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You don’t need the thinnest, lightest, or most elegantly designed items for your home office. In the space you make your living, you want reliable, comfortable, efficient tools—though it doesn’t hurt if they look nice, too. That’s why a team of three experienced remote workers spent more than 150 hours researching and testing new gear and apps, picking the most office-friendly items from The Wirecutter’s guides to find a selection of tools that we’re sure will earn their place in your workspace. To round out a work-optimized list of computer, phone, printing, and audio gear, we looked for the best software and apps that help remote workers get organized and connected. We tested apps for time tracking and task management, tax filing, web meetings, and project management, then compared and debated the merits of each to find the best fits for most people.

Once we had our picks, we set them up on our ideal standing desk, took some photos, and then, inspired by the challenge, fixed up our own home offices, as did many other. We hope this guide provides you with your own spark to make your home office a more efficient and less stressful place to get things done. Need a better place to put all of your stuff? Get your office furnished and outfitted with our “” guide. If you need a portable hard drive to back up important documents that’s compact enough to occasionally bring along on trips, the is the best choice. After about over the past three years, we’ve found the Seagate Backup Plus Slim to be reliable, the most important factor for any data-storage device.

It has a failure rate of 6.5 percent out of nearly 9,000 reviews. It’s also lighter and smaller than its competition, making it ideal for stashing in a drawer or (gently!) tossing into a bag to take with you, and it was consistently faster than other hard drives in our multifile music and photo transfer tests.

Plus, it’s one of the least expensive drives per terabyte that we tested. The 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus Slim weighs just 5.6 ounces and is one of the thinnest portable hard drives out there, measuring less than half an inch thick. Through testing, we learned that the leading portable hard drives don’t vary much in speed.

The Slim was roughly as fast as the rest of the competition, with read and write speeds of 87.8 megabytes per second and 86.8 MB/s respectively, but its long-term record of reliability is what makes it our pick. The 2 TB version is less expensive per terabyte than other capacities, so it offers the best value. Seagate also includes handy backup software that makes backing up important files from both your computer and phone easy, as well as 200 GB of free OneDrive storage for two years. —KS Backup service. Everyone who works at home should have off-site backup in addition to a local one on an external hard drive. Pay a few bucks a month, install an app on your computer that runs in the background, and your data is safely backed up over the Internet to the service.

There’s no hardware to buy, no discs to swap—and your backups remain safely off-site, so even if your home office burns down or someone steals your computer, your files are secure. At about $50 per year per computer, is currently the least expensive of the.

(You can also pay $5 month-to-month, or buy a two-year subscription for $95.) Backblaze includes all of my must-have features along with half of my nice-to-have features—including deduplication and the capability to back up external hard drives. The best thing about Backblaze is its ease of setup. When you run the installer, it prompts you to enter your email address and password, but that’s the only decision you have to make. At the end of the installation process, Backblaze starts running immediately, backing up all of your important files. You don’t have to have any further interaction with the app, and even if you do decide to change settings, it has very few of them for you to worry about. It’s a friendly experience—and the software is native for Mac and Windows. Once it’s set up, Backblaze runs unobtrusively in the background, even with continuous backups—you’ll probably never notice it unless you open the app to check on its progress.

—Joe Kissell Network-attached drive. After testing five new devices for our full, we’ve found that the is the speediest network-attached storage device offering support for many third-party apps. You can use this two-bay home NAS as a Web-hosting or backup device, a media streamer, BitTorrent box—or as anything else that a Linux computer is capable of running as. The DS218+ has an interface that’s easy to understand, plus it’s equipped with an Intel Celeron processor (with 2 GB of RAM that can be expanded to 6 GB) and hardware-level encryption. The DiskStation Manager’s interface pops out as a widget and shows an overview of the drive’s health. It uses a file system, which won’t hugely affect file-transfer speeds, but includes a feature that prevents accidental file deletion. You can access files remotely if you choose to use Cloud Station Server, the device’s optional cloud service.

Its Cloud Sync package, on the other hand, allows you to back up files and folders to external cloud platforms such as Google Drive, Backblaze, Amazon, or Dropbox. Through its own apps, the DS218+ supports media playback. It supports RAID 1 drive mirroring, alerts you to drive failure, has three USB ports, including one on the front, and supports all the features Wirecutter readers have asked about, such as FTP protocol, VPN server capabilities, IP cameras, UPS compatibility, and SSDs. —Thorin Klosowski and Samara Lynn Thumb drive. After doing, we found that the best USB 3.0 flash drive for most people is the.

