Years ago, most of the big tech companies used shows like IFA, which cheerily stands for Innovation for All, to unveil their biggest products. These days? Not as much.
But all that really means is we get to give the spotlight to more quirky and interesting bits and bobs rather than the latest flagship Samsung phone.
Want that more conventional stuff? Sure enough, Samsung did announce the Galaxy S25 FE and some tablets at IFA 2025, which get a brief mention below. But today the focus is on the tech that really caught our eye, rather than the usual “like last year’s, but better” annual upgrades.
We have a handheld note-taker, a robot mower, an AI tennis player and, just to get you all hungry, a pizza oven we want more than just about anything else right now.
Remarkable Paper Pro Move
What is it? A phone-size E Ink note-taker
Remarkable is known for its large note-taking E Ink tablets, with screens like those of a classic Amazon Kindle ereader. The Remarkable Paper Pro Move spices things up by scaling things down. It has a 7.3-inch screen, intended for breezy one-hand holding. And that should appeal if you want to be able to read stuff comfortably while, say, on a packed train. We’ve met and used diddy E Ink devices before, like the Boox Palma 2, but this one has a colour display as well. It weighs a phone-like 232g, and is thinner than almost all smartphones at 6.5mm thick. You can expect a similar, simple and friendly interface as you get in the full-size Remarkable tabs too. A Remarkable Paper Pro Move will cost you £399.
Anker Nebula X1 Pro
What is it? A one-box projector portable cinema
Years ago, Anker’s Nebula series renewed our faith in portable projectors, showing they didn’t have to be utter rubbish. Now the brand is back to solve the one remaining issue. Portable projectors’ speakers usually sound dreadful. The Anker Nebula X1 Pro effectively crams the already-great Nebula X1 projector into a wheel-around tower of power that houses an entire surround sound system. There’s an 80W soundbar, a pair of 40W wireless satellites and a subwoofer. There is a wee bit of setup, then, and the whole thing weighs upwards of 30kg. But it is basically a full outdoor cinema — as long as the Wi-FI will stretch far enough to get you streaming. The projector itself has 3500 ANSI lumen brightness and handy higher-end features like 4K laser projection and an optical zoom lens. How much? TBC but early reports suggest $5000, although it's selling (for pre-order) for a lot less on Anker's Kickstarter page at the time of writing.
SwitchBot Kata Friends
What is it? An AI-powered children’s toy
Putting LLM-style chatbot tech into a kids’ toy? What could possibly go wrong? They can move too, paving the way for a full Chucky-meets-Gremlins outcome. However, these Kata Friends toys are pretty cute, you have to admit. They can move around on motorised wheels that sit under their feet. And while there are only two actual styles here, Kata and Noa, SwitchBot’s pics show how you can give them an unnervingly distinct personality. In the underlying tech, they could be more creepy, though, thankfully. They have an on-board LLM (large language model) which provides their chatbot-style conversational powers, rather than a potentially more contentious cloud-based one. And they use a cloud-based model for their visual AI — because they’re designed to be able to recognise people. Oh, and emulate a range of human emotions. If they’ll be fully released and how much the Kata Friends will cost is to be confirmed. But we’re as intrigued as we are alarmed.
Ooni Volt 2
What is it? An indoor pizza oven
If you, like us, spent far too much time during covid lockdowns watching Vito Iacopelli’s YouTube channel to learn how to make the best pizza dough, this one is for you. The Ooni Volt 2 is a pizza oven hot enough to cook classic Neapolitan pizzas in 90 seconds — that’s 450 degrees centigrade – but also made to fit in your kitchen without causing a fire or carbon monoxide poisoning. As the name suggests, this isn’t the first in the series. The original Volt came out in 2023, but this new version is 30% smaller and is charged with not just AI but PI. That stands for Pizza Intelligence. Yep, they went there. It’s perhaps a little less exciting than it sounds as it just involves three modes designed to perfect cooking temperatures for Neapolitan, Pan and Thin & Crispy styles of pizza. But we want one, bad. Out October 1st for £499.
