CES 2025: AI Takes Center Stage Amid Technological Advancements

CES 2025: The new tech we're expecting to see in Las Vegas from AMD, NVIDIA, Hyundai and more

The holiday season has barely begun, but some of us are already getting ready for CES 2025. Shortly after New Year's Day, many from the Engadget team will be packing our bags to fly to Las Vegas, where we'll be covering tech's biggest annual conference. As usual, our inboxes are already flooded with pitches from companies that are planning to be there, and our calendars are filling up with appointments for briefings and demos. Based on our experience, as well as observation of recent industry trends, it's fairly easy to make educated predictions about what we might see in January. Over the years, the focus of the conference has spanned areas like TVs, cars, smart home products and personal health, with a smattering of laptops and accessories thrown in. At CES 2025, we expect to see AI get even more pervasive in all areas of the show floor. But we are also likely to get the usual slew of new processors and subsequent laptops, as well as all manner of wearables, trackers, bathroom appliances and massage chairs. Oh, the massage chairs. There's already a lot we know is coming, just by a cursory glance at the lineup published by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). In addition to numerous panels and talks, there will be keynotes by NVIDIA's founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Delta CEO Ed Bastian as well as C-suite executives from companies like Panasonic, SiriusXM, Waymo and Volvo group. That gives us a taste of who might make big announcements at the show. In fact, some companies didn't even wait till January to make their news known. LG, for example, continues its annual tradition of sharing its upcoming CES launches weeks ahead of the show by unveiling the 2025 refresh for its QNED evo line of LCD TVs. Hyundai Mobis, meanwhile, has said it will be giving us a look at its "Holographic Windshield Display," something it's claiming is a world's first. Hyundai Mobis even shared a picture of what its booth at CES 2025 will look like, in case pictures of convention center booths get you excited. If you're already looking ahead to 2025 and are studiously researching what might be coming in January, here's a taste of what our team expects to see at the show. There's no doubt 2025 is going to be a momentous year for PC gamers. NVIDIA is expected to debut its long-awaited RTX 5000 video cards at CES, while AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed we'll see next-generation RDNA 4 GPUs early next year. Of the two companies, AMD could use the upgrade more. Its last batch of Radeon 7000 cards were decent mid-range performers, but they lagged far behind NVIDIA's hardware when it came to ray tracing, and AMD's FSR 3 upscaling also 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 (via DigitalTrends) suggested that the RTX 5090 could be up to 70 percent faster than the RTX 4090. (That's a GPU that I previously 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 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 scrub social security and credit card numbers from screenshots. We've also been mostly underwhelmed with Apple Intelligence's image generation capabilities. PC makers have been eager to talk up the potential of AI-powered features until now, but in 2025 they'll have to actually prove they can live up to their fantastical claims. -- D.H. 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 multiple new models, including one with heart-rate tracking for workouts. Plus, it already offers hearing assistance with dedicated devices like the true wireless Conversation Clear Plus. Those earbuds are more hearing focused than for general content consumption, so it would be great to see Sennheiser bring some features 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 devices and technology launch at CES, from major accessibility companies like OrCam and all manner of smaller brands. I just hope some of the new tech includes more general hearing tools on the models most people will want to use. -- Billy Steele, senior editor As the growth of electric cars nears 10 percent of new models sold in the US, it's easy to forget that wheeled vehicles aren't the only kind of transportation seeing the shift to battery-powered propulsion. Flying taxis have been a mainstay of CES for the past few years, with concept vehicles from brands as large as Hyundai dotting the show floor in Vegas. Granted, these contraptions look more like giant drones with cockpits than anything the Jetsons ever dreamed up. But with companies like Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation pledging to actually launch eVTOL services (electric vertical take-off and landing) in 2025, the era of air taxis may have landed for real this time. -- Sam Rutherford, senior reporter When it comes to the main aspects of soundbars, there really isn't a ton of innovation from year to year. Heck, Samsung's biggest update last year was the addition of HDMI 2.1 support to its flagship model, which should've been there already. Companies have also been focused on the transition to cable-free everything, whether that's wireless Dolby Atmos or wireless transmission boxes. Audio enhancement features are a place where companies can really rise above the fray, and tools 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.

