Live Updates From IFA 2025 in Berlin 🔴

There was one last gadget I couldn’t get out of my head in the days since IFA 2025. The $150 MCON mobile controller went viral earlier this year and had a successful Kickstarter that ended just a few months ago. I went hands on with the latest pre-production model for the first mobile controller that could actually fit in your pocket. The controller pops out with the press of a button and allows you to attach your phone via a MagSafe connection. The controls felt tight, and save for an issue collapsing the controller, it might turn into one of my go to for playing on my phone. —Kyle Barr

This Pop-Out Phone Controller Could Reinvent How We Think of Mobile Gaming

As much as you want to forget you have a car when you’re on vacation somewhere, it’s easier said than done. If you’re like me and let paranoia get the better of you, then you might also be a good fit for this dashcam from Baseus that uses solar power to operate a dual-dashcam setup without ever needing your car’s battery.

You won’t be able to remotely check on your car, to be clear (footage can be downloaded via Wi-Fi when you’re in proximity), but it will at least keep tabs on things, so you can check if someone tried to boost your ride while you sipped Mai Tais on the beach. —James Pero

This Solar-Powered Dashcam Watches Your Car While You’re Off ‘Finding Yourself’ in Europe

IFA 2025 ends tomorrow, but we’ve added a few more winners to our Best of IFA 2025 Awards. Hopefully, next year we can send more reporters to crawl the Berlin tech show for even more worthy winners. Congrats again to all the winners! —Raymond Wong

Gizmodo’s Best of IFA 2025 Awards: See the Winners

There was one throughline I encountered throughout my time sprinting through IFA 2025. Few companies wanted to say explicitly when their products would launch in the U.S. or how much they would cost. The word that went unsaid was “tariffs,” but you could see the impact on U.S. import taxes on everything from Lenovo’s new Legion Go 2 handheld to the lack of pricing on the Acer Swift 16 Air and the TCL QM9K. It made for a conference that felt more constrained than ever. Americans will have to get used to watching overseas companies innovate while we’re left with the same tired devices as usual. —Kyle Barr

Trump’s Policies Are Shutting Out Americans From the Coolest New Gadgets

IFA 2025 officially ends on Sept. 9, but our reporters have left Berlin. There may still be a few things that are worth blogging about, but for now, we’ve chosen some winners for Gizmodo’s Best of IFA 2025 Awards. Go check them out and let us know if we missed anything that deserves consideration! —Raymond Wong

Gizmodo’s Best of IFA 2025 Awards: See the Winners

If you look hard enough, you’ll find plenty of security cameras at IFA 2025. Reolink’s TrackFlex Floodlight WiFi is like a spiffed-up version of the Elite Floodlight WiFi that our smart home guru, Wes Davis, recently reviewed (and really liked). The big new feature is sensors that help the camera see where it’s not facing. It sounds neat… if you’re looking for a new floodlight security camera and have some interest in Reolink’s local AI features, like the ability to use natural language to search video footage. —Raymond Wong

Reolink’s New Floodlight Camera Uses Sensors and AI to Detect Where It Can’t See

Eufy’s MarsWalker wasn’t the only robot vacuum capable of climbing stairs with the help of a mech suit or arm-equipped caddy. Dreame also showed off the Cyber X, but instead of little stalks it uses what our reporter, Wes Davis, describes as “chainsaw hands” or tank treads that help a Dreame robot vacuum climb up and down stairs. Wes also checked out the Mova Zeus 60, which can also walk up and down stairs but uses a different mechanical design. Mova’s design is way slower, but now that seemingly every robot vacuum maker is trying to figure stair-climbing out, who knows how this will shake out. May the best robot vacuum maker win, I guess? —Raymond Wong

The Robot Vacuum’s Next Trick: Climbing Stairs

Withings updated its ScanWatch 2 with a massive new software update, HealthSense 4, which not only adds AI (ugh, but also yay?) but also extends battery life from 30 days to 35 days. The company told our reporter, Wes Davis, that it optimized some code to squeeze out five extra days. Of course, there’s always a catch when a company touts this kinda battery life in a smartwatch. And it’s the same spiel as always: you’ll have to turn off many of the ScanWatch 2’s features in order to even hit that number. So in reality, will you ever get 35 days on a single charge? Maybe if you go off the grid and have no outlets. But even then, you’ll probably have a battery pack like Anker’s Prime 300W Power Bank. —Raymond Wong

Withings Updates ScanWatch 2 With 35-Day Battery Life the Apple Watch Could Only Dream Of

We told you that wired earbuds were back. Belkin’s SoundForm USB-C Wired Earbuds have ANC for $5 more than Sony’s awfully named IER-EX15C that we told you about earlier this week. Belkin also showed off a neat new UltraCharge Magnetic Charger 25W and a BoostCharge Retractable Car Charger 75W. —Raymond Wong

Wired Earbuds Are So Back

We’ve had plenty of experience with the idiosyncrasies of Dbrand’s Killswitch Case for Switch 2. It feels great and helps protect the handheld, but its main drawback is the need to use a dock adapter to fit the thicker plastic. Accessory maker Jsaux’s remedy for its own upcoming ModCase is just to create a whole new dock. Better yet, this OmniCentro Charging Dock sports a big screen right in front to spy on whether your Switch 2 and controllers are getting enough juice. The dock still has an HDMI output that supports 4K at 60Hz. Jsaux’s ModCase Ultimate Kit for the Nintendo Switch 2 comes stock with an odd strap, which I immediately assumed was used to wear your handheld like a Pip-Boy from Fallout (New Vegas, of course; it’s the best one). Actually, the strap is supposed to support external battery packs. Like the company’s other ModCases for handheld PCs, the case is modular and allows for other attachments, such as a MagSafe phone mount. —Kyle Barr

