It’s a bit of a moment for the humble door lock. Schlage, one of the oldest lock makers in the US, just launched its first-ever smart door lock without a keyway. But that’s not the most exciting part: the Schlage Sense Pro Smart Deadbolt is the company’s first lock to support the new smart home standard Matter and one of the first ever to use ultra wideband technology (UWB) for hands-free unlocking.

Along with the Sense Pro, Schlage also announced a new entry-level smart lock. The $199 Schlage Arrive Smart WiFi Deadbolt does have a keyway, along with a push button keypad for the touchscreen-adverse. The new locks join the company’s existing Encode smart lock line.

Image: Schlage

While it’s nice to see a more affordable smart lock option from Schlage (its Encode deadbolts start at $274), the Sense Pro is the headliner. A radical redesign for the company, the new touchscreen lock has a completely smooth face and no keyway. While there are plenty of smart locks without keyways, this is a first for the 100-year-old Schlage. There’s also no fingerprint reader — a technology Schlage seems to have skipped over entirely.

Instead, it appears to be betting on UWB as the best option for seamlessly unlocking your door. Along with a numeric code and NFC-powered tap-to-unlock (similar to Apple’s Home Key), the Sense Pro can open automatically as you approach your door. Here’s how Schlage says it works:

This feature uses Ultra Wideband and the user’s paired and authorized personal device to intelligently calculate speed, trajectory and motion, ensuring seamless, intuitive entry that understands intent to enter and unlocks precisely as the user reaches their door.

Your phone or smartwatch will need to have UWB technology to support the hands-free unlocking, and Schlage said details on which specific models will be compatible with Schlage’s implementation will be announced closer to its retail launch.

While, initially, the lock will work over Schlage’s new Schlage Converge technology, Schlage has said that the Sense Pro will support Aliro. The open standard, which is due to be released this year, will add support for NFC and UWB unlocking across ecosystems and hardware. Theoretically, any Aliro lock will work with any Aliro-enabled smartphone — Apple, Samsung, and Google are all involved in developing Aliro.

Speaking of ecosystem support, the Sense Pro is Schlage’s first lock to work with Matter, which means it’s compatible with any Matter ecosystem, including Apple Home, Samsung SmartThings, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Home Assistant.

Matter support is over Thread, a low-powered, low-latency smart home protocol designed for battery-operated devices like locks. It should ensure the Sense Pro gets decent battery life, although the company hasn’t released details yet. Thread is used in the Schlage Encode Plus, but that model doesn’t support Matter. As with the Encode Plus, the Sense Pro will also work with built-in Wi-Fi to connect to the Schlage Home app.

Schlage says the Sense Pro will launch this year but hasn’t provided a date or price.

Image: Schlage

The entry-level Arrive doesn't have any of the bells and whistles of the Sense Pro, but it is Schlage’s first push-button keypad deadbolt equipped with built-in Wi-Fi. You can program up to 250 codes in the newly updated Schlage app or unlock it with a physical key. It also works with Amazon Alexa or Google Home — but there’s no support for Matter. Schlage says it will be available in late spring 2025.

Image: Schlage

It’s 2025, and Microsoft is kicking off the year by reminding everyone that support for Windows 10 ends in October. While the company has been trying to entice Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11 with full-screen prompts throughout 2024, it’s now calling 2025 “the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh.”

Last year, Microsoft kicked off 2024 by declaring it was “the year of the AI PC,” before launching a range of Copilot Plus PCs several months later. As Microsoft edges closer to the end of Windows 10, it’s making its presence at CES felt this week by declaring that refreshing a Windows 10 PC will be more important than buying a new TV or phone in 2025.

“As CES 2025 begins, showcasing the latest innovations in technology, we are excited for the advancements our industry will offer to people around the globe,” says Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft. “And we believe that one of the most important pieces of technology people will look to refresh in 2025 isn’t the refrigerator, the television or their mobile phone. It will be their Windows 10 PC, and they will move forward with Windows 11.”

