Tag: home

10 Best Blenders (2024): Jug, Hand, Immersion

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Prep like a pro: If you’re hosting and want to do more than one course, then soup (hot or cold) is your easy solution. Any seasonal veg sweated and boiled down with softened onion, garlic, and stock forms the perfect base. Then blend with a little cream, crème fraîche, coconut milk, or toasted nuts for super silky texture. It can be made a day ahead, then blended and adjusted for seasoning and taste in your own time. Then reheat and serve.

Perfect your sauces: What often separates chefs and home cooks are silky smooth sauces, condiments, and purées. Vibrant in color and packing a punch, they’re best made in a blender. Try a dollop of smooth spiced apple chutney on a plate with a liver parfait (also made in a blender). Or homemade ketchup to accompany BBQ grilled meats. A good blender helps takes your presentation to a whole new level.

Enjoy cocktail hour: When the sun’s out, your blender is ideal for cocktails. Try making a Pisco Sour in a blender with Peruvian Pisco, fresh lime juice, sugar syrup, egg white, and ice. Done by hand you’ll get two portions at a time, but the blender will give you that frothy consistency with 10 portions at once.

Freeze to avoid food waste: Make smoothies with fruit that is on its last legs. Chop fruit such as pineapple, mango, peach, and banana, and lay it on trays to freeze. Once frozen, put them in a sandwich bag and you’ve got small enough pieces to blend up with fruit juice or milk whenever you need.

Clean up effectively: If you’ve been blending strong flavors such as garlic, be sure to give your blender a good clean before putting it away. Blend a cup of warm water up with a drop of citrus juice. The acid from the citrus cuts through grease, garlic, and stains, and this will get rid of the worst of the mess inside the blender, now ready to rinse with hot soapy water.

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June 4, 2024
6 Best Linen Sheets (2024): Breathable, Soft, Affordable

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I fell in love with linen bedding years ago. I bought a bright yellow linen duvet I was certain would bring my bedroom together. The yellow was just a phase, but sleeping on linen just clicked. Linen has a rougher texture and a lived-in look, which can turn some folks off from sleeping on it. But the fabric is breathable and dries fast, so you’ll stay cooler as you sleep and avoid sweaty sheets. (That’s why linen apparel is popular in the summer.)

Linen is also strong and durable, softening up (slowly) after each wash without becoming thinner or weaker. Linen tends to be more expensive since high-quality linen will last a long time, so a linen sheet set is an investment not only in staying cool as you sleep (which is very important for sleep quality) but also in gorgeous bedding you can enjoy for years. I love sleeping on linen so long as it isn’t too scratchy, which is one of the many things I looked for while testing and searching for the best linen sheets. After sleeping on multiple sets (along with all kinds of other sheets!), these are the best.

Read our Best Sheets guide if you want something a little softer, and check out our other bedding buying guides, including the Best Pillows, Best Mattresses, Best Cooling Mattresses, and whether you need a duvet.

Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

What’s So Great About Linen?

Photograph: Judy Davidson/Getty Images

Linen is a woven fabric made from flax plants. It is a highly breathable material so it keeps you cool during the summer months as it doesn’t trap heat. It’s great for people who sleep hot. It’s rougher at first than a simple cotton set, but it should soften up the more it’s washed. Linen often has a higher price than other sheets, but it’s generally more durable than percale or cotton, so a good sheet set should last a long time.

They’re not for everyone, but if you love linen apparel, you’ll probably love linen sheets. If you’re unsure, start with a single piece (like a duvet or flat sheet) and see what you think. Most of the options we recommend come in a linen set, but you can also buy many of these pieces separately, allowing you to try a linen pillowcase or fitted sheet before wading into a full-on linen bed.

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June 2, 2024
Touch Controls on Stoves Suck. Knobs Are Way Better

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Ya know what would fix this? What would make the problem go away and remove this needless barrier to entry for induction stoves with a twist of the wrist? Knobs.

Yes, the simple, old-fashioned knob. That thing you twist to turn on and adjust the temperature on a gas or electric burner. The thing that did not need reinventing. The thing that, without a doubt, works better than its modern, smooth-topped successor and would likely speed induction adoption. Those knobs. Let’s “regress” back to knobs.