Samsung Sound Tower ST50F
What is it? A massive Bluetooth party speaker
Samsung announced a clutch of gadgets at IFA, including a Galaxy S25 FE phone and a whole family of Galaxy Tab S11 tablets. They are the kind of things absolutely loads of folks will end up buying. But are they all that interesting? Nah. Bit lighter, bit faster. And there’s a cheaper Tab S11 too. What caught our eye, though, was the Samsung Sound Tower ST50F. This is a borderline obnoxious party speaker that, while not part of a brand new range, levels-up the loud decoration with a massive “racetrack” LED ring around its front alongside a whole arsenal of other lights across the bodywork that animate in a host of animated programmes. You can roll it around like an airplane case, with a telescopic handle. And despite 240W peak output and chunky 6.5-inch woofers, the battery lasts up to 18 hours. Not at party volumes, of course.
Hue Doorbell
What is it? A video doorbell
You probably know Philips Hue for its smart light bulbs. Perhaps there’s one shining in your home right now. The first Hue smart doorbell has just been announced too. While that may sound surprising, it’s less so when you realise the name Hue has actually been stamped on home security cameras since 2023. This is just the latest piece of the puzzle but it’s an important one. You can pair it with your Hue lights so one (or more) turns on when someone comes to the door, the camera has a relatively high-resolution 2K sensor with super-wide fisheye lens. And you can see 24 hours’ worth of motion-sensed clips without paying for a subscription. Out in October.
Acemate Tennis Robot
What is it? A tennis-playing robot
Acemate has actually been banging on about its tennis robot since May, but it got a proper global show-off at IFA 2025. It’s yet another way to turbo-charge the loneliness crisis and replace good old flesh mounds with AI-powered robots. Or, if we must be less cynical, it could be a good way to train when no partner is available. The Tennis Robot uses a duo of high-resolution cameras to trace the tennis ball’s trajectory, to catch it in a ropey mitt before slinging it back over the net to you. Sure, it’s not going to challenge the pros, moving around on tiny little wheels, but Acemate describes it as for “beginners” or warm-up sessions. That said, with speeds of up to 5m/s and a "serve" of up to 80mph, it could probably outdo us on the court. Currently selling at $1599 online, it's actually cheaper than we'd guess.
Sony's RGB LED TV
What is it? The next frontier of TV (maybe)
Think OLED is the endgame of TV tech? Sony wants a word. It showed off its upcoming RGB LED TV behind closed doors at IFA. The concept is we’ll get the usual benefits of an OLED TV, like zero-bloom perfect contrast, and possibly even better colour than those sets, with awesome brightness. It sounds like the perfect recipe for HDR and the new Dolby Vision 2 standard announced around the show. We don’t know the price. We don’t know any TV series names. Still, a Sony RGB LED set should in theory be able to eclipse even the very best consumer TVs around today.
Roborock RockMow Z1
What is it? A robot lawnmower
Roborock has made robot vacuums for ages. And now it has unveiled its first wave of robot grass-mowers. The RockMow Z1 is the big daddy of the bunch, and looks a bit like a robot vacuum mixed with the kind of autonomous vehicle you might expect to see roving across the surface of the moon. And that’s because it needs to be able to hack harder terrain. Roborock says this plucky little thing can mount obstacles up to 6cm high, and it probably has better suspension than my last car. It’s designed to handle slopes of up to 38.7 degrees. This isn’t just a robotic vacuum with a bunch of rotating blades stuck to its bottom. Cheaper and also-new options include the Rockmow S1, made for less rugged terrain, and the more basic Rockneo Q1
Govee Backlight 3 Pro
What is it? Ambilight for non-Philips TVs
Most of the best TVs in the world lack one obvious thing: the ingenious backlight system Philips invented. It’s called Ambilight, and uses an army of LEDs to beam the colours of on-screen content onto the wall behind your set. The Govee Backlight 3 Pro recreates the effect using a set of cameras that literally sees what’s on-screen, because the Philips method is presumably locked behind a massive 18ft wall wall of patents. This is nothing new. Other kits have done this before, but the Backlight 3 Pro claims to be able to solve the big issue with them: they don’t generally work all that well. How? With the “industry’s first HDR triple-camera system" of course. A wider field of view and higher dynamic range lets Govee see more accurately and break up the TV’s content up into far more zones. In theory, anyway. We’ll see how it really fares in homes from September 29th, when it’s out.
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