The 25 Best Gadgets of the Past 25 Years

Technology has evolved immensely over the past 25 years. A number of landmark gadgets have come and gone since 1988—each one revolutionary in its own way—altering our personal lifestyle for the better as we continue to age. Mobiles became smart. PCs transformed into portable minicomputers we’ve come to know as tablets. Headphones grew into fashionably loud (literally) accessories. And gaming consoles morphed into multimedia machines. These are the many devices we've revered for the past quarter century and continue to treasure. We’re talking products that revolutionized and laid the foundation for today’s tech scene. So we welcome you to join us on this trip through memory lane as we crown the 25 Best Gadgets of the Past 25 Years.

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Year: 2004

Logitech became the first company to perfect the concept of a universal remote with its web-programmable channel changer. The Harmony 688 featured a DVR-esque button layout that simplified multimedia playback, where the additions of fully backlit keys and an LCD screen made it a joy to toy with during football Sundays. To put it bluntly, your home theater was completely naked without it or any of its successors.

Year: 2011

Premium performance and high-tech functionality housed in a retro-savvy design, the X100 proved to be an all-around stunner. Marveling shots have been captured through the fixed 35mm lens and its hybrid viewfinder has lived up to the hype by offering shutterbugs an option of switching between the optical and electronic viewfinders through the same viewing port. It’s a bold shooter that rewarded photogs with phenomenal landscaping and portrait shots.

Year: 1999

The first commercially successful optical mouse forever changed the way we maneuvered through the Windows OS. Ditching the traditional trackball for an optical sensor, the Intellimouse Explorer made for a much smoother and precise navigation experience, while allowing for faster page scrolling via the scroll wheel. Beautifully designed, the curved ergonomics of the device made it a pleasure to hold.

Year: 1996

With over 1 million units sold in its first 18 months on the market, the Pilot 1000 was the device that ushered in the PDA regime during the late '90s. It was the first of its kind to sync with Macintosh and Windows platforms, plus supported great handwriting touch recognition, the ability to store 750 addresses, and operated for several weeks on just two AAA batteries. Thank Palm for paving the road for today’s smartphone conglomerate.

Year: 2000

If it weren’t for Garmin’s global positioning system, you’d still be lost somewhere in nowhere Oklahoma. After meeting military regulations, the company’s first commercial GPS soon became a fixture for nearly every vehicle in America and across the globe. Its capability of navigating and providing vocal directions was unheard of for its time. Not to mention it killed the entire notion of using a traditional map when traveling on the road.

Year: 1996

IBM pushed the boundaries of laptop engineering when it created the ThinkPad 701C. The machine was spoiled with innovative facets that included a near-indestructible chassis, radical full-sized “butterfly keyboard,” and centered joystick pointer, which puts most of today’s trackpads to shame in terms of user navigation. Subnotebooks would never be the same.

Year: 1999

Sporting an affluent build and wide range of custom features, along with a 2.7 MP image sensor that snapped exceptional visuals, Nikon had photographers across the globe thirsty for its $5,580 camera. The D1's talent for capturing JPEG shots was considered groundbreaking at the time and set the standard for the digital SLR market heading into the millennium.

Year: 2002

When T-Mobile launched the originally tagged Danger Hiptop, the demand for the handheld blew up faster than Kim K’s belly during her first trimester. A special cameo appearance in Fabolous’ “It’s My Party” video had the hood dropping the popular Nextel PPT phones in exchange for the slideout-keyboard cellular. The Sidekick flaunted features unseen on a mobile in 2002 such as instant messaging, real-time email, and web surfing. Can't forget its radical swivel screen and keyboard design as well. Who would have known the man behind Google’s Android OS, Andy Rubin, would go on to become the brainchild behind it. Kudos, Andy!

Year: 1998

The all-in-one PC would not be what it is today without the iMac G3. Apple’s underappreciated desktop served as a gateway to our favorite operating system, Mac OS X, and became a pop culture staple amongst diehard Apple conformists and the media. PC manufacturers like Alienware, Dell, and HP were clearly influenced by the G3’s ultra-modern design and it goes without saying that it stood out as the best ‘90s personal computer. In fact, its popularity was so immense at the time that even the government blew the lid on it two months before launch.

Year: 2004

Motorola can lay claim to turning the cellular phone into a fashion accessory with the RAZR series. Enclosed in a remarkably thin aluminum chassis, the ultraslim device was a simple call-and-text phone that personified the two biggest necessities we sought in a mobile: form and function. Everyone from the Average Joe to your favorite A-lister traded in their BlackBerry or Sidekick for a V3, succumbing to its gorgeous look and insane $500 value. Over $100 million devices sold worldwide. Numbers don’t lie, homie!

Year: 2008

Beats By Dre did for headphones what Apple practically did for laptops and smartphones. When legendary producer Dr. Dre and Interscope kingpin Jimmy Iovine linked up with Monster capo Noel Lee, the trio went on to dominate the headphone industry by creating a pair of bass-blasting sound cans that not only complimented every style of fashionable garb, but packed the studio sound quality to back it up. These days, your favorite actor, athlete, or MC is often spotted with a pair of BBDs on their neck.

Year: 2012

When we look back another 25 years down the line and the word Android comes up in coversation, guarantee the first thing that comes out of your mouth is Samsung's third-gen smartphone. The Galaxy S III accomplished what no other Google-operated phone could during its run: snatch a notable chunk of Apple’s mobile profit margin. It was the first smartphone that utilized NFC technology for something other than Google Wallet, constituting the trademark method of sharing media files by tapping two phones together. Great call quality, phenomenal benchmarks, and one of the sharpest display’s ever pushed it to become the biggest selling Android phone of all time.

