The best gadgets of 2026 so far — 10 picks worth buying

Six months of hands-on reviewing at Tom's Guide produced a far shorter list of winners than the year's launch calendar would suggest. The site's mid-year roundup collects 26 products its editors reviewed in full over the first half of 2026. Nothing scoring below four stars out of five made the cut, and every entry carries either the TG Recommended or the Editor's Choice badge. Five of the 26 went all the way to a perfect five-star score.

This list narrows that roundup to 10 of the best gadgets of 2026 so far, leading with all five of the perfect scorers and filling out the rest with four-and-a-half-star picks chosen for range rather than category stacking. The selection spans a pocket camera, a video game, a stand mixer, a pizza oven, an OLED television, an action camera, two laptops, a pair of over-ear headphones and a portable Bluetooth speaker. That spread is deliberate. A home baker and a video creator are not shopping from the same aisle, and a mid-year list weighted entirely toward TVs or phones would say little about how people actually spend money on technology.

A few ground rules on what follows. Every star rating and every verdict about how a product performed belongs to the named Tom's Guide reviewer who tested it, not to Quartz. Prices appear only where the publication listed a confirmed retail figure across major retailers; where pricing was inconsistent or missing, that gap is stated plainly rather than filled with a guess. Three products here lack a single reliable number, including a laptop and a video game whose street price swings widely by seller.

Availability is worth checking before you shop. One of the five-star winners, DJI's newest pocket camera, is not sold in the U.S. at all, a casualty of tariffs and the company's dispute with the U.S. government. Prices on several others have moved since launch. What follows runs through all 10 picks in order of review score, with the features and tradeoffs that shaped each verdict.

The DJI Osmo Pocket 4 took a full five stars from Tom's Guide senior reviews and cameras editor Pete Wolinski, who found no fault with the gimbal camera itself — only with the fact that it is not sold in the U.S.

That caveat comes down to tariffs and DJI's ongoing dispute with the U.S. government, which has kept the company's newest pocket camera off American shelves. Buyers here are left with gray-market imports or the older Osmo Pocket 3, and neither route carries the warranty support of a standard domestic purchase.

Wolinski's verdict rested on a set of gains over the previous model. Footage looks better, stabilization holds steadier, there is more storage on board, the camera runs cooler under load and the battery lasts longer. Those are the unglamorous specs that decide whether a small camera finishes a shoot or quits halfway through. Handheld gimbal cameras cram a motorized stabilizer, a sensor and a processor into a body roughly the size of a chunky marker, and heat has long been the limiting factor. A camera that stays cool longer records longer.

What separates the Pocket line from a phone or a standard compact is that the gimbal is built in rather than bolted on. The camera head pivots on motorized axes, smoothing out walking footage in a way software stabilization still struggles to match without cropping the frame. Wolinski's recommendation framed it as the one device a creator needs to produce polished video — the audience DJI has built this product line around, including vloggers, travel shooters and anyone who wants usable footage without carrying a full rig.

Tom's Guide does not list a confirmed U.S. retail price for the Pocket 4, and the deal listings attached to its review show pricing for the Pocket 3 instead. Anyone importing one should expect customs costs on top of whatever the overseas sticker reads, and should weigh that against the Pocket 3, which remains widely available in the U.S. at roughly $406 to $440 depending on the bundle.

007 First Light earned a full five stars from Tom's Guide senior entertainment editor Rory Mellon, who called it the best James Bond game in 20 years. It is only the second title Mellon has awarded a perfect score, and the sole video game among the publication's five-star picks for the first half of 2026.

The game comes from IO Interactive, the Danish studio behind the Hitman series, and it builds an original story around a younger Bond rather than adapting an existing film. Actor Patrick Gibson plays the role. That choice frees the studio from retreading plots audiences already know. It also lets the team apply the systems-driven level design that made its Agent 47 games work — environments meant to be studied, approached from several angles and improvised through when a plan falls apart.

