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 doodads, robot bartenders, underwater drones, and exoskeletons. This liveblog is the place where we’ll report all of our findings. We’ll have videos, photos, written dispatches, and since we’re in the latter half of CES, we’ll probably start to get a little goofy.
We’re on Pacific Standard Time here in Las Vegas, so expect updates to start rolling in around 11 am eastern, or 8 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. We’ll keep updating until at least 6 pm PT with some sporadic evening updates after that.
WIRED’s CES Coverage
- Sex Tech Companies Are Having Fun at CES
- CES Liveblog Day 1
- CES Liveblog Day 2
- CES Liveblog Day 3 (You are here!)
- 10 Neatest Things We’ve Seen at CES
- 10 More Extraordinary Gadgets at CES
- 8 More of the Smartest Things at CES
- CES Trends We Expect to See
- All Our CES 2020 Articles
CES Attendees: Come visit WIRED HQ, located at the Yardbird in the Venetian
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A SSD with a Fingerprint Scanner
It’s not easy to get excited about hard drives, but if you’re a proponent of security—and happen to need extra storage space—then you’ll be happy to learn that Samsung’s new portable solid-state drive (called the T7 Touch Portable SSD), comes with a built-in fingerprint scanner. It’s not the first of its kind, but it’s about the size of a business card, doesn’t look gaudy, and comes in options of 500 GB ($130), 1 TB ($230), or 2 TB ($400). It uses a USB 3.2 Type-C port, and that helps it net transfer speeds up to around 1.05 GB per second.
—Julian Chokkattu
WIRED senior writer Lauren Goode explored the new sexual health and wellness area of CES, which was allowed on a trial basis this year after one sex device maker had her innovation award rescinded at last year’s show. Goode and the entrepreneur, Lora DiCarlo, toured some of the health and wellness section and talked about taboos around sexuality.
Read: Sex Tech Companies Are Having More Fun Than the Rest of Us at CES
—Jeffrey Van Camp
Coke Launched a Drink at CES
I needed a pick me up, so naturally I went to find Coca Cola’s new energy drink, aptly named Coke Energy. It has about four times the caffeine of a traditional can of Coke, so if you see a burst of liveblog entries or tweets from me in the next hour or two, you’ll know why. I got the Cherry version, which tastes like Cherry Coke mixed with a Gatorade. I kind of like it!
Coke Energy hasn’t been out long, only being available in select countries like Japan, but they tell me that starting January 20 you can order the drink via Amazon’s Alexa in the U.S., and it will hit retail stores on January 28.
—Julian Chokkattu
WIRED Chats with Twitter
Our EIC Nick Thompson spoke with Kayvon Beykpour, product lead at Twitter, and streamed it on Twitter’s Periscope from our WIRED HQ at the Yardbird in the Venetian.
—Jeffrey Van Camp
No More Smart Home Cameras!
By far, my favorite part of CES is Eureka Park, where the smallest startups and brightest university students come to show us all what we’ll be wearing and using in 5 – 10 years. I was very interested to see a lot of smart home security gear that doesn’t have hackable cameras or microphones.
Two of these were Oval Home’s small, multi-purpose sensors, which can detect temperature, light, humidity, motion, or water. The starter kit comes with one hub and two sensors, which can detect anything from a forbidden medicine cabinet opening, or a leaky bathtub faucet. They are available for preorder starting at $50.
Another is the Owl Home, which detects smoke, carbon dioxide, motion, and sound to alert you of a stranger’s presence. Maybe we’re finally starting to realize that maybe the best way to keep your family safe is to not invite a Wi-Fi-enabled camera into every room.
—Adrienne So
Mixed Reality Glasses
I saw the Nreal Light mixed reality glasses at CES 2019, and in just a year they have improved so much. There’s no longer a CPU puck you need to carry around with it (just plug it into an Android phone) and the glasses can finally fold! They project virtual objects into the real world and you can walk around and interact with them. Nreal’s latest feature, called Nebula, lets you run Android apps in a virtual space. I was able to boot up Netflix, YouTube, and Instagram, and I could place each app wherever I wanted, so all I needed to do was turn my head to multitask.
The glasses are lightweight and comfy, and Nreal offers magnetic prescription lenses you can easily attach so you can remove your glasses to use them. I’m still not sure who’s going to want to buy and use Nreal—the features are niche and it’s not the most attractive piece of hardware—but the tech is improving at a rapid rate; I can’t wait to see what they’ll have in store in 2021.
