The Best and Worst Kitchen Tools for 2026 | Gear Heads

We're here today to tell you about the best and worst gear to look out for this year. We buy every item that we review and we conduct rigorous hands-on real-world testing so you won't waste your money on bad gear that doesn't perform as promised. Today we're going to show you what does work and why. So let's dive into the best and worst kitchen gear for 2026. Stand mixers are an important piece of gear if you do a lot of baking. Now we constantly test new models and styles as they launch to see if our winning models are still the best. This year we included models from some big names. Ooni, the pizza oven company, and Instant, makers of the Instant Pot, both launched their first stand mixers. We were excited about them but unfortunately after testing we found them pretty meh. The Ooni Halo Pro spiral mixer uses a pretty different technology where the bowl and the beaters both spin. Now unfortunately we found this was only great at mixing dough which is understandable since it's made by a company known for pizza ovens. That's probably how they got there. It felt a little random at first. It's like why a stand mixer, another big appliance? But I guess that's how they got their pizza dough. Makes sense. They're going to own the whole journey. So they're going to mill flour soon. Anyway, while we do recommend it for dough, it doesn't do great at smaller quantities like whipping two egg whites or a cup of cream. There's too much of a gap between the whisk and the bowl. And unlike KitchenAid and other models that we recommend, you can't adjust the size of that gap. Yeah, and it's not like a cup of cream. That's not that small. No, we really want that versatility if you're going to invest in a stand mixer. And this is not cheap. You want it to be able to do anything you want it to do. Well, this looks pretty space-age. And over here we have the Instant Pot stand mixer which also looks pretty space-age with all these swoopy shapes in here. But we constantly had to stop and look at it while we were mid-baking project to be sure we were hitting the right buttons. It's quite small. It's pretty small and it has symbols on it. And if you touch the wrong place on it, you're doing something different than maybe you intended. It's a little bit of a learning curve, I thought. You might need your glasses to get in there. And for a short person, I have to say on this one, the screen is on top. And if I'm barefoot, I can't even see that. Like I'm going to have to wear shoes all the time. I do wear shoes in the kitchen most of the time, but sometimes I don't. I resent having to be tall enough to see that screen or to have to be facing that little tiny touchscreen. They don't think about versatility. If this one, you'd have to be standing on this side. A lot of people don't have the space to have things sideways. They want to be in front of it. People get all the bells and whistles of fancy digital screens and it looks so high-tech and attractive. It's just so muted. There's nothing to look at it. But also it makes it a little cryptic to operate. But it also took extra time to whip small quantities like cream and egg whites. And just like the Uni, the attachments aren't adjustable. So you can't really change that. And we didn't love that to tilt up the head of the mixer, you have to reach all the way around the back of the machine. It just didn't feel as convenient as other designs that had it a little more accessible. But all of that brings us to one of the best things we tested this year. The Neutromil Artist Stand Mixer is our new winning lighter weight mixer. This is just about 11 pounds. Now compare that to our top rated KitchenAid Classic at over 21 pounds. And more than 18 pounds for our winning Ankerstrom mixer. While we generally appreciate that a weighty mixer anchors itself on the counter, for some people these are just too much to handle. The Neutromil has little suction cups that lock it down. And it also has an open top so it's easy to see and add ingredients. This one did a beautiful job whipping, creaming and kneading. And it aced all our tests. This is called a motor in base model where the motor's down here. It's like the Ankerstrom where the motor's down here and the bowl's on the top. And so it's got a very big powerful motor. They don't have to fit it into a tilt head. And so it can really sit there and, you know, run that beater in a way that the tilt head are kind of limited by that tube-like space. You're dealing with the physics of getting up and over versus just a powerful machine. Yep. We have a great full stand mixer review. If you want to read that for all of the details, go to the ATK app or AmericasTestKitchen.com. We love multi-cookers, also known as electric pressure cookers. A good one can pressure cook, sear, braise, make rice and even ferment if you want to make some yogurt. After retesting this fast-moving category this year, our favorite was still the Instant Pot Pro 8-quart. This has been a longtime winner for us. It excels at nearly every task and is incredibly easy and safe to use. This year, we have news. We discovered a new Best Buy at half the price of the Instant Pot. It's called the Kasori 6-quart pressure cooker. It's a little bit smaller at 6 quarts, but this is a stellar performer. Now, we sauteed and pressure cooked with great results. Look how tender this beef is from the stew. But there's a few differences. First of all, the Instant Pot got a nice shiny stainless steel pot, which is light colored, which we love even in a skillet because we want to be able to monitor browning. And it's got those nice handles. This one doesn't