CR’s experts say that checking your oil is an important preventive maintenance task on cars that have a dipstick, the long metal strip that extends into the oil pan from near the top of the engine. Most new cars also have an electronic oil level sensor, but that may alert you only when the oil…
Run times have improved. Several battery and self-propelled mowers in our ratings offer impressive run times of 70 or more minutes. (The average run time of battery mowers in our tests is 45 to 50 minutes.) Some manufacturers are designing new models with multiple battery slots. When one battery is spent, another can take over,…
A new Mayan city, lost in the dense jungle of southern Mexico for centuries, has been discovered from the computer of a PhD student hundreds of miles away. This is the story of how he did it. The settlement, named Valeriana after a nearby freshwater lagoon, has all the characteristics of a classic Maya political…
in 2020, Apple’s MacBooks entered a new era. The company announced it was moving away from the Intel chips it had been using since 2006; in their place, it rolled out the first Macs with the Apple-designed M1. Cut to 2024 and the company now offers the choice between 14 custom processors, the latest of…
An engine is fully lubricated long before it reaches full operating temperature. When your car sits for an extended period of time, the oil drains down to the bottom of the oil pan. Once you start the engine, the oil pump quickly circulates the oil throughout the motor, lubricating all the necessary moving engine components….
No two snowflakes are alike, and that presents a problem for CR’s testing protocol. “We need to run our tests with something we can standardize, for consistency,” says Dave Trezza, who oversees our snow blower testing. That’s why he and his team use a mixture of a certain type of sawdust, saturated with water, in…
Some of our favorite Canon cameras are available at significant discounts. Canon’s R series cameras are some of our favorite mirrorless cameras and we like the company’s compact cameras. We’ve rounded up some great Canon promo codes for you to save while shooting videos or pictures. Save Big, Even Without a Canon Promo Code This…
KitchenAid’s strategy is one that maybe we should all live by—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Remaining nearly unchanged since its introduction in 1914, KitchenAid’s stand mixer has become such a legendary kitchen staple that we called it an “everlasting” kitchen must-have and put it on our Buy It For Life guide. Save 15%…
If you want to hunt down the best value for your insurance dollar, comparison shopping is a good way to start. Companies’ judgments of you and your property won’t be identical, so you may get a more favorable price from one company than from another. Just make sure you’re comparing coverage apples to apples. Switching…
If your home has a mortgage, your bank requires you to carry some type of homeowners insurance, and you don’t want it to lapse for any reason, says CFA’s Heller. If it does, the bank will step in and assign a type of policy (called “forced place”) that will cost you about twice as much…