A 64 GB drive hits the sweet spot, addressing most people’s cost and capacity needs, and the Kingston DataTraveler Elite G2 was the fastest and most reliable 64 GB drive in our real-world file-transfer tests. It’s also inexpensive per gigabyte. It has a metal case that’s sturdier than the plastic cases of our other picks, and it has a handy blinking activity light, a feature that many flash drives lack. Kingston’s five-year warranty is average for a flash drive, but is plenty for most people’s needs. The small cap that protects the USB plug is easily to lose, but USB-A connections are durable so it’ll work fine without it. —KS Mice and keyboards.

We spent about 100 total hours researching nearly 200 mice, surveying more than 1,000 mouse users, testing 30 mice ourselves, and consulting with a panel of experts and laypeople to find that the is the best wireless mouse for home office professionals. It was our testing panel’s favorite, and we think it has the best overall balance of features: medium size, ergonomic shape, six customizable buttons, long battery life, a Unifying Receiver (which lets you use up to six Logitech keyboards and pointing devices on a single USB port), and a three-year limited warranty. We tested mice on a variety of surfaces, and the Marathon Mouse M705 aced every one except the mirror. In addition to its six customizable buttons, it has a button that toggles between ratcheted scrolling and Logitech’s infinite (smooth) scrolling. Logitech claims the Marathon’s battery lasts a maximum of three years but doesn’t specify the frequency or length of use per day. In our original testing, after we used the Marathon for a few full days of work, the SetPoint software said the battery was still full, giving an estimate of 1,085 days of use remaining.

If you want a mouse with Bluetooth, we recommend the. It’s the second-most comfortable mouse we tested with tracking comparable with that of the Marathon. For people who use a mouse for hours on end every day, we recommend the. You can read more about our recommendations in.

—KS Bluetooth keyboard. After over the past few years, we recommend Logitech’s Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboards (/) if you spend all day typing and want a wireless keyboard that you can quickly swap between multiple devices.

The K810 and K811 have long been the gold standard for Bluetooth keyboards because of their smooth, well-spaced keys, adjustable key backlighting, platform-specific layouts for Mac and Windows users, and ability to instantly switch between multiple paired devices—like your computer, phone, and tablet. But they’re expensive: The street price for each usually runs between $60 and $100. The Easy-Switch keys are satisfying to type on, with deep enough travel and springy feedback.

Like our recommended mouse, the Logitech MX Master, the Easy-Switch keyboards can be paired with up to three devices at once and let you switch between them instantly. The K810 has a Windows-friendly layout, while the K811 is designed for Mac and iOS users. We recommend getting the version that corresponds to your operating system of choice, but both models will work with any OS—Bluetooth doesn’t discriminate.

The Easy-Switch keyboards have built-in rechargeable batteries, which you can charge via the included Micro-USB cable even while you’re using the keyboard. In our tests, an Easy-Switch keyboard typically lasted two and a half to three weeks on a single charge with the backlighting on the keys at maximum brightness. With no backlight, it lasted four to five more days. If the Logitech Easy-Switch keyboards are too expensive, we also like the.

The K380 lacks a backlight and operating-system-specific layouts, and it has less-comfortable, round keys that take some getting used to. But the K380 costs less than half as much as the Easy-Switch keyboards and has longer battery life. And if you want a keyboard with a built-in number pad, we recommend the.

It’s similar to the K380, but it adds a full-size number pad and a USB dongle for optional RF connectivity. —KS Ergonomic keyboard. If you find that a curved, split keyboard feels better under your hands, we recommend the.

Out of the 15 ergonomic keyboards we researched and nine we tested, the Sculpt was the most comfortable because of its large, curved wristpad design, removable negative-slope attachment, detached number pad, and chiclet keys. The keys don’t feel as nice as mechanical models, and the function and escape keys are a bit small, but no other keyboard we tested followed ergonomic principles as closely while remaining affordable. However, we don’t recommend any specific ergonomic keyboard to prevent the onset of repetitive stress injury (RSI) or carpal tunnel syndrome. There’s no conclusive evidence that using an ergonomic keyboard longterm can prevent those injuries, though an ergo keyboard can make typing more comfortable if you are already injured. Should that be the case, we like the combined with the.

The Kinesis allows you to detach the keyboard’s two pieces and angle them independently to exactly fit your hands. But if you need an ergonomic keyboard for medical reasons, we recommend checking with your doctor and following their advice based on your personal needs. Keyboard placement, posture, and the overall ergonomics of your desk setup will have a greater impact on your health than a curved, split keyboard, according to.

“The research we’ve done shows there’s a fair amount of tolerance within the structures of the wrist for that kind of lateral movement of the hand. However there’s much less tolerance for the hands moving vertically.” This means adjusting your keyboard (ergonomic or regular) with a to prevent wrist extension is more important for most people than a split keyboard to prevent. You can read more about ergonomic best practices and a few alternate picks in our. —Wes Fenlon Mechanical keyboards. Note: Our picks are currently unavailable in the Cherry MX Brown option, which are the most popular switches for all-around use, but are available in MX Clear, MX Blue, and MX Green. You can read about the different types of switches in our full guide to. If you spend most of your day typing, a can be a worthwhile upgrade over a cheaper, less comfortable keyboard.

