Digital Trends Best Products of 2015

By DT Staff Updated December 31, 2015

NASA discovered water on Mars. Volkswagen cheated on diesel emissions tests. Donald Trump ran for president.

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2015 had some highs, some lows, and some real facepalms. But along the way, the road was littered with awesome new gadgets.

From OLED 4K TVs to a fridge that tells you how many Bud Lights you have left, Digital Trends had the privilege of testing it all. Now, as the year wraps up and we prepare for the next big wave of innovation at CES 2016 in January, we’re looking back at all our favorites in every product category, from computing to home theater. Every section editor at Digital Trends was tasked with selecting a single winner for their section, and two runners up. We’ll reveal a new product category every day, and on December 31, the wraps come off on Digital Trends’ overall Best Product of 2015, as decided by the consensus of our entire editorial staff.

Mobile

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Mobile — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Photography

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Photography — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Gaming

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Gaming — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Cool Tech

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Cool-Tech — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Home

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Home — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Cars

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Cars — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Computing

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Computing — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Home Theater

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Home Theater — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Best of the Year

BestOf2015awards-DTCubes-Winner — Image used with permission by copyright holder

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Topics

Computing

Xreal’s latest AR glasses fix the brightness problem, but leave the rest largely untouched

Accessories, Sunglasses, Glasses

AR glasses sound magical until I imagine wearing them somewhere bright. That’s why a new pair launched today caught my eye.

Xreal's 1 Pro Plus refreshes its One Pro glasses (which float a virtual screen in front of your eyes). It packs a much brighter display than the outgoing model and smoother 2D-to-3D conversion. You can buy it now for $599.

Computing

A $75 gadget that remembers my conversations? Bee has my attention and my reservations

Two new ways to let AI listen (and remember) what you said.

Electronics, Phone, Mobile Phone

A $75 gadget that remembers my conversations? I’m intrigued and, at the same time, slightly nervous.

Amazon-owned Bee has launched two conversation-summarizing devices: the Bee Frontier ($74.99), available now, and the Bee Eclipse ($99.99), a magnetic phone card arriving soon. There’s also a new subscription: Bee Pro.

Computing

Anthropic warns of imminent self-replicating AI that might even work off an oven or TV

Self-replicating AI could be merely months away, and tests show it can run on the devices sitting at your home.

Illustration of dangerous AI.

Over the past few weeks, nearly every AI lab has released frontier AI models. Earlier today, Google started rolling out Gemini 4, Argon, hot on the heels of Meta announcing its Muse Wonder frontier AI models to compete against the best from OpenAI and Anthropic's Claude. This relentless pace of AI model release comes at a time when the same AI labs are calling for development slowdown and increased regulation, following a series of concerning incidents where these AI models went rogue and broke into private, as well as government-owned, websites.

Now, Anthropic has dropped a chilling set of predictions about the capabilities of these AI models after running a series of tests. The company claims that small AI models could be merely a few months away from self-replicating and turning into a dangerous swarm. More importantly, they won't require a massive data center or an uber-powerful computer to do so. On the contrary, the lab claims that these self-replicating AI swarms will need something with as little computing power as an average Internet-connected device, like a smart oven or an Android TV box.