Throughout the year, CNN Underscored is constantly Testing products — from coffee makers to computers to sheets to shower heads — to help our readers find the absolute best things.
Our testing process is rigorous. We spend countless hours of research, consulting experts, reading editorial reviews and perusing user ratings to identify the products we want to bring in for testing, be they things that have stood the test of time or the most promising new contenders. Then we spend weeks or months testing and retesting each product multiple times in real-world settings, putting everything through the sort of use and abuse it’s likely to encounter in your home. We’re confident that our process lets us identify the very best things so you can quickly and easily buy what you need.
Here, we round up all the products that took the top spot in our tests throughout the year.
We’ll make this really simple for you: If you want to spend less than $100 on wireless earbuds, you won’t find a better pair than the EarFun Air.
Read more from our testing of budget earbuds here.
The Beats Solo 3 headphones were released back in 2016, which in headphones years means they’re basically living their golden years. But despite their age, they consistently held their own during our testing. They were often neck-and-neck with headphones twice their price, if not flat-out surpassing them. The Beat Solo 3 produced sound you’d expect from a much more expensive pair of headphones. Instrumental and vocal clarity were among the best we’ve heard.
Read more from our testing of noise-canceling headphones here.
The Beat Solo 3s were released back in 2016, which in headphones years means they’re basically living their golden years. But despite their age, they consistently held their own during our testing. They were often neck-and-neck with headphones twice their price, if not flat-out surpassing them.
Read more from our testing of on-ear headphones here.
The Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones boast class-leading sound and phenomenal noise-canceling ability, so much so that they ousted our former top overall pick, the Beats Solo Pro, in terms of ANC quality, as the over-ear WH-1000XM4 better seals the ear from outside noise. Whether it was a noise from a dryer, loud neighbors down the hall or high-pitched sirens, these headphones proved impenetrable. This is a feat that other headphones, notably the Solo Pro, could not compete with.
Read more from our testing of over-ear headphones here.
Overall, Fluance is a brand that cares deeply about providing the best possible listening experience to consumers. Out of the box, you get everything you need to establish high-quality sound at a premium.
Read more from our testing of record players here.
While the Streambar Pro didn’t feature the best sound quality of the soundbars we tested, you would have to spend more than double the price to get something more than nominally better.
Read more from our testing of soundbars here.
Apple’s AirPods Pro hit all the marks. They deliver a wide soundstage, thanks to on-the-fly equalizing tech that produces playback that seemingly brings you inside the studio with the artist. They have the best noise-canceling ability of all the earbuds we tested, which, aside from stiff-arming distractions, creates a truly immersive experience. To sum it up, you’re getting a comfortable design, a wide soundstage, easy connectivity and long battery life.
Read more from our testing of true wireless earbuds here.
If you’re willing to splurge on a more premium set of earbuds that will help you quiet the chaos happening around you at home, then the Galaxy Buds Pro are worth the premium. Whether it’s a barking dog, a crying baby or a blaring jackhammer from the street below you, the Buds Pro’s dependable active noise cancellation (ANC) works to block it out, leaving you with a little white noise and room to think.
Read more from our testing of work-from-home earbuds and headphones here.
Beauty and Grooming
Remington’s Smart Beard Trimmer scored exceptionally well in all of our tests. What sets this trimmer apart from the rest we tested is all of its “smart” abilities. But this isn’t just the dream trimmer for tech nerds; there’s also real substance to it. It was our most durable trimmer, coming out unscathed from our drop test, where we dropped each trimmer from a shaving position three times.
Read more from our testing of beard trimmers here.
DryBar Detox Dry Shampoo was the best at absorbing oil, aptly removed sweat and dirt and had the most pleasing scent, leaving our panelists’ hair feeling cleaner and smelling better than any other dry shampoo we tried. Think of it as a sort of oil-absorbing sheet for your hair — a sponge that, even when applied in a fine, veil-like mist, sops up oil, sweat and dirt for even the greasier-haired among us.
Read more from our testing of dry shampoos here.
Through our tests, we found that the best face moisturizer overall is dermatologist favorite Olay Regenerist. The brand describes it as “an anti-aging moisturizer that hydrates skin and helps retain skin’s youthful surface contours.” Essentially, it’s meant to diminish the look of fine lines while improving skin’s elasticity and firmness. What sets it apart is the formula.
Read more from our testing of face moisturizers here.
The Dyson Supersonic is expensive. Like, $400 expensive. But, man, does it live up to its hype. It dries hair at warp speed, blasts out heat at a whopping 70 mph, is much, much quieter than other models we tested, and is just futuristic and cool all around.
