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Best of CES 2025: All for One, And AI for All
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When Microsoft announced the integration of the Windows key into the Natural Keyboard in 1994, it was more than just an accessibility feature — it was an industry-wide declaration, that an operating ecosystem was here to stay. Fast forward to last year’s Consumer Electronic’s Show (or CES for short), and Microsoft’s dedicated key for its AI tool, Copilot+, was on all Windows 11 laptops and PCs. Adding the Copilot+ key is single-handedly the biggest change to Windows keyboards in almost three decades, and serves as a physical entryway to AI functionality. At the touch of a button, it can answer questions you would normally asked a search engine, recommend music, summarize documents, etc. It put Microsoft’s AI services in front of more than a billion Windows users, and, more importantly, it’s impossible to ignore.
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But if 2024’s CES gave us a knock-out, drag-out bid for machine learning dominance indicative of how the world’s largest technology trade show became a glorified AI show-off, then 2025 was undeniably the calm after the storm. We’ve mostly assimilated into the metaphorical AI Borg at this point, and now resistance is futile. Vacuums have AI objection detection. Pillows have AI for snore detection and adjustment. Toothbrushes have AI coaches that give you advice on how to brush. Cars have AI-powered voice assistants, mirrors have AI biometric scanning, dog collars have AI, bird feeders have AI, and we haven’t even touched on the barrage of AI-powered robots (from the cutesy, to the uncanny valley of Realbotix’s Aria, who looks like a Disney Imagineer’s version of a Swedish supermodel).
Best of CES 2025: 35+ Best New Products, Tech and Gadgets
This year, there was thankfully much less gimmicky bloatware, and more quality-of life upgrades and practical use cases for existing alongside artificial intelligence. It’s come to the point where AI can be almost unnoticeable — think taking crystal-clear calls over JBL’s latest headphones thanks to their built-in AI algorithm, or kicking up your feet and binge-watching your favorite series with Hisene’s brilliantly colorful new TVs, quietly optimizing for picture and sound quality in real time. During their press event, President of Hisense Americas David Gold even said, “when AI is done right, you don’t notice it — it just makes living better.” The backlash is real though, so companies seem to be moving towards a vibe of “invisible AI” enhancements, a trend that touched every aspect of new tech presented this year at CES.
AI Is More Powerful Than Ever (But Less In-Your-Face)
While it can feel at times like it’s foisted upon us (do I really need my fridge to connect to Wi-Fi?), the reality is that the AI hype isn’t entirely manufactured. It took new-kid-on-the-streaming block Netflix three and a half years to reach one million users — ChatGPT had an estimated 100 million users in three months after its release. Even still, research shows that only around 25 percent of customers trust decisions made by AI over those made by people. While the train has already left the station, in response to public outcry companies seem to be pumping the breaks a bit when it comes to their messaging that touts the AI-ification of everything (think of how often people refer to AI-generated spam images on Facebook as “slop”).
Hisense’s Gold made it pointedly clear during their keynote that they didn’t want AI to be “just a buzzword” and thrown into their TVs for the sake of nothing — one of the reasons it’s there is to help compliment the RGB backlighting tech that’ll make picture quality pop. I was particularly taken by LG’s choice of phrasing for their booth this year, ditching the “Artificial” for “Affectionate AI” and thereby aiming to become more like an unobtrusive member of your family than any singular help device you’d buy into. It can theoretically do things like adjust the thermostat on the fly if it senses you shivering or automatically play music based on your detected mood (I’ve seen the DCOM Smart House and know how this ends, LG!).