Mehdi believes that “Windows 11 is available at a time when the world needs it most” and that “the forefront of AI innovation will be realized on Windows.” 2025 should be a bigger year for Windows AI features, particularly after Recall was delayed enough times that it didn’t launch fully in 2024. Microsoft also hasn’t delivered its improved AI-powered Windows Search features to Insiders yet after unveiling them in October.

Microsoft isn’t at CES this week in the traditional sense of having a booth on the show floor or even announcing product news, but its influence will be felt in the myriad laptops that get announced this week, and even unusual announcements of its Copilot AI assistant coming to LG and Samsung TVs. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some Microsoft executives jump onstage during CES press events this week. Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s vice president of “next generation,” is already confirmed to appear at Lenovo’s handheld gaming PC event, and Windows chief Pavan Davuluri has been appearing at partner keynotes in recent months.

With Windows 11 adoption still lagging behind Windows 10, it’s no surprise to see Microsoft dedicating the year to making sure people upgrade to Windows 11 or buy a new PC. Windows 11 is now the most popular OS for PC gaming on Steam, but with Microsoft offering Extended Security Updates to consumers for the first time ever later this year, it will be interesting to see how many opt to pay $30 for an extra year of updates instead of moving to Windows 11.

Barbecue tech startup Brisk It has unveiled its latest smart grill at CES, which uses generative AI to automate cooking and create personalized recipes. The $399 Zelos 450 electric wood pellet smoker features 450 square inches of cooking space and Wi-Fi connectivity for remotely adjusting settings and monitoring food as it cooks via a mobile app.

That’s pretty affordable for a smart wood pellet grill — the cheapest Wi-Fi-controlled offering from Traeger starts at $800, and that doesn’t include any generative AI cooking features. The Zelos is also substantially cheaper than previous AI-powered grills from Brisk It, which start at $849.99.

Whether you actually want AI to get in between you and your grilling is the bigger question. Brisk It says its Vera AI can “monitor, control, and automate the cook for you” at the push of a button, sending users notification updates on the cooking progress and reminders to do things like wrap or spritz ribs with water. If these prompts are missed or ignored, the AI will automatically adjust the grilling temperature to prevent food from being ruined. Ridiculous as it sounds, the company’s earlier models have received some positive reviews for their helpful automation.

Image: Brisk It

The latest Vera 2.0 model on the Zelos 450 includes new features like Smart Image Recognition, which uses photos of ingredients to generate recipes, and Recipe Re-creation, which can turn existing recipes into versions that can be automated on the grill.

The Zelos 450 has a temperature range of 180–500 degrees Fahrenheit that supports both slow cooking and high-heat grilling. Brisk It says it’ll be available to purchase at Amazon, The Home Depot, Lowe’s, Walmart, and the Brisk It Grills webstore sometime in Q1 2025.

Intel is announcing the rest of the Arrow Lake family of CPUs at CES today, with options for thin-and-light laptops all the way up to gaming notebooks. These mobile processors will appear in many of the computers being announced at CES this week, with the 200HX series being paired with next-gen GPUs we’re expecting Nvidia to announce later today and the 200H and 200U series of chips destined for thin-and-light and premium laptops.

While Intel will continue to supply Lunar Lake CPUs for its range of Copilot Plus laptops, the Arrow Lake mobile family won’t be ditching memory sticks after Intel confirmed in October that the Lunar Lake chips were a one-off experiment.

Image: Intel

The new Core Ultra 200HX series will be targeted at gaming laptops and should deliver around 5 percent better single-thread performance and 20 percent multithread performance improvements over previous Raptor Lake-H Refresh processors.

Intel says new gaming laptops with the “latest discrete GPUs” (read that as Nvidia’s RTX 50-series) will be coming in late Q1. The flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX has 24 cores (8 performance and 16 efficiency cores), can boost up to 5.5GHz, has 4 GPU cores, and a 13 TOPS NPU. That’s enough to meet Intel’s definition of “AI PC” but not enough for Microsoft’s Copilot Plus features.