CES 2025: What to expect from the biggest tech show on the planet

CES 2025 promises to light up Las Vegas once again, showcasing some of the most exciting and groundbreaking tech announcements of the year. From Monday, January 7, you can expect to see everything from highly anticipated product launches to revolutionary gadgets and inventions that could reshape how technology integrates into our lives. The biggest names in the tech world will unveil everything from next-gen TVs and smart home innovations to cutting-edge AR and VR solutions -- all with tightly integrated AI smarts. The Tom's Guide team will be on the ground, exploring the show floor to deliver the latest news and our first impressions of the hottest new tech. Expect detailed coverage throughout the event, and be prepared to see many of these products featured on our site in the months to follow as we dive into in-depth reviews. If you're looking for a daily recap, rest assured, we'll have you covered every step of the way. For now, I've asked our experts for predictions on what to expect from the show. While I've yet to see a truly useful (and exciting) AI-driven TV feature, I'm wise enough to know that most major TV brands are champing at the bit to make AI functionality a key part of not just their next TV lineup, but their entire brand identity. I think we're about to see a slew of software-based features that promise to leverage AI responsibly, delivering exciting and useful new ways to interface with your TV. I'll be interested to see if their claims hold up. On the hardware side of things, you can all but guarantee that we're due for a brightness bump for 2025 OLED TVs -- particularly those whose displays are enhanced with quantum dots or Micro Lens Array technology (like Samsung and LG's flagship models). With some clever engineering, these impressive displays have seen slow-but-steady upticks in brightness with each passing year. The brighter they get, the better they tend to look. The display tech still has quite a ways to go if it's to match the scorching highlights of high-end Mini-LED TVs, though. Speaking of Mini-LEDs, I very much expect CES 2025 to be a victory for viewers vying for more value-forward Mini-LED TVs. Hisense broke the dam a couple of years ago when it announced that its entry-level U6 series would begin implementing Mini-LED backlighting at an ultra-affordable price point. We've yet to see any competing brands join Hisense in its efforts to bring Mini-LED TVs to the masses, but I suspect that's about to change. Keep a particularly close eye on rival brand TCL, a perennial purveyor of affordable TVs with premium features. AI was the buzzword of CES 2024. This specific abbreviation was mentioned over 300 times during our seven days in Vegas earlier this year (yes, we counted). But what has it really amounted to when it comes to consumer tech? That's a little unclear. The start of this year was defined by companies trying to figure out what an AI device actually looks like, and the results? ...Well, they were bad. The Humane AI Pin was rather essentially ethered into obscurity to the point that the company has pivoted to doing software, and the Rabbit R1 left a bad taste in a lot of mouths. Really, the only one that made any headway (emphasis on head) was the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses for the sake of actually being a wearable that made sense for its position, and also rather stylish too. So when it comes to AI hardware, expect to see a whole lot more smart glasses come to Vegas. Elsewhere, I anticipate that AI will play almost like a dual role between more thoughtful implementations into the likes of TVs, kitchen tech and audio, while also being off the walls in enabling some truly impressive robotics prototypes. For a while now, new laptops at CES have become as inevitable as day turns to night. You get a little spruce up in the hardware design, a bump in performance and you call it a day. But see, we're heading to a point where I predict three things are going to happen: new GPUs, new CPUs, and more developed tech to flirt with new form factors. You'll see the usual suspects -- Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Razer and more -- all bring new systems sporting either: And finally, I think we're fast approaching whatever the next stage of laptop design is. Companies have dabbled with the foldable display/dual display format for a while now. Some have been successful like the Asus Zenbook Duo, and others a little less so like the HP Spectre Fold. The only real barrier here is the parts: namely the reliability and capability of them. You'd find a lot of these foldables sporting older internals, so expect progression in foldable displays, improved reliability of the mechanical parts, and some evolution in the core parts to keep a form factor like this so slim (such as the fans). It's a new year, so I expect to see the new best gaming laptops sporting equally new CPUs and GPUs during CES 2025. This