This idea crystallized at a recent cooking class I took in Oaxaca City, Mexico, where the stove we used was a four-burner, smooth—and thus knobless—induction cooktop. Over the next few hours, people had all of the “hard to turn on, hard to adjust” problems. A couple of times, I overheard someone say, “Hey, why’d it go to zero?” Someone also burned their finger trying to turn it down because the heat had spread from the nearest burner to the touch pad. Later, a pan slid over the main power button, turning everything off and bringing cooking to a standstill, something nobody realized for five minutes. Yet the moment that took the cake was when someone approached the stove, looked down at the instrument panel, and asked “How do I do this?” This was not ineptitude on their part; the person asking had been cooking for their whole life. This would never happen with knobs.

“I don’t like this,” said fellow cooking class student Pablo Scasso from Montevideo, Uruguay. Scasso studied product design before becoming a software engineer, and the difficulty controlling the stove reminded him of the way many car manufacturers have migrated away from dashboard knobs and buttons to the detriment of the driving experience (and potentially safety).

As he said this, he mimed driving while adjusting a knob on the dashboard with his right hand, all while looking straight ahead.

“I want to keep my eyes on the road. If I need to change the air conditioning with a touchscreen, I have to look at it. With a knob, I know right where it is.”

This is not a nostalgic plea for the good old days. A knob is a direct, dedicated connection, an instant response to the twist of your wrist. It’s still the best technology out there. Once you’re used to using it, you can turn it on blindfolded. The touchscreen always needs you to look at it.

Remember those years when the MacBook keyboards sucked so bad that Taika Waititi took time to make fun of them on the same night he won an Oscar? And how, after being repeatedly called out by tech journalists—Casey Johnston in particular went at the issue hard in a series of stories—Apple relented and reverted to the old keyboard style? Going back to knobs could be like that.

Yet change will likely be slow to come.

While I’ve read a few reviews that imply these “fully digital” induction-stove controls are something to get accustomed to, after close to a decade of use on my stove and other peoples’ stoves, I am fully accustomed to them and they do not work as well as knobs.

Casey? Taika? Are you out there? Can you save us?

This inspired me to write a three-line poem:

Call it a dial, call it a knob,
your life would be better
with one on your hob.

Induction-burner manufacturers may be getting the hint. A handful of them, like Samsung and Fisher & Paykel, now incorporate burners with knobs in their lineups. Impulse Labs has a promising-looking model slated to come out in late 2024. Breville makes an incredible, expensive standalone burner with buttons and knobs that make it easy to control.

The lack of knobs on induction stoves around the world isn’t a problem in the grand scheme of things, though making them more common would make people’s lives easier and speed adoption. There are certainly bigger fish to fry, but it would be nicer and easier to fry them on a stove with knobs.

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May 31, 2024
Unhappy With a Service You’ve Been Paying For? It Might Be Time for a Breakup

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Finding a new person to do a service for you could take time, effort, and multiple tries. If you don’t have a replacement lined up, think about whether you’ll be in a jam before you find someone new and consider waiting until you do.

Apart from obvious places such as Yelp and Google, you can seek out providers in places such as Angi (formerly Angie’s List) or Thumbtack for home projects. StyleSeat and Booksy can help you find hair, nail, massage, and spa services. Rover is good for pet services, including boarding, dog walking, and cat sitting, while TrustedHousesitters lists pet sitters and house sitters. For one-off projects, such as moving or quick home repair, TaskRabbit is a popular option.

Plan for a Clean Break

Now, for the hard part: the actual breakup. If you hate dealing with confrontation and awkwardness, be aware that this happens to service providers all the time. Anyone in the service industry is used to turnover, and nobody can meet their clients’ needs 100 percent of the time indefinitely.

If the professional relationship is not firmly established or has been short-term, it may be fine to simply stop scheduling service appointments and let things die on their own. You may get a follow-up call or message asking if you want to continue services, and you can simply say those services are no longer needed. Ghosting someone who has been serving you for years, especially if they’re trying to reach you, is not a sign that you respect the work they’ve done.

For these more established business relationships, it’s best to be polite and direct and to give the person the opportunity to respond. But even that may not always be necessary. Customer-facing industries such as salons are used to customer churn and recognize that clients don’t necessarily owe them an explanation for cutting them off.

“Unless you’re super close to the person and have been with them for years and feel comfortable telling them, you don’t owe anyone an apology,” says Chelle Neff, who styled hair for 21 years and who owns three Urban Betty salons in the Austin, Texas, area. “I’d rather people ghosted me than have a weird explanation, an awkward exchange, or a lie.”

Neff said that some customers just get bored and want to try something new, and some eventually come back. But ultimately, she says, if you’re the client, “you need to do what makes you happy.”

