iDrive uses 3D graphics and augmented reality to keep your eyes on the road.

At CES this week, BMW announced a new iDrive operating system with an eye-catching centerpiece: a 3D heads-up display (HUD) that stretches from pillar to pillar along the windshield.

Included in this futuristic setup is a new steering wheel with haptic buttons and a new augmented reality system that layers navigation directions and driver assistance with road information. And perhaps the most noticeable change: BMW eliminated the traditional gauge cluster in the dash in favor of a customizable digital version projected onto the windshield.

“We’ve taken on a new perspective in designing the UX,” Christian Bauer, the head of digital and UX at BMW, told a group of journalists at a preview event held near BMW’s massive Spartanburg, South Carolina, plant in November last year. “Pushing the display closer to the street will help drivers make quicker decisions, which will make it easier to keep your eyes on the road.”

The new system will appear in the upcoming-but-yet-unnamed X-class SUV that BMW is building on the all-electric Neue Klasse platform. That SUV will make its debut at the end of 2025, according to BMW.

BMW, like many automakers, is following in Tesla’s minimalistic footsteps by cutting down on screens and dials inside the vehicle. While BMW isn’t the first to eliminate the dash cluster and instead project it onto the windshield, it is an interesting move for a company with the tagline “Ultimate Driving Machine,” and its drivers have historically preferred classic dials and gauges in the dash.

BMW isn’t really worried about any backlash, chief technology officer Frank Weber told me — even though there were some members of the company’s board who were a bit concerned when first presented with the idea.

Weber said the new set up is no longer like having a video screen in your car, but rather an added layer of augmented reality that keeps driver and car more connected to the road. “You are connected to the car, and the car is connected to the road. It’s exactly where you would expect the information to be,” he added.

Your dashboard on the windshield

This isn’t the first time that BMW has teased the new heads-up display called BMW Panoramic iDrive. The company showed off a version of it at CES 2023 in the iVision Dee concept, and it’s all part of the new platform called BMW Operating System X.

The new heads-up display runs along the narrow black strip at the bottom of the windshield that stretches between A-pillars. The display is three-dimensional and includes speed, adaptive driving assistance information, stoplight and road sign information, navigation information, and state of charge. It’s customizable, too, allowing drivers to set up the information they want to have in their eyeline while on the road.

Unlike other HUDs, where you have to be at the right angle to see the information displayed, BMW says the new display will be visible to both the driver and passenger.

BMW also integrated navigation and ADAS features in the HUD so that the path you’re following turns green when using onboard navigation with driver assist. “If you think about higher levels of automated driving,” Bauer said, “then ADAS and navigation naturally come together.” He also noted that many of the features of the new HUD came about thanks to customer feedback. BMW already offers some hands-off autonomous driving features on marked highways.

Though the windshield is the display surface, it is not a specialty windshield and won’t cost extra to replace if it gets a rock chip, BMW said. A special film on the windshield helps make the 3D images appear crisp and clear. And the black print that the HUD is projected onto is the standard black print on all other vehicles.

Customizable infotainment screen

In addition to creating a full-windshield HUD, BMW also introduced a new rhombus-shaped center infotainment screen that offers a more customizable interface. Users can drag and drop “pixels,” or apps that they use frequently, into a couple of main boxes on the home screen so they are more readily available. According to BMW, the company does have plans to offer a BMW app store for the new UX, which could include paid apps for things like special lighting packages, similar to Hyundai’s plans for the upcoming Ioniq 9.

BMW says it’s using edge AI to “learn” from the customer as they drive and offer relevant features based on behavior. For example, if you frequently take a winding road home from work, put the vehicle into Sport mode, and cue up your music app, those options will regularly pop into the center screen for easy access. And if you frequently listen to meditation apps or podcasts while charging your EV, those apps will pop into the center stack whenever you’re plugged in.

BMW says it’s also using large language models to help make the vehicle smarter about what drivers want. BMW’s natural voice recognition system has been a class leader for some time, but now the company is leveraging LLMs to make navigation a bit easier. For example, you can ask the system to take you to a charging station close to a grocery store, using natural language, rather than having to use specific keywords.

In addition to updating its OS, BMW has also reimagined the steering wheel in the upcoming Neue Klasse. The new version has quite a few more buttons covered in a single piece of plastic, much like a medical device. Each button lights up when the system is available and offers haptic feedback when pushed.

BMW let us experience an approximation of the HUD and use some of the haptic buttons on a VR rig in November, ahead of the CES announcement. While it was impossible to get an impression of the imagery’s real-world clarity on the windshield, the haptic buttons were easy enough to navigate without being able to see them. The buttons feel similar to those in the 2024 Mercedes Benz S-Class and are all within easy reach.

BMW says that the new iDrive, UX, and interior setup will start to appear in its vehicles at the end of 2025.

Nanoleaf is best known for its colorful smart home lighting. But at CES 2025, it’s expanding into new territory: beauty tech. Specifically, a $149.99 LED face mask.

The Nanoleaf LED Light Therapy Face Mask is made of medical-grade materials and has received FDA Class II device certification. (This doesn’t mean the FDA has given Nanoleaf’s mask a stamp of approval; it just means this is a moderate-risk device that meets FDA safety standards.) It has seven different modes for specific concerns, based on color. Those include white, red, blue, purple, yellow, cyan, and green.