isn't a bold prediction given how we always see spec bumps with new laptops, but it's still worth getting excited about. I'm especially intrigued by whatever new CPUs the likes of Intel, AMD and Qualcomm might announce. And of course, I'd be shocked if we didn't get official word on the next Nvidia laptop GPUs. While companies will no doubt boast about greater performance and new cooling solutions, I want to hear more discussions centered on enhancing the player experience. To be specific, I'd like apps such as Legion Space and the Omen Gaming Hub to allow us greater control over how machines allocate resources when gaming and not gaming. The ability to automatically optimize a game's settings to maximize performance (similar to the Nvidia Experience app's solution) would be fantastic. And of course, we can't forget about RGB lighting control. A trend I noticed in 2024 that I expect to carry over in 2025 is more gaming laptops that don't look like gaming laptops. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy flashy and wild designs of old Alienware laptops, but I wouldn't want to be seen in public using a laptop that screams "WATCH OUT! THIS GUY'S A GAMER!" I fully expect (and hope) to see more laptops like the subdued HP Omen Transcend 14 and Asus Zephyrus G14 at CES 2025. Wi-Fi is something most people take for granted until their connection drops or they can't get a signal which is why networking companies and device makers will be pushing Wi-Fi 7 hard this year. At CES 2024, we saw a few new Wi-Fi 7 routers but this year, TP-Link, Netgear, Asus and others will likely be showcasing their mid-range and budget options in a much bigger way. The first wave of Wi-Fi 7-equipped routers and mesh routers were prohibitively expensive for all but early adopters. Now though, mid-range options and even a few more budget-friendly ones are starting to hit store shelves. A big reason for this is dual-band Wi-Fi 7 routers which forego the faster 6 Ghz band first introduced with Wi-Fi 6E in favor of affordability. They still have most of Wi-Fi 7's new features though. Cheaper Wi-Fi 7 routers and a greater selection of them is just the push smartphone and laptop makers need to start adding this new wireless tech to their devices. However, I expect we'll start seeing Wi-Fi 7 show up in other devices like TVs and even consoles now that the PS5 Pro has it. Mini PCs are having their heyday too and I expect there will be loads of them at CES this year. The launch of the Mac mini M4 helped renew interest in them across the board and I wouldn't be surprised if we see some Windows-based mini PCs trying to emulate its slick and smaller design. Desktops and laptops both have their place and mini PCs fit nicely between the two. Finally on the computing front, I think that spatial computing will see a big push now that the Meta Quest 3S has made it more accessible as well as affordable. The Apple Vision Pro wasn't quite the hit we initially expected and now other companies will look to bring this very futuristic tech to even more people.

CES 2025: our predictions and everything we expect to see at the world's biggest tech show

Every January, the biggest names in technology gather in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), ready to show off their new and upcoming wares for the next 12 months. The 2025 extravaganza gets underway on Tuesday, January 7, although there will be lots of news coming out of the show from the weekend before that. Our best gadgets of CES 2024 list gives you an idea of the variety of hardware that gets showcased at this expo: everything from high-end TVs and projectors to wireless earbuds and keyboard accessories for your smartphone. And there's lots to look forward to this year: the likes of Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sony, Google, Nvidia, and many more are all going to be in attendance. That covers a huge range of components, devices, apps, and services. The TechRadar team will be out in Vegas in force and will be bringing you all the highlights of CES 2025 once it gets underway. In the meantime, these are the announcements, new products, and tech trends to watch out for at this year's show. CES 2025 will run from Tuesday, January 7 to Friday, January 10, 2025. Those are the official show dates, although many announcements will take on the preceding two days (Sunday, January 5 and Monday, January 6), which are designated as media days. Many of the keynotes will be available to watch on the official CES YouTube channel, but if you're planning to go in person you'll be able to visit the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) or the Venetian Expo during the following times: In the TVs space, the big CES upgrade is expected to be HDMI 2.2 - or perhaps HDMI 2.1c, as the HDMI Licensing Administrator has merely referred to the new specification as "next-generation HDMI technology" - which will almost certainly improve upon the connectivity of our future HDMI ports. There's no word