Best of IFA 2024 Awards: All the very best products

This year is a big one for the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin, better known as IFA. In 2024, IFA is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The first IFA event happened in 1924 and mainly focused on the most significant technical advancements in the radio industry. In fact, Internationale Funkausstellung loosely translates to “international radio exhibition,” although it has expanded way beyond radios at this point. In 2024, IFA covers all manners of tech, including Android smartphones, smart home devices, televisions, security cameras, household appliances, and more.

Android Authority was on the ground at IFA 2024 and saw everything the show had to offer. Here, we’ve rounded up the very best products we experienced. Without further ado, here are our Best of IFA 2024 Awards winners!

Best of IFA 2024: Smartphones

As the smartphone industry has matured, fewer and fewer companies use general tech shows like IFA to launch new smartphones. Instead, they throw their own events so they can dominate the spotlight. That being said, there were still a few smartphones that landed here in Berlin, and the best of them are:

As far as smartphones go, the HONOR Magic V3 was the talk of the show. It is now officially the world’s thinnest foldable phone. When folded, minus the camera bump, it’s only 9.2mm thick, making it slightly thicker than the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and much, much thinner than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, its main competitor in the foldables space.

Along with being incredibly thin, it also has a very solid camera system, including a telephoto lens with 3.5x optical zoom. Throw in some high-quality displays, fast wired and wireless charging, and an IPX8 rating, and you have the makings of terrific book-style foldable hardware. For more, be sure to check out our HONOR Magic V3 review.

The HONOR Magic V3 is coming soon with a list price of €1,999 (~$2,217) in Europe and £1,699 (~$2,231) in the United Kingdom. HONOR has no plans to bring this phone to the United States.

Although TCL didn’t bring a foldable or any world’s-first claims to IFA 2024, it did bring a pretty innovative new way to use your smartphone. The TCL 50 Pro NXTPAPER 5G is the latest phone in its line of NXTPAPER devices, which have displays that are nearly glare-free and have a soft, paper-like feel.

Notably, this new phone has a unique addition: the NXTPAPER Key. This hardware button on the side of the phone allows you to hot-swap into Max Ink Mode, which makes your smartphone into a “dumb” phone. It locks you out of most of your apps and turns the display into an e-ink-style monochrome affair. This will help you stay off your phone and, most importantly, save you a ton of battery life.

The TCL 50 Pro NXTPAPER 5G will soon be available in Europe for €299 (~$331). Unfortunately, TCL would not commit to a US launch for the device, although it did hint that it could happen in 2025.

Best of IFA 2024: Smart home

This year, IFA seemed to be all about smart home stuff. Everywhere we turned, there were gadgets designed to make home life a little bit easier (and a lot more automated). Here are the best across multiple categories:

One might think that we’ve reached the zenith of what robot vacuums can do, but one would be wrong. There are still tons of ways robot vacs are getting better, and the Eureka J15 Pro Ultra has most of them.

First, it has a whopping 16,200Pa of suction power. This isn’t a world record, but the majority of robot vacs out there usually hover around the 10,000Pa – 15,000Pa mark, so the J15 Pro Ultra certainly brings the suction.

The vacuum also can detangle hair clogs (especially useful for pet owners), uses swinging mop arms to get to those tough-to-clean places, has an all-in-one base station that cleans the robot (and even itself), and plenty of AI smarts to better map your home and better clean those stubborn stains.

The Eureka J15 Pro Ultra will be available in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain starting in late September 2024 at a list price of €1,099 (~$1,219). It will be available in the United States in October, but Eureka has yet to announce pricing here.

When you look at most LED lightstrips on the market, you can easily see where each individual LED is on the strip. Chip-on-board (COB) strips, though, look much smoother, making them the new ideal for smart home users looking to light up certain spaces.

The COB Strip Light Pro will be available in Europe starting on September 10. The three-meter model costs €99 (~$110), and the five-meter model costs €149 (~$165). Both models can be trimmed to meet specific needs.

When it comes to cameras designed to boost home security, you often need to pay a subscription fee to store your recordings in the cloud. Additionally, with regard to battery-powered cams, you are usually limited by time: the battery probably doesn’t allow for more than one full day of nonstop recording. The Reolink Atlas PT Ultra, though, offers a solution to both of these problems.