Image: Nanoleaf

This isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. These types of at-home masks are massively popular among skincare enthusiasts to address a range of issues like acne, fine lines, and uneven skin tone, as well as boost collagen production. LED light therapy is also a treatment offered by dermatologists and estheticians.

That said, you should keep in mind there’s a definite difference between the light therapy you get at the dermatologist and at-home gadgets like this. The ones used by medical professionals are usually stronger. Plus, while red, blue, and near-infrared light therapy has been cleared by the FDA, other colors haven’t. In this case, the Nanoleaf mask’s Class II certification is more of a sign that the company has put in the effort to ensure a degree of safety.

In any case, when you think about it, it makes sense that Nanoleaf might be interested in this market. After all, what’s an LED Light therapy mask but a smart bulb by another name?

The LED Light Therapy Face Mask is available now for preorders.

E Ink has collaborated with PocketBook and Sharp to create a new low-power digital poster that displays images and artwork on a vivid color electronic paper screen. The InkPoster pairs E Ink’s Spectra 6 screen technology with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, allowing artwork to be regularly changed and uploaded. And thanks to a large battery, it only needs to be charged about once a year.

The InkPoster will be available in three sizes. The smallest model has a 13.3-inch screen with a resolution of 1200 x 1600 and a 14,000mAh battery, while the largest option measures 31.5 inches with a 2560 x 1440 resolution, giving it a slightly lower PPI in exchange for a bigger 20,000mAh battery. There’s also an in-between 28.5-inch, 2160 x 3060 version with a 20,000mAh battery that incorporates Sharp’s IGZO technology for faster screen refreshes. Pricing is expected to be around $599 for the 13.3-inch InkPoster, $1,700 for the 31.5-inch, and $2,400 for the 28.5-inch.

Image: PocketBook

The InkPoster will have access to “thousands of curated artworks” from “iconic masterpieces to contemporary works” when connected to an accompanying app, according to PocketBook. But the company hasn’t shared specific details about where art is being sourced or what themes or artists will be available.

You’re also able to turn the InkPoster into a digital photo frame by uploading your own images. Unlike similar products from Canvia, the now-defunct Electric Objects, or even Samsung’s The Frame TV, the InkPoster doesn’t have any screen lighting that could potentially keep you up at night if hung in a bedroom and only uses power when the displayed image is being changed.

The InkPoster is one of the first consumer products to use E Ink’s Spectra 6 display technology. E-readers like the Amazon Kindle Colorsoft and the Kobo Libra Colour use E Ink’s Kaleido 3 technology, which offers fast screen refreshes but a limited palette of 4,096 colors. The Remarkable Paper Pro tablet uses a slower E Ink Gallery 3 screen, which can display over 50,000 colors using red, blue, yellow, and white ink particles.

E Ink hasn’t revealed exactly how many different colors Spectra 6 can reproduce, but it relies on a six-color ink system adding green and black that pushes the gamut volume closer to 60,000. Because it can take several seconds to refresh the entire screen, Spectra 6 is better suited to devices like static digital displays like the InkPoster, instead of e-readers.

GE unveiled several new smart home products at CES on Monday, including new Matter-compatible Cync smart switches, non-Matter Cync lighting, and upscale smart shades. All of this will be rolling out over the next few months, starting with the new smart switches in March.

GE’s new Cync switches — the Smart Keypad Dimmer ($44.99) and Smart Paddle Dimmer ($25.99) — won’t use the usual quirky Cync design. The keypad dimmer, pictured at the top of this story, is more utilitarian, with programmable buttons for scenes or group control and up-and-down buttons for dimming at the bottom. The paddle dimmer looks, well, like a paddle switch with a dimming slider on the side. Here’s a picture of that one:

Image: GE

As both of the new dimmers have Matter support, you can expect them to work with any major smart home platform.

GE says “the entire family has been enhanced” so that when you install a Cync switch on a three-way circuit, you don’t have to replace the dumb switch on the other end to keep smart control. That means you can turn the circuit off with the dumb switch, but still use voice commands or scheduled automation with Cync smart bulbs that the switch controls.

The company also announced café lights and outdoor strip lights for its “Cync Dynamic Effects” category of lights that offer 16 million colors, tunable white light, music syncing, and addressable LEDs. The company says the café lights will have reinforced eye holes for hanging and come in 24-foot ($39.99) and 48-foot ($69.99) versions starting in March. The strip lights are coming in April and measure 16 feet ($79.99) or 32 feet ($129.99). They’ll lack Matter support and will only work with Google Home or Amazon Alexa.

Finally, GE is releasing smart shades as part of its Proseo line. They require professional installation and are controllable through the Savant app. The company says they’ll feature “modern architectural aesthetics, performance fabrics and unmatched control interface options to complement any luxury space.” They’re designed to hide wires and screws and to cover large areas like full-wall windows and floor-to-ceiling corner windows. These are custom jobs, “and priced as such,” according to Savant.

After several attempts, OnePlus made a great high-end phone.

Read the full story at The Verge.

I have to commend Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his new policy chief Joel Kaplan on their timing. It’s not hugely surprising that, as the pair announced early today, Meta is giving up on professional third-party fact-checking. The operator of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads has been backing off moderation recently, and fact-checking has always been contentious. But it’s probably smart to do it two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office — and nominates a Federal Communications Commission head who’s threatened the company over it.

