17 Pringles Flavors Ranked Worst To Best

Come in closer, dear reader, and I will let you in on a not-so-secret secret: I hate Pringles. In a world of crispy kettle chips and all of the Lay's potato chip flavors, I can't imagine a reason why anyone would purchase a can of Pringles, in all of their mushy glory, and genuinely enjoy them.

So why would I, a self-proclaimed and proud Pringles hater, volunteer to sample and rank as many flavors of Pringles chips as I could find? Well, as the expression goes: "To be loved is to be changed." Is there a flavor of Pringles that I haven't tried, prior to this ranking, that could make me truly love (or at least not absolutely despise) this snack food brand and its snarky, mustached mascot? To find out, I purchased all the Pringles cans I could find at my local Walmart, sampled them, and ranked them based on their flavor and overall enjoyability.

I'm really not a honey mustard fan, but I did make a sacrifice and try these chips for you, dear reader, so you wouldn't have to (seriously ... don't buy these). When I opened the can of Honey Mustard Pringles, I got the aroma of mustard, and when I got a lick of a chip, I could tell that "honey" was in the picture, too. But its flavor was like a firework: a really intense bang, followed by nothing — and I mean nothing. There wasn't any salt, so the flavor was entirely consumed by the mealy, potato flake undertones.

I don't think honey mustard really works as a potato chip flavor (it would be much better suited for a pretzel), so Pringles may have set itself up to fail on this one. It was the least enjoyable of all the Pringles I sampled, earning it the bottom spot on my list.

I realized I had a vested interest in chili cheese-flavored things after my Fritos tasting, so I had my hopes set a little too high for these Pringles. They did not taste like chili, cheese, or fries. Instead, they tasted like that artificial butter that's drizzled over popcorn at the movie theaters. 

Eating these Chili Cheese Fries Pringles is like eating molten, butter-flavored plastic. There's no spice or heat to elevate the bite, and if anything, it really only tastes potato-adjacent — which it should, seeing as it's a potato chip. I wasn't impressed by them in any capacity, and their fake-tasting, off-the-mark flavor landed them near the bottom of my list. They were still more palatable than the honey mustard ones, though.

The first smell that hit my nose when I opened this container of Smoky Mesquite BBQ Pringles was not of smoke or heat, but of acid. When I think of "mesquite," I think of a smoky undertone that tickles both the sinuses and the palate — not acid.

The first flavor, besides the zest, was tomato, which was sweeter than umami. There wasn't nearly enough seasoning on these chips to make them worth eating. This Pringles flavor is the definition of over-promise and under-deliver, but I don't think it was as bad as some of the others I tried, earning it a spot at the lower end. 

I look at Original Pringles the way that I look at all original potato chips: Why the heck would you eat them when there are so many more fun and adventurous flavors out there worth trying? As I suspected, these plain Pringles were just about as boring as it gets. While the first taste that my palate registered was "salty," there wasn't enough of it to carry through to the end of the bite. Within seconds, that saltiness had been replaced by potato flake flavor — kind of like if I were eating a bag of instant mashed potato flakes. 

The only real reason to eat these chips is if you're pairing them with something, but there are many other flavors that go better with caviar than the plain ones. It's not as overtly bad as some of the other flavors I tried, but it's also not at all good.

I don't like salt and vinegar chips, and I don't consider myself a convert after trying Pringles' rendition of the flavor. However, my ranking here was based on how these chips performed relative to the other flavors on this list, which admittedly wasn't very good. When I cracked the can, I felt my lips purse and my eyes roll back in my head as the vinegar filled my nostrils. It was very pungent. At first, this gave me the feeling that I was going to rank them at least in the middle. But when I took a bite, I noticed all that vinegar flavor faded. Sure, I could smell it, but there wasn't enough acidity on the chip itself — nor enough salt — to convince me it was trying to be a salt-and-vinegar chip. 

Pringles, as I would soon learn, really plays to its aroma when it can't replicate the flavor of something. Salt and vinegar is really not a hard chip flavor to imitate (speaking as someone who doesn't have any food product engineering experience), so I'm surprised that Pringles fared so poorly.

The only good thing that was flavored like Mexican Street Corn that I've ever had was the Trader Joe's elote corn chips — which I consider to be the crème de la crème of snack foods. Pringles, on the other hand, don't really do this flavor justice. 

