Here are 2025’s six highest rated hardware, enjoying tippy-top review scores—plus six dishonorable mentions

I think it best I let Jacob’s incredible opening paragraph from his review do at least some of the talking here: “Smaller than a reasonably sized dachshund but accessible as a two-sided bread bin: the Fractal Design Terra is a dream to build with.” Granted, your cooling options are a little limited for any builds calling this PC case home, but it’s hard to say no to a desktop tower featuring real wood.

If all you care about is responsiveness, this low-profile, Hall effect gaming keyboard is for you. What earned its place as our pick for the best low-profile gaming keyboard though is its wealth of customisation features, including the truly diabolical option of a 0.01 mm actuation reset point, all accessible through a web-based app rather than yet another bit of bloating software. Add to that Rapid Trigger and an 8,000 Hz polling rate, and it’s not hard to see why we’re impressed—well, blink and you’ll miss it but it’s definitely there.

And here comes the best PCIe 4.0 SSD, which, to the surprise of no one, is another stellar effort from SanDisk. This Gen 4.0 drive demonstrates some of the best in class random 4k read performance, turning in a top speed of 101 MB/s. The sequential speeds are far from half bad either, offering up a sustained read of 7,250 MB/s and a sustained write of 6,900 MB/s too, all with hardly breaking a sweat under load. Make no mistake, this is still a great gaming drive if you can get it at a decent price.

This bit of kit is essentially a capture card stuffed up inside a charging brick—talk about a weird roommate situation. Still, with how easy it is to record or even stream gameplay without a capture card, perhaps this 2-in-1 device design makes sense. Hope certainly seemed to think so, praising its stealthy design and its “full capture setup complete with HDMI passthrough” offering. Alas, there’s only HDMI 1.4 on offer here, but that means you’re still getting 4K footage at 30 fps.

Take a look at this beauty! A fishtank style PC case at a downright affordable price point, it’s hard to say ‘no’ to the Lian Li O11 Vision Compact—though our Zak would wish for a fan or two to be included in this otherwise very reasonable package.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “A review score of 92%? But it’s got holes in it!” Well, you see, those are ‘speed holes’–they make the mouse go faster. Joking and dated Simpsons reference aside, this is an exceedingly lightweight, wired gaming mouse with an asking price that won’t slow you down either.

You wouldn’t necessarily think to use an external SSD as your primary game drive, but the SanDisk Extreme Pro makes a strong case in its defence. This chunky lad offers some of the best random 4k performance we’ve seen from any external drive, and also manages to sustain those tasty USB4 speeds while staying relatively cool too.

Even without overclocking support (owing to this board’s B860 chipset), this mobo is still seriously impressive. Besides support for Thunderbolt 4 and PCIe 5.0 SSDs, you’re also looking at a price tag that should offer change for 200 bucks. Add to that the fact it won’t make your PCIe 5.0 SSD sweat under load unnecessarily, and this motherboard is one seriously cool customer.

Light in the hand, and light for your desktop too, as there’s absolutely no software to drag this speedy little mouse down. That does mean there’s not a whole load to customise, offering up only one onboard profile to play with, but also under the hood is an up to 8,000 Hz polling rate, Corsair custom tactile mechanical switches, and the Corsair Marksman S optical sensor (rated for up to 33,000 DPI and 750 IPS).

Though costing a very pretty penny, this mesh Wi-Fi setup makes a solid case for its price tag with its strong feature set. For a start, the Deco can pump out speedy Wi-Fi 7 connections across your home. The physical device also offers 10 Gbps LAN ports for rapid data transfers too, plus the triple pack claims to offer coverage to the tune of a whopping 8,100 square feet.

If you’re not yet an ergonomic keyboard convert, this split Kinesis board is well up for holding your hand through the process. Though not really geared towards the upper echelons of competitive, esports gaming, the Freestyle remains one of the most comfortable gaming keyboards to use.

The 2025 theme of screens on everything reached its nadir with the Xeneon Edge, an incredibly expensive, though admittedly decent-looking screen, that you can kinda stick on anything. It’s a second screen, but one with such limited utility, and some weird tearing that makes it incredibly hard to recommend to anyone.

A middle of the road misfire from Razer—and worst of all, it’s got a decidedly premium Razer asking price. Though the Joro keyboard is slim and lightweight for portable gaming, the Basilisk mouse commits two pretty unforgivable acts: offering an AI button, and placing that AI button where it can be too easily activated during frantic gaming sessions. The keyboard also offers an AI button, and its scissor switches feel surprisingly sluggish for a gaming-focussed board. All in all, this is a two-for-one package that seems determined to hold you back.

It’s hardly news that RTX 50-series graphics cards too often ask for silly money, but this one really takes the biscuit. Make no mistake, the Vulcan OC is a real try-hard, offering a one-key Overclocking button that makes the GPU huff and puff at 2,835 MHz with a single click—some of the time, anyway. For such a pricey card, that sort of inconsistency is unforgivable.

Trying to be all things to all people rarely ends well. A device that tries to do everything often ends up doing nothing well, and so it comes to pass with the X1 Air, a thick tablet that’s trying to also be a laptop and a gaming handheld, too. While the components inside are excellent (here’s to Lunar Lake) and the screen is a stunner, the device is too flaky and too awkward to justify its price tag.

We’ve dipped past simply mediocre hardware and distinctly into the realm of the underachievers—and this diva is here to greet us. Though this microphone offers good vocal capture close up, it’s kind of a pain to set up and adjust. Its price and sizable footprint hurts it too. Alas, this stage simply isn’t big enough for both of us, darling.

I’m definitely all ears for a mousepad that also acts as a charging station for my wireless mouse. Unfortunately, the Logitech G PowerPlay 2 is a disappointing execution of the concept; this is very much the ill-advised sequel to an interesting first installment. While the limited mouse compatibility may be understandable, the pad itself is thin, flimsy, and kind of on the small side. Here’s hoping the three-quel improves on what came before.