Trump’s FCC chairman pick (and current FCC commissioner), Brendan Carr, is a self-identified free speech defender with a creative interpretation of the First Amendment. In mid-November, as part of a flurry of lightly menacing missives to various entities, Carr sent a letter to Meta, Apple, Google, and Microsoft attacking the companies’ fact-checking programs.

The letter was primarily focused on NewsGuard, a conservative bête noire that Meta doesn’t actually work with. But it also demanded information about “the use of any media monitor or fact checking service,” and it left no doubt about Carr’s position on them. “You participated in a...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Lenovo is trying an experiment. In May, it will officially become the very first company outside of Valve to ship a handheld gaming PC with the Steam Deck’s wonderfully pick-up-and-play SteamOS instead of Microsoft Windows. And at $499, it’ll be a true Steam Deck rival, joining it as one of the lower-priced PC handhelds you can buy.

That handheld will be the 1.6-pound Lenovo Legion Go S, a new and improved version of the company’s eight-inch handheld that ditches the Nintendo Switch-like detachable gamepads and kickstand for a lighter and more traditional design, with a sculpted grip that felt supremely comfortable in my hands.

It’ll also be one of the few handhelds on the market to offer a 120Hz variable refresh rate screen — a highly desirable feature that lets low-power handheld gameplay feel smooth, even if it’s not generating lots of frames. That screen will be lower in resolution at 1920 x 1200, too, and feature a hopefully power-sipping new AMD Ryzen Z2 Go chip. (It’s a Lenovo-exclusive chip, by the way.)

In other words, it might address every major complaint I had in my Legion Go review, while additionally adding fun configurable RGB lighting around the joysticks, a slightly larger 55Wh battery, a pair of levers to reduce the throw of the triggers, and a less obtrusive touchpad, too, while retaining the dual USB 4 ports.

But Lenovo isn’t going all in on SteamOS. Not only will it hedge its bets by shipping a Windows version of the Legion Go S as well but it’ll also ship with Windows this month — four months ahead of the SteamOS models. The Windows model is white:

It’s not like the SteamOS model is ready now anyhow. Valve codesigners Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais tell me they’ve only been working with Lenovo for a couple of months, and the integration isn’t quite done. The new touchpad, gyroscope, and both RGB lighting and TDP configuration options are among the things on their to-do list.

But the Windows version shipping in January will cost $729.99, with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. In May, the true experiment will begin when gamers can pick between a $499.99 SteamOS version with 16GB / 512GB, a $599.99 Windows version with 16GB / 1TB, or the Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED at $399 and $549, respectively.

And it does sound like there will be one important reason to pick the Steam Deck over the Legion Go S and vice versa, because AMD’s Z2 Go is a different chip. While the Z2 Go announced yesterday sheds cores and GPU generations to be slightly more akin to the Steam Deck’s semi-custom Aerith and / or Sephiroth parts, we noted that it targets higher power levels, and Legion Go product manager Alex Zhu confirms to me that the Legion Go S is aimed at 20-watt performance, 30-watt, maybe even 40-watt configurable performance, which will likely offer higher performance (and lower battery life) than the 15-watt-and-below Steam Deck’s chip.

Zhu says Lenovo is targeting between two and 2.5 hours of battery life in demanding heavy games — which lines up with the basic math of dividing a 55 watt-hour battery by 20 watts, assuming the rest of the system doesn’t eat up a lot more. Versions with AMD’s existing Z1 Extreme chip will also be available in some markets. All Legion Go S can fit full-length M.2 2280 solid state drives.

BTW, Valve isn’t keeping key Steam Deck features like precompiled shaders to itself, or anything else, for that matter. Yang and Griffais say it will be one SteamOS, and the Legion Go S and any future SteamOS devices will get the same updates as the Deck, minus hardware-specific tweaks.

Valve tells me Lenovo is currently its only partner for a SteamOS device — there are no other third-party SteamOS devices currently in the works. But Griffais hints that Valve is close to publicly releasing a new beta of its SteamOS that just might possibly start working on other handhelds as well. (Valve previously confirmed to us that it was building toward some level of support for the Asus ROG Ally in SteamOS as well.)

And it’s vaguely possible that SteamOS beta could arrive before the SteamOS Legion Go S — Valve says it’s slated to ship sometime after March.

But the real dream is to pull a PC handheld out of a box and have it just work, the way a Nintendo Switch works, not to shoehorn an operating system on it afterward, no matter how good the result. That’s why Lenovo is working with Valve: Zhu agrees that SteamOS has the best out-of-box experience. But, he says, Windows offers a whole ecosystem of gaming and productivity that the company believes its customers still want.

Zhu agrees that SteamOS is an experiment for Lenovo and says it’ll look at the feedback and momentum before making its next move. Speaking of what’s next, Lenovo is also building a larger Legion Go 2 with detachable controllers and an 8.8-inch OLED screen, and it brought prototypes of that unit to CES:

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

Zhu tells me Lenovo doesn’t have “any specific plans” to put SteamOS on the larger Legion Go, just Windows — but perhaps it depends on what customers buy in May.

Meanwhile, Valve is still looking ahead to a future version of its own Steam Deck, saying that partnering with companies like Lenovo hasn’t reduced the desire to build its own. But AMD’s Z2 isn’t the “leap” that Valve’s been waiting for, Griffais tells The Verge. There won’t be a Z2 Steam Deck.

