Another year, another bajillion gadgets to talk about after CES, one of the world’s largest gadget trade shows that takes place in Las Vegas every January.
This year, we saw a car powered by the sun, shoes that massage your feet on the go, and a six-wheeled transformer SUV that keeps a spare passenger drone in the trunk for those moments you just have to ”get away from it all.”
But a firestorm that broke out in Los Angeles the same day CES officially started quickly overshadowed the tech spectacle, sending a good deal of gadget coverage to the backburner while many of our dear friends and colleagues dealt with terrifying losses and unthinkable tragedy just a few hundred miles away.
Where does the gadget world go from here?
In the midst of so much unknown, one major theme emerged this year: Tech leaders are all-in on an AI-accelerated future filled with real-world robots, self-driving cars and AI agents so advanced, they‘ll make Siri look like an old dial-up telephone. But at what point does that vision go from wild prototypes — one more fantastical than the next — to potentially life-changing solutions? I’m not sure, but that’s a question I’ll keep trying to answer as I power ahead with tech coverage this year.
In the meantime, here are a few of the gadgets I liked the most, including several that I just showed off on the Today Show.
The shoes that make everyone stop and stare
I’d gladly walk a mile in these futuristic, fancy-foot Nike x Hyperice Recovery shoes. The odd-looking boots heat up, vibrate and massage your feet and ankles using built-in air compression. Tested on Olympic athletes in Paris, the kicks promise to help you recover faster from workouts, improve your circulation, and soothe your muscles, tendons and joints.
They cater to your foot size thanks to the air compression system, and you can easily walk and run errands in them without issue — unless you consider a couple of errant stares from strangers to be a deal-breaker. These aren’t discrete. They’re big, and buzz loudly, and you probably wouldn’t want to get on an airplane with them. Oh, and when you jack the heat to the max, they get uncomfortably warm, at least for me.
All that aside, these are built to get you back to peak performance as fast as possible, and they’re like compression socks on steroids. As a runner — and someone who broke her ankle not too long ago — I’m all about it. No price or launch date yet, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for these.
Is this the shape of PC screens to come?
I’ve now spent a full week using Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable laptop that I first reviewed a few days prior to CES. So far, it continues to impress me with everything from the new rising screen form factor to the outstanding battery life (hours longer than my current Mac).
At the touch of a button, the display rises up, expanding from 14 inches to a towering 16.7 inches. That’s an impressive 50% increase in scrollable space. It’s like having an entire second screen on your laptop, and it’s ideal for split-screen work. When you don’t need it, tap a button and it slides back down and you’re back to your standard display.
It makes a lot of sense, as today’s web is designed for taller screens, like your smartphone. Giving your laptop screen the ability to grow taller is kind of genius. Plus, it’s better for you ergonomically, and you’ll avoid tech-neck from staring down at your screen all day.
It’s expected to hit the market early this year with a starting price of around $3,499.
Why use your smartphone as a TV when you can take this TV anywhere?
Here’s another gadget that just keeps growing on me. LG’s StanbyME 2, 27-inch QHD touch-screen is part giant cordless tablet and part ultra-sharp high-end TV. It comes with a mobile stand on wheels so you can watch, play, surf the web, or create wherever you want.
Who wants to be locked down in a single room when you can take this stunning display wherever you want? Great for bathtub binge-watching, sure, but just as well-suited to your kitchen, tailgate, home gym, garage and anywhere else you want a smart TV without all the hassle of a power outlet. (It has four hours of battery life.) As an added bonus it’s compatible with AirPlay, so you can stream videos or games straight from your iPhone, and it has a built-in “Information Board” to keep track of your crazy days.
No word on the price, but we’re expecting it to launch sometime this year.
Dear plants, this one device might save you from … me.
LeafyPod is an AI-infused plant pot for anyone who missed out on the green thumb gene at birth. It talks to your smartphone via wifi through a dedicated app. All you have to do is tell it what kind of plant you put in and fill the water reservoir, then let the smart pot handle the dirty work.