yet on what HDMI 2.2 will be able to support, but considering HDMI 2.1b (which has steadily become the standard connector type across the space) can transfer resolutions of up to 10K and refresh rates of 120Hz with dynamic HDR, we expect the next-gen tech will be something special. We also anticipate that CES will bring its usual suite of television improvements - i.e. brighter OLEDs, bigger mini-LED displays, better gaming support with 165Hz refresh rates, and the like. For soundbars this would mean more and/or more capable speaker arrays that can more easily generate an immersive Dolby Atmos soundscape, or perhaps tech that could build upon and roll out alternatives to the Sonos Arc Ultra's Sound Motion feature, which allows for more impressive performance from smaller sub woofers. However CES is also home to those wackier, more experimental designs. While they might not be announced for mainstream commercial availability, except to see some transparent TVs, screens that can be bent into weird shapes, and displays bigger than anyone could ever need. CES 2025 is expected to be a major event in the computing and laptop space thanks to one announcement that we're very likely to get: Nvidia's RTX 5090 graphics card. While the announcement has yet to be confirmed, there are plenty of rumors and leaks suggesting we'll see a new Nvidia flagship GPU - we might even see the more affordable 5080, 5070, and 5060 if we're lucky - and in this instance it certainly feels like a case of where there's smoke there's fire. If the 5090 does indeed break cover, then we'll also probably see the major computing brands announce new laptops sporting mobile versions of this powerful chipset. Nvidia won't be alone, mind. AMD is also expected to drop new GPUs at CES 2025, plus there's talk that Qualcomm will debut new desktop CPUs to better compete with AMD and Intel. So we should see various laptop and desktop configurations sporting these components too, if they make an appearance. Computing accessories will rear their head as well. We'll be looking out for impressively large or vibrant monitors, as well as new mice, keyboards and headsets - though they'll likely be a little overshadowed. HDMI 2.2 won't just have visual benefits but should also lead to audio improvements, as better data transfer can occur between your TV and soundsystem. That won't be the only development in the sound space, though. For a start we expect to see your usual suite of updates (in terms of the design and performance) to the audio gadget catalog - headphones, earbuds, AV receivers, turntables, speakers - as brands announce their 2025 lineup of consumer tech. But where things will get properly interesting is in the more medical side of headphones, with audio tech such as the AirPods Pro 2's hearing aid feature or the Neurable x Master & Dynamic brain-hacking headphones. We expect there will be plenty of CES demos showcasing similar tech that blends traditional cans with medical diagnosis kits into packages of varying usefulness - which we'll be nonetheless interested in testing for ourselves. Our Audio editor Becky Scarrott also predicts a return to wired connections, as people look to experience truly hi-res digital audio from their sound tech - so be on the lookout for more traditional-looking audio at tech at CES in and among the weirder stuff. Artificial intelligence: have you heard of it? AI has been everywhere this year, and that won't change in 2025. At CES 2024 we were all wowed by the Rabbit R1 - although it didn't exactly live up to the hype - and it's possible there'll be another AI breakout star at the next expo too. That could quite possibly be Luci, an AI companion wearable that tracks your life and offers instant help with anything. We're also expecting to hear more about the LG Self-Driving AI Home Hub: a little bit like an Amazon Echo built up to be a full robot that can move independently. It's able to answer your questions, give you advice, control your smart home devices, and more, and it's due to be launched sometime during 2025. Other AI innovations on the way at CES 2025 include the MSI Aegis RS2 gaming PC that uses AI to constantly tweak and optimize your settings, the Ailive Studio engine for generating virtual 3D worlds with AI, and the EVOM AI Piano - a physical piano that can invent music in real time to fit the mood of any environment. We're also likely to see plenty of health-related AI at CES 2025. One of the products being showcased is the January app, the first AI-powered virtual continuous glucose monitor (CGM) we've come across. The January team will be on the ground at Las Vegas, and explaining more about where AI might lead health apps and gadgets in 2025. When it comes to the smart home, expect AI to be infused into every product in this category too. Samsung is one of the companies packing AI and displays into ovens, fridges, and other appliances, and that's an idea that we're likely to hear more of at CES - the idea that everything in your