I can confidently say Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 stole the show for me at CES. I knew it the second I hit a button on the keyboard and saw the concept-turned-real laptop extend its rollable OLED display upward — motors whirring motors and a dumb smile forming on my face.

Compared to the many new laptops, desktops, gadgets, and handhelds Lenovo is announcing at CES, the ThinkBook may be completely ridiculous in a lot of ways — and it’ll start at a whopping $3,499 when it launches sometime in Q1 2025. But damn it, I love its quirkiness and the fact that you can soon buy something so utterly unique for mundane tasks like working on extra-tall spreadsheets.

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 has a flexible OLED display with small motors built into its hinge to unfurl the screen and roll it back down. It starts out looking like a fairly unassuming 14-inch productivity laptop, albeit with a slightly square-ish aspect ratio and a resolution of 2000 x 1600. But hitting a dedicated key or raising your hand to the webcam activates the motors and makes the display climb to a tall 16.7 inches, with an extended resolution of 2000 x 2350. It took roughly 10 seconds for the ThinkBook’s screen to extend or contract, and while its motors aren’t egregiously loud, they’re noisy enough to draw attention in a quiet environment. That, and the fact that your laptop just freakin’ grew out of nowhere.

The extra screen real estate in 16.7-inch mode is enough to fit two 16 x 9 windows stacked on top of each other. Going back to 14-inch mode tucks the bottom portion of the screen into the laptop chassis, where it hides below the keyboard deck and displays black pixels to not waste power. Reps from Lenovo, including Samuel Shang of Lenovo research, who worked on the ThinkBook’s development team, said the nested location of the screen and small size of the motors in the hinge allowed for ample battery capacity — which seems to track since the laptop’s 66Wh battery is pretty typical for a laptop of this size. Shang and Lenovo product marketing’s Drupad Kandhi said the ThinkBook was thoroughly tested and rated for at least 30,000 closings and openings of its lid hinge and 20,000 rolls both up and down.

Watching the screen go up and down just didn’t get old in our short time testing it. By default, the ThinkBook plays a bright and colorful abstract animation of a flexible material coiling or unrolling while the screen rolls down or up. It’s a cute graphic that’s reminiscent of rolling homemade dough through a pasta machine, but you can thankfully turn it off and watch the display grow or shrink with your current window or app onscreen. I suspect part of the animation’s purpose is to distract from the little curls visible in the display, which are more obvious when it’s moving and there’s something darker onscreen like The Verge’s homepage.

The flexible OLED in the ThinkBook Plus is one of Samsung Display’s IT foldable panels. Like the creases in folding phones, the ThinkBook’s screen has plenty of smaller creases along its lower half that you don’t really notice when using it — but look closely or stare at the screen from steeper angles, and they’re clear as day. You can see them in some of my photos, but I must concede that my bounced flash really illuminates the creases and makes them look more pronounced than they are with the naked eye.

I went into this demo expecting anxious company reps wanting me to treat their precious creation like a fragile heirloom and feared that just looking at this thing the wrong way would break it. But much to the contrary, they seemed surprisingly confident in letting me tinker with it. I jammed the ThinkBook into a backpack just like I would any laptop I’m commuting with, and I also closed the lid while the display was still extended — putting it in a ridiculous-looking overbite position — and all was fine.

As for the ThinkBook’s conventional laptop stuff, it’s a fairly table stakes thin and light productivity machine — but not one with a bounty of ports. It can be configured with up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2 processor, 1TB SSD, and 32GB of DDR5x dual-channel RAM. It’s got just two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack, so be prepared to live the dongle life if you need USB-A or a card reader.

One thing you may not need on your hub is an HDMI-out, as Lenovo told us the ThinkBook is not really designed to be used with external monitors. That’s because Lenovo had to program its extra screen real estate as a second monitor in Windows since Microsoft doesn’t have baked-in support for a setup like this. Even in our short demo, it didn’t take long to see some concerning and potentially deal-breaking software stuff. For example, you can’t snap windows and apps to the bottom portion of the extended screen. Instead, you have to open Lenovo’s built-in software and pin it to that window down there. This could be streamlined if Microsoft adds support for rollable displays in a future Windows update, but I wouldn’t bank on that happening soon.

While I’m super excited to see the ThinkBook Plus actually become a real thing people can buy, I fear the software and OS limitations may hold back its fun potential and make it too fussy. I’m very curious to test it over the long term to see what living the rollable life is like.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge

When it comes to reproductive health tech, wearable makers tend to focus on one of two things: period tracking and fertility windows. But at CES 2025, health startup identifyHer wants to shake up that narrative with Peri, a wearable designed to help people track and manage perimenopause symptoms.

Perimenopause refers to the transitional period before menopause when the ovaries gradually stop working. Hormones like estrogen and progesterone begin to decrease, which, in turn, can lead to mood changes, irregular periods, hot flashes, and night sweats. Perimenopause symptoms can vary widely from person to person and last four to eight years on average — though it can be as short as a few months or as long as a decade.

Peri’s press release notes that the device will provide “objective data on perimenopausal symptoms, lifestyle, and sleep, as well as actionable insights and encouragement to better understand the changes their bodies are undergoing.” In official pictures, the device itself appears to be pill-shaped and adheres to a person’s torso as opposed to their wrist or finger, like most other health trackers.

