Cigar Aficionado

Often dubbed the “affordable luxury,” premium cigars do not necessarily have to be expensive to be fine, and a high-quality, handrolled cigar can be found at many reasonable price points. In 2020, the tasting panel at Cigar Aficionado blind-smoked and rated hundreds of cigars, but we mined our database to bring you 28 smokes that are both wallet-friendly and humidor-worthy.

While value is a relative term, our list of Best Buys is made up of smokes that retail for $6 or less (before taxes) and scored 87 points or higher. Smaller smokes such as coronas and petit coronas make up a rather prominent percentage here, but there are bigger sizes too, such as robustos, figurados, a Churchill and even some grandes. Some of the best-known names in the business appear on this list, which, thankfully, spares you from having to make the regretful decision of sacrificing quality to save a few bucks. —Thomas Pappalardo