While 2025 has been a busy year, Malcolm Owen's top picks of the best items range from the future-centric iPhone Air design to the modern Beats Powerbeats Pro 2, to the plain simplicity of owning a UPS.
As usual for a news gatherer, I have found 2025 to be a busy year in many different ways. When it comes to actual products and services, it's a continued enhancement of what we've seen before.
A lot of it can be summed up as an upgrade of what came out last time. Sometimes there are new features just so there's something to promote, and sometimes it's just a performance update.
Everyone's experience of the year is different, and their particular Best Tech of 2025 list will reflect that.
In my list, while some relates to new products that have impressed me, some selections have a deeper meaning than seeing the specifications improve. Some are quality-of-life improvements, sure, but there are some on the list that are really important to me.
Beats Powerbeats Pro 2
When Beats brought out the Powerbeats Pro 2, the main celebration was all about its heart rate sensing capabilities. So long as you have an iPhone, you can monitor your fitness during a workout without needing to wear an Apple Watch.
That it also includes various design refinements and has the all-important Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency modes are also good points. But to me, it's really about another core function of the model.
It's a pair of wireless earbuds that offer AirPod Pro functions, but ones that have little chance of falling out of your ear and going missing.
Beats Powerbeats Pro 2
As a large man with an unusually large head, I also have large ear canals, which means I cannot trust silicone earbuds to stay in place in the long term. That ear hook, which was part of the original Powerbeats Pro design, keeps the earbud bit wedged in place and with no fear of losing the earbud while doing a rare bit of exercise.
Of course, similar things could be said about the Beats Powerbeats Fit, which uses a silicone wing to anchor it in place by wedging against the folds of the ear. This too is very secure as far as earbuds go, but the knowledge that the earbud could slip out a bit and still stay in your ear makes the Powerbeats Pro 2 the better option.
It may well be a precursor to Apple including similar heart rate sensors in the AirPods Pro and other devices in the future. That it stays in place is more important to me.
Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 are currently on sale for $199.95 on Amazon.
Apple Vision Pro with M5
The revision of the Apple Vision Pro may not necessarily be a groundbreaking update to most people. It's effectively a traditional spec-bump update that brings more performance to the table, and that's about it.
Really, the new M5-equipped Apple Vision Pro is less about new features and more about shoring up the headset by correcting small but important problems.
For a start, going to the M5 is a three-generation jump in performance. It's not just a higher capacity to crunch numbers, but also the introduction of chip features that really help a headset like this.
Apple Vision Pro with M5
There's now hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh mapping, which helps create a better picture for the user, without severely increasing power usage. The M4 generation's single-core performance inherited by the M5 will also aid in efficiency and prolonging battery life.
But then there's the addition of the Dual Knit Band, which is probably the biggest improvement overall. Along with tungsten weights to the back part of the band, the overhead section becomes a fulcrum that balances the headset's weight nearer the user's neck.
It helps to solve the core complaint of it being a heavy headset that presses on the face. Apple's solution is weird as it adds more weight, but does so in a way that the forward-pressing weight is lessened, making it easier to wear.
Arguably, the biggest takeaway from this is that Apple's core hardware, spec-bump update aside, did a lot of things right that Apple didn't have to change the core design at all. It's confident enough to reuse the design with few adjustments, with the real changes involving a chip and a band.
Considering Apple's massive research and development into the Apple Vision Pro in the first place, its update indicates that it is keen to still work within the field. Apple Glass may still be years away from becoming a reality, but the company has shown it stands behind its work, which should bode well for the next head-mounted product release.
The Apple Vision Pro M5 starts at $3,499 and can be ordered at Apple.com.
iPhone Air
The iPhone Air is not the most popular iPhone in the 2025 roster. It had an impressive launch, but its sales have been derided by analysts believing it to be underwhelming.
To be fair to the analysts, they're not wrong, but they could be missing the point.
