Great Gifts for Moms
The best in home and self-care products, and more
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Whether it’s your mom, grandma, or mother-in-law, there’s no doubt that mothers hold a special place in our lives. And with the holiday season in full swing, there’s no better time to show them just how loved they are. To help you find the perfect gift, we rounded up the best in home products, electronics, self-care, and more.
Need more holiday shopping help and inspiration? See all of CR’s holiday gift guides and check out gifts for gardeners and plant lovers, home chefs, top gifts under $50, and great gifts for coffee lovers.
Self-Care
Slip Sleep Mask
There’s no doubt about it: This popular mask is gorgeous. It’s made with stunning silk fabric, and colors include a lush navy, a graceful ballet pink, and opulent gold. It has a scrunchy backstrap that stretches rather than adjusts, which allows for a more seamless look (but perhaps an imperfect fit). To that end, some CR evaluators found that the mask was true to its name and slipped during the night. But overall, the Slip makes a great gift for that stylish someone in your life. Just make sure to get a gift receipt in case it, well, slips.
For more options: Best Sleep Masks
Compartés Signature Truffle Gift Box
“While the fillings are playful and unique, it’s evident the chocolate shells are well made: snappy, dark, and not especially sweet,” writes CR’s Angela Lashbrook of this Compartés Signature Truffle Gift Box filled with adventurous chocolates. She says the fun comes from its unmarked packaging, which encourages indulgers to try new flavors they might otherwise skip over.
For more options: Best Boxed Chocolates
Mouth Wellness in a Box Gift Set
A curated gift box loaded with the essentials for a night in will be much appreciated. Mouth was the top-scoring company in a study conducted by CR where staffers evaluated the ordering experience and gift selection from five prominent vendors. It was the only one where all of CR’s gift set senders were satisfied with the gift they selected and most thought they got good value for the money. This option features an assortment of wellness-themed items such as granola, tea, turmeric concentrate, a sweet fig candle, and more.
For more options: Best Gift Baskets
MZ Wallace Travel Jim
If Mom’s idea of self-care involves a mini getaway, the MZ Wallace Travel Jim weekender bag is an ideal pick. A favorite in a recent evaluation of the best weekender bags, we like it mostly for its spacious innards and abundant availability of pockets. It doesn’t quite tout the luxurious aesthetic of something like a Hermès Birkin, but this highly functional bag won’t let you down with features like water- and stain-resistant lining, a key leash, and a tall external pocket that’s ideal for carrying water bottles. The satin-like quilted pattern on the exterior may offend some, but this is the bag you want for stress-free travel..
For more options: Best Weekender Bags
Kitchenware
Material The Trio of Knives
“Tradition says knives should not be given out as gifts. I care to disagree,” says Melanie Masarin, founder of Ghia, a nonalcoholic apéritif brand. “It seems like I can never get enough knives, and the ones from this collaboration are sharp, universal, and beautiful."
This trio includes an 8-inch chef’s knife, a 4-inch paring knife, and a 6-inch serrated knife. All three are made from Japanese high-carbon and stainless steel, which lends itself to routine sharpening and a long life in your kitchen. They also come in an embroidered felt pouch that makes them easy and safe to store, too, Masarin says.
We haven’t evaluated this particular set. For knives that CR has evaluated, see the best chef’s knives from CR’s tests.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
Here’s one for the mom who’s a foodie. A home chef’s bookshelf isn’t complete without beautifully written cookbooks that teach theory in addition to recipes, says Carmel Hagen, founder of Supernatural, a brand focused on providing healthier baking ingredients like natural sprinkles and plant-based food colors. One such book is “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” by Samin Nosrat, which preceded the Netflix series and comes packed with cooking tips and secrets.
A more affordable take on Ninja’s Coffee Bar brewers, the Ninja Specialty CM401 is a terrific all-in-one machine, capable of brewing hot and iced coffee, lattes, macchiatos, and other specialty brews. In our tests, it receives an excellent rating for brew performance, and its glass carafe handles with ease. This model is also packed with features, including an over-ice brew mode for iced coffee, a built-in milk frother, brew-strength control, and brew-size adjustment for everything from travel mugs to full carafes. It’s one of the most versatile coffee makers we’ve tested.
