Walk into any Brookstone in a mall and you’ll see gourmet gadgets and specialty products like electric back massagers, personal remote flying helicopters, and futuristic-looking clocks — all billed as high-quality luxury items. However, every once in a while Brookstone recommend a product that you might find is of surprisingly low quality. We found three examples included here of products that have poor reviews and ratings and, therefore, low Decide Scores.
Headphones
Brookstone’s top advertised ($49.99) Wireless Headphones have a low 40/100 score. It scored so low because these headphones are in the middle of their product lifecycle, it’s not a commonly reviewed product, and no experts have bothered to review them. Meanwhile, Audio Technica’s $54 pair noise-canceling wireless headphones have a 72/100 score. We don’t necessarily recommend the Audio Technica’s as a pair of quality headphones, but they are the best when it comes to the wireless kind.
Grills
The featured ($149.99) Cuisinart portable gourmet gas grill has a 62/100 score. The old age of this grill and lack of expert reviews played into this score, along with the fact that most owners rated the grill as average. Meanwhile one of our recommended and highest-rated grills, the ($149) Weber liquid propane outdoor grill, has a 90/100 score. As a brand, Weber generally has high scores. This grill is popular right now, and we’re confident this price will hold steady as well.
Food Dehydrators
Brookstone’s featured ($67) Presto Dehydro digital dehydrator has a 70/100 score because it is in the middle of it’s product lifecycle and only five owners have bothered to review it. Meanwhile our highest-rated ($60) Nesco snackmaster pro is $7 cheaper and has a 91/100 score. This is a popular alternative. In fact, over 900 owners have written glowing reviews of this Nesco dehydrator, and we’re confident this price will hold.
Elliptical Trainer
Though most of the Brookstone products met our lowest-tracked prices, we still found some good items you can find cheaper elsewhere, like Brookstone’s featured stamina elliptical trainer. While it is highly rated with a 90/100 score, Brookstone charges $119. We found it priced under $100 at three major retailers and you could buy it for as low as $80.99. We’re also confident the price will drop even lower within the next two weeks, so you should consider waiting to buy this product in any case.
Our conclusion is that Brookstone can be hit-or-miss with both the price and quality of their products. Though you can definitely find gems for a good price, often you are sacrificing one for the other. If you do your research, you can be confident in your purchase there, or more likely you may find a better/cheaper option elsewhere.
Correction: An earlier version of this post had a sub-heading incorrectly listing “Four products to avoid” instead of three. We have corrected the error. See comments.