A camp stove doesn’t have to be complicated to be great.

It should cook food and boil water quickly and be rugged enough to withstand travel in the back of a car. And it should not require a burdensome amount of fuel.

After researching 26 camp stoves, testing 13, and dissecting three of them — down to the welded copper tubing and soldered burner plates — we discovered that the Coleman Classic Propane Camping Stove is, in fact, uncomplicated yet great.

One of my earliest beach memories is the sight of my father chasing a large, colorful umbrella down the sands on a particularly windy day on the Maine coast.

I’m sure I’m not the only beachgoer who has witnessed umbrellas uprooting and tumbling into sunbathing neighbors, despite all efforts.

There is a better solution: the sunshade.

A good sunshade provides consistent protection from the sun over a large area while maintaining a comfortable amount of headroom. It should be easy to carry and intuitive to set up, and it should remain sturdy in the wind without collapsing.

Not every beach allows sunshades, however, and some of us simply prefer the classic silhouette of an umbrella. So along with our two favorite sunshades — one that maximizes available shade and a lightweight yet sturdy model that’s easy for one person to set up — we include a classic umbrella that’s great at blocking rays and one that’s absolutely impervious to the wind.

Searching for a low-cost cell phone plan can bring up more questions than answers.

While you can find plenty of cheap plans out there, many of them come from wireless services you may have never heard of. And that can leave you wondering not only how to tell the carriers apart, but also whether their low-cost plans come with a catch.

US Mobile is one of the carriers that may pop up in your searches. A little more than a decade after its 2015 launch, the company is suddenly everywhere and seemingly beloved by its customers.

Like a lot of competing wireless carriers, US Mobile tries to grab your attention with low monthly rates on plans, especially options promising unlimited data. What really sets US Mobile apart, however, is the fact that you can choose coverage from any of the major wireless networks rather than committing to one, and you can move between networks with relative ease in areas where one network’s signal is stronger than the others.

We decided to investigate what makes US Mobile so cheap, whether there’s any fine print that makes choosing a network less flexible, and whether using US Mobile involves any unsavory trade-offs.

Slow Wi-Fi can be more frustrating than no Wi-Fi at all, and the culprit in many cases is one router trying to cover too much house. One solution is mesh-networking systems, which spread multiple access points around your house to improve the range and performance of your Wi-Fi.

After spending hundreds of hours evaluating and testing more than 130 Wi-Fi mesh-networking systems in home and lab environments over the past six years, we’re confident that the Eero 7 system is the best mesh router for most people who need one.

If your router is more than a couple of years old and struggling to give you fast speeds, or if it’s frequently dropping connections altogether, a new router or a mesh-networking kit will improve your Wi-Fi’s range, stability, and speed all over your home.

Over the past seven years, we’ve spent hundreds of hours testing and evaluating nearly 150 routers, and we’ve determined that the best router for wirelessly connecting your laptops, your smart devices, and anything else your daily life depends on is the TP-Link Archer BE230.

Lightweight knits, sweaters, and polos come with a certain degree of good vibes. These are the garments in rotation when the weather is mild, folks are out of hibernation, and style is back on the agenda.

These knitwear tops should be able to bridge spring to summer and summer to fall without much fuss. Versatility is the name of the game: The best ones will keep you warm enough on a chilly morning commute (and at the office), are breathable enough to wear in the afternoon sun, and are flexible enough to handle sudden temperature swings. They work nicely under a jacket, over a T-shirt, or on their own — and they play well with jeans, chinos, dress pants, and even shorts.

To find the best options, I researched nearly 100 garments and tested 24 myself. To gather perspectives from people with different body types and tastes, I enlisted two colleagues to test the most promising pieces with me.

Our picks range from lightweight sweaters in a variety of materials to classic cotton polo shirts to slightly dressier sweater polos. We sought low-maintenance options in a wide range of sizes and prices — with a focus on workhorse pieces that will wear nicely, last a long time, and remain in style for many seasons to come.

Whether you’re backpacking in the Himalayas or working in your backyard, a portable solar battery charger offers a vast supply of power that you can easily fold up and carry with you. While the sun is out, you can catch rays to charge a phone, a laptop, and other small electronics, and (when paired with a separate power bank) you can keep them running long after sundown.

The Allpowers SP012 Solar Panel 100W is the best portable solar charger for anyone who needs to keep their gadgets charged and stay connected during a power outage or off-grid adventure. It packs a lot of power into a relatively small package, works seamlessly with most phones and other devices, has a rugged build and good weatherproofing, and comes with more useful accessories than the competition.

For writers, there’s nothing quite like putting pen to paper. You feel each scratch of the notebook and every smear of ink.

A digital notebook takes that familiarity and adds modern convenience. Those hundreds of ideas, notes, and scribbles live in one convenient, portable device — where they’re searchable, convertible to digital text, and easily shareable. And you’ll never have to wonder to yourself, “Where did I write that down?”

While the digital platform can’t truly replicate writing on paper (at least not yet), they come pretty close. But digital notebooks, also known as E Ink tablets or paper tablets, aren’t for everyone.

If you’re ready to modernize your writing without sacrificing its pleasure, we found three digital notebooks that we recommend. The Supernote A5 X2 Manta offers an excellent writing experience and array of features that seamlessly combine writing and reading; the reMarkable 2 provides a distraction-free writing focus that comes closest to mimicking paper; and the Amazon Kindle Scribe (2025) not only functions as a notebook but allows you to read ebooks and write directly on them.

My parents bought a beach house — their dream — back when you could buy a New Jersey beach house on a teacher’s salary. They then filled it with all of the garage-sale and curb castoffs they could find, producing a mostly cute kitschy hodgepodge.

Years ago, I spilled an entire pot of coffee on a turquoise dining chair upholstered in Ultrasuede, a fake leather. I blotted furiously at the chair with a dish towel before realizing I had no need to panic. The material had not absorbed a single drop.

Ultrasuede and other fake leathers are engineered to mimic the look of animal hide, but they function like performance fabrics, offering durability, colorfastness, and — as I witnessed that day — superior cleanability.

And they’ve come a long way from the sticky, peeling pleather diner booth seats you might remember. If you’ve shopped for a sofa or armchair recently, you’ve likely encountered a dizzying array of fake leathers.

For now, most of the fake leather you’ll encounter when shopping for furniture is still made from plastic polymers. But that’s starting to change. Besides petroleum-based synthetic leathers, there are also bio-based leathers, which contain some percentage of plant material, as well as bio-fabricated leathers, which are grown in a lab, said Theanne Schiros, a professor of materials science at the Fashion Institute of Technology and a Columbia University research scientist. Many fake leathers advertise that they’re vegan or sustainable, or they highlight their apple, cactus, or mushroom origin.

Below, we break down these three kinds of fake leather, how to choose the best one for your needs, and why you might want to opt for fake leather over real leather in the first place.