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The Best Plain Yogurt

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I eat yogurt almost every single day — mixing it with sliced banana and honey at breakfast, using it to bulk up an afternoon smoothie, or topping a bowl of chili with it at dinner. Chances are, you do too. With the average American eating nearly 14 pounds of the probiotic marvel each year, it’s a wonder that yogurt’s only been part of our culinary zeitgeist since the ’70s, evolving from a fringe health food to a supermarket staple. Today, a head-spinning amount of the fermented milk product is in the dairy aisle, spanning styles, flavors, fat percentages, and milks (dairy and non). To make sense of it all, we tasted 61 plain cow’s milk yogurts, including nonfat, low-fat, and full-fat, and traditional (unstrained), Greek (strained), and Skyr (ultra-strained) styles. Just as a chef’s greatness can be judged by how well they make an omelet, we reasoned that yogurt should be judged by its plainest self. Ultimately, we landed on the 14 best, including standouts from Fa...
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10 Gifts for Anyone Not Going Back to School

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In this edition of The Gift, we share gifts — like a two-tone ring shaped like a pencil and an excellent salad bowl — that ease end-of-summer blues. “I’m not ready for summer to end :(” a friend texted last week. An innocuous text! A relatable text! A text that left me speechless. You see, here in Maine, for 12 weeks and 12 weeks only, the weather strums in perfect harmony with the topography: Hot days pair with cool nights, bracing waters accentuate lofty forests. June hits, and it’s a sprint through lobster shells, beach towels, and pockets loaded with ice cream napkins — straight on through Labor Day. It’s transcendent. It’s singular. And when it’s over, some of us breathe a secret sigh of relief. I am always ready for summer to end :) My longstanding, if unpopular, love for the start of the school year is well documented — and at least partially explained by the privilege of high-gear summers. What’s the perfect antidote to sand, sun, and sugar? Bath, brush, a...
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The Best Time to Buy a Mattress (and How to Get a Deal)

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Listen and follow The Wirecutter Show Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadio Buying a mattress can often be a boring, expensive task. And the mattress industry doesn't make it easy: Prices are constantly changing, brands use confusing terminology, and permanent “sales” can make it hard to know what's a real discount. In this episode, Wirecutter senior staff writer Elise Czajkowski explains when to look for deals and how to negotiate a better price when you're ready to buy . She shares why you should always ask for an additional discount, how to negotiate with a store or online chatbot, and why one popular online shopping trick—abandoning your cart—may not work for mattresses. This episode covers Why you should never pay full price for a mattress. Those constant website “sales” are often just the regular price in disguise; the biggest discounts tend to come around major holidays like Memorial Day, Labor Day, Black Friday, ...
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The Best Cheap Laptops

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Budget laptops are becoming endangered this year as essential components like memory and storage undergo significant price increases . This is a major change from previous years, where we saw an overwhelming glut of cheap laptops, most of which were downright awful. But that abundance is drying up as prices rise and as older, cheaper models get discontinued, making it harder than ever to find a good laptop at a reasonable price. To uncover decent options, we’ve researched and tested hundreds of cheap laptops over the years. Our picks are for anyone on a strict budget who primarily wants to browse the web, watch Netflix, or handle occasional school or work tasks. They’re not ideal for heavier workloads such as photo and video editing or gaming, and in just a couple of years they’ll feel more sluggish on everyday activities. But not everyone has $1,000 or more to spend on a better laptop that feels faster and lasts longer. We have picks here for Chromebooks and Win...
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The Best Electric Vehicle Chargers for Home

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Whether you’re a longtime electric vehicle owner, or you’re still waiting for your first EV to leave the factory floor, you should consider investing in a Level 2 charger for your home. Most modern EVs ship with a Level 1 charger, which you can toss in your trunk (or frunk ) and plug into any standard wall outlet. But the fastest way to juice up an EV at home is to use a Level 2 charger, which can add at least four times as many miles per hour of charge. After researching and testing dozens of models for hundreds of hours, we found the Emporia Classic Level 2 EV Charger (J1772 version) to be the best at-home charger for EVs with a J1772 port. Likewise, we found the Emporia Classic Level 2 EV Charger (NACS version) to be the best for Teslas and other EVs with a J3400 connector (also called the North American Charging Standard, or NACS). In either configuration, this charger is powerful, simple to use, and equipped with a long cord. And thanks to its streamlined ...
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The Best Projectors

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Different projectors are designed for different uses. We carry much higher expectations for a 4K projector designed for a big-screen home theater than we do for a portable, battery-powered mini projector designed to be an everyday TV replacement. Some projectors excel with movies in a completely dark room, while others are better for sports or gaming in a room with some ambient light. We’ve tested more than 80 projectors to find the best options for a variety of uses and budgets. from Wirecutter: Reviews for the Real World https://ift.tt/0UDIbFK via IFTTT
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What Your Noise-Cancelling Headphones Can and Can’t Do

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This old Amazon commercial bugs the heck out of me. In it, a young boy jumps on a bed, raucously playing an electric guitar while another kid plays drums. Meanwhile, a father relaxes blissfully undisturbed because he’s wearing noise-cancelling headphones. This scene drives me bonkers because, as a headphones expert, I know the truth: That’s not how noise-cancelling headphones work. It’s a popular misconception that noise-cancelling headphones can block out any sound around you. People purchase them in the hopes of dimming the din of kids at play, loud-talking officemates, the barking dog next door, and airplane engines. The trouble is, active noise cancellation is really effective on only one of those things. (Spoiler: It’s the airplane engine.) The reason has to do with the physics of sound and how noise-cancelling headphones work. from Wirecutter: Reviews for the Real World https://ift.tt/dUyw26v via IFTTT
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