Best Labor Day Deals on Grills, Lawn Care Tools, and More Outdoor Essentials

The three-burner Napoleon Freestyle 365 F365DPGT delivers strong all-around performance. This small gas grill earns top-level scores for indirect cooking as well as sturdiness. Its temperature range and quick ability to preheat are impressive as well. It receives only a middling mark for its ability to heat evenly, though, which is a pain if you’re making a bunch of burgers and want them all to finish at the same time. Napoleon, as a brand, received ace ratings for reliability and owner satisfaction for its gas grills in CR’s latest member surveys. Overall, it’s slightly sturdier than the Weber and quicker to heat, but you sacrifice some evenness across the cooking surface.

The Monument Grills 77352 is back down to the same low price we saw at the beginning of the summer, after jumping up about $40 for most of the season. It is not only a good large grill for the money but also one of the highest-scoring gas grills in our ratings. It earns top marks across our performance tests for heating evenness, temperature range, and preheating, as well as a solid rating for indirect cooking. It comes with an electronic ignition, stainless steel grates, and four casters to make it easier to move around. And while the grill itself has a typical one-year warranty, it includes an eight-year warranty on the six burners.

The Coleman Roadtrip is a favorite among campers and tailgaters, and different iterations (including the 285 model here) tend to do quite well in our tests. What’s nice about this configuration is that it includes legs with built-in wheels—many portable grills are built to be used on a tabletop. This is among the lowest prices we’ve ever seen on this model, though it typically retails for closer to $325, so you’re really saving about $30.

Our grill expert recommends these sheet pans as the perfect accessory for transporting food to and from the grill and the kitchen. He uses one for raw food and the other to bring everything back once it’s cooked. And while hand-washing is recommended to avoid discoloration, he cleans them in the dishwasher on the sanitize cycle after he’s used them to hold raw meat. He even says the resulting discoloration has not affected their performance, and he’s owned them for over a decade.

This basket lets you keep all your lit charcoal on one side of the grill, so you can crisp a chicken leg or sear a steak on the side the coals are on, then move it to the side without the coals to cook through without burning.

This basket was about $90 earlier this month, so the price may drop a few bucks when the Labor Day sales start.

This kit is recommended by CR’s grilling expert Paul Hope. He says it’s exactly what you want if you’re grilling on the go, like at a park or on a beach. It has all the essential tools and comes in a nice case, which makes it easy to transport. This is the same sale price we saw last season.

These colorful, extending s’more sticks are both fun and practical. Because they’re color-coded, it’s easy to tell whose is whose. They extend to almost 3 feet, and when you’ve had all the s’mores you can eat, they retract for easy storage.

The Meater+ meat thermometer is one of the most reliable digital thermometers. It’s easy to use, and given its top-notch accuracy, you won’t need guesswork to determine the doneness of brisket and other fleshy delights. It’s shaped like a thick ink pen with dual sensors—one to check the internal temperature and one for ambient temperature—and its size makes it better suited for girthier cuts. The Meater+ transmits temperature readings wirelessly to the companion smartphone app.

ThermoPro’s SmartBT Meat Thermometer TP920 is one of the lower-priced leave-in two-probe wireless thermometers. It sends instant temperature readings to your smartphone via Bluetooth, offering excellent response time and accuracy. The easy-to-use app estimates the remaining cooking time for nearly all cuts and varieties of meat based on guidelines from the Department of Agriculture.

Made by one of the most trustworthy thermometer companies in the grilling industry, the ThermoPro TP19H instant-read meat thermometer offers temperature readings with a single stowable probe. There’s a built-in LED and rotation lock for the display, and a magnetic backing allows you to store it on your refrigerator between meals. Perfect for checking meats, this simple thermometer delivers reliably accurate readings within seconds.

The Sun Ninja Beach Canopy is back down to its best price. Of the canopies we tested, it offered the most consistent shade and held its own in the wind. The poles didn’t tilt, and the canopy simply swayed with the breeze, but this didn’t affect shade coverage.

