Tag: buying guides

25 Gift Ideas Under $25 (2024), Tested and Reviewed

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We all have a loved one who never wants any fuss. “Don’t buy me anything,” they say. But you know them better than that. The trick is to get something that doesn’t cost much, just to show you’re thinking of them. They don’t want to be lavished with expensive stuff, but they do like to feel appreciated. The best way to pick a gift that shows your affection is to choose something that matches your giftee’s interests. Here, we’ve hand-tested and curated 25 items for gifting, each of them under $25. This holiday season, you can make a statement without making a fuss.

Be sure to check out our many other gift guides, including gifts for coffee lovers and gifts for outdoorsy people.

Updated November 2024: We’ve added a popcorn popper, a camping mug, a cute crossbody wallet, and some sparkly gel pens. We’ve also updated prices and links throughout and removed a few items.

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Former WIRED reviewer Medea Giordano also contributed to this guide.

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November 8, 2024
We Tested and Reviewed the Best Home Treadmills (2024)
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Buying a treadmill is a big commitment. Even the more affordable models are pricey. They take up a lot of space, and if you’ve ever come across a busted belt or a broken screen, you know how frustrating they can be. That being said, having a cardio machine in your house that works makes exercising so much more convenient. I definitely run more (and stick to my marathon training plans better) throughout the winter months because of various treadmills I’ve had at home over the years. They can also make interval training a bit easier, and help you practice hills if you don’t have access to much challenging incline outside.

If you’re in the market for one, you probably know there are tons of options at all kinds of price ranges out there, and it can be hard to know what’s really worth splurging on. To help you narrow down your search, we tested all the treads below, seeing how they held up through countless long distance runs, hill workouts, and sprinting intervals. Here’s what you should keep in mind as you shop, and our top picks for the best treadmills of 2024. Don’t see anything you like? Don’t forget to check out the rest of our buying guides, including the Best Action Cameras and the Best Sunglasses.

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How to Pick a Treadmill

Of course, budget will probably be the biggest factor. Beyond that, here are a few other things that you might want to consider in your search:
- How much space do you have? Most companies recommend that you leave at least two feet of clearance on either side of the treadmill and six feet behind, in case you fly off while running at high speeds.
- What is the machine’s weight capacity?
- Which metrics do you want to measure? Do you want to measure pace, distance, or heart rate? Do you want a built-in display or do you have your own wrist computer?
- Do you want built-in fitness programming, or do you have your own workout plan?
- Do you need a machine that you can all-out sprint on, or one that will allow you to practice running on steep inclines and declines?
Best Overall

In SNL’s Stefon’s voice: This treadmill has everything. A solid top speed of 12 mph (a roughly five-minute per mile pace), incline and decline options, a springy running deck, fans, a 16-inch pivoting touchscreen you can use to stream shows, and two water bottle holders. Not only is this a durable, well-built machine, it has some seriously cool features in terms of programming. NordicTrack uses iFIT, which features a library of 10,000 workouts, including running, walking, hiking, and even off-tread activities like strength training and yoga. (You’ll need a subscription to access the majority of the workouts—there are two options at $15 or $40 a month.) You can follow a trainer through gorgeous mountain and beach landscapes, and you can opt to have the treadmill automatically adjust your speed and incline throughout the workout.

Another feature, called Smart Adjust, will tweak the speed and incline to match your fitness level over time, based on changes you made in your past workouts. Using the free wearable monitor that comes with the tread, your machine can track your heart rate, and Active Pulse can also auto-adjust your workout’s intensity to keep you in your ideal heart rate zones throughout. Even the fans can adjust automatically during workouts to give you more breeze when you’re really suffering. If you like workout variety and following along with digital training—versus running your own workouts—you’ll get a lot out of this treadmill.

When I tested the 1750, I was following a training plan for the Kerlingarfjöll Ultra, a trail series held in the Highlands region of Iceland, in which I was running the 22 km race. I did a lot of my own workouts on this tread, and it was well suited for manual training, too. I used it to do several interval sessions, and I appreciated how quickly it moved between speeds. You can change the speed and incline manually via up/down buttons on the front of the machine under the screen, and by pressing numbered buttons on the sides of the screen.

