A standalone device with a touchscreen and physical buttons. The buttons are not of a high quality and the build quality overall feels quite cheap. It's Wi-Fi based and has an offline mode that requires languages to be downloaded, but initiated downloads never finished and we could not use the device in offline mode. It was the only device in our test that refused to translate from English to French.

A standalone device with a touchscreen that can be used via Wi-Fi or a mobile data connection. It comes with an eSIM and two years of free data, but there is also a SIM card slot for a third-party data card. In eSIM mode, performance was poor as it did not detect all of the words we spoke; it was much better on Wi-Fi, but users said it spoke too fast. Of all the standalone devices in this test, this one had the best build quality.

This is a pair of earphones that needs to be used in conjunction with a smartphone app called Timekettle. The earphones reside in their own case, which acts as a charger. Each earphone can be assigned a different language within the Timekettle app. The app has various modes and needs better clarity as to what each mode actually does.

This is a plug-in device for an iPhone with a Lightning port, and it needs to be used in conjunction with a smartphone app called Timekettle. The device has a multi-directional microphone that can potentially be used to pick up voices from different directions and translate their language in real time. The app has various modes and needs better clarity as to what each mode actually does.

A standalone device with a touchscreen interface and physical controls. It can work with Wi-Fi or in offline mode once you download language packs, but the performance in offline mode was poor as it misinterpreted our English inputs.

This translator does not have a touchscreen and needs to be paired to a smartphone via Bluetooth so it can interface with an app. It essentially acts as a separate microphone and speaker for your phone. The Android app is not available in the Google Play Store and has to be installed via a website link. This device was not a consistent performer: when trying to play back translations, they sometimes did not work, or they worked with a very long delay.

This is a standalone device with a touchscreen interface and physical controls. In addition to Wi-Fi, the product has a SIM card slot and is supplied with a SIM card and free data for the life of the product. It worked adequately when using this data connection. While the device was good in our translation tests, the device overall is a mixed bag: the headphone port did not work in our tests, and the supplied charger was not Australian. A USB charger with a 5V, 1A output will be required to charge the device.