SwitchBot’s weird world of AI gadgets doesn’t stop at a fuzzy robotic “pet” that stared, occasionally blinking, at the passing IFA crowds. One of their more enticing products was an “AI Art Frame.” You should really ignore the word “AI” in the title, since the product’s real raison d’être is the use of a color E Ink Spectra 6 panel that makes for a distinct look compared to other, larger canvas-style TVs like Samsung’s The Frame, which is essentially a QLED with an additional matte layer. There’s no word on availability or price, but the company promised its Art Frame will come in various sizes, namely 7.3-, 13.3-, and 31.5 inches. —Kyle Barr

There are now more companies than ever trying to recreate the appeal of the Nintendo 3DS’s stereoscopic display. What’s odd is every company seems to think the reason players weren’t keen on the 3D display was that it was too small. The upcoming Abyxlute 3D One handheld PC includes an 11-inch display attached to two controllers. At IFA 2025, yet another small Chinese company came along and proposed to do something very similar with one major twist.

Digiera brought its prototype glasses-free 3D handheld and PC hybrid to the show floor. It uses two Xbox-like controllers that can detach, like the Switch 2. We’ve seen that capability before, though Digiera’s device is more like a Windows 11 tablet thanks to the included low-profile keyboard, which attaches via pins to the screen’s bottom. The company told me it’s going up on Kickstarter soon with three different AMD chip options, with a top-end Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 64GB of RAM, and a ludicrous 4TB. This device was an early prototype that wasn’t playing any games. The connection point from the controller to the screen was also very loose. Whether or not it ends up as vaporware, at least we’re still trying to figure out how to do 3D the right way. —Kyle Barr

I’ve tried a lot of open-ear wireless earbuds in my day, but open-ear headphones? That’s a flavor I’ve not yet tasted—mainly because I’ve just never seen it before. JLabs, however, is intent on fixing that lack of category with its JBuds Open Wireless Headphones.

I’m excited for open audio in a headphone form factor for a couple of reasons, but one of the big ones is that it should help provide the volume you need to counter ambient audio bleed. I’m even more curious if JLabs’ “LabFocus” tech can actually prevent sound leakage from these things so you’re not annoying everyone around you with your tunes. —James Pero

Forget Open Earbuds, It’s All About Open Headphones Now

We were all having a good time making fun of all the failed AI wearable assistants, like the Humane AI Pin, that there was a growing product segment making a strong case for the specific capabilities of large language models. Plaud, the makers of the AI NotePin that records and transcribes all your conversations, is in the black despite the losing game that most AI-based startups have been playing.

For IFA, Plaud showed up with its Note Pro—which is essentially a beefed-up version of its credit card-sized Note with a screen. The new Note Pro also includes an extra feature that lets users highlight important points in conversations for you to go back to later in the Plaud app.

Then, this week, Anker introduced its own Soundcore Work AI Recorder, a puck with a magnetically attached pin that does the same thing as Plaud. The Note Pro has a stated 50-hour battery life, while Anker’s pin claims it will get 32 hours with the puck and 8 hours with the pin separated. How long before we see even more copycats, I wonder? —Kyle Barr

I still remember when I almost lost my cat. I opened the door for 12 seconds, and she bolted out under my radar while I was intercepting a package. Luckily, I checked my home security camera and saw that she had escaped, which at least told me where to look, but apparently, with today’s tech, I wouldn’t have even had to frantically pore over footage.

That’s right, with SwitchBot’s AI Hub, you can unleash the power of a Vision Language Model that lets you find footage recorded by your home security using natural language prompts. In my case, “Did my cat literally escape the house?” I can’t verify whether or not that prompt would work, but the fact that you can even do it is pretty rad. My cat, Devious, is alive and well, by the way. —James Pero

This AI Box Lets You Search Your Security Camera Footage Using a Text Prompt

Sometimes you just need a gadget that does the most, and in the case of Anker’s new Prime 300W Power Bank, that’s exactly what you’re getting. According to Anker, this tank of a power bank has enough power to top up two laptops and a phone simultaneously while using its two USB-C and a single USB-A ports.

Couple that with the Prime Docking Station—a 14-port dock with a screen, single SD and microSD card slots, and three USB-C ports on the front, each capable of up to 140W output—and you’ve got yourself quite a combo. Is this the last power bank you’ll ever need? It very well could be. —James Pero

Anker’s New Prime 300W Power Bank Is the Last Portable Battery You’ll Ever Need

You may have never heard of the Chinese brand Tecno, but you might wanna get familiar because the company announced two Tecno Slim phones that give Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge (and soon Apple’s iPhone 17 Air) some serious competition in the skinny phone category. While just over a millimeter thicker than the S25 Edge, the Tecno Slim phones have bigger batteries and a higher 144Hz refresh rate; they also have two cameras compared to the iPhone 17 Air’s expected single camera. Performance isn’t gonna be flagship-level because of the MediaTek chips, though, but these phones are all about their slimness. —Raymond Wong

This Extremely Slim Phone Is Hitting Apple and Samsung Where It Hurts

Lenovo is known for going hard on concept devices (some even become real products, like the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable). Or, at least, it’s one of the few major companies willing to show off what its engineers are cooking up behind the scenes. The laptop maker didn’t disappoint at IFA 2025. First up is the ThinkBook VertiFlex Concept. It’s a laptop with a screen built on a pivot point, meaning you can spin it from horizontal to vertical. I know you’re already asking, why would I want that? Having a vertical display on demand may be convenient if you prefer to read an article without scrolling a paragraph at a time through ads. Coders also make good use of vertical displays. It’s one of those designs I honestly think has a wider use case than even a foldable or rollable laptop.