I would have loved to have the option of speed and incline dials for quicker and easier adjusting, but the buttons worked well enough. The fans are well-placed. The deck on the 1750 was also bouncier underfoot than other treads I’ve tested (in a good way). I got a good energy return without feeling unstable. It was also lighter and easier to fold and move around than many of the other options I tested, though still not exactly easy for me at 5’4”. The 1750 also just looks and feels really nice, even though it’s by no means the most expensive option out there. It’s the one I wanted to keep coming back to for workouts.
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November 8, 2024
12 Best Stocking Stuffers (2024), Tested and Reviewed

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This sexual wellness kit from Foria includes Melts with CBD, which are suppositories that deliver 50 milligrams of broad-spectrum CBD as well as lubrication upon melting. You’ll also get little vials of Arousal Oil with CBD, which stimulates erogenous zones, and Sex Oil, which is a soothing, luxurious lube. All of them feature CBD and natural organic ingredients like coconut oil or cocoa butter, with no synthetic additives or fragrances. I found them to be smooth and pleasant with no noticeable effects other than excellent lubrication. And no, unlike some of the brand’s past products, these won’t get you high.

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November 7, 2024
6 Tested Safety Apps for Personal Protection (2024)

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Your iPhone comes equipped with a few safety features that work right out of the box—no extra downloads or purchases needed.

First, there’s location sharing, which lets you share your whereabouts directly with other iPhone users. Just open their contact card, tap Send My Current Location or Share My Location—and a time frame: indefinitely, until the end of the day, or for one hour.

The Emergency SOS feature is just as straightforward. When needed, just hold down the power button and one of the volume buttons, then slide the SOS slider to call 911. Or, keep holding both buttons, and it will automatically dial after a five-second countdown. You can also text 911.

With iOS 17, Apple introduced a Check In tool. It essentially lets you, well, check in, with someone you trust, right within your message thread. If you don’t update your selected contact once you arrive at your destination, it will prompt you for a response and share important data (location, battery life, network signal) with your emergency contact. Here’s how to use it.

The obvious downside is that your phone needs to be charged for these features to work. If you’re in a situation where your battery is running low, I recommend sending your current location to a loved one while you still have power. If GPS tracking isn’t for you, you could always snap a quick screenshot of your location or route on a map and share it with a friend. That way, if something unexpected happens, emergency responders will have a starting point to trace your steps.

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November 7, 2024
11 Best Cheap Mattresses, Tested and Reviewed

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OK, we have to preface this with a disclaimer: You’re going to spend roughly a third of your life on a mattress, so there are probably better places to save a buck. Seriously, if you can save up to buy a nicer mattress, do. But for tight budgets (or guest rooms), we’ve tested more than a dozen mattresses under $1,000 that you can buy online and have conveniently shipped to you in a box in a matter of days.

We slept on a variety of mattresses of differing firmness, materials, and filling to find what we consider to be the best mattresses at a budget-friendly price point. Some of these cheap mattresses far exceeded expectations for costing roughly what you can spend on a fancy dinner.

These under-$1,000 picks are also conveniently shipped straight to you. Buying a mattress online is easy and efficient—a box comes to you with no need for a truck or professional movers. Just lug the bed-in-a-box inside, crack the cardboard, slash open the plastic wrap, and watch the mattress spring into shape.

The drawback to online shopping is you can’t test a showroom of mattresses until you find the perfect fit. Add in the fact that reviews can be gamed by bad actors, and it’s hard to know what’s worth your time and what’s not. WIRED has done the work for you, spending at least a week, if not longer, sleeping on some of the cheapest mattresses you can buy online—we’re looking for a great night’s sleep at a good value. It’s worth noting that we don’t think online is necessarily the best place to buy a mattress—we go into our reasons below—but if your prime focus is cost and convenience, then you do have some good options with these cheap mattresses you can buy online. The prices below are based on queen size.

