The Best Kitchen Faucets of 2026

The Kohler Simplice K-596-CP is a bit of a dark horse, but it wound up being among our top faucets. There are no special features, no hook, no gimmick. Our time with it was enjoyable, but rather unremarkable. During our initial test run, we answered the battery of questions, but took very few notes beyond that. There just wasn’t much to note on the Simplice.

It turns out this is enough to propel this Kohler to the top half of this list. In a field stuffed with over-engineered faucets, this basic pull-down does its job well. There are no bleeding-edge tricks here, but there are also no tics or unfortunate drawbacks.

The Moen Banbury CA87000SRS is a perfectly serviceable faucet, with its fair share of minute frustrations and one feature that stands out.

The first obstacle to using this faucet is the installation. Unlike every other faucet we tested, water lines are not included with this faucet. They’re also not mentioned in the “tools you’ll need” section of the manual, meaning that by the time you learn you need them, you may already be up to your neck in pipes with your water shut off. In a regular consumer situation, we probably would have just taken this faucet back to the store.

However, if we’d done that, we would have missed out on the sprayer, which is quite a treat. This powerful blast wasn’t the most powerful sprayer that we tested, but it’s nevertheless an incredible benefit.

All in all, this faucet’s construction and sturdiness puts it in the middle of the pack. It’s nothing special. But, if you want a two-handle faucet that can hold its own against your dirty dishes, you could do a lot worse.

Of the “pro-style” faucets we tested, the Kräus Bolden KPF-1610SS is probably the least frustrating, but we still don’t recommend it for most people.

On the one hand, the design is smarter and easier to use than many other pro/industrial-style faucets. Installation is straightforward. The faucet head docks securely into the stabilizing arm, so you can move the faucet from side to side without issue, something other pro-style faucets struggled with. Clearance isn’t as frustrating as some of the other pro-style faucets, either.

However, there’s still the issue of cleaning a nylon hose with a coil of metal around it, and there’s nothing pro-style about the water pressure, which is unfortunately lacking. While this faucet holds fewer frustrations than many of its “pro-style” ilk, it’s far from our first choice for home use.

MSTJRY Touch Kitchen Faucet remains popular in some corners of the Internet, and we were excited to take it for a spin. Unfortunately, our actual, hands-on experience, it came up short.

The MSTJRY’s water pressure is frustratingly low, making it a pain to clean dishes. In addition, when you set the faucet’s pressure to its lower settings, it emits a concerning hum.

The touch sensors are a particular pain point. Because the faucet is touch-operated and not motion-controlled, skin tone shouldn’t be an issue for users. That’s a plus. However, the touch control is poorly implemented. If it’s been a while since the last operation, the faucet takes two touches to activate, almost like you have to “wake it up” before using it. This may be great for saving battery life, but it’s frustrating when your hands are full of produce that needs rinsing.

In addition, the touch controls extend to the spigot, so if you need to move the faucet left or right while cleaning dishes, you’ll also be turning the water on or off, whether you want to or not.

Between the lackluster touch controls and the sad water pressure, this isn’t a faucet we can wholeheartedly recommend.

The Owofan 9009R is useful in some ways, but it feels over-designed in others.

For a “pro-style” faucet, the height is very low. This isn't something we were explicitly testing for, but the low clearance makes this faucet difficult to use. It's particularly noticeable in our double-basin sink, but it would be obnoxious in any sink. For the incredible height of the faucet on its upward curve, there's no reason for it to come down as low as it does.

You can detach the faucet from the base easily for a little extra height. But unfortunately, the forcefulness of the faucet and the looseness of the construction means that the faucet head goes flying around like a water-powered jetpack if you do. Meanwhile, the spiraling curves and exposed hose make it difficult to clean the faucet. This faucet looks great on paper, but a couple of crushing design decisions make it very frustrating to use.

Peppermint UT16Y’s entry on this list is frustrating in many respects. Installation is easy, and the water pressure is powerful, but that’s where the upsides end.

The UT16Y’s faucet juts straight out over the sink, and you have to grab the entire faucet spigot to use as a sort of wand-shaped sprayer. It’s a bit unwieldy, and the sprayer doesn't really dock on its own when you’re done. Nor does it particularly retract, especially if you place the weight where you’re instructed during installation.

One piece of this faucet arrived broken, or at least displaced, on our test model. It was a black plastic shield that covers the gold-colored inner workings on the handle. Because of this piece’s location, it was impossible for us to put it back into place. It was only a cosmetic issue, but gave us some concern about the faucet’s construction, and how it might hold up over time.

The water pressure is incredible, and it does a phenomenal job of blasting food and residues away from dishes. However, that water pressure is hard to control. Even after turning the pressure down at the supply lines, the water came through the faucet hard and fast enough to shoot up out of our water glasses when we went to get a drink. There is little to no nuance in the range of water pressure offered. It’s all or nothing.

Additionally, the faucet offers a little more resistance than hoped for when moving the faucet from side to side.

Our installation experience with the Delta Essa 9113T-AR-DST was deeply frustrating. The pieces under the sink were higher-quality than the other Delta faucet we tested, leading to a slightly less obnoxious installation. However, it was still unnecessarily tricky, trying to squeeze a bizarre custom wrench up the water supply line into a tightly-crowded area full of wires and hoses to find a single nut.

The faucet’s touchless controls leave a lot to be desired. It usually turns on, but turning it back off can be difficult. It seems that having wet hands (or letting the faucet get wet) may have something to do with this, but the truth is that the sensors were so finicky during testing that we couldn’t definitively identify what worked and what didn’t.

We tried all kinds of pressure and duration of touch, and different types of skin from different parts of the hands, arms, and even forehead, and we never could get this to reliably shut off like it’s supposed to.

Adding to the bafflement is the fact that the handle is also part of the sensor area. That means that trying to adjust the water temperature or flow can cause the water to abruptly punch into action (or shut off) when you don’t want it to.

The supply lines are made of some kind of inflexible plastic, with nothing to mark which line is which. The good news is that an LED light indicates the water temperature, which is helpful since I installed the unmarked supply lines backwards and the colored dots on the faucet handle ended up backwards.

Changes in pressure happen instantaneously, and the faucet tends to overshoot on pressure. It’s hard to find a useful middle ground of pressure, which is especially frustrating since it’s so easy to turn this faucet on without meaning to.

Another “pro-style” faucet, the Kohler Sous K-R10651-SD-CP is easier to use than some of the others in its class. It has much higher clearance, so cleaning large dishes is less frustrating. It also feels sturdier.

However, there are also some serious shortcomings. For such a large faucet, it puts all of its weight into one hole. Using it with a 3-hole sink requires an escutcheon that just sort of sits on top of the sink. It’s not the only sink we tested that works that way. However, considering the enormous size, the escutcheon seems like a wasted opportunity to add some extra ballast. The instructions suggest that you can add a 1/2 piece of plywood to reinforce your sink, but that isn’t communicated until you’re already trying to install the faucet, and by then it feels a little late.

This isn’t the only place the Kohler Sous K-R10651-SD-CP disappoints. The faucet head is held in place magnetically. But, the magnet is weak enough that if you grab the faucet by the head to move it side to side, the head simply detaches and swings limply around. Turning the faucet on in this state causes it to fly around like an out-of-control jetpack. The whole thing is wildly counterintuitive, and a big enough inconvenience that it negates any advantages the “pro-style” form might offer.