Then there’s the Smart Motion Concept. It’s a giant, heavy laptop stand that uses the laptop’s camera to track your face. Imagine if you’re in a Zoom call with your company, and you can’t even duck out of frame to avoid its scrutiny. —Kyle Barr

Yes, the Screen on This Lenovo Laptop Really Flips From Horizontal to Vertical

For all those folk still holding out hope for Android tablets to make a resurgence, Lenovo’s Yoga Tab already sounds like an iPad Air alternative. The 11-inch tablet is built with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Gen 3 mobile chip and has up to 12GB of RAM. The 3.2K OLED display supports Dolby Vision HDR (no, not Dolby Vision 2) with a rather high stated brightness. When hooked up with the keyboard and its built-in flat-panel kickstand, the Yoga Tab could make for a fair-looking pint-sized PC alternative, especially with the magnetic stylus attachment point. —Kyle Barr

Sometimes, I need Lenovo to remind me it owns Motorola. At IFA, Lenovo showed off the new Moto G06, the Moto G06 Power, and an Edge 60 Neo. Even though the specs seem solid for mid-range devices, you’ll have a real hard time getting them in the U.S. Instead, I finally had the chance to check out the Brilliant Collection edition of the Motorola Razr (2025), but in a stark white color that seems designed to pick up a sheen of dirt the next time you drop it in the dirt. It’s a faux leather back with a look made to resemble a “quilted pattern,” but all it reminds me of is my grandparents’ old upholstered cushions. —Kyle Barr

Lenovo’s sequel to its odd and peculiar Legion Go handheld PC, the Legion Go 2 (or you can call it the Legion Go [Gen 2], I guess), is finally coming, and soon. Lenovo says it will include an OLED display with support for variable refresh rate (VRR). That’s already more enticing if you’re one of the Nintendo Switch OLED players miffed about the Switch 2’s return to IPS LCD. It will still have the breakaway controllers with the built-in mouse sensor for players to wield like a flight stick in “FPS mode.” The Legion Go 2 uses an AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme chip, which promises better performance over the last-gen handhelds. The big questions about price, availability, and performance will need to come later.

The Pretty Screen on Lenovo’s Legion Go 2 Will Almost Make You Forget About Its Price

Oh, if you still prefer laptops, Lenovo is dropping a new version of its Lenovo Legion Pro 7 with a high-end gaming CPU, the AMD Ryzen 9 9955X3D. With that processor, it promises to be a truly powerful gaming machine. —Kyle Barr

Lenovo’s press conference announcing its new products started off with a focus on its iconic business laptop brand. Along with a host of new ThinkPad devices, including the thick and heavy-duty ThinkPad P16 that can be configured with up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX Pro discrete mobile GPU, perhaps the most enticing is a “glacial white” ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition. It’s exactly the same as the regular X9 in black, but it’s the best way to look distinct among your ThinkPad-obsessed peers. It’s only going to be available in limited quantities for people in the U.S. The only thing missing is the red TrackPoint “nipple” that’s so iconic for ThinkPad devices. —Kyle Barr

Call me old-fashioned, but back in my day, stuffed animals just needed a cute face and some polyester. This is 2025, though, and now we’re stuffing on-device LLMs into cute stuff because apparently your imagination just isn’t enough.

I’m speaking, of course, about SwitchBot’s new furry AI companion that apparently watches what you do all the time and gets “jealous.” Fun for the whole family if you ask me! Our staff writer, Kyle Barr, got to see this thing on the IFA show floor and said, “All it did was stare at me.” Nothing weird to see here, folks! —James Pero

Finally, You Can Cuddle With a Cute Camera-Clad AI Robot That Feels Jealousy

Only time will tell whether or not the robot vacuums—they can slip on little mech suits and climb up stairs now—will rise up and kill us all thanks to AI. But until that happens, we’ll play along and believe that companies like Ecovacs adding AI into their wheeled floor cleaners is all in the name of better cleaning without us lazy humans having to constantly tell them where and how to clean. That’s what the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone promises, at least. The $1,500 robot vacuum also has better motors that can climb over different floor materials (i.e. rug to wood and over the little dividers that separate them). —Raymond Wong

Check out Wes’s first impressions of the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone here:

This New Ecovacs Robot Vac Uses AI for Something Useful, but It Doesn’t Come Cheap

Have you ever looked at your electric shaver and thought: This is great, but what if it were made out of the same stuff that airplanes are made out of? Me neither, but that didn’t stop Laifen from doing it anyway. Here is its electric shaver made from aerospace-grade aluminum alloy. I can’t tell if its T1 Pro shaver is ready to make my head slick or detonate some C4. Either way, this is one shaver you don’t have to worry about getting crushed in your overnight bag. —James Pero

This Electric Shaver Is Made From Aircraft-Grade Aluminium, Because Why Not?

