Hunker's Best Of IFA 2025

If you've gotten the sense that innovation in the home technology marketplace has grown a tad stale in recent years, that impression certainly didn't come from the IFA 2025 expo in Berlin. Hunker has been on the floor at IFA Berlin and on the lookout for the best of the products on offer from the most thoughtful and cutting-edge companies showing off on the floor of the event.

What we found are products that are not only impressive, but unexpected. Even the upgraded products in our Best Of IFA lineup are a bit jaw-dropping. And that's saying something, because the folks milling around IFA — industry leaders, tech aficionados, and journalists — can be pretty hard to take by surprise. But that's exactly what these five Hunker Best of IFA 2025 products managed to do.

It's the industry leaders who should really take note of the quality and character of innovation on display at IFA this year. Our picks are all firsts in one sense or another, but more importantly, each represents what should be a sea change in its respective market, whether it's making refrigerators better at actually preserving food, recognizing that cleaning means cleaning everywhere, or making countertop kitchen appliances actually do the work for you while improving your diet. Let's dive in.

Sometimes a product is so smart (in the "brilliant" sense, not the "you can control it from the bathtub" sense) that you can feel the foundations of an industry shifting, and so it is with Vitesy's Shelfy Upgraded Version. The little device is superficially an air filter, but the things Shelfy can do inside a fridge are things fridges really should be doing for themselves.

Fundamentally, Shelfy makes your fridge smell better and makes food last longer using blue light to initiate a process called photocatalysis. The light interacts with a nanomaterial-coated ceramic filter to reduce bacteria by more than 99%; remove more than 80% of odor-causing volatile organic compounds (VOCs); neutralize chemicals associated with odors like decomposing fish, meats, oils, butter, and cheese; eliminate most ethylene, the chemical that causes produce to ripen and spoil; and double the shelf-life of fruits and vegetables. "The price of fresh food is expensive, and with Shelfy Upgraded Version, you can double the shelf time," said Mauro Mercandel, Vitesy's head of sales and marketing, to Hunker. Shelfy does not use UV light, and it doesn't have consumables; simply charge it and wash the ceramic filter when the app tells you to, and you're all set.

Shelfy Upgraded Version comes on the heels of Vitesy's Indiegogo campaign for Shelfy Lite, a version without sensors or connectivity that can't tell you when your fridge or your filter needs cleaning. The Shelfy technology will disrupt the home refrigerator market, with all reputable fridges eventually having at least Shelfy Lite functionality. Keep your eye on the Vitesy website for when it becomes available for purchase.

Sometimes, a product is so complete that its innovation can get lost in the mix. This is the case with Tineco's Floor One S9 Artist Steam Pro. Its name is a mouthful, and both its name and its feature set is close to a number of other Tineco offerings. But this is the company's most well-rounded, well-thought-out floor cleaner. It sports a thin profile and more features than you can believe fit in the package, from its 140-degree Celsius HyperSteam cleaning and sterilizing function to ReverseScrub ... the most obvious feature that vacuums should have always had. ReverseScrub simply reverses the rotation of its brushes with a simple touch to deal with the hardest-to-handle messes and stains.

Chris Long, Tineco's International PR Manager, is almost modest when discussing the company's extraordinary lineup, and the Artist Steam Pro in particular. "At Tineco, we've always tried to provide convenient features," Long told Hunker. "We are constantly learning from our consumers and adjusting our products based on their needs, whether that's dropping a useless feature or adding to that convenience." And there's a lot of convenience being added by the Artist Steam Pro. It features the company's anti-tangle tech, both Quiet and SilentDry modes, a zippy five-minute FlashDry function that dries floors at 185 degrees, and a remarkable 22kPa of suction power.

All this comes in a package that's about 5 inches deep and is powered by seven 6400mAh batteries, giving the Artist Steam Pro 90 minutes of runtime. The Floor One S9 Artist Steam Pro and other new offerings in Tineco's lineup should be available globally by the end of 2025.