“We will keep the specific sensors confidential until we open pre-orders,” says Peri cofounder Heidi Davis, though Davis acknowledges that none of the sensors in the device are new or proprietary. “Our breakthrough lies in the digital fingerprints we have identified through three years of R&D, collecting sensor data from women experiencing perimenopause.”

Davis says those “fingerprints” were then used to develop algorithms that provide continuous data on hot flashes, night sweats, and anxiety in perimenopausal women. One surprising finding, Davis says, is that body temperature isn’t a reliable indicator of hot flashes. Extra effort was also put in to ensure the algorithms weren’t swayed by things like exercise or warm weather, which could affect heart rate, sweating, or increase body temperature.

Image: Peri, identifyHer

Davis says identifyHer also intentionally decided to forgo a limb-based tracker.

“During the early stages of development, we tested our sensors on the limbs but found that we could not identify the digital fingerprints for some of the typical symptoms of perimenopause,” Davis explains, noting that the torso delivers the most accurate readings and is where hot flashes and night sweats are strongest.

As promising as this all sounds, none of Peri’s tech is proven just yet. We’ll have to see how Peri fares when it launches, which is expected to be in mid-2025. That said, its mission to bring further clarity to women’s reproductive health — a historically understudied area — is one wearable makers and researchers alike have widely pursued in recent years. Oura, for instance, has conducted its own study on pregnancy prediction, while Apple also launched its own long-term, large-scale Women’s Health Study using the Apple Watch. It’s just finally nice to see some traction on a less-studied stage of reproductive health.

Lenovo is updating its Yoga device lineup to 10th-generation versions, including a new lightweight Yoga Slim 9i, a fresh Yoga Book 9i dual-screen laptop with larger displays, and a Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition convertible notebook.

The first is the Yoga Slim 9i, now powered by NPU-packing Intel Core Ultra chips that earn it Windows 11 Copilot Plus PC designation. The laptop also has Lenovo’s AI Core system, which does some AI stuff like dynamically adjusting settings in creative apps to help improve battery life (up to 17 hours on a 75Wh battery, according to the company).

Image: Lenovo

The Slim 9i has a 98 percent screen-to-body ratio and features a no-notch webcam for an attractive, bezel-free design. The Slim carries a 14-inch PureSight Pro OLED with a 4K resolution at 120Hz, two Thunderbolt 4 ports (one per side), a quartet of Dolby Atmos-capable speakers, and Wi-Fi 7 in a 2.26-pound package.

Image: Lenovo

Lenovo’s dual-screen Yoga Book 9i also gets 14-inch screens, which catch it up in size to the Asus ZenBook Duo. The Yoga Book screens have a 2.8K resolution (2880 x 1800) at 120Hz per display, and they’re also brighter now at 750 nits versus 400 nits on the previous model.

Intel is also updating the Yoga Book with the latest Arrow Lake 255H processor. You can max out the Yoga Book with up to 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1TB of internal storage. Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, four speakers, and Wi-Fi 7 are also on board. It also has a bigger battery and an improved folio case / stand design.

Lenovo promises a healthy slathering of AI-powered applications in the Yoga Book, including its own Smart Note note-taking app, a book synopsis-generating eReader app called Smart Reader, and a hand gesture feature called Air Gestures to move windows and scroll.

Image: Lenovo

The shiny-finished Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition, meanwhile, gets a new, brighter 14-inch OLED display with a peak brightness of 1,100 nits. There’s also a new Yoga Slim 7i (Aura Edition) and new 16- and 14-inch 2-in-1 7i models that now feature Intel processors.

The Yoga Slim 9i starts at $1,849, while the 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition starts at $1,599. Both will ship starting in February. Meanwhile, the Yoga Book 9i dual-screen will set you back at least $1,999 and will ship beginning in May. Lenovo offers a free two-month Adobe Creative Cloud membership if you buy select 2025 Yoga models.

Qualcomm teased it was about to enter the mini desktop PC space yesterday, and now Lenovo is announcing two mini PCs that cater to consumers and businesses. Both the ThinkCentre neo 50q and IdeaCentre Mini x will include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series chips, enabling Copilot Plus PC features in a desktop form factor.

The IdeaCentre Mini x is a 1-liter mini PC that’s designed for creatives who want a desktop that’s quiet and capable of productivity tasks. It comes with a built-in power supply and an easy-to-open case so you can swap components. It’s not a fan-less mini PC, though, as it has two fans inside to keep things cool.

Image: Lenovo

At the front, there’s a single USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port and a single USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, alongside a headphone jack and a power button. At the rear, Lenovo has equipped its IdeaCentre Mini x PC with two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a single USB-A 2.0 port, a USB-C 4 port, a HDMI 2.1 port, a DisplayPort 1.4 connection, and an ethernet port.

The IdeaCentre Mini x can be configured with either a base Snapdragon X chip or the Snapdragon X Plus, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. Lenovo is using the latest Wi-Fi 7 connectivity inside the IdeaCentre Mini x, too.

Image: Lenovo

Lenovo’s ThinkCentre neo 50q is designed for small and medium businesses, and it has a similar set of specs. The ThinkCentre neo 50q will also be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chip or the X Plus, with up to 16GB of RAM instead of the 32GB found on the IdeaCentre Mini x. At the front of the ThinkCentre mini PC, there is a single USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a single USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, and a headphone jack and power button. At the rear, there are two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, two USB-A 2.0 ports, a HDMI 2.1 port, a DisplayPort 1.4 connection, and an ethernet port. Lenovo has also equipped the ThinkCentre neo 50q with Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, instead of the Wi-Fi 7 support available on the IdeaCentre Mini x.

