Which windows best

Consider purchasing the highest-quality window your budget allows. Windows with better insulation and materials generally provide greater weather resistance while lowering your utility bill. As far as design, there are several window styles to choose from, including double-hung, casement, bay, and picture windows, to name a few. For a seamless look, select a design that suits the age and style of your home. Window replacement costs vary by location and factors like window material and design.

Andersen and Pella are the leading replacement window manufacturers—and both happen to be available at The Home Depot and Lowe's. Both have great track records for customer service, quality products, and excellent warranties. Choosing the window brand is just a part of the decision. You'll also need to find a reliable installer that carries your preferred brand and has experience installing it. As a general rule of thumb, it's a good idea to get at least three estimates from different window installation companies.

Below, we've highlighted some of the most common window styles and where to buy the best options from Andersen, Pella, and other top-of-the-line window brands. Ready to schedule a consultation? Andersen and Pella offer free virtual and in-home consultations to go over product samples and pricing. Double-hung windows are one of the most popular types of window replacements for homes. Designed with two sashes, these windows offer increased airflow and cleanability because both the upper and lower sections can open and close.

Single-hung windows only open from the lower sash, with the upper window section remaining fixed. If you're on the hunt for replacement windows of either style, Pella and Andersen have multiple options to choose from—and they're all backed by positive customer reviews.

The best part? Both manufacturers let you customize the window to your liking, including the grille pattern, trim style, and hardware. Casement windows are often found above kitchen sinks and in bathrooms because of their superior ventilation.

But no matter their location, casement windows offer many advantages like energy efficiency and top-notch security thanks to airtight seals, safety locks, and easy-to-operate hand cranks. Depending on the unit, this window style can either open to the left or right. Over the years, Marvin has racked up awards for window quality and customer satisfaction.

In , President Obama held up Marvin as an example of American manufacturing quality, along with the fact that Marvin refused to lay off workers during a deep economic downturn a few years earlier. When corporate conglomerates amass home-related companies, there is the danger that these smaller companies may lose their sense of identity and mission.

For Milgard Windows, it helps that its corporate parent is Masco. Milgard offers full lifetime warranties on all of its products. Unlike most window manufacturers, which rely on partner companies to supply them with glass, Milgard makes its own glass at its California plant. Milgard is one of few vertically integrated window companies.

But because Milgard controls every step of the manufacturing process, high quality is ensured. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.

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List of Partners vendors. Tip Energy-efficient windows such as those from NFRC members are an investment in your home's value that also increases comfort, making this decision more than just an aesthetic one. And you know, you still have some menus that haven't changed since, like, You're definitely not as consistent as you could be.

But for the most part, it's been a pleasure working with you. That's largely because you just work well. You're fast, and your interface is mostly pretty clean, and you have a Start menu. We all appreciate that. The way we can tint your window coloring and apply it consistently across the whole UI is a really nice touch.

Those lock screen photographs are actually a treat when we login every day. And you've done a good job of adapting to the high resolution display era, with scaling that mostly works without too much fuss. You tried some things that didn't work here and there—and your Microsoft Store is still total crap—but you managed not to screw up the most important things.

Thank you for that. Chris : As with every version of Windows I have just about reached the point where it seems pretty much okay and nothing seems confusing. So naturally we're about to get yanked into Windows 11 where once again I will fail to understand what changed and why and how to make it stop doing the thing that annoys me the most.

Morgan: I really like Windows With that out of the way, holy crap why are there three different versions of every settings menu? Do you wanna mess with sound? Well you can't just go to the clean, Windows 8-lookin' panel menu. You have to crack into the proper Sounds screen that looks straight out of XP. Is it called "10" because there are 10 other Windows versions still operating underneath it all?

Rich: Windows 10 is the best Windows ever, as long as you can google "How to turn off unnecessary Windows 10 features. Today an update like Windows 3. I'm not sure I've ever heard someone say "Windows 3. Macintosh was still the prestigious competition, but during the Windows 3. It's the most important evolutionary step in Windows history. Also it had a color scheme called Hot Dog Stand. Wes: One of my most vivid memories of Windows 3. It's funny how much our tastes in user interfaces have changed since then.

