I’ve had a Black & Decker Bullseye laser leveler/stud finder lying around for over a year collecting dust and I finally opened it to hang stuff in my fi room. I am in love with the thing. It makes leveling stuff on the wall an absolute breeze. Maybe that’s no big deal for people with talent but for those of us with limited handyman skills, it was a godsend.
So, what product or products did fall in love with that you really didn’t expect to?
At one of those automatic key makers in my local Walmart I had a front door key made and one of the available designs was a little plastic case that attached to the “head” of the key and pressing a button on the side caused a small LED light to illuminate whatever the key was pointing at. I paid the $1 extra for it but was quickly amazed to find out how useful it is when you’re trying to get into your house in the pitch black of night. If I could I’d make every single key I own with that LED light but unfortunately that design is no longer available at the automatic key maker.
Twice, I have bought a an adjustable LED desk lamp to illuminate the keyboard on my laptop. Life would be impossible without one. Electronics are designed to look cool, not functional.
Motion sensor night lights. I originally bought one for my bathroom but have since planted them all through out my house. No more stubbed toe for me!
4oz “OJ” glasses. When I bought them off Amazon, the smallest pack they came in was 8. I thought that was too many as I don’t drink that much OJ. But they come in handy for so many other things. It appears 4oz is the perfect size for milk after you treated yourself to a cookie. They make great mouthwash cups. And if you need to add just a little more water to that dish you’re cooking, they work well there too.
Water delivery service. I originally bought it bc I drink tons of iced tea. Now I find myself drinking lots more water. Nothing like waking up in the middle of the night, and walking over to the cooler to down an ice cold glass of purified water. The cats seem to love it too.
mrAru just bought an ice maker that you put one of the 3 or 5 gallon delivery bottles in the top of like a water cooler, it has the water tap on the side and a lovely bin for the ice. Purportedly it will make 33 pounds in 24 hours, but we have never gone through that much before =)
We have quite good well water at the farm so we wouldn’t buy water anywhere, but it would also work if you did do the delivery deal or fill bottles at a big box store.
Not really myself but my wife saw a pair of shoes on some TV show, tried to find them online and the best she could find was something on AliExpress. She asked me to order since I sometimes order cheap bric-a-brac from there and I warned her that they’d likely be super cheap junk but, for $20, why not. I wasn’t encouraged by the seller asking to change my ordered color but, when we had it all finally worked out and they arrived, they’re actually pretty decent. She loves them and has worn them a number of times now and they’ve held up fine.
Of course, then she ordered some bootleg Samsung earbuds that were complete garbage but at least that aligned with expectations.
I didn’t think I would want bluetooth LED bulbs in my living room. I was gonna write out the whole story of how I came to get them but it’s boring. The point is I eventually got them and I like them. I turn my lights on and off using my Echo.
Google home hub. I could see little utility for the thing before getting one, but found in the weeks following that it’s just the handiest thing to have in the kitchen, whether it’s to access recipes, ask questions like ‘how many tablespoons in a cup’, listen to music, get the weather, or set a timer, all with the convenience of just a voice command.
On my Alexa, I can say: “Let there be light” and ALL the lights in my home will turn on.
Nice when you need an ego boost. lol
The air fryer.
I was 99.99% sure that this mini-A/C unit was gonna be a waste of $40 but it actually works great. It isn’t gonna cool a whole house, but it will cool down an area or even a mid-size room.
For me, Nexcare Tegaderm, which is a large (maybe 3 or 4 inches x 3 or 4 inches square) band-aid-ish thing. I had crashed a bicycle a few years ago and one knee looked like a small pizza as a result.
After a few messy efforts with gauze pads and tape I saw the Tegaderm at a local pharmacy and decided to give it a go. It is a miracle product. It adheres to the skin around the road-rash and consists of a transparent, very thin membrane. The whole thing is completely water-tight so no scab forms and you can literally (in the correct sense of the word 
) watch the pizza disappear and heal from day to day. It was absolutely incredible for me.
Do you live in a place where humidifying your house in the summer isn’t a terrible idea?
One of these “steam powered” grill cleaners. It’s only steam powered because you need to heat the grill up first, but it does do an amazing job of cleaning the grill. Much better than a steel brush alone.
Where I live, humidifying a house isn’t even a thing, really. I live in a desert.
Yes, but will it part the water in your swimming pool? 
I never thought I’d want an echo and didn’t even investigate them. But about four years ago, a girlfriend of mine got one, and they were on sale, so I said what the heck.
Now I have three of them in my 1,200 sq ft house, and I have set up various routines with different configurations. One command turns them all on; another one turns them all off. If I’m lying in bed in the middle of the night and hear something funny outside, I can just instantly light up the whole house. I’ve also set up a routine that responds to “Get ready for evening,” and that turns on just a couple of lamps in the living room and leaves one on in the kitchen.
Bonus: I’ve always had a clip-on light attached to a shelf over my stove to shine right down on the cooking surface/pots/etc. After a few months, the switches (a twisty post on top of the lamp) just break. They stop working, they won’t twist or whatever. But now that my stove lamp is attached to a smart plug, I can just say, “Alexa, turn on/off stove light,” so I’m not using or stressing the switch at all. 
Ironic epilogue: that friend of mine still hasn’t set up her one echo. She’s one of those people who has to think and think and think about something before she does it. As an example, back in the days of Windows XP, she never did get around to installing Service Pack 2… 
Those cheap plastic furniture moving disks work great on carpeted areas. I haven’t tried them on tile or wood flooring yet. My 85 year old father and I effortlessly moved a VERY heavy dresser from one side of the house to the other. Neither of us expected them to work at all.
It was a dollar or so more expensive to buy the gentle soft-closing toilet seat, but it turned out to be something that makes me smile every time it closes without slamming shut.
The Gillette Mach 3 razor. Back when they came out I was skeptical that three blades would really be that much better than two or one. I figured three blades was mostly just a marketing gimmick. But I found one on sale, so I tried it. It is so much better than any previous razor I’ve used. I get a closer shave and much fewer nicks. The thing that really sealed the deal was when I tried switching back to my old razor ('cause the blades were cheaper) and realized how much it tore my face to shreds compared to the Mach 3. The Mach 3 blades are definitely worth paying for.
The bidet toilet seats we now have in all bathrooms.
I had been somewhat interested in them - then got inspired to, er, take the plunge last summer, and ordered a basic one (cold water only) for the powder room. My husband thought I was nuts, but rolled his eyes and installed it.
He tried it first.
And LOVED it.
He eagerly ordered one for the master bathroom so we didn’t have to fight over getting to use that one toilet. Then I found a shmancy heated-water one on sale at Amazon (one of their “treasure truck” daily deals) and ordered that for the master bathroom, as that’s the only one with an outlet near the toilet. Dweezil’s bathroom got the plain one from our master bath.
Dunno if the kid has tried it yet and I’m not about to ask him - but if we are travelling, we really miss our bidet seats.