Stainless Steel Tea Infuser Sphere Locking Spice Tea Ball

It’s not easy being a tea drinker. We’re used to walking into a coffee shop and selecting one of maybe three options, or (true story) having to explain to a barista why simply dropping a tea bag into a cup of ice water does not make iced tea. And at work, where it’s common to find a single-serve pod coffee maker at-the-ready, tea drinkers often bring their own from home.

Without a teapot, those who prefer using full-flavor loose tea leaves over tea bags need an in-mug tea infuser to get their caffeine fix. But, as someone who has put in years of unofficial trial and error can attest, good ones are hard to find. That’s why we spent weeks putting nine of the best tea infusers to the test, throwing ourselves a daily tea party to see which were easiest to use, most effective at steeping evenly, and least annoying at extracting stubborn leaves and washing by hand.