OWC has released two new super-long active optical USB4 cables, available in lengths of nearly 10 feet (3 meters) and 15 feet (4.5 meters) and offering up to 40Gbps of data throughput. According to OWC’s press materials, they’ll set you back $98.99 and $129.99, respectively, though its website currently lists them for slightly less. That’s a bargain, compared to what Apple is charging.

Data throughput aside, OWC says you can also expect the 3m option to provide up to 240W of power, while the 4.5m cable manages 60W. The cables are covered with braided nylon, too, which hopefully means they’re nice and flexible. And although they aren’t Thunderbolt 4 cables, they’ll work the way you’d expect with other Thunderbolt 3- or- 4-capable devices, including docks and hubs.

Image: OWC

Intel generally guarantees Thunderbolt 4 performance at up to 2 meters over traditional copper cables. Those cables need special tech inside to keep throughput up over longer runs, which is likely part of why Apple’s 3-meter 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 cable costs $159.

You can find some USB4 cables as long as OWC’s for much less than that, but the longer ones don’t tend to offer the same high throughput, which OWC credits to the electromagnetic interference immunity of fiber-optics.

OWC’s cables are a bit of a throwback to Thunderbolt’s roots as Light Peak, which was initially codeveloped by Intel and Apple as a fiber optic cable standard that made its way to a Sony laptop just as the companies decided to go with copper, instead. Optical, data-only Thunderbolt lives on at companies like Corning, which has you covered if you need a $480 164-foot (50 meters) 5K optical display cable in your life.

Cables aside, OWC also recently announced a $189.99 Thunderbolt 5 hub, which went up for preorder in November and is available now. It’s got four Thunderbolt 5 ports and a single USB-A port and supports three simultaneous 8K displays at 60Hz.

L’Oréal is hoping its latest beauty gadget can demystify skincare. At CES 2025, the company announced Cell BioPrint, a device that’s designed to analyze your skin and give personalized advice on how to slow down signs of aging.

The device is the result of a partnership with NanoEntek — a Korean startup that specializes in chips that can read biofluids. A person essentially takes a facial tape strip, sticks it on their cheek, and then puts the strip in a buffer solution. That solution is then inserted into a cartridge for the Cell BioPrint to analyze. Once that sample is processed, the device takes images of your face as you answer a few short questions about skin concerns and aging.

From there, L’Oreal says it uses proteomics, or the analysis of protein structure and function from a biological sample. In this case, the Cell BioPrint is designed to determine how well your skin is aging. It’ll then give personalized advice on how to improve your skin’s appearance, as well as predictions of how responsive your skin may be to certain skincare ingredients.

It’s an attractive claim, but as with most beauty tech, it’s difficult to properly evaluate L’Oréal’s methods without peer-reviewed studies or experts weighing in. L’Oréal also claims the device can help predict future cosmetic issues before they manifest. For example, it may be able to determine if your skin is prone to hyperpigmentation or enlarged pores.

Image: L’Oréal

Skincare became massively popular during covid-19 lockdowns, sparking a shift in beauty trends toward self-care and the rise of “skinfluencers.” On the flip side, that virality has since turned skincare buying into an extreme sport. Hop onto TikTok, and you’ll find dozens of skinfluencers egging you into dropping $80 on a vial of vitamin C serum, debating the moisturizing properties of glycerin versus hyaluronic acid, or wagging a finger about this or that retinol cream. (Some, may even convince you to buy a wand that zaps your face to increase the efficacy of said ingredients.) It’s confusing, expensive, and maddeningly, what works for one person may not for another. The most the average consumer can do is cross their fingers and hope that the latest potion they bought will actually work.

The Cell BioPrint’s appeal is it claims to use science to cut through that noise. Maybe every skinfluencer says you need to start using retinol when you turn 30, but this device will purportedly tell you based on your own biology whether retinol will actually work for you. Personalization has always been a major theme with CES beauty tech, but it’s particularly compelling with skincare, which is highly dependent on your individual biology. But again, right now there’s no way to know how reliable the Cell BioPrint’s science and recommendations are.

L’Oréal says the Cell BioPrint will be easy to use, with the process taking only five minutes. It also says people will be able to repeat tests, enabling them to monitor changes and progress over time. That said, it might be a while before something like Cell BioPrint is available for consumers. L’Oréal says the device will first be piloted in Asia later this year but otherwise didn’t have a concrete launch timeline or price.

With its new lineup of TVs, Samsung is making a decision that I think might prove somewhat divisive. The company is bringing the matte, glare-free display technology that debuted on last year’s S95D OLED to several more models — including its flagship Mini LED sets. Here at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Samsung is showcasing all of its latest TVs at its annual First Look event.

The new S95F QD-OLED gets blazingly bright, likely using a just-announced Samsung Display panel that’s technically capable of reaching 4,000 nits. According to the company, the glare-free coating has been improved to further cut down on reflections from overhead lighting, floor lamps, and sunlight. And similar to LG’s top-tier 2025 OLEDs announced earlier today, the S95F is capable of hitting a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz. PC gamers, rejoice.

If you’re wondering what’s so controversial about Samsung’s glare-free screen, some people insist it results in a worse overall picture than glossy coatings and that the perfect blacks of OLED aren’t so inky black in all lighting conditions anymore. This issue has been debated at length on Reddit, in YouTube videos (hey, Caleb), and all over AVS Forum.

But clearly Samsung remains undeterred by the haters because now the glare-free display is also coming to the company’s Mini LED “Neo QLED” TVs for the first time. That includes the flagship 4K QN90F and both of this year’s 8K models. (Buying an 8K TV is very silly; I still very much recommend against doing that.) Samsung’s other 2025 4K TVs will stick with a glossy treatment, so at least there are options if you refuse to go glare-free.