Be sure to check out our other sleep guides, including the Best Mattresses, Best Organic Mattresses, Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers, and Best Sleep Gadgets.

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November 7, 2024
9 Best Down Comforters (2024), Tested and Reviewed

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Look for a cover thread count between 230 and 500. Fabrics with these thread counts are “down-proof” and minimize the chances of feathers poking through.

Fill power vs. fill weight: Fill power is a measurement of how much space, in cubic inches, an ounce of down takes up—for instance, a fill power of 600 means one ounce of down will take up 600 cubic inches. A higher fill power means fluffier, more efficient down. Fill power doesn’t necessarily translate to warmth, but it’s an indication of the quality of the down and how much the down compresses. Fill weight, on the other hand, is the amount of down inside the product. If something has high fill power but low fill weight, it won’t necessarily be warmer than if something has low fill power and high fill weight. It’s a little confusing. The most important factor is how the down is distributed. Look for baffle-box or sewn-through construction in your comforters for an indication that down will be distributed evenly and keep you warm throughout the night. Baffle boxes keep down lofty but need to be shaken sometimes to reallocate the down inside, whereas sewn-through keeps things in place but often results in a slightly less fluffy comforter.

Goose vs. duck down: Goose down has a higher fill power than duck down, so it’s fluffier and loftier. It’s also less smelly and generally more hypoallergenic. On the other hand, duck down is usually more affordable. We think goose down is best unless you’re on a very tight budget. Two common types of goose down are Hungarian and Hutterite. Both are considered to be top-notch based on the large down clusters typical of birds that come from the cold regions of Hungary and Canada. Hutterite tends to be more affordable. You likely wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two. Hungarian down can be a bit loftier, and Hutterite down can be a bit softer, but ultimately neither of these factors should make or break your decision to purchase a comforter. When it comes to the types of birds the down comes from, however, you should look for all goose down or at least a blend of goose and duck. That will cut back on odors and allergens and offer a fluffier, more high-quality blanket.

Down comforter care tips: If you’re investing in a comforter, you might want to consider getting a duvet cover, which can help protect the comforter and also usually improves the look (unless you’re into plain white). When it comes to washing the comforter itself, you want to follow the instructions on the care tag, and wash it as infrequently as you can. You can do it at home if your washer is big enough; otherwise, head to local laundromat to use their bigger machines. Use a delicate wash cycle with high spin speed to get as much moisture out as possible, and avoid using fabric softener, which can degrade the down’s fluffy texture. You should also use a small amount of detergent—err on the side of less, not more—and consider an extra rinse cycle to ensure that all the soap is rinsed out. Make sure that your comforter is fully dry using a low-heat setting. It might take a few cycles. Fluff the comforter between rounds to ensure efficient drying and maximum loft.

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November 6, 2024
8 Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers, Tested and Reviewed (2024)

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There’s no such thing as the best mattress for everyone. Not when there are so many different sleeping positions. However, most people are side sleepers. The numbers vary by study and how rigidly you define a side sleeper, but between half and three-quarters of people sleep on their side for at least part of the night.

I am one of those side sleepers, and I’ve tested and reviewed more than three dozen beds from various mattress brands over the past 18 months to find one that suits my needs. Firm mattresses are nice for back sleepers, but side and stomach sleepers may typically prefer a softer bed with some give for hips and knees. Before I started testing mattresses for WIRED, I would’ve told you the softer the bed the better. But, as I’ve sampled more styles and religiously tracked my sleep on my Apple Watch, I’ve found that the best mattresses for side sleepers offer both cushion and support. The top recommendations below have enough give to let your hips sink in for a natural spinal alignment without making you feel like rolling over is an uphill battle. Everything I recommend was put through at least a week of real-life testing in my home. I have provided my own ratings for the firmness of each mattress I tested based on how soft they felt after a week of testing—since I only tested one of variant of each mattress you can approximate what a different firmness lever will be like when ordering. All of the prices shown are for queen-size models.

Be sure to check out our other sleep guides, including the Best Mattresses, Best Organic Mattresses, Best Cooling Mattresses, Best Pillows, and our new guide to the Best Body Pillows for Side Sleepers.

