Best of IFA 2018: Our favourite products from the Berlin tech show

IFA 2018 was a treat for the electronically minded. There were phones, laptops, chipsets and terrifying gaming chairs. There were flops and flagships, speakers and keynotes, the good, the bad and the journalists, all ferreting about a Berlin Expocentre, fighting to get their fingers on the latest tech.

Expert Reviews was in the fray, and after much deliberation, we’ve settled on seven deserving products worthy of a prestigious award. Here they are, along with a snippet of what our writers had to say about them.

Sony Xperia XZ3

Nathan Spendelow: “Sony’s Xperia XZ3 is a welcome return to form. Following an abundance of middling handset launches from the Japanese firm, the XZ3 appears to be ticking all the boxes that matter: notably, top-tier performance, screen quality and a swish redesign.”

Acer Swift 5 15in

Jonathan Bray: “Acer’s Swift 5 is an intriguing ultraportable. Skinnier and lighter than most, Acer seems to have achieved the impossible.”

Samsung Q900R 8K TV

Jonathan Bray: “It’s early days yet but, so far, Samsung’s 8K TVs look every bit as impressive as their 4K predecessors. It’s also good to see Samsung addressing the pixelated elephant in the room – the current lack of native 8K content – with its ‘AI’-based upscaling image processing engine.”

Lenovo Yoga C930

Tom Bruce: “For fans of the 2-in-1 laptop setup, the Yoga C930 seems to be the full package, offering the ultimate in visual and audio entertainment coupled with supreme speed and power. And then there’s the bundled pen, which means you can go straight into tablet mode whenever, wherever.

B&O Beosound Edge

Tom Bruce: “It’s loud enough that it could single-handedly keep a house party happy but, in typical Bang & Olufsen fashion, it also doubles up as an artistic centerpiece for your living room with its gorgeous one-piece reflective aluminium case.”

Huawei Kirin 980

Jonathan Bray: “The fastest, most power-efficient processor the company has ever produced. The best news is that fans won’t have long to wait to get their grubby mitts on one. The Kirin 980 is likely to find its way into the firm’s flagship phones as early as October 2018.”

Casio WSD-F30

Jonathan Bray: “Casio has long been a big name in the world of high-tech watches, from the time of the very first digital watches of the 1980s, right through to the modern smartwatch era. The next step in Casio’s Android Wear range of outdoor-focused smartwatches, the Pro Trek WSD-F30 is Casio’s most advanced smartwatch to date.”