Consumer laptops that aren’t gaming-focused will come with Intel’s 200H or 200U series of processors. The H variants have a base power of 28 watts, apart from the flagship Core Ultra 9 285H that pushes the power requirements up to 45 watts. These H-series CPUs have a new Intel Arc GPU inside that delivers around 15 percent better graphics performance over previous Meteor Lake chips.

Image: Intel

CPU performance on these H chips should be around 15 percent better, too, for single-thread tasks. There are five chips available for laptop makers here, including the flagship Intel Core Ultra 9 285H with 16 cores (6 performance, 8 efficiency, and 2 low-power efficiency cores), a boost clock of 5.4GHz, and 8 GPU cores.

Intel will also release the U series of its Core Ultra 200 processors for laptops that are much more focused on battery life and thin-and-light designs. These chips have a base power of just 15 watts and only turbo up to 57 watts. The top Intel Core Ultra 7 265U processor includes 12 cores (2 performance, 8 efficiency, and 2 low-power efficiency cores) and can boost up to 5.3GHz.

While the 200HX series of chips won’t appear until late Q1 in gaming laptops, the 200H and 200U chips should start shipping in thin-and-light laptops in the coming weeks.

Home security company Kami Vision is introducing a new camera that’s designed especially for seniors living on their own. The Kami Fall Detect Camera monitors for falls and can alert families or caregivers to take action. The company has been offering similar fall detection systems for senior living communities, but this is its first product designed with private homes in mind.

The Fall Detect Camera offers an 87-degree view and can rotate 360 degrees. The owner can authorize other users to receive alerts if a fall is detected or access the camera’s live view to check on them — there’s even two-way audio communication built in. Kami Vision claims the camera detects falls with 99.5 percent accuracy and uses AI to identify a fall even if the person is partially obscured.

Kami Vision offers a subscription service at $45 per month that includes professional monitoring to verify falls and automatic calls to emergency services if there’s no response to a fall. The camera itself costs $99 and can be used on its own, but the subscription is required to get the fall detection features.

Kami isn’t the first company to introduce tech to help people age in place. Both the Apple Watch and Google Pixel Watch include fall detection features that allow the wearer to call for help when a fall is detected. But those devices need to be on your body to work and need to be kept charged, which might not be practical for someone whose age or condition puts them at risk for falls. As baby boomers reach their senior years, something like Kami Vision’s approach will probably look awfully appealing to caregivers and those wanting to age in place alike.

Ring is doing something rare for a technology brand: upgrading devices that customers have already purchased. The company is updating its outdoor cameras to boost video resolution, but it’s not just new customers who will benefit — existing owners of the floodlight and spotlight cams will get the upgrade, too.

Ring’s series of outdoor cameras currently support 1080p video. The Floodlight Cam Pro and the Spotlight Cam Pro are getting the boost to 2K video, while the Plus versions of those cameras will remain at 1080p. It’s a significant jump in resolution for the Pro models considering that most other Ring cameras top out at 1080p, with the exception of a few doorbells that do 1440p and 1536p.

Across Ring’s product line, these outdoor cameras are good candidates for a resolution bump. Since they’re typically mounted higher and farther away from the subjects they’re meant to record, a little extra resolution can make a significant difference in image detail. Digital zoom, which was already pretty good on the Floodlight Cam Pro, should get a little sharper, too.

Existing Floodlight and Spotlight Cam Pro owners will be able to upgrade their devices through the Ring app when the update starts rolling out on January 8th.

Ring has announced a new partnership with fire safety brand Kidde to launch smart smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that connect to the Ring app via Wi-Fi and send alerts to your phone when the alarms are triggered.

The Kidde Smart Smoke Alarm with Ring ($54.97) and the Kidde Smart Smoke and CO Alarm with Ring ($74.97) are hardwired alarms with battery backup. They will launch this April at The Home Depot and come to more retailers later in 2025, according to Kidde.

