Best Labor Day Deals for the Holiday Weekend

The Kamado Joe Classic II is one of the best kamado grills we’ve seen. It offers countless features that make grilling and smoking easier than with other models. For starters, it has a spring-assisted lid that holds in place at any height, whereas most grill lids are either open or closed. The lid also locks, helping control airflow and, in turn, temperature. The upper and lower dampers are easy to adjust, and it has split racks that allow you to cook food at different heights, so you can sear a steak and cook chicken with indirect heat at the same time. And it’s one of the few models that features a pullout ashtray, helping it earn an above-average rating for cleaning.

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 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.

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.

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. 

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.

The iRobot Roomba i3+ EVO Vacuum Cleaner is very quiet and exemplary at cleaning up bare floors and pet hair. It comes with a self-emptying docking station, though one of the downsides is that you’ll have to buy replacement bags for the base.

The cordless Shark Stratos IZ862H is only $25 more than the lowest price we’ve seen in the last year (available only around Black Friday), making this an excellent time to buy.

It has Shark’s signature DuoClean brush roll and a flexible wand for reaching under furniture. It earns top scores for cleaning bare floors and removing debris along edges. But if you have carpet, it’s only so-so. A dirt sensor increases suction when the vacuum senses debris and decreases when the floor is clean. It has a self-cleaning mechanism that prevents hair from getting tangled around the brush roll. The vacuuming mode and battery life are displayed on the console.

Currently the highest-rated combo vacuum-mop in our ratings, the Hoover ONEPWR Streamline Cordless Hard Floor Wet Dry Vacuum is superb at cleaning up wet and dry messes. It does a satisfying job of cleaning up dried stains, though its run time isn’t superlong. The vac-mop has a self-cleaning feature and an indicator that shows how much battery life is left.

If you’re looking for a soft mattress, the Casper Dream is a solid pick, providing pressure relief and comfort to those who need it. In our lab evaluation, we found the model—a newbie to CR’s ratings—to be a standout for petite back sleepers, and it serves all other sizes and positions very well. The Dream scores well for durability, too, so you can expect to get sound sleep on it for eight to 10 years. If you sleep with a partner, you should feel very little vibration from their movement. CR members give Casper mattresses high marks for comfort and owner satisfaction.

The Essentia Stratami is one of the top performers in CR’s tests, especially if you sleep on your back. Essentia’s Labor Day sale is a sitewide 25 percent discount, garnering big savings. Mattress shoppers who go to Essentia for organic materials won’t be disappointed in the performance of the company’s natural rubber latex-based foam. This mattress performed excellently for petite and average-sized back sleepers. Large and tall back sleepers and all side sleepers will also find very good performance.

Since last week, the price for this fridge has dropped $150 to a new low at Best Buy, beating the best price we’ve seen this year by $50. Equipped with an external water/ice dispenser, touchpad controls, and gallon-sized storage bins on the doors, the low-priced 33-inch Whirlpool WRS321SDHZ hits our thermostat control test out of the park. This side-by-side fridge also earns a solid rating for temperature uniformity, midlevel ratings for noise output and ease of use, and a substandard rating for energy efficiency. In our member surveys, Whirlpool’s side-by-side models earned a passable rating for predicted reliability and a rock-bottom rating for owner satisfaction.

The budget-friendly LG LDFC2423V is now just $20 more than its best price. It gets dinged in our member surveys for its middling reliability and satisfaction scores, but it still has a lot going for it, starting with its stellar washing performance in CR’s tests. It’s also considerably less expensive than the Bosch models that dominate this category. This model is also fairly quiet when running and has some of the design perks that make life a lot easier, like a soil sensor, an adjustable upper rack, adjustable tines, and a time-remaining display. But its drying performance is just okay.

The top-rated LG DLE3400W is at a new low price at Lowe’s, beating the previous best by $30. We expect it to perform similarly to the CR-tested LG DLEX3700W (now discontinued). The tested model delivers solid performance across the board, nabbing an ace rating for noise and ratings near the top in our drying and convenience tests. This stackable Energy Star certified machine, with a claimed capacity of 7.4 cubic feet, is equipped with a moisture sensor, an extended tumble, custom programs, and an end-of-cycle signal—offering all these features at a fairly low price.

