Okay, so it's been a good, weird year for tech. We saw a lot of phones. We saw the foldable, flippable, thin, and then thinner. Smart headsets and glasses from every company competing for your eyes. All kinds of cameras, AI in literally everything. Cargo, ebikes, humanoid robots, vacuums with arms, and this fuzzy thing, and a whole lot of other oddball gadgets. So, we asked some of the folks here at The Verge to pick out what stood out the most to them this year.
I have two smart home picks this year. I have one hardware and one software. My hardware pick is the Matic robot vacuum. I first met this little guy in 2024 and finally got to test it out in my house this year, and it is a complete rethink of the robot vacuum. Developed by two Google Nest engineers, it was designed specifically to address many of the common frustrations of the robot vacuum. It rarely gets stuck. It moves more like a human around your house and less like a robot. And it just gets the job done.
One of the things I really like about it is the design. It fits much better into the home environment because it doesn't come with a giant dock. It also is much quieter in operation and it doesn't rely on the cloud at all for operation. You can even use it without Wi-Fi. It's actually the first robot vacuum I've tested that I didn't at some point want to throw down the stairs in frustration. It's also representative of a lot of trends I would actually like to see more of in home robotics, which include good design, thoughtful implementation, and just a friendlier feel that fits better in the home.
I also want to shout out Alexa Plus as my software pick for the year. While Amazon's generative AI revamp of its voice assistant has had something of a bumpy start, it shows tremendous potential. Alexa Plus has already taken the smart home from its command and control phase towards something much more powerful.
>> Exactly. We've moved way beyond just barking orders at your devices. Now [laughter] it's about anticipating what you need before.
>> It's also a little verbose.
>> Hey, turn on the living room.
>> Alexa, enough. Thank you for interrupting me. [laughter] But it does.
>> I'll step back and let you take the lead.
It shows tremendous potential, and Google's Gemini and Apple's Siri have got a lot of catching up to do if they're going to beat out Alexa in this space.
So, my standout of 2025 has to be the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. It is so thin and so light, and you can almost forget that you're using a folding phone. It's the first foldable where I'm like, I get this. I don't feel like I'm carrying around this heavy, chunky thing just to have the inner screen sometimes when I want it, and I don't feel like I'm making this big sacrifice. It's beautiful and lovely and $2,000. So, that's a consideration.
I mean, it still has the drawbacks of a foldable, that the cameras are not as great as you would get from a mainstream phone. There's sort of like two paths right now with folding phones. There's the path that Google went down, which is more durability but a slightly bigger phone, and then there's this path, which is thin and light, but it's not dust resistant the way that the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is. So you kind of have to consider that it's not maybe as practical. I wouldn't recommend it to everybody, but it is so special. It is a really amazing phone to use, and I think it's the future.
>> It's beautiful. It's covered in my finger grease.
>> So, my pick is the TMB from Also, which is the micromobility division of Rivian. I've been covering ebikes for many years now, and I can confidently say that this is the craziest, most unique ebike that I have ever seen. Uh, in fact, why don't I just show you?
So, here it is. TMBB transcendent mobility. Uh, there's a lot of really interesting ideas in this bike. They really crammed a lot into this. You've got a pedal-by-wire system, which means that there's no like mechanical connection between the pedals and the motor. It's just software that's guiding the bike. You've got a swappable top post here, um, which means you can basically just take the whole seat off and change a different seat in if you'd like.
Like that. You've got a removable battery that also serves as a portable power bank. Uh, this is USB-C chargeable. The price is a little steep, with the launch version selling for $4,500, but Also says a cheaper base model will come out in late 2026, which will sell for about $3,500.
That's still pretty expensive, especially in the US market where, you know, US shoppers usually spend around like $1,000 to $2,000 on ebikes. So, this seems like it's kind of geared towards the premium market, and that's not really a very safe place to be for Rivian right now. There's a lot of bikes that have gone out of business, and it's just it's a little chaotic for them. So, I'm a little bit worried about the bike's chances of survival because of the price, but we'll see what happens.
So, my pick for favorite of 2025, and I'm going to caveat this because favorite doesn't mean good, but my favorite has been AI wearables. Everything I'm wearing has AI in it. The Apple Watch has a new thing called Workout Buddy. This has Meta AI in it. This has Gemini in it and the Fitbit AI coach. And this is Friend, an AI wearable, which is a kind of a new cursed category that emerged this year. AI wearables.
I found the AI in these glasses really helpful when I went to vacation in Italy. I could just say, "Hey, Meta," very quietly in a museum, cuz it's a museum. What is this painting I'm looking at? And I could get a short description. And you know, it also just activated right now and is describing this room to me. So it's not always useful, but there are use cases in which you go like, oh.
>> appears to be a room with various equipment and people.
>> Did you hear that?
>> Filming or photography setup.
>> Can you hear that? Yeah. Yeah. So thank stop. Stop. Just stop.
I picked AI wearables as kind of an outstanding category. Not because it's good, but because it's notable. These companies are very convinced that AI and wearables go hand in hand. Because wearables are on your body all the time. You can put your phone away, but the idea is that you never put these away. It's kind of dystopian if you think about it too much, but I've honestly had a lot of fun testing this cursed, cursed tech over the last year. Should just change my title to senior cursed tech reviewer.
