Entertainment
A Potato Chip Taste Test
We take potatoes very seriously here at Cup of Jo, so we enlisted Casey Elsass — recipe developer and food writer extraordinaire — to help us find the best potato chips out there. Casey has worked on over 20 cookbooks, and when it comes to party snacks, no one does it better (this is the man behind Mosaic Jell-O and hot-fudge gifts). With his finely tuned palate, he set out to rank five grocery-store chip brands. And the winner surprised us all…
The Contenders:
Five widely available potato-chip brands — original salted flavor only. I also nixed ridged chips or any specialty varieties.
The Methodology:
As with our last taste test, I set out blind samples, each numbered and coded to a key that I kept to myself. Sliced cucumber and plain sparkling water were available for palate-cleansing between tastes. In addition to ranking the samples, I asked Casey to weigh in on saltiness, crunch, and potato flavor.
The Duds
5th Place: Utz
4th Place: Zapp’s
We’ll start with the bad news: Both Utz and Zapp’s were total flops. “Utz has potato flavor and nothing else,” Casey said. “Not much salt, and it’s pretty dry — like a potato cracker.” The Zapp’s chips were deemed very stale-tasting, even from a freshly opened bag. “They taste like they’ve been sitting out,” said Casey. “Also, for me, they’re too crunchy.” The good news for both these brands is that we all love them for their other work: Zapp’s Voodoo chips are one-of-a-kind, and no one does pretzels like Utz. We’ll let them stick to that, and leave the potato-chip business to our top three, which are…
The Saltiest
3rd Place: Wise
This one seemed a little too salty on first bite: “My dream chip is salty, but salt should be a secondary flavor. With this one, it’s immediate.” But the Wise chips grew on Casey (and on me — though I kept my thoughts to myself during the proceedings!). It was the one he kept coming back to reconsider and was a strong contender for second place. Until…
The Silver Medalist
2nd Place: Boulder Canyon
Who knew?! These chips have been around for 30 years, but are still comparative newbies in the century-old American potato-chip industry. “Mmm!” Casey said, visibly surprised when he first tried them. “This one’s very light — crispy, but in a snappy way. And it has a good balance of potato and salt.” These chips were so good that Casey very nearly gave Boulder the crown. He did a palate cleanse, then a side-by-side comparison with his other top pick, just to be sure. And in the end, although Boulder chips were excellent, the winner, no question, was…
The Slam-Dunk Favorite
1st Place: Lay’s
“Yes, this is it,” Casey said. “They have perfect crunch, and the flavor progression is ideal: oil, potato, salt. They look so light that you expect them to be too airy, but the crispiness is spot on.” After sampling them, Casey suspected they might be Lay’s, specifically because of that subtle perfection. “If you’ve ever been to Italy, the big thing there is ‘aperitivo,’ a before-dinner ritual, where you have your spritz and some little snacks. And I’m almost positive that everyone in Italy is serving Lay’s.” While I cannot confirm Casey’s Aperitivo Theory, I believe it. I always thought of Lay’s as oil-heavy, but this test proved me wrong (as our colleague Alison put it, “It’s shocking how much better these are than the others”). On overall satisfaction, Lay’s were — to the official and unofficial testers — the stand-out favorite. When the taste test was over, we sat around in the garden and finished the whole bag.
Thank you so much for your expertise, Casey! So, friends, do you agree with these findings? And what snack, dessert, or ingredient shall we put to the test next?
P.S. Many more taste tests, and THE best summer dessert to bring over.
(Thank you to Alison for letting us use your garden!)
Entertainment
Final days to lock in your favorite Microsoft Office apps for life for just $33
TL;DR: Get a Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows lifetime license for $32.97 through Aug. 9 and enjoy Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, and Teams with a one-time purchase.
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This is your last chance to ditch Microsoft 365’s subscription fees for good. Through Aug. 9, you can grab a lifetime license to Microsoft Office 2021 for much less than its usual retail price. Simply pay once, download the full software suite, and never worry about renewals again.
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Entertainment
One dashboard, 20+ AI models — get ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and more for $79
TL;DR: Pay $79 once (reg. $619) for ChatPlayground AI Unlimited Lifetime and compare 20+ leading AI models side by side, chat with PDFs and images, and generate AI art.
Credit: ChatPlayground AI
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Entertainment
The best Dyson vacuums actually make vacuuming fun: See my favorites for 2026
Read my full review of the Dyson PencilVac.
The Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones takes the small space vacuum to a whole new level. It’s unbelievably slim and lightweight, and seamlessly scoots into tight crevices near furniture that don’t get dusted often enough. If there are certain spots in your home that you avoid cleaning just because it’s too tight of a squeeze, the PencilVac is about to change your life.
“Fluffy” references the ultra-soft material cushioning the four brush rolls, which provide a gloriously glide on hardwood you don’t want to scratch. The PencilVac’s short battery life and limited suction power wouldn’t be ideal in homes with more than just a few rooms or lots of carpeting.
No stick vacuum takes “stick” as literally as the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones. It doesn’t have a main body with a battery pack, handle, or dustbin like any other traditional cordless vacuum. It’s just a wand and a funky cleaning head with four microfiber cones as brush rolls — the coolest little vacuum that’s truly grab and go.
The whole vacuum can fit just about anywhere, and tight squeezes are even more accessible with a cleaning head that can spin a full 360 degrees. The agile design led me to so many awkward dusty spots that other cordless vacuums can’t comfortably reach: the small chunks of floor between furniture and the wall, between island and bar stool legs, beside the toilet, or under the low-hanging credenza. The PencilVac had commendable hard floor performance in my apartment, offering near-perfect pickup of daily debris like cat hair and long human hair, kitchen crumbs, multiple types of cat litter, and dust.
Oh yeah, the Fluffycones cleaning head has two dust-detecting lasers. One laser projects out the front to point out the hair and tiny flecks lying ahead, and one laser projects out the back to illuminate anything that you just missed. It’s so satisfying that you’ll accidentally end up cleaning for much longer than you meant to, only to be cut off by the pitiful battery life.
With the precision nozzle wand attached, the PencilVac weighs in at just 2.9 pounds. This uniquely compact design makes cleaning cobwebs out of ceiling corners or dusting baseboards so much less of a pain. The wand’s diameter is just 1.5 inches the entire way down, which made it possible to vacuum behind my dresser without pulling it out a foot from the wall.
Against Astros, Rangers counting on Evan Carter to carry hot bat into August
Final days to lock in your favorite Microsoft Office apps for life for just $33