Read more from our testing of hair dryers here.
The Stila Stay All Day Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner excels at many things: It applies smoothly and precisely, and its firm felt marker-like tip allows you to create a perfectly sharp wing with minimal effort. While firm enough to apply with accuracy, though, it does not snag or pull on the eyelid, and its staying power is top-notch — one of the most long wearing of the liners we tested.
Read more from our testing of liquid eyeliners here.
The Beautyblender claimed our top spot, thanks to its versatility, effectiveness and overall comfortable feel. It’s a rounded sponge with a teardrop shape, designed to be used while moist.
Read more from our testing of makeup sponges here.
The Stila Stay All Day Liquid Lipstick has thousands of 5-star ratings across the internet, and it’s easy to see why. True to its name, this product clings to your lips for hours upon hours, burritos and messy breakfast sandwiches be damned. It’s also surprisingly moisturizing for such a superior stay-put formula, a combo that’s rare to come by.
Read more from our testing of matte lipsticks here.
Best men’s razor: Gillette SkinGuard ($8, originally $9.99; amazon.com)
Out of all the razors we tested, the Gillette SkinGuard gave us the easiest, most comfortable shave by far, mainly due to its specialized blades. The razor has little bumpers in between the SkinGuard’s two blades to minimize skin irritation. While Gillette says this causes a shave that isn’t as close as its five-blade razors, we didn’t notice much of a difference between the SkinGuard and the other cartridge blades we tested.
Read more from our testing of men’s razors here.
Best sunscreen: Hawaiian Tropic Island Sport Sunscreen Spray ($8.92, originally $9.69; amazon.com)
The Hawaiian Tropic Island Sport Sunscreen Spray scored miles above every other sunscreen we tested. An SPF 30, broad-spectrum, chemical formulation, this spray sunscreen applied super light, rubbed into the skin right away and smelled deliciously of coconut.
Read more from our testing of sunscreens here.
We loved the Billie razor, from the way it looks, with a cool, colorblocked design and curved cartridge, to its super-sharp blades that removed hairs in a single swipe. The razor is also comfortable to use — the handle has a rubber backing to provide a firm but comfortable grip so there’s no slipping.
Read more from our testing of women’s razors here.
The Baratza Virtuoso+ has a sleek, intuitive design. It also has 40 settings from which to choose. Having more options lets you micro-customize the grind size to your liking, so you get the exact taste you want from the beans. It was easy to quickly customize our grinds, from espresso and Turkish coffee to French press or cold brew.
Read more from our testing of coffee grinders here.
Blue Bottle’s coffee subscription hit all of our marks during the testing process. It has multiple kinds of subscriptions perfect for all kinds of coffee drinkers. With its solid customizability, variety and — above all — outstanding taste, Blue Bottle beat out every other coffee subscription we tested. No matter what you want from a coffee subscription, Blue Bottle tailors an experience that will always provide you with freshly roasted, delicious coffee right at your doorstep.
Read more from our testing of coffee subscriptions here.
The Hario Mizudashi Cold Brew coffee pot is a sleek, sophisticated and streamlined carafe that produces 1 liter (about 4.25 cups) of rich, robust brew in just eight hours. It was among the simplest to assemble, it executed an exemplary brew in about the shortest time span and it looked snazzy doing it. Plus, it rang up as the second-most affordable of our inventory.
Read more from our testing of cold brew coffee makers here.
We brewed countless pots of coffee with the Braun KF6050WH BrewSense drip coffee maker, ranging from light to dark roast, and each one yielded a strong, delicious cup with no sediment, thanks to the gold tone filter, designed to remove the bitterness from coffee as well as reduce single-use paper-filter waste. The machine we tested was white, but it also comes in black, and it’s compact enough to fit under the cabinets in a smaller space compared to some of the more cumbersome machines we tested.
Read more from our testing of drip coffee makers here.
The Kalita Wave 185 Pour-Over Coffee Dripper features a flat bottom with three drip holes, which enables more easily and evenly saturated coffee grounds. The flat-bottom shape and its larger surface resulted in a rich and robust single cup of coffee, and it was also the most user-friendly of the drippers that required a swirled pour, producing between 16 and 26 ounces at a time.
Read more from our testing of pour-over coffee makers here.
If you’re in the market for a coffee machine that can brew a consistently great cup that’s piping hot, makes espresso, is extremely easy to use and looks great on your counter, then you need the Breville-Nespresso VertuoPlus. This single-cup coffee maker stood out from the pack in nearly every category. It produced the hottest coffee of the bunch, delivered the same great taste with every cup, allowed for a variety of brewing options and truly could not be easier to use.
