Every September, hundreds of thousands of visitors descend upon Berlin for IFA, one of the largest trade tech conferences in Europe. IFA heralds the unofficial start of Techtember, when companies launch products in anticipation of the holiday shopping season. For over 100 years, companies, financiers, and journalists have crossed the Spree and eaten cold liver sausage for breakfast, just to check out the latest innovations in consumer electronics.
This year, those attendees include me and Gear editor Verity Burns. Here are some of the new gadgets and trends, and the funniest things we’ve found.
Updated 9/6/2025, 2am EDT: We've updated this piece with details on We Are Rewind's Boombox, TCL's Playcube projector, Hypershell's new exoskeleton, Samsung's portable Movingstyle TV and Antigravity's 360-degree A1 drone.
Samsung’s Flagship Tablet Eyes the iPad Pro
Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
Don’t let your tablet dreams die—if you’re an Android user, there’s now an iPad Pro for you. At IFA 2025, Samsung launched the next-gen Galaxy Tab S11 and Tab S11 Ultra, which match Apple's iPad Pro in one regard: thinness. Both Apple’s and Samsung’s top-tier tablets are a mere 0.20 inches thick. That's sort of been the theme for 2025, especially with the upcoming iPhone 17 Air. The Tab S11 and S11 Ultra run Android 16 out of the box, have 120-Hz AMOLED displays, and can hit a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. The company also announced a fifth Galaxy S25 phone, the Galaxy S25 FE. This $650 Android phone offers similar specs to the Galaxy S25+, but cuts some corners here and there to bring the price down.
You can read more about Samsung’s new tablets and phones here. —Adrienne So
We Are Rewind Has a Gorgeous New Retro Boombox
Rewind is a little French company that makes cassette players that are so gorgeous that artists like Charli XCX collaborate on releases. Next week, the company will release its first boombox, the GB-001. It's an equally beautiful, heavy boombox that plays cassettes, but also offers a full spectrum stereo image (the founders used Marshall speakers as test devices) with separate left and right woofers and tweeters.
You can pair with your phone and use it as a Bluetooth speaker and adjust the EQ right there on the machine. You can also plug in headphones or a mic (there are two backlit VU meters to check your playback) to record live music or use it as a karaoke machine. It's a little heavier than you might expect, but it feels delightful to use and sounds wonderful. Your tape collection deserves a great player, and so do you. —Adrienne So
TCL's Playcube Projector Is Both Cute and Now Available
Photograph: Verity Burns
TCL’s Playcube portable projector that was first spotted as a concept at CES is now a real, working product that’s available to buy.