Mexican street corn, for the uninitiated, is typically grilled and coated in a mayo- and sour cream-based cream sauce with paprika, lime, and cotija cheese. On the first bite, I could clearly pull out the mayo and the sour cream, but that flavor was very quickly overtaken by an artificial lime essence, which permeated each bite and left an unsavory flavor in my mouth. It wasn't acidic, but was like the stale citric flavoring found on a hint of lime tortilla chips. It could have included some more umami and spice-forward notes, maybe even played more to the heat with a sprinkle of cayenne. The flavor of these chips, as a whole, is haphazard and not well thought out, though I could pick them out more clearly than the ones in some of the other Pringles flavors I sampled. 

I am a self-proclaimed sour cream and onion chip snob, so it shouldn't be a surprise when I say that Pringles sour cream and onion chips give this unique and usually bold chip flavor a bad name. Honestly, these Pringles tasted more like a French onion dip than a proper sour cream and onion chip. While there is a lingering sour cream acidity — weirdly, more so than on the salt and vinegar Pringles — there wasn't enough herbiness and fresh oniony flavor to balance the chip out. Instead, that freshness was replaced by an almost-umami flavor that made the chips heavy on the palate rather than light and fresh. 

It was better conceptualized than some of the other chip flavors on this list, which earned it a spot near, but not on, the bottom. I wouldn't go out of my way to buy these chips, nor would I recommend anyone else do so.

If you know me, you know I love a good food gimmick. And pizza-flavored things are right up my alley. Pizza-flavored Goldfish were a popular choice in my house growing up, but I can't say the same about the pizza rendition of these Pringles. When I opened the can, I quickly realized there was very little flavoring dust on the chips, and that sentiment was true for the flavor. 

As I snacked on one, I audibly said, "Sauce ... no, pepperoni! No ... grease!" It was hard to decipher what Pringles was trying to get at here because there were so many different flavors going on, and none of them were fully in focus. I might have felt different after eating 20 in a single sitting, but one chip wasn't memorable enough to rank any higher.

Going into this ranking, I figured that simple was going to be better. Cheddar cheese Pringles are supposed to taste like one thing and one thing only — cheddar cheese — so they should be relatively hard to screw up. And I was practically giddy when I cracked the can to reveal fluorescent orange chips. I wanted them to be traffic cone orange to signify that they were about as cheesy as they come. While I will say that the cheese flavor was present and easily identified, I can't say that it was overwhelmingly complex or nuanced in the way a good cheddar cheese can be (but what do you want from a cheap snack food?). 

The cheese flavor tasted about as fake as it looked, and there wasn't any boldness or sharpness present. It wasn't as bad as some of the others on this list, but it's not interesting enough to warrant eating more than one at a time. 

I had tried a couple of the top-ranked Pringles before diving into the ranch ones, and I initially suspected that ranch would score pretty high. However, the flavor of these chips wasn't quite correct, nor was it what I was expecting, which is why they trickled down the list to a respectable spot toward the middle. 

When I think "ranch," I think fresh dill, herbs, and creaminess. This ranchy rendition chose to focus more on the acidity of the dressing, which I think is helpful for chips — as the saltiness and starchiness can weigh down the palate and demands an acidic reprieve — but I think it did so at the expense of the overall "ranchiness" of these chips. There was garlic and what tasted like onion (but was too soft to clearly define), and a bright, vinegary undertone. I was missing out on that dilly flavor that makes ranch, well, ranch. Perhaps Pringles misread "buttermilk" as "vinegar?" I dunno, but I can't say I wanted to go back into this can like I did some of my higher-ranked picks. 

Brisket is such a complex dish, so Pringles had an uphill challenge making this chip flavor taste like its namesake. However, barbecue-adjacent chips are popular among snack enthusiasts, and I do think that if they're your favorite chip flavor, you may be partial to these Texas BBQ brisket Pringles. 

Are they the best barbecue chips out there? No, and they still have the potato-flaky mouthfeel that Pringles are known for. However, they have a barbecue note that clearly makes itself known and helps disguise that potato flavor a bit — which is just what I was craving by this point in the ranking.

However, do I think that they're "brisket?" No, they're not juicy, nor are they meaty or almost succulent in the same way brisket is. But they have a much more defined flavor than the lower-ranked Pringles flavors.

When I first saw these seven-layer dip Pringles at my local Walmart, I said audibly, "You've got to be kidding me." It seems like such a complex flavor to try to imitate in a snack food—from the beans and guacamole to the sour cream and cheese — but Pringles did surprisingly well. A gross oversimplification (but bear with me, here) is that everything in this Tex-Mex dip tastes the same: like cumin. That was the predominant flavor note, along with onions, garlic, and a background of some sort of fresh pepper. 

You can't clearly say "Oh, that's sour cream" like you were in the gum scene of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," but its overall flavor is Tex-Mex-adjacent enough to work. I didn't mind eating them, which is big for me to say, as a self-proclaimed Pringles hater. 