Mechanical models are more durable, responsive, and customizable than other types of keyboards. The best for you depends a lot on personal preference and what you’re using it for, but after spending months testing 31 top-rated keyboards with a four-person panel, we unanimously agreed that the is a great place to start because of its fantastic key feel, build quality, and elegant design. The WASD Code 87-Key is available with all the most popular switch options for general use and typists—, and, plus —and every single one of our panel testers loved how it felt.

Though many other mechanical keyboards have very aggressive styles, the Code’s tasteful modern aesthetic and even white backlighting fit with almost any desktop decor. Out of the box the Code works as a standard keyboard for any operating system, and you can also customize the layout to Mac and other modes using switches on the underside of the board.

We recommend the 87-key version for most people because compact keyboards are. If you like the Code 87-key but need a full-size number pad, get the instead. It’s exactly the same as the tenkeyless version, but it includes a number pad. You can read more about mechanical keyboards, and check out our other recommendations, in our. —KS Charging and cables. Almost any accessory that you use at a desk these days charges via USB—and that means you probably have a separate USB charger for each. Wouldn’t you rather charge multiple devices at once without taking up precious outlets?

Using six iPads and surveyed over 1,100 Wirecutter readers to determined that the is the best multiport USB charger for most people. Anker’s 40-watt four-port USB charger doesn’t use a cable and plugs directly into wall outlets without completely covering them, which leaves space for another pronged outlet device. The PowerPort 4 can fast-charge three full-size iPads or two full-size iPads and two smartphones at once. Otherwise, when four iPads are plugged in, it’ll charge them at slower rate. At 2.6 inches tall, and 1.1 inches thick, it’s just slightly bigger than. When testing, we measured the PowerPort 4’s idle kilowatt power draw using the —it was so low that the monitor reported zero kilowatt usage after 166 hours. Another reason we consider the PowerPort 4 to be the best pick is because 84 percent of readers that we surveyed noted that at most, they’d likely charge three devices at one time.

If you’re on the other side of the fence in this preference, our previous pick, is still a great option for simultaneously charging six devices. This pick is better suited to desks than our overall favorite multiport charger, because its plug is at the end of a 5-foot-long cable. This means it can rest on top of your desk even if it’s plugged into the wall or a surge protector on the floor. —Nick Guy Micro-USB and Lightning cables. Most Android phones, plus a huge variety of accessories, rely on Micro-USB, while iPhones, iPads, and Apple peripherals use Lightning.

Having some extras around your desk means you’ll never have to go searching. When it comes to and, we like. They charge Micro-USB accessories and devices at their maximum speed and are extremely durable. Anker builds its PowerLine cables with Kevlar fiber and PVC strain-relief collars that should prevent fraying during normal use. The cables are also affordable, with even the most-expensive model—the 10-foot length—priced at less than $10. Add Anker’s solid reputation for hardware quality, the company’s well-regarded customer service, and an impressive 18-month warranty, and you can see why this cable is our pick.

If you’re an Apple user, we also like for the same reasons. This MFi-certified cable stands out among the competition thanks to solid build quality inside and out, a Lightning-connector plug that works with almost any case, and a price tag that’s significantly less than what you’ll pay for one of Apple’s cables.

Great 4K monitors no longer cost much more than their non-4K counterparts, so if you’ve bought a new computer within the past three years, or if you plan to buy one soon,. We’ve spent and we think most people who need a great one should get the. It has one of the most color-accurate screens we tested, tiny bezels around the side and top, and easy ergonomic adjustments that allow you to tilt, swivel, pivot, and adjust the height. The Z27 also has a variety of useful ports like USB 3.0 and USB-C. The USB-C port lets you transmit data and video and charge a USB-C laptop at 65 W all over a single cable. It also comes with a dead-pixel policy and a three-year warranty. If you don’t want to spend the money on a 4K monitor, or you want something a little smaller, we have a few other recommendations in.—KS Laptop and phone docks. You can charge and sync your phone with a loose cable, but a dock—a cradle that holds your phone upright while it’s plugged in—is a nice upgrade.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve tested more than 25 docks for the iPhone, and is easily my favorite. This attractive and stable dock works with any Lightning-connector iPhone (bare or in almost any iPhone case, including battery cases) and most Micro-USB charging phones, Android or otherwise. If you’re using an older iPhone model with a headphone jack, the HiRise 2 Deluxe keeps the jack accessible, and—my favorite feature—makes one-handed docking and removal of your phone easy. It’s the only dock I’ve seen that has all of these characteristics, and it can even hold an iPad mini or iPad Air. If you want to save $20, you can buy the non-Deluxe model that ships without a Lightning-to-USB cable and requires more assembly, but we think the Deluxe is worth the cost. —Dan Frakes USB 3.0 docking station. A USB 3.0 docking station lets you quickly connect a monitor, Ethernet, hard drives, and audio to a work laptop with a single cable, making them easy to pick up and drop back onto your desk. We researched 30 models, tested six top contenders for more than five hours, and found that is the best for most home offices.