Mellon's review credited the game's cinematic presentation, its story and the care it takes with the character and the wider 007 canon. He also set it against a broader shift. Games built on film licenses were once treated as quick products timed to a studio's release calendar, and he argued that period has ended, with First Light standing out even against the stronger licensed titles arriving now.

Pricing is the one soft spot for buyers. Listings for 007 First Light vary widely by seller, with digital key resellers coming in well below what mainstream storefronts charge for the same game. Compare current prices across retailers and platform stores rather than assume a single standard figure, and check which region and platform a key is tied to before paying.

The five-star score reflects one reviewer's assessment rather than a cross-outlet consensus. Players who find stealth-first design tedious and prefer straightforward action shooters may rate it lower. For Bond fans who also liked how Hitman handled open-ended assassination missions, it is the clearest overlap of the two.

The KitchenAid Artisan Plus stand mixer is one of five products to earn a full five-star score in Tom's Guide's mid-year roundup, awarded by staff writer Camilla Sharman. It sells for $599.95 to $599.99 at Crate & Barrel and KitchenAid's own store.

Sharman came to the review as a longtime owner of the standard Artisan, the model this one builds on, and her verdict rested on three specific upgrades rather than a ground-up redesign. First is a sliding speed control in place of the stepped lever used on earlier Artisan machines. She described the action as gliding, which matters mid-recipe when a baker needs to move from a slow fold to a faster whip without throwing flour out of the bowl.

Second is an in-bowl light that shines down on the ingredients while the motor runs. Mixer bowls are deep and the head casts a shadow across the contents, so judging whether a meringue has hit stiff peaks or a dough has come together often means switching off and leaning in. Lighting the bowl removes that pause.

Third is a double-edge flex beater that scrapes the bowl walls as it rotates, clearing batter that would otherwise cling in place. That targets a familiar complaint with stand mixers generally: ingredients stranded on the sides that never fully combine unless someone stops the machine and works a spatula around it. The problem shows up most in thick cake batters and butter-heavy doughs, where unmixed pockets survive into the finished bake.

Sharman's starting point is useful for anyone weighing an upgrade. She had used the previous Artisan for years and did not expect KitchenAid could improve on it, and the five-star score reflects a set of small, practical refinements landing well rather than a reinvention. At roughly $600, the Artisan Plus sits in premium stand mixer territory, aimed at people who bake often enough for those refinements to add up.

The Gozney Dome XL Gen 2 took a full five stars from Tom's Guide U.S. editor-in-chief Mike Prospero, who described it as the closest a home cook can get to a built-from-scratch pizza oven without laying brick. It sells for $2,799.99 at retailers including Ace Hardware, BBQGuys and Acme Tools.

Fuel flexibility sits at the center of the design. The Dome XL burns gas, wood or charcoal, so one oven covers a fast weeknight bake on propane and a longer weekend session over wood when smoke and a higher ceiling temperature are the point. Most home pizza ovens commit to a single fuel, which forces buyers to decide upfront whether convenience or char matters more.

Two temperature probes let the cook track separate readings at once. The stone floor and the air under the crown rarely sit at the same temperature in a domed oven. That gap decides whether the base scorches before the cheese melts, or the toppings stay pale while the crust darkens. Watching both numbers takes guesswork out of a process that otherwise relies on practice. Prospero also praised the oven's displays for being easy to read at a glance, which matters when the bake moves quickly.

Capacity runs to a 16-inch pie without crowding the edges, clearing the usual ceiling on compact ovens and leaving room to turn the pizza mid-cook.

Prospero was direct about the tradeoffs. The Dome XL is large, and at nearly $2,800 it costs several times what a competent portable pizza oven runs. He also said cheaper ovens had produced pizzas just as good in his own cooking, which frames this one as a buy for the committed rather than the curious. Anyone weighing it should account for permanent outdoor space, a stand or counter rated for the weight, and the fact that fuel versatility only pays off if more than one fuel actually gets used.

