John's Five Great Gaming Hardware Products of 2025

2025 is coming to a close and it’s been an interesting year for tech and gaming. There wasn’t anything huge in 2025, nor are we seeing as much innovation as in years past. Still, there are some things I’ve experienced or reviewed that I've really enjoyed using even after I’ve finished writing about them. So, what are some things this year I feel are really great for the gaming scene?

XREAL One Pro - Review
During CES 2025, I visited the Xreal booth and was treated to my first look at the XREAL One Pro. I owned the original Nreal (Before they rebranded to Xreal) Air glasses, which I ordered back in 2022. The XREAL One Pro are the AR glasses that made a nice step from the design that a lot of other companies have done.

The birdbath lenses were replaced with their X Prism lenses making for a thinner profile and a wider field of vision. Also add in an integrated chip to handle a bunch of functionality and you've got a pair of AR glasses. They have great picture quality and can deliver some great features without the need for running any software to do things like adjusting the picture or enabling 3DoF screen pinning. Add in the Xreal Eye camera attachment and unlock 6DoF features for the XREAL One Pro.

In my review, I found the XREAL One Pro to be one of the best AR glasses I’ve tested. It’s currently the one I use on a regular basis. While the picture quality might not be the best out there compared to some recent AR glasses from its competitors, its overall feature set and wide FOV make it the current top offering in this space. I use these with my Steam Deck to play in a larger screen format, and I can even lay down in bed to play if I want to be in a more comfortable position.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 - Review
It seemed so long ago that the Blackwell GPU was announced, but it did come out right at CES 2025. And NVIDIA unleashed a great deal of GPUs in that line the next month or so after the announcement.

The GeForce RTX 5090 is the current card in my gaming machine, and it’s been powering my AMD 9800X3D setup and connected to an LG 42” OLED TV. Gaming at 4K with the incredible colors that OLED delivers has been outstanding. Every game I’ve thrown at it so far has been running smoothly with many of the features turned on to the max.

NVIDIA has continued to improve on their software to support their hardware delivering a great upscaling in the transformer model. It’s allowed games to run at a lower resolution yet retain some great level of detail that the previous convolutional neural network model couldn’t achieve without running at a higher resolution. Ray tracing is still top notch on the NVIDIA line of cards. If you want those glorious rays bouncing around, the RTX 5090 delivers in spades.

Yes, the RTX 90 series of NVIDIA cards is the top of the line for gamers, but its price tag is certainly not accessible to a lot of people. Also, the card draws a ton of power and there’s that pesky little 12VHPWR connector that’s still an issue for some folks. So, while the card is extremely powerful and it’s going to deliver the best gaming performance out there, it’s not all roses with the GeForce RTX 5090.

That said, it’s the one graphics card you want to get if you want the best of the best. The question now, though, is not availability like it was earlier in the year. It’s now a question of if you can afford it.

Bambu Lab H2D
A 3D printer as one of your best of 2025? You bet! 3D printers are versatile machines that will help you fix things around the house, create items that many people can enjoy, and facilitate new items and ideas with the amount of freedom you have in making things.

I’ve used 3D printers to create a mini bar top gaming machine that looked like an old '80s arcade-style stand up. With the freedom to modify files, I was able to take a great model I found on Makerworld, put my own twist on it, and make a fun mini arcade machine that has interchangeable control decks—and it supports light guns. Oh, I’ve also used it to print out light guns as well.

The Bambu Lab H2D has two nozzles so it can do things like print two different colors with little to no waste, mix and match materials, and use one nozzle to print support materials that are easily removable from the main model. I was able to use the two nozzles to mix TPU rubber with plastic in making my light gun have softer grips. Without the two nozzles, it wouldn’t be possible.

Bambu Lab recently released the H2C, which is a dual nozzle printer with a built-in nozzle changer. It’s an interesting approach to solving the wasted filament problem when printing with many colors. Other companies are using a multi-tool changer approach, but Bambu Lab’s solution allows it to keep compatibility with their AMS systems that hold multiple filaments. I’m waiting for my local Microcenter to have one for sale in order to pick one up to test printing light guns in a few different colors.

Blamcon Light Guns - Review
Did I say printing light guns? Why yes, Blamcon is a company that provides kits for light guns, and they make models available for people to 3D print the shell. What’s great about Blamcon is that they are making models of famous movie and video game guns for you to make. If you’ve been to arcades, you know most light gun games have some basic light guns apart from movie-themed games such as Aliens or Halo. Blamcon is using their model-making experience to create accurate recreations of these types of guns to be used as light guns.

I’ve been searching for a good light gun solution for a while for my home arcade machine. There have been a few released the past few years, but Blamcon’s approach really appealed to me. I can source my own parts or use theirs. I can make my own guns or have them provide me with one that’s already complete. You have plenty of options when it comes to how you want to get your light gun up and running.

Blamcon’s support is also top notch with a lot of their folks taking the time to answer questions in their Discord channel. If you have an issue, they’re quick to help troubleshoot your problems.

Currently, I made two guns from their collection: the Vyper SMG and Robocop’s Auto 9. My next two are going to be the Fallout Laser Pistol and the Aliens Pulse Rifle. The Bambu Lab H2C will come in handy, especially for the Fallout Laser Pistol as I have plans on how I want the various parts to be colored. I’m not very good at post-processing so I’ll get my color fix by using filament instead of paint.

Performance for the guns are solid, and I had no problems with Steam or emulated games (once you set them up in MAME). Their guns have rumble motors and recoil on some of them providing great tactile feedback during gameplay. Blamcon also supports multiple IR LED configurations so if you have a setup with a certain pattern, Blamcon guns can work with those just by changing some settings.

If you have access to a 3D printer and need a light gun, this is a great solution. Building your own is a great learning experience. And if your light gun needs repair, you can either print a new part or swap out some electronic component as it’s not a complicated setup inside.

MOZA AB6 - Review
As somebody who loves sim games, MOZA has some great affordable gear that lets you drive and fly with a whole new level of immersion. Their new AB6 force feedback offering lets you feel the various effects while flying and can double as an active gear shifter for driving games.

Coming with a flight stick and a price of $399, the AB6 combo delivers up to 6Nm of force feedback. It’s a smaller unit than their AB9, which was released a year or so ago. The smaller unit should allow you to fit the AB6 in many other places.

The flight stick is good for both traditional planes as well as space sims. Plenty of HATs and buttons adorn the flight stick and a little bit of RGB was thrown in there for those who like colored lights.

In my review, I 3D printed out a gear shift knob to put on the AB6 and was able to use it in various racing games, replacing my old H shift pattern Logitech gear shifter. The flexibility in changing up the pattern makes a really versatile throttle for various driving games. If you have an all-in-one chair setup like me for both flying and racing games, the AB6’s ability to switch between the two functions makes it a very nice all-in-one solution for these types of setups.