Updated October 2024: We’ve added the updated version of the all-foam Nectar Premier as our pick for people looking for a soft mattress and the Helix Midnight Luxe with GlacioTex and ErgoAlign as the best pick for spinal alignment.

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Is sleeping on your side good for you?

If you’ve ever tried to consciously change your sleeping position (maybe because of a medical procedure or odd bed) you probably know it’s tough to fight your natural inclinations. The good news for side sleepers is the broad consensus among experts is that it’s at least as good as any other option.

Sleep experts at Houston Methodist say side sleeping has “the least negative impact on health.” Which is great! The only things worse for you than sleeping on your side are not sleeping enough or sleeping in any other position!

I have always envied back sleepers but sleeping on your back is the “worst position” according to the Mayo Clinic, which calls side sleeping “a good way to sleep.”

What type of mattress is best for side sleepers, hybrid or memory foam?

We prefer hybrids for side sleepers. Given that you’re putting more weight on a smaller surface area you might think that memory foam is nicer than a hybrid mattress that has a layer of springs (often called coils). On memory foam, you sink into a fluffy little cloud and get support on the sides.

The problem is that when you’re sleeping well and not moving much, over the course of a night, that foam will slowly but surely compress under you. If it’s just one layer of foam, after a while it will feel like you’re sleeping on a yoga mat. That’s why mattresses with multiple comfort layers of foam of various weights are better, and why we like hybrids better yet. That layer of springs means the foam doesn’t compact nearly as much in my experience.

A good hybrid gives you a chance to sleep for a solid six hours without needing to change position, which isn’t necessarily the case for me on an all-foam mattress. Hybrids also tend to sleep cooler because there’s less mass of solid foam absorbing heat.

What’s the ideal firmness levels for side sleepers?

Most side sleepers gravitate toward a soft mattresses, which usually means medium-soft memory foam. Over the course of a night, though, you want to be sure you have a mattress with enough support. All types of mattresses can offer that, but be sure to pay close attention to the firmness level the company advertises and the firmness options within it. Also take your body type into account, as the more body weight you have, the firmer the mattress you’ll want. I’ve offered my own subjective scale of how firm the mattresses I tested are below, noting which variant I tried in each case.

One other thing worth considering is that it’s easier to make a mattress softer later. If you’re spending a lot of money on a high-quality mattress made with good materials and you feel it’s too firm it’s relatively cheap and easy to add a mattress topper, since almost every mattress topper has the effect of softening your sleeping surface. However, you can’t practically make a mattress firmer—if you found a firm mattress topper and put it on a soft foam bed it would still have a squishy base which would lead to sinkage and likely pull your back out of alignment. So my advice as a mattress tester who has slept on many, many bed-in-a-box mattresses shipped to my home is to always error toward too firm, knowing that if just after the trial period you realize you didn’t pick the perfect mattress you have lots of options for changing your trajectory.

What’s the best type of mattress for heavy people who are side-sleepers?

I am a bigger guy—smaller now than when I started testing mattresses, thanks to semaglutide, but still a bigger guy. I’ve found that the bigger you are the firmer you want your mattress, as otherwise your body weight will compress the foam and springs below you too much. If you’re heavier, look for extra support.

How I test side sleeper mattresses

I have reviewed three dozen mattresses and I personally tested every pick in this guide. I slept on each pick mattress here in my own home for at least one week and long-term tested the top pick, the Bear Elite Hybrid, for nearly a year when I was not actively working on a different mattress review. When there are multiple models available, I usually ask for the firmest option available and grade the firmness based on my impressions after a full week of sleep. In addition to my subjective assessment I closely track my sleep stats using an Apple Watch Ultra.

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November 5, 2024
The Best Online Gift Cards and Digital Gift Ideas (2024)

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Trawling through busy retail stores seeking gifts is a daunting task. Shopping online can be just as time-consuming, and you may run into delivery delays. Even if you successfully secure a haul of presents, many will wind up in closets or charity stores. It’s time to try an online gift. Digital presents and online gift cards are easier. Shop from your comfy sofa or cozy bed—no need for gift wrapping or shipping. We have a virtual smorgasbord of delicious digital gift ideas for you.

