ShopSmart, the shopping magazine from the publisher of Consumer Reports, recently revealed the best (and worst) products of 2009, selected from the thousands of home, food, beauty and other products that were tested throughout the year.

“What’s unique about our list is that it’s 100 percent unbiased. Unlike other magazines, we don’t recommend products based on popularity or brand,” said Lisa Lee Freeman, editor in chief of ShopSmart. “Our favorite products — which include everything from pancake mix and coffee makers to cars and treadmills — were the top performers in laboratory and real-world tests. And because we don’t have to answer to advertisers, we can bring you the year’s biggest losers, too.”

ShopSmart has named more than 60 products as their favorite “stuff” of the year. Here is a sampling:

Best home

• Dirt Devil Featherlite Bagless M085845, $60, is barebones but light and great on pet hair.

• Kalorik CM25282, $80, costs more than many of the models tested but was one of the best brewers.

• Behr Premium Plus Interior Satin Enamel, $24, is half the price of other paints and is the top choice in satin and eggshell.

Best food

• Organic Batter Blaster Original Pancake & Waffle Batter, 18 oz., $5.69, turned out tasty pancakes with no measuring, no mixing and little mess.

• Kirkland Signature (Costco) Organic Salsa Medium, $5.89, beat out Old El Paso salsa.

• Market Pantry (Target) Maple & Brown Sugar Instant Oatmeal, 15.1-oz. package, $1.67, is hearty and flavorful, packs about 3 grams of fiber per packet and cooks in a flash.

Best beauty and fitness

• Asics GEL-150TR, $65, beat out other sneakers with a super shock-absorbing midsole.

• Bowflex Series 7, $1,500, is a space-saving treadmill but still sturdy and solid.

• Olay Total Effects 7-in-1 Anti-Aging Booster Eye Transforming Cream, $20, smoothed wrinkles and fine lines around the eyes slightly better than creams that cost twice the price or more.

• Revlon Perfect Heat Ceramic RVST2001C hairdryer, $30, is cheap, super-light, small and easy to use.

Best electronics

• Samsung PN58B860 plasma television, $3,100, is super-skinny and has a huge 58-inch screen and Internet capability.

• Amazon Kindle 2 reader, $360, is cool and sleek, with fast page turning and enough memory to read for days.

• Asus Eee PC 1005HA netbook, $350, saves some bucks and gives you a big keyboard and long battery life.

Worst products of 2009

Consumers Union, the publisher of ShopSmart, spends millions of dollars buying products and services each year and submits them to rigorous testing. Based on how they performed in the laboratories and in real-world tests, here is a list of some of the items testers said were “not so hot.”

• Hercules Hook, $15, isn’t any better than a regular old hook for hanging heavy stuff.

• Mini Portable Jump Starter, $20 to $50, is unreliable. Stick with jumper cables.

• Spinlash spinning mascara, $14.95, was messy and left clumps.

• OneTouch Wine Opener KC07, $15, was annoyingly slow and noisy.

• VW Touareg, $40,440, got the worst new-car reliability score of all the cars in the 2009 survey.

• Bud Light Lime, $5.99, was citrusy, as advertised, but didn’t taste much like beer.

• Melitta Mill & Brew MEIMSB coffee maker, $100, needs a radio signal to program and makes just so-so joe.

• Folgers Simply Smooth Decaf Medium, 1 lb., $6.46, was the worst coffee tasted in tests.