CES Liveblog Day 1: Flying Cars, Smart Fridges, and 5G Chips

Welcome to our CES 2020 liveblog! The WIRED crew is on the ground here in Las Vegas to touch, test, prod, and fondle all of the latest gadgets, apps, smart-home appliances, brain-training headgear, and Alexa-powered running shoes. This liveblog is the place where we’ll report all of our findings. We’ll have videos, photos, written dispatches, and of course, more than a few lulz.

Monday is one of the slower days here at CES. The show technically gets fully underway tomorrow (Tuesday) when the expo halls open to the public. But there will still be some action to report on from today’s “preview” events. Monday’s news will likely be dominated by the press conferences being held by big companies like Toyota, Samsung, Bosch, and Intel.

We’re on Pacific Standard Time here in Las Vegas, so expect updates to start rolling in faster around 12 pm eastern, or 9 am out west. Refresh the page every once in a while and you’ll see the newest piece of news appear at the top of the page. And don’t forget to check out the rest of WIRED’s CES 2020 Coverage.

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TCL Goes Mobile

You probably know TCL for its affordable but excellent TVs, but the company also makes phones through its sub-brands like Alcatel and BlackBerry. For the first time, TCL-branded phones are about to arrive on U.S. shores. The collection includes the TCL 10 5G, the TCL 10 Pro, and the TCL 10L, and all of them will cost under $500.

They have slim bezels around with a cutout or notch to house the front-facing camera and an otherwise all-screen display. The TCL 10 5G specifically uses a fun crystal-like effect on the back that makes it look like shards, gleaming light when the phone is held in any angle.

TCL hasn’t shared much in the way of specifications—it’s saving the goods for Mobile World Congress at the end of February—but the 5G phone will use a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 series 5G processor. Considering its estimated price, that would make it one of the most affordable 5G phones you can buy, though TCL hasn’t said what wireless networks it will work on.

5G has made its way to dozens of cities in the U.S., but it can only be found in select areas for short distances and, sometimes, it’s not all that faster than 4G LTE. You will need to upgrade your phone to use 5G, and while the initial crop of 5G phones in 2019 cost an arm and a leg, you can expect to see a greater variety of affordable options this year, like the TCL 10 5G.
TCL hopes to launch the 10 series this spring.

—Julian Chokkattu

Toyota City (Pop. 2,000)

Toyota wants to build its own city. The Woven City, as the company calls it, will provide a “living laboratory” where about 2,000 people will live and work while Toyota and others study an acronym soup of technologies on the premises. The Woven City is a collaboration with Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and will break ground in 2021.

The presentation today at CES—reminiscent of a 20th century World’s Fair exhibit in its scope and sheer audacity—outlined a vision of the future city in which traditional Japanese woodworking meets modern photovoltaic roofs and AI-powered robots. The end result is an updated take on the city of the future we’ve been promised for decades.

Does it sound a little insane? Yes, yes, it does. Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda poked fun at his own goals, admitting that it makes him seem a little like Willy Wonka. Still, Toyoda seems serious about making it happen, crazy or not.

—Scott Gilbertson

Frameless

The Sero rotating TV (see below) isn’t the only TV that caught my eye in Samsung’s litany of announcements. The company’s newest QLED 8K TV, the Q950, doesn’t have a fun name but it sure is one of the prettiest TVs I’ve ever seen. That’s largely because Samsung reduced the bezel around the screen to a mere 2.3 mm, making it look like it’s purely all screen. The stand is much smaller and centered too, so you don’t need a humongous amount of space for the TV.

It still doesn’t make sense to buy an 8K TV—I only bought a 4K TV in 2018, so I need to justify not shelling out for an 8K one—but Samsung claims the processor inside uses artificial intelligence to help the TV teach itself to upscale HD or 4K content to 8K resolution with the best picture quality, and the results look pretty darn good.

—Julian Chokkattu

A Rotating Soundbar

Everything must rotate at CES 2020. Julian talked about Samsung’s rotating TV (see below), and now Vizio has a soundbar with some spin to it. The new Elevate soundbar has speakers that physically rotate depending on what you’re watching or listening to at any given moment. The 48-inch soundbar’s two speakers fire upward when you’re watching immersive content on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, giving you great Dolby Atmos or DTS:X sound, but a flick of a switch turns them to fire straight at you when music is playing.

It’s not just a cool aesthetic: Most music is mixed in stereo, which means other Dolby Atmos Bars aren’t using their full speaker power to provide you with a big, studio-like image, because at least two of their drivers are facing up at all times. With the Elevate, that problem becomes a thing of the past.

