Jessica Monroe

I’ll never forget the first time I hosted friends on my patio with a traditional fire pit. Within 20 minutes, three of my guests had migrated indoors because of the smoke. That’s when I started testing smokeless fire pits seriously. Over the past 18 months, our team has burned through more than 40 fires across … Read more

If you’ve ever spent a full Saturday pushing a mower across two acres of grass, you’ll understand why I started testing robot lawn mowers for large lawns in the first place. After three months of testing eight different models on properties ranging from a half-acre suburban yard to a six-acre hobby farm, I can tell … Read more

I spent the last three months pushing, pulling, and charging ten different electric mowers across three suburban properties to find out which ones actually hold up to weekly mowing. My test yards ranged from a flat 0.15-acre lot in a quiet cul-de-sac to a 0.6-acre yard with two slopes and a fenced garden bed, so … Read more

I spent the last three months rotating through eight different VR headsets across racing sims, Beat Saber sessions, and Half-Life: Alyx marathons. The short answer: the Meta Quest 3 512GB is the best VR headset for most gamers in , thanks to its pancake lenses, wireless freedom, and the deepest game library in the industry. … Read more

I spent 45 days wearing eight pairs of smart glasses on my daily commute, through workouts, and at my desk, and the gap between the best and worst models in is wider than you might expect. Some pairs felt invisible after ten minutes, while others sat heavy on my nose and ran out of battery … Read more

I have been hunting for outlets in coffee shops, airport lounges, and hotel lobbies for years. That changed when I started testing laptop power banks seriously. A good one keeps a MacBook Pro alive on a cross-country flight, powers a Dell XPS through a full workday, and even tops off a gaming laptop between matches. … Read more

I learned this the hard way on a six-day section hike in the Sierra Nevada: my phone died on day three, and the “solar power bank” I strapped to my pack had collected exactly 8% charge after two full days of walking. That 12-oz brick sat in my closet for the rest of the trip, … Read more

Last winter, a storm knocked out power to our office for six hours. My desktop PC rebooted mid-edit, I lost 90 minutes of unsaved work, and my Synology NAS threw a corrupt volume warning that took three days to repair. That weekend I bought my first uninterruptible power supply. Six months and eight different models … Read more

If your trolling motor battery died halfway through a fishing trip or your RV house batteries won’t hold a charge over winter, you already know the frustration of being let down by the wrong charger. I have been there, stranded on a launch ramp with a completely dead group 31, scrambling to find a working … Read more

After three months of testing infrared saunas in our homes, recording EMF readings with a calibrated meter, and tracking monthly electricity costs, I’ve learned that not all home infrared saunas deliver the same therapeutic value. Some units produced deep, even heat in under 15 minutes, while others took nearly half an hour just to reach … Read more