These latest Mini LED TVs are also available in some truly enormous sizes: the QN90F tops out at 115 inches, while the (glossy) QN80F can be had at up to 100 inches. Samsung says the wonderfully named “Supersize Picture Enhancer” will help keep 4K content looking crisp even on that giant QN90F. You still won’t find Dolby Vision on any of these TVs no matter the size; clearly, that’s a philosophical choice at this point.

Vision AI

For 2025, Samsung is pulling all of its AI-powered TV features under new branding called Vision AI. These include the usual suspects like AI Upscaling, Auto HDR Remastering, and Adaptive Sound Pro. But there’s a new Click to Search feature that can identify actors on-screen, the location of a shot, or what clothes are featured in a scene “with just one click of the new AI button on your SolarCell remote.” Yes, there’s now a dedicated AI remote button.

Another new AI trick is Samsung Food, which “recognizes the food on your screen and provides recipes for bringing it to life.” I’m mildly curious about this and can’t wait to see how accurate or off the mark it is. Live Translate is a much more helpful addition: it can “instantly translate closed captions on live broadcasts in up to seven languages.”

The company is also using AI to provide more robust home security features. From tonight’s press release:

Samsung AI Home Security transforms your TV into a smart security hub. It analyzes video feeds from your connected cameras and audio from your TV’s microphone to provide comprehensive home monitoring.

It can detect unusual sounds and movements, such as falls or break-ins, to give you more peace of mind whether you’re at home, or away.

You’ll receive alerts and notifications on your phone or directly on your TV screen, helping you stay connected to your home while ensuring the safety and well-being of your loved ones.

Samsung is even leveling up Bixby, which isn’t something we’ve said in a long time. The company’s voice assistant can now “better understand context and assist with multiple actions — like changing the channel and raising the volume at the same time.” You can also now control your Samsung TV with the Galaxy Watch on your wrist. That’s got absolutely nothing to do with AI, but it might be convenient at times.

As for its lifestyle TVs, Samsung is announcing The Frame Pro, which you can read all about here. Pricing for all of these 2025 TVs will be announced over the next few months, and they’ll begin to ship this spring.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

The company created a sensation by making TVs that look more like art and less like tech. With The Frame Pro, Samsung is trying to deliver the best of both worlds.

Samsung’s The Frame has been enormously popular ever since its release. There’s no shortage of imitators at this point, with other manufacturers trying their hand at creating a TV that seamlessly blends in with home decor and can also convincingly look like wall art when idle. But none have captured lightning in a bottle quite like Samsung.

And in 2025, Samsung is looking to fend off copycats by introducing The Frame Pro. With the artwork side of things well handled, now the company is aiming to make The Frame Pro a good TV for everything else. The Frame has nailed the aesthetics and style from the start. People buy it for the vibe more than anything else. But as a TV, it’s always just been, well... fine. There wasn’t much wow factor in terms of brightness or the overall picture quality that came with the nice design. That might be changing now.

There are two main upgrades that put the “pro” in The Frame Pro. First, Samsung is moving to Mini LED, which the company says will give The Frame Pro a boost in contrast, brightness, and black levels. The regular Frame, which isn’t going anywhere, has never offered any local dimming to speak of.

But there’s an important caveat: this isn’t Mini LED in the regular sense. Normally, Mini LED TVs contain a ton of small dimming zones behind the screen. This lets them be way more precise in lighting up only the sections of the display that need it while preserving black levels and shadow detail elsewhere. The Frame Pro doesn’t do that.

Instead, Samsung is placing Mini LEDs along the bottom of the screen, while claiming that this approach still produces some level of local dimming. To me, it all still very much sounds like an edge-lit TV. But I’ll give this “Mini LED” tech a fair chance whenever I get one in for review.

Samsung is also boosting The Frame Pro’s maximum refresh rate from 120Hz to 144Hz, so PC gamers can get even smoother visuals than before. But if you were hoping “pro” might finally mean Dolby Vision support, that’s still a no.

The Frame has always been something of a compromise; maybe you’ve got a significant other who refuses to allow a dull black rectangle into the living room. So you, being the good and considerate person you are, ultimately agree to “settle” on The Frame. After first hearing about The Frame Pro, I was hopeful that it would be much less of a compromise.

But this asterisk around Mini LED has me a little less excited. Like recent models, The Frame Pro’s display has a matte finish to give your preferred art a more authentic appearance and mask the reality that you’re looking at a screen. But matte screens can sometimes lessen a display’s punch, so genuine Mini LED backlighting could’ve helped quite a bit in that regard.

The second major improvement is that The Frame Pro no longer has a thin wire running between it and Samsung’s breakout box that houses all the HDMI inputs and the TV’s other brains: that connection has gone fully wireless. This will result in an even cleaner look with less cable clutter. And the Wireless One Connect Box, which supports up to Wi-Fi 7, eliminates yet another telltale sign that The Frame Pro is a television. Now, all you’ve got to worry about concealing is the display’s power cord. Samsung says the wireless connection between the box and TV works at distances of up to 10 meters, “even with obstacles in its path.”

The Frame Pro is also getting the same litany of AI-powered features as Samsung’s other 2025 TVs. AI is such a focus this year that there’s a dedicated button on the remote for activating Click to Search, which can show you “who the actors are in a given scene, where that scene is taking place, or even the clothing the characters are wearing,” according to Samsung’s press release.

A new Samsung Food feature can recognize dishes onscreen and provide you with the recipes to make them — or something in the same ballpark, at least. Beyond that, the company is dialing up its AI-enhanced picture and sound optimizations, and AI is also reaching into accessibility features like Live Translate, which can “instantly translate closed captions on live broadcasts in up to seven languages.” That’s very neat.

The critical question is one I can’t answer yet: how much will this thing cost? How much more expensive will The Frame Pro be compared to the regular model? Samsung won’t be sharing pricing details until closer to the spring when it ships. If the company gets cocky and goes too high, that could ruin a lot of the appeal here. But if you already know that some version of The Frame is in your future, you’re probably very happy that The Frame Pro now exists.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

Typing on a TV sucks. Those long and / or scrambled on-screen keyboards are both a nuisance to use, and a real problem for anyone wanting to make stuff for your TV.