We’ve sang the praises of Vizio’s affordable soundbars for years, but the Elevate again shows that the company makes some incredible high-end options for the money. Better still? Vizio has listened to reviewers: The new soundbar line finally comes with backlit remotes, so you won’t have to use your phone’s backlight to change inputs in darker rooms.

Vizio has yet to announce pricing or availability for the Elevate, but the company has always had a keen eye on value, so I hope the Elevate will cost in in the hundreds, not thousands, of dollars.

—Parker Hall

All Touch, No Keys

WIRED’s Lauren Goode tried out Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold, a folding-screen laptop at CES. It’s basically a 13-inch $2,500 Windows 10 touch tablet that folds up, with no physical keyboard. If you plan to type on it, you’ll have to get used to tapping a touchscreen or buying an extra keyboard accessory that sticks onto one half of the display. Above is some footage of what it’s like to hold and fold it.

—Jeffrey Van Camp

An Ice Cube Ouster

The other day I was making a cocktail (a whiskey sour, for the curious), until I realized I forgot to make some ice in the freezer. Looking back, it would have been handy if I had a Juno at home, a machine that rapidly cools just about anything you can fit inside inside its cylindrical structure—even a bottle of wine.

It uses a thermoelectric cooling engine, in conjunction with water, to spin whatever’s inside and draw heat out, cooling the beverage in less than five minutes—all without the need for any refrigerants. A fridge could take 10 minutes or a lot more time (especially if the drink is hot). Even better, because you’re not using ice, you don’t end up diluting the drink. I tossed a scalding cup of coffee inside Juno and within three minutes it was cold; ice would have done the trick, but it also would water the coffee down.

I’m not a fan of how much countertop space the machine takes up, as I’m already pretty limited in my tiny New York apartment, but I’m more intrigued about Juno’s applications outside the home. Imagine it inside a 7/11 instead of fridges that run 24/7: Just bring your drink to the counter and have the clerk rapidly cool it. It could be used in vending machines to cool drinks as you buy them, too.

The company behind the tech is Matrix, makers of the smartwatch powered by body heat. The company is in active discussions with businesses to see how they can integrate Juno into other applications.

Juno is available as an Indiegogo preorder now for $199, but the price will jump up at a later date to $299. The company hopes to release it in the third quarter of 2020.

—Julian Chokkattu

A Smartwatch for Snoozing

I love Withings’ smartwatches. They’re attractive, affordable, and look like a watch, not a miniature computer strapped to your wrist. Last year, the company made moves into the healthcare space by showing the Move ECG, a smartwatch that can take electrocardiograms. This year, it improved its health monitoring capabilities with the ScanWatch, which is clinically validated and can detect signs of both atrial fibrillation (Afib) and sleep apnea.

Unlike the Move ECG, it continuously monitors the wearer’s heart rate for abnormalities and will send an alert to take an ECG if those are detected. You can check the results directly on the watch’s face, without using your phone. The ScanWatch also has an SpO2 sensor to check for sleep apnea, a sleeping disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts.

As always, these sensors are packaged in a gorgeous, utterly wearable stainless steel case with a sapphire glass watch face. Unlike previous iterations, the rechargeable battery only lasts for a month— which, to be honest, is still 29 more days than some health smartwatches we could mention.

—Adrienne So

AI Sun Block

Today, Bosch took the stage here at CES to show off the company’s ongoing investment in AI. It started its presentation, perhaps not inappropriately, by bringing up pop culture’s image of artificial intelligence—Terminator, The Matrix, Ex Machina. Ironically, Bosch’s slogan here at CES sounds exactly like something Skynet or HAL would say: “Beneficial AI. Building trust together.”

Luckily for us, AI is vastly over-hyped. Super-intelligent systems that talk won’t be coming to your spaceship any time soon. Bosch’s new driver assist systems are more realistic. It showed an LCD-based sun visor that uses facial recognition to detect and block the sun in your eyes. It’s clever enough to garner the company a CES Innovation Award, but it’s also a problem that can also be solved with a $20 trucker hat.

Bosch’s efforts to integrate Lidar into automobile-AI systems for better 3D spacial recognition and intelligence (so you don’t hit things!) also sounds exciting. Unfortunately, as with so much AI news, details are frustratingly absent.

—Scott Gilbertson

A Snore-Stopping Pillow

Ask anyone who sleeps next to a partner who snores, and they’d probably go to extremes to find a solution. They might even be willing to shell out more than $400 for the newest version of the Motion Pillow, made by South Korea-based TenMinds.