While the IdeaCentre Mini x looks like the better option both in terms of optional specs and design, it will also be priced lower than the ThinkCentre mini PC. The IdeaCentre Mini x will be available starting in April, with an expected starting price of $659.99. Lenovo’s ThinkCentre neo 50q QC will be available slightly earlier in February, with a starting price expected at $849.

Lenovo has unveiled two new ThinkPads: the X9 14 and X9 15, both Aura Editions equipped with Intel Core Ultra processors and slim designs. But what they don’t offer might be the most interesting thing about them: namely, Lenovo’s signature red TrackPoint. Instead, they use a haptic trackpad without the ThinkPad’s usual discrete button for a distinctly MacBook vibe.

No doubt, it’s a ThinkPad, through and through. It’s tested to MIL-SPEC 810H durability standards. It offers a Thunderbolt 4 port on each side of the machine, making it easier to arrange docks and displays to your liking. And the design allows access to the SSD and battery to facilitate repairs and replacements.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto

Both the 14-inch and 15-inch versions come with OLED panels in touch and non-touch variations. All versions come with an HDMI 2.1 port and 3.5mm audio jack and can be configured with up to 32GB of DDR5x RAM and 2TB of storage. As Copilot Plus PCs, they’re ready for Microsoft’s AI as well as Lenovo’s “Aura Edition” features including focus mode-like Smart Modes to filter out distractions or optimize privacy.

Still, the missing TrackPoint is probably the ThinkPad X9’s most notable feature (or anti-feature?). In a time when hardware has shifted toward a kind of sameness, the TrackPoint stood out as a quirky carryover from a time when you could try to reinvent something — namely, the mouse. The trackpad won out long ago, but Lenovo kept the TrackPoint around for its loyal fans. Now, it might just be checkmate for the TrackPoint.

Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto

The ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition will start at $1,399 and the 15 Aura Edition will start at $1,549; both go on sale in February.

Discovery Plus is going up in price, with its ad-supported plan going from $4.99 to $5.99 per month, and its ad-free plan increasing from $8.99 to $9.99 per month. The price hike will go into effect immediately for new subscribers, while existing subscribers will see the change during their next billing cycle or after February 7th.

Discovery Plus raised the price of its ad-free plan for the first time in October 2023. Following the launch of Max, Discovery Plus remained a standalone subscription despite most of its content appearing in Warner Bros. Discovery’s flagship streaming service. Discovery Plus has a mix of shows — ranging from ultra binge-worthy to ultra cringe-worthy — from channels like HGTV, TLC, the Discovery Channel, Investigation Discovery, Magnolia Network, and others.

Streaming service price hikes have become frustratingly common over the past few years, with Max, Paramount Plus, and Peacock all raising their prices in 2024, while Amazon Prime Video introduced ads. Max and Disney Plus are also following Netflix’s initiative to crack down on password sharing.

Getty Images and Shutterstock are joining forces in a merger valued at around $3.7 billion, the companies announced on Tuesday. The merger will allow the companies to expand their stock photo libraries as they face increasing competition from AI-powered image creation tools.

Getty Images CEO Craig Peters will remain the head of the combined companies when the merger closes, while a reworked board of directors will consist of members from both Getty Images and Shutterstock, including Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy. In the press release, Peters said the merger will bolster the companies by “enhancing our content offerings, expanding event coverage, and delivering new technologies to better serve our customers.”

Shutterstock will remain a separate website following the merger, Getty Images spokesperson Anne Flanagan confirmed to The Verge.

The merger comes amid the rise of text-to-image AI tools from companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe. In 2023, Getty Images responded to the trend by launching an image generator trained on its vast library of licensed photos. It rolled out a similar tool on iStock, which Getty also owns, and partnered with online image editor Picsart to create a “responsible, commercially-safe” AI image generator.

Meanwhile, Shutterstock struck an AI training deal with OpenAI, and has agreements with Meta, Google, and Amazon, according to Reuters.

The decision to combine two stock photo powerhouses may also spur antitrust scrutiny, but it’s unclear how a more merger-friendly Trump administration will respond.

Mechanical keyboard specialist Keychron is adding fancy analog Hall effect switches to more of its lineup. Two of the models announced at CES today are launching immediately: the $169 Lemokey P1 HE QMK, and the $229 Keychron Q6 HE QMK, with three additional keyboards set to be released later this year.

Hall effect switches are notable for providing more customization features and a faster press than traditional mechanical switches, making them a popular choice for gamers. They use magnetic induction sensing on the PCB that detects how far down a key has been pushed — allowing you to decide the exact actuation point or even set different functions that activate depending on how hard you press.

The Lemokey P1 HE QMK is a 75 percent layout keyboard with 2.4GHz Bluetooth and a 1,000Hz polling rate. It can be used wired or wirelessly and is compatible exclusively with Gateron Double-Rail magnetic switches. The Keychron Q6 HE also launching today is a full-sized mechanical keyboard with similar features and switch restrictions. Both models are available in either black or white and feature PBT double-shot keycaps.

Image: Keychron

Keychron released its first Hall effect keyboard last year, and rival keyboard makers like Corsair and SteelSeries have also adopted the feature after Wooting popularized the use of Hall effect switches. Meanwhile, other brands like Epomaker and Ducky are trending toward induction-based switches that provide similar analog features and use less power. Other Keychron models like the K4, K8, and Lomokey L5 will also be available with Hall effect switches sometime in Q1 2025.