Keep Things Professional

Especially in small communities or industries where there are only a limited number of professionals doing the work, rumors spread, and negative feedback travels fast. Think twice before leaving a negative review or trash-talking someone who worked for you to your new serviceperson. When leaving any kind of public feedback, unless you had an extreme experience that is worth warning others about, you should take the high road and simply state facts as you’re transitioning to a new professional.

Obviously, using a bad review to hurl personal insults or to criticize things that were out of the serviceperson’s control is rude and unfair. Think about how your review might be perceived by others. Were your expectations for the work you hired the business to do unreasonable to start with? Did the service professional promise something and then not deliver, or were your expectations just not fully communicated? You might want to ask a friend to take a look at what you plan to post before you hit Send. A negative review could backfire if you come across as a bad client; if the facts favor the service provider, the review could reflect more poorly on you than on them.

If the person you broke up with works for a company and you take your complaints to their manager or the business owner, it could affect their chances for advancement or even lead to them getting fired. Make sure you are on solid ground and are not acting on anger before you take action like that. As a business owner, Neff says that contacting the business directly is better than leaving a negative review: “Nine times out of 10, if they’re a good company, they’re going to make it better and set you up with someone else too.”

Whether it’s a review or you’re contacting supervisors in hopes of a solution, stick to the facts, including documentation of what you paid and what was provided, and don’t make it personal.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re past the hardest part. You’ve gotten out of a bad working relationship and are hopefully enjoying better service that’ll go the distance.

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May 27, 2024
8 Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers (2024): Budget, Luxe, Tested by Experts

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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. (The older and heavier you are, the more likely you are to be a side sleeper, and it’s recommended that pregnant women sleep on their side.)

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. I am mostly a side sleeper. If you had asked me about my firmness preferences before I started reviewing bed-in-a-box mattresses, testing dozens for weeks over the year, I would’ve told you the softer the better. Indeed, if you’re a side sleeper you’re likely to gravitate toward cushy memory foam mattresses. 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 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 tested for at least a week of real-life testing. 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 Bed Frames, Best Sleep Trackers, and our how-to on setting up a mattress in a box.

Updated May 2023: We’ve added the Casper One and Leesa Sapira Chill Hybrid.

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May 24, 2024
5 Best Cooling Mattresses (2024): Hybrid, Soft, Foam, and for Couples

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There are a ton of mattresses on the market that claim to have cooling benefits. Here are a few others I’ve tested and liked, but not as much as the options above.

Casper Snow Hybrid for $1,745: When you come across a mattress with a name that includes “snow,” your expectations for cooling effects are naturally high—and this mattress indeed lives up to that expectation. With a medium feel, the Casper Snow Hybrid incorporates a cooling material alongside three patented HeatDelete bands, engineered to “act as thermal highways and effectively dissipate heat,” according to Casper. The patented Snow Cover is cool, and I consistently woke up sweat-free when testing this bed. Structurally, this hybrid bed combines poly foam, memory foam, and pocketed coils, and provides targeted support at the hips, waist, and lower back to alleviate pressure, making it ideal for back and stomach sleepers. Keep in mind that upon unboxing, this mattress may need some time to chill (pun intended). I noticed it came out of the box slightly misshapen from its packaging and emitted a faint plasticky scent. After about two days, the mattress was ready to go, the smell gone, and settled into its intended neat rectangle shape.

Saatva Memory Foam Hybrid for $1,595: The Saatva Memory Foam Hybrid is marketed as firm, and that’s exactly what you should expect. Crafted with patented AirCradle memory foam, the mattress features concentrated cushioning in the center, strategically intended to support your lower back. Since I’m only 5’2″, the middle-back cushioning didn’t hit where it intended to. Despite its firmness, I didn’t find this mattress particularly exceptional, especially with its cooling properties. Despite incorporating a triple-phase LuxeCool system and cooling gel-infused memory foam, the cooling effect didn’t stand out.

BedJet 3 for $429: I haven’t tested the BedJet myself yet, but WIRED reviewer Christopher Null did and liked it a lot (8/10, WIRED Recommends). This device uses a large blower under your bed to blast hot or cool air beneath your covers. If you like your existing mattress but find yourself sleeping hot, this could be just the ticket.

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May 23, 2024
5 Best Juicers (2023): Centrifugal, Slow, Masticating

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Juicers aren’t just for healthy wheatgrass shots and tall green juices. The latest designs can conjure up so much more with fresh smoothies, sorbets, and nut milks all just a whizz away. Delicious cocktails, mocktails, and chilled yogurts can all be made in a good juicer, as can wholesome baby food for weaning juniors.