In a field of very similar products, Anker’s dock offers the best combination of high-speed drive transfer, fast-charging USB ports, and 4K video support at the lowest price. We used a as our test laptop.

To evaluate USB 3.0 data transfer speeds, we used an, the fastest portable external drive at the time of our tests,. We also tested the charging speed of each USB port by plugging in an iPad Air 2 connected to a.

We specifically tested 4K video output to ensure support for the increasingly common standard for monitors. For our tests, we connected each dock via HDMI to a with the resolution set to 4K; we repeated this test with DisplayPort and DVI ports on the docks that had them. We tested Ethernet speeds by plugging each dock into another computer with Gigabit Ethernet (specifically, a 2010 iMac) and measuring speed with Network Utility on the MacBook Pro. Each dock showed link speeds of 1 Gigabit per second, exactly what we were looking for. Finally, we tested each dock’s audio inputs and outputs, monitoring the playback and recording levels on headphones. All of the docks we tested provided reliable audio passthrough. Anker’s dock has two USB 3.0 ports and an additional four USB 2.0 ports.

The former were the second fastest we tested by only a small margin, with read speeds of 371 MB/s and write speeds of 320 MB/s. In terms of charging, the 3.0 ports put out 0.5 A (enough for some small accessories such as Bluetooth headsets) while the 2.0 ports were more impressive at 1.5 A. That’s still a slower rate than what many smartphones and tablets support, but it’s not bad. 4K video support from both the HDMI and DVI connectors worked without issue―two other docks had lower resolution through DVI.

The Ethernet port on the Anker dock properly supported Gigabit speeds, and the audio worked just fine. —NG Looking for a? We’ve got that covered in. Headphones and speakers.

A pair of great headphones is an investment in both focus and enjoyment, and we recommend for listening while you work. They’re our pick for best over-ear but typically sell for about half that.

The Sonys are a mainstay of professional studios, and delivers sound that a panel of audio experts unanimously ranked the best among the 15 headphones we tested. They can last forever because of their replaceable earcups, one-year warranty on parts, and tough, coiled cord that should survive many roll-overs from your desk chair. The MDR-7506 is a comfortable shape that fit the wide range of head sizes and ear shapes on our panel. And you can easily fold them over for storage or travel. Unfortunately, they don’t have a built-in microphone, which makes them a poor choice for conference calls, but great for shutting out distractions and nearly everything else. —Lauren Dragan Noise-cancelling headphones. If you really want to block out all-day low-frequency noise—engines, refrigerators, air conditioners, or heating—or if you travel often on planes or trains, the are the best noise-cancelling headphones around.

They have a balanced and natural sound. They’re comfortable to wear for hours and they have about 25 hours of battery life, which is important if you’re stuck on long flights or train rides.

The travel case isn’t as slim as those of some of our other picks, but it’s still reasonably compact. We simply can’t think of anything we don’t like about this pair. Computer speakers. After our previous pick for computer speakers, the was discontinued, we conducted another round of testing with 11 new contenders to find that the are the. It impresses in the area of user-friendliness and sound quality while also coming equipped with more inputs, outputs, and control features that most pairs of speakers. Though they’re priced around two-thirds of the cost of our previous pick, the nicely showcase a balanced midrange that supports vocals well.

The low end can get a little muddy closer to the 80 hertz lower limit of the speakers’ range but with only a 3-inch woofer, this can be expected. If you’re looking for an option with built-in Bluetooth, our runner-up pick, the, are a pair of speakers that perform just as great. They have a thinner sounding midrange, but the 4-inch pair is bigger all-around and offers heavier bass. —John Higgins Bluetooth speaker. If music is only an occasional thing around your office, if you move your work from room to room, or if you want a speaker you can take along on business trips, the gives you above-average sound in a rugged, waterproof, portable design.

Out of 40 that our panel of audio experts tested and analyzed (on top of 78 models tested previously), the UE Roll 2 stood out as the best package of sound, convenience, design, and bag-fitting size. Although it produces much less bass than larger, the sound is less thin and harsh than that of most Bluetooth speakers and doesn’t distort when you crank it up. Unfortunately the UE Roll 2 doesn’t have a speakerphone option. Our, the, is especially good considering the price.

I could hear Lauren very clearly, although she complained that my voice sounded slightly muffled. In our tests, Bluetooth range was about 25 feet through one wall, which is good for a speaker of this size. —BB Router and modem. After, we recommend the, especially for people who do most of their work online. When considering short and long range connections, it’s fast and reliable.

