Best tech products of 2015

Virtual reality remains a solitary experience, but with Samsung's Gear VR it's affordable (if you own the right phone), and it's easier than ever to share.

The Amazon Echo first appeared in 2014, but it wasn't until June of this year that it became generally available for purchase. In the meantime, what started as a wireless speaker with some modest voice-recognition tricks has blossomed into one of the year's most impressive products, thanks to endlessly improving software and a ton of new smart home and cloud-based features. (We're even experimenting with it in our CNET Smart Home!)

For most people looking to literally take their photos and videos to new heights, this is the best way to spend your $1,000.

The ready-to-fly quadcopter for professionals, the Inspire 1 may have come out last year, but it reached its full potential in 2015 with the addition of new, interchangeable lens camera systems and powerful autonomous flight features.

Thanks to its low cost and ease of use, the da Vinci Jr. is an excellent entry point to 3D printing -- and our favorite DIY manufacturing unit of the year.

Who needs an iPad Pro? Belkin's QODE Ultimate Pro Keyboard Case turns your iPad Air 2 into a near-laptop, and offers sturdy, lightweight protection to boot. It's a CNET Editors' Choice, and one of our favorite accessories of the year.

This Kenmore makes induction cooking more affordable while still producing a range that covers the cooking basics well.

It costs as much as a PS4 or Xbox One, but the Oxo Barista Brain is worth it. It's our favorite coffee brewer of the year.

Anova's sturdy, dependable immersion circulator offers smart sous vide cooking at a great price.

If you can live without stainless steel, the Kenmore 72482 offers high-end performance, features and storage capacity at a mid-range price.

Samsung's Chef Collection fridge is a high-end kitchen centerpiece (monolith) with an attractive build and enough features to compete against designer fridges that cost thousands more.

LG's biggest bottom freezer is filled with user-friendly features, and offers the best fridge performance we've found for less than $2,000.

JBL's great-sounding Flip 3 is a serious contender for the best wireless speaker you can buy for under $100, £100 or AU$150.

The Bose SoundLink Mini II is a superb sequel, adding a charging dock and standard USB port to an already stellar wireless speaker.

Ultimate Ears delivered three great fully waterproof Bluetooth speakers in 2015: the big UE Megaboom, the $100 UE Roll, and the UE Boom 2 shown here. All of them sit near the top of the wireless speaker heap in terms of sound quality and features.

As a Bluetooth speaker that's not battery powered, the Fluance Fi50 at first appears to be an odd duck. But it puts AC power to good use, delivering best-in-class sound quality.

Sonos maintains its lead in multiroom wireless audio, delivering the company's best-sounding speakers to date with the redesigned Play:5.

Our favorite budget receiver, the RX-V479 offers enough power for most home theater setups while adding in great sound quality and multiroom music too.

In addition to a full roster of wireless features for 2015 (including AirPlay, Bluetooth and Spotify Connect), the Marantz NR1506 is one of the only AV receivers with a slick half-height design.

Legendary designer Andrew Jones moved from Pioneer to ELAC, and among his first products are the Debut B6s. At $280, £299 per pair, these sumptuous bookshelf speakers are an insane value, and an enthusiastic CNET Editors' Choice.

Dolby Atmos is the next-generation of surround sound, and the Pioneer SPEBS73-LR speakers are the most affordable way to jump in.

If we could buy just one sound bar this year, it would've been the LG Music Flow LAS751M.

It costs $35, £30, AU$49 and it's not much bigger than a silver dollar. But the Google Chromecast Audio turns nearly any old boombox, stereo or PC speaker into a poor man's Sonos, bringing wireless audio to the masses.

Dedicated portable music players are a tough sell in an iPhone age, but for those of us who appreciate better-than-MP3, real high-resolution music, the Cowon Plenue 1 is the top choice.

The X1000V can easily go lens-to-lens with GoPro's Hero4 Black. In fact, it has features GoPro's cameras simply don't offer including built-in GPS and digital image stabilization.

A month ago, the Session would not have made it onto this list. But since then, GoPro cut the price of its smallest camera to only $200 (£160, AU$300), making it a pretty sweet deal.