Ah, yes, stairs. The mortal enemy of robot vacuums everywhere. But maybe not for long. Eufy announced its next generation of robot vacuums and an accessory called the MarsWalker, which is a little mech suit for climbing up steps. The great part about this cool (if slightly bizarre) solution is that it means preexisting Eufy robot vacuums could also gain the ability to climb steps just by hopping in a mech and using its legs to start climbing.

In this case, we saw the MarsWalker coupled with Eufy’s Omni S2, a new robo-vac, and a follow-up to its Omni S1 Pro self-cleaning robot vacuum. Outside of climbing stairs, the Omni S2 is also geared towards tackling pitfalls of other robot vacuums, like adapting to different floor surfaces, addressing bad carpet performance, and their bad habit of getting clogged. I’m personally looking forward to seeing what happens when we inevitably get AI involved, too. A robot vacuum that can climb and tell me to put glue on my pizza? Sign me up. —James Pero

Eufy’s Got a Little Stair-Climbing Mech Suit for Its Robot Vacuums

Whether or not you knew it, your Philips Hue bulbs (or most of them, at least) have been capable of motion detection this whole time. Thanks to an update from Philips and its new Hue Bridge Pro, most generations of Philips Hue bulbs can now use a feature called MotionAware that activates bulbs when movement is detected in the room.

MotionAware, which is enabled by new algorithms in the Hue Bridge Pro, uses radio frequencies already present in every generation of Hue smart bulb since 2014 and can also double as a security tool for detecting burglars. It’s creepy but also cool, and according to Philips, all of the motion activity is stored locally on its Bridge Pro hub, which is ideal since I don’t fancy Philips knowing where I am in my own apartment. —James Pero

Oh God, Philips Hue Now Lets You Turn Your Lights Into Surveillance Bulbs

Santa is gonna be confused—or impressed—when he lands on people’s roofs and sees their houses decked out in Govee’s Permanent Outdoor Lights Prism, er, lights. The lighting system supports up to 16 million colors and can create a tricolor lighting effect from each LED. Basically, these are permanent Christmas lights that you can leave up all year round and program to output different colors and lighting patterns throughout the year. Halloween is coming up, so maybe an orange theme? Kyle Barr’s got the lowdown on the Permanent Outdoor Lights Prism below.

Govee’s New Permanent House Lights Prove That Christmas Is a State of Mind

Govee also has a new Backlight 3 Pro lighting system for TVs that uses “cinema-quality” lenses to match the lighting to the content you’re watching. —Raymond Wong

Maingear’s new Super 16 gaming laptop is a beast by every spec. The 16-incher has an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti mobile GPU. But the marquee spec is its 300Hz IPS LCD display. Yes, it’s not OLED, but the stupidly high refresh rate means you have no excuse when you lose a match of Fortnite or Valorant or whatever game you think you don’t suck at. —Raymond Wong

Maingear’s ‘Super 16’ Gaming Laptop Has a Blistering Fast 300Hz Display

The NXTPaper 60 Ultra phone has a cool screen, but TCL’s bread and butter is TVs. So, of course, it’s got a new TV at IFA. The honor goes to the QM9K, a mini LED 4K TV with 6,500 nits of peak brightness and up to 144Hz refresh rates. Long story short, TCL’s TV will blind you with so much brightness you won’t know whether you’re in heaven or hell. Oh, it also has built-in Gemini because AI, AI, AI. Shoving Gemini into TVs is the new shoving Google Assistant/Alexa into TVs. —Raymond Wong

TCL’s Bright-As-Hell Flagship 4K TV Is Filled With Enticing Features… and AI

Look, we know that Apple is announcing the iPhone 17 family next week, but if you want something different, perhaps TCL’s NXTPaper 60 Ultra will fancy you. The standout feature on the Android phone is its second-gen NXTPpaper 4 screen technology. The matte screen is supposed to be more paper-like, offer zero flicker, and have more natural backlighting than the blue light emitting from regular phones. According to TCL, all of these features make the phone a lot easier on your eyes. There is one catch: it’s not available in North America. Europeans can get it for 449 euros or about $524. Check out Kyle Barr’s write-up below. —Raymond Wong

TCL’s New Phone Is What You Want if You Stare Too Long at Screens

Alongside the Galaxy Tab S11 and Tab S11 Ultra tablets, Samsung also announced the Galaxy S25 FE at IFA 2025. And as you’d expect, the ” $650 “Fan Edition” smartphone is made up of parts mostly from the $1,000 S25+. There’s a 6.7-inch display and a 4,900mAh battery. The telephoto camera got a resolution downgrade, and there’s less base storage (128GB vs. 256GB), but otherwise, it seems to be a solid value if you’ve got exactly $650 to spend on a new phone and don’t want to splurge any more. Read all about the S25 FE and what it has and doesn’t have below. —Raymond Wong

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 FE ‘Fan Edition’ Is a Cut-Down S25+ For $350 Less

Teased last week, Samsung announced its new Galaxy Tab S11 and Tab S11 Ultra Android tablets today. You can read my write-up about all the differences between the two slates, but if you’re short on time, just know that the Tab S11 has an 11-inch screen and the Tab S11 Ultra has a 14.6-inch display. The bigger model also has an anti-reflective coating on the screen, which should reduce glare by quite a bit, especially if you’re gonna be using it outdoors. —Raymond Wong

