2017 hasn’t been the easiest year to live through, but we’ve found joy and comfort in some of the hardware we’ve tested over the last 12 months. Last year, we saw VR surge in prominence, but our picks this year are more conventional — not to mention more diverse. The usual suspects include the iPhone X and Surface Laptop for getting helping us get things done, and the Nintendo Switch and the Sonos One for their ability to let us luxuriate at home and on the road. There’s some more unexpected stuff on our list, too, like the easy-to-use DJI Spark drone as well as the Mighty, a tiny music player that won over much of the Engadget staff. Ultimately, we appreciated these picks for the ways they made our lives more pleasant, even if only a little.
iPhone X
Apple’s latest iPhone is a radical departure from the company’s tried-and-true smartphone formula, but you’d better get used to it. The home button is finally gone, and Apple’s new Face ID technology works better than we expected and gives app creators another canvas for new kinds of experiences and interactions. (Animoji, anyone?) And for those more concerned with speed and camera performance, the iPhone X delivers on those fronts, too.
What really impressed us about the iPhone X, though, is the way Apple rewrote its rules for what an iPhone should be and still managed to build a pleasantly familiar slice of tomorrow. This is the future of the iPhone, and we’re more than happy to never look back.
Galaxy Note 8
Lumping two phones into a single entry may seem like a cop-out, but whatever — Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus were a remarkable return to form for a company mired in controversy. As usual, Samsung combined top-tier horsepower with some truly phenomenal cameras, and we give the company credit for taking risks with projects like the Bixby AI assistant, even it’s a long way off from reaching its potential.
Still, it’s Samsung’s prowess with screens and industrial design that really impressed us. We’d argue that the S8 and S8 Plus are the most beautiful machines Samsung has ever crafted, and there’s no phone maker in the world that does these big, bezel-less displays better. (No wonder Apple tapped Samsung to make the iPhone X’s screen.) For Android fans, Samsung’s hardware is second to none.
Surface Laptop
MacBooks can seem ubiquitous at times, but Microsoft just might be the king of laptop design now. The Surface Laptop took much of what we loved about Microsoft’s Surface Pro line and adapted it into a more traditional form factor. It ships with a seventh-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, and while it’s not the most powerful ultraportable out there, its excellent battery life and gorgeous 13.5-inch display made such concessions easier to live with.
The biggest knock against the Surface Laptop is that it ships with a locked-down version of Windows 10 S, but that’s easily remedied with an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro — a process that’s much easier than it sounds. The Surface Laptop line will almost certainly grow more powerful and capable over the next few years, but Microsoft’s first-gen notebook for the masses still belongs on shoppers’ shortlists.
Nintendo Switch
After the flop that was the Wii U, Nintendo’s Switch hybrid marks a bold step in a new direction. First-party games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odysseyare among the best (if not the best) in their respective series, and developers have been keen to port more adult fare like Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus to the new platform. Best of all, you don’t need to be lounging in your living room to enjoy the Switch’s surprisingly broad slate of year-one games. Truly, the number of Engadget staffers who swear by the Switch as a travel companion is impressive. And people seem to like the Switch as much as we do. Nintendo recently revealed it has sold more than 10 million units so far, with the new console poised to overtake the Wii U’s lifetime sales in a single year.
Xbox One X