At CES 2025, I was just introduced to a better way. It’s made by a company called Direction9, which has been working on the system for about a year, and it starts with a very old way of typing: T9. T9 was created by necessity, back in the days when cellphones’ only buttons were the number keys. (Here’s a demo for the uninitiated.) TVs are similarly constrained by their directional pad — on most set-top boxes and smart TVs there’s no other way to type.

The Direction9 system works like this: all the letters are arrayed in a three-by-three number grid, with multiple letters assigned to each number, just like T9. When you open the keyboard, your cursor defaults to the middle, and you click around to the letter you’re looking for. Every time you click the middle button to select a letter, the cursor jumps back to the center, which means you’re always only a click or two from the letter you’re looking for.

You can use the keyboard a “smart” mode, which tries to predict which word you’re looking for — click...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Electric bikes built around Bosch’s smart drive systems will be getting a new digital Battery Lock function this summer that would make stolen batteries worthless to thieves looking to make a quick buck. Great idea — if only Bosch wasn’t being so greedy with the rollout.

Battery theft is a major issue. I’ve personally had to replace two stolen e-bike batteries here in the Netherlands, where over half of all new bicycles sold are electric. The mechanical locks protecting all those removable batteries can be defeated with force, costing owners anywhere from $300 to $1,000 — in the case of e-bikes built around Bosch systems — to replace the stolen battery, in addition to any costs required to repair the broken housing.

Bosch says that Battery Lock supports several digital keys that can be used simultaneously — in the form of the Bosch Flow app and Kiox 300 and Kiox 500 bike displays — or disabled to share batteries with family and friends. The digital lock is compatible with all batteries in the Bosch smart system, including DualBatteries and the PowerMore 250 Range Extender.

Once activated, Battery Lock will engage automatically when a Bosch-based e-bike is turned off. “If a locked battery is inserted into another e-bike with the smart system, it automatically deactivates its motor support and renders the entire e-bike unusable for the thief,” says Bosch in a press release. “This also makes reselling the battery pointless, which reduces the risk of theft.”

In other words, once thieves realize there’s no market for the stolen Bosch batteries, they’ll stop trying to steal them. It’s all part of Bosch’s “vision of ensuring that no e-bike with a Bosch system is stolen in the future.” Great!

Image: Bosch

Here’s the catch: Battery Lock requires a Flow Plus subscription, according to Bosch:

Battery Lock can be installed over-the-air as usual on any Bosch e-bike with the smart system via the e-bike Flow app and will be available from summer 2025 as part of the Flow+ subscription.

This is dumb. To be an effective theft deterrent, Battery Lock needs to be active on all Bosch smart system batteries, whether the owner subscribes to Flow Plus or not. Otherwise, there will still be a sizable resale market for thieves to profit from. Bosch does offer owners a free year of Flow Plus, which then costs $35 / £35 / €40 each year thereafter.

It makes sense to put premium services like an e-bike alarm with GPS tracking and notifications behind Flow Plus, like Bosch does now. But Bosch smart drive e-bikes already feature an integrated system lock that requires a digital key to activate the motor — no subscription required — and the same should be true for Battery Lock if the company’s zero-theft vision is to be believed.

If you’re health-conscious, chances are your feed for the past year has been flooded with influencers evangelizing hormone balancing as a hack for easy weight loss, lowering stress levels, and even reversing symptoms of hormonal conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). So it’s not at all surprising to see Eli Health announce Hormometer, an at-home hormone-testing system that uses your spit and your smartphone’s camera to measure hormone levels.

Like many at-home tests, Hormometer requires you to take a sample of bodily fluid. In this case, it’s saliva. It consists of a thin cartridge that you stick in your mouth for 60 seconds. It looks similar to a pregnancy test, with a window where you can view results. Once collected, the Eli app uses your phone’s camera to assess the test’s results based on criteria like color intensity and sample patterns. Depending on the test and results, Eli Health says the app will then provide personalized trends and recommendations related to stress, sleep, athletic performance, and fertility.

To start, Eli Health says it’s offering two types of hormone tests: cortisol and progesterone. Cortisol is commonly known as the stress hormone and plays a critical role in regulating fight or flight response, blood pressure, blood sugar, metabolism, and sleep cycles. Long-term imbalances, both high and low, are often linked with negative health outcomes including Cushing’s syndrome, unintentional weight gain / loss, fatigue, Type 2 diabetes, and abnormal blood pressure. Meanwhile, progesterone is a reproductive hormone. Abnormal levels can result in irregular periods, fertility problems, and depression.

Image: Eli Health

Eli Health’s tests are a reflection of recent health and wellness trends. Connected at-home testing kits, for example, saw a rise in popularity at the height of the covid-19 pandemic. Though expensive, smart over-the-counter PCR tests like Cue Health became a major part of some tech companies’ return-to-office plans, thanks to their convenience and accuracy.

Similarly, a big part of Hormometer’s appeal is its portability and accessibility. Traditionally, hormone tests have to be sent to a lab and are often taken at a doctor’s office. That can take several days or weeks. They can also be messy if they’re urine-based or invasive if blood-based. The advantage of this type of test is it doesn’t require another party and can turn around results more quickly. As far as cost, Eli Health says Hormometer will come with a subscription plan, starting at $8 monthly with a 12-month commitment. That’s competitive with other at-home hormone tests, which can range from roughly $30 to $250 and require people to mail in samples.

Meanwhile, balancing hormone levels, particularly cortisol, has become a viral wellness trend. Tips to fix “cortisol face,” for example, ran rampant on TikTok throughout 2024. However, experts have decried hormone balancing as both misleading and potentially harmful — hormones can’t truly be balanced, as they’re dynamic and naturally ebb and flow throughout the day. That said, these tests could help people with official diagnoses of chronic hormonal or reproductive health issues monitor their conditions.

