Phones make an impact, but Pickr doesn’t just cover phones. We cover lots of gear, with all sorts of electronics and gadgets and tech aplenty, and it all gets judged by experience and methodology.
And every year, we have a bit of a celebration with a set of awards we’ve run practically since we started. It’s important to point out the best gear, because it means finding great gear is easy for everyone, which covers part of Pickr’s mission: to help people pick from research.
This year, with scores of gadgets reviewed, we’ve picked what we think is the best tech of 2025, diving into sound, tablets, computing, the home, and more.
Best ANC Headphones: Bose QC Ultra 2nd-gen and Sony WH-1000XM5
Sometimes it’s too difficult to make a choice, and in the case of over-ear headphones, that is definitely the case this year.
We saw a bunch of great headphones, and so we’ve expanded the options because it’s just too difficult to pick one. We ended picking two.
In terms of absolute ANC excellence with fantastic sound, Sony’s WH-1000XM6 are one of the best you can find, delivering extreme comfort and some of the best active noise cancellation around. They’re a top choice, but they also miss out on spatial audio unless you use Sony 360 Reality Audio, which no one does.
But as far as sheer compatibility and feature excellence goes, the Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra Headphones generation two are where you want to be.
They offer some of the best noise cancellation, best sound, best comfort, and spatial audio that works across every platform regardless of whether your music service offers it or not.
Both are winners and easy recommendations.
Best Value Headphones: CMF Headphone Pro
While we always love a good pair of high-priced headphones, the reality is most people can’t really afford them. They exist, and they’re brilliant, but you shouldn’t have to spend an arm or a leg to get something amazing, and the good news is you also don’t.
In the category of value headphones, particularly the over-ear variety, Nothing’s sub-brand CMF really delivered a pair worth singing about in the Headphone Pro.
A little different from the brand’s earphones, the CMF Headphones Pro come with a cute and semi-retro style, lots of controls, and surprisingly solid sound for the price.
For the $199 price point, it’s difficult to complain.
Best Premium Headphones: Sennheiser HDB 630
A bit of a new category for our awards, it’s one that offers a response to the best value, with gear on the opposite end of the spectrum: premium and high-end gear.
There is a lot of that lately, and we were treated with a surprise to end the year on, as 2025’s best premium headphones are easily one of Sennheiser’s best pairs in a long time.
Given the company has delivered excellent headphones almost every year, that’s really saying something. But the HDB 630 are different.
While they come with a rather nonsensical model name and number that probably only makes sense inside Sennheiser’s offices, the focus is on people who love audio and high-resolution sound. They’re both wired and wireless, supporting lossless on either approach, and they even come with noise cancellation and a staggering battery life.
The $999 price may throw some people, but these are easily one of the nicest sounding pairs we’ve experience all year.
Best ANC Earphones: Apple AirPods Pro 3 and Bose QC Ultra 2nd-gen Earbuds
When we look at best audio gear, we can’t simply look at headphones. There’s more than just headphones these days, because earphones are different, too.
Small and compact, noise cancelling earphones allow you to seal yourself in a bubble of sound without needing to carry large headphones. This year, in 2025, those earphones sported some of the best active noise cancellation of any pair, whether they were over-ear on in-ear.
The two stand out models are the Apple AirPods Pro 3 and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2nd-gen, two pairs of noise cancelling earbuds that match each other, but in different ways.
If you listen to a lot of Apple Music and own Apple devices, the AirPods Pro 3 are the winners to consider. The cancellation is among the best, the sound is excellent, and the spatial audio support works incredibly well, provided you’re using specifically Apple gear and services.
Outside of the world of Apple, the Bose QC Ultra Buds 2nd-gen are the next best bet, delivering among the world’s best noise cancellation, excellent sound, and spatial audio on any platform and device.
We’ve put both models against each other and found that Apple’s active noise cancellation just barely beats what Bose is offering, but the differences are really minor. That makes either pair the best you can find, and an easy recommendation for either side.
Best Value Earphones: CMF Buds 2 Plus
CMF has already made an appearance once in this best tech of 2025 list, and it’s about to make another for a similar reason.
Not only does CMF have the best value headphones, but it also has the best value earphones, with the roughly $100 Buds 2 Plus delivering decent sound and active noise cancellation at roughly a quarter of some of the other big brands.
If the earphones weren’t great, we’d kind of get it. And that’s typically the end of that story.
But the CMF Buds 2 Plus are surprisingly good, delivering great sound in a compact form-factor, and worthy of a 2025 Best Pick.