Because this dual-band router has load-balancing band steering, you can get it up and running faster than most—one of the main reasons we chose it as our top pick. Brother 8220 driver download. It’s also ideal because the interface is user-friendly for those who are either experts or novices in setting up wireless routers. The also has MU-MIMO support as well as parental control support. We found that the R700P was among the top contenders when we tested unthrottled HTTP download performance using a single device.

Even if overcrowding is never an issue, it’s good to have a router like this one that’s unlikely to run into network or coverage issues. We didn’t really find the website blocking feature that comes with both the R700P and R6700 to be useful. And when considering the absolute fastest and smoothest connection to the Internet, the R700P’s lack of a third band could be an issue if it’s used in a small space or crowded apartment with an overload of devices. We otherwise found fewer shortcoming with our top pick than with other tested routers.

—Jim Salter Best modem. If you have cable Internet, you’re probably paying a separate monthly fee for the privilege of renting a cable modem from your ISP. If you buy your own cable modem instead of renting one, it will pay for itself within a couple of years, and (depending on how old your rented modem is) it could improve your Internet speed right away. After since 2013, we found that the is the best modem for most people. Instead of a couple of years, it’ll pay for itself in a couple of months and it’s compatible with most US Internet service providers.

This is especially important to consider when buying a modem because providers sometimes change which modems are compatible with their service. Having more than a few options if this happens is ideal. Handling 24 downstream channels and eight upstream channels, this DOCSIS 3.0 modem (which will also work with DOCSIS 3.1 service) works well with plans up to 600 Mbps. The biggest downside is that the comes with only a one-year warranty (most modems come with a two-year warranty), but it’s garnered lots of positive reviews and is reliable.

—TK and Joel Santo Domingo Printers, scanners, and fax services. We’ve spent more than 300 hours over the past few years, and of the 40 printers we tested in 2018, the was the most reliable and least annoying to use of the bunch. It’s fast (it printed 17 single-sided pages per minute), powerful, flexible, and easy to set up and use, which in our book makes it the best laser printer for most people. Print quality is excellent, and all of the features you’d expect from a high-end machine are here: auto-duplexing, plenty of networking options, support for common mobile printing standards, and a bypass slot for odd-sized media. You can get extra-large toner cartridges that are good for more than 3,000 pages. If you want to make your dollar stretch a little further, you can make the printer default to duplex printing and adjust menu settings to reduce toner usage.

We don’t recommend handing out reduced-toner prints to clients, but the results are passable for everyday personal use. And because the M254dw is a laser printer,. Unlike ink cartridges, toner cartridges have a high capacity, which reduces the chance that you’ll find yourself out of toner when you really, really need to print. Laser printers don’t need to run lengthy cleaning cycles, either. —Ben Keough All-in-one printer/scanner/copier. After more than 35 hours of research and testing, we’re convinced that the is the for your home office.

If you need a jack-of-all-trades—and master-of-none—machine for your home office or your family, this model will get the job done. It can print, scan, fax, and copy most regular documents, it runs faster than many inkjets at this price, and it feels sturdier than other AIOs we’ve tested over the years. HP’s interface seems more polished than any other company’s, and that makes installation, everyday use, and even troubleshooting relatively painless. Per-page print costs are lower than those of most competing inkjets, at 1.6¢ per page for black and white and 8.1¢ for color. Though it’s best suited for document printing and scanning, it’s actually decent at printing photos when the need arises, too. This model is as close as you can get to a great, affordable all-arounder. Let’s be clear:, particularly color all-in-ones.

Yes, that statement even includes this HP model. Even the most popular, highest-rated printers will probably find a way to let you down at some point during their life cycle. And no matter which one you choose, it will use up lots of ink. If you can get away with it, avoid a printer entirely.

If you don’t need color,; if you only occasionally need scanning, our portable scanner pick can accept up to 20 duplex pages. —LM Portable document scanner.

Don’t let the “portable” label fool you: The is the best tool for getting a large amount of scanning done at your desk, keeping your space tidy and your documents organized. Over more than since 2013, we’ve found that the Brother ADS-1250W is more pleasant to use than the other document scanners we’ve tested.

It offers more accurate text recognition, cleaner-looking scans, and reliable Wi-Fi connectivity, and in our tests it scanned just as quickly as the other models we tried. It’s bigger and heavier than some of the competition, and it doesn’t include a battery, but we think it’s still portable enough for most people. —BK Document scanning app.

We can safely say doo’s Scanbot is the best scanning app for both and after researching 26 options and testing seven of them. It’s a free app that’s loaded with enough features for most people.

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If you need to convert documents to edit-ready text using optical character recognition, or OCR, it’s a $5 in-app purchase (or, optionally, enabling in-app advertising in the Android app). It’s worth it, because though Scanbot’s OCR quality isn’t perfect, it is as good any other app we tested.