This year really highlighted under-the-hood AI advancements that didn’t necessarily involve talking to a souped up Siri or using a robot as your personal assistant (and maybe kind of your pet, in the case of Samsung’s Ballie). There were chip updates from Intel and AMD that brought faster and improved battery life, and both Samsung and LG partnered with Microsoft to bring seamless Copilot integration into your small screen (we’re also inching ever-closer to a Chromebook-like price point with Asus’ Zenbook A14, the lightest, sleekest Copilot+ PC we’ve ever seen at less than 2.2 pounds). Even the Halliday Smart Glasses sets the new standard for AI smart glasses that you’ll genuinely want to wear. Sporting a pint-sized display that projects info on the lenses instead of waveguide tech, it follows the heels of Ray-Ban Meta’s success by simply looking like traditional eyewear, rather than bulky geek-wear.
In the meantime, Nvidia became the darling of CES 2025 thanks to the announcement of their groundbreaking foundational model, Cosmos AI, which will help robots and autonomous vehicles learn more about the physical world. But there was much more buzz in our camp for their GeForce RTX 50 series. This new generation of GeForce GPUs (like the game-changing RTX 5090 GPU) have more powerful generative AI capabilities that are even better than what PC gamers have typically come to expect from these kinds of yearly upgrades, with the potential to double the frame rates of your favorite games like Cyberpunk 2077 compared to their predecessors. We may be a few years away from Nvidia’s dream of android assistants, but these are the kinds of improvements that make the biggest day-to-day computing difference, and we love to see it.
The Bigification of Our Screens — TVs, Laptops, And Otherwise
Look, enormous TV announcements are nothing new at CES — expecting any screen to get smaller at this point is like losing chess to a dog. Case in point: Acer’s Nitro Blaze 11, which is undeniably a powerhouse gaming handheld and worthy Steam Deck competitor, yet whose massive size makes its “portability” a bit of a stretch.
But back on the TV front, this was the year where the big dogs like LG and TCL proved that 100-inch behemoths of the “small” screen are no longer merely conceptual or one-off technology showcases. Virtually every brand showed off a consumer-friendly 100-inch they planned to actually bring to market, from Samsung’s impressive 115-inch version of its premium QN90F Neo QLED set, to Hisense’s 116-inch MicroLED model which brings unparalleled brightness and color. This isn’t coming out of nowhere — we saw clear demand for 97-inch TVs at CES last year thanks to post-pandemic affordability of those models.
That being said, most of the TVs displayed at the show will, obviously, be on the premium end (we’re talking $10,000+), which is where the popularity of 4K and UST (ultra-short throw) projectors like the JMGO 02S Ultra will likely reign supreme for those who don’t want to make that big of an investment. Billed by the company as the “world’s smallest laser TV”, it can beam a 100-inch image from a 5.75-inch distance, all at the size of a shoebox (and for a fraction of the cost of those massive TV models).
We also saw laptops working smarter, not harder, to give you more screen estate in increasingly unique ways, without resorting to 17-inch displays. Lenovo’s new ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable is the first of its kind, a stunning “rollable display” that feels like it should be conceptual, but we’re so glad is real. The laptop miraculously extends a 14-inch landscape display to a 16.7-inch vertical one with just the press of a button, doubling your viewing potential instantly. We were also blown away by the 2025 Asus Zenbook Duo, which has not one, but two brilliant 14-inch, 3K resolution OLED touchscreens that can be stacked in front of a keyboard, or used on their own. Sometimes, bigger really is better.
Personal Audio Is (Finally) Exciting Again
Unfettered audio innovation wasn’t the main focus of this year’s CES, which took a backseat (as it usually does) to smart streaming solutions and AI-enhanced…well, everything. After the pandemic’s burst of productivity-minded advancements in personal audio gear (i.e. work-from-home headsets galore), we suffered through a ho-hum few years of companies slowing their roll on new releases of everything from wireless cans to compact speakers. But things have finally heated up again in the hi-fi arena, and though you may not have heard about them over the buzz of robots, and laptops, and TVs (oh my!), audio offerings were better than ever.
