10 Harbor Freight Summer Items Under $25 Worth Buying

Once those cold, dark days are long gone, you'll probably want to store away your stocks of winter essentials until the end of the year. In their place, you'll need a fresh batch of summer gear, and Harbor Freight has plenty of affordably priced picks. Even with a limit of $25, the discount retailer's shelves offer plenty of must-have items that are within budget. Many of them have also been reviewed by hundreds (or even thousands) of other customers in the prior months and years, making it easy to see which ones are good contenders.

Whether you're heading out for a weekend camping trip, soaking up the sun on the beach or by the lake, showing up for your favorite sports team, or just getting jobs done around the house, you'll need to stock up accordingly. Reviewers have confirmed that all of these 10 affordable summer-ready items are worth the money, giving them consistently high ratings and overwhelmingly recommending them. That makes them a good place to start if you're looking for new equipment but don't want to spend an arm and a leg.

While pop-up headlights on cars might have gone the way of the dodo, pop-up camp lights are still available from many major outdoor retailers, including Harbor Freight. For just $4.99, Harbor Freight offers the Luminar compact pop-up lantern, which emits 500 lumens across a 360-degree field of illumination. It's powered by a trio of AA batteries, which are included with the device.

Luminar says that when those batteries are fully charged, campers can expect a runtime of around 2 hours and 20 minutes. That's fairly short if you're planning on using the lantern all evening, so you'll need to make sure to bring spare batteries with you. At least the lantern and those spare batteries won't take up much weight in your backpack, since the lantern itself weighs only 0.66 pounds.

Once you've hauled the lantern to your campsite, you can pull up on the top to reveal the bulb. According to the brand, the plastic casing of the lantern is weather resistant, but it doesn't have an IP rating, so it's best to avoid using it in heavier rain. The handles allow the lantern to be carried around a campsite or hung from a tree branch, but the base's flat-bottomed design also means it can be used freestanding.

It's safe to assume that anyone who's already a fan of Harbor Freight will be well aware of how the company's Bauer brand has a strong reputation for quality affordable power tools. Aside from its comprehensive line of DIY essentials, Bauer also offers several products that should come in useful in the summer, with the 120V/20V cordless dual-power fan being one of the best rated options.

While this fan can be plugged into a wall socket, it can also run on Bauer's 20V battery packs, with runtime dependent on the capacity the battery you use. By the brand's estimates, a 3Ah battery should produce around 6 hours of runtime on the fan's low speed setting. Alternatively, anyone running the fan from mains power doesn't have to worry about any limitations besides the length of your extension cord.

Even by the standards of Bauer's 20V cordless tool line, the dual-power fan is cheap. It's available in tool-only form for only $24.99. Since you can plug it directly into the wall, you don't even necessarily have to have any Bauer 20V battery packs in your tool kit to get plenty of use out of this product. However, if you do want to take advantage of its cordless capabilities, you'll have to add in the cost of a battery and charger to your final bill. Bauer's cheapest 20V battery pack offers 2Ah of capacity and costs $37.99, while its cheapest charger retails for $34.99.

The arrival of summer means it's time to tackle any untrimmed plants that aren't yet ticked off the list. To keep those unruly tree branches in shape, Harbor Freight offers the One Stop Gardens steel handle lopper. It's available for $14.99, and it's one of several picks here that can only be bought at a Harbor Freight store and not online.

The tool's spec sheet looks good considering its affordable price: It features 3-inch carbon steel blades and a 7-inch handle length for extra leverage, yet it weighs less than 3 pounds. None of those things matter if the tool doesn't perform well in the real world, but reviews confirm that it is indeed solid value for money. Close to 1,700 reviewers have left their thoughts about the tool on Harbor Freight's website, and the vast majority are happy with its performance and durability. In total, 97% of reviewers said they'd be happy to recommend the tool.

Over time, even the best tent stakes can start to bend. Eventually, they'll need to be replaced, but paying more for replacements doesn't always guarantee a better product. The Harbor Freight 6-pack of 10-inch tent stakes is one of the cheaper options out there, costing just $6.99, but it still gets consistent good reviews from customers. The stakes are plated with zinc to make them resistant to corrosion, while a plastic slider at the top of the stake helps keep tent lines securely in place.

Even outside of camping trips, tent stakes can prove to be useful in a surprising number of ways. Marking out lines for borders in the yard is much easier with the help of tent stakes and string, and they can also be used to remove weeds from hard-to-reach corners behind buildings or other outdoor structures. Given their multiple talents, they might end up being useful even if a camping trip isn't in the cards this summer.

A spray nozzle is one of those gardening items you might not think about too much until your old one breaks, or you realize you've lost it over the course of the winter. Yet when summer rolls around and the plants in your yard need watering, it's an essential piece of kit. If you need a new one, Harbor Freight offers the Greenwood trigger spray nozzle for only $5.99. It can distribute water in six different patterns, making it suitable for use across a broad array of plants.

