{"id":219791,"date":"2026-01-04T10:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T10:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/219791\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T10:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T10:30:08","slug":"what-were-expecting-at-ces-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/219791\/","title":{"rendered":"What We’re Expecting at CES 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

CES 2026 doesn\u2019t officially start until Jan. 6, but if you\u2019re a regular Gizmodo reader, you already know that it has unofficially started. Like every year, companies start dripping out teasers and partial product announcements at the end of December, weeks before the biggest tech show even opens its doors in Las Vegas. Be sure to follow our CES 2026 live blog<\/a> to see all the stuff our consumer tech team will be taking a look at in person.<\/p>\n

I have a strong feeling CES 2026<\/a> will be a lot more packed than everyone is anticipating. Six years after the pandemic, it seems to me\u2014based on early announcements\u2014that the show is finally roaring back to life. Revitalized by the promise of AI\u2014whether automation, generative, agentic, or some other kind\u2014companies are daring to shoot for the moon again. So what major trends are we expecting from the year\u2019s biggest show for technology innovation? I may ultimately be wrong, but let me peer into my crystal ball and see if I can connect some dots.<\/p>\n

AI will be inescapable <\/p>\n

More than any CES show in past years, we\u2019ll see AI shoved into every gadget imaginable. Samsung, LG, Lenovo, Razer\u2014all of the biggest attendees and even the small unknown startups will be boasting about why some form of AI will supposedly make their products better. Some of the AI applications could legitimately move the needle; the vast majority will be AI features for AI features\u2019 sake, overpromising and underdelivering.<\/p>\n

As reporters, we\u2019re gonna spend our days at CES 2026 wading through the AI minefield of intelligence sprinkled into laptops, mobile devices, home appliances, transportation, and more. The same way Wi-Fi was added to virtually every gadget, AI will wiggle its way in even if you don\u2019t want it.<\/p>\n

Do you really need AI in a washing machine or refrigerator? How many times is a big electronics company going to try to convince us at a packed press conference that we need some new home appliance to figure out how to cook a meal from leftover ingredients? The most useful AI functions will be the ones that don\u2019t even appear to be AI, LLMs, or chatbots working invisibly in the background to make our lives more convenient.<\/p>\n

A sea of smart glasses \"Meta\u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

If reviewing a bunch of smart glasses, including Meta\u2019s Ray-Ban Display<\/a>, last year signaled anything for what to expect in 2026, it\u2019s that there will be an avalanche of smart glasses coming.<\/p>\n

As a possible Next Big Thing after smartphones, every company seems to be trying to figure out how to commercialize smart glasses. How do you balance style and utility while making it worth the pricey early adopter cost and also squeeze in AI into them to keep up with the latest trend? Meta might have you thinking it\u2019s figured out some magic recipe, but in reality it hasn\u2019t. A single pair of smart glasses with solid screens, cameras, battery life, speakers, AI, and apps is still the holy grail device everyone is chasing.<\/p>\n

Currently, smart glasses still have too many tradeoffs. It\u2019s also not clear that consumers even want smart glasses that do it all. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve seen so many flavors of smart glasses\u2014ones with mono and dual-lens waveguide screens, ones with no cameras (for privacy, naturally) at all, or simple \u201cAI glasses<\/a>\u201d that excel best at taking photos and videos and playing music like a pair of open-ear headphones. Then, there are video glasses from the likes of Xreal that are bolting on XR functions<\/a> to allow them to offer more computing-like features that you\u2019d find in bulkier XR or VR headsets.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t expect any smart glasses blueprint to emerge by the end of CES 2026, only that the variety of designs and offerings will widen beyond what we\u2019ve already seen shipped. There will be far more smart glasses than XR and VR headsets. The metaverse is dead<\/a>; AI is now the new hotness.<\/p>\n

TV tech matters again \"New\u00a9 Bob Riha Jr \/ Contributor \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n

Okay, maybe consumers won\u2019t care at all what micro RGB<\/a> or WOLED<\/a> means, but TV makers will be pushing hard to make their latest display technologies seem like must-haves when they eventually ship in actual flat screens.<\/p>\n

