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We’re formally counting down the times till CES 2026 begins, and a fast look at this week’s information cycle reveals simply how packed the present can be this 12 months.
Forward of the Las Vegas commerce present, which opens its doorways to hundreds of journalists, analysts, and business professionals on Tuesday, January 6, we’re already seeing main bulletins from the world’s main shopper electronics manufacturers, together with Samsung, LG, and Hisense.
This 12 months’s agenda? Anticipate extra formidable pitches from corporations, small and huge, together with how AI will help and improve our day by day lives in numerous methods, modes of transportation that reach past metropolis streets, and TVs that surpass standard specs, type components, and sizes.
If we’re fortunate, we’ll uncover a number of notable merchandise you can truly purchase shortly after the curtains shut.
Find out how to watch CES 2026
You may tune into CES by numerous livestreams and keynotes. The total schedule of displays may be discovered right here; a few of them begin as quickly as this weekend.
For a extra complete overview of the largest bulletins this 12 months, discuss with ZDNET’s reside information tracker under, curated by our floor workforce of reporters and editors, in addition to people monitoring the most recent bulletins from residence.
The most recent information (refresh for updates)
By: Nina Raemont, Wearables and Well being Editor / Jan. 3 at 7:10 p.m. ET
The most recent sensible residence decor makes art work out of your personal phrases. Fraimic is an e-ink canvas that is powered by OpenAI, and it generates art work primarily based on user-provided prompts. Individuals may also add their favourite art work by the Fraimic app for additional customization. The sensible canvas offers residence decorators additional management of their house — in addition to a personalised, changeable contact.
May it make paper art work prints out of date? Not so quick, since it’s going to run customers $399 for the usual canvas and $999 for the big canvas. Kickstarter shipments start in Could and direct-to-consumer availability is estimated for June.
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By: Nina Raemont, Wearables and Well being Editor / Jan. 3 at 6:42 p.m. ET
It was 11 years in the past when Pebble unveiled its first-generation spherical smartwatch, the Pebble Time Spherical. Eleven years later, the watch model introduced the Pebble Spherical 2 with updates that can please the veteran Pebble wearers and newcomers alike. The smartwatch isn’t as skinny because the famously skinny Pebble Time Spherical (it is .6mm thicker), however it’s bought ten days value of battery life and maximized the 1.3-inch e-paper show.
Widening the show made studying notifications and messages far simpler and extra legible on the brand new watch throughout a side-by-side demo. The watch is not made for hardcore train monitoring, as an alternative nailing the essential well being monitoring (sleep and steps) and preserving the watch, skinny, elegant, and as near analog as attainable.
“With this product, we needed it to be probably the most trendy, elegant Pebble ever, and one of many issues is to make it really feel prefer it is not a block of expertise in your wrist. It feels extra like a timepiece. To do this, it needed to be skinny,” Eric Migicovsky, Pebble’s CEO, informed me in an interview.
Pre-orders for the Pebble Spherical 2 at the moment are open.
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By: Nina Raemont, Wearables and Well being Editor / Jan. 3 at 4:49 p.m. ET
LG is constructing its subsequent laptop computer with a newly developed materials referred to as Aerominum, which can make the units lighter and extra moveable. We’ll see LG’s in-house developed Aerominum in motion by LG’s Gram Professional 17 and Gram Professional 16. We do not know far more about pricing and availability at the moment. What we do know, although, is that, with the assistance from Aerominum, these laptops may very well be lighter in your backpack or work bag.
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By Kerry Wan, Managing Editor / Jan. 3 at 12:56 p.m. ET
It has been within the works for years now, however I used to be met with a shock this morning when United introduced on the gate that my flight from Newark to Las Vegas would assist the brand new Starlink Wi-Fi service — free, sooner web speeds for streaming, work, and extra, basically.
If that is not an indication for me to get work carried out these subsequent 5 hours, then I do not know what it’s.
And, to date, it is legit. I’ve a number of tabs open in my Chrome browser, writing articles about information you may be taught extra about within the coming days, and downloading and importing images and movies with none points. This is to hoping this holds for the remainder of the flight.
