If you are to go out and get a smartphone in early 2021, the Oppo Find X3 pro should be a candidate. That’s provided you can stomach the entry price and it’s available in your region.

Sony’s efforts in the mobile space over the past few years may have been a mixed bag overall, but the Xperia 5 II — and Xperia 5 prior — is easily the best in recent memory for a number of reasons.

Around a year ago, Samsung launched the Galaxy S20 series. While they proved to be great smartphones in the end, they were flawed. Samsung’s pricing was out of control, and the value for its devices just wasn’t there. Now, Samsung is correcting a lot of that with the Galaxy S21 series by making cuts to bring the price down by $200. Samsung is admitting its mistake, and it’s for the best.

Samsung has long made some of the best flagship phones in the Android world, and starting in 2020, the company decided to go all out with its “Ultra” models. To enthusiasts, it sounds like an amazing idea, but for the average customer, it’s not exactly an easy sell, especially when we’ve seen the rise of excellent devices at nearly half the cost with “affordable flagships” such as the Pixel 5. Still, Samsung accomplished its goal, the Galaxy S21 Ultra is the best Android phone you can buy, and it might even be worth its price tag. 

After striking gold with the TicWatch Pro 3, Mobvoi’s Earbuds Gesture wireless Bluetooth headphones have arrived after a successful Indiegogo campaign complete with some hands-free head gestures.

Last year’s Galaxy Buds+ were some of the best truly wireless earbuds to date, but they still left quite a bit of room for improvement. For 2021, Samsung is launching the Galaxy Buds Pro that provide a new design, additional features, and a higher price tag. Through it all, they might be Samsung’s best earbuds to date.

You still shouldn’t buy a foldable. 2020 has seen tech move leaps and bounds, with Samsung especially releasing the excellent Galaxy Z Flip and, more importantly, the Galaxy Z Fold 2. After three months using the $2,000 foldable, I’m thoroughly convinced that this technology is the future, but it’s not ready yet. Let’s talk.

The state of smartwatches on Android has been relatively unimpressive. Google’s Wear OS platform has a decent foundation but lacks any strength when it comes to health features. That’s why Google in the process of buying Fitbit. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been wearing the Fitbit Sense and Fitbit Versa 3, the brand’s latest smartwatches, to learn what all the hype is about. While, personally, I still wish the operating system on these watches was closer to Wear OS, I finally see what all the hype is about in the health department. Here’s what you need to know about Fitbit Versa 3 and Fitbit Sense.

Earlier this year, Google Stadia Games and Entertainment announced partnerships with a handful of studios, including Uppercut Games, the developers of Submerged. The result is Submerged: Hidden Depths, a sequel to the 2015 original and a Stadia exclusive.

The most confusing of Made by Google series launches effectively concluded in 2020 with the public-facing release of the Pixel 4a 5G — from the outset, a particularly tricky handset to review.

One year ago today, Google unleashed Stadia, their ambitious game streaming platform, onto the world. In the time since then, my gaming has been done almost entirely through Stadia alone. Over the course of 2020, Google Stadia has grown in many ways, stagnated in some others, but a special something about it has always shined through.

Whether you’re trying to save on energy usage, set a schedule, or just make it more convenient to adjust the temperature of your home, the Nest Thermostat line has been available for years to do it all. Now, the Nest Thermostat (2020) has hit the market with a new design, updated software, and the most affordable price to date. Here’s what you need to know.

Smartphone design over the past few years has hit a bit of a plateau. There’s only so much you can do with a glass slab after all. While other OEMs are pushing foldables as the future, LG had the bright idea of coming up with some unique designs and throwing them at the market to see if they stick. The LG Wing is the first of those devices with its wacky swivel design and… it’s quite something.

OnePlus might be going through a transition phase right now, but they’ve still managed to crank out a number of new devices plus another affordable pair of wireless earbuds in the form of the OnePlus Buds Z.

The Nokia 8.3 5G is a reasonably solid device that is massively let down by its release timing. Announced in March 2020, had it hit the market then, it would have been a far more enticing smartphone.

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro has been released into a very different landscape to that of its predecessor, the Mate 30 Pro. Restrictions have tightened, but that hasn’t dulled the Chinese firm’s enthusiasm for flagship smartphone releases.

The OnePlus 8T is probably the best OnePlus smartphone to date in a number of key areas. It also falters in a few, simply to justify the existence of the OnePlus 8 Pro.

As gaming on phones has slowly become less and less casual — thanks to both native games like Fortnite and cloud gaming from Google Stadia and Xbox Game Pass — so too have the gaming accessories. We got a chance to play with the Razer Kishi to see if it holds up to the rigors of “hardcore” phone gaming.

For better or worse, the Pixel 5 is not like previous flagship Google smartphones. It’s a very different proposition for buyers as a result — but is it actually a good device?

2020 has been quite a year, but outside of the obvious things, it’s also been notable for the barrage of streaming services that have changed how we consume TV shows and movies online. There have been perks, sure, but it’s only made finding our favorite content more confusing. In steps Google with its new watchlist feature, a new platform, and a brand-new piece of hardware to watch it all on — Chromecast with Google TV.

Flagship smartphones are ridiculously expensive in 2020, and frankly, people are tired of it. No one wants to spend over $1,000 on a phone, but Samsung’s entire Galaxy S20 lineup demanded four figures. After those devices failed to gain traction, though, Samsung has responded with the Galaxy S20 FE, a $699 smartphone that has everything a buyer actually needs for a fraction of the cost.

For a few years now, Google has maintained three sizes of smart speakers: small, large, and just right. With the new Nest Audio speaker, Google has taken “just right” to a whole new level.

The first thing you probably think of with Google’s Chrome OS platform is a cheap laptop. That’s understandable — the platform has built its popularity on super-affordable laptops that don’t suck. However, there’s a whole other side to the Chrome OS coin. Premium Chromebooks offer the simplicity of Google’s platform with killer performance and premium features. Lately, I’ve been testing out two premium Chromebooks from HP — the HP x360 14c and the HP C640 Pro. Here’s why they’re some of the best “high-end” Chromebooks you can buy, and possibly better than Google’s Pixelbook Go.