The Bandit solves the one problem most action-cam users have: What do you do with the video once you've stopped recording? Using a team of sensors to tag the best moments of your videos, when paired with a phone or tablet, the camera can then turn those clips into a shareable highlight reel and all it takes is a shake of your device to do it.

Not only is it the first use of an APS-C-size backside-illuminated sensor, but the Samsung NX1 is also one of the fastest mirrorless cameras we've ever tested.

In addition to being a great all-around compact, Sony crams a lot of technology into this tiny RX100 IV, including 4K and high-frame-rate (slow-motion) video.

With great performance and image-quality befitting its class -- a dSLR for folks photographing fast-moving subjects -- the 7D Mark II improves significantly over its excellent predecessor.

This Sony mirrorless uses the world's first backside-illuminated full-frame sensor, and it delivers terrific photo and video quality in its relatively compact package.

Focal delivers an in-ear headphone with audiophile chops, but at a more affordable price.

You may know Plantronics for its call-center headsets or monaural Bluetooth models. But the BackBeat Sense put the company on the map for stereo Bluetooth headphones -- a great-sounding wireless headphone at a good price.

The SoundTrue Ultras are both the best-sounding and most comfortable Bose in-ear headphones to date.

The Sony MDR-1A was, arguably, the best overall headphone of 2015.

The V-Moda Crossfade Wireless combines sound quality and design flair in a winning wireless headphone.

We were never Skullcandy fans -- until now. The Grind was one of the best-sounding low-priced headphones of 2015.

The Audio Technica ATH-MSR7 headphones sound so good, they can sometimes actually reveal flaws in recorded material.

Bose ups the ante on wireless headphone sound quality with its SoundLink Around-Ear Wireless Headphones II. The only thing missing is noise-cancellation.

A full desktop PC that's a bit bigger than a coffee cup? That's exactly what Acer's Revo One is -- and it doesn't charge a premium for its stealthy design, either.

The MacBook finally got a redesign in 2015. It's gorgeous -- and expensive -- but the new keyboard takes some getting used to (it eventually won us over).

Dell came out the gate strong in 2015 with the XPS 13, a beautiful laptop with a no-bezel screen.

Before the iPhone's 3D Touch, Apple added Force Touch to its MacBook Pro line, adding a nice upgrade to what was already its no-compromise 13-inch laptop.

The Yoga 900 fixes nearly every problem we had with 2014's Yoga 3 Pro, delivering one of the year's best Windows laptops.

Microsoft's first-ever laptop has a unique detachable screen and a discrete GPU option. It's not quite as refined as the Surface Pro 4, but it's an impressive first-gen product that should be on the shopping list of anyone shopping for a high-end laptop.

The HP Spectre x360 was one of the year's best Windows 2-in-1 laptops, with its giant touchpad, and all-day battery life setting it apart from the competition.HP Spectre x360

Delivering some of the smoothest, fastest gameplay we've seen this year from a laptop thanks to Nvidia's G-Sync tech, there's very little to dislike about the updated G751J. Well, maybe its price, but you get what you pay for.

The RT-AC88U has everything you'd ask for from a home Wi-Fi router and the fact that it has an 8 Gigabit LAN port is an excellent extra.

Windows 10 is the best version of the operating system yet, fixing many of its predecessor's flaws while attempting, mostly successfully, to bridge the gap between traditional PCs and finger-friendly tablets.

A triumph of specs, performance and price, the new Nexus 6P has the charm and chops of costlier phones.

A winning combination of style, comfort and waterproofing makes Moto's affordable handset one of our favorite budget choices this year.

Lesser-known Alcatel exceeds expectations, delivering a big-screen phone that's one of 2015's best budget options.

Good small-screen phones are hard to find, which puts the sensible, dependable and water-resistant Z5 Compact in a class by itself.

If you can get your hands on this China-only phone, you'll find an ultra-affordable Android powerhouse that can stand up to the greats.

We don't love losing the microSD card slot this year, but if you're going to splash out on one Android phone, this gleaming metal device earns its place at the top. It was one of only two phones to earn a CNET Editors' Choice in 2015.