At $499, the Nreal Light glasses are surprisingly affordable considering all the tech inside. They’ll be available in early 2020.
—Julian Chokkattu
Perfect Your Yoga Moves
There is a bunch of motion capture technology in the fitness section here at Eureka Park at CES. My personal pick is the Yoganotch personal yoga assistant. Cue up one of their yoga classes, wear the notches, and yoga-centric AI takes in data from 3D sensors to correct your form.
If you like to follow along with “Yoga with Adriene,” (not a real show!) you’ll now be able to do so with sensors that tell you to bend forward just a little more, or get your butt in line with the rest of you. That way, you’re much less likely to injure yourself.
The Yoganotch starter kit costs $200, along with a $8/month subscription. Units will ship later this year.
—Adrienne So
Auto-Tuning Earbuds
Your ears might need glasses, or at least that’s what the team at Nura claims. The popular Kickstarter-backed company’s new in-ears listen to the way you hear, mapping your eardrum and inner ears’ responsiveness and shaping the sound to fit it. The demo they showed me was pretty convincing; they shared several other journalists’ hearing profiles with me, and I’m convinced that those people can’t hear a thing. Professional hubris or legitimate scientific proof I’ve got “2020” hearing, I’m not sure, but the wireless earbuds sounded pretty fantastic when switched to my profile.
You can preorder the Nuraloop for $199. They ship in March. Read our review of the original Nuraphones to learn more about the tech.
—Parker Hall
Magnet Games
One of my favorite trends at this year’s CES is the prevalence of kids toys that mix digital and physical. The Tori board is one of my favorites. It’s a magnetic board that pairs with a small portable magnet which you insert into various game controllers. The controllers—for example, a spacecraft—are then embedded in the company’s tablet-based software and come to life, so to speak. You fly the digital representation of your spacecraft by moving the real one in your hand. There are a variety of games, ranging from the spacecraft game Explorer to the Angry Birds-like Jungle Rescue—and Supreme Builder, a Minecraft-ey block-building game.
There are plenty of opportunities for kids to build their own controllers or decorate objects with the game (by using pen and paper and then scanning). Parents can track screen time and set challenges using the app. Right now Tori is focused on fun. Your kids will learn some on soft skills, but it’s easy to see how the company could expand the platform into more explicitly teaching-focused games.
The Tori Explorer Pack costs $129 at Amazon. It’s aimed at kids ages 5-8.
—Scott Gilbertson
A Plant-Based Phone Case
This phone case might look quite ordinary, but it’s made out of plants! It’s called Organicore, and it’s Incipio’s new line of sustainable cases with zero plastic. The cases are 100 percent compostable material, and Incipio said it still manages to offer 6-foot drop protection thanks to the raised bezel on the sides, which protects your phone’s screen. Even the packaging is eco-friendly—it’s recyclable and uses water-based ink.
At the moment, these cases are only available for the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max in a range of colors, but Incipio said it will support more products in the coming months. The Incipio Organicore costs $40.
—Julian Chokkattu
Alexa Links Your Car to Your Home
Honestly, I (and two other WIRED staffers) body-wedged our way through the crowd at Amazon Auto’s booth just to check out the Rivian R1T for our own selfish curiosity, but when I heard that the R1T (the pickup) and R1S (the SUV) will be the first production vehicles to have Alexa Home integrated with Alexa Auto, I pounced.
Few appreciate how significant of a shift it is to link automotive smart assistants to home and phone. That means you can ask your Fire TV to tell you whether your Rivian is charging, how much battery level there is, and how many miles that level will take you, said a Rivian spokesperson. And begin driving navigation to a hiking trailhead, and when you park in the visitor’s lot you can seamlessly pick up walking directions on your phone for the rest of the way. Or you could ask your Echo Show if you left something in your Rivian, which will display a live feed of the truck bed camera.
Alexa Auto is currently online-only. That’ll change with the Rivian, which will work without cell signal for requests that don’t rely on the cloud. So you won’t be able to ask Alexa to see the indoor cameras in your house or answer weird trivia questions when it’s offline, but you’ll still be able to work vehicle-specific actions, such as change system settings or pop open the front-end trunk. You’ll be able to buy the R1T for $69,000 and R1S for $72,500 at the very end of the year. No news yet if you’ll be able to buy things off Amazon with just the right combination of words as you go down the road, but knowing Amazon, it would be overjoyed if you bought two seasons of Life on Mars on the way home from work.
