Best Deals on Grills and Outdoor Essentials

This Neutrogena spray is very good in overall performance across the board, with excellent UVA protection and very good protection from sunburn-producing rays. It does not meet its labeled SPF 50 in CR’s tests, but the protection is still adequate. It has a moderately strong tropical, fruity aroma and leaves a slightly greasy film and a notable sheen on the skin.

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 testers’ skin.

The Kamado Joe Classic is our top-rated ceramic kamado and comes packed with features, including a few that make it a stellar smoker. It has an elevated rack and comes with a heat deflector for smoking meats, both of which allow you to easily slow-cook, say, a brisket, without drying it out. It also has adjustable dampers and a locking lid, which help control the flow of air so that you can maintain a low and slow smoke for hours on end. It excelled at slow-cooking a pork shoulder in our tests, as well as at cooking a thin-crust pizza over high heat.

Weber is best known for its iconic kettle charcoal grill, but this flat-top grill is worth a serious look. It earns a spot near the top of our ratings for its even heating and broad temperature range. It features three burners instead of two, a second side shelf, and a lid. It also has some stainless steel accents.

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.

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.

The Lerekam Solar Spot Lights are among the priciest outdoor ones, but you get unrivaled performance. Our testers were impressed by the duration of their light and ease of use. They can be angled, installed with ground spikes (included), or screwed to other surfaces. They have an on/off button and can be recharged with a USB cable (also included). Each of the lights in the six-pack has 40 LEDs, resulting in intense white light that shines wide over an area, not unlike a flashlight. That makes them ideal as spotlights. They’d be great for drawing attention to a water feature or an ornamental tree, but they can also be pointed down to illuminate a path or walkway.

This Ego battery string trimmer can take on heavy-duty jobs and with precision. It trims evenly in a single pass, edges well, and can cut down tall grass and weeds aggressively—all while being easy to handle. Be mindful of its weight: at over 12 pounds, it’s on the heavier side of the battery models we’ve tested. But if you have other tools in this Ego 56-volt platform, this is a good sale price for a great tool.

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.

Your neighbors will thank you for using an Ego LM2135 because it’s very quiet at 25 feet away and at the ear of the user. While this unit is often a bit expensive as far as push mowers go, it performs well in mulching, cut evenness, and handling. In our tests, it also earned impressive marks in bagging and side discharging. Run time is up to 50 minutes, enough to cover about a quarter of an acre in one go. What’s more, the battery can be fully charged in just over an hour.

This Greenworks pressure washer gets solid ratings in CR’s tests, especially when it comes to ease of use, where it got top marks. It also scored above average for cleaning and noise. It gets a middling score for power. Our testers also noted that it has a manual trigger lock, a small spray angle, and a shorter hose than most models, all of which are less than ideal. On the flip side, we found that it’s very effective at removing stains, and it’s easy to move and operate.

The Ego HPW3204-2 does a very good job of cleaning and delivers a satisfying amount of power (a maximum of 3,200 pounds per square inch at 1.2 gallons per minute). The company claims there’s up to 60 minutes of run time on a single charge with two 6.0Ah ARC lithium batteries (included). But online users report much shorter run times. (CR doesn’t currently test that attribute of battery-powered pressure washers.) The handheld pressure control allows you to select the different modes—Eco, High, or Turbo—and you can check the battery charge status using a display built into the wand.

Our testers found that this DeWalt PMC 168000 delivers impressive power, with a run time of up to 17 hours on a single tank of gas. It has an electric start, making it easy to turn on, and a built-in CO safety shutoff. For under $1,000, this is a solid choice for a large portable generator. You can always shop around, though: our ratings have other options for quality generators of this size for under $1,000.

This bag fits five beach towels, one water bottle, two bottles of sunscreen, a hardcover book, four small packs of pretzels, and sunglasses. The Simple Modern beach bag is made of soft EVA material and has the thickest hand straps of all the bags we tested. The handles folded backward and forward easily and never got twisted.