Curve alert! Samsung's audacity to bend both sides of the Edge's display makes it the S6 model we drool over most, if only for the sheer ostentatiousness of its sumptuous, sometimes impractical design. And for once, no one will confuse your phone with an iPhone.

Android power users, look no further than this sleek, large-screen take on the Galaxy S6 -- with a stylus that unlocks advanced tools.

Apple delivered a series of under-the-hood updates in 2015, including Live Photos, 3D Touch and a faster processor. The changes are subtle, but it's still the go-to smartphone, earning a CNET Editors' Choice.

Apple's second-gen phablet, the 6S Plus (left), includes all of the 6S's features, plus 4K video capture with optical image stabilization and better battery life. The existence of this big, beautiful iOS device is just one more reason why iPad sales are on the decline.

The Droid Turbo 2 is the only smartphone with a screen guaranteed not to crack when dropped -- plus it's a great all-around Android pick with a speedy processor and solid battery life.

A complete security system packed into a small DIY camera frame with free cloud storage, customizable alerts and an incredibly intuitive app.

Neato's newest robot vacuum is our top-scoring performer, and the well-designed app finally brings remote control into the picture. It earned a CNET Editors' Choice in November.

Cree's (US-only) $15 smart bulb offers great light quality and works with almost every platform for the connected home. It earned a CNET Editors' Choice in March.

They aren't cheap, but BeOn's clever smart bulbs offer unique security-minded features you won't find anywhere else.

The Samsung Portable SSD T1 puts backup flash storage in a tiny, superfast package.

WD's latest My Passport Ultra is the backup drive that you've been looking for. It's fast, capacious and includes backup software that works well. And did we mention it gives you 2TB of space for about $85, £75, AU$180?

E-readers may be a dying breed, but the updated Kindle Paperwhite makes a strong case for leaving your tablet behind. The new model uses the screen from its upscale Voyage sibling, but sells for almost half the price.

The 8-inch Asus ZenPad S delivered the best bang for your Android tablet buck in 2015.

Microsoft's fourth-gen Surface approaches the pinnacle of tablet PC perfection, thanks to some subtle design tweaks, an improved keyboard attachment (sold separately) -- and the addition of Windows 10.

Apple's biggest, priciest tablet ever is a dream tool for digital creative pros -- just be sure to pick up the Apple Pencil stylus to use it to its full potential.

Google's Pixel C is the best -- and fastest -- Android tablet we've tested to date, and the optional keyboard attachment makes it a capable laptop replacement.

Our favorite Smart TV system runs circles around the others, and it's especially nice not having to connect a box to a secondary TVs.

Dirt-cheap pricing meets very good picture quality to create the best TV value we've reviewed this year.

The highest-rated TV overall in 2015, Vizio's local-dimming equipped, 4K M series outperforms others that cost hundreds more.

The best-performing television we've ever tested, LG's flat 4K OLED leaves LCD and even plasma in its perfectly black dust.

Not a DVR, but a unified entertainment system, the Bolt combines a video recorder (for cable and over-the-air antenna broadcasts) with a streaming-media box and the capability to stream to mobile devices in or out of your home. But, frankly, it was the one-button commercial skip that sealed the deal.

For Apple fans with big investments in iTunes TV shows and movies, not to mention games, the long-awaited Apple TV delivers. The touchpad remote and the elegant new on-screen interface justify the price, too.

The best combination of apps, search, performance and value, the Roku 2 is our highest-recommended streamer ever -- and, of course, a CNET Editors' Choice.

The most capable Roku yet serves up more 4K video than any other device, making it the perfect match for your shiny new 4K TV.

Jawbone tweaked the design of its Up2 fitness tracker in September, delivering a more comfortable and reliable design. That upgrade, paired with Jawbone's coaching-centric app, made the Up2 one of our favorite fitness trackers of year.

Fitbit is the top wearable tech band, and the Charge HR is the Goldilocks product in its lineup, delivering step counting, sleep tracking and heart-rate tracking in one affordable device.

The Garmin Forerunner 225 was the best GPS running watch we tested in 2015.

The one real bright spot in an otherwise disappointing year for smartwatches was the Pebble Time Steel, delivering an always-on display with week-long battery life.