Best of IFA 2025 awards – our 15 favorite tech reveals at the show, from next-gen TVs to stair-climbing robo-vacs
The top gadgets at the big tech expo, chosen by TechRadar's team on the ground

The TechRadar team is on the ground at IFA 2025, the huge tech show in Berlin, and we've spent the last few days scouring the event's myriad halls and booths in search of great tech we haven't seen before.
IFA always brings us a great range of stuff, from small smart home upgrades through to electric mobility, up to the world's largest TVs.
We've asked our writers to choose their favorite tech they saw at the show, and awarded those products our Best of IFA 2025 accolades.
We saw tons more cool stuff that we just didn't have enough trophies for, but these are the products that really jumped out us – either because they do something totally new, because we were really impressed with their performance, or because they bring great tech at a lower price… or in some cases all of the above.
IFA 2025 Best Phone: Honor Magic V5
Honor's latest folding phone is another seriously impressive device, and despite being stunningly thin packs in a larger battery capacity than either Samsung or Google's folding phones. It also includes super-fast charging at up to 66W – more than double what its rivals offer.
Of course, it's got a big and beautiful 7.95-inch internal display, as well as a useful 6.43-inch external display. It comes with 512GB as standard, which we also love – combined with its impressive camera system and that screen, it's great for creators.
Other folding phones might have caught up with the thinness of Honor's folders, but when it comes to how much can be squeezed into that space – and at a lower price than the competition – the Magic V5 still has the edge.
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IFA 2025 Best TV: Samsung Micro RGB
This is the first time that a final version of Samsung's Micro RGB tech has been shown to the public – we got a preview of it at CES earlier this year, and have seen developments behind closed doors since, but at IFA you can head to Samsung's booth and see the 115-inch beast that you could actually buy for real.
RGB-backlit TVs are the next big thing, providing a wider color range than current TV tech, and even more brightness, while being more power efficient. Samsung's TVs have always been able to wow with color anyway, and this new TV looks absolutely stunning, while also showing off fantastic contrast that could trick you into thinking it's an OLED – but with brightness that even the most elite OLEDs can't match.
It's a seriously impressive panel, and we got to put it through its paces with real-world viewing during the show – and it's definitely the start of something big.
Read more: I saw Samsung's $30,000, 115-inch micro-RGB TV, and its vivid picture outshines mini-LED TVs
IFA 2025 Best Projector: Xgimi Horizon 20 Max
The Xgimi Horizon 20 Max is Xgimi's most advanced home projector to date, supporting 4K resolution, Dolby Vision HDR, Filmmaker Mode and IMAX Enhanced. It also boasts an ultra-low 1ms input lag time, variable refresh rate, and 240Hz maximum refresh rate. But most impressive is its claimed 5,700 ISO lumens of brightness.
I've seen the Horizon 20 Max in person, and it's an impressive machine. Its super bright, and its detailed image is perfect for movie viewing and, as we experienced, gaming. A demo of Assassin's Creed: Shadows shows just how responsive the Horizon 20 Max is, feeling smooth and snappy.
It also has a useful lens-shift tool for easy picture adjustment without having to move the projector, which is itself portable. Optical zoom also makes for easy image adjustment without detail loss. At $2,999.99, it's at the premium end of the portable projector market, but from what we've seen so far we're excited to try out both it and its step-down siblings – the Horizon 20 and Horizon 20 Pro – in a full review.
IFA 2025 Best AV Innovation: Soundcore Nebula X1 Pro
This, we're assured, is the world's first combination of a projector with Dolby Vision HDR image quality, plus a Dolby Atmos sound system, all in one unit. To be clear, it doesn't just support Dolby Atmos – it has an elaborate system of speakers to play surround sound directly.
The speaker units fold out from the sides to provide physical width, and there are removable speakers that can go behind you for genuine surround sound, with drivers pointing in basically every direction for Atmos' 3D sound. Two eight-inch woofers provide the bass.
And note that this is a high-quality projector too, with wheels and a handle so you can move it anywhere. We saw it in action, and it's seriously impressive – a true portable cinema.
IFA 2025 Best earbuds: Earfun Air Pro 4+
IFA is absolutely overrun with affordable earbuds, but when we tried these out in the middle of a busy show floor they immediately shot to the top of our list of candidates for these awards. They're a juiced-up version of Earfun's existing Air Pro 4 buds, adding a dual-driver sound system and other advanced features, and these additions make a big difference.
The sound is powerful and incredibly deep, delivering big bass that's really well-controlled, but nicely balanced mids and treble – and with astonishingly good active noise cancellation for the price. We tested them in the middle of a bustling and really loud show floor, and pretty much everything was cut out – there are high-end earbuds that don't have ANC this good.