Sure, it might be easier to buy juice from the grocery store, but making your own juice from scratch is far more satisfying, we say, with no added sugar or preservatives to dull the flavor. You will need to prep correctly to get the best performance from the juicer—chopping and washing your fruit and veg so it fits neatly in the feeding chute, and picking the correct mesh filter for the task at hand—but the end game with a delicious drink in hand is definitely worth the graft. And once you’ve mastered the art of juicing, there’s no going back. A chilled fruit juice for breakfast can taste far more nutritious than carton juice, while a freshly-squeezed pomegranate daiquiri at dusk will be the talk of your dinner party.

There’s a wide selection of stylish juicers to buy online, but here you’ll find our selection of the most versatile options on offer. We’ve used these juicers to grind whole fruits such as apples and pears to a pulp, squeeze the goodness out of leafy veggies such as kale, and tackle fibrous veggies such as celery and broccoli. We’ve noted how easy they are to use and clean and how effective they are at extracting every last drop of juice.

Check out more of WIRED’s top kitchen tech and accessory guides, including the Best Air Fryers, Best Blenders, Best Electric Kettles, and the Best Gear for Small Kitchens.

Update May 2024: We’ve included three new options including the budget-friendly Nutribullet Magic Bullet Mini Juicer, and added essential buyer’s guide information, plus tips on creating the healthiest drinks with your new machine.

Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you’d like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

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May 10, 2024
Delonghi Specialista Arte Evo Espresso Machine With Cold Brew Review: A Little Weird

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The counter space in my kitchen is at a premium. It’s valuable real estate, and every square inch matters. So when a new espresso machine arrives at my door, I always have to play a high-stakes game of countertop appliance Tetris to figure out how everything will fit—or who needs to get banished into a cupboard. When the De’Longhi Specialista Arte Evo rolled into my kitchen, I was ready to make tough decisions.

From the box’s size, I was sure the rice cooker or the food processor would have to be exiled. When I got the De’Longhi out of its box, though, my appliances breathed a sigh of relief. This is a svelte espresso machine, and it fits perfectly without sending any of my favorite appliances to a pantry gulag. Things were off to a good start, and it only got better—mostly.

Slim and Consistent

The first couple of shots I pull out of any espresso machine will usually require some finagling. When an espresso machine has an internal burr grinder, that’s just one other thing I have to dial in from scratch. By the second shot, I was happy with what I was getting out of the Specialista.

The espresso poured into the cup in two streams of luxurious caramel-gold liquid, the crema gathering on top in an even layer. I changed the settings and pulled more tester shots to see how it performed with different grind consistencies and amounts for testing purposes, but by that second shot, I knew I’d found the sweet spot.

Photograph: Jaina Grey

Something I always like about De’Longhi espresso machines is the knobs. A lot of different models from the company up and down the price spectrum have really good knobs. The ones here are a joy to use. They’re raised from the surface of the control panel, and the outward face has the signature concentric circles of machined steel; the sides are adorned with textured metal accents. One controls the amount of coffee to grind, and the other toggles between brewing modes.

When you turn the grind knob, there’s a little resistance, just enough to feel like you have very fine control. The mode knob has a satisfying click when you switch from one mode to another. How much you enjoy using a device is important, and these little details make the Specialista Arte Evo feel good to use.

The Specialista Arte Evo comes in at a delightfully narrow 11.2 inches, sparing quite a bit of my counter space—especially since this is taking the place of two appliances, an espresso machine and a coffee grinder. There are smaller espresso machines—the new KitchenAid Semi-Automatic Espresso Machine is about as narrow as the Specialista—but most that have a built-in grinder are a little wider.

Photograph: Jaina Grey

Some Assembly Required

The Specialista’s built-in conical burr grinder can grind coffee fine enough for espresso and coarse enough for drip or other brewing methods, so it’s capable of replacing a stand-alone grinder. There is one little quirk, though. The portafilter can’t slot into place underneath the grinder unless you attach the “grinding and tamping guide.” This component is a short cylinder of plastic that locks onto the portafilter to guide the grounds directly into the basket and help direct the tamp down onto the grounds.

It’s weird. The guide doesn’t feel as high-quality as other parts of the Specialista, almost like a cheap 3D-printed plastic. If you try to slot the portafilter underneath the grinder without the guide, you have to hold it there the whole time, and the grinder will likely spill some grounds into the drip tray. It feels like the grinding and tamping guide was added as a fix to the issue of the grounds spilling out.