have the handles, and it has a slightly less durable nonstick coating. It's also darker colored, and that makes it a little bit harder to see inside when you're trying to monitor the browning. This is also a real pot you can use on the stove. It has a base on the bottom here to help distribute the heat evenly on the stovetop as well. The handles really make a difference. You're usually pulling the pot out while it's hot and having to, like, pincer onto these versus having a stay-cool, comfortable place to grab your pot. It makes a huge difference. I love how it protrudes out of the pot, so they don't ever really get hot. You can grab them. So you're making a couple of compromises with this Best Buy, but at half the price of our winner, this is a bargain, and it's worth checking out. We also just retested manual citrus juicers. For me personally, these were a revelation. You get more of the juice than squeezing the fruit by hand, and most of the seeds are removed, too, theoretically. More on that later. We definitely found some interesting new models, including this one, which is the Dream Farm Flusser. Yeah, I said flusser. Like, this is flat. It's foldable. It's intriguing, but a bit cryptic. Where does the lemon go? Let's see. You put it in here, and you squeeze. It's okay, except we're getting covered with lemon juice. Pretty effective, but I'm going to get in all these parts to clean it. And it kind of made a mess. Another style that we tested, which is kind of an old-fashioned style, is the reamer, and this is by OXO. This has a point that you center on the lemon, and you press while holding, and you twist to get out all the juice. Now, this, you can probably see, is filling my bowl with juice and seeds. And, you know, it's... I'm kind of safe over here, but I see it's actually going all this way. It's not getting me here, but it's all over here. I've got like a handful of juice and pulp, and there's about 12 seeds in there. And, you know, how much juice you get out of it depends on your endurance ability. This is a pretty thick lemon. I tried this on thinner lemons, and it almost wanted to go through. It's a really sharp point and a long reamer, and I think that they're trying to make it flexible so you can do grapefruit or whatever you might want to do by making it so long. But for limes and lemons, you're really only using the tip. Yeah, if you just need a tablespoon or two, these are fine. And I know they have their fans because they're so easy to clean up, but we preferred, overall, the press style. And in that style, even with new contenders, the Chefin Fresh Force... Topped our ratings again. It's sturdy and comfortable and efficient. It got plenty of juice. It was easier to use thanks to a gear assembly that compresses the fruit with more mechanical advantage, basically a gear. So the lemon in, face down toward the drain. Juice just pours out, and honestly, what you can't see, there's some seeds in there from our other less successful models. That really does hold back most of the seeds. Very rarely do you get a little seed going through, and the juice just pours out. What we learned is that these long arms give us better leverage, and the drain slot caught more of those seeds than most of the juices we tested. If you juice a ton of citrus and want to invest the money in space, this sturdy countertop model was speedy and yielded a ton of juice with ease. Yeah, it's really great if you're going to make homemade lemonade or you need a lot of lime juice. It feels very, like, 50s diner or something. Yeah, right? It's so classic. Fresh orange juice, fresh citrus juice in the morning. And that big old lever gives you so much more power than doing each one by hand. Oh, yeah, I'm actually doing it backwards, and it's doable. You know, that's a very powerful lever, and when you bring it down, the juice just barrels out of the bottom of that. You want to try it? Yeah, let me try it. I mean, I love, this is cast iron and steel. It's not plastic. It's not flimsy. It's just a really sturdy machine. And then when you're going to clean it, this stuff lifts right out, and you can rinse it. And it's all stainless, right? So you put it in the dishwasher. This is going to last a long time. We got to go make some margaritas now. Oh, yeah. Bye. We tested dish drying racks, and we had to dry our tears afterward because some of these were so bad. This one from the brand Jazzyway earned a not recommended rating in our recent review. Yeah, sure. It's cool that it can adjust to fit across different sinks and different sizes, if you want to have an over the sink option. It also has feet on the bottom, so it can stand on the counter. But in testing, we found the construction was so weak, it couldn't even hold dishes for two, let alone more. And you still need to get a draining mat. This is just going to go all over your counter if you don't. And, you know, you can use a dish rag, but it gets it gets pretty gunky in my experience. Yeah, this is just like catching on this right here. So, I mean, it works better without this. So I guess you want to pop it off and adjust it. But like, look, it's just like this is brand new. And those spaces for the plates are so little and they're only about four inches wide. So you put a plate in there that's too big. It won't fit. Yeah, we actually saw this problem in testing where, you know, what they seem to be suggesting you could fit like a plate plates for 10 here. But it's just not true. You start to have like an ergonomics problem where they start to bend over backwards. So that little cup that's on there, it's very small. And oftentimes when we were really busy, it did that and threw