The sensors inside keep track of temperature, light and moisture — watering your plant when it needs it without overwatering — and it lets you know when something might be wrong or when it’s time to add more soil or water. The rechargeable battery lasts up to three full months, so you can go on guilt-free vacations with confidence that you won’t return to brown, wilted leaves.
It’s available for preorder right now for $148, with the first shipments hitting homes in April.
Kitty litter robot straight out of the Jetsons
We might not have flying cars yet but at least we got a litter box that’s straight out of The Jetsons. The Litter-Robot 4 is more than just a place for your kitty to do her business; It’s also a sensor-packed gadget that weighs your cat, keeps track of how often they go, and can alert you to important health concerns like kidney disease (if they go too often).
It can tell two cats apart, too, so multi-cat households aren’t a deal-breaker. When a cat uses the box it waits for them to leave then rotates and clumps the litter into a bag-lined drawer that keeps the smell and mess contained.
Roughly one out of every three homes in the United States has a cat, and that’s a whole lot of scooping that nobody really likes doing. For $699, that problem is solved, and it’s available now.
A smart pizza oven that bakes the perfect pie in two minutes
Current Backyard Model P is a smart-home-friendly pizza oven with heaps of power. You can set it on your countertop or use it in your backyard to cook 12-inch pies wherever you have a few feet of suitable space.
It can heat up to over 800 degrees and it uses a super-smart algorithm to keep the heat even throughout, so you don’t have to adjust anything halfway through the cook. It syncs with a smart app that uses a “pizza build calculator” to pick the optimal cooking time and temp based on dough thickness, toppings, cheese and sauce.
This trip to little Italy will cost you $600 when it launches in Q2 of this year.
Mow your lawn without lifting a finger
AI is also in the lawn care space and I’m all for it. This race-car looking robotic lawnmower uses cutting-edge machine vision to trim right up to the edge of your lawn without messy wires or a complicated setup process. Just pair it with its app and let the mower map out your yard and get to work.
As the name implies, this robo-mower is all-wheel drive for maximum traction, and handles up to ¾ of an acre in its default configuration, which is more than enough for any city yard I’ve ever seen. It navigates around and under trees, bushes and other common obstacles with ease, and it’s perfectly at home with rough terrain.
Presales are currently underway with a starting price of $2,499.
Porch pirates finally meet their match
Porch pirates are the worst part of our on-demand delivery culture, but Hyve’s new package security system promises to keeps them out. It’s a smart box for your deliveries when you can’t be there to grab them yourself. Instead of letting them linger on your steps in the view of eager eyes, Hyve locks them away until you can retrieve them, using your smartphone as the key.
It uses your front door hinge as an anchor point so thieves don’t just nab the entire box, and it’s spacious enough for packages of all sizes. There’s also a tamper alarm and wifi connectivity that sends you images of deliveries as they happen.
Hyve’s waitlist is currently open, with launch coming in June 2025 for a price of around $300.
A little robot cat that blows
Sometimes a gadget doesn’t have to have a good reason to exist but we love them anyway. I’m extremely confident that this tiny little cat robot fits into that CAT-egory. You see, it has a hilariously specific job: To blow on your hot drinks and food to cool them down. That’s it. That’s all it does.
The quirky little feline perches itself on the edge of your cup or bowl and quietly blows air over your food or drink at one of eight different speeds. It sounds silly – and it is – but it’s also adorable and it works just as well as if you were blowing on your coffee or soup yourself.
For just $25, it falls into the “so stupid I have to have it” category.
Mirmuri
From the same folks behind the coffee-cooling-kitty above comes a vision for the future of robots that I can totally get behind. Mirumi is an adorable little robotic charm that hangs out on your bag or backpack like a tiny baby sloth. It has subtle-but-eye-catching head movements, reacting to movement in its environment and looking adorable while doing it.
At $70, it blurs the line between high-tech gadget and cutesy plush toy, but you can’t put a price on the joy it brings onlooking – and you – whenever you see it looking around. Are robotic pets the wave of the future? All signs point to… maybe.
Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist and on-air contributor for “The Today Show.” The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. You can watch videos on the gadgets mentioned above @JennJolly in Instagram.
This post was originally published on here