For more options: Best Drip Coffee Makers
The Oxo Brew Conical tops CR’s list of burr coffee grinders thanks to its consistent grind performance. It performs above average for coarse, medium, and fine grinds in our tests, and it’s very easy to clean. It has 15 different grind settings that are easy to understand and use, plus it features one of the largest bean hoppers with a 12-ounce capacity. You’ll also find a timer and an auto-stop feature. At this price, it’s a solid pick for turning out a tasty cup of joe.
For more options: Best and Worst Burr Coffee Grinders
SodaStream Fizzi One Touch
The SodaStream Fizzi One Touch, the only soda machine we tested that has to be plugged into an outlet, gets our highest marks. It has three preset levels of carbonation, each with its own control button that you lightly touch to activate. Because the electric-powered One Touch doesn’t require you to hold down a button or lever, it alone earns our top mark for ease of use.
For more options: Best Soda Makers
The full-sized Vitamix 5200 blender scores top marks in our tests for making icy drinks, puréeing soup, and crushing ice. It’s also one of the few models we test that makes hot soup from raw ingredients, using just the friction from the blades to heat things up. Vitamix beats the competition in terms of owner satisfaction, too, with excellent ratings for that and for predicted reliability in CR’s member surveys. Yes, you’ll pay a premium for this blender—it’s one of the most expensive models in its category—but you’re getting a hardworking machine that can make smoothies and more on a daily basis. Plus, it comes with a generous 7-year warranty.
For more options: Best Blenders for Making Smoothies
The Hamilton Beach Professional All-Metal 63240 stand mixer is a great mid-range kitchen companion that offers excellent whipping speed and kneading power. It’s also very good at mixing mixtures like cookie dough without producing much noise. The dishwasher-safe stainless steel 5-qt bowl and attachments (whisk, flat beater, and spiral dough hook) make cleanup a breeze.
For more options: Best Stand Mixers
Tech and Electronics
If your mom is a fan of Apple’s earlier Watches, she should like the Series 8 as well. It looks and feels a lot like the Series 7 model. The case and display are the same—with just a slight change in the color selection—and the interface and main features look familiar, too. The Series 8 features new body temperature sensors and a high g-force sensor for car crash detection. It also has an ECG function designed to detect unusual heart rhythms and a blood oxygen sensor for added sleep-tracking accuracy, which differentiates the Series 8 from the value-priced SE model.
For more options: Best Smartwatches
The Bose Smart Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 are the long-awaited successor to the company’s flagship QuietComfort 35 Series II (which are usually at least $100 cheaper). The two models are almost identical in performance: Both deliver superb sound quality and noise cancellation. But the Bose 700 earphones have a much slimmer profile when folded up, and they have a few updated elements, including more integration with digital assistants, touch controls, and sensors for Bose’s “augmented reality” apps. Bose has kept some of the best-loved features from its older models as well, such as adjustable levels of noise cancellation, a monitoring mode to let in sound from your environment, and an advertised 20-hour battery life.
For more options: Best Noise-Canceling Headphones
The 1000XM5 headphones are a popular noise-canceling model from Sony with a true wireless design, meaning there’s no cable connecting the earpieces. They offer best-in-class marks in our tests for audio quality and blocking out sound. They have touch controls, adjustable levels of noise cancellation, a generous battery life with quick charging, and a slew of other features like AI voice assistants and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio for virtual surround sound. These are our top pick for noise-canceling earbuds..
For more options: Best Bluetooth Headphones
For over-ear headphones from a trusted brand at a reasonable price, the Shure Aonic 40 would be great for moms who like something more substantial to keep them motivated during walks, workouts, and work-from-home sprints. These Bluetooth headphones feature awesome noise reduction capabilities and produce nice audio quality for most content types, only they’re a little heavy on the bass (but you can tweak sounds with the built-in EQ). They’ll last up to 25 hours on a single charge, and a 15-minute charge gets you another 5 hours of listening. Other nice features include support for digital assistants and an integrated microphone.