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S11 Tablets Come in Two Sizes: Big and Absolutely Huge

Did you watch the Chainsaw Man anime and wonder to yourself what a robovac version of the chainsaw-headed Pochita would look like? Behold: Dreame’s Cyber X, a dock for the robovac with four separate arms and tank-like treads made to haul itself up stairs. When up on all fours, the device looks like a killer robot spider and is much more severe than Anker’s similar MarsWalker that also made its debut at IFA 2025. The CyberX’s rubberized tracks are supposed to help it stick to both rug and hardwood surfaces. The device also uses a laser and camera system to navigate horizontally or up flights of stairs. —Kyle Barr

Roborock sounds like the kind of company that already makes automatic construction vehicles, not mainly robovacs. The company is branching out now into lawn care with a slate of three mowers headlined by the Roborock RockMow Z1. The big feature of this mower compared to competing products from companies like Yarbo is how it handles slopes. The RockMow Z1 has an all-wheel drive system, and independent hub motors on the two front wheels help the mower tackle 80 percent, or around 38-degree, surfaces. Otherwise, it’s using both visual sensors and satellite-based, real-time kinematics for hitting all corners of your lawn. —Kyle Barr

If we’re keen to save space for all our extraneous gadgets, why should our robovacs’ charging unit take up so much room? Roborock’s 4-in-1 Homewide Cleaning Combo includes a secret door tall enough for a robot vacuum to fit inside. The whole unit is a clothes washer and dryer combo, but the vacuum itself includes a mop function—hence the 4-in-1 in the name. While the robovac doggy door is kind of neat, it will be interesting to learn how well it handles the dirty water from the mop.

You can check out Wes Davis’s first impressions of the washer/dryer/ and robot vac dock combo here:

Roborock’s Washer and Dryer Combo Also Doubles as a Robot Vacuum Dock

—Kyle Barr

Anker’s used to sticking screens on its big external chargers, but seeing its Prime Docking Station, I now realize just how useful it would be to have another screen where I plug in all my displays. It supports 140W fast charging through a single USB-C, and with the AnkerSense panel you can see how fast each of your connected devices is charging. Otherwise, the Prime Docking Station has enough ports for three displays (one DisplayPort and two HDMI) while promising support for 8K resolution at 60Hz through DisplayPort. If you’re looking for something to supply the most juice possible to your devices, you should look at the 300W Anker Prime Power Bank. —Kyle Barr

Anker’s Soundcore Nebula X1 Pro is an entire cinema in one massive, rollable package. While the original Nebula X1’s big claim to fame was its internal liquid cooling and extra-large projection lens, the new version contains an entire speaker setup for spatial surround sound, either in your home or outdoors. The projector can hit 4K at 3,500 lumens, which is pretty damn bright, but it will also cost you $4,000. —Kyle Barr

Anker’s Mammoth Projector Is Now So Big You Should Just Call It R2-D2

Anker’s Soundcore AI Voice Recorder will remind you of the Plaud NotePin AI voice transcription device for more than one reason. It’s a coin-sized clip-on wearable that will listen to everything you say, or anything anybody says to you, and then transcribe and summarize it in an app. The AI Voice Recorder is smaller than Plaud’s NotePin, though that may just make it easier to misplace when it’s not kept on the charging unit. —Kyle Barr

Finally, our robovacs are finding ways to tackle the most daunting impediments to full-house cleaning: dreaded stairs. Anker’s Eufy MarsWalker is essentially a robot suit for another Eufy cleaning robot built with four fold-out paddles on the exterior of each of its wheels. After achieving the right angle, the robot-robot exoskeleton can then ascend relatively steep stairs.

The MarsWalker currently supports Eufy’s new Robot Vacuum Omni S2. It promises to give you a deep clean of your rugs to remove all the excess dirt and pet hair. It lifts up to 5 centimeters to attack thick carpets. The roving vacuum also includes a mop function using Anker’s new HydroJet technology to scrub away stains on hard floors. The Omni S2 should be available sometime in January in the U.S. MarsWalker is a real product, which should arrive sometime in the first half of 2026. —Kyle Barr

Anker’s eufyMake E1 UV Printer has been one of my most-anticipated gadgets since I saw it last year. It uses UV-activated ink to print on practically any surface, not just paper or canvas. What’s even neater is how it can print in “3D” by applying multiple layers of ink to create a kind of effect akin to an oil painting. Now, finally, regular consumers should be able to get one if they missed the Kickstarter. The printer should be available starting in December at a starting price of $2,500. —Kyle Barr

Amazon-owned Eero has a dongle to sell you if you’re an Eero customer. Called the Eero Signal, the dongle is a USB-C splitter that connects to an Eero router and lets you back up your Eero network over cellular data. In other words, it’s handy for when you have an internet outage. Our freelancer and smart home expert, Wes Davis, has the details on the Eero Signal below. —Raymond Wong

Eero Wants to Sell Customers a Cellular Internet Backup Dongle for Its Routers

Wired earbuds are back big-time, and Sony knows it. Introducing: the IER-EX15C, a pair of “in-ear headphones,” which come equipped with a wired USB-C connection. These wired earbuds are only $29.99 and give me flashbacks to the days of Apple’s wired EarPods with a Lightning port.

