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Every winter, manufacturers from around the world set up shop in Las Vegas for the National Hardware Show, ready to show off new innovations for pros and homeowners alike. From massive brands you’re familiar with from the home centers to inventors with a unique idea they’re hoping will command your attention, the show offers a range of solutions for home improvement, gardening, and outdoor entertaining. We walked every inch of the show’s 600,000-square-foot hall to find the best products at the show.
Like-Nu Concrete Restoration Kit
While pressure washing concrete, and making small repairs to cracks, are DIY tasks, resurfacing is usually a bigger job for the pros. But now, refreshing a patio or driveway is something anyone can do over a weekend. Based on a formula urban engineers used to breathe new life into worn concrete, Like-Nu is a two-part, modified cement coating you mix in buckets and roll or spray to cover faded, stained, or discolored concrete. Like-Nu blends and absorbs into your existing porous concrete so it feels just like the real thing when you’re done and won’t bubble or peel like a typical coating. After one coat, the treatment dries in about 30 minutes, with most driveways, patios, and walkways needing two layers.
$269 to treat 200 square feet twice; likenuconcrete.com
Rhino Cart All Terrain Moving Cart
With all due respect to a hand truck, it can be tricky to use, especially with appliances or when rolling over uneven terrain. This heavy-duty dolly carries one ton (2,000 pounds)—and while you might not ever need to move 11 washing machines simultaneously, you just might need to get several bags of mulch, sand, concrete, or maybe a pile of pavers, from point A to point B.
The eight never-flat casters roll over just about any surface and grade. The frame expands up to 3.8 feet wide, and built-in tie-down points let you secure cargo. When not in use, the Rhino keeps a slim, 4 ¾ x 18 x 29-inch profile that you can lean against the wall and out of the way.
$160; rhinocart.com; Amazon
Monument Grills Eminence 405 Grill
Under the window in the hood, Monument tucks in four gas burners pumping out 60,000 BTUs to handle a range of cooking applications, from grilling hot and fast to offset roasting larger cuts of meat. But it’s the side, infrared burner, which pumps out 12,000 BTUs that you’ll use to singe steaks and chops quickly with restaurant-level heat. Backed by a 10-year warranty, the Eminence has a battery-powered touch panel to make adjusting the two included meat probes intuitive, and you can keep an eye on them from your phone via Bluetooth up to about 65 feet away. The cast iron grates act as a heat sink that pumps the energy into the food above, leaving very distinct grill marks, and the porcelain enamel coating keeps them rust-free, just like the rest of the stainless steel body.
$949; monumentgrills.com; Amazon
Anker Solix C300 Portable Power Station
Portable power stations have a strong presence at the National Hardware Show. Anker’s solutions stand apart for its user-friendly design in a range of sizes that enables you to pick the right one for your needs. Solix’s C300 and slightly smaller C200 models are solid performers, but it’s the C300 with AC outlets that we like best. The 288-watt-hour battery has eight ports and weighs a manageable 9 pounds. The most useful of those ports are the three 100-volt outlets for standard household gadgets. Use this to work outside when the weather is nice, take it camping or to a tailgate, or use it to keep essentials running during an outage. It creates only 25 decibels of noise from about 3 feet away, so it can run in a bedroom overnight without keeping anyone awake and is fully controllable by Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Expect it to charge a phone 19 times, a laptop four times, or keep a CPAP machine running for five hours.
$300; ankersolix.com; Amazon
Permasteel Elevated Garden Bed
A raised garden bed is an excellent way to garden for those who have the space. If you want to garden on a deck or patio, though, you’ll need something that combines the raised bed idea with a pleasing, low-maintenance aesthetic. The Permasteel Elevated Garden Bed, which will soon be available in a range of colors, is a powder-coated steel tub that keeps about 5.6 cubic feet of soil at just over countertop height (36 inches) for comfortable access while on the patio or deck. An air barrier surrounding the 14.13-inch deep soil bed promotes airflow and keeps roots from sogging out. The bottom is sealed (sorry critters), and you can easily drain away excess water from a drain plug on the side, kind of like a cooler. A bobbing indicator shows you when you need to add water, taking some of the guesswork out. Underneath, locking casters keep the weighty bed easy to move around, and a sturdy storage shelf underneath ensures gardening and harvesting tools are close at hand.
$250; permasteel.life; Amazon
Lifetime Modern Outdoor Storage Deck Box
Keep patio clutter out of sight, yet conveniently close, with an attractive-looking, low-maintenance deck box. The Lifetime Modern box, which comes in two colors—the rich brown one, exclusive to Costco, caught our eye at the show—holds 165 gallons worth of pool toys, sofa cushions, sports equipment, gardening tools, or grilling gear nearby when you need it. The DIY assembly is easy, and the sides are made from weather-resistant, UV-protected, dual-walled high-density polyethylene that won’t be bothered by rain or the path of your sprinkler system. The 73-pound Lifetime box is 28.3 x 57.9 x 30.3 inches, and the lid, which has a gas spring-assisted hinge, is lockable.