Best Premium Earphones: Technics AZ100
On the other side of the coin, there are premium options for earphones, which like their headphone variety are typically focused on people who like high-res audio.
That isn’t everyone, but there’s clearly a market for it, particularly if people want the best sound they can find.
This year, some of the best sound is from the Technics AZ100, a delightful pair of earphones that could be slightly better on the noise cancellation, but delivers some of the warmest and most accurate sound we’ve heard.
It would be a sin not to give these an award, and so we have.
Best Wearable: Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Google Pixel Watch 4
Like how our value phones offered two phones — one for iOS and one for Android — our wearables split that, as well, and for good reason: each of our winners only works on their respective operating system.
So in 2025, we’re deciding on two wearables for a Pickr Best Pick to deal with both platforms, Apple and Android.
In the world of Apple, you’ll ideally want to look at the Apple Watch Ultra 3, the only current Apple Watch model that can actually hit two days of battery life.
It’s also built extraordinarily well and comes with great features, though given its high $1399 price, expect most people will probably eye the Apple Watch SE3, which is enough Apple Watch for most iPhone owners.
Over on Android, Google wins the best wearable mantle this year with a smartwatch that not only looks good and feels great to wear, but manages to achieve a good two days of battery life and then some.
The Pixel Watch 4 is easily one of the year’s most impressive wearables, but because it’s Android only, it needs to share this title with the Apple Watch Ultra 3.
Best Tablet: Apple iPad Air
There’s a new tablet or for every year, and yet one stood out for the value and capability on offer: the iPad Air.
The chip is fast, the design solid, and the compatibility with iPad Pro accessories makes this year’s M3 iPad Air a device you can upgrade from if you need to, though you probably won’t.
It’s just that little bit more capable than the standard iPad without needing to spend up on the more expensive iPad Pro, and easy to recommend.
Best Computer: Apple MacBook Air M4 and Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i
There’s always a best computer, and this year — like in other years — there are actually two, thanks to the difference in operating systems. Both are some of the best computers we’ve reviewed this year, and are worthy of any buyer.
If you want a Mac, the M4 MacBook Air is a solid bet. The laptop comes with one of the fastest chips and most capable batteries you’ll find from the world of Apple, available in both a 13 and 15 inch variety.
Meanwhile, over in the world of Windows, Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7i is an instant win, providing a capable performance and battery life, as well as a military spec-level of durability, sporting the MIL-STD-810H certification. The AI features are a bit of a miss, as they are with most computers, but just about everything else is a win.
Best Peripheral: Espresso Display 15
You can’t really have a computer without an accessory, and there have been a few this year worth talking about.
One is a clear favourite, making it possible to take a great monitor with you thanks to a clever little magnetic stand.
Hailing from Australia, the Espresso Display 15 is a highly portable 15 inch screen that simply plugs in using USB-C. It works in both landscape and portrait, is easy to use, and while it lacks touch like its Espresso Pro sibling, the sub-$500 price makes it a better value altogether.
Best Kids Tech: Yoto Mini Player
A gadget for kids technically from last year that we reviewed a little later than expected, we’re picking the Yoto Mini Player as our 2025 pick because of how relevant and important the technology still is today.
With kids and teens no longer technically allowed to visit social, the idea of going “screen free” could be more important to parents than ever, and Yoto’s screen-free concept makes even more sense in a pint-sized way.
The original Yoto wowed us with its design and almost tape-based approach to cards. The Yoto Mini is perhaps more useful for kids today, because it retains the same clever approach, but brings in portability, making the idea compact and easy to take with you.
Best Home Tech: Narwal Flow and Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch
Pickr has long been covering home appliances, but the focus has often been in gear in the kitchen and laundry.
This year, it seems as though cleaning appliances are the big deal, going beyond the regular small appliances you might use for food and laundry, and turning to saving you from the adulthood’s seemingly non-stop chores.
And crazily, we have two cleaning gadgets that qualify for the Best Home Tech in 2025.
On the manual labour side of things, there’s the Tineco Floor One S7 Stretch, an impressive floor cleaner designed to help you vacuum and steam mop that almost feels like it drives itself.
The tech is easy to use, well designed, and so simply, even your kids could use it.
Meanwhile, if you don’t actually want members of your family doing anything, a robotic vacuum could be the way to go, especially if it’s also a robotic vacuum and mop.
Relative newcomer to the Australian market, Narwal’s Flow is one of the more impressive options released in 2025, offering a decent robotic vacuum with AI smarts, and a mopping system that just works until the floor is properly clean.