Apple's design for the iPhone Air introduced many changes to the familiar iPhone appearance, with the biggest of all being its thickness. Using smart component placement in an already cramped casing, the main body is now extremely thin, if you ignore the camera bump or "plateau" as it's now known.
iPhone Fold
That wide bump may not be great to look at, but it's where the logic board now exists. There's enough room to fit the key thermally-affected bits in, as well as retaining a camera, while the body has a large and quite thin battery.
This is smart thinking by Apple if you consider future products. Not necessarily the main iPhone line, but the iPhone Fold.
The iPhone Fold will need to have a very thin body when unfolded, simply because it will effectively double in overall thickness when folded up. Apple has to think about thin designs now, otherwise iPhone Fold users may feel like they're carrying a brick around when the flexible smartphone's not in use.
You might not necessarily consider the iPhone Air to be impressive in its current state. If you reframe it to effectively be half an iPhone Fold, it becomes a more impressive technical feat.
The iPhone Air can be picked up at a discount in the form of incentives from wireless carriers T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T.
AI for coding
Let's face it, artificial intelligence has been a double-edged sword when it comes to work and creativity. Many of the reports point to the technology changing the workplace and prompting layoffs, as AI replaces roles in various companies.
There are still lingering issues that need to be addressed, especially involving the content that the models are trained on and whether artists are being properly compensated for their work. Not to mention the amount of AI-generated images and videos that are invading social media.
For the purposes of an article discussing the "best" of tech, AI has done something for me that I didn't think would ever happen. It allowed me to make a game.
AI has helped me code a proper game for the iPhone and iPad.
Readers who have been following along with the developer logs on AppleInsider will know that I have been working on a game, and use ChatGPT to help code it. It's not full-blown "vibe coding" as I'm being careful to check the AI's code and reasoning at each stage where possible, instead of running into problems when people let the AI code without oversight.
While there have been some frustrations, and it's still a work in progress, what AI has ultimately allowed me to do is to accomplish something that I wanted to do decades ago as a teenager. Over the years, there has been some dabbling in game-making, but nothing I could really consider as a serious effort.
But now, as a way to teach me how to code once again, AI has helped me get to a position where I have a really good chance of actually getting a game into the world. One that will actually appear on Steam and the App Store in the future.
It's an educational tool with problems that will affect society for years to come. To me, right now, it's a small instance of wish fulfillment.
A cheap UPS
I know that this is supposed to be a retrospective on tech released throughout the year, but buying a UPS in January has been invaluable to my work over the last year.
In January, after some winter power cuts and occasional lapses to remember to recharge my prepaid electricity meter in this house, thoughts turned to acquiring a UPS again. I had one years ago and it worked well, but I declined to replace it after it died because it was just too expensive.
After last winter's brownouts and other issues, the repeated instances of losing work I had done on the Mac mini without saving had convinced me to look at Amazon for a replacement. My first was a heavily discounted "closing down sale" bargain, so I expected high prices with new models.
Thankfully, I was wrong, as the UPS market is broad enough that you can get some for quite reasonable prices. Cue adding a fairly value-priced option into my cart and hoping it will help. Over the last year, it certainly proved its worth.
This UPS has more than proven its value over the last 12 months.
Not a month went by without the electricity going off during the shift at some point. While other devices and the network may have gone down for even a few seconds during a blip in the power supply, the Mac mini and its displays were still usable.
Each time the rest of the house shut down, I was able to use the leisurely five minutes of estimated battery power to save my work. At the very least, it bought me the time to protect my documents, but really, it allowed me to work relatively uninterrupted as power would return less than a minute later.
Indeed, while writing this very article, the Welsh weather has caused two blips in the power supply, which the UPS handled well, albeit noisily with its alarm.
This isn't an endorsement of any particular uninterruptible power supply, or even a so-called "power station." Really, it's an urging to add some form of protection to your power supply, even if it buys you a few seconds to click Save.