$200; costco.com; Amazon
Post Protector Post Proservative
The 24 spikes that come in the Post Proservative kit help refuel pressure-treated lumber, prolonging its life. Once in the ground, the pressure-treated lumber’s preservative leaches out, over time, losing its ability to fight off fungi that move in, turning deck and mailbox posts into meals. With Post Proservative, you drill holes (above and below grade), hammer in the sticks, and cap them to protect the wood for years. It’s the same way utility poles are treated in the field, and can extend the lifespan of the lumber for about 10 years with each treatment. Once the moisture level inside the wood reaches a point that can support fungal life, the sticks start dissolving. Post Proservative protects against fungal decay and insects and works in all wood species, even untreated ones like cedar.
$88.30 for enough to treat (12) 6×6” or (24) 4×4” posts; homedepot.com
Aiper Scuba X1 Pro Max pool vacuum
While lawn robots are a prominent technology at the National Hardware Show, anyone who owns a pool understands the value of having a robot that can take care of the cleaning. The X1 Pro Max has a few cleaning modes we’ve seen in pool vacs before, like wall and floor cleaning, but the unit’s surface mode enables the X1 to act like a roving skimmer, taking care of bugs, leaves, and floating suntan lotion that finds its way in. The waterline mode is also unique and ensures the robot spends extra time scrubbing the perimeter of the pool. Controllable from your phone, the X1 maps the pool and uses the most effective route, back and forth, which is a more consistent approach than earlier machines and their random cleaning pattern. Inside, nine brushless motors suck up every bit of sand, debris, and sunscreen it comes in contact with. The cord-free cleaner will thoroughly clean a pool for up to five hours of continuous use before needing a recharge.
East Oak Camber 29-Inch Smokeless Fire Pit
The unique shape of the East Oak Camber is a welcome departure from the round tub most smokeless fire pits offer. While the corners are still round, the look is a bit more modern with a squircle shape. The 29 x 18 inch Camber draws cool air from the outside vents just above the base, funneling it under the burning logs, which enables a hotter and cleaner fire that produces less smoke. The holes around the inside, higher up, also supply oxygen to the fire from above. The included poker helps adjust the logs and retrieve the ashtray once the fire is over. The 33-pound fire pit relies on 304 stainless steel construction, which should resist rusting for years, and the unit comes with a three-year warranty. Expect to keep about eight people toasty around the fire, using logs up to 22 inches long.
$400; eastoak.com; Amazon
Britton Tool Britton Square
Combine a lightweight aluminum rafter square with a pivoting arm you have a marking tool with just about as much functionality as you can stuff in a tool belt. The arm swings across the square, within a machined track, to easily find any inside or outside angle or slope. It has a pivot point to make marking circles easy. That arm also locks in to make repeated cuts or marks accurate and quick. The bull’s-eye level on the end of the arm, when held tight against a 4×4 post, makes short work of plumbing fences and mailboxes. The clear markings are easy to read, and all the hardware is stainless steel and replaceable, so you can swap out parts if they get dinged up.
$49; brittontool.com; Amazon
Oklahoma Joe’s Bronco Drum Smoker & Grill
While pellet smokers take a lot of the guesswork out of barbecuing, some folks still enjoy managing a fire. With the revised Bronco, Oklahoma Joe solved one of the biggest issues with barrel or kamado style cookers: refueling. Typically, that requires the cook to remove the food, grate, and maybe a few other parts, to dump in more coal or wood chunks. But the Bronco features a swing-out access door to make managing wood and charcoal an easy task. Gaskets around the lid and door help mitigate heat loss and retain smoke. Load the bottom up with wood and charcoal and maintain low temperatures for hours over the weekend for barbecue, but during the week, add charcoal under the porcelain-coated steel grates and grill hot and fast as you would with a kettle grill. No Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and no plug to tether you to a wall. The tidy footprint that’s 26.6 x 44.4 inches packs a lot of versatility in a small grill that can match most offset smokers. A pair of vents allows you to control the airflow to the fire below as well as the draw of smoke over the food above.
$499; oklahomajoes.com
Pit Boss Navigator 3 vertical smoker
Vertical smokers powered by an outlet aren’t necessarily a new idea, and most suffer from the same anemic wood flavor. The Pit Boss Navigator 3 sidesteps that issue by burning wood pellets, not chips, fed by a massive 50-pound hopper — that’s about twice the capacity of full-size pellet cookers — for worry-free cooking over days, not hours. The large capacity, 1,118 square inches, spread over five porcelain-coated steel racks, makes it easy to cook food for a crowd. Use the dashboard to punch in the cook temperature, from 130 to 420 degrees, which is a massive range to handle things like smoking mac and cheese to tougher cuts, like brisket, that benefit from hours of cooking. A folding side shelf helps with loading and unloading food, and tucks away when not in use to shrink the footprint. The controller, mounted just above the shelf, is accessible through Wi-Fi when you’re using it within your home’s network, or Bluetooth if you’re cooking away from a reliable internet signal.
$699; pitboss-grills.com