A lot of that will depend on accuracy. According to Eli Health, the Hormometer is FDA registered. To be clear, this is different than clearance or approval. It doesn’t mean the FDA has reviewed or cosigned Eli Health’s claims. That said, the company claims that its cortisol and progesterone tests had a 97 percent and 94 percent agreement with gold-standard, FDA-approved lab tests in third-party testing, respectively.

Eli Health says Hormometer will begin beta access this month in the US and Canada. A full release is expected later this year. And while Hormometer is currently limited to cortisol and progesterone, the company says it’s already developing testosterone and estradiol tests for the future.

Aiper has announced a new smart watering solution at CES 2025 that could be as easy to set up as a traditional lawn sprinkler. The IrriSense Smart Irrigation Sprinkler doesn’t require any pipes to be buried under a yard, and as an all-in-one device, it doesn’t need additional hardware to be installed on a faucet. Its targeted approach to watering also limits overspray, reducing water usage.

The IrriSense Smart Irrigation Sprinkler will be available starting in May 2025 for $399. It includes a 33-foot-long waterproof power cord that needs access to an outlet, but you’ll need to provide a standard garden hose long enough to reach a faucet. Installation and setup takes about 15 minutes, according to Aiper, which involves the IrriSense sprinkler being secured using four ground stakes that can be pulled up when you need to relocate or temporarily remove the sprinkler to cut the grass.

Image: Aiper

The sprinkler’s blast can reach 39 feet and cover an area up to 4,300 square feet as it oscillates back and forth. Through the Aiper mobile app, you can customize the spray pattern by creating a map through a manual process that involves pinpointing locations around your yard. The goal is to not only reduce water consumption but also help keep certain areas dry, such as a public sidewalk on your front lawn.

The IrriSense sprinkler’s routine can be scheduled through the mobile app, but for additional conservation and to prevent overwatering, it can also take into account the weather. There’s a sensor on the sprinkler itself as well as separate soil sensors that can keep track of moisture levels. If the lawn is still properly hydrated from a recent rain, scheduled watering routines will be skipped.

Multiple IrriSense sprinklers can be installed and automated to expand the coverage area, and they can be used to dispense liquid fertilizers or pesticides.

There’s a hot new smart pizza oven in town that’ll let you cook a 12-inch pizza in your apartment in two minutes. The $599 Current Backyard Model P electric pizza oven works both indoors and out, can customize cook time based on pizza construction, and has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for remote monitoring.

And it really is hot for an electric oven — Current Backyard says the Model P has a maximum temperature of 850 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing it to cook Neapolitan-style pizzas in two minutes. It comes with a 12-inch cordierite cooking stone and features specific modes for broiling and cooking Neapolitan, New York, thin crust, and frozen pizza. The Wi-Fi connection also enables users to step away for a few minutes while continuing to monitor and control the oven with an app.

Image: Current Backyard

Current Backyard says the Model P uses a proprietary algorithm to keep heat uniform within the oven and prevent users from needing to turn pizzas while they cook, something that’s generally recommended with pizza ovens from competitors like Ooni. The Model P smart app controls also include a “Pizza Build Calculator” that works out the optimal cooking time and temperature based on dough thickness and the quantity of sauce, cheese, and other toppings.

“The Model P Smart Pizza Oven isn’t just about making pizza — it’s about eliminating limitations,” says Current Backyard CEO Tom Penner. “Whether you live in an apartment or have a backyard kitchen, this oven adapts to your lifestyle, offering unparalleled convenience, performance, and flavor.”

Halliday Glasses have boarded the smart spectacles hype train, featuring “proactive” AI assistance and a near-eye display that shows information directly in the user’s field of view. Wearable technology startup Halliday says its flagship eyewear will be available sometime after CES. Shipping is expected to start “by the end of Q1 2025,” and pricing will be set somewhere between $399 and $499 — pricier than display-free competitors like the $299 Meta Ray-Bans and Solos AirGo Vision.

Halliday says the “DigiWindow” located in the upper right of the frame is the world’s smallest and lightest near-eye display module and can display information to the wearer “regardless of whether they have perfect eyesight or require vision correction.” The display appears as a 3.5-inch screen in the upper-right corner of the user’s view with minimal obstruction, according to Halliday, and remains visible in bright sunlight.

Image: Halliday

The glasses’ built-in display works alongside an AI assistant that can anticipate what users need by analyzing conversations, answering questions, and providing additional insights without requiring a prompt. “For instance, during a meeting, it can proactively answer complex questions, summarize key discussion points, and generate summarized meeting notes afterward,” Halliday said in its announcement.

The AI features require the glasses to be connected to a smartphone via Bluetooth, according to Halliday, but the company hasn’t mentioned what AI model it uses or if there are additional costs involved. Features include real-time AI translation in up to 40 languages, live navigation for directions, voice-to-text notes transcription, and the display of synchronized lyrics when listening to music. Users can also discreetly view and reply to messages, create audio memos, and display notes like a teleprompter.

The near-eye display is supported on both prescription lenses and if no lens is used at all. The displayed information isn’t visible to other people and can be controlled using either voice commands, frame interface controls, or a ring that features a built-in trackpad.

Image: Halliday

Image: Halliday

Halliday says the glasses weigh 35 grams (about 1.2 ounces), provide up to eight hours of battery life, and come in two color options: matte black or tortoiseshell. We’ve asked Halliday for more information about the trackpad ring, such as how / if it’s charged and any potential options for color and sizing.

SwitchBot, the company behind the ingenious robot finger that presses buttons for you, just debuted the closest thing yet to a real Rosie the Robot.

The SwitchBot Multitasking Household Robot K20 Plus Pro is a version of SwitchBot’s mini robot vacuum that attaches to a new “FusionPlatform” — a circular device on wheels that fits over the robot and connects to various SwitchBot devices.