CES 2025 is officially underway, and the adrenaline of a day of running around Las Vegas is fading fast. Yet I cannot fall asleep. Probably because I’ve been replaying the same three product teaser videos over and over and over. One opens with the familiar frenetic strains of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons violin concerto, panning to a CGI desert, where grains of sand blow in undulating wisps. The words “Rare by Ultrahuman” emerge on a stark black background. Then, from the depths of a CGI dune, emerges a smart ring.

The other two videos are carbon copies, except in one, the desert is a golden pink. In the other, a wintry silver.

I check the press release. The rings range from £1500 to £1800. I immediately pull up Google. That’s roughly $1,900 to $2,200. I rack my brain. The most expensive smart ring I can remember is Oura’s collaboration with Gucci, which I described in my writeup as an eye-watering $950. I double-check that my tired brain hasn’t goofed the conversion. It hasn’t. My eye twitches.

Rare, the Ultrahuman press release says, is meant to be a luxury smart ring. It will come in three colors: desert rose, dune, and desert snow. Or, you know, rose gold, gold, and silver. They are apparently thusly named because the collection “captures the essence of nature’s most captivating phenomena. From the intricate fluid elegance of wind-sculpted dunes, each piece embodies the harmonious blend of beauty and resilience found in these arid landscapes.”

The desert rose and dune rings are made of 18-karat gold “sourced from London Bullion Market Association.” These will cost $1,900. Meanwhile, the desert snow ring is “meticulously crafted from pt950 platinum, a metal of exceptional purity and prestige.” It will cost $2,200. While I think of how that’s around my monthly mortgage payment, I read more purple prose about the symbolism of harmony between nature and technology, the wind’s gentle caress of a dune, and the rarity of snow blanketing the desert.

I squint at the press renders of these rings. They look like ordinary smart rings.

Spec-wise, Rare is the same as the Ultrahuman Ring Air. The Ultrahuman Ring Air is a great smart ring and came this close to beating the Oura Ring in my smart ring battle royale last year. That ring costs $350 — a standard, reasonable price for a smart ring. The Rare series is roughly five to six times that price. According to Ultrahuman, this is the price of the artisanal craftsmanship and complex engineering — and a lifetime membership to UltrahumanX, the smart ring maker’s extended warranty subscription. You also get access to all of Ultrahuman’s PowerPlugs, features that you buy a la carte on Ultrahuman’s platform such as period tracking, vitamin D tracking, and smart alarms. That includes any future PowerPlugs. Is that worth $1,900 to $2,200?

I go back to my inbox and reread the FAQ Ultrahuman sent me for the billionth time. Under the question, “Is there demand for this” and “who is the target buyer?” there’s an impassioned plea. People have been using the Ultrahuman Ring Air — which I vehemently maintain is a great smart ring — for engagements and gifts for loved ones. Rare, the FAQ says, is a natural evolution toward jewelry becoming smart like everything else. The ideal buyer? “Rare speaks to those who seek exclusivity and purpose in the choices they make.”

The more I read, the more this feels like a fever-dream pitch from Jony Ive, because it’s the same doomed approach Apple took for its Watch Edition.

I don’t know what time is anymore, but I look at the Oura Ring 4 in brushed silver on my finger. Then I look at the desert snow ring render on my laptop screen. My eyes dart back and forth several times. Hm. Hmm.

Image: Ultrahuman

At some point, I don’t know when, I realize I have become The Verge’s very own Gollum. I am sleep-deprived, dark circles forming under my eyes. My reflection in the hotel mirror as I grab some water scares me. But I can think of nothing else. We must see our precious $2,000 smart rings in person. Yes. We wants it. We must seek it on the show floor because Rare will only launch in London and Paris at “select premium retail locations” to start. Yes, we must see this, we must feel it on our finger if only to answer the one burning question: what would make a $2,000 smart ring worth it?

Hyperkin opened preorders for a new guitar-shaped controller on New Year’s Day, but it isn’t compatible with Harmonix’s Fortnite Festival music game that debuted on the Switch in late 2023. In fact, the Hyper Strummer isn’t compatible with the Switch at all. It only works with the 18-year-old Nintendo Wii, and the older Guitar Hero and Rock Band rhythm game titles released for that console.

The $76.99 Hyper Strummer could have potentially been a cheaper alternative to Fortnite Festival-compatible guitar controllers like PDP’s $129.99 Riffmaster. But it only works with a Wiimote slotted into the back, and is not compatible with modern gaming hardware like the Xbox Series X / S or the PlayStation 5.

Its design also appears identical to the Guitar Hero controller Hyperkin released in 2009 during the Wii era, which led to accusations on X that the company was repackaging and selling old stock as a new product.

Hyperkin responded to the accusations with a statement shared on X explaining why the Hyper Strummer looks so similar to older hardware. “While it is correct that this is the same shell mold of a previous Hyperkin release from 2009, that is all it is. We used the mold to make brand new shells, fitted with new 2024 internal components. This is not old stock, nor is it old guitars that have been sitting in a warehouse.”