All I can remember about the days of wired audio is having to constantly untangle my headphones before I listened to them, but Sony says its latest entry have a “serrated design” that’s meant to prevent that. One great thing about wired earbuds like this is that they at least usually have a great mic and solid sound. I’m still not ready to go back to 2012, but if that’s your thing, you clearly have some new options. —James Pero

Party speakers seem to be a big thing this year at IFA, with entrants from JBL, Marshall, and now, Samsung. Samsung’s new Sound Tower speaker has a revamped acoustic design over the last generation and comes in two variants. The top-of-the-line version has 18 hours of battery life and the biggest tweeters and woofers for a robust karaoke sound that will make your neighbors wish they’d never been born. —James Pero

Samsung’s New Sound Tower Speaker Is for Party Animals Only

Notable among the sea of accessories announcing at IFA 2025 this week is this Mophie Headphones Charging Stand. It’s $150, which is kinda pricey, but it does have silicone cups and a magnetic USB-C dongle for quickly dropping AirPods Max into them for a charge. The aluminum base also has a Qi wireless charger for juicing up any AirPods or AirPods Pro, or non-Apple wireless earbuds that support wireless charging.

Mophie Made the Ultimate Charging Stand for All Your AirPods

Mophie created the ultimate AirPods charging stand that Apple should have. —Raymond Wong

People love Whoop’s screenless fitness bands, but one thing they don’t love is paying subscriptions forever and ever. Luckily, Polar and its new Polar Loop is here for anyone who isn’t okay with adding another subscription to their life. The Polar Loop does all the same stuff as Whoop’s band, too, including heart rate tracking, sleep monitoring, and step counting. Sorry, Whoop, maybe it’s time to soften your stance on recurring fees. —James Pero

This Whoop Copycat Doesn’t Gouge You With Subscriptions

Acer announced a truckload of tablets at IFA 2025. There’s the $320 Iconia X12 and $350 X14, and the $300 Iconia A14 and $340 A16. I haven’t any clue whether these are good tablets or not. I do know that all of them except for the Iconia X12 have kickstands. I like kickstands on my gadgets. The 12-inch Surface Pro and the Nintendo Switch 2 have very nice kickstands. But the ones on these new Acer Iconia tablets? They look more like the gumstick one on the original Nintendo Switch, though they’re longer and hopefully made of more durable material. —Raymond Wong

The Iconia A16 (left) and Iconia X14 (right) also have kickstands!

No kickstand on the below Iconia X12:

I love ogling gadgets, but I hate when they actually make me want to spend money. The latest source of that frustration comes courtesy of We Are Rewind, which just announced its GB-001, a next-gen boombox that plays cassettes, looks cool, and still has all the modern trappings of wireless audio devices like Bluetooth and hi-fi sound. It even has analog needles for volume and recording levels. Check out my post for the full details. I don’t need this boombox, but damn do I want it. —James Pero

Great, Now I Need a Next-Gen, Cassette Tape-Playing Boombox

reMarkable’s smaller e-paper device is official, and it’s called the Paper Pro Move. Get it? For people on the move who need to jot stuff down but won’t do that if they need to pull out a big iPad or Paper Pro from their backpack.

The Paper Pro Move starts at $449 with an included Marker stylus and features a 7.3-inch color E Ink display and 64GB of internal storage. Battery life is up to two weeks, according to reMarkable.

I’ll have a full review in the coming days, but for now, here’s my first impressions (including thoughts on the handwriting-to-text recognition) of the device after using it for a few days:

reMarkable Paper Pro Move Hands-On: A Notebook Lover’s Dream Device?

—Raymond Wong

Nvidia has a whole new pipeline it claims will allow anybody to create 3D objects using AI. The company’s 3D object generator blueprint can generate up to 20 objects based on a single prompt. Nvidia claims the tool takes into account the theme of the project you’re working on and then creates 2D images that act as previews for the potential generated 3D model. You can then export those models to most 3D applications, such as Blender.

Nvidia suggested these tools aren’t built to replace 3D modelers but allow them to more easily prototype a scene or rendering with “low-fidelity assets.” I’ve seen Adobe’s AI 3D modeling suite in action going back to 2024. Those objects were not what anybody would consider high-quality. Still, if you’re growing tired of the number of AI-generated 2D images flooding online art repositories, which formerly featured human-created work, we may soon find 3D model sites filling up with even more prompt-created slop.

You could consider Nvidia’s big contribution to this year’s IFA its GB10 Blackwell Superchip—an AI-centric version of its latest GPU microarchitecture fueling new devices like Acer’s Veriton GN100 AI Mini Workstation. It may look like a mini PC, but it’s a computer specifically built to test large language models or other generative AI locally, rather than relying on cloud-based processing. Nvidia has its own similar device, the DGX Sparx, that the company teased back at CES and is currently up for reservation. Acer said its Veriton will be available to North American customers for $4,000 a pop. —Kyle Barr

Acer’s Nitro XZ403CKR is one of those monitors that makes you wonder if 5K will become more mainstream outside of creator circles. It’s a 39.7-inch curved ultrawide IPS LCD display with the notorious 5K2K spec, or 5,120 x 2,160 resolution. The best part is the monitor can still hit 180Hz refresh rates at 5K. At the wide FHD resolution—equivalent to 1080p—you could expect 288Hz. The refresh rate may not be blisteringly fast compared to some gaming displays, but it’s more than enough for most players looking to play their games at 4K at high frame rates. Acer says the XZ403CKR will be available sometime early next year with a starting price of $1,000. —Kyle Barr