And all for $99? We've recommended the Nothing Ear (a) as our top earbuds for this kind of price since their launch, but one of the TechRadar team who owns a pair of the Nothing buds said the brand should be worried…
IFA 2025 Best turntable: Technics SL-40CBT
Technics' turntable line, and the direct-drive motor you find inside, has been revered for decades – but now there's a more affordable version coming, still with the same motor system, and we're really excited for it.
The Technics SL-40CBT still isn't cheap at $899, but we've no doubt it's going to be high-quality. And there's Bluetooth on board, as well as a switchable phono stage, so it's designed to be flexible – you can choose to go wireless, go straight into active speakers, go with your own pre-amp in a hi-fi system…
It's also got a really cool minimalist design, with a matte finish that almost feels like concrete (but isn't). It comes in gray, black and terracotta colors, all of which look great.
Read more: Technics introduces a terracotta turntable with a Bluetooth boost, and it's absolutely beautiful
IFA 2025 Best Headphones: JLab JBuds Open
You've heard of open-back headphones, sure, but they're not usually open to this degree. Similarly to how open earbuds are becoming hugely popular, enabling people to listen to music without being cut of from what's happening around them, these open headphones mean you can listen to music and still be aware – and the design means they're cooler and lighter than other over-ear headphones.
They're different to hi-fi-style open-back headphones – the speaker system itself is more like a closed-back system, and has a dual-driver setup for a surprisingly punchy and detailed level of sound reproduction. It's just that these speakers aren't then enclosed in a sealed ear cup.
The speaker housing uses waveguides to focus the sound towards your ear canal, so they also leak far less noise than out than you'd think. Listening to them on a noisy show floor, we were really impressed by how good the music sounded, and how well you could hear it while still having enough of other sounds coming in to feel like you're still connected to the world. We also like that you can have an acoustically-transparent grille on them, or have them fully open, depending on your aesthetic preference.
IFA 2025 Best Laptop: Acer Swift 16 Air
This laptop slightly breaks the brain of anyone who picks it up, based on our experience. It's a 16-inch laptop, so it's not a small thing – but it weighs less than 1kg / 2.2lbs, and it feels like it must be a dummy unit with no battery or something (it wasn't, we checked).
If you pick it up when it's closed, and then open the lid, you're genuinely surprised to see an actual functioning screen come to life, because it just doesn't feel like it could have a whole laptop's guts in there.
It does, though – as well as a 16-inch screen (which is IPS LCD on the model we saw, but can be OLED, if you don't mind tipping the weight over to 1.1kg), you get an AMD Ryzen processor package, and you can fill it with up to 32GB of memory and up to 1TB of storage. A third lighter than a 13-inch MacBook Air, but with a bigger screen? This could be the ultimate mobile work machine.
Read more: Here are the 3 best things Acer showcased at IFA 2025 – including a gaming laptop-inspired e-bike
IFA 2025 Best Gaming Tech: Acer Nitro XZ403CKR
At Acer's IFA presentation hall the gaming accessory that we couldn’t take my eyes off wasn't the 3D monitor which can function without glasses, or the gaming laptop inspired Predator e-bike, it was the Acer Nitro XZ403CKR monitor.
This widescreen curved monitor measures 39.7-inches, and boasts a 5K (5120x2160) resolution with a 180Hz refresh rate and a 1ms VRB and 0.5ms GTG response time. Drop to WFHD resolution (2560 x 1080) and you can bump that refresh rate up to 288Hz. The dramatic 1000R curve also really envelops you.
What we most appreciated was the sensible excess offered by this screen. You get specs that won't feel like a limiting factor to your performance – even for higher end rigs – plus a wide screen to facilitate a larger FOV or multitasking without being so large that the display is more of an inconvenience than a benefit.
IFA 2025 Best Smartwatch: Amazfit T-Rex Pro 3
Amazfit is worth keeping an eye on right now. The Amazfit Active 2, which launched earlier this year, earned a coveted five stars in our review, and thanks to its official Hyrox partnership and its watches’ outstanding price-to-quality ratio, Amazfit is having a moment in the fitness community.
Now it’s taken gyms by storm, Amazfit is having another crack at Garmin by introducing the Amazfit T-Rex 3 Pro, just days after Garmin released its own Fenix 8 Pro. Of course, the Amazfit T-Rex 3 Pro is price at $399 (around £295 / AU$600) rather than Garmin’s super-premium offering, which starts at a four-figure £1,029.99 in the UK (around $1,400 / AU$2,110).
While it might not pack all of the hardware features serious Garmin loyalists might be used to, at this price, it’ll easily woo weekend warriors with tighter wallets based on specs. Up to 25 days of battery life, 10ATM water resistance, a scuba-diving mode, full-color maps and an LED flashlight. Very impressive, and a standout smartwatch on this year’s show floor.
IFA 2025 Best smart ring: Luna 2.0
Promising to ‘decode the mind and body’ with its sophisticated algorithms, the Luna Ring 2.0 by Noise has arrived at IFA to challenge Samsung and Oura’s dominance in the emerging smart ring space.
