Best Deals on Grills, Lawn Care Tools, and More Outdoor Essentials

Solo Stove is one of the better-known names in the world of smokeless firepits, and while it’s not the best one CR tested, it still gets high marks in virtually every test we run. It gets top marks for large fires and the amount of wood it can hold. Where it struggles is with the completeness of the burn. The Solo left a fair amount of unburned wood. Its ash pan captures most of the ash, but some unburned pieces fell into the firepit’s bottom chamber, from which they were difficult to remove.

The three-burner Napoleon Freestyle 365 F365DPGT delivers strong all-around performance. This small gas grill earns top scores for indirect cooking. Its temperature range and quick ability to preheat quickly and cook evenly are impressive as well. Napoleon, as a brand, received ace ratings for reliability and owner satisfaction for its gas grills in CR’s latest member surveys. Overall, it’s slightly sturdier than the Weber and quicker to heat, but you sacrifice some evenness across the cooking surface.

This high-end midsized Fuego F27S grill hits almost every mark. It rates very good at producing even heat, preheating quickly, offering a wide range of high and low temperatures, and creating indirect heat. It’s less likely than many other models to flare up. Notable features include recessed folding shelves and burners with a long warranty. (They’re the parts that are replaced the most.) An unimpressive rating for convenience is one of its few blemishes.

This basket lets you keep all your lit charcoal on one side of the grill, so you can crisp a chicken leg or sear a steak on the side the coals are on, then move it to the side without the coals to cook through without burning.

The Meater+ meat thermometer is one of the most reliable digital thermometers. It’s easy to use, and given its top-notch accuracy, you won’t need guesswork to determine the doneness of brisket and other fleshy delights. It’s shaped like a thick ink pen with dual sensors—one to check the internal temperature and one for ambient temperature—and its size makes it better suited for girthier cuts. The Meater+ transmits temperature readings wirelessly to the companion smartphone app. This is the typical sale price.

This bag fits five beach towels, one water bottle, two bottles of sunscreen, a hardcover book, four small packs of pretzels, and sunglasses. The Simple Modern beach bag is made of soft EVA material and has the thickest hand straps of all the bags we tested. The handles folded backward and forward easily and never got twisted.

This was the only bag we tested that came with both hand straps and a shoulder strap. It fit four beach towels, one hardcover book, one water bottle, two bottles of sunscreen, sunglasses, two small bags of pretzels, and a phone. And the clear pouch on the outside is perfect for keys and wallets.

The Crocs Classic Large Tote is a good bag, and it stands out most for its extensive traction on the base and sides, as well as a dipped curve on top that makes it more comfortable to carry on your shoulder. It fit six beach towels, one hardcover book, one water bottle, two bottles of sunscreen, car keys, sunglasses, four bags of pretzels, a phone, and a wallet.

The Oileus beach tent, is now the best price we’ve seen. It was the runner-up in CR’s evaluations thanks to the ease of setting it up and taking it back down. It’s large enough for two adults and two kids. It takes less than 2 minutes to set up, and just about 4 minutes to pack up at the end of your beach day. And on windy days, you can fill its six pockets with sand to keep it in place. Perhaps the best part is it only weighs 4 pounds, making it convenient to schlepp from the car to the beach and back.

The Sun Ninja Beach Canopy is at the best price we’ve seen this year. It’s worth noting that it reached as low as $120 last summer, so it may be better to wait until later in the season if you don’t need it right away and want to potentially save more. Of the canopies we tested, it offered the most consistent shade and held its own in the wind. The poles didn’t tilt, and the canopy simply swayed with the breeze, but this didn’t affect shade coverage.

Who says you have to drop hundreds on a trendy freestanding pizza oven to make a perfect pie? If you own a grill, all you need is an attachment like this one from BakerStone. Throw it right onto the grates of your grill. The grill provides the heat, and while we didn’t try this grill-compatible model, we did try the BakerStone with a dedicated gas burner and found we got great results.

The Grand Patio umbrella is one of the more expensive patio umbrellas we tested and one of the larger options in our ratings. It got above-average scores in CR’s tests for ease of use and assembly, but it’s a little less rigid than higher-scoring models.

A tool that Lorin Nielsen always finds herself reaching for is the Power Planter DIY Guru Auger, a drill bit tool. The head horticulturist at Epic Gardening—an online destination that offers advice and techniques for cultivating a garden—employs this 3-inch-wide auger bit for a hand drill and uses it to bore into hard-packed soil to easily plant dahlia bulbs or loosen the soil before transplanting in veggies. “I also find myself reaching for it to help blend amendments or mix together batches of potting mix in my garden cart,” Nielsen says.

This Black+Decker BEBL7000 leaf blower has a well-performing built-in vacuum function, making it easy to gather leaves into the included collection bag for composting or easy discarding. The bag connects using a flexible tube, making it easy to handle and maneuver. It’ll move leaves with very respectable efficiency (up to 250mph), and leave little impact on your ears and neighbors. You’ll have multiple speeds at your disposal to tackle any job.

The Ego LB7654 delivers all-star performance across the board, adept at loosening and sweeping, all in an easy-to-handle package despite weighing 9.9 pounds. In addition, this electric blower comes with a generous five-year warranty. As a brand, Ego battery handheld leaf blowers are very reliable and earn a top mark for owner satisfaction in our latest member surveys.

For a competitive price, the spartan Ego LM2114 performs commendably, with a respectable run time of almost an hour on one battery. Cutting evenness, noise, and handling are excellent, and it does a solid job of mulching, bagging, and side discharging. This 21-inch-wide push mower doesn’t have high wheels for better maneuvering and doesn’t include a second battery. The battery takes about an hour and a half to charge. It has a three-year warranty, which is fairly standard among the higher-rated battery push mowers in our ratings. Ego battery mower predicted reliability is very good, and owner satisfaction is excellent.

Your neighbors will thank you for using an Ego LM2135 because it’s very quiet at 25 feet away and at the ear of the user. While this unit is often a bit expensive as far as push mowers go, its performance rates high for mulching, cut evenness, and handling. It also earns nearly as impressive ratings in bagging and side discharging. Run time is as long as 50 minutes, enough to cover about a quarter of an acre in one go. What’s more, the battery can be fully charged in just over an hour.

Despite its relatively low price, this 40-volt battery-powered chainsaw from Skil earned high marks for cutting and a top score for safety. It also did well in handling and ease of use. This model was selling for $149 last week at a few retailers, including Amazon and Lowe’s.

The Brightech Pro Solar Powered Outdoor String Lights are the best in class in our tests, with above-average marks for light duration and a top score for ease of use. Long and widely spaced, these lights provide flexibility. You can run the strand as is for more subtle lighting or double up the cord to concentrate more of the light in a tighter space. Each of its 12 separate Edison-style oval-shaped bulbs has 24 LEDs, resulting in exceptionally bright light. The lights can’t be manually charged, but they do have replaceable batteries and an on/off button to preserve power.

It’s hard to contend with the value offered by the Gigalumi Grid Solar Pathway Lights, especially at this new low price. Their cost is lower (on a per-light basis) than just about any other path light we’ve seen, and yet they earn solid marks for both light duration and ease of use. The light cast comes from a single LED in each of the lights—casting a dimmer glow than the other products we tested.

That may not be a dealbreaker if you’ve got supplemental lighting elsewhere or if you’re using these strictly to create ambience. There’s a single setting, an on/off button, and a removable battery, but the lights can’t be charged or angled.