Choosing the most important technological product of the last 30 years is no easy task: does the iPhone deserve that recognition? Nintendo Switch? Apple Vision Pro? Okay, maybe not the last one. But that’s the task T3 set itself for its 30th anniversary award – and after much deliberation, it crowned the Apple iPod as the ultimate winner.
The iPod – launched in 2001 – was considered the biggest product of the T3’s lifetime, reflecting its popularity, its longevity and ultimately its game-changing nature.
“The iPod was more than just a product, it revolutionized the entire music industry,” says Mat Gallagher, T3’s editor-in-chief.
“What started with 1,000 songs in your pocket introduced the world to iTunes and paying for digital music. Although the iPhone ultimately made the iPod redundant, without the iPod the iPhone would not have existed.”
Launched in 1996 and owned by TechRadar’s publisher Future, T3 also honored two giants of the past 30 years with special anniversary awards: Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, was named British Icon, while outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook was named Person of the Year.
The awards cover a total of 84 categories, across everything from kitchen technology to transport and from smartphones to smartwatches. The prestigious Product of the Year went to the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, while Garmin picked up Brand of the Year and the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra took the Readers’ Choice award.
Meanwhile, Lego won the Smart Play Tech Innovation Award and the Suri 2.0 electric toothbrush won the Sustainability Award. There were also four Design Awards winners, voted on by a panel of industry editors, including TechRadar’s own global editor-in-chief Marc McLaren; The Nothing Headphone (1) and Dyson PencilVac were among those taking honors there.
You can see all 84 winners on T3 now, while the anniversary edition of the magazine is on sale now.