Never mind that you may not understand how backlighting technologies work or that your worsening eyesight can\u2019t see the wider dynamic range, expanded HDR, higher contrast, or increased brightness. CES 2026 will tout TV tech like it has for more than 50 years. The show simply wouldn\u2019t be the same if you didn\u2019t fly in to ogle pixels.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be paying close attention to how much AI is forced into new TVs and how companies choose to integrate AI in there. Google\u2019s Gemini will no doubt replace the old Google Assistant, but I really want to see how much AI slop there will be. My guess is that there will be an uncomfortable amount of AI slop masquerading as utility. More AI screensavers\u2014sorry, canvas art. More AI to create fake frames to make watching sports and gaming smoother, but visibly uglier when watching movies and TV shows because of the motion smoothening.<\/p>\n

Speaking of higher frame rates, I have to wonder how high TV makers will go with the refresh rates? 120Hz, 165Hz, and 240Hz already push the envelope for gaming, but don\u2019t be surprised if there are a bunch of TVs with even higher native (and artificially boosted) refresh rates just to outgun the competition on a spec sheet battle.<\/p>\n

EVs and mobility take over \"Ces\u00a9 NurPhoto \/ Contributor \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n

Everyone knows that CES is not a car show, but it\u2019s also impossible to ignore the entire hall of EVs, automotive, and mobility tech at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Like a slow burn, there will be more of all of it. More EVs with absurd top speeds, longer ranges, and displays plastered inside their interiors; more e-bikes and e-scooters that blur the line with motorcycles; and more wacky prototype flying cars and personal quadcopters that will promise to hit the skies (but probably never will).<\/p>\n

Zooming in more specifically, my observation is that there will be a trend of returning back to physical and tactile in-car controls. A decade ago, Tesla made touchscreen dashboards and controls ubiquitous, but carmakers and consumers are now realizing that good ol\u2019 buttons never needed to be\u2014and perhaps never should have been\u2014ditched.<\/p>\n

Personally, I welcome this return to sensibility. Besides giving cars more differentiation and character, physical buttons, dials, and knobs are actually more user-friendly while driving. Who could have imagined that turning a dial to adjust volume or the air conditioner is faster than tapping several layers into a touchscreen layer?<\/p>\n

And of course, like every other connected device at CES 2026, I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll see AI crammed into the dashboard as well as more promises for self-driving tech.<\/p>\n

Here come the home droids \"AgiBot\u00a9 Photo by Shi Bufa\/VCG via Getty Images <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that the smart home won\u2019t have a huge presence at the show\u2014it will\u2014but it\u2019s currently being retrofitted with AI, so it won\u2019t sound groundbreaking. Google Assistant is being replaced by Gemini<\/a> and Alexa with Alexa+<\/a>. These \u201cupgrades\u201d are mostly on the backend, but as we\u2019ve seen testing the early batch of products powered by these more intelligent voice assistants, the intelligence part is not quite there yet. When you need consumers to use two separate modes\u2014one for smart home controls and another for more conversational AI\u2014as you do with Gemini, it\u2019s a sobering reminder that the retrofitting is still very much a work in progress.<\/p>\n

What should be a lot more interesting on the smart home front is seeing intelligence merge with robotics within the home. I\u2019m, of course, talking about humanoid robots that can lift things and do chores, and even beefed-up robot vacuums that can climb stairs. At CES 2026, we should be able to get a closer look at some of these personal robots. They won\u2019t be commercially available at any affordable pricing anytime soon, but at the very least they should give us an idea of whether we\u2019re really closer to the sci-fi dream of having a real-life C-3PO to do our bidding.<\/p>\n

More of the usual consumer tech \"Lenovo\u00a9 Raymond Wong \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

Those are the bigger trends I expect to see at CES 2026. On a pure hardware level, the show will be filled with the usual new laptops and PCs, home entertainment systems (TVs and speakers), wearables, audio (wireless headphones and wireless earbuds), cameras, transportation (EVs, e-bikes, e-scooters), and mobile accessories and computer peripherals. A heaven of gadgets, if you will.<\/p>\n

By the end of the show, the Gizmodo consumer tech team will be exhausted and hungry, but we\u2019ll have taken in the whole spectacle of it all. CES is the best place to preview the future. Or rather, ideas of what the future looks like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CES 2026 doesn\u2019t officially start until Jan. 6, but if you\u2019re a regular Gizmodo reader, you already know…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,108523,108548,85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-219791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ces","12":"tag-ces-2026","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}