It closed in Las Vegas the 2024 edition of CES, the largest consumer electronics fair in the world. After the pandemic break, the event returned (almost) to the glories of 2019 and 2020, with around 4 thousand small and large exhibitors arriving in Nevada to show their new products.
CES is the right place to grasp the technology trends for the year to come and feel the pulse of the technological market, but it is also the place where producers often indulge themselves by announcing products of all sorts, from the most useful to the most surprising. Below we have selected 10 of them that we liked.
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LG’s transparent TV
When it comes to Oled T TV, the transparent screen that LG showed for the first time in Las Vegas, the first real news is that it will be put on sale already in 2024, although probably at a prohibitive price. That of the Korean giant is certainly not the first transparent screen we have seen, but it could be the first to arrive on the market, a sign in itself that technology has finally made some progress. The basic idea is to create TV from refined and minimally invasive design, which blend harmoniously with the surrounding environment when in operation and tend to disappear when turned off. The Oled T TV seems to succeed in this purpose well, even if it seems less transparent than the MicroLED display presented by Samsung always in Las Vegas. In terms of image quality, we are far from the performance of the top-of-the-range LG Oleds. While waiting to find out when it will be on sale and at what price, in the meantime we note that all the management electronics are entrusted to a box connected in totally wireless modefor an even cleaner and more minimalist design.
Withings BEAMO
At CES 2024, digital health was one of the main themes. There is certainly one of the most interesting proposals in this area Beamo, from the French company Withings. The device combines 4 functions for remote diagnosis and telemedicine in a single, simplified and easy-to-use product. Users can take advantage of Beamo’s simplified interface to take an ECG, measure blood pressure, check oxygen saturation and listen to the heart and lungs with a digital stethoscope. The data, in addition to being saved in the app, can be shared in real time with a doctor: the idea is simplify remote visits, especially for older users. It will arrive during 2024 and should cost around 250 euros.
Ballie, Samsung’s home robot
According to the announcements seen at CES, one might think that Korean big tech companies never want us to feel alone. In addition to LG, which presented a small homemade bipedal robot based on Qualcomm’s robotic and AI platform, Samsung also chose Las Vegas to show off a small living room droid. It’s called Ballie: as the name suggests, it has an appearance similar to that of a ball with wheels, and is the evolved, revised and corrected version of a prototype already seen at CES but in 2020. Once activated and connected to other smart devices in the home via the SmartThings platform, Ballie will start to wander around the house and (thanks to the omnipresent artificial intelligence) will learn about our habits, always ready to reach us whenever we call. In practice, the small robot facilitates the use of other connected products via voice commands, or thanks to the built-in projector which displays images on the walls of the house, showing a bit of everything: from the interlocutor of a video call to the online fitness class. demand.
Perfecta, the grill with AI that cooks itself
At CES in Las Vegas, artificial intelligence is everywhere and promises to help us do anything: even grill meat. The British Seergrills uses it in Perfecta flagship model to allow cooking that would be “10 times faster than with traditional systems”, with the notable (and appetizing) result that a two and a half centimeter thick steak is ready and perfectly cooked in 90 seconds. Specifically, the system is composed of two vertical infrared burners which they cook the meat on both sides speeding up the process while freeing the cook from the delicate responsibility of having to turn it at the right time. The Perfecta grill runs on gas, is equipped with a touch screen to enter the desired cooking parameters and will go on sale towards the end of 2024 at a price of $3,500.
NanoLeaf Skylight
NanoLeaf, a well-known manufacturer in the smart lighting sector, has presented a new series of intelligent ceiling panels: they are called NanoLeaf Skylight and, as the name suggests, they serve to simulate (as much as possible) natural lighting of the open sky. Marketing aside, the idea is interesting: firstly because they don’t cost a lot (they start from 250 euros for the 3-panel kit) and then because they allow you to modulate the light temperature from 2700 to 6500K with a diffusion effect from above which can help improve moodparticularly alleviating the lack of natural lighting in the winter months.
The Philips lock that reads the hand
Increasingly committed to smart systems for home security, Philips presented a smart lock at CES that it is unlocked by having her palm read. The device is called 5000 Series Wi-Fi Palm Recognition, costs 360 dollars and will be on sale in the United States in the next few months. The user is recognized by detecting and reading the pattern of the veins in the palm, unique for each person, thanks to special proximity sensors. Yet another biometric recognition technology not widespread but very effective, which is added to more traditional ones such as fingerprint analysis. Thanks to wi-fi connectivity, the Philips lock can be controlled remotely with the Home Access app, communicates with other smart devices and integrates with the most popular smart home assistants, including Alexa and Google.
Rabbit R1
Despite all the talk about AI, one of the very few devices really focused on this and seen at CES is the Rabbit R1 (we wrote about it here), a gadget that aims to simplify and rethink the use of the smartphone. It resembles a portable console and is used via an interface based on natural language recognition. The device runs Rabbit OS, an ad hoc operating system centered around an AI model trained to interpret and predict user actions smartphones. According to its creators, it would be able to perform actions on behalf of those who use it: they can order a pizza, call a taxi, play music and much more. Even though the idea is interesting and original, and even though we think that generative AI will inevitably lead to a rethinking of interfaces as we know them, we still miss the point of a hardware product that, ultimately, it could simply have been an app for iPhone or for Android. The device is available for pre-order, costs 200 dollars and should arrive in March (at least in the USA).
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WHSP Ring, the ring for whispering to AI
Imagine this scenario: it’s night, you’re in bed, someone is sleeping next to you and you have to give a voice command to your digital assistant, but you don’t want to disturb. The Korean company VTouch has come up with a solution: it’s called WHSP Ring (pun intended it sounds like whispering in English) and is a connected ring equipped with a microphone and proximity sensor that activates when you bring it close to your mouth, for example to allow you to whisper commands to your digital assistant, as well as other interactive AI systems that will be available in the future. It is not yet clear if, where and when WHSP Ring will arrive on the market, but its creators would be willing to finance it with the crowdfunding su Kickstarter already in 2024. In the meantime we know that the device connects to the smartphone, that headphones are needed to listen to the AI’s responses, that it is equipped with a battery that should guarantee up to a day and a half of operation and that the charging case extends the duration up to 9 days. Also interesting is the function whereby, by pressing a button 5 times in a row, a service is activated notify specific contacts of an emergency in progress, while simultaneously turning on the microphone to record environmental sounds. A feature that could prove very useful when you find yourself in danger.
Unistellar Odissey and Odissey Pro
The telescopes of the new Odyssey series, developed by Unistellar in collaboration with NIkon, set themselves the ambitious goal of reinventing and simplify the approach to astronomical observation amateur. The two devices do not require any type of manual adjustment and thanks to a dedicated app it is possible to select planets and celestial formations that are better observable from the position we are in. The credit goes to a technology called Autonomous Field Detection, which crosses the GPS position with a coordinate database integrated into the product. Which should have a starting price of around 2500 dollars.
Jackery Solar Mars Bot
At CES, Jackery showed the new Solar Generator Mars Bot, an intelligent robot/generator that can follow the Sun autonomously and open the panels in the most suitable place to optimize energy production. The company explained that the robot behaves similarly to a sunflower, orienting itself based on exposure. All thanks to Lidar sensors and an integrated system for obstacle detection. Designed for off-grid camping, the device integrates a lithium and ferrous ion battery (similar to that of other Jackery products) and numerous ports and sockets for charging electronic devices.