Great gadgets from the world's weirdest technology show

IFA takes place at Messe Berlin, a fairgrounds complex in the Charlottenburg neighborhood on the city's western edge. Keep clicking for some of the most notable announcements from the past few years.

The most amazing thing about this massive laptop from last year's show isn't that it has a 21-inch curved display. It's that it costs $9,000 (about £7,020 or AU$11,405). It also weighs 17 pounds (8 kilograms), it has four speakers and two subwoofers and it needs two power supplies to run. How does it stay cool? Why, with five system fans and eight heatpipes, of course. For a more convention laptop from IFA 2016, they the Lenovo Yoga 910.

There's a lot to like about the Xperia XZ's design and its water-resistant skin will handle a quick swim or a spill of your coffee. In the end, though, we couldn't get too excited about the XZ and we weren't fans of the name. Its camera and battery life can't match those of its Samsung and Google's Pixel rivals and it was quite expensive (original price $687, £540 or AU$999) when it went on sale late last year.

Last year's Gear S3 from is an incredibly feature-rich smartwatch, even if it is woefully short on app support. But we liked the big, bold design with clever spinning bezel interface. 

Shown at IFA 2016, the ComfortLift feature raises the dishwasher's bottom rack to an easy-to-reach height. No more bending over for those bowls! It also runs quietly and has an energy-efficient cycle. The bad news: There are no plans to release it in the US.

The True Zoom snaps on to the back of the Motorola's Moto Z phones and delivers something other phone cameras don't have: optical zoom. Video quality isn't spectacular and the software is annoying, but it has an intelligent design and is easy to use. You can use it on the Moto Z Play, which also debuted at IFA last year.

Like Samsung's Family Hub refrigerator, the InstaView from 2016 has a large (29-inch) touchscreen that allows you to track your groceries and expiration dates. It works with Amazon's digital assistant Alexa and, as an added bonus, if you knock twice the screen turns translucent giving you a view inside.

The feature that immediately separated 2015's Gear S2 from any other high-profile smartwatch before it was the rotating bezel that's used to navigate through menus and apps.

Also in 2015, Sony revealed a phone with a 4K display, the Xperia Z5 Premium. It also has a fingerprint scanner built into the power button, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, and a whopping 23-megapixel camera.

A Samsung star attraction the same year was the UBD-K8500, the word's first ultra-high-definition Blu-ray player. It has four times the resolution and 64 times higher color expression compared with standard Blu-ray and can upscale content to provide UHD resolution for any disc.

The second version of the SmartThings Hub launched at IFA 2105. It added a Bluetooth 4.0 adapter alongside its Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Z-Wave radios, giving you the potential to control even more connected devices.

TVs tend to dominate CES, but they grab a lot of attention at IFA as well. In the past we've seen curved TVs and OLED models, and in 2015 we got a closer look at the LG EF900. It was LG's first TV with a 4K resolution.

Introduced at the 2014 show, the Galaxy Note Edge showed us a wrap-around display on the right side.

Archos's Music Beany in 2014 combined "the benefits of a headphone with the style and comfort of a traditional beany." Translation: It's a woolly hat with headphones in it.

Huawei reached for the sky with the Ascend Mate 7 three years ago. It had a fantastic display, an octa-core processor, a capacious battery and a great price. It's just too bad the software was a confusing mess.

LG's G Watch R at IFA 2014 was a big improvement over the earlier G Watch. It sported a more attractive round face (the G Watch is square) and a superior leather band.

Samsung's Gear 2 and Galaxy Gear hit IFA in 2014 and 2013, respectively. The Gear S built on its predecessor by adding a curved screen and a SIM card for making calls right from the watch.

IFA used to be the stage for Samsung's Galaxy Note line including the Galaxy Note 4 in 2014, the Note 3 (2-13) and the Note 2 (2012). But over the last three years, Samsung held its own Note launch event before IFA began. Just last week it announced, the Note 8.

The PowerBot was big and ahem, powerful, but at $1,000 it's also a lot more expensive than its rivals. It first crawled across the carpet at the 2014 IFA.

Sony pushed out the Z3 at IFA 2014 only a few months after the earlier Z2. It packed a brilliant display, waterproof features and a good camera into a slim and sleek design.

A robot vacuum that cleaned the IFA show floor in 2014 was Dyson's first model to go to market. It has a camera and you can control it with a mobile app.

You might scoff at the idea of an iPad stylus, but it's worth a look if you have a creative bone. Much better than the first version, it's a great, well-priced pressure-sensitive stylus for iPad artistes. It debuted in 2014.

Shown three years ago, the Sony Short Throw Projector turns bathtime into movie night and your fridge door into a family pinboard shared across houses.

Like 2013's QX10, the QX30 from IFA 2014 is an entire camera -- minus a screen -- packed in a cylindrical body. The camera wirelessly connects to your Android or iOS device via Wi-Fi so you can use its screen to see a live view from the camera to frame and review your shots.

The 13-inch Lenovo Yoga 2 (pictured) and 11-inch ThinkPad Yoga from 2013 are the second generation of Toshiba's Yoga laptops, which use hinges that rotate 360 degrees to give you several viewing angles. With both models, you can fold the keyboard behind the screen to prop it up, or fold it completely flat to turn the laptop into a touchscreen tablet.