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The 5 coolest things we found at IFA 2026
Sep 8, 2026 — 6:04 PM ET
IFA is full of weird and wonderful tech, and every year the trick is separating the genuinely interesting stuff from the wall of white goods and AI-stuffed copycats. We spent the week walking the halls in Berlin at IFA 2026, and these are the five products that made us stop and look a little closer.
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Blurams F20C: A 4K solar camera with no wires and no subscription
The Blurams F20C HelioCam Pro is built around removing the two most annoying parts of owning an outdoor security camera: cabling and monthly fees.
Let’s start with the power. There’s a 12,000mAh battery inside, paired with a detachable 5W solar panel, so once it’s mounted somewhere that gets sun, you shouldn’t need to take it down to charge. It’s also IP66-rated, so it’s designed to withstand outdoor use year-round.
Setup runs through the Blurams app, and the camera uses dual-band Wi-Fi 6 on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. The camera itself shoots 4K Ultra HD, with full-color night vision, two-way audio, and 355 degrees of pan, covering a wide area from a single mounting point.
Blurams calls its continuous recording mode AOV (always-on video), which is designed to keep 24/7 monitoring running while drawing less power than conventional continuous recording. AI detection for people, vehicles, and pets runs on the camera itself rather than in the cloud, and you can draw specific activity zones to reduce unnecessary alerts. Footage lives locally on a microSD card up to 256GB.
The best part is the free lifetime cloud plan for event playback. Buying a camera and then discovering the useful features sit behind a monthly subscription is pretty standard for a security cam, and not doing that is worth real money over a few years. The F20C carries a $149.99 list price, but has been selling for $109.99.
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Mammotion LUBA 4 AWD: A robot mower that finally deals with edges
Robot mowers are already clever, but Mammotion’s pitch with the LUBA 4 AWD series is that the next step isn’t just smarter cutting; it’s understanding how to move around a lawn and leave it looking like a human did.
The company’s slogan for the range is “see more, move smarter, cut closer,” and the hardware backs it up. A Tri-Fusion navigation system combines 360-degree lidar, a four-camera array covering the front, sides, and rear, and NetRTK positioning, so there are no perimeter wires to bury and no separate RTK base station to mount on your roof. Mammotion claims centimeter-level precision, including under dense tree canopies and in low light, which is where many camera-only mowers fall apart.
The more interesting change is how it drives. The LUBA 4 AWD can travel in both directions and steer its front wheels independently, eliminating the constant three-point turns that scuff and compact turf at the end of every pass. Cutting gets an upgrade, too. The 3000F and 6000F models use twin discs and a 440mm (roughly 17-inch) deck with a 25 to 100mm cutting height range, while the flagship 12000F steps up to three discs, a 530mm (roughly 21-inch) deck, and a 25 to 85mm height range. Coverage runs from 0.75 acres (3,000 square meters) on the 3000F, to 1.5 acres on the 6000F, to three acres (12,000 square meters) on the 12000F. All three handle slopes of up to 80%.
But the real differentiator is the edge-cutting attachment that lets the mower trim flush against walls, fences, and garden beds as part of its normal cycle — the job that usually still leaves you outside with a string trimmer.
Anker MindBase: An AI brain for your smart home that doesn’t phone home
Anker made a lot of noise at IFA, but the MindBase is the most ambitious thing the company showed in Berlin. It’s a hub that tries to stop your cameras, robot vacuums, speakers, and sensors from behaving like a dozen unrelated gadgets, and instead runs them as one system.
The part that makes it interesting is where the thinking happens. MindBase runs an on-device language model on a removable AI Core compute card rated at 26 TOPS, so video analysis and automation logic stay in the house. Storage backs that up: 64GB of internal flash plus support for up to 48TB of expandable local storage via 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives, which effectively makes it a NAS for your home footage. There’s no monthly subscription attached to any of it.
You also don’t need to buy into Anker wholesale. MindBase works as a standalone Matter 1.5 hub and plays with Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Home Assistant, alongside nearly 100 of Anker’s own devices across security, energy, cleaning, and audio. On the camera side, it handles up to 16 wireless cameras plus four more over PoE with an external switch.
Anker hasn’t announced pricing or a release date yet, which is the one frustrating thing about it. Whether it’s affordable is the whole question, but a local-first hub with real storage and no subscription is exactly what this category has been missing.
Acer Project DualPlay Mini: A handheld-laptop concept we want to be real
The Acer Project DualPlay Mini looks like a conventional 8-inch gaming handheld with all the controls you’d expect, until you flip and swivel the display to reveal a backlit keyboard underneath. The point is genre flexibility: play a first-person shooter or a strategy game with keyboard and mouse, flip it back for controller-friendly titles, or plug it into an external display and use it as a very small productivity machine.
Acer isn’t giving out full specs; we do know that it’s Intel-powered — Acer’s product page references Intel Arc G3 Extreme graphics — but there’s no confirmed processor, display resolution, or weight. What the company did confirm is dual-fan cooling, including its metal AeroBlade fans, which Acer says move up to 10% more air than plastic blades. There’s also a neat detail on the back: Morse code that translates to “Acer 50 since 1976,” marking the company’s 50th anniversary.
Sadly, this is just a concept device, and Acer has made no commitment to shipping it. But the handheld market has settled into a lot of very similar 8-inch rectangles, and this is the first one in a while that solves a real problem. Acer, please build it.
Homey Portal: A smart home controller that gets your phone out of the loop
Here’s the thing nobody admits about smart homes: they’re often slower than the dumb version. The Homey Portal wants to be the fix to all that.
It’s a little 2.8-inch touchscreen that you can stick on your wall or leave sitting on your desk, and it has a physical ring around the outside that you twist to control different things around your home. Tap your Philips Hue lights on and off, twist to adjust brightness, control the color, or use it with music (the display shows the cover art of whatever is playing, which is a nice touch).
Because it’s all about the smart home, you can also control your heating and see how much energy the room is using. It supports Homey Flows, so you could have your doorbell automatically bring up the live camera feed and unlock the door if you want.
The clever bit is that you assign a Portal to each room. One in the living room, another in the kitchen, and anyone can use them without needing your phone or the Homey app.
If you’re wondering about the price, it’s €249 for the first batch, and anything sold after that will be €299. Homey hasn’t confirmed US pricing yet, so treat the rough conversions as a guide rather than a sticker. Shipping is expected before the end of 2026.