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THE GOOD The Gear VR's relatively low price belies a compelling VR experience, and the games are quickly catching up to the hype. The headset is fairly light, and offers a completely cordless experience.

THE BAD It only works with some recent Samsung phones. The mobile VR experience still pales in comparison to more robust upcoming PC- and console-based options.

THE BOTTOM LINE The Gear VR is the best virtual-reality gadget you can buy right now, and a great way to jump into the world of VR gaming and entertainment -- just make sure you own a compatible Samsung phone first.

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Update: After upgrading our iPhone 6 to iOS 9 we revisited the handset to see how it was getting on. We've updated our review with the findings, and its new competition in the iPhone SE.

Why do we have the Apple iPhone 6? Well, back in 2013, despite record sales, the Cupertino brand was heading for a fall. The brand had been trading on the same phone for four years, and something big was needed to keep it current.

So with that, the iPhone 6, and its bigger brother, the iPhone 6 Plus, were born to keep Apple at the sharp end of a market that was starting to lust after powerful, big-screen smartphones with clever and premium design.

• Compare: all the best iPhone 6 deals

The iPhone 6 certainly addresses a number of the problems Apple had developed, coming with a much larger screen (although not dramatically increasing the size of the phone) a boosted processor, better camera, improved battery and, crucially, overhauled design. Much of the ground work that went into the iPhone 6S was done here, with the iPhone 6.

This is the sixth iPhone I've reviewed, and there's a distinct sense that this one is really rather different.

I wrote in 2013 that Apple was becoming more aware that the time when it could define what consumers would buy in the smartphone was ending – and with the 4.7-inch screen, it clearly had to admit defeat in the smaller screen market.

There will be some who will miss that 4-inch screen size, maintaining that they don't want a bigger display on their phone – but nearly all of those people won't have spent any appreciable time with a larger device, and I believe that a good portion of you thinking you need a smaller phone will quickly come to appreciate the power a bigger handset brings, without compromising quality.

Apple's now appeased those longing for a new 4-inch handheld though, with the launch of the iPhone SE. It sports the specs of the iPhone 6S, uses the body of the now-discontinued iPhone 5S and sports a lower price tag than the iPhone 6, giving the latter some tough new competition.

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XBOX ONE

THE REVIEW

The Xbox 360 that exists in 2013 bears little resemblance to the console that Microsoft launched in 2005. It’s so different, in fact, that it helps to think of the company’s new Xbox One as an evolution, not of the original Xbox 360 but of the one that exists today.

Over that eight-year span, the Xbox 360 underwent radical transformations. In 2008, the "New Xbox Experience" delivered an entirely new interface, customizable player Avatars, eight-player party chat and Netflix streaming, a first for video game consoles. In 2010, the first iteration of Kinect and the platform’s voice and gesture controls redefined the 360 once again.

That focus on entertainment never diminished the Xbox 360's gaming bona fides, however. Between first-party exclusives like Halo, third-party console exclusives like Left 4 Dead and timed exclusives like The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, the Xbox 360 never wanted for games. The Xbox Live Arcade program made games likeCastle Crashers, Braid and Limbo into household names. Despite its investment in entertainment, the Xbox 360 was always a video game console.

But there was a sense that the Xbox 360's greater aspirations as a mainstream portal for entertainment were restrained by hardware created before our current age of streaming video, tablets and smartphones.

So when examining the Xbox One, it may seem familiar. This is what Microsoft has been working toward all these years, effectively showing its next-generation hand as early as 2008. While the Xbox 360 was upgraded, the Xbox One was developed in parallel, but as a beginning, not an end. And despite its familiar elements and concepts, the Xbox One still manages a genuine sense of wonder, all without losing sight of the strong gaming foundation the Xbox was built on.

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PLAYSTATION 4

THE REVIEW

In the seven years since the introduction of the PlayStation 3, we've seen our gaming consoles transform into living-room hubs through constant evolution and software updates. Those updates weren't always smooth – though on PS3, they were always happening – but it's easy to see just how far the platform has come.

Meanwhile, the designers of the PlayStation 4 were taking notes and designing a console that, feature by feature, sought to address the failings of its predecessor. The PS3 was notoriously difficult to program for, thanks to its proprietary silicon. So the PS4 was built to be developer-friendly, with a familiar, PC-like architecture. The PS3 was announced with a bizarre, boomerang-shaped controller, and launched with the rumble-free Sixaxis controller before settling into the never-great DualShock 3 controller. So the PS4 comes with the DualShock 4, inarguably the best controller Sony's ever made. And the PS3 launched at an abnormally high price point, costing $200 more than its competition. So the PS4 carries a far more aggressive price, asking $100 less than the competition this time around.

While Sony in 2006 was focused on driving adoption of the Blu-ray standard, envisioning another home media boom that never quite materialized, Sony in 2013 has no such distractions. The PS4 isn't built to sell 3D TVs, or Blu-ray discs or any other corporate mandate. It's a gaming console, a clear message that Sony has been quick to repeat.

That focus has resulted in a console that's better positioned than the PlayStation 3 was in 2006 to compete in an expanding turf war for the living room. But that same focus has also kept Sony from taking the kinds of chances that make generational leaps so exciting.

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