A packable chair might just be the workhorse of your summer outings, and this option is prime for the beach and beyond, especially at its best price. It’s the heaviest of the beach chairs we evaluated, but for good reason: It comes with plenty of features, like a built-in padded head pillow. It has a footrest that can be raised up or pushed down if you prefer a traditional chair position, and you can recline it to five positions, including fully back, so that it converts to a lounge chair. 

Its seat measures 12 inches from the ground and has a built-in cup holder that’s cleverly positioned beneath the right armrest so that it swivels out to the right but takes up zero armrest space. The cup holder itself won’t fit your beloved Stanley cup, but it will fit a can, a Hydro Flask, or other bottles of water.

With about 1 inch of insulation, the Coleman Chiller Cooler is great at maintaining a cool temperature. Its performance is on a par with the popular Yeti, and it costs $180 less. A large bail handle makes it easy to tote, but the hard-sided cooler does weigh almost 3 pounds before you even put anything in it.

The manufacturer claims the cooler can hold four cans with 4 pounds of ice, but we were able to fit seven cans in it with less ice, and it still kept our drinks icy cold for 3 hours at room temperature and 2 hours at 100° F.

The Crocs Classic Large Tote is a good bag, and it stands out most for its extensive traction on the base and sides of the bag, as well as a dipped curve on top to make it more comfortable to carry on your shoulder. It fit six beach towels, one hardcover book, one water bottle, two bottles of sunscreen, car keys, sunglasses, four bags of pretzels, a phone, and a wallet. This bag doesn’t come with an insert, so everything you need to take goes into the one large bag.

If your umbrella requirements are simple and you want one that’s lightweight, portable, and has enough features to keep it steady on a calm day, the Sport-Brella Core Vented Upright Beach Umbrella may satisfy your needs for a lower price than some others. The canopy pole inserts into the base easily and lifts up to click into place without effort. Taking it down is also simple. It lacks a built-in sand anchor, though, and doesn’t have fold-down handles, either. 

The Oileus beach tent, which typically costs $60-$65 but is now the best price we’ve seen all summer by a few bucks, was the runner-up in CR’s evaluations thanks to the ease of setting it up and taking it back down. It’s large enough for two adults and two kids. It takes less than 2 minutes to set up, and just about 4 minutes to pack up at the end of your beach day. And on windy days, you can fill its six pockets with sand to keep it in place. Perhaps the best part is that it only weighs 4 pounds, making it convenient to schlepp from the car to the beach and back.

The Ooni Koda gas-powered outdoor pizza oven is a great option for the home pizza chef. The fit and finish are stellar, and it feels solid and built to last. Plus, it was one of the only models we tested that turned out consistent results. The Koda has folding legs, which make for easier storage and transport. The opening is narrow enough to trap the heat but wide enough to easily slide in a pie or rotate a pizza. But it weighs nearly 40 pounds, so it’s not the most ideal model if you plan to put it away between uses.

The Everdure Kiln pizza oven is the priciest we evaluated, and it’s got a lot to like. Powered by electricity (plug-in or battery) it simply requires a push-start to rotate your pizza for an even cook. But our tester did note that even though the top of the pizza cooked perfectly, the bottom struggled to cook all the way through in the same amount of time. By preheating the oven on its hottest setting, he managed to turn out a more perfect pie.

Available in two bold hues and four sizes, this cheeky accent piece is part of a collaboration with the Finnish design house Marimekko. The shed-resistant rug is made from recycled polyester and is handwoven. The price shown here is for the 5’x8’ rug, but all sizes are on sale.

This medium-pile polypropylene rug features a subtle stripe pattern with just the right touch of texture. It’s available in a variety of sizes, and many are on sale right now.

The Grand Patio umbrella is one of the more expensive patio umbrellas we tested and one of the larger options in our ratings. It got above-average scores in CR’s tests for ease of use and assembly, but it’s a little less rigid than higher-scoring models.

Solo Stove is one of the better-known names in the world of smokeless firepits, and while it’s not the best one CR tested, it still gets high marks in virtually every test we run. It gets top marks for large fires and the amount of wood it can hold. Where it struggles is with the completeness of the burn. The Solo left a fair amount of unburned wood. Its ash pan captures most of the ash, but some unburned pieces fell into the firepit’s bottom chamber, from which they were difficult to remove.