You might also be interested in the Best Subscription Boxes for Gifting, the Best Gift Subscriptions for Kids, or one of our many other gift guides.

Updated October 2024: We’ve added new entries in several sections, including food and restaurants, online teaching courses, and travel and experiences, and we removed discontinued services or gift options and updated existing entries to reflect the latest changes and prices.

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Photograph: Amazon

They may not be all that imaginative, but electronic gift cards let your loved ones choose what they actually want, and it’s never disappointing to receive one (assuming it’s at a place you like). Gift cards are everywhere—you can also look beyond the retail giants to find highly rated independent stores near your giftee.

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November 5, 2024
13 Best White Elephant Gifts (2024): Legos, Desk Accessories

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White elephant parties present a unique challenge: Can you find something either cool or funny enough within a set budget that a group of people—who are potentially strangers—will battle to take it home?

If you’re headed to your first white elephant gift exchange, here’s a quick explainer on what’s about to happen. Everyone will bring a wrapped gift (often under a certain price, like $25) and place them into a pile or central spot, and then each person will draw a number to see the order. When your number is called, you can either choose and unwrap a gift from the pile, or steal one that has already been unwrapped by someone. Most exchanges will have a limit of how often you can steal one gift—usually around three times—so if you have the best gift in your hands, there’s no guarantee you’ll get to keep it. If your gift is stolen, you can either unwrap a new one or steal a different gift (no take-backs, sorry).

The real thrill comes from finding something great in a pile of who-knows-what. Some folks bring joke gifts, some bring booze to be safe, and some gifts will feel like garbage to you but gems to others. Here are some gifts I recommend bringing, ranging from quirky to cool. There’s something in this guide too for every potential price cap.

Looking for more gift ideas? Don’t miss our other awesome gift guides, including Best Gifts for Under $30, Best Gifts for Cold People, Best Gifts for Moms, and Best Gifts for Outdoorsy People.

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November 4, 2024
7 Best Beauty Box Subscriptions, Tested and Reviewed (2024)

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I’m a big proponent of treating myself. I think everyone should have more little treats, all the time, always. A monthly beauty box subscription guarantees that once per month you will receive a little box of joy on your doorstep. Whether that joy is centered on sample sizes, full-size products, makeup, skin care, or bath and body items is largely dependent on the service you choose. But I tried a few months of the most popular services, and these are the best I’ve found. (Note that we’re still waiting on our Ipsy and BoxyCharm shipments to arrive, so look out for our thoughts on those and more popular services in a future update.)

Be sure to check out our related guides on the Best Subscription Boxes for Kids, Best Snack Boxes, and Best Meal Kit Subscriptions for more recommendations.

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Are Beauty Boxes Worth It?

WIRED: Beauty boxes are an excellent way to discover new products, and they usually offer excellent value compared to buying the items separately. You can’t put a price tag on the sheer dopamine rush of getting a present in the mail every month. (Or maybe in a literal sense, you can, but I still think it’s priceless.) Products that don’t work for you will make good gifts or donation items.

TIRED: Some beauty boxes have a whole lot of little environmentally unfriendly plastic bottles and tubes, which can be bulky and hard to recycle. You’ll likely receive some products that aren’t right for your hair or skin type, or just don’t work out. Most beauty boxes don’t allow for any customization—what you get is truly a surprise.

I reached out to popular services and asked to test at least one month’s box but ideally three months’ worth. I compared the value of the included items to what the box itself cost. I also took notes on the overall variety and likelihood of the average person being able to use them—weighing specialty products against those that would work for most people. And yes, I put all of these pretty little potions on my actual face and hair and skin. Please refrain from asking me about the state of my bathroom countertop at this trying time.

Note that some brands offer one-off boxes that are available for purchase outside of a subscription. I didn’t test these or consider them as part of the criteria for this guide.

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November 3, 2024