home is smart. There's a good chance we're going to get more unusual items of furniture with appliances inside as well - think the Sonos IKEA Symfonisk table lamp speaker, but even crazier - and these are the sort of innovations that CES is known for. We're also quite looking forward to testing this Eden Rovo 25 body massage chair. The craziness is likely to continue with robot vacuums, which continue to get more capable and more feature-packed. Think magnetic mops, quad bike-style suspension, and other upgrades, as well as (we hope) the robovac upgrade we want the most - the added ability for these devices to climb up the stairs. Two other trends to look out for: more smart home kit that connects to rapid response emergency services (like medical alert systems) and sustainability in smart home devices - tech companies continue to focus on health, well-being, and eco-friendliness in their products, and there should be more evidence of that at CES 2025. AI is likely to be every bit as prominent in the fitness space, too. We've seen some solid examples of it so far, but AI interpretation of your health metrics to help you better understand what stats mean for your health and workout plans seems like a trend we'll see incorporated into more gadgets at CES. Our team hopes that new versions of these AI trainers will be able to take into account your injuries when generating guidance. More widely in the wearables category, we expect glasses sporting AR and/or AI capabilities will rear their heads to capitalize on renewed interest in this area thanks to the arrival of the Meta Ray-Bans, Meta Orion prototype, and the recent Android XR announcement. Similarly, following the success of the Samsung Galaxy Ring we're expecting CES 2025 will treat us to a handful of copycats here, and to more generally continue a trend of more discreet fitness bands and wearables that might not be so obviously techie like a smartwatch. CES will also likely be home to innovative mobility options in the e-bike and e-scooter area, so look out for those announcements. But we'll also be on the hunt for the... let's call them stranger announcements in the wearables and fitness space. We're talking exoskeleton suits that increase your carrying capacity and other gadgets which feel ripped from science fiction. There's always a lot of automobile tech on show at CES, and this year we're anticipating that Honda will have the most to say at the event. As a lot of companies do, Honda has put out a press release ahead of the show: it announces an all-new hybrid-electric Honda Prelude, and we also know a new Honda 0 Series EV will be unveiled at CES 2025 too. Chinese EV makers will be represented by Zeeker, which is going to have three models to show us in Las Vegas. The car manufacturer has a strong record of CES announcements, and there should be plenty of news out of CES 2025 as we look forward to what the automobile industry has to show us over the next year. Another company that will be at CES 2025 is car rental service Vay, which delivers autos to customers via remote teledriving - so a Vay employee is operating it remotely. It means you can get a rental car any place, any time: the service is already up and running in the US and could be coming to Europe soon. Those themes of electric vehicles and tech innovations will be the dominant ones at CES 2025 as far as the car industry goes, and we know that key speeches are going to be delivered by executives from Volvo and Waymo too. Part of what makes CES great is the sheer number of tech products that get showcased: some weird, some wonderful, but mostly all interesting. Consider, for example, the Romi Lacatan, a "conversational AI robot" that's able to keep up a detailed, real-time conversation, and talk about what it sees and hears. We've also got exoskeletons at CES 2025: the XoMotion takes assistive tech to a new level, with various advancements in terms of built-in agility and balance. It's intended to help patients recovering from spinal cord injuries, strokes, and other neurological conditions, and it's going to be on show in Las Vegas. Chamelo is another company we're looking forward to hearing from, as we've already been impressed by their glasses tech that can turn normal specs into sunglasses in an instant. More and more smart eyewear products are hitting the market now, and no doubt more will show up in January. There's lots more, too: for instance the BioLite Backup batteries that can keep your whole house powered for up to 60 hours should the power get cut. From smart beer makers to self-refilling coffee machines, just about every tech category is covered at CES - and we might even see some new categories created in the process. We'll be updating this page constantly during the show, adding in the latest stories as they appear. So bookmark it now and check back regularly for all of the big announcements as they happen. Plus, don't forget to follow us on TikTok and WhatsApp for the latest from the CES show floor!

