More from CES 2024: all the TVs, laptops, smart home gear, and more from the show floor
Gatik’s autonomous box trucks are going to be the first AVs on the road to roll on Goodyear’s ultra-intelligent data-collecting tires. Using its proprietary Sightline tech, the tires can measure their own air pressure, the amount of friction between the rubber and the road surface, the amount of tread that’s left, and the temperature of the air around the tire. This should help improve safety and efficiency, the companies claim.
MySmartPrice reports that Bose is getting ready to launch new wireless open-ear headphones at CES, over three years after it released the now-discontinued Sport Open Earbuds.
The open headphones feature a G-shaped design that hooks around the ear for a snug fit, similar to Huawei’s FreeClip earbuds. Pricing, specs, and a final product name should hopefully be available soon.
The Xebec Snap reminds me of my colleage Dan Seifert’s unhinged Dex setup. It’s a bracket you stick on the back of your laptop. There are these wings that pop out and you can then snap on portable monitors that extend your laptop’s screen.
The bracket supports up to two portable monitors, has passthrough charging, and works with both Windows and macOS. The Xebec folks also showed off some prototype accessories, like a MagSafe charger for your phone and a ring light.
Not gonna lie, I would kill for one of these when I’m filing stories on business trips.
All cat owners know: litter boxes be stinky and ugly. That’s why I did a double take tonight when I saw Pawbby at CES. This looks like a litter box straight out of Mad Men.
It’s got a deodorizing cartridge in the litter drawer, and you only have to empty it once every two weeks for a single cat. (It supports up to four cats.) There’s also a companion app that tracks your cat’s weight.
I’d love one except my cat Pablo wouldn’t be able to use it. He’s a chonker at 19 pounds, and this only supports kitties between 3 and 17.5 pounds.
Literally! And gently.
Like many Razer concepts, there’s no guarantee this haptic cushion will ever come to market. But I definitely found it more compelling than haptic headphones here at CES, and it seems way more comfortable and convenient than an “FPS vest.”
BTW, there is already a device called the Buttkicker.
The Epomaker DynaTab 75X looks super flashy here at CES, and it’s not all that expensive: under $150 for hot-swappable keys, USB-C, Bluetooth and 2.4GHz wireless (with hidden dongle), and a 10,000mAh battery. It’s a Kickstarter.
Now that we’ve corrected the Razer flub, a few more Thunderbolt 5 gadgets we spotted at CES: an SSD from Sabrent, an OWC dock, and a TBT5 cable, none of them hooked up.
Don’t necessarily expect big adoption this year. Jason Ziller, aka Intel’s Mr. Thunderbolt, wouldn’t tell me if we’d get even a handful more TBT5 PCs this year (though peripherals should keep coming).
How about Apple? “You know they support every other version. That’s all I can tell you.”
Hailed by some as a more sustainable leather alternative, the company claims its new nopal cactus leather cases require fewer greenhouse gas emissions as well as resources like land and water.
OtterBox says the cases are ruggedized to military standards, too. Hopefully, that means they’re more durable than Apple’s terrible leather replacement. The cactus leather cases will be available for iPhones in black, green, purple, and brown for $59.99 this spring.
Power stations commonly feature a small integrated light, but the Solix C800 Plus attaches a rechargeable camping light to a long retractable pole (that doubles as a selfie stick) to illuminate a larger area of 10 square meters for up to eight hours. It’s loaded with ports and features 768Wh of LFP storage, up to 1200W of AC output, and 300W of solar input. Available in March but pricing is still TBD.
It’s all of five seconds, but Sony snuck in a short look at the upcoming film, based on the Gravity Rush game series, into its CES 2024 press conference. You can see the clip starting at 22:12.
We still know barely anything else about it, or when it might come out, but at least it’s still in development!
An early pic we received from the CES show floor shows Samsung’s delightful rolling robot trapped in a glass case. I’d love to see this thing actually move around — but it looks like those wheels aren’t going anywhere for now.
In an incredibly unsurprising Sony tie-in, the car will be added to Gran Turismo 7 as part of a patch update “later this year,” according to a blog post. You can get an idea of what it will look like in the game in a new trailer.
Sony apparently wants to let you add themes to the screens inside its Afeela EV prototype, as shown at CES 2024. Its examples? Themes of Across the Spider-Verse, a Sony movie, and Fortnite, made by Epic Games, which Sony has invested in.
That was the setup, anyway, during this CES presentation. But I was watching Izumi Kawanishi, Afeela’s president and COO, as he was steering the latest prototype onto the stage, and I would swear he didn’t move his thumbs at all. Plus, he then made a comment about how this was just for tech demo purposes. So color me skeptical. But either way, at least someone is trying to make my dream of car controllers come true.
While kicking off Sony’s CES 2024 press conference, CEO Kenichiro Yoshida mentioned some of the Sony Pictures highlights on the way, including a particularly interesting partnership with Nintendo. All we got was that “This live action film will deliver an amazing tale of adventure and discovery,” whenever it’s eventually released.