Whether you’re clearing debris or trying to avoid the jabs and stabs of thorny bushes, a sturdy pair of gardening gloves can provide protection from Mother Nature’s, well, natural defenses. Take it from someone who wrangles stems and branches professionally:

“I don’t love wearing gloves when I make flowers, as it feels too clunky,” says Matilda Noble, a floral designer and founder of Noble Diaz, an event production company in New York. “But these are great when doing bigger branch installations because they are thick enough to avoid spike stabs but thin enough to do intricate work, plus you can still use your phone.”

NYC Plant Doctor Christopher Satch, who’s a professor of plant biology and pathology at The New York Botanical Garden, always starts with insecticidal soap when faced with unwelcome visitors in his garden. “It’s superior to neem [oil] in that it not only has a greater efficacy at killing insects due to its mode of action but also doesn’t hurt the plant like neem oil can,” Satch says. “Neem oil suffocates the plant over time by the oil clogging the plant pores.”

Satch recommends this insecticidal soap from Bonide, which can be used on shrubs, trees, flowers, ornamental greens, and garden vegetables. 

This Black+Decker battery-powered string trimmer earns a stellar rating for edging, its ability to trim along vertical lines. It also does a solid job of trimming grass. However, it struggles more with tall grass and weeds, earning a middling rating in that test. The trimmer has only one cutting line, which results in slower and less aggressive cutting. Weighing only 6.4 pounds, the model is one of the lightest string trimmers in our ratings.

The Ego ST1502SA edges and trims like the best gas models, and it does a solid job of clearing through tall grass and weeds. In our tests, it ran for a decent 26 minutes. At 10 pounds, it’s extremely light. Plus, it sells for hundreds less than other higher-rated models while providing similar performance.

The Kobalt KPW 4280-06 does a very good job of cleaning, with a maximum pressure of 3000 pounds per square inch and a 2-gallons-per-minute flow rate. This model comes with two 4.0Ah batteries and a dual-port charger, five replaceable quick-release spray tips, and a siphon kit that can draw water from available water sources such as lakes and pools. It has a 25-foot hose.

The GPW2301 pressure washer from Greenworks is very effective at removing stains, it’s relatively quiet, and it comes with replaceable nozzle tips. It’s easy to move and transport, and easy to use (you just plug it in), and it even comes with convenient hose storage. But it’s not a very powerful machine, and its hose is shorter than in most pressure washers we’ve tested.

The Ego LB7654 delivers all-star performance across the board, adept at loosening and sweeping, all in an easy-to-handle package despite weighing 9.9 pounds. In addition, this electric blower comes with a generous five-year warranty. As a brand, Ego battery handheld leaf blowers are very reliable and earn a top mark for owner satisfaction in our latest member surveys.

The Skil BL4713C-11 does a great job sweeping leaves, including stragglers that get embedded in grass. This model should suffice for quicker, smaller jobs.

This battery-powered, self-propelled Ego LM2167SP delivers. Plus, the two batteries (it uses both at the same time) run for an impressive 70 minutes. This price is one of the lowest we’ve seen for this mower. This model is part of Ego’s POWER+ 56-volt battery platform, so the battery will still be available should you need a replacement or a new charger.

The Brightech Pro Solar Powered Outdoor String Lights are the best in class in our tests, with above-average marks for light duration and a top score for ease of use. Long and widely spaced, these lights provide flexibility. You can run the strand as is for more subtle lighting or double up the cord to concentrate more of the light in a tighter space. Each of its 12 separate Edison-style oval-shaped bulbs has 24 LEDs, resulting in exceptionally bright light. The lights can’t be manually charged, but they do have replaceable batteries and an on/off button to preserve power.

It’s hard to compete with the value offered by the Gigalumi Grid Solar Pathway Lights. Their cost is lower (on a per-light basis) than just about any other path light we’ve seen, and yet they earn solid marks for both light duration and ease of use. The lights cast a dimmer glow than the other products we tested. But that may not be a deal breaker if you’ve got supplemental lighting elsewhere or you’re using these strictly to create ambience. There’s a single setting, an on/off button, and a removable battery, but the lights can’t be charged or angled.

They’re $2 more than their lowest price right now.