Image: Kidde

The alarms connect to the Ring app and, as well as sending alerts when triggered, will notify you about a low battery to help avoid those 2AM chirps. But the Ring alarm can’t hush an active alarm, you’ll have to do that manually. If you have other compatible hardwired Kidde smoke alarms in your house, adding one of these Ring-powered alarms will enable your existing alarms to also connect to the Ring app.

Unlike the First Alert Z-Wave smoke and CO alarms that also work with Ring, the Kidde alarms do not need a Ring Alarm hub to connect to the app and don’t require a subscription to receive alerts. Ring will offer the option go 24/7 professional monitoring of the smoke alarms for $5 a month; if you already have Ring Professional Monitoring for your Ring Alarm, smoke alarm monitoring is included. (Ring also sells a $35 smoke alarm listener that can alert the Ring app if it hears an alarm in your home, which also requires a Ring Professional Monitoring subscription.)

Smart smoke alarms are critical devices, as they can alert you to danger at home when you’re not there. There really aren’t many choices on the market today. While Amazon, Apple, and others offer services through smart speakers and home security systems that listen for your existing smoke alarms and send alerts to your phone, actual connected alarms are few and far between.

Google’s Nest Protect is one of the best options, but at $149, it's very expensive. While it has some excellent features, including a motion-activated nightlight, voice alerts, and the option to silence the alarm from the Nest app, the product hasn’t been updated in several years. Google also doesn’t offer professional monitoring. First Alert’s OneLink smart alarm line has been discontinued. Kidde sells a stand-alone line of Wi-Fi-connected smart smoke alarms that work with its app to send alerts and integrate with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. According to Kidde, these new alarms will only work with the Ring app at launch and will not integrate with Amazon Alexa or any other smart home systems.

At last year’s CES, we heard from the company behind Ultraloq and U-tec about the $69 Ulticam Dot, a portable security camera that was supposed to launch over the summer. But according to Xthings chief strategy officer Matthew Brown, it delayed the launch until Q1 2025 in part to work on what it considers a “disruptive” feature: giving every Ulticam product seven days of free cloud storage for recordings and offering all features without a premium subscription.

Is that truly disruptive? Well, there aren’t many security camera manufacturers we know of that offer free cloud storage for any meaningful stretch of time, let alone a full week. (Arlo did before removing the option for new customers, and Nest still offers three hours.) Xthings isn’t exactly promising such generosity forever, but Brown says the company is committed to “deliver that experience for as long as we possibly can.” The company is also looking into an optional subscription that would extend cloud storage retention beyond seven days.

Free cloud storage will be available for every Ulticam, starting with the Dot, a battery-powered security camera that leans into its portability. It has a magnetic base that could make it more convenient than other options for travel. While it’s magnetically attached to the base, you can pan and tilt the camera to get the angle just right. You can attach the base to any vertical surface using screws or adhesive for more permanent installation or just set it upright on a flat horizontal surface.

The Dot otherwise follows a proven formula. The weather-resistant 2K camera supports night vision and offers real-time person and motion alerts with configurable detection zones. You can also engage visitors with two-way audio or a siren. It has 8GB of onboard storage for saving clips locally, and it works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Xthings says the Dot can last up to nine months in standby mode on four AA batteries (though battery life can vary based on usage).

The brand is also readying high-end wired home security cameras designed to cover your home’s exterior. The previously announced Ulticam IQ ($169 or $199 with 4G LTE connectivity) will come in Q1 2025, while the newly announced Ulticam IQ Floodlight ($199 or $239 with 4G) arrives in Q2. Both start with 2K resolution, but 4K versions will arrive in Q2.

Image: Xthings

The Ulticam IQ has a built-in motion-activated spotlight, while the upgraded model adds two floodlights for better illumination and color night vision. Both IQ cameras also have AI-powered motion detection of vehicles and specific faces with four configurable zones, all processed on-device. Like the Dot, they’ll come with seven-day cloud storage and 8GB of onboard storage, but you can expand that with an SD card up to 128GB.

