Toilet paper: almost everyone uses it, but do you put much thought into which brands you buy? Do you have a brand preference, or just pick up the biggest and cheapest package available at Walmart or Costco? Our colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports put on their 2-ply lab coats and got to work stirring, pulling, and caressing various brands of toilet paper to find out which brands really are the best.

What qualities are important to you? If you have fussy plumbing or use a septic system, the papers that dissolve the best in water after some agitation might be your choice. Strength and tearability? They test those by pushing checking how well a steel ball passes through a pile of sheets. Softness is hard to test with cold machinery, so testers evaluate those by just touching them. With their hands. We think.

Curiously, the top performers are only available at Walmart. Those are Great Value Ultra Strong, Wally World’s house brand, and two products from White Cloud.

Attention Walmart shoppers! White Cloud toilet paper is tops. [Consumer Reports]

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