Once attached via three mechanical claws, the robot pushes the platform around, enabling it to deliver items around your house, act as a security camera using SwitchBot’s pan / tilt cam, purify the air with the SwitchBot Air Purifier, or provide spot cooling with its fan. It can even carry your phone or tablet on a selfie stick, and SwitchBot says the platform will be compatible with third-party devices. The company also plans to add more features, including a mechanical arm.

Image: SwitchBot

The robot can do all of these tasks autonomously using automations set up in the SwitchBot app — such as “purifying the air upon entry into a room,” or you can control it using the app or with voice commands through Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri Shortcuts.

The robot navigates via a map the lidar-equipped device creates, and SwitchBot claims it has “centimeter-level accuracy in avoiding obstacles and navigating tight spaces” and “moves steadily and effortlessly over everyday barriers.”

The platform has various power ports, including USB-C, so, in theory, you can plug anything into it — although it has a weight limit of just under 18 pounds (8kg). SwitchBot says the FusionPlatform can work with “custom-made attachments, 3D-printed components, and third-party devices with multiple power ports for speakers, car fridges, or even UV sterilization lamps.”

Image: SwitchBot

A teaser image the company released shows a larger robot with the addition of a robotic arm, with an asterisk saying, “Mechanical arm is still under development.” There’s also the option of a combo base station for the K20 Plus Pro, which adds a stick vac, allowing you to summon the robot and do a quick touch-up with the handheld vac. If that mechanical arm ever comes to fruition, maybe the robot can take over this chore for you, too. That would get it a lot closer to its Rosie aspirations.

Image: SwitchBot

This modular approach seems smart, and while no pricing has been announced, it should keep costs down. Rather than spending years and lots of money developing a humanoid robot to try and mimic human actions, adding mobility to existing devices feels more achievable.

In use, it will involve more human interaction — you’ll presumably need to remove the air purifier and replace it with the fan when you want to cool off — but it also feels like something people will use in their homes. Without the ability to climb stairs, it’ll be fairly limited in my three-story home, but I’m still looking forward to testing it out.

Image: SwitchBot

Switchbot plans to launch the K20 Plus Pro in May or June 2025 in custom bundled kits for all the various functions — bundling the vacuum with a circulating fan to form the K20 Plus Pro Air Flow Kit, or the K20 Plus Pro Combo with the SwitchBot air purifier to make up the K20 Plus Pro Omni Clean Kit, or combining all of the above for the SwitchBot K20 Plus Pro Omni Ultimate Kit.

The S20 mopping robot vacuum gets some upgrades that matter

Image: SwitchBot

SwitchBot also announced the SwitchBot S20 Pro this week, which is similarly slated to launch in May or June. The successor to the S10, one of our favorite mopping robot vacuums, the S20 adds an extendable roller mop and side brush to help the robot mop and vacuum in harder-to-reach areas such as corners and along walls. The S20 also has 15,000Pa of suction power, up from 6,500Pa on the S10.

The SwitchBot S10 was one of the first robot vacuum mops to feature plumbing hookups, enabling hands-free draining and refilling of its onboard water tanks via a compact battery-powered water station. (It has a separate auto-empty charging dock). While the S20 is compatible with the water station, which doesn’t need an outlet so it has more versatile placement options, the robot comes with the choice of two all-in-one auto-empty base stations: one with a regular water tank you manually refill or one that can hook into your plumbing. The S20 also works with SwitchBot’s Evaporative Humidifier and can be programmed to automatically refill the humidifier when it’s out of water.

Image: SwitchBot

SwitchBot confirmed that the K20 Plus Pro (vacuum portion) and the S20 will support Matter over Wi-Fi, making them compatible with Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, and any other platform that supports robot vacuums in Matter.

Ugreen has announced a new version of its Nexode desktop GaN charger, boosting the total power output from 300W to 500W, with up to 240W from a single USB-C port. It features five USB-C ports and a single USB-A port, so you can charge five laptops at the same time without the need for a power strip overstuffed with chonky adapters.

Pricing for the Nexode Desktop Charger 500W won’t be finalized until it’s available sometime in March 2025.

Image: Ugreen

Although it would definitely help simplify your travel charging kit, the Nexode Desktop Charger 500W is a hefty brick designed to sit on your desk, in your workshop, or on a kitchen counter. It’s useful anywhere you have multiple power-hungry devices like laptops or handheld gaming devices, and Ugreen says it can even be used to charge power tools or e-bikes.

The charger supports USB-PD 3.1 and Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 fast-charging protocols. The top port can deliver up to 240W of power; the other five ports share 260W regardless of what the top port is doing, and none of them can exceed 100W. You can charge a gaming laptop at 240W, plus two more laptops at 100W and one at 60W, or one laptop at 240W and four laptops at 60W, with another device charging at 20W from the USB-A port.

Without a screen, this might be another multi-port charger in need of a cheat sheet to keep track of which port to use.

SwitchBot has taken the wraps off a new video doorbell that comes with a monitor you can put inside your home. The 4.3-inch monitor serves as a “gateway” for SwitchBot products, as you can use it to see who’s at your door, talk to your visitors, and manage your door lock.

You can plug the display directly into a power outlet, allowing you to mount it on a wall or prop it up on a table. It features a 100dB chime and connects to SwitchBot’s new video doorbell, which offers 2K resolution and color night vision. The doorbell also features a 165-degree wide-angle view, AI motion detection, and an Amazon Alexa integration. You can either purchase a wired option or a battery-powered model that you can juice up with a USB-C charger or a solar panel.

Image: SwitchBot

SwitchBot has also revealed an upgrade to its SwitchBot Lock Pro. Like its predecessor, the SwitchBot Lock Ultra is compatible with the company’s Matter hub and can fit over existing locks, including deadbolt, mortise, and jimmy-proof locks.

Where the Lock Pro has disposable batteries with the option to purchase a rechargeable one, the Lock Ultra comes with a rechargeable battery right out of the box. The Lock Ultra lasts up to nine months on a single charge (or up to 12 months with the “extra large” battery option) and has an “emergency battery” in case the main battery stops working due to cold temperatures.