Additional reporting by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Home security cameras are usually good at getting a wide shot of your yard and whatever’s passing through it — but a new camera can help you get a close-up on your visitors, too.

Tapo’s new HybridCam Duo camera sticks two cameras together: a more traditional security camera with a wide-angle lens, plus a second camera that can pan, tilt, and zoom in to capture details.

Image: Tapo

Both cameras capture 4K footage that gets stored locally and processed using an on-device AI system for person, vehicle, and pet detection. The cameras are battery-powered, and they can be paired with a solar panel to keep them running indefinitely, so long as you’ve got the weather for it.

Tapo didn’t share many details beyond that, so pricing and availability are still TBD.

Other companies offer pan-and-tilt cameras with zoom lenses for tracking movement and capturing detail. Other companies also offer dual-lens security cameras to put zoom and wide-angle capture into a single unit. But companies don’t usually stick two cameras together quite as literally as Tapo has done here.

Tapo is the latest brand trying to let you open your front door with just a wave of your palm. The company announced the PalmKey smart door lock today, which lets you enter the house with a PIN, a fingerprint, or a palm scan.

The palm scanner requires your hand to be roughly four to 10 inches away from the reader, and according to Tapo, it’ll work if your hand is wet or dirty or if you have worn-down fingerprints. The system allegedly uses AI to assess the vein patterns within your palm.

Image: Tapo

Tapo’s lock has a removable, rechargeable 10,000mAh battery that’s supposed to last a full year on a charge, which should make upkeep fairly low-effort. There’s also support for a physical key backup, according to the press release, though Tapo didn’t detail where that sits on the unit. It also works with Alexa, SmartThings, and Google Home.

Details are limited beyond that — Tapo didn’t share pricing or a release date.

Palm scanning is one of the newer trends we’re seeing in smart locks. Philips already has a palm-scanning model on sale, and Eufy announced a model in December. What this Tapo model misses out on is some of the truly hands-free tech that’s likely to start hitting the market this year. Those locks will rely on ultra wideband in your smartphone to automatically open the door when they sense you’re approaching, no need to raise your hand at all.

Buying a smart home product today means checking which ecosystems it works with by looking for the little “Works with Apple Home” or “Works with Google” badge on the package. Matter was supposed to get rid of those because if a product works with Matter, it should work with all the big smart home platforms. That hasn’t happened yet, and now we have one more badge to look for: the Matter badge.

Getting all those badges is about to get simpler for manufacturers, though. The Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), which runs Matter, announced today that Apple, Google, and Samsung will all accept its certification for their “Works With” programs:

The Alliance is excited to share that Apple has begun accepting Alliance Interop Lab test results for Matter devices for Works With Apple Home, and that Google and Samsung will be doing the same for their respective Works With Google Home, and Works With SmartThings certifications later this year, underscoring the credibility and reliability of the Alliance’s testing programs.

This means device makers won’t have to put their gadgets through a separate testing program for each platform to wear its “Works With” badge. If they get certified as a Matter Device by the CSA, they can show their results to the other ecosystems and get those badges, too, without doing any more testing. This makes it much easier for device makers and gets us one step closer to just one badge to rule them all. (Notably, Amazon has not announced participation for Works with Alexa.)

The CSA also announced a new FastTrack Recertification Program and a Portfolio Certification Program that lets companies certify multiple products more efficiently. A complaint I’ve heard frequently from smart home companies is that getting devices certified and recertified by Matter when they make a change or an update is a laborious and expensive process that slows down their development work. The CSA says these two new programs simplify both processes and make them less costly and complicated.

Intuition Robotics introduced the ElliQ Caregiver Solution on Monday, an AI-powered system that includes the ElliQ companion robot and a new Caregiver app to help caregivers monitor the health of homebound seniors.

Originally, the bobblehead-esque animatronic was mainly a friendly looking Amazon Alexa-like voice assistant designed to offer companionship to seniors living alone. Unlike Alexa, though, the ElliQ is proactive, prompting seniors to talk to it and have conversations, while also offering entertainment, health and wellness support, and more. The company also offered a Connect app that let caregivers keep in touch via video calls but not much else.