It’s a strong enough phone app to eliminate the need for a. It’s a strong enough phone app to eliminate the need for a document scanner for most people. In choosing the best scanning app, we tested factors such as document detection (finding the document on a surface, framing it, and lining up the crop lines with the paper’s edges), multi-page support, and image quality. And while not everybody needs it, good OCR was a necessary feature for our top pick, as it can be had for such a low cost.

We also favored apps that allow easy sharing to outside cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive. Scanbot launches right into a capture window, ready to find documents or receipts. The image detection algorithm is able to differentiate between a sheet of paper and the surface you have it on. Other apps require you to draw the frame yourself or find it after the shot. Once the edges have been found and the content in focus (on-screen prompts tell you to move closer or hold still), the app automatically snaps its shot. Your scan is then uploaded to your cloud service of choice, if you have that feature set up, or you can jump in and edit the file.

The app’s image quality is the best of those we tested. Text is crisp and clear, with great contrast.

Images reproduce accurately, in both color and black-and-white scans (scans are color by default, but can be switched to black-and-white after the shot). The OCR is about as good as can be expected from a mobile app. We counted about seven mistakes in a 200-word document. Scanbot does better with text without special formatting or unusual spacing; we noticed it had problems with underlined text.

If you don’t need OCR, you can continue to use the scanning and sharing features of the app as long as you’d like, for free. ($10) is the next-best scanning app, available on iOS only.

It produces image quality on a par with Scanbot and also features OCR. It’s at least twice the price of Scanbot, though, and sharing with other apps relies on the Share Sheet built into iOS. All the other apps we tested were inferior to Scanbot and Prizmo.

And unless you need something more than a phone can provide, there’s little reason to buy dedicated scanning hardware. —NG Online fax service. We spent more than 20 hours researching and testing to find that is the best for most people who only need to fax documents occasionally. You can send up to three pages (and a cover sheet) for free through a simple, single-screen design without having to create an account. Because it’s free, a FaxZero logo appears on the cover page, but it’s unobtrusive enough that we don’t think people will mind it for personal faxes. If you’re frequently sending long documents or you need a logo-free design for professional faxes, is a good option.

For about $10 a month, HelloFax integrates with all the major cloud services (Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, and Evernote) and allows you to send and receive a total of 300 pages. And if you want to cancel, you can at anytime, no phone call required. —Mark Smirniotis Web meeting and call recording gear.

If you need a webcam—because you don’t have one or your laptop’s integrated webcam isn’t good enough—we recommend the. It has great image quality, helpful software, and is universally loved by reviewers. Cheaper webcams, like the Logitech HD Webcam C270, don’t have good enough image quality or enough features to justify them over a built-in laptop camera or for frequent video callers. The only webcam we found with slightly better image quality is the business-focused, which costs around $30 more and has harder-to-navigate software that offers less manual control over the camera. And tested six head-to-head in Skype calls, Google Hangouts, and Zoom meetings. The C920’s 1080p image was crisp and clear, and autofocus and auto–white balance worked well for meetings.

If you need more control, you can manually adjust exposure, gain, brightness, contrast, color intensity, white balance, and focus in the Logitech Webcam Controller software for Windows and Mac. If you don’t, you can ignore all those settings and use the webcam straight out of the box. The C920 has a huge field of view, and the software allows you to zoom and pan—keeping your lovely face in frame, for example, without showing your messy office to coworkers. Our pick sits on top of your laptop screen or monitor and braces itself against the back of the screen, or can be mounted on a tripod, depending on your needs. It physically tilts up and down—in addition to the software controls—to control what’s in frame. At least 11 webcams and crowned the Logitech C920 best.

Our pick was chosen as one of the, has the, got an “Excellent” rating, and is the top seller on Amazon. —KS Bluetooth headset. After more than 50 hours of research and testing 17 different headsets, the is our pick for the. It’s comfortable enough to wear during even the longest conference calls thanks to soft, well-padded earcups that aren’t covered in a scratchy fabric like those on many of the other headsets we tested. The Evolve 40 was the clear standout in our sound-quality evaluations, and once we figured out how to correctly position the microphone (which rotates 270 degrees so that you can position it for left-side or right-side use), it picked up crystal-clear audio without broadcasting regular breathing sounds or ambient noise.

The Evolve 40 also has one of the better inline controllers of the headsets we considered, with buttons arranged simply and located at four equidistant points around the edges. Other controllers have buttons placed closer together, making it harder to find the exact button you want without taking your eyes off your screen. —DV and Ray Aguilera Wireless USB headset. We spent more than 50 hours researching and testing and found that the is the best choice for people who make frequent calls and listen to music while at their desk. It offers surprisingly good audio quality, has a balanced sound signature, and was the most comfortable of all the headsets we tested to wear for long periods of time.

