Hey there! Welcome to What Tom's Guide Tested. This is part of a regular column where our writers round up the winners and losers from that week's product reviews. All of these products have passed through the scrutinizing gaze of our expert reviewers, and have been judged. Some are worth buying, others maybe not...
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It's been another diverse week in the Tom's Guide testing lab. Over the past few days, we've given our verdict on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, been hands on with one of the best mirrorless cameras you can buy, used an AI recording device to transcribe our editorial meetings, and scratched our heads about a coffee doser that looks a bit like the Starship Enterprise.
I'm Pete, the reviews editor here at Tom's Guide. Me and my team of expert testers review tech day in, day out, from coffee gear through to mechanical keyboards. We put technology through its paces in our reviews process to help you figure out what's worth the money, and what isn't.
Read on for a snapshot of what we tested this week, and if you see anything that tickles your fancy, I've left links to our full product reviews throughout the article.
What Tom's Guide tested this week: Review highlights
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra ★★★★½
I've been reading a lot of negative reviews about the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It's boring. It's too much like the iPhone. But after testing this flagship over the last week I actually think it's one of the best Android phones ever.
In fact, this handset is so good I'm tempted to ditch my iPhone.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra's AI features are truly impressive. You can perform cross-app actions using just your voice. For example, I could press the side button and then ask Google Gemini to look up the date and time of the Oscars, add it to my calendar and text the info to my brother. The S25 Ultra did all of the work.
Other AI features I like on the S25 Ultra include AI Select, which lets you perform actions after selecting content on screen. You can also ask Gemini to summarize entire YouTube videos. The new Now Brief feature gives you a quick summary of your day, while Now Bar gives you live alerts on your lock screen.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra is a great flagship in other ways. The new 50MP ultrawide camera is sharper than the S24 Ultra, and the whole camera system outperformed the iPhone 16 Pro Max in my side-by-side tests.
Other highlights including very long battery life, a larger 6.9-inch display and snappy Snapdragon 8 Elite performance. But there's some trade-offs, too, such as no Bluetooth in the S Pen.
By Mark Spoonauer — Read Marks’s full Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review
Sony A1 II ★★★★½
I’ve been testing a few cameras this week and the highlight, for me, has been the Sony A1 II. This flagship mirrorless camera is so loveable that all I want to do is keep photographing birds and wildlife with it — it’s certainly one of the best cameras no doubt about it. I’ve captured stunning photos of birds in flight with its 50.1MP sensor, and recorded gorgeous 4K and 8K footage. But its autofocus system is the real star here.
Why, you ask? Because it takes the guesswork out of the equation, thanks to the AF system being stupidly intelligent (oxymoron, I know). You could be stepping up to this camera from a beginner-friendly camera and you’d get used to shooting with it in less than an hour. Its auto subject-detection mode is capable of tracking practically anything — breathing or inanimate objects — and at fast speeds too. I’m talking about 30fps burst shooting which, in conjunction with the 8.5-stop in-body image stabilization, captures sharp photos. Combine the camera with the new FE 28-70mm F2 GM lens and sports and wildlife photographers have got kit that’s hard to beat.
And if, like me, you live in the rainy U.K. and are worried about taking this very expensive camera out with you, fret not. Both the camera and the lens are weather-sealed so I stood in heavy rain to test this out. Both were completely unscathed while I was drenched.
This is by far the most reliable camera I’ve tested so far. As someone who has loved animals and birds since a very young age, I’ve had so much fun using the A1 II. Awarding it 4.5* was a no-brainer.
By Nikita Achanta — Read Nikita’s full Sony A1 II review
Plaud Note AI voice recorder ★★★★
I'm not going to lie: I wasn't anticipating loving the Plaud Note at all, let alone loving it as much as I did. This little AI voice recorder and transcription device is pretty unassuming to look at, and as a journalist, I've been recording and transcribing in other ways for years.
Oh how wrong I was to overlook the Note. If you're a journalist, professional or anyone who needs to record and transcribe lots of audio/text, this is definitely the tool for you. Interviews, meetings, even phone calls: the Plaud Note records them clearly and uses GPT-4o to transcribe and format everything exactly how you want.
As such, the Plaud Note takes a previous disparate process (normally you would record on one device then use a separate online transcription service) and bundles it all into one ecosystem. Its AI features are extremely powerful too — I created a custom prompt to turn my vocal dictations into formatted draft reviews, and the Note did it all no sweat. It also comes with a super handy app (which does all the AI transcription and formatting) that offers lots of customization and provides plenty of helpful tips for novices to AI, like me.
The downsides? Well, it is a 4-star review and not a 5-star after all, so there are a couple. The power of the Plaud Note all lies within its app, where the AI processing happens. That means this device is completely dependent on its smartphone app for the majority of its purpose. If the app is no longer, you're only left with a voice recorder. I'm always skeptical about products that rely so heavily on an app. The charging system is also proprietary, so better not lose your cable!