Acer’s Predator Helios 18P AI looks like many of the company’s previous big and thick gaming laptops. Let me halt your yawn, because there’s a twist. The device has the kind of specs and security software you expect from a big workstation laptop, but it will still bloom with heavy RGB lights under the keyboard. It’s the real mullet of gaming laptops, a “business in the front, party in the back” situation. —Kyle Barr

I Can’t Tell if Acer’s New ‘Predator’ Laptop Is Better for Gamers or Working Stiffs

Intel hasn’t exactly been quiet talking about its next generation of mobile chips, dubbed Panther Lake. While we’re waiting for more official specs to tell us if this is the start to the beleaguered chipmaker’s redemption arc, Acer mentioned it’s working on an upcoming Swift 16 AI laptop that should have the chip inside. This CPU should provide better gaming performance—something that leaks suggest will be a major selling point for both small and thin laptops and maybe even handhelds. Otherwise, everything is centered on AI, AI, and AI. If you could not begin to care about on-device AI processing, the Swift 16 has an extra-large trackpad with stylus support, kind of like the company’s Triton 14 AI. —Kyle Barr

I’m not sure why tech companies have to show they’re always using tech, even if it’s to move the 15 feet to start presenting its refreshed laptops. Acer CEO Jason Chen took one of the company’s Predator e-scooters to the center of the stage to talk about its sustainability goals. I’m not here to dive into the company’s stated green goals and how the impact of global supply chains on climate change may conflict with that. At least the scooter wasn’t running, because that would have been a waste of electricity.

If you’re awake right now, you can watch along with me here. The actual hardware is still incoming. First up are Chromebooks.  “The most advanced Chromebook” from Acer, the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514, features the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra chip last seen in the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14. That processor is noticeably extra for ChromeOS, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a convertible too, so it’ll act as a tablet with an optional 2.8K OLED display. —Kyle Barr

Edit: For those of you who want a closer look at Acer’s new $699 Chromebook, here it is. Here’s a reminder: you don’t need to stick with ChromeOS. If you’re considering the open-source operating system Linux, the Chromebook Plus Spin could offer solid bang for your buck.

I’m here at Acer’s press conference, and the PC maker is playing the music way too loud at the City Cube Innovation Stage in the Messe Berlin convention center. I have an idea of what to expect, though it may be hard to top last year’s conference. In 2024, the company debuted several cool concept devices, like its deranged Dual Play gaming laptop with a controller built into the trackpad. There were other small-form gaming laptops and interesting devices like hot-swappable desktop PC SSDs. I’d love more crazy gadgets, but I have a feeling this year’s devices will be more humdrum. Just give me a surprise, please. Or better yet, tell me when you’re finally going to launch your Acer Nitro Blaze and Blaze 11 handhelds. —Kyle Barr

Marshall is back with another soundbar, and, as usual, it’s leaning on some appealing mid-century design. The Heston 60 is more compact than its predecessor and maybe not as powerful, but who really cares when you’ve got this smooth ’70s cream color? Read my post below for the full details. —James Pero

Marshall’s Mid-Century-Looking Soundbar Would Make Don Draper Cry Tears of Joy

Summer might be coming to a close, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have time to double-fist a beer and JBL’s new Bluetooth speaker. According to JBL, its new Grip speaker is inspired by a can of seltzer. I personally think of an ice-cold beer (tallboy) when I see it, but that’s just me.

In keeping with the seltzer inspiration, this speaker is IP68 rated, so it won’t get damaged by water easily. They also come in quite a few fun colors (purple is my favorite) and have a programmable light on the back panel. The main thing with the Grip is that it’s portable, so it has a loop attached that you can hook a rope through to carry on your bike or backpack, but I request that you please bike responsibly. For all the details, you can read my post below. —James Pero

JBL’s Grip Is the Tallboy of Portable Bluetooth Speakers

Some 10 years after Dolby Vision first came out to bring HDR to the masses, the audio and visual technology company is advancing things forward with *drum roll* Vision 2. And the crowd goes wild!

Hard to tell (no pun intended) whether or not Dolby Vision 2 actually brings anything noticeable to the naked eye. I mean, how many colors can you actually discern? I dunno about you, but my sight is only getting worse with age, and so too is their ability to see more shades. Who has the “golden eyes” (coining this term as the visual version of “golden ears” for audio) to appreciate Vision 2 to its fullest?

Our Senior Reporter James Pero has the breakdown on what’s new in Vision 2 here:

Wake Up Babe, Dolby Vision 2 Just Dropped After 10 Years—Yes, It’s Powered by AI

It mostly boils down to “Content Intelligence” which is jargon for using AI to adjust picture quality based on what you’re watching and where you’re watching. Yes, really! Then, there’s also Vision 2 Max. Again, yes, really! Go read about… if you’re an HDR enthusiast looking for a reason to buy a new TV with Dolby Vision 2. Or just wait for Vision 2 to come to inevitably come to an iPhone or something. —Raymond Wong

If you’re in the market for a super skinny phone that doesn’t have battery compromises, you probably shouldn’t get Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge or Apple’s iPhone 17 Air, which will be announced at Apple’s “Awe dropping” event next week on Sept. 9. You might want to look into the Tecno POVA Slim, which is reportedly 5.95mm thin and has a 5,160mAh battery, according to tech reviewer Ben Sin.

