William's best tech in 2025: Mac Studio, iPad Pro, and so much from Elgato

If there's ever a year when I don't spend a lot of money on technology, it had better be 2026 — because I am skint after a Mac Studio, an M5 iPad Pro, and more.

I did not set out to buy either my M4 Mac Studio with 48GB RAM and 2TB SSD, nor my M5 13-inch iPad Pro with 512GB storage. Although I'm not sure who I'm trying to kid there: I wanted both before they even existed.

So as much thought as money went into both, though overall I've got to say that the Mac Studio has been my best buy. Possibly ever — this is certainly the greatest Mac I've ever owned.

The thing is that it's great for the tiny tasks like typing. I had expected the difference I see in Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, but just everything day to day is brilliantly fast and responsive.

Or at least it is when I clear off some of this storage space. My only regret is not having been able to go for more internal storage.

The M4 Mac Studio starts at $1,999.

One of my absolute best technology items of 2025, though, is something I've had for at least five years. It's an Elgato Stream Deck and specifically the first one of those I bought.

I liked this ability to program buttons to control apps and my Mac, I liked it enormously. Some work that used to use a sequence of contorted keystrokes, for instance, is now just a single button press.

The largest of my three Elgato Stream Decks — and an old-style tape editing block from my radio days in front of it.

Right now I have 55 such buttons across three Stream Decks and when I'm audio editing, my hand barely leaves one of them. Fifteen buttons become dedicated to Logic Pro whenever I'm in that app and it has saved me hours.

Elgato Stream Decks start at $80 for the Stream Deck Neo on Amazon.

A couple of years ago, I bought a Hollyland Lark microphone that was smaller than a "Star Trek" combadge. This year, I got the next version, which is the size of a shirt button — and also sounds better.

That first set was small enough, and in fact sufficiently small that it took an hour to find them in order to compare the size. So the old one was tiny, but this new set is practically invisible.

And I want that because I don't want my YouTube videos to have you staring at my microphone. I understand why YouTubers have large wireless microphones, although there is no earthly reason why they hold them out in front of the camera.

No, that circular one is the old microphone. The new Hollyland Lark M2S is what looks like a tie clip at the top.

Hollyland Lark M2S starts at $149 on Amazon.

Around seven months ago, I bought a large and expensive HidrateSpark Pro smart water bottle — and then managed to break it. But before I accidentally dropped part of it in water, I liked it enough to already look for a smaller version to travel with.

The smaller one turned out to be the HidrateSpark Pro 2 model, which as Wesley Hilliard says in his review, is at least in theory better. I do like it a lot, but the smartness is partly in how it communicates with the company's iPhone app and that's not great.

I sometimes wish I'd bought the chunkier one on the left, but all of the HidrateSpark Pro 2 bottles are good.

It was. I'd take a swig from the old bottle and it seemed that as soon as I put it down, the sensor re-weighed the bottle. It reported the reduced weight to the app, which figured out how much water I'd drunk.

The new one I have does exactly the same thing — but it has to be coaxed into reporting its data to the iPhone. Sometimes that means turning Bluetooth off and on again, but I think of it has needing a tickle on the tum.

HidrateSpark Pro 2 starts at $69.99 on Amazon.

This is the most expensive iPad I have ever bought and curiously enough, it was in the ballpark of the cost of my Mac Studio. Consequently I spent such a long time debating it even after I had decided I wanted a larger screen iPad.

I used to have the original large iPad Pro and missed the surface area. But the decider for me in the end was a working trip to Paris where, for the first time, I really found my M1 11-inch iPad Pro cramped.

I did not expect to watch so many films on my M5 iPad Pro, but the screen is incredible. (The film is "Kissing Jessica Stein."

There was still the issue of the iPad Air now coming in a larger screen, so I must've spent an hour or two in a couple of Apple Stores trying everything out. I felt that there was sufficient speed and performance difference that I'd regret going for the iPad Air, and so I bought this.

And yes, it is fast, it is everything I wanted and I'm having a particularly good time editing video on Final Cut Pro for iPad. But what I did not expect was how truly stunning this screen is.

Around midnight every Christmas Eve, I re-watch Eric Heisserer and Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival," based on the short story by Ted Chiang. This year I will be watching it on my M5 iPad Pro and listening over AirPods Pro 2. I am struggling to wait.

The 13-inch M5 iPad Pro starts at $1,299 from Apple.

Have I still got you? While managing editor Mike Wuerthele isn't looking, you've got to let me tell you a sixth Best Tech. This is a very quick response to using it and a full review will follow, but instantly I tried it, I knew it was in the best of the year.

It's also going to be a big part of my 2026, too, as the new Elgato Prompter XL takes everything that was great about the original Prompter and makes it bigger. So you can see more of your script, and live comments on YouTube are far clearer when you're presenting.

As well as having a bigger screen, Elgato Prompter XL makes that display detachable

The price is bigger too, but without detracting from the first, smaller, lower-cost, Elgato Prompter, this is the one you want.

Elgato's software is still fiddly to set up, but once it's in place in your studio, it's going to get so much use.

Elgato Prompter XL is $599.99 and is available direct from the developer. The smaller Elgato Prompter is also available from Amazon, priced at $228.99.