The Good The Bad The Weird Of CES 2026

Isaac Taylor

Avatar: Fire and Ash is in the midst of it’s theatrical run, and at the time of writing we’ve already seen it pass the $1 billion threshold despite haters believing it might tank after an average opening weekend. I saw it at IMAX, the native environment for Avatar films, and maintained my awe at the visuals for the entire 3 or so hour runtime. It didn’t look real, it looked hyper-real. Only James Cameron can bring to life so much water (again) and totally immerse me in it.

Finally an Ultrasonic Knife

Have you ever wanted a knife that vibrates between 10 to 20 microns so it can wiggle between the atoms of your tomato? Then buy the C-200 UltraSonic Chef’s Knife. It’s IP65-rated so you can handwash it like normal. It has a removable battery that’s recharged via USB-C, or if you splash out a little more you can get a mahogany wireless charging tile for it to sit on so it’s always ready to buzz right through your next victim, I mean steak. It’s not the be-all and end-all. The creators liken it to using an E-Bike, you still need to put in some effort, it just makes the journey a little easier.

Mind the Phone

At only 8.9mm thick and measuring just 86×72mm across the Ikko Mindone Pro takes compact to a whole new place. If they figured out how to embed the camera they could have shaved off some unnecessary bulk. But then they wouldn’t have been able to put the 50MP Sony camera on a hinge to flip forward to become a selfie camera. It runs Android 15 with its own custom OS iKKO AI OS which is like a focus productivity workspace mode with a bunch of AI features. But if you want to slum it a long press on a physical button switches back to standard Android. The screen has a 90Hz refresh rate and a 1240×1080 resolution. These are some real wack numbers to write about a phone these days. The 2200mAh capacity battery is good for about 16 hours of video playback. If you really need your buttons the snap-in case features a full on QWERTY keyboard, essentially turning this thing into a BlackBerry. Honestly, I miss having a QWERTY board on my phone. Those were the days.

I’m Sorry Dave

The title makes way more sense with the red trackball variant. The Keychron Nape Pro Wireless Trackball Mouse turned heads at the event. It’s a cool piece of design despite looking like it’s uncomfortable to use. Although being a modular piece of tech, chances are you aren’t replacing your mouse with it. Being free floating you can set it up in front of your spacebar or wherever suits best. It pairs via a bluetooth dongle and has enough buttons to macro the crud out of any scenario you might need it for. It features a 25mm trackball surrounded by a twisty scroll wheel and six buttons. Firmware uses the open-source ZMK, which allows for a lot of customization. It’ll find a place in your productivity flow, somehow, somewhere.

Tri So Hard

The double folding smartphone has been a long time coming. Back in 2024 Huawei’s former CEO Richard Yu was spotted on a plane sporting one and in late 2025 we got our hands on the Mate XT. Now Samsung is joining the fray with the The Galaxy Z TriFold. You can use it like a phone when it’s all folded up with it’s 6.5” outer screen. Or unfold it twice to create a gigantic 10” tablet. Then turn on Samsung’s DeX mode to essentially make it a regular desktop with windows. These foldable options, while goofy on paper, end up being way cooler in practice, as they actually make the case for themselves as being viable 2-in-1 products. It feels like you’re treating yourself when you pop open a screen that big after it’s been lurking in your pocket. The outer screen is a 6.5-inch FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED while the inner is a 10.0-inch QXGA+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X, both with a 120hz refresh rate. When it’s all folded up the total thickness is 12.9mm (not including the camera that sticks out a little more) and weighs 309 grams. It’s packing five different cameras and is powered by a Snapdragon 8 backed up by 16gb of ram and up to 1tb of internal storage.

Sun Hunting

The Solar Mars Bot by Jackery is an interesting take on charging. It rolls around looking for sunlight to sit in, and if you like, even follow you around, never be without power ever again. Mans new best friend can’t fetch a stick but it can toat around a 5kWh battery and six retractable solar panels able to gather 600 watts of solar power. These are attached to a double-axis mechanical arm which allows 60 degrees of vertical light tracking.

It has 3 AC outlets and 3 USB-C’s. A display on the back also gives you a heads up on how much juice it has and how it’s doing. If you’re worried about taking one of these camping and having it toddle off looking for power, you can of course track it and it’s battery status on your phone. You can even send it commands. Why even put it in the car. Just drive to Wellington and then ping it back in Auckland to jam up traffic along State Highway 1 for a week getting to you.