Samsung's S95H OLED earned a full five stars from Tom's Guide managing editor Kate Kozuch, who singled out brightness as the trait separating it from other OLED sets she has reviewed. The 55-inch model lists between $1,997.99 and $1,999.99 at Target $TGT, Best Buy $BBY and Samsung's own store.

Brightness has long been the weak spot of OLED technology. Self-emissive panels win on contrast and black levels because each pixel makes its own light and can shut off completely, but that same design has historically limited how much luminance they can push next to LED and mini-LED rivals. The consequence shows up in daylight. A living room with large windows can wash out an OLED picture in a way it would not on a bright LED set. Kozuch's review credits the S95H with cutting through ambient glare to a degree she did not expect from a self-emissive panel, and she described the set as the first in several years to exceed her expectations.

The floating metal bezel is the other design element her review flags. It is a styling decision rather than a performance one, giving the screen a thinner visual profile on a wall or a console, and Kozuch writes that she came around to it after assuming she would dislike it.

Samsung Art Store support is built in, letting the screen cycle through artwork and photography when nobody is watching anything. That matters most in open-plan rooms, where a 55-inch black rectangle dominates the space during the hours it sits idle.

At roughly $2,000 for the 55-inch size, the S95H competes directly with flagship OLED models from LG and Sony $SONY, and pricing varies by configuration within the same line — Best Buy also lists an S95H at $2,999.99. The five-star score reflects performance measured against that premium tier rather than against budget sets.

The GoPro Mission 1 Pro earned four and a half stars from Tom's Guide senior reviews and cameras editor Pete Wolinski, the first GoPro in years he said he was excited about. It sells for $599.99 to $699.99 depending on retailer and bundle, with listings at Sweetwater, B&H, Walmart $WMT, Amazon $AMZN and GoPro's own store.

Open-gate 8K recording is the main draw. Open gate means the camera reads the full area of its sensor instead of cropping to a fixed widescreen frame, leaving an editor more image to work with after the shoot. One take can be reframed for a 16:9 edit and again for a vertical cut without a reshoot. Retailer listings also cite a 1-inch sensor, 50MP stills and HyperSmooth stabilization.

Wolinski credited a reworked processor architecture and a new battery with battery life and thermal performance that beat rival action cameras in his standardized testing. The two problems travel together on small cameras. Pushing 8K through a compact body generates heat, heat throttles the processor, and a throttled processor can stop recording mid-clip.

The positioning is professional rather than casual. Wolinski's review frames the shooting features as aimed at working creators, and the price sits above GoPro's mainstream Hero line. His assessment is that GoPro had spent several Hero generations making only minor changes before this model. The feature set exceeds what a casual user shooting mountain-bike clips for social media would need.

Against the DJI Osmo Pocket 4, a five-star pick in the same Tom's Guide roundup, the difference is form factor rather than quality. The Mission 1 Pro's squared action-cam body is built to bolt onto helmets, handlebars, chest mounts and roll bars. DJI's gimbal-stick design suits handheld walk-and-talk shooting. The Mission 1 Pro carries one practical advantage for American buyers: it is sold in the U.S., which the Pocket 4 currently is not.

Apple $AAPL's MacBook Neo earned four and a half stars from Tom's Guide managing editor Jason England, who called it the best ultra-portable the publication has tested this year. It starts at $599 at Apple and runs to about $689 at retailers including Amazon $AMZN and B&H for the 13-inch configuration with 8GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage.

The unusual part is the silicon. The Neo runs on the A18 Pro, a chip Apple built for iPhones, rather than the M-series processors inside the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. England's review credited the chip with quick performance on everyday work — email, browsers, documents, streaming — rather than sustained video rendering or heavy multitasking.

England flagged a recent $100 price increase on the Neo. He also noted that value for money across the laptop market turned into a running joke in 2026. Even after the increase, his review rated the Neo as honestly well priced for what it delivers. Shoppers should compare listings before buying, since the $90 gap between Apple's own price and third-party retailers is wide for a laptop in this bracket.

