The CrossFit shoe wars got interesting: Nike’s Metcon reached its tenth anniversary, Reebok’s Nano hit X5, and two challengers — TYR out of the swim world and veteran-owned Born Primitive — built shoes good enough to steal podium spots. Everything from our 2017 guide is long discontinued; here’s the current generation for lifting, box jumps and everything a WOD throws at your feet.
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The one-shoe-for-the-gym question has a better answer in 2026 than it did when we first wrote this guide: hybrid trainers finally got good at both halves — stable enough for the squat rack, flexible enough for the HIIT class. First, the rule that still sorts everything: running shoes are for running, trainers are for everything else (our explainer on the difference holds up). Here are the trainers that earn the bag spot.
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Every shoe in our original tennis guide has been discontinued — not aged, discontinued. The lines survived under new numerals: Asics’s Gel-Resolution is now the “X,” Nike’s Vapor hit 12, the adidas Barricade died and came back as the 14. This 2026 rewrite covers the current generation for actual court tennis, with the durability warnings the marketing won’t give you.
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Let’s retire the TOP 10 fiction: the epilator market consolidated down to three brands worth buying — Braun, Philips and Panasonic — and the honest pain conversation the category always dodged. Yes, the first session hurts; regrowth comes back finer and later sessions genuinely don’t. This 2026 rewrite covers the four epilators that matter, plus the technology that grew up next door and now competes for the same money: home IPL.
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Facial hair removal reinvented itself since our last guide: the mini epilator is now just one of four tool families, alongside the “lipstick” electric razors that exploded out of TV ads, the dermaplaning razors that became the internet’s default peach-fuzz answer, and the humble spring coil that refuses to die. Different tools solve different problems — root removal versus surface smoothness versus exfoliation — so this rewrite is organized by what you actually want to happen to the hair.
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Depilatory creams are the most misunderstood tool in hair removal: chemistry that dissolves hair at the skin line, painless when used right and a chemical burn when used wrong. The 2026 shelf is essentially a Nair-versus-Veet duopoly with two useful challengers — and the differences that matter are printed in the fine print: minutes allowed, and body areas allowed. We read the labels so you don’t have to guess.
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The bikini trimmer grew up. In 2018 this category was AA-battery “shapers” from the drugstore; in 2026 it’s ceramic-blade, USB-rechargeable, fully waterproof tools from brands that talk about pubic hair like adults. The old guard mostly didn’t survive the transition — here’s what did, what replaced it, and what’s actually worth your money.
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Home waxing split into two worlds since our last guide: hard wax you melt in a warmer (we cover that in a separate hard wax guide), and everything that needs no warmer at all — ready-to-use strips, body-heat sugar gels and sugaring paste. This rewrite covers the no-warmer world, where the biggest news is that a razor startup’s $19 strip kit now beats the drugstore legends in nearly every editorial test.
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Good news for tired feet: the best foot massager of 2026 costs forty dollars. That’s not us being cheap — in independent testing this January, the little Nekteck shiatsu machine beat rivals costing three times more. This rewrite of our guide covers the full field, from that giant-killer to heated foot-and-calf machines and the wireless compression boots athletes wear, plus the health caveats the boxes bury in fine print.
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First, an honesty correction to our own old headline: waxing is not painless. Hard wax is the less painful technology — it grips hair, not skin, which is why dermatologists call it one of the safest and most effective home options, especially for coarse hair. What changed since our last guide: beads-plus-warmer became the standard kit format, a couple of once-popular brands vanished, and the safety rules got clearer. All of it below.
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