Sun Hunting

Ghost In The tube

Not everybody is looking for a sexbot, or if they are, they aren’t telling me about it. Everybody though would like another friend. The Lepro Ami is a standalone desktop AI Companion that aims to put a face to the AI chatbot companion space. It’s presented in a curved 8.01-inch OLED display with your choice of avatar inside. To simulate an actual 3D environment, dual cameras on the top do refined eye tracking that tilts the image to create the impression of an actual space you can physically look around. Presumably when more than one person is looking at her the whole thing would start fritzing out trying to pick a person. A camera on the back of the unit allows for a passthrough effect so she can further integrate with your space.

If you want an AI companion that doesn’t get lost in the flood of apps already on your phone, then this is a pretty cool option. No word on when it will be available for consumers yet. An extremely similiar product by Razor is also coming out in late 2026, and that one has screen awareness so it can help with tasks on your PC.

AI Companions Level Up

AI Companionship is already on the rise as people get attached to their chatbots so it was only a matter of time before this emotional hook would be attached to sex robots. Lovense is usually all about the traditional toys, but they’re branching out with a full size silicon lady called Emily with opposable arms, limited facial movement and sensors in all the important places for her to react. Emily is designed to remember things and even talk back letting you mould her personality. Lovense is doing their best to market her as a companionship device rather than just a receptacle. The truly diabolical part is that you can chat with her via the app when you’re apart, and she’ll even generate you selfies. The dream of every company is to make you emotionally attached to their product in some way. If they can do that they have free access to your bank account for as long as you stay enthralled. This is a dark road we’re starting to walk, but it feels inevitable.

Big Promises For Solid-State Batteries

Donut Lab has claimed to have made the first solid state battery, and according to them isn’t a pipedream and is definitely going to be used in Verge TS Pro Motorcycles. The promise of Solid State batteries has been a dragon engineers have been chasing for a while. No thermal runaway, no caps on fast-charging, lighter than lithium ion, increased energy density and even cheaper. Zero downsides. Feasibility? Yet to be determined. I’ll believe it when people can get their hands on them and not just hold mockups on the CES show floor. Donut Lab has made them about the size of iPhones, but for the Motorbike they’ll need to be stacked into 5-kilowatt-hour power units about the same size as a PS5. Four of those are then packed onto the bike. Donut even claims these things have minimal battery fade over their lifetime, and are good for up to 100,000 cycles. But is any of this true?

Chinese battery maker Svolt, that recently celebrated it’s own breakthroughs in battery efficiency is calling BS on the whole thing. Yang Hongxin, chairman and CEO of Svolt Energ told Xuanyuan Business Review “All the parameters are contradictory… Any technician with basic knowledge would recognize it as a scam”.

He goes on to allege that these are contradictory specifications — 12C charging, extreme low-temperature performance, 400 Wh/kg energy density, no such battery exists in the world, Svolt’s Yang said in the interview.

“Too many unresolved issues exist; it’s premature to discuss industrialization timelines”
Or could it just be nationalistic envy?

”If China can’t produce or perfect it, companies from other countries certainly can’t either. We must possess this confidence” Hongxin concludes.

Other cyberslueths online note the distinct lack of a patent papertrail, something you’d definitely want if you were about to revolutionise the planet with a physics defying battery.
I hope I’m wrong. Watch this space.

This Sound Sucks

No Lollipop Star isn’t another weird intimacy device. It’s a weird bone conductive lollipop that sends beats through your entire body. There’s three artists to choose from to suck on with it’s own flavour and beat, Ice Spice, Akon and Armani White. In a loud environment you’re gonna have to plug your ears to truly experience it, and a bulbous button at the end of the stick activates it. Bite down and the music feels like it appears in your head. It’s a bit muted, and a bit frivolous. I’m not sure the world needs more button cell batteries located so close to food but I guess that’s just the world we live in now. Prices start at US$9 a lollipop.

Lenovo’s Extended View Of Things

https://content.abt.com/media/blog/ces-2026-lenovo-legion-pro-rollable-hero.webp

Lenovo dared to think outside the box, and what they thought of was a box outside of the box. The Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable Is a laptop for the intersection of pro gamers who want a somewhat portable machine to play on, but don’t want to compromise at all on the screen. In it’s base form it looks like a regular gaming laptop with an odd 2048 x 1280 at a 16:10 aspect ratio, but grab the sides of the screen and extend out and you’ve got yourself an ultrawide setup of either 2986 x 1280 or 3413 x 1280 24:9 display. The concept model at CES is packing a RTX 5090 but who knows what it’ll have if and when these finally make it into the hands of consumers.