(Learn more about Amazon and Rivian’s partnership.)
—Matt Jancer
More OLED TVs Are Coming
Finally, OLED TVs are getting cheaper! Chinese brand Konka is one of a couple of brands sharing plans to launch a value-packed OLED model this year (Vizio has also announced its own model). The new OLEDs should put some pep in Konka’s step as it attempts to burst into the US market for the first time in 2020, having been a top five brand in China for years.
The company showed me two prototypes of the models that will hit shelves in the latter half of the year. One comes with a built-in soundbar, which is particularly exciting to the audio nerd inside me; I can’t tell you how often I see gorgeous TVs without a high-quality audio solution to go along with them. For shame!
—Parker Hall
Oven, Fridge, Dishwasher, … Robot Arms?
Order in or cook? The answer for me is almost always order in, because I just don’t have an innate desire to whip something up with my bare hands—especially when the hunger pangs kick in. Well, maybe robotic chef’s arms can help? Samsung’s Bot Chef is a pair of arms hanging from a kitchen cabinet. Sensors and cameras (and a little dose of artificial intelligence) tell the arms where things like the salt and pepper are, and I watched as the arms helped a (human) cook make a bowl of tofu salad.
Samsung calls it a collaborative robot, so it’s not meant to cook from start to finish without any help, but it can take some tasks off your hands (and it could be of greater use in industrial applications). Its grips are sensitive enough to gently squeeze a little bit of hot sauce out of a bottle of Sriracha, and it can even open the cabinets above it to grab seasonings it might need. This is a concept, so don’t expect it to see it at your posh friend’s house anytime soon, but it is a reality that Samsung thinks we’ll embrace in the near future.
—Julian Chokkattu
A TV Guide for Streaming
CES is, in a way, defined by products that answer questions nobody has ever asked; gadgets that are cool, but nobody truly needs. Well, Dabby is cool, and I need it.
How many times have you Googled whether a TV show is on Netflix or Hulu? How many times have you wanted to watch a show, only to find out that it isn’t on a streaming service you’re subscribed to? Dabby, a dongle-and-touchscreen entertainment system, uses AI and “deep search” to intelligently play any free or paid content online. That doesn’t mean just showing you where you can watch Friends these days. You can take it a step further and ask Dabby to “play the dracarys scene from Game of Thrones” and it’ll find a clip on YouTube.
Aside from the intuitive interface, my favorite feature is Dabby’s intelligent subscription manager. Visit the subscriptions tab and you’ll get recommendations for canceling streaming services you rarely use. Tap a toggle and you’re unsubscribed. Should you give it the power, Dabby can even automatically unsubscribe for you if you aren’t using a service frequently.
There are lots of other neat features, like a fun swiping motion to dictate what plays on your TV, or using the AI to stream clips from Instagram and Twitch, but the reason I like Dabby boils down to this: It’s trying to solve a problem that I actually have.
You can preorder the Dabby for $399. It ships later this spring.
—Louryn Strampe
Got a Spare Shipping Crate?
The Planty Cube from N.Thing is a modular vertical farm system designed to fit inside a standard, 40-foot shipping container. The hydroponic beds that slot into the wall racks are made for growing veggies (leafy greens mostly) in a contamination-free environment.
If you want to build a large-scale farm, you can do so, arranging and stacking up to 96 shipping containers filled with plants in all stages of life, from seed to harvest.
—Michael Calore
Meat Master
The new Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub wants to turn you into a pit master. The Hub consists of a temperature probe which connects via wire to the actual hub. The hub then broadcasts to an accompanying app running on your favorite device. There are several competitors that do the same, but Weber’s app offers considerably more hand-holding than others I’ve tested. It offers instructions on everything from how to set up your grill for indirect heat, to the best way to apply a rub. It’ll let you know when to flip your cut, when it’s done and how long your should let it rest.
You can preorder the Weber Connect Hub for $130 at Amazon. It should ship sometime in February or March.
—Scott Gilbertson
Screen Saver
Every company wants to make its booth a spectacle at CES. Royole made a tech tree to do it.
