The best (and weirdest) tech we found at CES 2024

It doesn’t take much time on the show floor to see that CES has become a big car show, and this year came with some pleasant surprises.

Consider Honda’s 0 Series Saloon, which might be the least Honda-looking car the company has ever shown off. It’s a low-slung EV that almost gives off Lamborghini vibes, and Honda says that — if it ever makes it to production — the Saloon will offer a sporty ride aided by some Formula 1-inspired aerodynamics.

But what if you’re not a driver? Hyundai’s Space transit concept might be more your speed. Imagine a small — think four-seater — autonomous trolley powered by hydrogen fuel cells with transparent displays in lieu of traditional windows that you can hail via an app. It can even control its boarding height, so people in wheelchairs and pets can more easily hop on board. Don’t expect to see one of these in your city anytime soon, though.

Well-heeled road trippers, meanwhile, may prefer to lounge in an all-electric Pebble RV that can autonomously hitch itself to your car, spin into tight spots with help from an app, and recharge itself with a built-in solar system. The icing on the cake? Electrochromic glass windows around a spacious bathroom that go opaque at a touch.

Lots of PCs turn into, or are, tablets. But hardly any let you tear off a screen to use as an Android tablet.

Fine, you probably shouldn’t “tear” anything off Lenovo’s $1,999 ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid. But you can indeed pop off its 14-inch screen for some Netflix, web browsing or mobile gaming when the urge rises. (The high-end Qualcomm chipset inside should make sure everything runs at a more-than-respectable clip.)

Even better, you can connect the remaining bottom half to another monitor, at which point it will continue functioning as a full-blown Windows computer. This is about as out there as laptop concepts get, but Lenovo really does intend to sell this thing — the company says it will be available in the second quarter.

You might not need an app to listen to — and interact with — music on your TV anymore. All you have to do is tune in to the right broadcast channel, and you’ll be able to play, pause, skip music videos and even dig into different music categories, no accounts or downloads required.

And yes, it really works — I spent a few minutes skipping through music videos being broadcast over the air here in Las Vegas. Honestly, it kind of felt like flicking through TikTok.

The feature comes courtesy of the music streaming company Roxi, and the how is a little complicated — it relies on a new broadcast standard many new TVs support, plus a bit of transient software that generates the on-screen controls and tries to figure out what else you would like to listen to.

Roxi is focusing on music for now, and the broadcast giant Sinclair — which reaches millions of American homes — plans to roll out interactive Roxi music channels to viewers this year. But music is just the start: For better or worse, Roxi CEO Rob Lewis told us he sees a near future where people can skip through news shows or shopping channel presentations to see just the bits they want.

This tiny handheld gadget isn’t meant to replace your smartphone, but it does want to prove there’s a better way to get things done.

The easiest way to think about the $199 Rabbit R1 is like an AI-powered walkie-talkie with a screen. Just hold down the button, ask it something — say, a recipe for an omelet, or to play a certain track — and wait for it to respond. Which admittedly doesn’t sound all that interesting at first.

The real draw is that R1’s software is powered by a “large action model,” which means it has been trained to interact with apps and services we commonly use anyway. Ask it to show you flights to San Diego, for example, and the R1 essentially handles all the clicking and tapping you would normally do in the background before reading the results out loud. Ask it to book the flight, and it interacts with the service to do just that.

In other words, it just does all the “doing” for you. It’s a grandiose promise, but one we may get to test very soon — the company says it plans to ship R1s to customers in the United States before Easter.

At first look, Clicks Technology’s $139 iPhone keyboard case comes off as a love letter to old-school BlackBerry fans — and it is. Typing on it feels satisfying in a way I haven’t experienced in years, and I’m surprised to admit that holding a super-long, encased iPhone isn’t as awkward as I expected.

But this accessory isn’t just for people who miss their old phones. The company believes these physical keys could help people who have trouble typing on slick, feedback-free glass screens, be it because of preference or a physical impairment such as blindness.

Out of the box, the Clicks keyboard also supports a handful of iOS shortcuts that let you scroll through webpages or open Spotlight search with a few button presses, and the company is exploring ways to turn all those keys into shortcuts for other things you do frequently on your iPhone. That could be a boon for power users, creators and others who just want to get things done a little faster.

The giant optics conglomerate EssilorLuxottica showed up at CES with a set of eyeglass frames that double as over-the-counter hearing aids for people with mild to moderate hearing loss.

The Nuance glasses, as they’re called, use six built-in microphones and some software smarts to amplify whatever sound source you’re looking at — whether it’s your TV or your date over dinner.

Even better: Unlike many other OTC options, nothing actually sits in your ear. That’s partly for reasons of style but also because the company believes chatting someone up with devices in your ears can lead to the perception that you’re not fully engaged in the conversation.

I tried on a pair of Nuance glasses in a casino floor coffee shop, which turned out to be a less ideal testing environment than a raucous dinner party. While the effect was subtle, it did work — which means I didn’t have to lean in and ask my conversation partner to repeat what they said, as I often have to now.

The big thing EssilorLuxottica needs to sort out now is the price. Currently, it expects a basic set of Nuance frames will cost north of $1,000 when they go on sale toward the end of the year, though it’s talking to insurance providers to see about making them more affordable.

Samsung will probably sell a lot of its new TVs this year — but it also hopes people will find space in their homes for a friendly robot.

Ballie, a rolling companion that’s a little bigger and heavier than a bowling ball, will go on sale this year. And when it does, it’ll project movies and video calls onto walls, interact with smart appliances, keep tabs on your pets and more. (How well it’ll do at most of these things is anyone’s guess, but we can confirm its projector works reasonably well.)

It’s very different from other homebound machines Samsung makes, such as the company’s motorized mops and vacuum cleaners. Ballie is, by design, a more general-purpose assistant. And it’s not alone: LG is planning to release an AI home robot that does a little bit of everything in 2025, too.

These companies are clearly convinced that these machines have a role to play in our lives; the bigger question is whether normal people feel the same way.

Lots of rings at CES want to monitor your health. This one, built by a start-up called Lotus, is meant to control objects around your home.

Each Lotus ring has an infrared transmitter and a tiny, click-y button — press that, and it’ll send commands to compatible Lotus smart home products that can flick off light switches and turn on plugged-in appliances. You’ll also be able to turn your TV on and off, says CEO Dhaval Patel, who added that the team is working on a version of the ring with a touch sensor that will let you flick through channels and menus.

When the prototype I tried worked, it felt a bit like having a very specific kind of superpower, one I wouldn’t mind using in my daily life. But Lotus mainly built the ring for people with limited mobility who haven’t already spent lots of time and money making their homes “smart” — an audience that too often goes unnoticed by mainstream tech.

In recent years, cars have expanded their presence at a show that used to be best known for new televisions and PCs. But they’re not the only way to get around — you could, for instance, strap on a pair of French motorized ski shoes and whiz around town at 50 mph.

If that sounds a little terrifying, well, it should: Commuter-grade electric scooters in the United States usually top out at about 25 miles per hour. When cruising around on these four-wheel-drive skis at a more reasonable 12 miles per hour, you can expect its set of batteries to carry you close to 20 miles. And when you’re done, the handheld remote used to control the Skwheels latches onto these speedy shoes and becomes a handle for easy transport.

The luxury of skiing anywhere comes at a cost, though: While the company is running an early-adopter discount, the full retail price of a set of Skwheels is close to $2,700.