What we learned from CES 2026 – The Verge

These are the smart home gadgets that impressed me at CES 2026

2026-01-12T07:50:29-05:00

A giant version of Lockin’s wirelessly charged V7 smart lock was a showstopper on the CES show floor.

I picked Aqara's Smart Lock U400 and Roborock's Saros Rover robot vacuum as the overall best smart home gadgets from CES 2026, but there were gazillions of other great gadgets on the show floor.

It was a banner year for smart home products, and the big trends I saw weren't about new product categories; they were about bringing better features and lower prices to smart home staples such as smart lighting, smart locks, cameras, and TVs.

This is what I expected the launch of the interoperability protocol Matter would bring. Once companies could stop spending time and money on working on integrating with half a dozen platforms, they could fo …

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We tried to get humanoid robots to do the laundry

2026-01-12T07:48:23-05:00

At CES this year, humanoid robots appeared to be closer than ever to moving into our homes. LG introduced CLOiD, a household robot it says can handle chores like preparing food and loading the washing machine. SwitchBot showed off the Onero H1, another home helper built to tackle everyday tasks, and Boston Dynamics, WIRobotics, Zeroth, and others debuted even more impressive humanoids.

Advances in robotics and AI have made robots smarter and more capable than ever. The question is whether they're capable enough to do our chores. We already have robots that vacuum our floors and mow our lawns - but there's one job they haven't mastered: laun …

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CES 2026 was awash in bodily fluids

2026-01-13T18:34:21-05:00

Mira is a hormone testing kit that I tried out ahead of CES 2026. I had to pee in that cup.

This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent every Friday from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest phones, smartwatches, apps, and other gizmos that swear they're going to change your life. Optimizer arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 10AM ET. Opt in for Optimizer here.

At CES 2026 this week, people kept asking me what health tech I was seeing on the show floor. My only answer was this: bodily fluids. As in urine, blood, sweat, and saliva.

With most people, my response typically got a handful of groans and raised eyebrows. Among insiders, I surprised no one.

CES is ground zero of the wellness Wi …

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The Verge Awards at CES 2026

2026-01-09T14:46:04-05:00

Every January, the world of consumer electronics heads to Las Vegas to spend the first full week of the year in the desert presenting, prodding, and gawking at all the new gadgets and gear debuting at CES. The show has once again delivered an avalanche of products, both innovative and vaporous, that will shape the industry in 2026.

The Verge's team has been working around the clock to share the experience. Some of it wowed us while some of it weirded us out, but that's part of the fun of CES.

After taking it all in over the past week, there are some gadgets that stood out from the rest. They innovated on an existing product, entirely ret …

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The coolest laptops we saw at CES 2026

2026-01-08T15:20:05-05:00

Gamers, roll up!

CES is always jam-packed with new laptop announcements, acting as a barometer for the year's upcoming releases. The proofs of concept at the show display what could potentially come further in the future. 2026 will soon bring us new chip options from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. While I'm excited to see how the latest horse race shakes out, some of the new designs and form factors displayed at the show are easily more compelling.

There was a myriad of new models shown from Asus, Lenovo, Dell, MSI, Acer, and HP. Here's my shortlist of all the ones I'm most looking forward to testing - or hoping that there will even be an opportunity to test in …

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Most dubious uses of AI at CES 2026

2026-01-08T13:14:34-05:00

Let’s take bets on how much Hayao Miyazaki would hate this.

You can't shake a stick without hitting an AI gadget at CES this year, with artificial smarts now embedded in just about every wearable, screen, and appliance across the show floor, not to mention the armies of AI companions, toys, and robots.

But those are just the beginning. We've seen AI pop up in much stranger places too, from hair clippers to stick vacs, and at least one case where even the manufacturer itself seemed unsure what made its products "AI."

Here are the gadgets we've seen at CES 2026 so far that really take the "intelligence" out of "artificial intelligence."

Glyde smart hair clippers

An extremely normal hair-cutting experience. | Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge" data-portal-copyright="Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge">

This is a product that would be si …

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TV makers are taking AI too far

2026-01-11T09:40:25-05:00

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.

Every year, TV makers flock to CES in Las Vegas to show off bigger, brighter, and better-looking displays. And every year, the same companies also use the show to throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall as they try to figure out how to sell those big TV sets to consumers busy watching TikTok videos on their phones.

In recent years, TVs have gotten cameras for video chats and AI-powered workouts. They became cloud-powered game consoles, smart home hubs, and art displays. Tw …

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Is this the world’s first solid-state battery?

2026-01-11T15:03:48-05:00

CES is a land of bold announcements of amazing, innovative products and technologies that will revolutionize the world, often set for release in two years' time. Twenty-four months seems to be about the right hype window: close enough to generate excitement and investment, but far enough that everyone forgets about your promises before that deadline quietly comes and goes.

It was CES 2018 when Henrik Fisker made such a proclamation, saying that his team of gurus had cracked the code of solid-state batteries. By 2020, he said, those batteries would be in mass production. The car was the EMotion, which never did come to market. By 2021, the c …

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The PC market braces for an AI-driven storm

2026-01-08T09:52:03-05:00

The personal computer has remained surprisingly resilient to change over the past 15 years. Apple promised a "post-PC" era with the iPad in 2010 and failed to deliver one. Smartphones even overtook laptops as the most popular device to connect to the internet a decade ago, but millions of people still kept buying PCs every year. But this PC resiliency is going to be tested even further this year.

RAM and NAND / SSD prices have surged in recent months due to shortages created by AI data center demand. Some stores have had to sell memory like it's lobster, prebuilt PC costs have risen, and some assemblers are even selling PCs without RAM.

No …

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The gap between premium and budget TV brands is quickly closing

2026-01-11T15:03:32-05:00

New TVs from TCL and Hisense, like the TCL X11L, are closing the performance gap to those from Sony, LG, and Samsung.

For all the time that I've been covering technology, there's been a hierarchy when it comes to TV brands. The big three - Sony, Samsung, and LG - have been on top for a while. Pioneer and Panasonic were up there with plasma TVs, and Panasonic is getting back in the game in the States. Hisense, TCL, and Vizio battled it out as midrange tiers for years before Vizio pivoted from hardware profits to an ad-centric model under Walmart, leaving the other two to one-up each other by offering the most bang for the buck.

But over the past couple years, both TCL and Hisense have made impressive strides in performance, bringing them closer and closer t …

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