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By Kerry Wan, Managing Editor / Jan. 3 at 12:40 p.m. ET
Smartphone lovers — notably those that lengthy for the times of the BlackBerry – are doubtless accustomed to the model, Clicks. This 12 months, the corporate is releasing two new equipment, one within the type of a MagSafe keyboard that doubles as a wi-fi charger, and one other that capabilities like a BlackBerry.
The previous, the Clicks Energy Keyboard, is launching at a comparatively accessible worth of $79, and its snap-on nature lets you function your telephone in each portrait and panorama orientations.
The Clicks Communicator includes a comparable bodily QWERTY keyboard, but additionally has a show, 3.5mm headphone jack, and microSD card slot, successfully serving as a secondary system for messaging. That may go on sale later this 12 months for $499.
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By Kerry Wan, Managing Editor / Jan. 2 at 5:11 p.m. ET
The parents at RayNeo are showcasing two new pairs of sensible glasses at CES this 12 months: the Air 4 Professional, which extends off of your telephone, pc, or gaming console, and the X3 Professional Undertaking eSIM, which helps a built-in 4G connection, permitting you to browse the online or make telephone calls with out pairing the glasses to a mobile system.
The latter of the 2 merchandise is extra intriguing to me, because it appears like a pure subsequent step for sensible glasses. The Meta Ray-Ban Show has given us a glimpse of what it is prefer to compute with out having to choose up our telephones. What if we did not should even have our telephones current to get issues carried out?
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By Kerry Wan, Managing Editor / Jan. 2 at 5:05 p.m. ET
Forward of CES, TCL has unveiled the brand new Word A1 Nxtpaper pill, an 11.5-inch digital notepad that competes with the likes of the Kindle Scribe and ReMarkable. There may be one distinctive side with the TCL, although: It has each a full-color LCD show and a 120Hz refresh fee, yielding each vivid and easy visuals because the consumer browses, sketches, and extra.
The Word A1 Nxtpaper is priced at $549, and positions itself as a sooner, extra versatile hybrid for professionals and college students who need a paper-like pill expertise with out the normal imitations of E Ink.
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By Kerry Wan, Managing Editor / Jan. 2 at 5:02 p.m. ET
CES is residence to many issues, together with AI vaporware, however Undertaking Luci might change that narrative. It is a compact, magnetic AI pin designed to behave as a searchable digital archive of your day by day life.
Just like the Meta Ray-Ban glasses, it includes a 12MP ultra-wide digicam and twin microphones able to recording constantly for as much as 4 hours.
Utilizing a proprietary AI mannequin referred to as Mavi, the system permits customers to carry out “semantic searches” to recall particular particulars, akin to what they ate or who they met. To handle privateness issues, it features a bodily digicam shutter and a devoted companion hub for native information processing.
Priced at roughly $99, does a “memory-augmented” expertise entice you in any respect?
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By Kerry Wan, Managing Editor / Jan. 2 at 5:00 p.m. ET
Alongside TVs, Samsung has unveiled a brand new batch of 6K screens. Sorry, I ought to specify that they are each 6K in
decision and 3D in playback, permitting players to be extra immersed in numerous titles and professionals to be a greater really feel for his or her digital creations.
We have seen 3D screens earlier than, particularly at CES, however Samsung’s new Odyssey line stands out as the most polished, with glasses-free eye-tracking that makes the 3D really feel extra real looking. Nonetheless, we’ll should see these screens in individual earlier than deciding in the event that they’re value it or not.
“It is exhausting to not be skeptical. 3D TVs have been all the fad a decade in the past, solely to fall out of favor on account of their propensity to muddy colours, worsen picture high quality, and trigger movement illness,” says my ZDNET colleague, Cesar Cadenas. This is to hoping Samsung overpromises and overdelivers.
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By Kerry Wan, Managing Editor / Jan. 2 at 4:50 p.m. ET
There’s by no means a uninteresting second with TVs, and I blame producers and their intensive dictionary of tech jargon for that. This 12 months’s sizzling phrase is “Micro RGB,” a meticulous association of LEDs that produces enhanced mild management and accuracy. Samsung has a model of this, LG has a model of this, Sony has a model of this, and so forth.
The massive query is how accessible this current show tech can be, as most TV fashions out there presently are each too massive and too costly.
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