Best of Tech 2025: Gadgets, books, games, and more
I was much better at keeping note of things I read, watched, and played in 2025, and one unexpected benefit is that it’s far easier to look back and pick out the highlights. It seemed rude not to share, so here’s a roundup of the best things I found this year (and some to you might want to avoid).
Some of the winners are tech-related, and some aren’t. Some were released in 2025, and some are much older. But they’re all things that stood out for me this year - this is a personal blog, after all. Please do get in touch on X or via email if you have your own recommendations, and I’ll check them out.
Best gadget: Amazon Kindle
I already said it in my review, but I can’t believe I didn’t buy a Kindle earlier. After bouncing off an e-reader in the early 2010s, I always preferred paper books and never looked back. I only reconsidered digital books when I started reading chunkier titles that were hard to carry around, and had trouble with lighting on the transatlantic flights I regularly need to take on business.
The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is a rarity in modern tech, in that it’s a focused device that just works. Adding books is easy, it’s softly backlit in the dark, and the battery lasts forever. Single-purpose gadgets are hard to justify in the smartphone era, but the Kindle has certainly proven me wrong on e-readers, and these days I rarely leave home without it.
Best book: Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography of the Apple founder is a party I’m 14 years late to, but definitely one that’s still worth attending. I picked up Steve Jobs in a Kindle sale, having enjoyed the author’s book on Elon Musk. Initially I got bogged down in the chapters about Jobs’ childhood and early life, but once I hit the Apple years it proved difficult to put down and I breezed through.
Steve Jobs sounds both inspirational and terrifying to work with, but from the safe distance the book affords there is much to admire. His obsession with detail and quality - which at once restored Apple to its former place as a tech leader and produced world-changing products - particularly resonates with me, but there are wider lessons in business and negotiation here, too.
A break from tradition
I love Haruki Murakami's novels. The way they contrast fantastical narratives with long passages on mundane, everyday life clicks with me on some level, and I've read just about everything of his available in English. I was thrilled when The City and its Uncertain Walls arrived, but it turned out to be a rare Murakami book I never finished. The problem for me is that there was too much fantasy. With most of the action occurring in a fictional world, the domestic relationships, whiskey, and jazz records that usually keep me hooked were all absent, and I dropped off within the first third.
Best podcast: David Senra on Tim Ferriss
Podcasts are a dangerous game for return on investment. It’s easy to listen for hours and feel like you’re learning something, when it’s just an illusion. Since the summer, my return to traditional notetaking has provided a record of which episodes were the most valuable, and nothing had as many bullet points against it as David Senra’s appearance on The Tim Ferriss Show.
Senra has two podcasts of his own that cover entrepreneurship - Founders and a new self-titled show - but his discussion with Ferris focused more on his own journey to prominence and the lessons he learned from his subjects. Listen for thoughts on finding your life’s mission, what constitutes true learning, and what it means to be an “anti-business billionaire”.
Best game: Death Stranding 2
Any game by Hideo Kojima piques my interest, but I walked away from 2019’s Death Stranding with mixed emotions. It showed flashes of the legendary director’s brilliance, but lacked the pacing of his earlier classics. I began to wonder whether the Konami hierarchy had kept him in check until their ugly 2015 divorce, and an independent studio had let him run away with himself.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach presented an opportunity to refine the formula, and Kojima and team duly delivered. The sequel revolves around a far more relatable and human story. It feels edited and focused in a way its predecessor didn’t, but isn’t afraid to introduce more quirky gameplay elements, such as guitar-like energy weapons and coffin skateboards.
The noise surrounding the game’s launch in June was just as interesting. Kojima flew a group of journalists to his company’s Tokyo offices and took his team and stars on an international trip for the World Strand Tour - both attempts to re-establish live human connection in a disconnected world.
A missed opportunity
Oblivion was a huge part of my teenage years - a rare game where my hours played clicked into triple digits. So imagine my excitement when Bethesda updated the 2006 role-playing classic with refined controls and glorious modern graphics. Unfortunately, said excitement only lasted about an hour. The tutorial dungeons were just as I imagined, but once I exited into the main world, the game was unplayable. The Unreal Engine creaked along at a miserable frame rate, and I spent my time fighting the game itself rather than Cyrodiil's wildlife. To date, no developer patch has done anything to resolve this. Oh, to think what could have been...
Best album: The Human Fear
I’ve followed Franz Ferdinand since their self-titled 2004 debut, but will freely admit that I felt a drop in quality after their first three or four albums. Every release guaranteed at least a couple of great singles, but the records weren’t start-to-finish listens like they were before. I’m happy to report that The Human Fear is a return to form that hasn’t left my rotation all year.
Alex Kapranos and company have rediscovered the infectious blend of indie rock and dance that marked their early style. My favourite tracks are Night Or Day, Cats, and Bar Lonely, but even the more electronic-driven Hooked, which I was initially cooler on, grew on me after a fantastically energetic performance with Master Peace at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in March.