Mainly, specialty sound is getting more equitable and accessible, with Dolby Atmos facing some serious competition in Samsung and Google’s Eclipsa Audio. As an open source alternative to Dolby Atmos and DTS:X that brands like LG are getting in on, it has the potential to change the game for bringing immersive surround sound into your home. While we’re still light on the details of exactly how it works, the fact that existing TVs and soundbars will be able to decode this new sound format with just a software update to the source device is an exciting prospect. Leson, a spin-off of Montreal-based music and sound creation studio Music Unit, also debuted a new technology that can turn any mono or stereo audio output into spatial audio. Could this signal the end of remaster re-releases for good? Only time will tell (most definitely no, but the tech is still pretty sick).
Personalization is also having a big moment for new wireless earbuds — on the luxe end, we have Dutch singer Xander de Buisonjé’s company, which is offering the $2,200 Breggz Zohn-1 Bluetooth buds that you won’t be able to find in any stores. No, you’ll have to have your ears scanned through the Breggz mobile app so the buds can be a perfectly-tailor fit and adapt to your hearing profile for killer sound before they even arrive at your doorstep. On the more wallet-friendly side, Creative’s Aurvana Ace Mimi earbuds can adjust the sound to match your personalized hearing profile based on a quick hearing test. But unlike other buds with similar programs, Aurvana Ace Mimi accounts for frequency differences between your right and left ears. And at the same price as entry-level AirPods, I’m glad we’re seeing that bigger audio advancements are shrinking, both in size and price point.
Shopability Trumps Pie-In-The-Sky Concepts
It’s a CES miracle — gadgets are finally leaving the concept and prototype phases. This year, it seemed like the ghosts of CES past were back with concrete plans, firm price points, and yes, actual release dates. While there will always be buzzy announcements that evaporate into the vaporware ether due to lack of funding (or general engineering failures), I was shocked by how many products I saw on the show floor that were actually available to purchase right now. Yes, now.
Even if we couldn’t add them to cart immediately, a number of high-profile products were resurrected out of development purgatory and into consumer-ready status — Sony Honda Mobility’s Afeela 1? Samsung’s rolling robot Ballie from 2020? LG’s transparent OLED TV? Aw, hey, we thought you guys were dead! Concepts that normally feel like they would take years to comes out, like Roborock’s handy-dandy, mechanical-armed Saros Z70 robot vacuum, are hitting shelves some time this year. Can I say though, we’re most excited for Displace’s truly wireless 4K OLED that you can hang anywhere you want, thanks to — and we’re not kidding — huge suction cups on the back of the TV. Wild that this exists, that it legitimately looks good, and that it’s finally available for pre-order and expected to ship in March.
Bringing it back to Lenovo’s rollable laptop, that’s another idea we never thought would see the light of day. Laptops, for the most part, have looked exactly the same for the past few decades for a reason — it’s hard to improve upon a classic (that old clamshell design is just so solid), but we’ve been seeing concepts and prototypes for rollable screens at CES since 2019. But the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable beat them all thanks to versatility, elegance, and most importantly, being on sale starting this Spring.
CES 2024: Key Takeaways
In truth, we got the usual flurry of standard CES innovative fare this year, AI-infused and otherwise: bigger, brighter TVs, robots galore, and expandable laptops that extend your screen three ways from Sunday. And it can be hard to tell at times what’s just a “how do you do, fellow shareholders?” hot-button marketing play, and what is legitimately going to elevate a particular technology. But a lot changes in a year, including the public’s appetite for the new flavor of the “next big thing” — and with AI, brands are starting to take note.
The fact that the darling of CES 2024, AI phone assistant Rabbit R1 (who, mind you, sold out their first batch of 10,000 units in a single day) flopped so incredibly hard, certainly makes it real how many of us want to participate in the AI transformation, but only so long as it actually feels good to use. This year, CES proved that companies are realizing solid hardware that’s available now instead of in some nebulous future and meaningful software updates (yes, with AI) that enhance our everyday lives instead of feeling like a glorified pop-up can be better than any concept announcement. What a concept.
Best of CES 2025: 35+ Best New Products, Tech and Gadgets
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