But with the debut of the ElliQ Caregiver Solution at CES, the companion robot is now a much more helpful care assistant. For example, if the robot detects an elderly parent hasn’t slept well or is feeling sick, ElliQ will send alerts to the caregiver. It can also send updates about any significant behavioral or health changes. This way, caregivers can monitor their loved ones’ health and activity in a way that doesn’t feel as intrusive as a camera or sensor.

Caregivers can set personalized care goals that ElliQ will promote at home and receive other “proactive updates powered by AI-driven insights.” Basically, it’s like having a “friend” keeping you up to date about your loved one — without requiring you to physically check in.

The ElliQ Caregiver Solution is now available to purchase. Its price is comprised of a one-time enrollment fee of $249.99 and a subscription that costs $59.99 per month. For now, the Caregiver app will be available at no additional cost. Later this year, Intuition Robotics will charge new users an extra $9.99 per month for the Caregiver Solution.

More than a year after launching its smart TV platform in Europe, TiVo is now bringing it to the US. The company’s putting its TiVo OS platform inside a new Sharp TV arriving as soon as February, rivaling the likes of Roku, Google TV, and Amazon’s Fire TV.

TiVo first announced TiVo OS in 2022, but the platform didn’t actually launch until last year. The company bills its operating system as a “neutral” platform, allowing TV manufacturers to put their own spin on the viewing experience. It says TiVo OS supports “a wide range” of streaming services and comes with a recommendation system that serves up “personalized suggestions.” TiVo OS also offers voice controls for select TVs, but it doesn’t say whether this Sharp one is included.

The TiVo-equipped Sharp TV seems pretty standard: it comes with a 55-inch 4K QLED panel, along with three HDMI ports and Dolby Atmos. There’s still no word on how much it will cost or if TiVo plans on bringing its operating system to other TV brands. Over in Europe, TiVo OS comes packaged in TVs from several different companies, including Sharp, Panasonic, Daewoo, and others.

Still, TiVo is up against some tough competition in the smart TV platform business. Roku-powered TVs remain one of the most popular choices in the US, while a wide selection of brands already use Amazon and Google’s OS. It will likely have to be priced competitively if it wants to stand out in the sea of smart TVs.

LG and Samsung have both announced their 2025 smart TVs at CES this weekend, and some of them will include access to Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant. Both TV manufacturers are chasing the artificial intelligence hype train with dedicated AI sections on their smart TVs that include a shortcut to a Copilot web app.

LG is adding an entire AI section to its TVs and rebranding its remote to “AI Remote,” in an effort to sell consumers on the promise of large language models. While it’s not clear exactly how Copilot works on LG’s latest TVs, the company describes access to Copilot as a way to allow users to “efficiently find and organize complex information using contextual cues.”

LG hasn’t demonstrated its Copilot integration just yet, but it has shown off its own AI Chatbot that’s part of its TVs. It appears Copilot will be surfaced when LG TV users want to search for more information on a particular subject.

Image: Samsung

Samsung also has its own Vision AI brand for its AI-powered TV features this year, which include AI upscaling, Auto HDR Remastering, and Adaptive Sound Pro. There’s also a new AI button on the remote to access AI features like recognizing food on a screen or AI home security features that analyze video feeds from smart cameras.

Microsoft’s Copilot will be part of this Vision AI section. “In collaboration with Microsoft, Samsung announced the new Smart TVs and Smart Monitors featuring Microsoft Copilot,” says Samsung in a press release. “This partnership will enable users to explore a wide range of Copilot services, including personalized content recommendations.”

I asked Samsung for more information or images of Copilot in action, but the company doesn’t have anything more to share right now. I’ve also asked LG and Microsoft for more information about Copilot on TVs and neither company has responded in time for publication. Without any indication of exactly how Copilot works on these TVs, I’m going to chalk this one up as a gimmicky feature that LG, Samsung, and Microsoft clearly aren’t ready to demo yet.

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.