Year: 2006

Take everything we loved about the first-generation MacBook, coalesce it with an alluring brushed-aluminum chest, magnifying display, and monstrous specs—you have the most wanted laptop of the past generation. The massive increase in power and performance solidified its reign as the top portable PC for most of the millennium and helped pave the way for Apple’s recently successful MacBook Air line, which as you know has become a trendsetter for the ultrabook scene. Still worth the $1,500+ in coin.

Year: 2006

Everyone has their own experience with the BlackBerry brand, all memorable at most. However, many attribute the 8700 as the model that transformed the Canadian telecommunications staple into a mobile force. A dynamic OS paired with a reliable navigating mechanism ala scroll wheel, along with a sharp color screen and the best QWERTY keyboard on the block can attest to the resolute claim. Throw in RIM’s unrivaled enterprise software and of course, BlackBerry Messenger, the 8700 can arguably go down as the greatest BlackBerry ever.

Year: 1989

After dominating the home console market with the NES, the Big N set out to revolutionize the portable gaming landscape. And it did just that with the original Game Boy. Nintendo had everyone from children to grandparents yearning for its 8-bit handheld throughout the 90s. Titles like Tetris, Super Mario Land, Metroid II, and several NES ports made everyone forget about those Tiger Electronics game devices. It was the first successful portable gaming system and with that came the expansion of the GB brand, which has flourished throughout the past 20 years thanks to the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS.

Year: 2006

Bose has garnered a reputation for making stellar music systems over the past 50 years. Then the American audio-engineering specialists tuned its hearing to the headphone game and launched its universally acclaimed noise cancellers—combining its newest active noise-cancelling technology with patented passive noise cancelling to create the ultimate ambient sound killer. Memory foam integration improved the former to enhance audio quality and provided a pleasingly snug fit on the ears during long listening periods. Pretty obvious why it’s still considered the ideal flight and office gadget.

Year: 2001

As tape and CD players became obsolete, MP3 players were in line to become the next big thing in portable media technology. The only problem was super giants like Sony failed to capitalize on the sensation due to limited (and overpriced) hardware. Apple took the bull by the horns and welcomed its own digital music player to the market. The iPod should be hailed as the device most responsible for resurrecting the tech giant and shape-shifting the music industry through the installment of Apple's game-changing digital media service: iTunes. And so the i-Revolution began…

Year: 1999

Programming VCRs just to record the latest episode of Seinfeld became a huge nuisance. The pioneering digital video recorder altered the way we viewed television by granting owners the luxury of recording shows onto a hard drive and revisiting them at any time. Need we say more?

Year: 1995

Before the days of MP3 players, the iPod, and Spotify, we relied on compact discs and the Sony Discman to get us through those boring days at the office or at school. And when it came to the ‘90s, you weren't considered relevant without a D Series player attached to the hip. The culmination of Mega Bass and AVLS (Automatic Volume Limiter System) technology, plus anti-shock protection for skip-free playback results made for trailblazing attributes that elevated Sony to become the top electronics brand of the decade. Well, that and the PlayStation.

Year: 2000

Whether it was music, spreadsheets, or x-rated content, the flash drive has served as the optimum gateway to share and transfer personal data onto a personal computer at quicker speeds. When the USB was first introduced in the mid-90s, it was foreseen as the wave of the future. It proved to be much bigger. Its official coming out party came in 2000 when Trek Technology pushed its own line of flash memory devices, turning floppy discs into artifacts and sending the format directly to the tech hall of fame. MicroSD cards and NFC technology would soon follow.

Year: 2000

The PS2 was the system that made gaming mainstream and placed Sony atop of the console throne for nearly an entire decade. On top of being the biggest selling console of all time with over $150 million units sold, it accomplished a number of other feats, such as being the first gaming machine to push a heavy online presence via broadband connection and promoting DVD playback. With a massive catalog of over 3,800 titles spearheaded by franchises like Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo and Final Fantasy, Sony obliterated the competition--and our wallets.

Year: 2007

When the e-reader war commenced, no one had Amazon coming out the victor. Little did we know, the e-commerece business would go on to give us one of the most addictive devices of the millennium in the Kindle. Sluggish performance and a flawed design were entirely overlooked, primarily because of its ability to replace the print medium with electronic readings. Like the iPad, each iteration has become the next big thing.

Year: 2010

Speaking of which. Steve Jobs once described Apple’s groundbreaking innovation as "holding the Internet in your hand." And as always, dude lived up to his word. The iPad stands out as the most successful and revered gadget to date, surpassing all expectations and sales figures with every next-gen model introduced. Its popularity and market share scream in loud volume. If you can name another gadget to come along over the past three years to change the tech spectrum for the better, we’re all ears.

Year: 1996

We crowned it the best gadget of the ‘90s and with great reason. The StarTAC redefined the mobile scene by doing away with the brick-sized device we all remembered as the Zack Morris phone and introducing a compact form factor that, simply put, set the standard for yesteryear’s clamshell cellular and today’s smartphone. Not too mention it was also the first mobile to introduce vibrating ring.

Year: 2007

Hate it or love it, the iPhone is the one gadget that will forever remain synonymous with this generation. It was the device that turned Apple haters into believers and created the blueprint for the modern-day smartphone. From its superior ecosystem to its visionary design, the phone bridged the gap between a portable computer and mobile--flawlessly at that. CEO Steve Jobs said it best when announcing the product at MacWorld 2007: “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.” Needless to say, it hit the "Grand Slam" Jobs predicted.