For more options: Best Headphones Under $100
The Samsung Galaxy Book3 360 is all business on the front, but ready to party when you bend the keyboard toward the back. This 2-in-1 laptop can fold outward, exposing its 15.6-inch OLED display to enable tablet mode. It packs a lot of power thanks to the latest Intel Core i7 processor running the show, 16GB of RAM for multitasking, and a roomy 512GB SSD, all in a sleek, portable package weighing just 3.2 pounds. You’d also be surprised how long it can last—CR tests show it has MacBook-rivaling battery life of 15-17 hours per charge. This laptop should easily satisfy the needs of any moms who own a business or need something to do schoolwork on.
For more options: Best Laptops
The iPad is more affordable than ever with the Apple iPad (64GB) 2022. The storage in this base model won’t serve heavier users well, but it’s a great starter device for someone who would appreciate a well-balanced tablet for light reading, streaming movies and shows, and productivity tasks. It features a long battery life, works with nice accessories like the Apple Smart Keyboard Cover and Apple Pencil, and enables access to the millions of quality apps and games in Apple’s App Store.
For more options: Best Tablets
The Apple Watch SE (gen 2) GPS (40mm) packs in a vast majority of features most people desire in a smartwatch and leaves out the higher-end tech and add-ons that sometimes go unused. And in exchange, the price is lower than for other Apple Watches. The SE comes in two sizes (40mm or 44mm) and two hardware configurations (GPS-only or GPS plus cellular). The bands are interchangeable, too. Our testers say its updated design makes it easily mistakable for one of Apple’s newest smartwatches, and it uses the same processor as the premium Apple Watch Ultra. This is a great way to try the essential Apple Watch experience without breaking the bank.
For more options: Which Apple Smart Watch Should You Buy?
It’s been a stressful year, so why not give Mom something that can help her drop out and tune in? The Edifier S1000MKII Bluetooth speaker provides top-notch sound quality, with a tight and musical bass and a midrange that lets the user hear every nuance of their favorite singer’s best tracks. And for a very reasonable price of about $350, mom gets a stereo pair of Edifiers, which allows the speakers to create a convincing illusion that the musicians are right there in the room with her.
For more options: Best Wireless Speakers
Bed, Bath, and More
Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer
The Dyson Supersonic lives up to its status as a luxury hair dryer. In our lab tests, it earns top scores for drying speed and is one of the quietest of the models we evaluated. Plus, it comes with five attachments: A diffuser, a styling concentrator, a gentle air attachment, a flyaway attachment, and a wide-tooth comb. All attach easily to the nozzle via a magnet and store neatly in a case that also houses the hair dryer.
For more options: Best Hair Dryers
Bio Ionic Long Barrel Styling Tool
The Bio Ionic Long Barrel came out on top in our at-home evaluations of the best curling irons. Four of the five evaluators thought it yielded shiny, healthy-feeling results. The extra-long barrel and multiple temperature settings produced bouncy curls that lasted for days for most users—although one tester thought the barrel was too long for her short hair.
For more options: Best Curling Irons
Glerups Shoe With Leather Sole
Consider this the perfect cozy addition to Mom’s winter wardrobe. These slip-on Glerups Shoes feature a leather sole on the bottom and a warm yet breathable wool material up top. “Feels like I’m wearing nothing at all,” says Perry Santanachote, a writer who tried these on for size. “They’re super light and easy to move around in.” Our testers noted that they’re grippy, but probably not as grippy as similar rubber-soled pairs. They’re also not as easy to slip in and out of as traditional slippers, so you may want to find another option if your recipient has limited mobility.
For more options: We Tried Ugg Fluff Yeahs and 7 Other Popular Slippers—Here’s What We Loved
The Brooklinen Lux Core sheets will fit a 14-inch mattress (or shorter). Our testers noted they don’t shrink as much as some other cotton sheets we test. They earn a top-notch rating for fit and an above-average rating for shrinkage, which means though they do tend to get smaller during washes, they don’t deform all that much over time. Luxe Core sheets are on the softer side based on our sensory test. Labels along each side that read “short side” and “long side” make it clear which way to make the bed.
For more options: Best and Worst Sheets
Therabody Theragun Mini
The ultraportable Theragun Mini is one of the quietest we test. It has a wedge-shaped handle and we find it’s one of the best devices for reducing problematic wrist postures. “I like the fact that it is small to hold,” one user said. “I love how easy it is to use and charge. It’s compact and easily transportable.” For overall portability and quietness, this could be a top choice.
For more options: 7 Massage Guns Evaluated