My standout pick for this year isn't just one laptop or one computer. It's actually Framework Computers. The company, uh, they really knocked most of the releases out of the park this year. Mostly the Framework Laptop 13 that got its, uh, AMD Ryzen AI 300 series upgrade, and this little guy just keeps getting better, even for original owners that want to upgrade their existing one.
The Laptop 12. Not far from perfect, a little pricey compared to, you know, others running a slightly dated Intel CPU, but a very endearing two-in-one design. Love the colors and, you know, you just don't get a kind of kid-friendly almost two-in-one like this. Uh, especially again, one you can change the ports on, one you can upgrade yourself down the road and repair so easily.
And then there's the desktop, which actually doesn't have as much upgradability as like a standard desktop, but this thing is tiny and powerful for something you can just slap on your desk. And I mean, look at this little handle. This is adorable. I want to take this to LAN parties cuz, you know, we all wish LAN parties were still a thing.
The Laptop 16 I have a little more mixed feelings about as a whole, but Framework finally did it. They finally released the new GPU module for this. So, you can just slap an Nvidia RTX 570 in here, even from an original one from 2023. And that's huge. All of this is huge. There's just no other company doing this kind of thing. Most other laptops, everything's being soldered in and you get less access to what's inside it.
With the Frameworks, you can open them up, you can tinker, you have to kind of hope for an upgrade down the road, but if they release a new upgrade, you can upgrade to it. I don't want to sound too fanboyish, but this kind of speaks to a lot of us that are nerdy about computers. If you ever opened up a computer and worked on it or built one yourself, you probably wish or maybe thought it'd be nice to do that with a laptop. Now you can, at least with these, and I'd like to see it continue and to see where it goes next.
Okay, so I have two standout picks. The first one is kind of obvious. We're going to have to talk about the Switch 2. It was the biggest device of the year. It had the biggest launch. It is selling like hotcakes. It has all these nice quality-of-life updates where Nintendo is finally playing catch-up with the other two console makers, kind of giving us the things that we have come to expect with our console gaming experience that Nintendo has kind of lagged behind.
So now you've got your game chat where you don't have to go through a bespoke app on your phone to talk with people while you're playing your games. You've got a little camera device that you can use that you can see pictures of your friends while you play Mario Kart, or it will put you in the game if you're playing the Mario Party DLC. So Nintendo is not necessarily breaking the mold here; they're kind of playing catch-up, but with playing catch-up for Nintendo, it just feels like such a great, you know, mobile playing experience that's just really fun to have.
So, my second pick of the year is actually the PlayStation Portal. I have been so completely spoiled by my Steam Deck and my Switch 2 that I want to be able to play all of my games, no matter what console they're locked to, on the go, like very cozy, like from my bed. And the PlayStation Portal is that like first facilitation of this. Uh, we're still waiting on Xbox with the Xbox Raga LAX. For now, we've got this, and I just love this so much.
And especially now with the recent update that allows for cloud streaming. So, you're no longer tied to your console where you would have to stream through the console to get to the PlayStation Portal to play your games. Which means, I know this is a very unique use case, but it means, you know, me and my husband are both playing Final Fantasy Tactics and now we don't have to fight for console time. Like, he can play in the living room on the console and I can just stream my game from somewhere else and we can both play and we're both very happy. So, the PlayStation Portal, especially now with cloud streaming, is my device of the year.
So, my standout pick for this year is not necessarily my favorite or something that I love using or even something that I'm that happy exists. It's more something that's a huge game changer in my opinion for the AI industry and for society as a whole. The thing that stood out to me the most this year was Sora 2. I've never seen such good video generation AI before, and I've been on the beat for six years. So, you know, I've seen it all from Will Smith eating pasta really badly to now Sam Alman in a cat suit or talking to his employees but not actually doing it, and you can't tell the difference.
We now no longer have, you know, six-fingered hands that we can look at to tell when something's AI generated. Even though the company said it took pains to make it so that, you know, disinformation couldn't spread and, you know, these videos would always be watermarked and you would know what was AI generated and what wasn't. We saw people immediately learn to remove the watermarks and, you know, code their own tools for doing so. So the videos are making their way off the platform and just circulating online. It kind of reframes what we can trust is real and what isn't, for better or worse. And it had a big impact on the way we act online, what we see online, and what people create online. And I don't think things will be the same after this.
And my pick of the year is the Insta360 X5. I love 360 cameras, and I really like to use them wrong. Sure, they can get some cool shots of action and all, but I really like just putting one in a random spot to see what kind of goofy results I can get. I like how distorted and warped faces can get, and it really feels like I'm having fun with a camera when I'm using it. Like, look how stupid I look right now. This is awesome.
I'm not blown away by the image quality or anything, but it's a big step up from the 360 cameras that came before it, and I've started actually bringing it on shoots with me a lot more often than I ever would. I'm not saying that anybody needs this thing, but it's been a lot of fun to mess with. It makes me excited to see where 360 cameras are going next, especially with all the competition from Osmo and GoPro making their own with super comparable specs.
The X5 narrowly beat out the other two cameras for me, mainly because I can tolerate its editing workflow the most. Editing 360 footage is still terrible. It's like you're fighting footage the whole time you're actually editing. But it has gotten a little easier. So, Instax 5, it's fun.
And there you have it, folks. Those are our staff picks for 2025. Some innovation, tech trends, and products designed to curse Vong's life. Let us know if we missed the most obvious thing. And thanks for watching The Verge this year. We'll see you at CES.