The Voyager Focus comes with a USB Bluetooth dongle for your computer that’s paired to the headset out of the box, so you can get up and running quickly. (You can also pair directly with your computer if you’d like to avoid using the dongle.) You can also pair with a smartphone at the same time. The Voyager Focus UC comes with a charging stand and carrying case. —Marianne Schultz Web meeting app. The best web meeting software for people who work from home and can make their own choice is.

Zoom’s free Basic plan contains enough features and free connection time to cover most teams’ meeting needs, and it works across the vast majority of devices. It’s the fastest, most painless route between “We need to have a meeting” and being in that meeting among the 20 options we considered.

Works on, and BlackBerry, and the mobile apps are good enough that those using devices that the app doesn’t support (like Chromebooks or Linux) can simply prop up their phones on their desks to join in. Perhaps Zoom’s best feature is that those being invited to a Zoom meeting only need to click a link in an email or calendar invitation.

From there, if you haven’t already installed the application, Zoom quickly installs a tiny client that automatically launches into the invited meeting. The Zoom software has your video off until you turn it on, and the options and settings make it relatively easy to adjust audio, video, and interface settings. Wirecutter staffers have taken part in hundreds of Zoom meetings, and the video and audio quality have been as good as most of us expect from web conferencing. Screen sharing, chat, a phone-in number, and most everything else you need is included in Zoom’s Basic plan.

While one-to-one meetings are free and unlimited, meetings with three or more (up to 25) participants are limited to 40 minutes. For the ease of use, free features, and good online support you get with Zoom, that seems more than fair. Most other web meeting software―including, and ―imposes limits and price tiers in ways that feel more restrictive for small teams.

If you need to meet with groups online for more than 40 minutes, Zoom’s Pro and Business plans maintain the app’s easy setup and wide device compatibility. Other good alternatives include and, both recommended by; check each app’s features, restrictions, and pricing before signing up. But for most home offices and remote workers, Zoom is the best option. —Kevin Purdy Audio recorder.

You can use a smartphone to record meetings, lectures, or take personal notes, but you shouldn’t: Their tiny microphones are fine for phone calls, but lousy at capturing farther-away voices. Also, using your phone to record audio eats up your handset’s battery life and storage. If you want a voice recorder that can capture audio that you won’t have to strain to listen to and that has tons of storage space, we recommend the. It was chosen after doing. Its all-around collection of features are better than most and it recorded the clearest, most intelligible audio out of our tested bunch. The received the highest ratings among our testers, who sat on a blind listening panel. It offers 39 hours of recording time, 4 GB of storage, a backlit screen that’s bright, as well as a menu that’s easy to navigate.

The UX560 also has a retractable USB 3.0 plug and a built-in rechargeable battery. When tested in a coffee shop with background noise it performed better than our other picks and delivered audio that didn’t drown out the speaker—its Clear Voice setting contributed to these results. It also picked up sound well and performed exceptionally when testing lecture recordings. —Seamus Bellamy Productivity and finance apps. For the past five years, we’ve consulted experienced tax professionals while feeding both fake and real tax returns through leading services to find. While there is no single site for everyone, we found to be the easiest program for entering and double-checking your income, expenses, and household and business particulars.

It’s far from perfect, but it does the best job of helping you enter your numbers and understand what to expect after you file. Compared with the competitors we looked at—, and —TurboTax’s interface is notably less cluttered and offers better help and tips. It tells you about uncommon entries that most people should ignore, and alerts you to common mistakes. Other suites generally present long lists of checkboxes that can induce uncertainty.

If you’re not sure, and you’re filing at least one day before the deadline, you can ask questions of TurboTax’s tax experts and get a swift response, or get a second opinion from the TurboTax online forums. —KP Budgeting app. Most financial experts and books steer people away from budgeting apps entirely, because exposes you to the reality of your money in a way that having it done for you cannot. That’s why automated spending trackers, like Mint, aren’t sufficient on their own. But is different because it walks you through the process, offering just enough coaching to make it easier without doing it for you. Setup is easy, it syncs with your banks and credit cards (with a manual option if you prefer), does helpful math, shows month-to-month trends, and offers a better onboarding system than other apps.

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After that’s done, it helps you stick to your plan by providing clear feedback on your budgets and compelling you to account for everything. Its mobile app is full of features, it’s easy to use, and its help sections (and occasional tip emails) are far better than those of most other apps. —KP Invoicing and time-tracking. If you don’t have a good time-tracking or invoice-generating service already set up, the easiest services to try out are. If you’re a one-person shop and need time-tracking, project management, and simple create-and-send invoices, we recommend Harvest. If you generate trickier invoices, have many expenses, and need to closely track payments from different clients, FreshBooks will help you get paid.