The mist, angle spray, and shower patterns are useful for light, general watering, while the flat spray and soaker add an extra dash of versatility. The sixth and final pattern is the jet spray, which is most useful for removing dirt and dust from shoes, outdoor equipment, or decking and paving. Reviewers report using the nozzle for all of these things and much more, with 91% of them being happy to recommend the item.

Harbor Freight isn't short on foldable finds for camping trips, although not all of them can be picked up for $25 or less. The retailer's folding camping table is one that can just about be purchased within budget though, since it carries an MSRP of $24.99. It's available in either blue or green colorways, but at the time of writing, only the blue table is available for purchase online. The green table, meanwhile, remains an in-store exclusive.

Alongside the table, Harbor Freight also throws in a carry case with every purchase. Its dual handles make the table easier to carry to your campsite, and it'll also prevent the unit from unfolding in transit. Unlike some camping equipment, the table isn't bulky to haul around, as it only weighs 5.3 pounds.

Harbor Freight notes that the table is water resistant, and so it should be able to withstand spilled drinks or light rain. It's capable of supporting up to 50 pounds of drinks, plates, and other gear, with the former being securely storable in one of four built-in cupholders.

Keeping cars looking their best over the summer months can feel like a never-ending task. Driving through clouds of bugs, pollen, or road dust is almost inevitable in many parts of the country throughout much of the season, and encountering any one of them will leave a car's paint work needing yet another clean. Washing the car is only part of the equation; it also needs to be dried to prevent streaks, but this can be a time consuming process.

To speed things up a little, Harbor Freight offers the Grant's XXL Ultimate Microfiber Drying Towel. It's essentially a giant version of the microfiber cloth most people already have in their cleaning kit, and at 3 feet by 2 feet it's large enough that it can dry a vehicle in one go. The green side of the towel is specifically designed for paint and plastic, while the gray side is best suited to glass surfaces. When the car is clean, you can throw the towel right into the washing machine, just like a standard microfiber cloth. The towel retails for $10.99.

Summer is more than just the season for cleaning your car; it's also arguably the best time to be working on it. Plenty of wrenching jobs will require you to keep track of lots of small metal parts, and it's all too easy to misplace one or two of them if you're not careful. With the Pittsburgh 9-½ inch magnetic parts tray, it shouldn't be as easy to lose them. The tray will securely hold nuts, bolts, and screws in place, while the item's built-in adjustable hood prevents non-magnetic objects from going astray.

It retails for $9.99, and it's only available in-store as of this writing. The tray is one of a long list of magnetic tools and gadgets that are available at Harbor Freight, many of which have received consistently positive feedback from buyers. With a $25 budget, you could purchase the Pittsburgh magnetic tray and still have enough left over for a Central Machinery magnetic sweeper, which promises to make the task of collecting any magnetic parts that do get dropped on the floor easier.

As well as being one of the cheapest items here, the Harbor Freight 5 gallon bucket is undoubtedly one of the most useful. There are the obvious uses, like carrying water, shoveled dirt, or plant clippings, or storing tools and other items. However, there are plenty more innovative uses for the bucket too. If you're willing to cut up your bucket, it can be used as a slow feeder for animals, and if you're looking to try hydroponic gardening, it's a great cheap base for your setup.

Whatever you end up using the bucket for, you'll likely need one over the summer. In typical Harbor Freight fashion, its 5 gallon bucket is also one of the cheapest on the market, retailing for $3.98. That's 60 cents cheaper than an equivalent Lowe's bucket, and just as affordable as Home Depot's equivalent orange one. Meanwhile, more than 9,000 Harbor Freight customers have reviewed this simple tool, and they're almost unanimously won over by it. A near-perfect 98% of them said they'd recommend buying one.

There are several ways of making a demanding job more appealing during the height of the summer heat. One of the most reliable methods is cracking open a cold beverage of your choice while you work. To make sure you always have a good bottle opener on hand in your tool kit, Pittsburgh created the ⅝-inch wrench bottle opener. It is, as its name suggests, a regular wrench on one side, but the other side features a bottle opener to quench your thirst while you're on the job.

The tool is made from chrome-vanadium steel, making it just as tough as the brand's conventional wrenches. It's also chrome plated for a premium look, but its price is far from it: The wrench/bottle opener is available for just $2.99, making it a great pick either for yourself or as a summer gift for someone else.

For some Harbor Freight shoppers, summer is the season to kick back and relax; for others, it's time to start ticking off the list of jobs that have accumulated over the winter. When selecting items for this list, we selected a broad range of products that aim to appeal to both kinds of shopper. Each pick has been put to the test by Harbor Freight's customers and has consistently received good ratings, earning an average of at least 4.5 out of five stars from at least 500 reviews, with some items having been rated positively by several thousand buyers.