We thought the first-generation Luna Ring felt a little like a work in progress, but the core sleep and recovery tracking were strong. Luna Ring 2.0 is bringing a whole host of new stuff and little refinements, not the least of which is a clamshell case option for on-the-go charging.
We’re particularly intrigued by the promise of circadian rhythm tracking, analyzing your metrics to provide optimal bedtime information similar to Whoop bands, and the prospect of an ‘open source plug’ app, meaning more features are on the way in the future. Otherwise, automatic walk and run detection, fertility tracking, stress tracking and more. Best of all, there’s no subscription attached, unlike Oura: it’s a one-time payment, and one cheaper than either the Samsung Galaxy Ring or Oura Ring 4. Tempting!
IFA 2025 Best Drone: Antigravity A1
The combination of this 360-degree drone with its matching goggles and motion controller is a true game changer. When you fly the Antigravity A1 in first-person mode you can see in every direction around the drone, with no view of the body or propellers; you're just there, flying.
Smartest of all is that controlling flight, the pilot's view, and the camera angle are all disconnected from each other. You can steer left while looking right and recording straight downwards – it gives you incredible freedom for making amazing immersive videos, or just getting lost in the view.
And because all this tech still fits under the 250g limit for personal drones, anyone can enjoy this. It's a fantastic leap forward for drones, and we hope it will really… take off.
IFA 2025 Best Smart Home Tech: Reolink TrackFlex Floodlight WiFi Camera
Most outdoor security cams are great for monitoring a fairly narrow area, but you need several of them if you want to watch out for potential intruders from several angles. Reolink’s new camera gets around that problem with two lenses set into a chassis that pans and tilts to follow motion, meaning it won’t miss a thing – especially because it has two floodlights built-in too.
The TrackFlex can also identify different subjects, including people and animals, so you’ll only receive alerts on your phone when there’s something worth seeing, and the camera won’t be triggered to start recording unnecessarily. Want to see something specific? You can use AI-powered search to see a particular event (‘man in red jacket’ for example) to avoid scrubbing through reams of footage.
There’s no need to pay a monthly subscription fee either, because your clips are stored locally on an SD card. It’s a very impressive offering, and we're looking forward to testing it fully soon.
IFA 2025 Best Smart Outdoor Tech: Roborock RockMow Z1
Roborock is one of the leading players in the robot vacuum market, and its first foray into robot mowers looks equally impressive. The RockMow Z1, which sits at the top of a three-bot range, packs some innovative tech.
This all-wheel drive lawnbot is designed to tackle especially tricky terrain. There's an Active Steering System that delivers ultra-smooth turns and gentle, slip-free maneuvering – protecting your lawn from getting churned up, even when the grass is wet.
The other standout feature is the 'PreciEdge' blade – an extra, smaller cutting deck that sits on the edge of the bot and can trim the edges of lawns to within 1.2 inches / 3cm of walls, meaning you won't need to tackle that bit manually. A truly impressive debut in the robot mower space.
Read more: I've just seen Roborock's first robot mowers in action, and other lawnbot brands should be worried
IFA 2025 Best Smart Home Innovation: Eufy MarsWalker
One of the major drawbacks of robot vacuums is that they can't move independently between floors of your home, but the Eufy MarsWalker might be about to change all that. This stair-climbing module can carry Eufy's latest robot vacuum up and down automatically, so it's able to clean your entire home without you needing to intervene.
The robot vacuum docks itself in a pocket on the climbing module, then four legs maneuver the whole thing onto the first step, and hold it steady as tracks on the underside propel it up (or down) the flight of stairs.
While this isn't the only stair-climbing bot at IFA (Dreame has a similar concept bot), on demo the MarsWalker impressed with its fully-realized design and smooth, confident ascents and descents. This could truly shake up the robot vacuum market.
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Matt is TechRadar's Managing Editor for Entertainment, meaning he's in charge of persuading our team of writers and reviewers to watch the latest TV shows and movies on gorgeous TVs and listen to fantastic speakers and headphones. It's a tough task, as you can imagine. Matt has over a decade of experience in tech publishing, and previously ran the TV & audio coverage for our colleagues at T3.com, and before that he edited T3 magazine. During his career, he's also contributed to places as varied as Creative Bloq, PC Gamer, PetsRadar, MacLife, and Edge. TV and movie nerdism is his speciality, and he goes to the cinema three times a week. He's always happy to explain the virtues of Dolby Vision over a drink, but he might need to use props, like he's explaining the offside rule.
- Ruth HamiltonHomes Editor
- Hamish HectorSenior Staff Writer, News
- James DavidsonTV Hardware Staff Writer, Home Entertainment
- Cat EllisHomes Editor
- Matt EvansSenior Fitness & Wearables Editor
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