Both are easier to set up for most people than the 40 other invoicing and tracking services our experienced freelancers considered. Both and have straightforward monthly pricing, based on number of users (Harvest) or clients (FreshBooks). That pricing reflects each service’s strengths. Harvest has robust time-tracking and project-management powers, with estimates, web and mobile tracking apps (and widgets), tie-ins with other project management apps, and resource-tracking features you may find useful, even if you don’t generally bill by the hour. The invoices are clean and readable, and reports you generate for your own knowledge are rich and interactive, showing you just where your time and efforts are going. Harvest invoices via the Web, PDF, PayPal, or Stripe.

FreshBooks offers more than a dozen integrations with PayPal and other payment services. FreshBooks provides far more in the way of invoicing, allowing you to more easily duplicate, search, and modify past and recurring invoices. Because FreshBooks sends a link to an online payment page, FreshBooks can show you exactly when a client saw and opened your invoice, and offers plenty of options on payment, reminders, late fees, and adjustments. Expenses are also easier to add, search, and bill from FreshBooks than Harvest.

But FreshBooks’ time tracking interface is less elegant and can’t be triggered from apps like Basecamp or Google Drive, as with Harvest. FreshBooks is a better tool for more complicated relationships with clients, but not everybody needs that. —KP Calendar app After much installing, deliberating, and dueling with our personal recommendations, our team came to agree: the best mobile calendar app for most people is the one built into their smartphone. While there’s plenty of attractive calendar software out there, each with their own useful feature (or three), we think the built-in apps in iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, or just in a browser tab are fine for most people. Android and iOS make up the vast majority of smartphones out there, so most people have their calendars synced through either Google or iCloud, or imported from an Exchange account. Google Calendar is the safer bet, as it offers the best range of support across browsers, desktops, and mobile apps and devices. Apple’s iCloud Calendar is a little more limited, as there’s no native support outside of Apple products and Microsoft Outlook.

Google and Apple’s native calendar apps both offer rich experiences that match about evenly with the third-party options we tested (at least as of this writing), including deep integration with the other apps on your phone including the dialer, maps, and contacts. That hasn’t always been the case, but they improve with each new operating system release.

We found that the main selling point of third-party apps is distinct design. Some people may strongly prefer a certain layout or text scheme, enough so to pay for a change. But both Google and Apple offer multiple layouts to meet different needs, too.

Much praise has gone to Flexibits’ Fantastical 2, which is available for (with a companion Apple Watch app),. It’s a nice-looking app with support for iCloud, Google Calendar, Exchange, and other services. The flagship feature is natural language parsing. Type or dictate a full sentence, and Fantastical 2 will turn the relevant information into a calendar event.

“Lunch meeting with John next Tuesday at Marble & Rye at 1:30” becomes an event titled “Lunch meeting with John,” scheduled for next Tuesday, at the appropriate time, probably with a map link to that restaurant. But here’s the thing: the voice assistants on iPhone and Android, Siri and Google Now, can do that just as well. In our testing there was no significant difference in the quality of the parsing between Fantastical and those native tools. Our ultimate recommendation is to stick with what’s already on your phone, unless you really hate the design or another calendar offers an app integration―Facebook, Evernote, your to-do manager, etc.―that you simply must have. —NG Task management/to-do app. The best to-do app for the majority of people is Wunderlist.

It’s available on pretty much every platform, including, the web, and even the Apple Watch. We find the app incredibly simple to use without sacrificing deeper options and conveniences. At least one of our editors switched away from his well-established reminders setup after reviewing this pick. The app has free and paid tiers, but for most people the free version will be more than enough for their daily tasks. Wunderlist (now owned by Microsoft) presents an intuitive interface: a bar for adding text at the top, and a checklist below. Type in your task or reminder, add a deadline if necessary, and hit enter. It’ll appear right on the list, and be cloud-synced to all your other devices.

From there you can choose to add subtasks, notes, reminders, and comments to each task, as well as share them with other people, whether or not they use Wunderlist. None of the other apps we tested offered significantly more features or superior interfaces. The whole concept of a to-do app is a simple one, but Wunderlist nailed it. The pro version of the app offers a few benefits: unlimited file attachment sizes, rather than 5 MB; no limits on assigning others or sub-tasks, and 10 new backgrounds for the app. If you need these features, the $5 per month cost should be pretty easy to swallow. Both and agree that the software is great, with the former naming Wunderlist the best to-do list app, and the latter saying it’s their favorite app for shared lists. As Casey Newton at The Verge writes, “Wunderlist is usually more intuitive” than other to-do apps, “with most key features never more than a tap or two away.” is a strong competitor that unfortunately hides some basic functionality, such as searching file attachments, behind a $29-a-year paywall.

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Those looking for even more power, including people who subscribe to the Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy, will probably want more in-depth (read: expensive) software title than either of the picks listed above.