Image: SwitchBot

You can unlock the SwitchBot Lock Ultra using 16 different methods, including with your fingerprint, NFC, voice commands via Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, or through the SwitchBot app. It stores up to 100 fingerprints and can recognize them in as fast as 0.3 seconds, according to SwitchBot. The device also supports auto locking, allowing you to lock your door at a specific time.

The SwitchBot Lock Ultra, along with the new video doorbell and monitor, is set to arrive toward the end of the first quarter of 2025. There aren’t any details on pricing just yet.

Withings is back at CES with another futuristic health tech concept called Omnia. It’s a smart mirror that can measure and display your health metrics, offer feedback from an AI voice assistant, and then potentially set you up for a telehealth consultation with a doctor.

In a nutshell, Omnia has a base that can measure weight, heart health, and metabolic health. It can also pull in data collected from other trackers like smartwatches, blood pressure monitors, or even a smart bed. Withings says the built-in AI voice assistant will offer real-time feedback and could potentially give motivational pep talks or guidance. In addition to virtual consultations, the company says the mirror could also send data to doctors for review.

Image: Withings

The most interesting thing about the Omnia concept is how it rolls up a bunch of existing health tech trends into a single package. Connected smart mirrors capable of displaying information, making video calls, and playing sound are not new — all of those components existed in Lululemon’s ill-fated Mirror and other copycats. Likewise, smart scales that can measure heart rate, take EKGs, and discern body composition have been around for ages. Meanwhile, AI chatbots embedded in existing health tech was an emerging trend in 2024 — and something well-known players like Oura, Whoop, and Fitbit are tinkering around with.

More cynically, you could see this as an ecosystem play — a proof of concept for what a single person could do if they went all in on Withings’ myriad gadgets. After all, Withings makes plenty of smartwatches, smart scales, connected blood pressure cuffs, smart thermometers, and even a noninvasive sleep tracker that you stick under a mattress. It’s shown up at CES in the past with an at-home urinalysis gadget that you stick in your toilet and scales that can analyze nerve health from your foot. It’s also incorporated elements of telemedicine in past launches. Its original FDA-cleared ScanWatch had cardiologists review EKG results.

Omnia isn’t an actual product for sale yet. Withings says it’s “currently in development,” with no concrete timeline for when it’ll actually be available or for how much. Given the company’s track record with bringing CES launches to market, there’s a good chance it’ll be a lengthy wait before Omnia reaches consumers — if it ever does.

Withings will give demos at CES 2025, which may help gauge whether Omnia is the real deal or more CES health tech vaporware. But even if Omnia never amounts to anything beyond a concept, it’s an indication of where health tech is marching.

I was not at all impressed with the Circular Ring Slim. It wasn’t accurate, it felt like it was made of 3D-printed plastic, syncing took forever, battery life wasn’t great, and honestly, we’d be here all day if I listed everything that went wrong during testing. But for CES 2025, the company behind the ring says it’s here to redeem itself with the $380 Circular Ring 2.

“We had some issues, obviously, with the previous ring,” says Amaury Kosman, cofounder and CEO of Circular. “Mostly electronic, but more than that, we wanted to rebrand the company around two main points. One being accuracy, and the other being a more luxurious, quality-built product.”

That’s immediately apparent looking at the Circular Ring 2’s design and specs. For starters, it’s no longer plastic. The Ring 2 is now made from titanium in four finishes: gold, silver, rose gold, and black. It also sports an upgraded EKG sensor that allows for FDA-cleared atrial fibrillation detection — a first for this category. Beyond that, the new ring has additional photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors for more precise readings. Kosman says the upgraded sensor array translates to much more accurate health tracking compared to the Slim. (It’s a good thing, too; the Slim was sometimes off by 5,000 steps in my testing.)

“We also took into consideration everything we’ve learned from what was told to us [by customers]. The biggest things were connectivity issues, battery life, and at the beginning, the ring wasn’t entirely waterproof. The Slim tried to correct some of that, but obviously we weren’t doing it perfectly,” Kosman says, noting that these issues have also been improved in the new ring.

As mentioned, syncing was an absolute chore with the Slim — so much so, I often just gave up on engaging with the device. Now, Kosman says, the Circular Ring 2 should have no problems with background syncing. He also assures me that battery life has doubled. In performance mode (where all the tracking features are turned on), users ought to get around four days. In a battery-saving mode, the ring gets up to eight days. Also, instead of a tiny, easily lost USB charger, Circular has switched to a charging dock.

Circular’s AI chatbot Kira has also been revamped. Previously, it took 14 days to calibrate, took forever to generate dubious advice, and overall was cumbersome to use. With the Ring 2, Kosman says that it’ll only take about four days to calibrate and the overall experience will be smoother. Recommendations should also be more accurate and complex thanks to improvements to the algorithm and sensors.

Another neat update is that Circular will add digital sizing. Kosman says the company’s website will let customers use their smartphone camera to compare the size of their hand to a card-sized object. From there, Kosman says the company will be able to calculate which size ring a person needs for each finger. Smart ring sizing is a huge pain point for the category, and most companies require customers to order a physical sizing kit before they can actually buy the product.

Image: Circular

On paper, it seems like Circular has taken the laundry list of issues with the Slim and ticked them off one by one. To do that, though, some sacrifices had to be made. One of the Slim’s unique features was a built-in haptic motor that worked as a silent alarm. In the future, Circular had promised that the motor could also alert you to notifications. Unfortunately, Kosman says the haptic motor had to go to accommodate better health sensors.

That said, Kosman isn’t giving up on the idea of haptics in smart rings entirely. The goal is to have two product lines — the Circular Ring 2, a more health-focused ring in line with what’s currently available on the market, and an upcoming revamp to the existing haptics-capable Circular Ring Slim.