—Jeffrey Van Camp
One Appliance to Rule Them All
This is the Julia from CookingPal, a countertop appliance that performs multiple cooking tasks at once. It boils, steams, blends, and weighs ingredients, among other things. If you’ve heard of the Thermomix, this gadget works like one of those, except the Julia is controlled by a ruggedized Alexa-powered tablet that provides a voice-controlled guided cooking experience. The recipes in the tablet app are decent, too. I tasted a sample of the mushroom-potato soup, and it was excellent—properly seasoned even, which is surprising because guided cooking apps tend to be timid with the salt.
The Julia ships later this year for less than $1,000.
—Michael Calore
Clingy Luggage
Julian takes a look at the Ovis AI-powered suitcase that can follow you.
—Jeffrey Van Camp
An Exoskeleton Straight Outta Sci-Fi
Sarcos’ Guardian XO not only has a badass name, but it’s also one of the coolest things I’ve seen at CES so far. It’s one of the few (if not the only) non-tethered exoskeleton suit, and it looks like a machine straight out of a movie like Edge of Tomorrow. It allows a human operator to hop inside and carry up to 200 pounds, without feeling anything more than the weight of a small backpack. That means almost zero strain on the person’s back.
You can freely move around—Sarcos said it only takes a few minutes to learn how to use the suit—and the arms have different types of grips you can attach to help carry varied, heavy items. It’s powered by two 12-pound batteries that last around 8 hours; they’re hot swappable though, so you don’t need to wait for the suit to charge back up to continue working.
Delta Airlines will be testing the alpha version of the suit this month, where workers will use it to lift luggage, propellers, massive tires, or push heavy items out of the way. Sarcos plans to have a commercial version in the hands of various other manufacturers as well by the end of 2020. It really feels like we’re one step closer to a real-life Iron Man.
—Julian Chokkattu
A Smoking Sidecar
What’s cooler than riding up to a party on a classic Indian bike? Riding up to a party on your Indian with a freshly smoked rack of ribs in the sidecar, of course. That was the inspired thinking that led Thor Drake of See See Custom Motorcycles to create a bike that has a Traeger smoker in the side car.
Yes, you can smoke ribs in it while you ride. Drake smoked some ribs on his way to the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. The grilling, smoking hog is currently on display here at CES in the Goal Zero booth. Goal Zero’s Yeti 1400 battery system powers the automated features in the smoker.
—Scott Gilbertson
A Smart, Gender Neutral Vibrator
One of the coolest and most practical things I saw today was the MysteryVibe Poco. It’s an itty bitty little vibrator that aims to redefine the portable bullet vibe by packing it with power and features you don’t see very often in travel-sized sex toys.
Clad in a soft blue silicone, the Poco has two internal joints so you can shape it to fit you. Plus, and this is always a plus, it’s a gender neutral toy. No “for men” or “for women” language on the packaging. It was even designed to be gender neutral from the get-go.
The Poco connects to the MysteryVibe app via Bluetooth. From there, you can create custom vibration patterns, fine tune intensity, and frequency of each part of the pattern and save it to the device. Most vibes this size come with a couple preset patterns and there or four intensity levels, but each of the two motors in the Poco features 16-levels of intensity.
The MysteryVibe Poco vibrator is available now for $90.
—Jess Grey
Underwater Scooting at CES
One of our senior reviewers, Adrienne So, literally went swimming on the CES show floor with the help of Sublue’s underwater electric scooter.
—Jeffrey Van Camp
Moisture-wicking Workout Buds
If you work out regularly, your wirefree headphone case is probably a bit gross. Klipsch’s new T5 Sport workout buds solve this problem with a built-in moisture-wicking section in the top of their tough Pelican-style case. Your buds will stay cleaner longer, and the added protection of the case means you can take them with you anywhere from the gym to gnarly off-the-beaten-path adventures.
Check out our favorite wireless earbuds here.
—Parker Hall
More From CES 2020
- Liveblog Day 2: Get the latest from Las Vegas
- Gallery: 10 more extraordinary gadgets we’ve spotted at CES
- Bell and Hyundai soar into the air taxi race
- Amazon doubles down on Ring partnerships with law enforcement
- Ivanka Trump’s future of work isn’t for workers
- The Inventors Hall of Fame honors pioneering brainiacs
- Looking for more? Check out our full coverage here
- 📩 Sign up for the Gadget Lab newsletter for news and reviews you can use