Although it might seem like loaded potato skins is one of those "Why is this even a flavor?" chips, it's surprisingly not the first rendition of it I've seen. It's supposed to be generally savory — with undertones of bacon, cheese, sour cream, and potato. It seems very fitting for a potato chip, and it looks like something that Pringles could do pretty well. 

And that it did. The aroma doesn't give off much besides generally savory, and the same can also be said for its flavor. When I bit in, I could vaguely detect notes of bacon, sour cream, and cheese, though if you fed me one blindfolded, I wouldn't point to "loaded potato skins" immediately. The savory flavors all work with each other, kind of as they did with the seven-layer dip Pringles, though I would have appreciated some more definition between each of the layered flavors in these chips.

I tried the smoky cheddar Pringles along with all the other cheddar-ish flavors to compare them side by side. I was a bit turned off at the idea of a smoky cheddar chip at first, as the label of this can features what looked like a block of tofu (which I assume is supposed to be cheese) on a grill. Weird visuals aside, I can say definitively that the smoky cheddar Pringles are leaps and bounds above the plain cheddar ones. 

The first bite on the palate is salty, and this flavor note persists longer than those of the other Pringles I tried. The brand clearly plays to the aroma of these chips, as their flavor doesn't deliver the sharpness I was looking for. But the saltiness made them taste much better than many of the other chips I sampled for this ranking. I would have liked a little more on the "smoke" and "cheddar" components, but these were among the more enjoyable and easily snackable chips I tried.

I have an affinity for white cheddar-flavored snack foods, and while I can't say that these Pringles will be replacing my beloved Aldi puffed corn triangles any time soon, if I had to eat one of the Pringles on this list, these would be it. They are by far the saltiest flavor on this list, which really helps hide the potato flavor. Instead of tasting starchy and sad, these have a deep, umami flavor that not all of the other Pringles flavors I tried offered. They were complex and flavorful in the best way possible, and were some of the few I went back for seconds of. 

The only thing I don't think people will like about these chips is that they're on the edge of "too salty" — like I could feel my taste buds gasping for air after being covered in the seasoning. But pair it with a crisp Diet Coke and reruns of "Grey's Anatomy," and I'd be set. 

Although it might seem gimmicky, dill pickle potato chips do conceptually work: The acidity helps elevate the greasy chip, and the saltiness helps drive home the "pickle" flavor even more. Dill Pickle Pringles certainly smelled briny and tasted tasty, and their flavor was better fleshed out than some of the others on this list. While the salt and vinegar-flavored chips were all bark and no bite, these dill pickle chips had me howling all the way home. The flavor was very clearly pickle, and it was very bright, salty, and acidic. It makes me wonder why anyone would eat any of the other, vinegar-forward chips on this list when this is an option. 

I also liked that I could taste the dill pickle after I ate the chip; the flavor stuck around and was memorable enough to warrant sneaking my hand back into a can for another. While I don't think that everyone will love the idea of a dill pickle chip, they were one of the easiest flavors to eat, earning them a saddle-shaped silver medal in this very competitive race. 

I think that Pringles may have reinvented its cheddar and sour cream chips since I last tried them, because this go-round, they were much, much better. Granted, they're not the best cheddar and sour cream chip brand that I've ever had (look to Lay's for that one), but they set themselves apart from all the other Pringles chips on this list for a reason. 

Although I really loved the Sharp Cheddar Pringles that I ranked below it, these cheddar and sour cream chips offered the perfect balance of cheesy sharpness, acidity from the sour cream, and just enough salt to intensify those flavors even more. It wasn't overwhelmingly salty, nor did I feel the need to grab a sip of water after I ate a few, which increases their universal appeal a bit more. They're a really well-rounded salty snack, and I think that I may have become a Pringles convert after trying them. 

I tried all of these Pringles on the day I purchased them. I tried to group my selections into flavor categories, like cheesy (sharp white cheddar, cheddar, and the like), acidic (dill pickle, sour cream and onion, and salt and vinegar), and the wild cards (loaded potato skins, elote, and the others that really don't sound like they should be potato chip flavors) so I could better compare the ones with similar profiles. They all have the same base — mealy, potatoey, and mushy — so I used flavor as the primary criterion to rank them.

For one, the flavor of the chips should match the one listed on the label. The flavor also had to be enjoyable, balanced, and easily snackable — so I looked at which ones warranted a second handful. Although everyone's chip preferences differ, I considered which flavors had the greatest universal appeal when finalizing my ranking.