This was a surprisingly fun year for smartphones. I wasn’t expecting it to be; the category is often described as stale or “plateaued.” But as WIRED’s resident phone reviewer, I’ve tested nearly all of this year’s handsets—devices as cheap as $130 all the way to an eye-watering $2,000—and I don’t think there’s been a year filled with as many varied styles in quite some time.

It all started with the Nothing Phone (3a) series, which the UK company launched at Mobile World Congress early in the year. While I wasn’t a fan of the Pro model’s top-heavy camera module, the electric blue Phone (3a) is a standout. It looks like no other smartphone on the market, with a transparent backplate, a pop of color from a small red square, and the company’s signature Glyph lights, which blink when you receive notifications. Those LEDs may not be the most useful, but they’re fun and wacky.

That whimsical design has been sorely lacking for several years. Remember 2020’s LG Wing? The five-camera Nokia 9 PureView from 2019? The weird Moto Mods of a decade ago, which added things like cameras and speakers to the Moto Z from Motorola? These phones may not have topped the charts, but they tried something different.

Smartphones are a necessity in today’s world, and like all commodities, that means good and playful designs are often sacrificed for the sake of manufacturing efficiency. When companies chase the bottom line, we end up with plain, simple-looking phones designed for the broadest possible audience. This is why the recent shift to devices with a little more character feels significant.

Nothing had another win on its hands this year with the CMF Phone 2 Pro, a sub-$300 phone that didn’t look or feel anything like its budget price. Uniquely, you can unscrew the back of the phone and replace the backplate with one that’s a different color, or take off the Accessory Point module and attach things like a lanyard. Sustainability-focused Fairphone had a similar idea with The Fairphone (Gen. 6), except this smartphone did all of that while also achieving a 10/10 repairability score from iFixit.

The Nothing Phone (3a).

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The Motorola Razr 2025 series.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Next came Motorola, which has seen a lot of success in recent years with its Razr folding flip phones. With the 2025 Razr models, the company leaned heavily into different materials and textures. You could buy a Razr with a back coated in the microfiber textile Alcantara, vegan leather, or polished black Gorilla Glass. There’s even a version with Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood. It helps that Motorola remains one of the only manufacturers offering a folding flip phone under $700. (It even gets as low as $600 during sale events.)

You may still be hesitant to invest in one of these hinge-reliant handsets, given their spotty history with durability, but they are tougher than ever. I’ve dropped multiple Razrs, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, and even the Galaxy Z Flip7 this year, and outside of minor scuffs on the frame, none of them have cracked. Motorola introduced a titanium-reinforced hinge plate this year. Google promises 10-plus years of folding for its latest Fold and has finally earned an IP68 rating for its folding design. Samsung says its Galaxy Z Fold7 can withstand 500,000 folds, which pencils out to more than a decade of typical use.

We should expect more out of how the gadgets in our lives look and feel. As with a good watch, I find that I genuinely enjoy using devices that put a little more care or effort into design and build quality. This year, I was delighted by the sharp-looking Light Phone III—the anti-smartphone that doesn’t run traditional apps—whereas the Minimal Phone, which is built with the same goal of helping reduce time spent staring at a screen, had a plasticky build that felt off-putting. Even with all of this experimentation in form, you don’t have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a good-looking phone. Motorola’s Moto G Stylus 5G has a striking design with a lovely leather-like texture, and it’s frequently on sale for $300.

The Light Phone III.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

The Moto G Stylus 5G 2025.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Thin, as always, was also very much in. Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge and the iPhone Air may not be original ideas, but I kid you not, holding an ultrathin and lightweight phone is actually pretty dang awesome. Unfortunately—and unsurprisingly—Samsung’s design suffered from lackluster battery life, and while the iPhone Air delivered better-than-expected run times, its single camera system and high price didn’t exactly scream good value in an economically tumultuous year. (These flaws likely explain the rumors that suggest Samsung has canceled plans for a successor to its thinnest handset and that Apple has been weathering lackluster sales of the Air.)

But we’ve already seen the benefits of thinner phones. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold7 is one of the best folding phones of the year, in large part due to the massive reduction in size and weight over its predecessors. Apple is also rumored to be working on a folding iPhone, and the learnings from the iPhone Air would go a long way in making a device that’s not cumbersome to hold.

The subwoofer is no joke, at about 13 x 16 inches and 18 pounds, but it’s not something you’ll need to move once you get it set up, and it contributes massively (pun intended) to the depth and breadth of the Bar 500MK2’s sound. With a 10-inch driver, it’s more than enough to get to its claimed 40-Hz floor.

Controls on the bar are minimal, with volume and input buttons hidden in the center of the matte black bar, and an included remote that lets you adjust settings. There is a convenient LED screen hidden inside the right front of the grille that tells you in plain English what is going on, which is a nice departure from many brands’ variety of lights and colors.

Jamming On

The impressive 750 watts of claimed total output of the speaker and subwoofer really are a bold departure from any built-in TV speakers. In fact, for a small bar, the Bar 500MK2 filled my testing room with some of the most immersive sound I’ve heard from a bar that doesn’t include rear surround speakers.

It has an uncanny ability to bounce sounds around you in a way that makes it feel like they’re genuinely coming from the sides or rear, especially when playing Gran Turismo 7 on PlayStation 5 Pro.

Dolby Atmos effects in movies are equally impressive. While watching my 4K Blu-ray copy of Ford Vs. Ferrari, cars zipped by my head in such lifelike detail I sometimes felt like I needed to lean out of the way. When listening to music like Agave Fire Pit’s “Goodnight,” I was impressed by how cleanly it is able to render the vocal effects right in the center of the stereo image.

All monitors have HDMI and DisplayPort to connect to a PC (or even VGA if it’s a really old one). Those are the basics. If you want the latest of these port standards in monitors, you’re looking for HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.1.

More and more monitors nowadays include a built-in USB hub, which can sometimes include USB-A ports, an Ethernet jack, and more. Once you connect over the upstream USB-C (or USB-B if the monitor’s a bit older), you can plug accessories and peripherals directly into the monitor. That’s particularly useful if your laptop doesn’t have many ports, or if you frequently move your laptop and like to keep it as cable-free as possible. Many monitors also include Power Delivery over USB-C, letting you connect and charge your laptop through a single cable.

Some workstation-level monitors take this a step further and also include a KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch, which allows you to switch between multiple laptops or PCs, all plugged into the same monitor. Most people don’t need this, but if you run multiple PCs for any reason, it’s a must.

The placement of these ports is also important. Ideally, you won’t have to reach the back of your monitor too often, because let’s be real, it’s a huge pain. Down-firing ports are the hardest to reach and see, but give you the cleanest look. Back-facing ports, meanwhile, are easier to plug in. Some of the new Dell monitors even include a pop-down, forward-facing port module for quick access to USB-C or a headphone jack. Some monitor stands include some built-in cable management to route your cords, which is a helpful feature.

Pricing

There’s a huge range of pricing for monitors, ranging from under $100 to $5,000 for the Apple Pro Display XDR. Most people will likely be shopping in the sub-$300 range, which is what makes options like the Dell 27 Plus 4K so impressive. It’s not a perfect monitor by any means, but in my own testing, it hits the sweet spot in price and quality.

But I love the diversity in the monitor space right now. You’ll have to pay extra for it, but as a product category, it has matured to a point where you’ll always be able to find what you’re looking for, whether it’s a port-filled workstation, a super-fast gaming monitor, a display with smart features that doubles as a television, or maybe even an oversized ultrawide monitor that replaces dual monitors.