rice were no match for these wipes. They were also easy to dispense from the tub.

For a middling price, Finish Powerball Ultimate dishwasher pods deliver above-average results in our tests, with excellent scores in both cleaning dishes and resisting film and mineral deposits. They also ward off water spots. They include scum-fighting enzymes, but no bleach.

This is a great, budget-friendly option if you’re not sure your pets will adapt from a bowl to a fountain. You can try it out without investing too much (and you can always invest more in an upgrade later on if you want). The Veken water fountain, consisting of five parts, was intuitive for our tester to assemble, and the carbon and foam filter replacements are low-cost as well, at $10 for a four-pack or $24 for 16. It was the noisiest option, but that didn’t deter the tester’s pets. And the flower can be removed for a low-profile bubbler effect rather than a raised fountain.

This fountain is back down to the same price we saw during the October Amazon sale, making it a good time to buy.

Veken Packing Cubes, which are $2 less than they were at the end of October, provide great bang for your buck, though they are a few dollars more than we’ve seen recently. This set has the largest capacity among the cubes we tried, and you get eight different ones to stay organized: four small, medium, large, and extra large, a laundry bag, a shoe bag, a toiletries bag, and an accessories bag. The laundry bag, in particular, is on the larger side, which can be a real asset when you’re on a longer trip.

The Bagail 8Set Packing Cubes won over CR’s evaluator with the sheer number and variety of cubes it offers. In addition to three packing cubes (medium, large, and extra large) that have mesh on the top panels to help you identify the contents inside quickly, it also comes with two zipper bags, a cosmetics bag, a shoe bag, and a drawstring bag that you can use to separate your dirty laundry. The extra organizational features were ultimately what gained Bagail the edge over the other packing cubes CR tried.

There are 14 different color options, but not every variation is on sale for as low as the price highlighted.