CES 2025 preview: The new technology we're expecting and hoping to see in Las Vegas

What Engadget's experts predict we'll encounter at the Consumer Electronics Show. The holiday season has barely begun, but some of us are already getting ready for CES 2025. Shortly after New Year's Day, many from the Engadget team will be packing our bags to fly to Las Vegas, where we'll be covering tech's biggest annual conference. As usual, our inboxes are already flooded with pitches from companies that are planning to be there, and our calendars are filling up with appointments for briefings and demos. Based on our experience, as well as observation of recent industry trends, it's fairly easy to make educated predictions about what we might see in January. Over the years, the focus of the conference has spanned areas like TVs, cars, smart home products and personal health, with a smattering of laptops and accessories thrown in. At CES 2025, we expect to see AI get even more pervasive in all areas of the show floor. But we are also likely to get the usual slew of new processors and subsequent laptops, as well as all manner of wearables, trackers, bathroom appliances and massage chairs. Oh, the massage chairs. If you're already looking ahead to 2025 and are studiously researching what might be coming in January, here's a taste of what our team expects to see at the show. There's no doubt 2025 is going to be a momentous year for PC gamers. NVIDIA is expected to debut its long-awaited RTX 5000 video cards at CES, while AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed we'll see next-generation RDNA 4 GPUs early next year. Of the two companies, AMD could use the upgrade more. Its last batch of Radeon 7000 cards were decent mid-range performers, but they lagged far behind NVIDIA's hardware when it came to ray tracing, and AMD's FSR 3 upscaling also 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 (via DigitalTrends) suggested that the RTX 5090 could be up to 70 percent faster than the RTX 4090. (That's a GPU that I previously 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 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 scrub social security and credit card numbers from screenshots. We've also been mostly underwhelmed with Apple Intelligence's image generation capabilities. PC makers have been eager to talk up the potential of AI-powered features until now, but in 2025 they'll have to actually prove they can live up to their fantastical claims. -- D.H. 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 multiple new models, including one with heart-rate tracking for workouts. Plus, it already offers hearing assistance with dedicated devices like the true wireless Conversation Clear Plus. Those earbuds are more hearing focused than for general content consumption, so it would be great to see Sennheiser bring some features 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 devices and technology launch at CES, from major accessibility companies like OrCam and all manner of smaller brands. I just hope some of the new tech includes more general hearing tools on the models most people will want to use. -- Billy Steele, senior editor As the growth of electric cars nears 10 percent of new models sold in the US, it's easy to forget that wheeled vehicles aren't the only kind of transportation seeing the shift to battery-powered propulsion. Flying taxis have been a mainstay of CES for the past few years, with concept vehicles from brands as large as Hyundai dotting the show floor in Vegas. Granted, these contraptions look more like giant drones with cockpits than anything the Jetsons ever dreamed up. But with companies like Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation pledging to actually launch eVTOL services (electric vertical take-off and landing) in 2025, the era of air taxis may have landed for real this time. -- Sam Rutherford, senior reporter When it comes to the main aspects of soundbars, there really isn't a ton of innovation from year to year. Heck, Samsung's biggest update last year was the addition of HDMI 2.1 support to its flagship model, which should've been there already. Companies have also been focused on the transition to cable-free everything, whether that's wireless Dolby Atmos or wireless transmission boxes. Audio enhancement features are a place where companies can really rise above the fray, and tools 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.