Aside from those issues though, right now while the app is going strong, the Plaud Note is a fantastic tool for professionals, and an easy recommendation from me.
By Pete Wolinski — Read Pete's full Plaud Note review
Acaia Orion ★★★½
The Acaia Orion is one of the most unusual devices I’ve ever used. The Orion is effectively a coffee bean doser, which means it dispenses an agreed weight of coffee beans into a container. That’s it. You can set it to dispense 4g all the way up to 3000g (but its hopper only holds 500g, so you would need to pour more coffee in as it augers). But yes, genuinely, that’s it. It doesn’t do anything else.
The price? Well, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering what would be an appropriate price for this product. The Orion looks a treat. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this on the set of the best high-budget sci-fi movie. It’s well-made, too, with phenomenal, stunning craftsmanship. It’s immediately obvious that the Orion has been made with care.
But the Orion isn’t a grinder — Acaia have a $1,600 Orbit grinder for that. You put whole coffee beans in the hopper, and get whole coffee beans out of the auger. The Orion does not change the beans whatsoever.
I hope you’re sitting down — the Orion costs a mega $1,050. For what is effectively a mechanical dispenser. Don’t get me wrong, the Orion performs its one job really well. It does dispense an accurate amount of coffee every time, and does it really quickly. But who is this for? Why would professional baristas waste time or space to dose coffee using the Orion, only to then pour those beans into a grinder. Home baristas might have time and space, but not as much expendable income as cafes. The only situation I can see the Orion being super helpful in is a roastery, for workers packing wholebean bags of a specific weight to ship to customers. However, there are surely bigger commercial gadgets for that.
That’s why I gave the Orion 3½ stars in my review. Yes, it works really well. Yes, it’s beautifully made. Yes, it looks marvelous on my desk. However, there’s no obvious use case for the Orion, especially not at this price point.
By Erin Bashford — read Erin’s full Acaia Orion review
Fellow Tally Pro ★★★½
As a vocal lover of the coffee scale, I was super excited to get my hands on the Fellow Tally Pro. Fellow makes some of the best coffee gear around, such as the fantastic Fellow Stagg EKG gooseneck kettle. While Fellow’s stuff is often the best around, it doesn’t ever come cheap. The Tally Pro scale is a whopping $185.
Yes, I’ve reviewed scales pricier than that (the $250 Acaia Lunar and the $220 Acaia Pearl S), but the Tally Pro feels needlessly expensive. For the $220 Acaia Pearl S, users get access to a range of apps, including an app that literally Bluetooths coffee recipes to the scale, which in turn teaches you said recipes. The Tally Pro doesn’t offer that.
That’s not to say the Tally Pro is a bad scale, or even a mediocre one. It’s a fantastic scale with high accuracy, high usability, and a fantastic BrewAssist mode for pour-overs. I can’t recommend another scale more than this one for Chemex, V60, or Kalita Wave aficionados.
So why’s it not a 4* review, then? Because the Tally Pro doesn’t do enough to justify its $185 price tag. Sure, it’s a stunning scale with high usability. Sure, it performs better than most other scales I’ve used. But when something costs this much, basic usability is kind of meh. The Tally Pro needs to do something else to justify the cost. Perhaps a coffee-tracking app, like Acaia offers, or even a flow-rate monitor.
By Erin Bashford — read Erin’s full Fellow Tally Pro review
Fender x Teufel Rockster Cross ★★★½
Now that's a handsome Bluetooth speaker, am I right? I am. The Fender x Teufel Rockster Cross is the bigger brother of the Fender x Teufel Rockster Go 2, which we awarded best looking in our best Bluetooth speakers roundup. And both speakers absolutely nail the styling.
Personally, I feel like the Rockster Cross is the better looking of the two. The circular front design of the Go 2 is, as I point out in my review, a bit cutesy and soft-rocky: think Buddy Holly. Whereas the Rockster Cross, styled like the top of an amp stack, is easily more metal: think Ozzy.
I've been using this speaker for a few weeks now to get a really good idea of how it performs. Everywhere I've taken it, it's turned heads and had people asking where they can get one (unfortunately, it isn't available for sale here in Britain).
Our 3.5-star rating is defined as very good, but there are better products out there. And indeed this speaker has some great qualities beyond its attractive looks. Thanks to a 5-inch subwoofer, its bass performance is really impressive, and it puts out a really decent sound — enough to fill a large room for a party. It's built like a tank, too, and functions as a power bank for charging other devices.
The thing is, while there's plenty of bass, the mids and trebles sounded consistently muted in testing, especially on busier tracks. There's no companion app and EQ either, for adjusting levels — Teufel simply recommends rocking the speaker backwards if you want better sound in the mids and highs.
As such, while this is a decent speaker, it's difficult to recommend over other solid performers in the mid-range, namely the JBL Xtreme 4, which packs plenty of bass, better waterproofing and battery life, plus a custom EQ, for not a lot more money.
By Pete Wolinski — read Pete's full Fender x Teufel Rockster Cross review
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