Tom's Guide Awards 2025: Our favorite AI tools and gadgets

Turning your ideas into reality used to take a significant amount of time and effort, but thanks to AI, that's rapidly changing. While other technologies iterate, AI tools seem to reinvent themselves at an extraordinary pace, and we’ve put them all to the test.

From chatbots on standby to answer every query to image and video generators that can bring your ideas to life and even AI features that unlock brand new capabilities for your existing devices, AI is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Our team of experts has tested and reviewed all of the latest AI tools and AI services for the Tom’s Guide Awards 2025. Below, we highlight our favorite ones from the last 12 months that have completely transformed the way we live and work.

Best AI chatbot

Claude

The market for AI chatbots has changed a lot in recent years. Where ChatGPT once ruled supreme, miles ahead of its competitors, the gap has quickly closed.

GPT-5 is just around the corner, Gemini 2.5 Pro saw huge improvements to Google’s model and Grok 4 is promising to change the world. But, right now Claude is Tom’s Guide’s pick for the best AI chatbot.

It is fast, highly conversational and has a good understanding of context. It has also made major improvements to its coding abilities and is one of the more user-friendly AI chatbots out there.

It lacks in some areas, like having no memory functions and the missing AI image and video generators its competitors are using, but it makes up for that with a strong view on privacy, research and accountability — a welcome change in a market heading in a different direction.

Best AI image generator

ChatGPT

Competitors have come and go, new names have entered the market and big upgrades have been seen. And yet, ChatGPT remains one of the best AI image generators on the market.

This mostly comes down to its pure consistency. Sure, it’s not as exciting or creative as Midjourney, or as detailed as some of the more niche competitors out there. But ChatGPT works with simple prompts and delivers every time.

In other words, ChatGPT is the best AI image generator for the most number of people. It’s the jack of all trades. Hopefully, it will only get better when GPT-5 rolls around in the coming months.

Best AI video generator

Veo 3

Veo 3 delivers stunning, cinematic-quality footage with smooth motion, realistic lighting, dynamic camera work and sound including background noise and dialogue, all from a simple text prompt.

As part of Google’s new Flow suite, Veo 3 integrates seamlessly with Gemini and other creative tools, making it easy to script, generate, and edit videos in one cohesive workflow. As a solo creator or production team, Veo 3 gives users the opportunity to turn their ideas into professional-grade videos in minutes.

Best AI music generator

Riffusion

Riffusion creates original tracks by visualizing sound as spectrograms and generating audio through diffusion models.

Unlike traditional AI music generators, this app lets users experiment with genre, instruments and style in real time to produce music that’s surprisingly coherent and creative. It’s a powerful tool for musicians, content creators or anyone looking to explore sound with the help of cutting-edge AI.

Best AI device

Plaud NotePin

The Plaud NotePin is one of the most capable AI wearables available today. It’s majorly inconspicuous and can be worn as a watch, a necklace, a pin, or a collar clip, making it ideal for professionals, students, journalists, and anyone in between.

The NotePin is effectively an AI-powered dictaphone that not only transcribes spoken words, but also categorizes and formats the content in an infinite variety of ways. It can transcribe alphabetically, in complete sentences, in notes, and countless other options. With the premium Plaud subscription, industry specialists can create a personalized dictionary of complex jargon that the NotePin will learn and transcribe accurately. The NotePin is one of the most versatile and unique AI wearables around.

Best AI phone feature

Gemini Live

Gemini Live is available on just about every phone and it’s also free, making it the best AI phone feature around. It’s the new way of interacting with the AI bot on your phone, seeing that you can have natural conversation with Gemini Live — even if you happen to mess up what you’re saying.

Another layer that adds to the experience is going multimodal by giving Gemini Live access to your phone’s camera, enabling the AI to see what you see. From translating a sign, to more complex tasks like guiding you how to reset a tripped breaker on your circuit box, Gemini Live is a transformative experience that will make you understand the true power of AI on your phone.

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