Buying Guide

Three summers ago, I strung a white bedsheet between two trees for a backyard movie night. By the time the opening credits rolled, a light breeze had folded the sheet into a sail, the projection was riddled with shadows from creases, and half the audience gave up and went inside. That night sent me down […]

After installing projector ceiling mounts in three different homes over the past two years, I can tell you the best projector ceiling mount is the one that matches your projector’s weight, hole pattern, and your ceiling type. Our team spent 45 days testing 10 universal mounts, dropping heavy test weights, measuring vibration, and checking real-world

Setting up a backyard movie night looks easy on Instagram, but anyone who has tried it knows the truth. After testing more than a dozen models over the last two summers, our team found that the right projector stand makes the difference between a magical evening and a wobbly, keystoned mess. An outdoor projector stand

I’ve been testing wireless HDMI kits for projectors for over three months now, and the truth is they work better than most people expect for movie nights, conference rooms, and ceiling-mounted home theater setups. After running 8 different kits through a 120-inch screen, a busy conference room, and a backyard with one wall in the

My team spent three weeks plugging streaming sticks into a pile of older TVs we borrowed from family members and a few estate-sale finds: a 2008 Samsung plasma, a 2011 LG LCD, a 2014 Sony Bravia, and one stubborn Vizio from 2005 with nothing but RCA jacks on the back. That hands-on testing shaped every

If you have ever sat through another 4K movie that sputters, freezes, or drops down to 1080p mid-scene, you already know the frustration that wired Ethernet solves. After spending six weeks testing the best streaming devices with Ethernet in two homes and a busy apartment building, I can say it plainly: a wired connection is

I’ll never forget the first time I clipped a camera on top of my TV and watched the entire wall behind it turn ocean blue to match the scene in Avatar: The Way of Water. That moment sold me on camera sync TV backlights forever. After spending the last 90 days running eight of the

If your living room looks like a cable graveyard behind the TV, the best HDMI matrix switch for home theater setups is the single upgrade that ends the mess. After running 12 source devices through 10 different matrix units across three home theaters in , our team saw switching times stretch from a frustrating 8

After 60 days of testing 10 laser printers across 3 home offices, our team picked the Brother DCPL2550DW as the best laser printer for home offices in — it balanced 36 ppm speed, automatic duplex, and cheap toner better than anything else we ran. We printed 2,400+ pages of contracts, invoices, and duplex drafts to

After spending six weeks side-by-side testing eight monochrome laser printers with duplex scanning in our Mercury PC lab, I can tell you the gap between a great all-in-one mono laser and a frustrating one comes down to three things: whether the ADF is single-pass or reversing, how much toner you actually get per cartridge, and