Build quality is the other reason the score landed where it did. The Neo uses an aluminum chassis rather than the plastic shells common in this price bracket, and pairs it with a Liquid Retina display and a keyboard England described as tactile. Apple sells it in a range of colors, including Indigo, a shift away from the silver and space gray that have defined its notebook line for years.

The competitive framing in the review matters for anyone cross-shopping. England wrote that the Neo has rattled the budget Windows laptop market, a segment where Apple has rarely competed on price. Buyers who need M-series performance for creative workloads should look at the MacBook Air instead; the difference between the two comes down to what the chip can sustain under load, not how the laptop feels in hand.

The 2026 Asus Zenbook Duo, a dual-screen OLED laptop, earned four and a half stars from Tom's Guide managing editor Jason England, who credited its new Intel $INTC silicon with gains in both battery life and graphics over the previous generation. Tom's Guide lists no confirmed retail price for this model, so shoppers will need to check current listings themselves.

The defining feature remains the two OLED panels, which can run as a single extended workspace, as two independent screens, or in a standard laptop layout, depending on how the hinge and keyboard accessory are set up. England's review gives Asus credit for the physical design and ergonomics of that arrangement — the part two-screen machines have historically gotten wrong.

Inside is Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 chip, known internally by the codename Panther Lake. England frames this chip as a significant step forward for Intel's presence in Windows laptops, pointing to improvements on two fronts at once: how fast it runs and how little power it draws doing so. He ties the Duo's endurance to the redesigned CPU cores and the efficiency architecture underneath them, and rates that endurance highly enough to hold up against a MacBook — a comparison that carries weight given how long Apple $AAPL silicon has led on battery life in thin laptops.

Graphics are the second half of his argument. England credits the Duo's GPU, working alongside Intel's XeSS 3 upscaling, with enough performance for gaming, which is not what dual-screen productivity laptops are usually bought for. XeSS renders frames at a lower internal resolution and reconstructs them for the display, a technique that lifts frame rates without a proportional jump in processing load.

England's larger point concerns tradeoffs. Windows buyers have long had to choose between endurance and speed, or between portability and gaming performance, and he argues the X9-class silicon in this machine removes that choice. On a laptop already feeding two OLED displays, that is the specific result behind the score.

Apple $AAPL's AirPods Max 2 earned four and a half stars from Tom's Guide senior reviews writer Erin Bashford, who rated the sound strong enough to outweigh the bulk of the metal build. Listings run from $488 to $769.99 depending on retailer, color and bundle.

The second generation keeps the all-metal headband and anodized aluminum ear cups of the original. Bashford's review concedes the trade-off that comes with them: these are heavy headphones by over-ear standards, and the metal is the reason. Rivals at this price generally use plastic housings and a padded plastic band, which cuts weight but gives up the finish Apple is after.

On sound, Bashford found detail holding up across the frequency range, an expressive midrange and a low end she judged warm and controlled rather than exaggerated. That restraint matters at this price, since a bass-heavy tuning tends to expose itself quickly on acoustic and vocal-led recordings.

Two software features separate these from the first AirPods Max. Live Translation converts spoken conversation into another language through the headphones in real time, which has obvious use for travel and cross-language meetings. Integrated Siri handles calls, playback and questions without reaching for a phone. For anyone already carrying an iPhone, that integration is the strongest argument for choosing these over an equivalent pair from Sony $SONY or Bose.

The price spread is worth a close look before ordering. Tom's Guide's listings ranged from $488 at Amazon $AMZN for a midnight pair bundled with two years of AppleCare+ to $769.99 at HSN for a blue set, with Apple and Target $TGT sitting near $549 in between. Color, retailer and whatever coverage is included all move the number. Stock on specific colors shifts that math too, since the cheapest listing is not always the shade a buyer wants. Comparing current prices across Apple's own store and the major retailers can save several hundred dollars on the same pair of headphones.