CES 2025 preview: Mashable's guide on what to expect

More than 100,000 people are expected to make their annual trek to Las Vegas this coming January - and no they're not taking the trip to gamble (mostly). We're, of course, talking about the Consumer Electronics Show, better known as CES. The annual trade show is the largest technology conference of its kind. Every January, some of the biggest and some of the newest tech companies and startups show up to show off their latest products as well as prototypes for potential future technologies. And CES 2025 will be no exception. So, what should you expect to come out of this CES. Mashable takes a look at some of the latest news, rumors, and announcements to give you a sneak peek at what's likely to be the main events of CES. Televisions are always a showstopper at CES and CES 2025 will likely continue that streak. We'll likely see plenty of new Smart TVs touting AI-integration. But, alongside announcements regarding new TV consumer products, will be the real headline-stealers that you likely won't find in-stores anytime soon. LG, for example, is already promoting its "World Premiere press conference" at CES on Jan. 6, the day before the show floor opens to the public. It's very possible that they are going to announce a brand new TV product that attendees will be able to experience in-person the very next day. Just last month, LG announced a new stretchable display, the first that's able to expand by 50 percent - from a 12-inch display to an 18-inch one. LG might have that at the event. Along with brighter OLED displays and more affordable Mini-LED options, there's another big TV announcement likely coming to CES: HDMI 2.2. HDMI Forum will announce a "new HDMI specification release" at CES 2025. It's expected to be HDMI 2.2, which will bring higher resolutions and refresh rates to your TV set. While there have been some minor updates, the latest major release was HDMI 2.1 in 2017. TV technology has certainly improved since then, so HDMI 2.2 will be much-talked about at CES. There's no doubt about it: AI will be the big buzz word out of CES this year. And it won't just be in TVs. Artificial intelligence products, led by industry leader OpenAI and its hit ChatGPT, will be everywhere at CES and ingrained in every product category imaginable. For example, at last year's CES, Mashable was able to get hands-on with multiple smartglass products from companies like TCL and XReal. Conversational AI, AI-powered translations, and chatbots could be found in nearly every smartglass wearable that was demoed at the 2024 event. Yes, some big AI wearable launches have been major flops over the past year, but the AI space as a whole has only grown since then, so expect even more AI-related products looking to improve in areas where others failed at CES. Speaking of AI, don't be surprised to see new laptop models from basically every PC brand to integrate AI in some way. In fact, if you want a look into what to expect at CES, just look at what the newest Innovation Award honorees showcase. Yes, CES has already issued awards for 2025. And award-winning laptops like the HP OmniBook 14" Ultra Flip and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition are both winners that highlight AI capabilities. So, look forward to plenty of new laptops accentuating their AI capabilities and Microsoft Copilot integrations. As always, expect a few next generation laptops that introduce something new to the space. For example, one 2025 Innovation Award winner to keep an eye out for is the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid. There are plenty of tablets out there that you can connect a keyboard accessory to and touch-screen laptops are also a growing market as well. So what's unique about this? Well, for one, the "hybrid" part of this laptop isn't that it's a laptop and tablet. The innovative aspect here is that the computer is both a Windows and Android device. Gaming computers and laptops should also make their mark at this year's CES for a very specific reason, which brings me to the next likely big CES 2025 announcement. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is delivering a keynote at CES 2025 and rumors are spreading that the company is planning to use the big event to launch its latest GPUs, specifically the GeForce RTX 5090. Nvidia's products have been very successful and in-demand thanks to AI. But, don't forget that gamers have been a reliable consumer base for the company too. The Nvidia RTX 50-series will be the first powered by the company's new powerful Blackwell architecture. At the point, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is expected to be the big announcement as part of Huang CES keynote on Jan. 6, 2025. So, while CES officially starts on Jan. 7, it seems the party will get started a day before the show floor opens to the public. Electric vehicles always steal at least some of the headlines at CES. Aptera Motors, for example, is going to debut its solar-powered EV at CES 2025. But, the conversation around EVs at CES will likely be something that can't be showcased: The incoming Trump administration's hostile policies regarding electric vehicles. Trump will likely look to end the EV tax credits, which would hurt many EV companies, especially startup EV manufacturers like the ones that attend CES. Combine that with a global slowdown of EV sales in general and the EV news coming out of this CES may not be all about what new technology was unveiled, but who isn't there this year. CES 2025 in Las Vegas opens to the public on Jan. 7. Mashable will be there live at the show floor and at the media days before the public opening covering all the latest news from the event.