The GE JGBS86SPSS is the least expensive model of the double-oven gas ranges recommended by CR, and the sale price dropped $100 just this week. But it doesn’t skimp on features. It’s equipped with continuous cast-iron grates, two high-power burners, and convection and air-frying modes. The ovens perform solidly in our baking and broiling tests, and the cooktop simmers very steadily, but its boiling speed is on the slower side of all the gas ranges we’ve tested. Based on our CR member surveys, GE gas ranges are top-notch for reliability and so-so for owner satisfaction

The Melitta Aroma Fresh Plus 10-Cup coffee maker is a grind-and-brew model, which means you can start with fresh beans every morning and let the machine do the rest of the work for you. It scored very well in our brew test, but our testers found it especially excellent in terms of convenience and carafe handling. In addition to its conical burr grinder with a 7.5-ounce bean hopper capacity and 3 grind settings, it features an LCD display, touch controls, auto-shutoff, a cleaning indicator, and a cone-type filter. This model is a little expensive, but it saves you the cost of a grinder if you don’t already have one—and you may be pretty pleased at how much of a difference it makes to brew with fresh-ground beans.

The Cooklee SM-1551 holds its own against better-known competitors. And the price is right. Whipping time and mixing cookie dough are top-notch, and it kneads bread dough well and quietly. Our testers found it convenient to use. It’s lighter than any of our other top contenders, and the bowl is almost 10 quarts vs. 5 for most other stand mixers. Whether you need that much volume is your call. Keep in mind that this mixer has a tilt head.

The GE Profile Opal 2.0 Nugget Icemaker is one of the best options on the market, according to CR’s tests. GE claims it can produce up to 24 pounds of ice a day (our testing did not last long enough to hit the max). It’s also among the quieter icemakers we tried. This slick-looking model makes the nugget type of ice and does it faster than all other models, which earned it the only top score for speed. It also has the highest water capacity and features a large, removable plastic water reservoir, which means fewer refills. It is the priciest in our ratings, making this discount even more important if you’re thinking of buying it.

This icemaker was about $50 less recently at Best Buy, but this is the lowest price right now across multiple retailers’ sites.

This Ninja air fryer has two baskets, and each can be removed on its own, which allows you to cook two different things at separate temperatures and cook times simultaneously (say, fries and chicken nuggets). Its total measured capacity is 6 quarts. In our tests, it was very easy to use and clean, and while it’s a little on the noisy side, it’s not the loudest of the models we’ve tested. It has six cook functions—air fry, air broil, roast, bake, reheat, and dehydrate—and programmed settings for cooking specific foods. It comes with a one-year warranty.

The Marshall Emberton II is a good-sounding small portable Bluetooth speaker that differentiates itself with its styling. So if you want to avoid the typical cylindrical speaker in Skittles colors, the Emberton II is an elegant option. Channeling the styling of its namesake company, the Emberton II is a nice gift for the guitar geek in your life. Unlike Marshall’s larger models, which sport satisfyingly beefy knobs, the baby Marshall wasn’t particularly easy to use in our lab tests.

If you like to run outside, the Bose Ultra Opens are a unique option that will allow you to listen to music while still being aware of your surroundings. They hook on your ear, just above the lobe, kind of like a cuff-style earring. They sound surprisingly good, too, once you get the placement just right. And it’s totally easy to hear things around you with a clarity that the "transparency" mode of most earbuds can’t match.

Looking for a lightweight tablet your kid can toss in their backpack and use all day at school? This previous-generation Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 has a crisp 11-inch display, a top-notch camera, and a long battery life. The price has also dropped $50 since the beginning of August.

Google’s newest smart thermostat, the Nest Learning Thermostat 4th gen, comes with a remote temperature sensor that you can place in another room to balance heating and cooling. It’s also one of just a few Matter-compatible smart thermostats on the market, meaning it works with any major smart-home system, including Apple Home.

This rugged-looking (and high-performing) Samsung smartwatch is aimed at outdoors enthusiasts—and anyone who wants the latest premium health- and fitness-tracking features. Just note that Galaxy Watches work only with Android devices. The price has been falling steadily.

The Abus Granit X-Plus 540 U-Lock is another good option if you want a sturdy lock for your e-bike or your regular bicycle. It scored well in our testing, but like the model above, it doesn’t include hardware for attaching it to your bike’s frame for easy transport.

This tub-shaped ice bath from Tru Grit is now $200 less than it was at the start of summer, making it a truly impressive deal. It’s more comfortable than the other models we tried, which are more barrel-shaped. It inflates like an air mattress and is pretty sturdy. Plus, the thicker PVC walls help insulate the tub and keep the ice water colder longer. This deal is a bundle that includes two ice molds so you can easily prep your ice for your baths.