First, the camera does not need cloud access to store its 4K/15FPS video footage. Instead, it records everything on up to a 512GB microSD card. You can then view these recordings remotely through the camera’s Wi-Fi 6 connection.

As for power, the built-in 20,000mAh battery has enough juice to record 12 hours per day for up to eight days. If you need nonstop recording, the battery should last you up to four days, according to Reolink. If that’s still not enough, you can buy an optional solar panel charger that can give you an extra day of recording with just ten minutes of sun.

The Reolink Atlas PT Ultra will launch on September 25. The company will announce pricing then.

Nanoleaf’s light-up wall panel shapes have basically defined their own niche. However, there are two significant limitations to them: you can’t mix and match shapes within one design, and the panels don’t serve any function other than looking cool.

With the new Nanoleaf Blocks, the company is changing up this reputation. With Blocks, you can mix and match large and small sizes to your heart’s content. Additionally, you can mix and match with the new variations of Blocks, which include textured panels, pegboards, and shelves.

In other words, now you can really design the light wall of your dreams, one that looks incredibly cool while also allowing you to hang a gaming controller or even support a small plant.

Nanoleaf Blocks come in two kit sizes: the Squares Smarter Kit (six squares) and the Combo XL Smarter Kit (squares, small Squares, light pegboards, and shelves). The former is available for $199.99, and the latter sells for $249.99. There will also be an add-on kit (extra squares, textured squares, shelves, and pegboards) for $49.99. Pre-orders are available now at the Nanoleaf store, with availability opening up to Best Buy, Amazon, and Home Depot in October.

One colossal problem robot vacuums face is getting over raised surfaces. Even if they can climb over a raised floorboard, for example, constantly doing so can harm the sensitive machinery underneath the vacuum.

The Roborock Qrevo Curv (and its close sibling, the Qrevo Edge) can actually raise itself up to get over these kinds of obstacles. Roborock calls this the AdaptiLift Chassis, and it features independently adjustable three-wheel controls, allowing it to adjust height by up to 10mm.

The Qrevo Curv also offers 18,500Pa of suction power, an anti-tangling system, and a FlexiArm Arc side brush. While this is all wonderful, the €1,499 (~$1,668) price is tough to stomach. Regardless, it will be available in the US, EU, and APAC markets, although we don’t have US pricing or a general release date yet.

Sometimes, innovation doesn’t mean creating something new: it means combining two things to save you space (and money). That’s the case with the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table, which (obviously) combines an air purifier and a table to make one piece of furniture that does two things.

Not satisfied with just that, SwitchBot took this product one step further and added a third thing it can do: wirelessly charge your phone. This makes the SwitchBot Air Purifier Table perfect as a nightstand, providing clean air, a place to put your bedside lamp, and a spot to charge your phone. Brilliant!

You’ll spend $269 for this new product. Additionally, if you don’t need a new nightstand, you can buy an alternative version that swaps out the table for a bowl-shaped topper for your cat to sleep in (awww). That will cost $219.

Best of IFA 2024: Chargers and power

In our hyper-connected world, ensuring you never run out of power has never been more important. Likewise, getting yourself charged from empty to full as quickly as possible has become integral. Here are the products we saw that will keep us charged up and ready to go:

If you’re going out on an adventure and need a serious amount of power in a relatively small package, the Anker Solix C300 DC Power Bank Station is worth a look. It has a 90,000mAh battery, a max output of 300W, and two USB-C ports that can provide up to 140W of juice simultaneously, allowing you to charge two gaming laptops at full speed. There are also USB-A ports and a car charger port (sadly, no traditional AC outlet).

The “Solix” part of the name refers to its ability to be charged via solar panels. You can buy up to a 100W panel to keep your devices charged for as long as the sun is around, which I hear is another five billion years, so you’ve got some time.

The Solix C300 DC Power Bank Station costs $199 and is available now. In fact, there’s a limited-time deal running on Amazon already that saves you $30 off the list price. Just remember to tick the “apply coupon” box before adding it to your cart.

UGREEN makes some of our favorite portable chargers, offering myriad ways to juice up your devices in minimalist, elegant chassis. However, with the new Uno series, UGREEN is getting cutesy with its designs, and we’re here for it.