The Tecno POVA Slim, launching at IFA, measures only 5.95mm but with a 5160 mAh battery. That's crucial because I don't see what's so impressive about a "thin phone" if the battery shrunk down. And yes I will keep this energy in September 9 pic.twitter.com/pOBsYdnX6o

— ben sin (@bencsin) August 28, 2025

Sin shared a few images of the thin phone on X, and as you can see, it appears to have two cameras (one more than the iPhone 17 Air), but also a signature feature that Samsung ditched years ago: curved glass edges. Anything to make the phone look and feel even thinner in the hand, amirite? —Raymond Wong

Smart light brands Philips Hue has a few announcements planned for the next few days. Last month, the lighting fanatics over at HueBlog were keeping track of several upcoming products the company self-leaked on its own website. These include several more products for the Hue Secure line, including a long-rumored smart doorbell. Philips Hue is also reportedly planning all-new Festavia lights that look like a more permanent garland feature with a few spotlights. There are several more smart bulbs coming down the pike as well.

The big news may be a Hue Bridge Pro. This is a device that allows Hue devices to connect with the Matter smart home standard, which allows interoperability between several different brands. Philips Hue does not support Matter natively, as it normally only works over Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Thread. The latter is a low-power Wi-Fi-like connection between devices that lets them communicate. According to HueBlog, Philips Hue isn’t abandoning its love affair with Wi-Fi and Zigbee—a separate communication protocol. However, it may be introducing some kind of radio chip that could support Thread into its latest products without having to rely on the Hue Bridge Pro. We’ll know more in the coming days. Philips Hue is holding a large announcement soiree on Sept. 3. —Kyle Barr

I’ll be in Berlin in just a few days. Already, my thoughts are burned with the memory of the Messe Berlin convention center and its utterly nonsensical layout. If you’ve never had to meander those labyrinthine halls, where one can lose their sanity as fast as they lose their way, then my advice is to travel light. I’m stuffing my Patagonia 55L Black Hole duffel with my usual essentials plus everything I’ll need for quick capture and content creation. I’m still testing the Insta360 Go Ultra, which will be especially useful for POV shots as I eat my hundredth bratwurst (and possibly shoot some wacky gadgets). Alongside a DJI Osmo Mobile 6 and a simple USB-C lavalier mic, I’m packing my ancient Nikon D3400 DSLR. It’s light, foolproof, and does the job. I don’t have to worry much if I damage or lose it.

For moving between nations with different outlet dimensions, I rely on my Anker Nano Travel Adapter. My 14-inch MacBook Pro 14 with M4 will keep me company as I write these blogs, but of course you probably spotted my Nintendo Switch 2. It’s sporting vinyl stickers from Dbrand as well as the company’s KillSwitch case grips. I’m still making use of Dbrand’s travel cover, but I’ve since replaced the main case with Genki’s Attack Vector. That shell includes a MagSafe attachment point that lets me hook up an external battery for when the handheld inevitably dies on the plane. We’ll find out if I’ll have any time to relax to play it or read more of Micaiah Johnson’s Those Beyond the Wall. —Kyle Barr

DJI, the company you likely most associate with drones, has a few new products on its plate that have little to do with UAVs. We expect the China-based company to offer us a look at its new $220 Mic 3. This is a compact wireless microphone setup that’s best described as a cross between the company’s Mic mini and Mic 2. Each of the pack’s two mics weighs in at just 16 grams—half that of the DJI Mic 2—though you can still adjust the transmitter’s orientation. It can now support up to four transmitters and eight receivers at once, in case you want to capture an entire podcast debate that hopefully won’t go viral for all the wrong reasons. In addition, new leaks suggest DJI is planning on producing a new action camera with a magnetic lens pod à la the Insta360 Go 3S.

👉Here is our little Osmo Nano, which is set to compete with Go Ultra.
✅Built-in memory 64 GB / 128 GB
✅OLED touchscreen for one-handed control.
✅Charges from the module to 80% in just 20 minutes.
✅SD card slot
✅Magnetic body for mounting anywhere#osmonano pic.twitter.com/12tvl5ZMDf

— Igor Bogdanov (@Quadro_News) August 28, 2025

We’ll have to wait and see what actually shows up at the DJI IFA booth come Sept. 5. —Kyle Barr

reMarkable’s e-paper tablets have gained something of a cult following. People who use them love them to death. It’s not hard to see why—writing on the slim displays is closer to pen and paper than an iPad and Apple Pencil.

The company has started teasing “something” that’s “on the move.” Speculation is that it’ll be a mini version of the Paper Pro. It better have a color e-paper display or else. —Raymond Wong

Samsung is doing its own virtual Unpacked event on Sept. 4 to announce a new Galaxy Tab. Most likely refreshed versions of the Galaxy Tab S10+ and Tab S10 Ultra. Anybody wanna take bets on the name? I’m going with Galaxy Tab S11+ and Tab S11 Ultra.

Samsung Is Announcing a New iPad Pro Killer at IFA Next Week

As for what to expect from the tablets. Well, they’ll run Android and likely with Samsung’s own One UI 8 interface. More Galaxy AI features are a safe bet. Ditto for Google Gemini integration. AI, AI, AI—you know?

The Tab S10 Ultra had a gargantuan 14.6-inch display. I say go bigger or go home. Give us a 16- or 18-inch tablet that dwarfs even the biggest 12.9-inch M4 iPad Pro. Why the hell not? —Raymond Wong