Promises, promises.

We all want to believe products’ claims that they’ll make our home lives easier. But as the Does It Work? testers have learned, promises and reality don’t always match.

Food writer Lisa Abraham, consumer reporter Betty Lin-Fisher and home writer Mary Beth Breckenridge, all of the Akron Beacon Journal, put five home products to the test. This time, all of our verdicts were unanimous. Here’s what we found.

FURNITURE FIX

Maybe you’ve tried the trick of putting plywood under the cushion of a sagging seat to firm it up. Furniture Fix works on the same principle, except it’s plastic and provides a little more give than rigid plywood.

Furniture Fix is a set of interlocking plastic panels that slide under a seat cushion in an upholstered chair or couch. Each box contains six panels, or enough to support one seat. For a regular-size couch with three seats, you’d need three sets.

We tried out one set on a co-worker’s aging sectional sofa, where one particularly well-worn seating area sagged and tended to cause the sitter to lean to one side. The Furniture Fix made the seat noticeably firmer — maybe even a bit uncomfortably firm, although not as hard as the board we also tried. And we still found ourselves leaning.

“I think it’s an improvement,” Betty said, “but I wouldn’t spend $15 on it.”

Considering we’d need at least two and perhaps three to shore up the sagging portion of this particular couch, we’d be looking at an investment of $30 to $45. That’s still considerably cheaper than new furniture, but we thought it was a little pricey for a solution that’s less than ideal.

•  Verdict: It depends.

EZ MOVES

Somehow I missed the physics lesson that explained why certain materials reduce friction and make heavy things easier to move across a surface. But apparently the makers of EZ Moves paid closer attention.

EZ Moves are plastic pads that are placed under furniture legs to make the furniture easier to slide. Each pad has a foam insert with a felt backing that can be removed and used instead of the plastic on hard-surface floors to prevent scratching.

We tried the pads on Betty’s heavy sleeper sofa. Without the EZ Moves, it took all three of us working together to move it across her carpeted floor. With the EZ Moves, each of us could move it alone. Even Betty’s 11-year-old daughter managed to move the couch by herself with the help of the EZ Moves, albeit with considerable effort.

I thought the plastic was a little flimsier than the furniture-moving glides I already had at home, but the pads still seemed sturdy enough to hold up to repeated use. And we all liked the lifting tool that comes with the glides, which uses leverage (see, I did remember something from physics) to help you lift a corner of a heavy piece of furniture so you can slide the pads underneath. It might even come in handy for cleaning under furniture, Betty noted.

Where we disagreed a bit was on the value. “It’s a little pricey at $19.99, but it does what it says,” Betty said.

Lisa and I disagreed. “I don’t think $19.99 is unreasonable for that package,” Lisa said, especially considering that it included the lifter and eight pads.