The Circular Ring 2 will be priced at $380 and is expected to launch in February or March of 2025. We’ll have to see (and test) for ourselves whether Circular can deliver on all these improvements. It’s certainly a tall order considering that there’s increasing competition in the smart ring space. But if it can, that’d be one hell of a redemption arc.

Targus-owned Hyper introduced the HyperSpace Trackpad Pro, a premium haptic trackpad for Windows, on Sunday. The company plans to add basic compatibility with macOS via a firmware update later this year.

Like the Magic Trackpad does on a Mac and other precision trackpads do on Windows laptops, the wireless HyperSpace Trackpad Pro supports multitouch gestures. However, Hyper’s trackpad software grants Windows users an advanced level of customizability, with the ability to set up shortcuts in the trackpad’s corners. That includes general functions like copying and pasting but also specific actions within apps like Adobe Suite, Figma, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.

For instance, users could customize the trackpad’s bottom-right corner so clicking on it will add a new slide in PowerPoint. Users can also create and assign their own gestures instead, assigning — in Hyper’s example — a two-finger deep click to enter presentation mode in PowerPoint.

Hyper also lets users adjust the haptic feedback and pressure sensitivity, tweak the click force, and create customizable sound modes. After they’re done, they can share these custom configurations or discover others via the “Hyper Learning Cloud” community.

The trackpad has other things going for it beyond customizability. Hyper says it has independent force detection for up to 10 fingers as opposed to Apple’s four. It also features a 240Hz report rate, which should allow for high responsiveness and extremely smooth tracking. Finally, the trackpad can support multiple devices and comes with detachable magnetic palm rests.

The HyperSpace Trackpad Pro will arrive in the second quarter of 2025 and cost $129.99, the same as Apple’s Magic Trackpad.

Govee is launching a new pixel light grid that can display art, animations, and live data. The Gaming Pixel Light lets you upload your own images and GIFs to display or choose from 150 different data sources, letting it provide live updates on the weather, Bitcoin prices, NBA scores, and more.

You can also sync the display to games you’re playing by hooking it up to Govee’s HDMI sync box or play 8-bit tunes that sync to the pixel grid using the built-in speaker. Naturally, there’s an AI component as well — an accompanying app can generate new pixel art for you using Govee’s “AI Lighting Bot.”

Image: Govee

The Gaming Pixel Light is compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. You can wall-mount the screen or place it atop a table or desk, making it seem like a neat little addition to a gaming room or office.

Along with this pixel light, Govee is announcing the Table Lamp 2 Pro — an LED-packed tabletop lamp with a 2.5-inch JBL speaker that syncs up lighting with your music. The portable device has 210 independently controlled LED beads and 600 lumens of brightness. When it’s not synced with your music, you can customize the lighting yourself or choose from 100 preset scenes.

Image: Govee

The lamp works with Matter, Google Assistant, and Alexa and comes with a rechargeable battery. You can also link two lamps together for a “full stereo surround experience.” Govee says it will release the Gaming Pixel Light and the Table Lamp 2 Pro in the second quarter of 2025, but it didn’t provide any pricing information.

Amazon Prime Video has licensed a documentary about Melania Trump that will be directed by Rush Hour director Brett Ratner, reports Variety. A Prime Video spokesperson told the outlet that the movie will be an “unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look” at the first lady.

The news comes after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos had dinner with Donald Trump, who was heavily critical of the company during his first term. It also follows the decision by Bezos and Amazon to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, just as other tech CEOs like Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have done. Prime Video is also set to livestream Trump’s inauguration.

The film is the first significant Hollywood project that Ratner has taken on since 2017, when several women accused him of sexual misconduct and another of rape, Variety notes. He denied the allegations but parted ways with Warner Bros.

Ratner has some notable ties to the Trumps, including a former partnership with Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin. He also filmed 2011’s Tower Heist largely on-location at Trump International Hotel & Tower and has reportedly run in Mar-a-Lago social circles since his departure from Hollywood life.

Amazon’s Melania Trump documentary has already begun filming and the company plans to give it theatrical and streaming releases starting in the second half of this year, Variety writes.

At least when it comes to making TVs, LG can seemingly do no wrong. Year after year, the company’s OLED sets are at the top of most reviewers’ recommendation lists. They’ve overcome the Achilles’ heel of older models — brightness — thanks to clever innovations like Micro Lens Array, which made the G3 and last year’s G4 bright enough to make HDR shine in any viewing environment.

So it should come as no surprise that LG’s 2025 lineup of OLED TVs raises the bar yet again. At the top of the lineup is the M5, which is the latest series to use the company’s Zero Connect Box for a wireless link between the TV screen and your gaming consoles, streaming boxes, and other external devices. The M5 will come in 65-, 77-, 83-, and 97-inch sizes. The Zero Connect Box is an impressive trick that, by all accounts, works quite well. This year the wireless connection is apparently even more reliable. But no one really needs that. So I tend to view the G-series as LG’s more practical flagship for consumers.

Lucky for us TV nerds, the G5 is (somehow) getting even brighter. LG says its latest Brightness Booster Ultimate technology “enhances light control architecture and light-boosting algorithms to achieve brightness three times higher than conventional OLED models.” (For context, that comparison is being made with OLEDs that don’t include the Micro Lens Array tech found in the M5 and G5.) LG is also pushing the refresh rate on its premium G5 all the way up to 165Hz, which it claims is an industry first, offering a new level of smooth gameplay for the PC crowd. You’ll be able to get the G5 in sizes ranging from 55 inches up to 83 inches. There are also 48-inch and 97-inch models, but those won’t deliver the same peak brightness.

Image: LG

The two highest-end models feature LG’s latest Alpha 11 Gen 2 processor, which improves image processing and upscaling to make lower-bitrate content look as good as possible on these 4K screens. LG says a lot of those processing tricks are also trickling down to the more mainstream C5. With so many people watching internet TV services and other streaming content these days, that magic sauce can make a noticeable difference. Sony’s known for being the best in the game at this, but LG has made big strides in recent years.

