5 hottest tech reviews of the week: the gorgeous, affordable iPhone 16e and Amazon's epic 21-inch Echo Show

The iPhone 16e has received some much-needed upgrades to go along with its rebrand from the iPhone SE series. Rather than the outdated design of its predecessors, which hark back all the way to the iPhone 8, it's got a much more modern look. It also rocks the brand new C1 chip, Apple's first-ever cellular modem, and one of the best displays the brand offers.

But whether it can truly join the pantheon of best cheap phones is up for debate. For every step it's taken forward, it has another foot in the past: bafflingly, it features the return of Apple's controversial notch, while it doesn't have a dedicated ultra-wide lens, just using a 12MP crop of its 48MP sensor for the 2x zoom. And the trickiest sell is its price, which is a decent markup over its SE forebears.

The Amazon Echo Show 21 is where the Venn diagram of the smart-home hub, tablet, and TV screen meet. Like its smaller sibling, the Echo Show 15, it can be wall-mounted, offering a way to control your smart thermostat, look up recipes, and catch up on Severance all while keeping your hands free to cook a bacon sarnie. But thanks to that 21-inch display, it offers an even better viewing experience than its 15-inch sibling.

With Fire TV built-in, it offers broad access to a range of streaming services, and its sound quality is genuinely pretty impressive, making it absolutely one of the best smart displays if you want both hands-on controls of your smart home and to watch TV shows in your kitchen. If you're just after a smart TV, though, there are better options out there.

The Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 sit astride two different worlds. They're neither as light and ear-plugging as many modern in-ear earbuds nor as transparent as many hooked, open-ear buds. Instead, they offer some of the strengths of both – offering the ANC and more intelligent features of the former and the secure fit and lengthy battery of the latter.

In terms of sheer comfort and impressive head-tracked spatial audio, they rival some of the best noise-canceling earbuds – although their sound is sadly on the weaker side. Features like heart-rate tracking give them some extra workout credibility, although they are only IPX4 so try not to sweat on them too much.

The Sony Bravia Projector 8 is a well-built premium projector that can match its biggest rivals in terms of performance. Thanks to its Z-Phosphor laser light source, it can produce 2,700 lumens of light, which is impressively bright and means it can offer an impressive HDR picture, even in lieue of HDR10+ support. It's also easy to operate, thanks to its polished operating system and handy backlit remote.

However, the Bravia Projector 8's gaming features make it shine as one of the best 4K projectors out there. Not only does it include 4K 120p, but it also supports ALLM, which switches into game mode as soon as you plug in your console. It's capable of a seriously swift input lag of just 10ms. This makes this a gorgeous companion for a current-gen console, offering nearly as many features as a high-end gaming TV.

The OM System OM-3 is fun in a way few cameras are these days. Thanks to its faux-leather frontage and silver top plate, its design echoes 1970s analog cams, with those exposure dials littering its top edge just the cherry on top.

But despite these retro good looks, this is every inch a modern camera – it's actually crammed with advanced features. Its stacked 20MP Micro Four Thirds sensor is capable of lightning-fast of up to 50fps. Its subject-tracking autofocus is super smart, while its computational photography modes make trickier shooting techniques like focus stacking a breeze.