The company says the modernized Hyper Strummer was “developed to meet the demand for an accessible and budget-friendly solution, perfect for retro gamers who want to enter the guitar scene in 2025 at an affordable price.” Instead of risking buying used hardware online that potentially turns out to be non-functional, devoted Guitar Hero fans who have refused to upgrade their Nintendo Wiis now have another option.

You can finally make your PS5 gaming set up all black everything. Sony has announced that it will soon release the rest of the PS5 suite of accessories in the midnight black colorway.

Sony’s offering the Dual Sense Edge Controller, the Pulse wireless headphones and earbuds, and the PlayStation Portal in sleek and sexy midnight black to match the PS5 cover and Dual Sense controller it released back in 2021.

Though the announcement wasn’t specifically apart of the CES celebrations, it did neatly coincide with the news that Sony’s giving Helldivers the Sonic and Mario treatment. The company also announced that its Horizon Zero Dawn adaptation is no longer a TV show produced by Netflix but a full-fledged movie that’ll cover Aloy’s exploits in the first game, and that the second season of The Last of Us is coming to HBO in April.

PlayStation’s website has the details on pricing for the electronics with pre-orders starting on January 16th.

If you’d rather wait, the accessories will hit retailers on February 20th.

Audio-Technica’s wireless earbuds don’t always receive the same amount of buzz that larger brands get, but they’re consistently good performers that deliver on all the most important criteria. Here at CES 2025, the company is introducing the new ATH-CKS50TW2. These buds feature Audio-Technica’s usual tuning and sound quality, but there are two main selling points for this latest model.

First, battery life seems almost endless. Audio-Technica says the ATH-CKS50TW2 can deliver a total of 65 hours of playback with noise cancellation off: 25 hours from the fully charged earbuds, plus another 40 hours from the charging case. With ANC enabled, those numbers shift to a still very impressive 15 hours from the buds and 25 hours from the case.

Image: Audio-Technica

The other helpful new feature should prevent battery drain even if you put the earbuds in your pocket without their case. Audio-Technica says its “Magnetic Switch” technology lets the earbuds join together with magnets. Whenever this happens, they automatically power off, so you won’t have to worry about them playing music in your pocket and eating through battery for no reason.

As for the rest of the hardware, the earbuds feature 9-millimeter “high-definition” drivers, hybrid ear tips that combine hard and soft silicone, wireless charging, and IP68 dust and water resistance. Audio-Technica has priced the ATH-CKS50TW2 at $149, and the company says you can order its newest earbuds starting today.

Gaming hardware manufacturer Razer is introducing what might be its most controversial “project” yet — an “AI gaming copilot” designed to help you get better at video games. With your permission, it takes thousands of pictures of your screen, then tells you how to play a game, optimally in real time, as you continue to play.

“By analyzing millions of simulations within seconds, I’ll always have an answer to your toughest gaming challenges,” a Razer marketing video claims.

For example, watching a prerecorded video of a punishing Black Myth: Wukong boss fight, Razer’s AI assistant had all sorts of tips:

• “Get ready to dodge when his blade spins or glows with an orange tinge.”
• “Keep a close eye on his health. Once you shave off 10 to 20 percent get your dodge fingers ready.”
• “He’s going to vanish...”
• “If he grabs you, you will feel it!”

I felt weird about this almost immediately. While it could be more convenient than looking up a guide, it doesn’t credit or compensate the creators of the guides that Razer ingests in order to train its AI. It would be pretty disruptive if Ava spent time telling me that Verge sister site Polygon crafted that guide, after all!

And yet, Ava did sound pretty disruptive regardless, seemingly interrupting the game’s audio to tell the player what to do. I suppose you might only summon Ava when you need help, but it still feels like a bit of a weird fit for Razer, a company that’s long associated itself with elite gamers. (There’s also a long conversation about how “female” AI can perpetuate harmful stereotypes, but at least Razer global marketing director David Ng tells us it’ll offer other voices in the future.)

Next, we saw an actual live demo of Ava helping someone play League of Legends, acting as an AI chatbot that could help you figure out what to do and which spells and items to equip based on enhanced situational awareness of the game, API calls, guides, and even potentially historical data about the outcomes of matches played by esports teams.

Ava knows where the enemy’s champions are because it’s taking pictures of the mini-map, and it knows what you might want to use to counter them — though its answers were delayed by multiple seconds in the prototype we saw, which ran on a pair of local Nvidia RTX 4090 laptop GPUs using Meta’s Llama 3.2 LLM instead of in the cloud.

Following the match, Ava attempts to continue to act as a coach, creating replays, pointers, and feedback for you about your performance.

It’s clear that there’s a lot of work that would need to be done to make this useful, particularly if Razer wants to fulfill some of its other dreams. (It imagines Ava could help you auto-configure your computer, act as an autonomous gaming companion, and serve as a raid leader if no one wants to spend their time organizing the group.)

But unlike many of Razer’s concepts, which it never guarantees to turn into products, it seems the company is already invested in Ava and is thinking about an Ava service as a new business opportunity. It’s not waiting for feedback on the idea before it rolls out a beta, and Ng tells us it’s building out a whole team of AI developers to work on such ideas, with a planned bigger announcement at GDC in March.

The company says it’s got a patent-pending algorithm on the way it figures out how to suggest gaming tips and is working on some sort of “proprietary AI hardware” to help it run. It’s thinking about how it can beat the competition with the cloud service — because yes, there is competition for AI gaming apps that coach you to play League of Legends. I just heard about another one yesterday.