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May 8, 2024
12 Best Sound Machines and White-Noise Machines (2024): Cheap, Night Lights, Lullabies

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Baby Brezza Sleep and Soother for $30: This is super light, can run on batteries or be plugged in, and has 18 sleep sounds and three timer options (or it plays continuously). There’s also a night light with three brightness levels.

Yogasleep Hushh 2 Portable Sound Machine for $30: The Hushh 2 is another great portable sound machine that you should consider. It has six sounds, three timer options, and a nice night light for softly illuminating your bedside table or guiding your way to the bathroom. The brand says this model is its most durable sound machine. I didn’t fling it down the stairs, but it has held up to falling off my nightstand.

My Little Morphée for $100: The Morphee above is great for adults, but this version is cute and designed for kids from 3 to about 10 years old. Senior reviews editor Adrienne So’s 7-year-old loves the stories, which take kids on meditative journeys with an animal companion. Stock tends to fluctuate on this one.

Lectrofan Evo for $57: Another solid option from the brand that makes our top pick. The Evo has a few more sound choices (like ocean noises) and looks nicer, but we prefer the buttons on the Classic. They’re better for fiddling with in the dark. This one also jumped in price recently.

Dreamegg D1 for $36: This one plays a lot of the same sounds as the D11 portable machine, with a handful more fans and a spectrum of noises. The control panel is matte and soft to the touch, and you can set it to play continuously or for 30, 60, or 90 minutes. I tried the white version, but you can get a few other nice colors on the Dreamegg site. The rim also lights up.

Snooz Sound Machine for $100: The Snooz machine has one sound: the comforting whir of a fan, thanks to the real fan that spins inside it. That’s the sound I turn to most so I appreciate that there’s nothing to futz with. It also has a nice fade-in and fade-out feature for timers, so it’s not jarring. The biggest problem is how expensive it is for one noise compared to other machines on this list.

Encalife Sound Machine for $85: This little sound machine has a blue light that you can match your breathing to in order to relax. You’ll also likely find it on sale often, which is good because I wouldn’t spend $85 on it. A very similar model is available under numerous brand names for far less money. Encalife says these are ripoffs, rather than from the same manufacturer. We can’t confirm that, but either way there are better options on this list for less.

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May 7, 2024
Ambient Weather WS-5000 Review: A Fantastic Weather Station

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I now have a moisture sensor in my garden bed that tells me how dry my soil is, which is an awesome way to know I need to turn on my remote sprinklers while on vacation. An air quality monitor inside my workspace tells me temperature and humidity (important to monitor for some of my acoustic guitars), and another monitor really made me open the window when cooking indoors. All of these things are trivially combined by the system and displayed alongside my other metrics on the Ambient Weather dashboard. It’s the easiest thing to set up ever.

Ambient Weather recently added a better digital display that you can buy aftermarket. As I said, the one that comes with the unit is a bit retro-chic, requiring you to use physical buttons to input logins and passwords, and with only a few selectable layouts. The new Weather Window, as the brand calls it, is much larger and more modern-feeling, and it does include touchscreen controls and variable layouts, but it’s still not as fantastic as it could be.

Photograph: Parker Hall

I wish there was a way to show the weekly weather forecast on the main screen, instead of having to tap the display to see that, among other UI niggles. I do like that the Weather Window comes with a frame-like edge, which makes placing it where you might place a family photo, or hanging it on the wall, particularly easy.

By the Numbers

Most of us don’t need such minutiae in our lives, and that’s fine. For the person who wakes up and plans their whole day based on the temperature and precipitation, or who constantly checks weather radar and talks about it, the Ambient Weather system is the closest we will come to reaching nirvana on Earth.

That might not be you, but it is almost certainly someone you know. I love being away from home and knowing how wet the soil in my garden is, that my house temp and humidity are correct. I like seeing when the sun and moon are going to rise and set at a glance, and knowing how many inches of rain, at a spot above my head, we have gotten in rainy north Portland. Every time my dad and I get together, if we’re not talking about Formula One or the local soccer team’s current woes, we’re talking about what our stations are telling us.

If learning the micro-trends of your yard and chatting, meaningfully, about the weather to friends, relatives, and strangers is your kind of thing, then an Ambient Weather system, really any of them, is probably a fun thing for you to check out. You might even find it useful.

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May 4, 2024