No half attempts and simple runs over the floor, the Flow is one of the more interesting robotic vacuums we’ve seen, delivering cleanliness by making sure your floor is spotless.
Best Accessory: Journey Aria
At home, when it comes to keeping your gear charged, there’s a good chance you’re turning to one of the assortment of wireless charging stations you can put next to your bedside or even on your desk.
Lots of companies make them, and they are by and large the same thing in a slightly different design.
The Journey Aria is not that same device.
Sure, it’s a fold-up Qi2 phone charger with support for Apple Watch and AirPods, or even just about any other pair of wireless earphones with wireless charging.
But then it also has a built-in light you can trigger simply by tapping. Turn it on, and you get a nice small warm light under the Apple Watch charging puck, which is a nice way to come to bed when the lights are off, or even just a handy thing to have in a dark room.
It is a feature we’ve seen on literally no other charger, and just that little bit more useful than simply having the same wireless charger that everyone else has. It’s part of what makes the Journey Aria so special.
Best Surprise: Canva Affinity
If you had asked which story would end up being a staggering surprise this reviewer would fall for this year, he’d never have guessed Australia’s Canva releasing a free competitor to Adobe.
The story is this: Canva bought Serif and its Affinity alternatives of buy-once photo-editing, vector and illustration, and publishing software, and then released a new version for free. No more buy once; just free.
You can add a Canva paid subscription if you want for extra features, but the point is that you don’t have to. Canva’s editions of Affinity are free, meaning you can get free versions of a fantastic photo editing app, illustration app, and publishing application that easily rival that of Adobe’s.
It’s the best kind of surprise: the type that won’t cost you a thing. We all needed that this year.
Best Music Service: Apple Music
There are quite a few music services, but only a few really stand out, largely due to their size. Spotify is one of the biggest, followed by Apple Music, and then YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tidal, and so on.
Most offer something similar: a veritable never-ending smorgasbord of all-you-can-hear music. And they’re all great at that.
But one is clearly evolving and getting better, seemingly every few months: Apple Music.
Several years in, its feature set includes lossless audio, spatial audio, exclusive recordings, a karaoke mode on Apple TV, plenty of live DJ recordings, free radio channels, and even a dedicated classical music app.
Frankly, it’s difficult to get better than Apple Music, and it’s this year music service of the year.
Best Games Service: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
Gamers keen to get their all-you-can-play on don’t quite have the selection of services that music and movies do, and so it’s difficult to see this one shifting just yet.
While the price has risen for another year, Xbox Game Pass still offers the best bang for your buck for gaming services, letting you play not just a bunch of games on an Xbox, but letting you do it without an Xbox, as well.
Play on your TV or your phone, and simply bring a controller. It’s what we do.
Best Movie Service: Apple TV
There’s been a bit of a change in guard in this category over the past year, and the cost of living could be a reason why.
Netflix has risen prices. Disney+ has risen prices. Amazon has risen prices and added ads. Paramount’s basic option has so many ads, it’s difficult to know where the ad stops and the TV programming begins, basically forcing your hand into going for an ad-free option (making its Black Friday sale one of the better deals when it happened).
But Apple TV hasn’t changed much despite the cost of living increases, and has even grown in catalogue. The programming on Apple TV is solid, providing original shows for kids and adults, and there’s even a theatrical movie with Brad Pitt sitting around there, too.
This year even saw the release of Apple TV+ on Android, which means we can finish watching Severance while we’re reviewing Android phones.
Best AI Service: Cursor
This will probably be a bit of a contentious issue, particularly when AI has so many problems, not least of which include blatant copyright infringement, environmental destruction through rampant energy use, plus others in the public view, but we’re giving the Best AI Service award to Cursor this year.
One of the many growing programming AI services, which can also include the big players, Cursor is both an app and a service, providing an agentic system to help people make things in programming languages.
Trained on libraries of code and programming, Cursor doesn’t feel like it rips off the work of others because it’s building stuff with knowledge. The app and service can be used to explore how AI works, watching its reasoning work, and prompts to Cursor can result in actual apps and websites being made.
AI coding using Cursor still shouldn’t replace a human developer, but rather assist them, potentially allowing them to prototype ideas with ease.
It’s not perfect, and it can take a lot of tries before you guide the software the right way, but it’s a genuinely interesting piece of software and AI service, and one that’s also quite flexible, allowing you to choose the coding model you want to use.
