ICYMI: Great Beach Gear, Ice Cream Recall, Worth-It Memorial Day Sales
Also last week at CR: What to know about using AI for health questions, phone cases for your Samsung Galaxy, and gifts for grads
Our In Case You Missed It series highlights recent ratings, news, and investigations.
- Electronics: Samsung Galaxy Phone Cases Artificial Intelligence
- Beach: Gear for Summer
- Health: Food Recalls
- Sales: Memorial Day
- Gifts: Graduates
- Latest Ratings
We took beach gear—think canopies, tents, chairs, and sand-repellent beach towels—to Long Beach, N.Y., where we assessed them by category. Check your freezers: Straus Family Creamery has recalled five flavors of its organic ice cream due to metal pieces, though no injuries have been reported as of yet. It’s Memorial Day, but not every Memorial Day sale is good. Our Deals editors have pulled together the best Memorial Day deals across categories, as well as those specific to Best Buy, appliances, and mattresses. AI can be useful, but when it comes to your health, its fabrications may be difficult to detect—and AI systems aren’t bound by the same privacy laws as your doctor’s office. Smartphones are sturdier than ever, but a phone case for your new Samsung is always a good idea, especially when you’re spending $1,000. Graduation party to attend? We’ve covered the best gifts for your favorite grad.
Photo: Lisa Fogarty/Consumer Reports Photo: Lisa Fogarty/Consumer Reports
Optimize your next beach trip with the best canopies, tents, chairs, and towels, all rigorously tested by CR.
Lisa Fogarty has been hard at work, testing and writing about the best beach gear so you can better prepare for the summer ahead. Below, find Fogarty’s articles and the tests she used for each. To find the...
- 3 best beach canopies, she spent a windy beach day evaluating each canopy’s ease of use and its ability to provide shade and withstand wind.
- 2 best beach tents, she set each up (and broke down) each model four times and evaluated opening and closing windows from the inside and the outside.
- 3 best beach chairs, she took notes on how comfy each was, how easy it was to carry, and how well it held her things.
- 3 best beach towels, she assessed each towel’s warmth and comfort after a quick dip in the ocean.
Source: FDA Source: FDA
The best antidote for a hot day? A cold treat that hasn’t been recalled due to the risk of metal pieces. Check your freezer for these ice creams.
Indulging in a bowl of cold ice cream at home after a long, hot day at the beach—skin tingling from time spent under a bright, blue sky it hasn’t seen in months, lips warm and chapped, hair wind- and sand-swept—is about as close as I’ve ever gotten to divinity.
Sadly, this experience now excludes a few of Straus Family Creamery’s Organic Ice Cream products, which the company recalled due to the possibility that five flavors (cookie dough, Dutch chocolate, mint chip, strawberry, and vanilla bean) may contain metal pieces.
The cold, hard facts about the recalled products:
- “Best by” dates in December 2026
- Sold in stores starting May 4, 2026
- Shipped to stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin
For more on what to do if you bought one of these ice creams, check our article, and, as CR’s director of food safety says, check your freezer.
Photos: Manufacturers Photos: Manufacturers
Memorial Day is a great time for big-ticket purchases, and CR has been tracking the best deals on grills, appliances, and more, so you can nab something worth celebrating.
Whether you’re looking for something seasonal—a grill, sunscreen, other outdoor essentials—or something evergreen—vacuums, kitchen appliances, fitness equipment—Memorial Day is a great excuse to save using a discount CR’s hard-working Deals editors have unearthed for you.
For electronics: Check out the best deals at Best Buy.
For large appliances: Check out the best deals on appliances.
For mattresses: Check out the best deals on mattresses.
For everything else: Check out all the holiday deals going on right now.
Paging Dr. GPT. Here's how to use AI for health questions—and where to turn when you’re unsure.
AI can be useful, but “there are places where the information is inaccurate,” says Ateev Mehrotra, MD, at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, R.I. "And it’s hard for the user to know where."
Three steps can make a difference when consulting AI for health reasons:
- In your prompt, tell the chatbot to rely only on info from major medical institutions, government websites, and studies from reputable medical journals
- Follow the links to confirm the sources are trustworthy, and the summary is accurate
- Talk to your doctor about what you find
Read our article for more reasons to be wary—your information may not be protected, for instance—and the websites you can count on.
When we tested the Samsung Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra, they survived 100 drops without breaking. But they cost so much, you may want to suit them up anyway.
A great phone case for a Samsung Galaxy S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra only needs to check two boxes for you to know it’ll do its most important job (protect your phone):
- Does it fit your model precisely, with a snug seal around the frame and fragile components, like the camera and charging port?
- Does it have a raised edge around the front display and rear camera to protect them from direct impact, or bulkier rubber corners for shock absorption?
But there are other, more subjective factors when it comes to a great smartphone case:
- Do you want a smooth or grippy smartphone case? Click here.
- Do you want a bulky or lightweight smartphone case? Click here.
- Do you want a smartphone case that allows you to wirelessly charge? Click here.
Read our guide for more, including a recommendation for a colorful phone case and our notes about screen protectors and warranties.
CR’s experts have pulled together a list of great gifts if you want to offer something more unconventional to your young traveler, homebody, or techie.
It’s nearly June. Instead of visions of sugarplums dancing, it’s about time school bells start ringing in our heads—a slightly more uncomfortable version of “The Night Before Christmas” that signifies the end of books and lockers and the beginning of a new phase of life.
To celebrate, Anna Kocharian, CR’s Shopping editor, has compiled a list of the best gifts for a newly minted grad that they will actually want and use, whether they love traveling (how about a bag?), staying at home (a nonstick frying pan?), or the latest tech (a portable photo printer?).
Fresh From the Labs
We’re constantly testing the latest products and retesting existing stock. Here are last week’s drops we didn’t mention above:
- We tested a few new wireless and Bluetooth speakers. Find our latest ratings.
- We added new robot vacuums to our ratings. Read more about the best robot vacuums.
- We assessed new under-desk treadmills. For more, check out our ratings.