The Motion Pillow is a memory foam pillow filled with four airbags and a sensor-based pressure monitoring system. It connects to a plastic box with microphones built into it, for detecting snoring frequencies. And of course: There’s an app. The idea is, once the system hears you snoring, it begins to inflate the pillow in such a way that it will force your head to turn—a kind of automated version of the person who nudges you into a new position.

The first version of the pillow ($378 on Amazon) connects to a box that you had to manually activate. The updated model, which will ship in April for $420, has no buttons and will automatically kick into gear at night. The whole thing sounds a little hokey, but if it helps save some zzz’s—or a marriage—it might be worth a try.

—Lauren Goode

TV Twister

If you’ve always hoped you could watch Instagram or Snapchat Stories on a massive TV screen, your oddly specific dream is coming true. The Sero is a 43-inch TV from Samsung that mechanically rotates between portrait and landscape orientations to better suit the content you’re watching. Say goodbye to those thick, black bars around your videos.

It’s pretty magical watching the TV rotate on its own, and while it can’t move around like a robot vacuum, it does have wheels, so you can push it from room to room (the speakers are in the base). This mobility comes with downsides: The TV cannot be mounted and its viewing angle is fixed. It’s also very low to the ground, making it ideal for anyone who has a room filled with bean bags—and less ideal for anyone who doesn’t. Samsung has not yet announced a price or release date, but the Sero seems like a model that may cost $1,500 – $3,000.

—Julian Chokkattu

Water Detective

Identifying power-sucking vampire devices and plugging up leaks are two of the best ways to act sustainably and conserve resources, but the devices that help you do it are usually expensive, difficult to install, or both. Thankfully, it looks like smart water-monitoring devices for the home (whew, what a mouthful) are getting much smaller and more accessible.

Flo’s newest smart water detector went on sale yesterday and is a mere 3.5 inches across and costs $50. Simply place the sensor in a vulnerable area, like under a water heater or washing machine. If customers also own the Flo smart water shutoff, they can also shut off the water automatically. We also took a look at Phyn’s smart water assistant ($250 at Best Buy)](https://bestbuy.7tiv.net/xa3Qk){: rel=nofollow}, which detects leaks and is easy to install yourself.

—Adrienne So

Ring in the New Year

Today at CES, the home security company Ring is launching six new products. These will include solar-powered lights, weather-resistant smart LED bulbs, and a device called the Access Controller Pro that will allow Ring users to operate a remote-controlled access gate from their phone and accept Amazon deliveries.

However, in the wake of reports concerning creepy security breaches and the questionable use of video footage, Ring is also announcing a new control center in the Ring app. It will debut later this month and allow Ring users to easily view and control their privacy and security settings. It will also enable users to opt out of receiving requests from local police who have opted into Ring’s partnership program.

CES will hold a privacy-focused panel on Tuesday with executives at Apple and Facebook

—Adrienne So

Chromebook Luxe

I’m always chasing after ultra-thin and lightweight laptops. Nobody wants to lug around something thick and heavy. Samsung’s latest Galaxy Chromebook is just that. It’s a 2-in-1 notebook that’s 10 mm thick and only 2.3 pounds (for reference, Apple’s MacBook Air is 2.8 pounds). Holding it for a few minutes already has me spoiled; I want all my laptops to be this light.

It doesn’t feel cheap, either. The chassis is entirely made of aluminum, and the 4K AMOLED 13-inch screen is luxurious, with slim bezels framing it. It’s powered by Intel’s 10th-generation Core i5 processor and has all the bells and whistles, like a fingerprint reader, a built-in stylus, and a display that can rotate 360 degrees. There is a webcam above that display and an extra 8-megapixel camera right above keyboard—you can use it as a rear camera when holding the Galaxy Chromebook in tablet mode.

The few hiccups? The keyboard isn’t as satisfying to type on as some laptops (it feels like the MacBook Butterfly keyboard), and it’s $1,000. Samsung and Google want this to be the premium Chromebook to buy, but at the end of the day you’re using Chrome OS, which limits you to Android apps and the Google Chrome browser. I’ve used a Chromebook for several years and they’re more than viable options for many people, but there are so many more affordable Chromebooks to choose from if cost is top of mind.

The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2020.

—Julian Chokkattu

More From CES 2020

• Liveblog Day 1: Get the latest from Las Vegas
• Gallery: The 10 neatest things we’ve seen so far
• Facebook revamps its privacy checkup feature just in time
• Lenovo flaunts its foldable PC, the ThinkPad X1 Fold
• Podcast: Sex toys, AI toothbrushes, and more in the forecast
• Looking for more? Check out our full coverage here
• 📩 Sign up for the Gadget Lab newsletter for news and reviews you can use.