The key difference between Uno products and the rest of UGREEN’s lineup is a small display that shows information about your charge and, well, a cute little smiley face. OK, we realize that that’s not exactly a game-changer, but come on, who doesn’t want their charger to smile at them when they plug something in?

The Uno series includes many products, such as small pocketable power banks, a MagSafe-supporting desktop wireless charger, and even a USB-C cable complete with a tiny display showing the eyes of a smiley face.

All the new UGREEN Uno products will come in mid-September.

Best of IFA 2024: Miscellaneous

We saw a few things at IFA this year that don’t fit into a particular category, but we loved them so much that we thought they deserved a special mention. Here are the exciting new products that don’t quite fit into our usual verticals:

While traveling, Google Translate and other translation apps can be a godsend for helping you communicate with people who don’t speak your language. However, these apps don’t offer true real-time translation. Even when using the face-to-face translation service in Google Translate, there’s a significant delay between what a person says and the translation.

The TimeKettle W4 Pro is the first thing we’ve tried that offers nearly real-time translation, allowing two people to have a natural, free-flowing conversation despite a language barrier. It works through a set of earbuds, one of which you wear and the other of which the other person wears. While wearing these earpieces, you can each naturally converse and hear, in near real-time, the speech translated.

While there are still some kinks to be worked out, we left the TimeKettle W4 Pro demo excited about what this could mean for the future of travel, communication, and relating to your fellow humans.

The TimeKettle W4 Pro earbuds support 40 languages with 90 accents and are available now for $449.

DJI has been making some of the best consumer and prosumer drones for years now. Somehow, though, it still comes up with ways to wow us, and the new DJI Neo did just that. The Neo is an impossibly small drone that is designed to be used by pretty much anyone. It’s so simple that you don’t even need a controller!

To use the Neo, turn it on and hold it in your outstretched palm. Hit the Mode button, and it will fly off your palm and follow you around autonomously, filming at up to 4K/30FPS the whole time. When you’re done, just hold your palm under it, and it will gently land on your hand. Then, you can wirelessly transfer the video file to your smartphone at full 4K quality. Amazing!

The DJI Neo is very versatile, though. If you want more control over it, you can directly fly it with the DJI Fly app on your smartphone, an RC controller (sold separately), or even use the brand’s various FPV goggles.

The DJI Neo costs $199 for the drone itself, or you can buy the Combo kit for $289, which gets you two additional batteries and a charger that can power up all three batteries simultaneously. Both packages are available for pre-order from Amazon for a release on October 8.

The Steam Deck may have revolutionized PC gaming on the go, but TECNO has a new way to approach things that could be of interest to gamers. The TECNO Pocket Go comprises a large controller with the guts of a portable Windows machine inside it as well as a pair of glasses that act as your monitor.

The controller runs an AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS with eight cores and 16 threads operating at up to 5.1GHz and features Radeon 780M graphics. It’s powered by a removable 50Wh battery. The headset uses a 0.71-inch MicroOLED screen that allegedly gives the user the illusion of a 215-inch screen six feet away.

Unfortunately, where the Steam Deck wins is pricing, and the TECNO Pocket Go can’t hold a candle to it there. TECNO told us the Pocket Go’s glasses alone will cost you €1,199 (~$1,330), with no pricing for the controller yet.

Most people reading this are likely familiar with the Qi and Qi2 wireless charging standards, which most phones use when wirelessly charging. However, there’s been a different standard in the works for years called Ki charging, and it was only finalized a few days ago. Ki uses electromagnetic induction to wirelessly transfer power, just like Qi, but Ki actually powers the device directly, unlike Qi, which only charges the battery. In other words, if you remove a battery from a smartphone and then put it on a Qi charger, it will still be dead. With Ki, though, the phone would work on the charging pad even without a battery.

Only days after the announcement of Ki’s finalization, small appliance maker Midea announced a line of Ki-capable devices, our favorite being the kettle. Placing this kettle on a Ki-capable induction range top will power the kettle, negating the need for you to plug it into the wall. This makes the kettle truly cordless.

This is only the beginning. We can imagine Ki being used for all sorts of things in your house, such as electric toothbrushes and even lamps.

Unfortunately, we don’t know when you’ll be able to buy the Midea kettle nor how much it will cost.

That’s everything we loved from IFA 2024. What was your favorite product? Let us know in the comments!