all the clean silverware into the bottom of our sink. And anything else you have in there, you can't even get at the silverware. It's just a little railing that goes over the top to hold it on. And any kind of jarring motion, it just flew off. This one, not so good. For the past decade, one brand has topped our ratings of dish racks. And that's Simple Human. They're also known for their kitchen trash cans. The Simple Human standard steel frame dish rack. This costs about a hundred dollars, way more than that wire one from the hardware store that I grew up with. Yeah, for sure. But, you know, for that money, you're getting a more user-friendly design that's very well thought out. There's sturdy, well-placed ridges that let you configure dishes in different ways. They're nice and tall. Anywhere you want to put them, you can go here, you can go this way. They're covered with silicone, so they're not going to chip your dishes. So it's very nice in that sense that you can put a lot of things in here and they can hold any way you want. And you will have one that we use every day in the testing lab because we love it so much and we really want to see how it holds up. And it's holding up great. In contrast to that little cup that wanted to pop off and throw all your clean silverware back in the sink. This has a nice giant. The Simple Human has these three chambers and a little end chamber. It sits inside, or you could put it on the outside. But it sits inside and can go on either end of the dish rack, depending on how you want to set it up. It's very tailor-made to this. The fit is perfect. Right. And it's full of really nice big holes in the bottom. That one has four tiny little holes. This one has tons of big holes. So the water is going to drain away and things are going to get dry, which for me is the good part about a dish rack. I do not want to dry dishes with a dish towel. So the other great thing is, depending on how you orient this to your sink, there is a spout down here. So all the water collects to a drain in the middle, just like a really good shower, and has a little drain spout here. And that can go right into the sink. So all the water that drips down collects and goes into this drain spout. And you can put it anywhere you want. It goes all the way around. It can be turned. So depending if you want to put this sideways to the sink or the long way, you can put that spout so it will drain very neatly into a corner of the sink and everything will dry, even the dish rack. Now into my favorite thing. There is a wine glass rack that is removable. So if you don't use it every day, that's fine. But I know we always have a dinner party and people come over and we have all these wine glasses to hand wash. And then we are trying not to break them. If you put them in something like this jazzy way, they want to fall right back off. And that's not good. This will hold them and you can slide your wine glasses and it holds them securely and lets them drip and air dry. Because I've often put them on a piece of paper towel and then you get the little terrarium at the bottom. The whole stuff is condensing inside the glass and you've still got to wipe it dry. You know, it's trapping the moisture. Or you stand it up and it's pooling around the bottom and inside. This drains everything and air dries it and you end up with nice, clean, dry wine glasses. So $100 might sound like a lot for a dish rack and it kind of is. But this one truly performs and it might be the last dish drying rack you'll ever need. When I recently tested espresso machines, I found some models I kind of wish I could take home and keep. They were that good. And then there were some I wouldn't mind never seeing again. And sadly, I'd put the Ninja Luxe Cafe in that category. What didn't you like aside from the fact that it's enormous? Who has that much counter space? It tries to do too much. It has a built-in grinder and it makes decent espresso. I'll give it that. But they should have quit there and made it half this size because they also decided to throw in a drip coffee option and a cold brew option. We tried both of those and they were both abysmal, I'm sorry to say. The innovative grind assist function is designed to help you dial in the best size grind. But we also found it wastes a bunch of coffee while it makes up its mind. You did find something you loved though, right? The Breville Bambino Plus is much more compact for one thing. Oh yeah, absolutely. Now you do have to buy a separate grinder with this model, but even with that it's going to take up less space than this beast. And it was really simple to use. You press one button and it's all in one compact package. But this is our best buy and one of the best things we tested all year. We already have one of these installed in the test kitchen for everyday use so we can see how it holds up over time. This is the plus. That's the plus. With the automatic frothing, the Breville Bambino is the least expensive option and you're going to need a grinder, but you can froth milk with it as well. It's just not going to be automatic. Right. If you want to go even deeper on espresso, we have a whole GearHeads episode about espresso machines and Lisa's new review. So if you want to get into it, go check that out. So for one of the best things that we tested for 2026, the Breville Bambino. So now you've seen some of the best and worst kitchen gear for 2026. What do you want to see us test next? Let us know in the comments. We hope you like this video and subscribe so you never miss an episode. And for all the gear we talked about today, check out the links below or visit our ATK app. We'll see you next time.