You may need thrown out the wrapping paper and are readying the drinks for the countdown to the brand new yr, however a few of us are already preparing for CES 2025. Shortly after New 12 months’s Day, many from the Engadget staff might be packing our baggage to fly to Las Vegas, the place we’ll be overlaying tech’s greatest annual convention. As regular, our inboxes are already flooded with pitches from firms which are planning to be there, and our calendars are filling up with appointments for briefings and demos.
Based mostly on our expertise, in addition to commentary of latest trade tendencies, it’s pretty straightforward to make educated predictions about what we would see in January. Through the years, the main target of the convention has spanned areas like TVs, vehicles, sensible dwelling merchandise and private well being, with a smattering of laptops and equipment thrown in. At CES 2025, we count on to see AI get much more pervasive in all areas of the present ground. However we’re additionally more likely to get the same old slew of recent processors and subsequent laptops, in addition to all method of wearables, trackers, rest room home equipment and therapeutic massage chairs. Oh, the therapeutic massage chairs.
What we already know is coming
There’s already lots we all know is coming, simply by a cursory look at the lineup revealed by the Shopper Expertise Affiliation (CTA). Along with quite a few panels and talks, there might be keynotes by NVIDIA’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Delta CEO Ed Bastian in addition to C-suite executives from firms like Panasonic, SiriusXM, Waymo and Volvo group. We have additionally seen that Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X (Twitter), might be interviewed by journalist Catherine Herridge at a keynote on January 7, whereas Snap CEO Evan Spiegel might be talking concerning the “future goals of the platform” on January 8.
Some firms did not even wait until January to make their information recognized. LG, for instance, continues its annual custom of sharing its upcoming CES launches weeks forward of the present by unveiling the 2025 refresh for its QNED evo line of LCD TVs. The corporate has continued to launch extra data, together with saying its 45-inch UltraGear bendable OLED gaming monitor alongside a line of curved OLED screens.
Hyundai Mobis, in the meantime, has stated will probably be giving us a have a look at its “Holographic Windshield Display,” one thing it is claiming is a world’s first. Hyundai Mobis even shared an image of what its sales space at CES 2025 will appear to be, in case footage of conference heart cubicles get you excited.
If you happen to’re already waiting for 2025 and are studiously researching what could be coming in January, right here’s a style of what our staff expects to see on the present.
New video playing cards from AMD and NVIDIA
There’s little question 2025 goes to be a momentous yr for PC players. NVIDIA is anticipated to debut its long-awaited RTX 5000 video playing cards at CES, whereas AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed we’ll see next-generation RDNA 4 GPUs early subsequent yr. Of the 2 firms, AMD might use the improve extra. Its final batch of Radeon 7000 playing cards have been respectable mid-range performers, however they lagged far behind NVIDIA’s {hardware} when it got here to ray tracing, and AMD’s FSR 3 upscaling additionally couldn’t compete with NVIDIA’s AI-powered DLSS 3.
“In addition to a strong increase in gaming performance, RDNA 4 delivers significantly higher ray-tracing performance and adds new AI capabilities,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said in an October earnings call.
As for NVIDIA’s new hardware, a rumor from the leaker OneRaichu (by way of DigitalTrends) prompt that the RTX 5090 could possibly be as much as 70 p.c quicker than the RTX 4090. (That’s a GPU that I beforehand described as having “unholy power.”) They also note that other “high level” cards could see 30 to 40 percent performance bumps. Those gains might be enough to tempt wealthy RTX 4090 owners to upgrade, but RTX 4070 and 4080 owners might want to skip this generation. For NVIDIA holdouts with RTX 3000 and earlier GPUs, though, next year may be the perfect time to upgrade. — Devindra Hardawar, senior reporter
AI PCs round 2
Last year, I predicted that AI PCs would dominate CES, and that mostly turned out to be true. As 2024 rolled on, we saw even more powerful NPUs in chips from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm. Microsoft also doubled down on AI PCs with its Copilot+ initiative, which gave a big marketing push for artificial intelligence features and premium specifications (like having at least 16GB of RAM).
Expect more of the same going into CES 2025, alongside even more AI being stuffed into every category of product imaginable. This year, in particular, PC makers are likely to gear up to take advantage of Windows 10 support ending next year. Instead of just upgrading your old computer to Windows 11, the likes of Dell and HP would rather you buy a whole new AI PC with the new OS pre-installed.
While 2024 was a year of endless AI PC hype, 2025 might end up being a year of reckoning. Microsoft’s long-delayed Recall feature is slowly trickling out to more users, but it’s already showing some glaring security holes, like failing to wash social safety and bank card numbers from screenshots. We’ve additionally been largely underwhelmed with Apple Intelligence’s picture technology capabilities. PC makers have been keen to speak up the potential of AI-powered options till now, however in 2025 they’ll have to truly show they’ll reside as much as their fantastical claims. — D.H.
Earbuds that follow Apple’s lead on hearing health
I’m fully aware not every audio company has the ability to build out a clinical-grade hearing test and hearing aid features in their apps. However, Apple’s recent update for the AirPods Pro 2 should inspire the competition to offer some form of hearing health tools on their flagship products. Jabra was probably the best equipped to do this since parent company GN has extensive hearing aid experience. Sadly, the company announced earlier this year that it wouldn’t make earbuds anymore.
Samsung and Google could probably integrate something like what Apple made for the AirPods, given both companies’ existing health platforms. If they did, those announcements are unlikely to be made at CES, as both companies prefer to host their own standalone hardware events throughout the year.