Our third entry in Hunker's Best of IFA 2025, Anker Soundcore's Nebula X1 Pro also uses light to spectacular effect. But it's not the 4K, 3,500-lumen, triple-laser, glass-lens Google TV projector that caught our eye. You got all that in the Nebula X1, and it's the sound of the Pro version that makes all the difference. "We took the guts of the x1 that we launched in April, the projection part of it, and we wanted to increase the sound," Adam Weissman, Global Brand PR Lead for Soundcore, told Hunker. "Sound is one of the key parts of a movie. So, by creating this theater station, we're adding front speaker, rears speakers, subwoofers, and you can roll it into place by pulling it with a retractable handle, and within minutes, you can plug it in and have it set up."

But can Soundcore really call the Nebula X1 Pro the "world's first mobile theater station"? Consider: To all the charms of the Nebula X1, Soundcore has added a 160-watt subwoofer and an 80-watt soundbar that folds out and works with two wireless satellite speakers to deliver Dolby Atmos multi-channel spatial surround sound. Oh, and since this is a mobile theater station, they added IP43 water-resistance protection. So, yes, the world's first ... no question.

Soundcore launches its Kickstarter for the Nebula X1 Pro on September 23, priced between $4,000 and $5,000, and hopes to ship to backers as early as December. Customers who put down a $100 deposit will get $500 off when it officially launches. The company estimates that the projection system will hit retail shelves in March.

Another Anker brand, Eufy, wowed us at IFA with a robot vacuum product that can't clean a single inch of your floor, or anything else. But when you see it in action, you'll know immediately why you want it. The Marswalker is a sort of ferry that helps your Omni S2 robotic vacuum navigate stairs. Its name is intended to evoke NASA's Mars rovers, but watching it work calls to mind other forms of transport ... catching an Uber for the motorway trip to work, or one of those tramlines starting and stopping in hilly cities.

Here's how it works: The Marswalker 3D-maps your home and recognizes the type of stairs you have. It handles straight, L-shaped, and U-shaped staircases with equal aplomb. When it's needed, it moves to the edge of the stairway and waits for the S2, which drives right up the Marswalker's door/ramp and inside the Marswalker. It then walks itself and the S2 up (or down) the stairs. It returns your robot vacuum to its base station for dust collection, mop-washing, and recharging as needed while synchronizing with the S2 to transport it between floors when needed.

Even if you haven't suffered the indignity of carrying an S2 up and down stairs like a height-challenged Corgi, you'll recognize that the Marswalker represents the first stair-navigating accessory for a robovac. And the first time using one to vacuum your whole home has been truly automatic. The Marswalker should hit stores the first half of 2026 and, while there's no pricing info available yet, it'll definitely save you the $1599 you'd spend for an upstairs S2.

Wan's AIChef Ultra knows you're standing there, and it thinks you should eat a little more. It knows what you're trying to cook thanks to its 12-megapixel camera, and has some recommendations based on the recipes of 1,000 top chefs. It can see how the cooking is going ... and show it to you on its 15.6-inch screen. You can respond by speaking or using its secondary touchscreen. It keeps track of your nutritional journey and can, if you'd like, make dietary recommendations based on your preferences, food history, and goals.

For all that, the AIChef Ultra is not at all imposing and looks a bit like a microwave. And it is, in fact, a bit like one, using microwave heating to reduce moisture loss and preserve nutrients while cooking. But it uses precise temperature control in its large 35-liter partitioned cooking compartment to perfectly steam, boil, pan-sear, braise, and/or stir-fry. "It's easy, efficient, and offers intelligent cooking," said Chris Chen, Wan's brand marketing manager. "We just provide the ingredients, and AI will do the rest and make the meal for us with a simple touch on the screen."

Ultimately, the AIChef Ultra is about choice. You can have it scan your face and make diet recommendations, give it your health metrics yourself, or just ignore all that and get on with the fun part — browsing and adapting recipes organized by cuisine, ingredients, and meal or situation. The options currently lean a little heavily toward Chinese cuisine because AIChef Ultra launched in China in 2024, but Wan is hoping to launch it in the U.S. by the end of 2026.