This month I traveled to Berlin for IFA, the show where the world’s consumer tech companies lay out their latest and greatest.
Plenty of people in the U.S. have never heard of IFA. If you know CES in Las Vegas, you basically know IFA: same scale, same sensory overload, better pretzels.
The scale is staggering. 240,000 visitors and more than 2,000 exhibitors, all crammed into Messe Berlin, a sprawling complex laid out in such a perplexing labyrinth of halls, stairways, breezeways, entrances, exits, and backlots full of speeding forklifts that it would confound M.C. Escher himself. I was particularly delighted by the 12 escalators leading up to the press room, which changed direction at least once a day.
Reviewed’s purpose at the show is to preview the best tech, appliances, and gadgets the world has to offer. Some of it we’ve already seen earlier in the year in U.S. models. The rest is a look at what’s coming in 2027.
We gather everything we find and roll it into the Reviewed Awards: IFA 2026. Of the thousands of products that debuted at the show, our editorial team narrowed the field to 188 finalists, then, after a great deal of research, booth visits, and hands-on time, named 58 winners.
The question I get most often after one of these mega-shows is always the same: “What was the coolest thing you saw?”
Honestly, I saw a lot of amazing products. A few favorites:
The Haier Maestro refrigerator seemed to contain every cutting-edge technology an engineer could possibly cram into a refrigerator-sized device. A drawer that thaws frozen meat or fish in under 30 minutes. A flash freezer that drops to -40, cold enough to safely freeze fish to sushi grade. Don’t forget AI-enabled internal cameras to monitor food inventory. Maybe not everyone’s pick of the show, but I’m a self-admitted appliance nerd.
There were robots galore: robots for your lawn, your pool, your windows, robots as kids’ toys, robots for companionship, and more. The PrimeBOT Q1 caught my eye after an extensive demo of dancing and martial arts moves.
More practical, and far more likely to end up on your gift list, was the magnetic Belkin UltraCharge Pro Slim Power Bank, which uses a semi-solid-state cell. Without getting into the science of it, it’s nail-puncture resistant and fully TSA carry-on compliant, which solves a real problem for travelers.
Now that we’re back stateside, expect that we’ll be reviewing a good number of these products over the coming months. And I’m already looking forward to next year’s IFA, when I can once again indulge in some of the world’s best biergartens and product launches.