That leaves Sennheiser as the biggest audio company that consistently launches earbuds and headphones at CES. Last year, it showcased a number of new fashions, together with one with heart-rate monitoring for exercises. Plus, it already provides listening to help with devoted gadgets just like the true wi-fi Dialog Clear Plus. These earbuds are extra listening to targeted than for common content material consumption, so it will be nice to see Sennheiser deliver some options from that product to its flagship Momentum line of earbuds. Perhaps a Momentum True Wireless 4 Pro or Plus is in the cards, but the current model is just nine months old.
Of course, there’s plenty of room for other companies to innovate here, and there will be no shortage of new earbuds in Vegas next month. We also tend to see a ton of assistive gadgets and expertise launch at CES, from main accessibility firms like OrCam and all method of smaller manufacturers. I simply hope among the new tech consists of extra common listening to instruments on the fashions most individuals will wish to use. — Billy Steele, senior editor
Automobile electrification goes sky excessive
As the expansion of electrical vehicles nears 10 p.c of recent fashions bought within the US, it’s straightforward to neglect that wheeled autos aren’t the one type of transportation seeing the shift to battery-powered propulsion. Flying taxis have been a mainstay of CES for the previous few years, with idea autos from manufacturers as giant as Hyundai dotting the present ground in Vegas.
Granted, these contraptions look extra like big drones with cockpits than something the Jetsons ever dreamed up. However with firms like Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation pledging to truly launch eVTOL companies (electrical vertical take-off and touchdown) in 2025, the period of air taxis could have landed for actual this time. — Sam Rutherford, senior reporter
Turning extra telephones into satellite tv for pc telephones
Since Apple launched Emergency SOS by way of Satellite tv for pc on the iPhone 14 in 2022, we have seen a severe uptick in improvement in satellite tv for pc communications. Not solely did Apple develop its function to permit for non-emergency communications, element makers like Qualcomm, too, tried to deliver related capabilities to Android gadgets. Snapdragon Satellite tv for pc was introduced at CES 2023, as a challenge between Qualcomm and Iridium, however the initiative didn’t acquire recognition with smartphone firms, and was finally led to November that very same yr.
Since then, Google launched satellite tv for pc calling in Pixel 9 telephones, whereas SpaceX’s Starlink satellite tv for pc texting service has gone reside in New Zealand by way of telco One NZ. Within the US, T-Cell opened up beta signups for its Starlink-powered satellite tv for pc cell service this yr. The skies are getting extra crowded, too, with AT&T and associate AST SpaceMobile launching 5 satellites in September, in addition to Amazon’s Undertaking Kuiper trying to increase its satellite tv for pc web community with area lasers.
This yr, Garmin launched the inReach Messenger Plus, which it describes as an “SOS Satellite tv for pc Communicator with Photograph and Voice messaging.” Although satellite tv for pc hotspots like which have been round for years from firms like Iridium and GlobalSat, they’ve historically cost $800 to $1,000, and haven’t had the ability to send much more than a few lines of text. Garmin’s product may be an indicator of things to come — not only are we likely to see major phone makers embed satellite communication capability into future handsets, but in the interim we’re probably going to get a bunch of hotspots so we’ll never lose connectivity, not matter how far off the grid we get. And I wouldn’t be surprised if CES 2025 is rife with devices that let us tap into satellites to get help and talk to others. — Cherlynn Low, deputy editor
Expanded dialog enchancment options on soundbars
With regards to the primary elements of soundbars, there actually isn’t a ton of innovation from yr to yr. Heck, Samsung’s greatest replace final yr was the addition of HDMI 2.1 assist to its flagship mannequin, which ought to’ve been there already. Firms have additionally been targeted on the transition to cable-free all the things, whether or not that’s wi-fi Dolby Atmos or wi-fi transmission packing containers. Audio enhancement options are a spot the place firms can actually rise above the fray, and instruments like Sonos’ TV Audio Swap and Bose’s Personal Surround Sound are great examples of this. A key area nearly every company can improve is dialog boost, a feature that raises the volume or separates spoken word from background noise and music for better clarity.
Sonos made a huge leap in this regard on the Arc Ultra, offering two additional settings for its so-called Speech Enhancement. Previously, this was just an all-or-nothing toggle, which is how most companies handle their versions of this tool. Not only is the Sonos update customizable to a degree, it’s also just better, thanks in part to the redesigned architecture of its new premium soundbar. This is an obvious area where other companies can improve.
LG and Samsung typically announce new soundbars at CES, and there are plenty of smaller companies that will debut some too. I’d love to see all of them take dialog enhancements a step further and at the very least give multiple options for how it’s applied. LG has been using AI Sound Pro from its TVs since 2021 and Samsung offers something called Adaptive Sound on its home theater speakers. I would expect them both to generally improve the quality of their features, but I’m hoping they’ll expand the capabilities too. — B.S.
Update, December 17 2024, 12:40PM ET: This story has been updated to include the companies and CEOs that will be making keynotes at the show.
Update, December 20 2024, 11:55AM ET: This story has been updated to include LG and Hyundai Mobis’ announcements ahead of CES 2025.
Update, December 25 2024, 10:00AM ET: This story has been updated to include a prediction about satellite communication devices being everywhere at CES 2025.
Update, December 30 2024, 11:30AM ET: This story has been updated to include a section titled “What we already know is coming,” that accommodates newer details about appearances by X CEO Linda Yaccarino and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, in addition to updates on LG’s UltraGear line. The intro was additionally up to date to be extra correct concerning the time of yr since we first revealed this piece.
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