Goodbye inputs button, hello endless AI features

This year’s Magic Remote no longer has a dedicated inputs button. In what might prove to be a controversial decision, LG is making the Home Hub button pull double duty: you can press it to reach the Home Hub dashboard of webOS or hold down the button to pull up your list of inputs. That’s not the end of the world, but it’s still another thing to remember for a fundamental TV interaction.

And then comes the avalanche of AI features. The usual AI Picture Pro and AI Sound Pro optimization modes are present. The C5 series is getting the same virtualized 11.1.2-channel surround sound that debuted in the G4 last year. LG is also expanding on the picture wizard it introduced two years ago, where viewers pick from a series of images to land on their ideal image settings, with a similar process for audio.

But this year, the AI focus is much, much bigger than that. LG has new “LG AI” branding — that’s what the mic button now activates. Oh, I’m sorry. Did I call it the Magic Remote before? The remote has been rebranded as the AI Remote. And there’s a whole damn LLM chatbot built into these TVs. Hell, even Microsoft’s Copilot is being thrown in.

The risk LG faces here is getting in the way and pushing this stuff on customers too aggressively. The company’s OLEDs are some of the very best TVs on the market. They offer brilliant visuals with every feature home theater enthusiasts want. In 2025, that includes an enhanced Filmmaker Mode that takes your room’s ambient lighting into account and adjusts picture settings accordingly — all the while making sure to “maintain the filmmaker’s original intent.”

For its part, LG claims the latest webOS homescreen is faster and easier to use. And the company has vowed to keep software updates coming over the next five years, much like our smartphones gain new features over time.

Still, at this stage, I find myself putting up with webOS and spending the bulk of my usage time in a different interface — whether that’s Apple TV, Google TV, or something else. I’m hopeful that LG’s mega push into AI won’t be too heavy-handed, but we’ll have to see how it all comes together once the 2025 TV lineup starts shipping this spring. If customers find their usual flows getting interrupted by AI gimmicks, there might be some complaints.

We’ll have a much better idea of how LG AI fits into these superb TVs — and whether it ultimately detracts from them — when the M5, G5, C5, and B5 OLEDs hit stores in a few months. By then, we’ll know how much they’ll cost, too.

Smart energy solutions company EcoFlow is debuting Oasis, its new AI-powered Home Energy Management System, at CES in Las Vegas this week. Designed to automate and simplify energy management, Oasis features an AI assistant that can answer and even act on complicated questions about your home’s energy using natural language, such as “How can I maximize my solar energy usage today?” The company also teased the upcoming launch of Ocean Pro, a new grid-tied whole-home solar battery solution for the US it plans to launch later this year.

Energy management is a key use case for the smart home, but the infrastructure is expensive, and it can be complicated to set up and confusing to manage. With Oasis, EcoFlow is tackling at least two of those problems.

Oasis works with EcoFlow’s home power technology to manage your home’s energy through real-time monitoring of your home’s solar energy production, energy storage to EcoFlow batteries, and energy use from third-party appliances and systems you connect to it through the EcoFlow app.

Image: EcoFlow

Peter Linghu, EcoFlow’s director of product strategy and development, explained that Oasis uses predictive analytics and automations to do helpful things automatically, such as switch to backup power in the event of a power outage or charge up your batteries if there’s a big storm coming. While these are features most home battery storage systems today offer, with Oasis, EcoFlow says it’s adding a more capable software layer to provide more granular whole-home energy management.

The EcoFlow Assistant, an AI chatbot in the app, can answer questions for you, such as “How much energy did I use today?” But it can also suggest, create, and set up automations to manage energy use across your home. For example, you can ask it to set up the best power backup solution, and it will present options it can then implement (see video). Linghu says it does this by analyzing data such as past energy usage, local electric rates, home solar energy generation, and weather patterns.

Oasis can also proactively offer suggestions, such as running your air conditioning or washing machine off stored energy rather than grid power when energy prices are high. Linghu says you can instruct Oasis to automate functions like this or choose to be notified about them and implement them yourself.

Intelligent management of your home’s energy can save you energy and money without you having to run around turning off lights, fiddling with the thermostat, and unplugging the EV charger. But a big hurdle is finding a system that can talk to everything in your home and to existing infrastructure like solar panels. You also need an energy provider that offers time-of-use rates and demand response programs to get the most benefit. Additionally, many solutions today only work with proprietary equipment, making them better suited to new builds rather than retrofitting into your home. EcoFlow’s approach is more open.

Today, Oasis works with EcoFlow products such as its portable Delta 3 Plus and River 3 Plus solar generators and its whole-home backup solution. Currently, that includes the Smart Home Panel 2, which offers circuit-level management of electrical loads and can be connected to your existing electrical panel. It can also work with the portable Delta Pro Ultra as a battery backup system.

The new EcoFlow Ocean Pro system that’s coming to the US later this year will bring a higher-capacity grid-tied option for whole-home backup. EcoFlow hasn’t provided many details but says it’s similar to EcoFlow’s PowerOcean system, which is available in Europe. It looks like it will be a direct competitor to popular products in this space, such as the Tesla Powerwall and Anker Solix.

Oasis also works with third-party devices such as Ecobee and Nest thermostats, energy-monitoring products like smart plugs from Shelly and TP-Link, as well as any Matter-compatible device. While Matter is still in its early stages when it comes to energy management, high-energy use devices like appliances, heat pumps, solar panels, and EV charging equipment are now part of the Matter specification. So, there may soon be more products that can integrate directly with Oasis. All this helps bring more devices into the system to get a clear picture of your home’s energy use.

Several other companies are working on this type of home energy management solution. Schneider launched its Schneider Home system at CES last year; Savant Power, Anker Solix, and Generac also have interesting products in this space. The initial cost is still a major roadblock for many people, but if the complexity can be reduced through intelligent home energy management software, that feels like a big step in the right direction.