At the time everyone I knew would leave tons of windows open on their desktop, displaying every icon they needed to access all at once.

Eventually we shifted to the start menu and minimal taskbar icons to keep the desktop pristine. Looking back, I really love how playful the icon design was.

Chris : I didn't own a PC at the time and I didn't use one at work but during my lunch I'd sit at a co-worker's desk and try out different Windows themes and change her mouse cursor and things like that. I realize now that must have been amazingly annoying for her. Sorry, Sherrie.

There's probably no version of Windows that evokes more warm, fuzzy feelings than XP. Everybody used it—it sold something like million copies by the time Microsoft stopped supporting it in It made Windows feel personal, with individual user profiles and that bold blue and green theme that you could reskin if you wanted to.

For millions of people, XP was also likely the gateway to the internet in a blossoming online era. Antitrust lawsuits meant Microsoft had to carve out some of its software instead of including it in XP, but XP still had a wealth of packed-in software that enabled the average computer user to do whatever they wanted.

Service Packs introduced the idea of meaty downloadable updates for Windows that made the OS even better, fixing bugs and adding new features like USB 2. This extended Windows XP's life for years and years probably far longer than Microsoft really wanted , making it almost certainly the version of Windows most people used for the longest span of time. XP was stable. XP was cozy. It was the best version of Windows ever made… until Morgan: XP is 20 years old, and I was still using it at an old job as recently as If you're around my age, it's probably what you see in your head when you think "computer.

It was just 'there' more than any Windows before or since, it almost felt like this was how computers would always be and, maybe I'm just delusional and old, but it genuinely felt fast. I don't think Windows 10 has the zippiness or purity of XP, even though 10's now the standard. Good times. Riveting television. The Once and Future King of Windows—the one that rescued us from Vista's obnoxious user account controls and let us live freely in a shiny glass paradise.

It was fast. It was stable. It did everything Windows needed to do and made the OS prettier and easier to use without messing with years of built-up experience. Aero still looks slick a decade later, even if contemporary design has moved to modern shading, and themes let you apply a consistent look to the whole OS based on your desktop.

So many little tweaks enhanced old Windows features. Pinning items to the taskbar gave you nice, easily clickable icons; stacking browser and file explorer windows into a single icon helped keep things organized. Jumplists provided quick access to features within those programs. Thumbnail previews let you mouse over to see a window without even clicking. Libraries made it easier to group files together in Windows Explorer so you weren't as beholden to the old "My Documents" folder setup.

And snapping windows to the sides of screens? Maybe the best productivity change Microsoft's made in the last 20 years. Some of what made Windows 7 great was kind of already there in Vista, but Microsoft cleared out to crud so it could shine through. Just pressing the Windows key and typing made launching any program a breeze, and added keyboard shortcuts for features like window snapping made it even more efficient. If Windows 10 or Windows 11 had simply been Windows 7, unchanged except for under-the-hood performance improvements and updates for modern hardware, would anyone have really minded?

Give us a version of this OS tweaked for modern hardware and security and so on, and we could use it forever. Wes: It feels a bit silly to feel nostalgic for Windows, but here I am feeling it. I have all sorts of childhood and teenage memories attached to Windows XP and Windows 3. It's for a time when Windows felt truly modern and had everything figured out , but Microsoft hadn't gotten overeager stuffing it with whatever's trendy in the tech world lookin' at you, Cortana.

Windows 7 had great tools like window snapping, keyboard shortcuts, a clean UI, regular online updates, with none of the bullshit we expect these days. There was no Microsoft store. There weren't invasive, integrated ad tracking profiles to turn off. These were just happy years of me using my computer and not having much to complain about.

And god, I played so much League of Legends. Feeling nostalgic about Windows now, or looking for the deets on Windows 11? We have more stories about Windows new and old. Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory it's really becoming a problem , he's probably playing a year-old RPG or some opaque ASCII roguelike.