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CES 2025 doesn’t officially kick off until tomorrow (January 7), but with the world’s biggest tech show now open to the media there’s already been a wave of big announcements – and we’ve rounded up the best so far below.
Whether you’re calling today ‘day zero’ or ‘day one’ of CES 2025, the most important thing is that we’re already seeing some major announcements that’ll shape the tech world this year.
As always, TVs are a major theme of the show, with both Samsung and LG duking it out with their flagship OLED TV lineups. But we’ve also seen some exciting arrivals in the world of wearables, with the Garmin Instinct 3 breaking cover and some intriguing new eyewear called the Halliday Smart Glasses.
Naturally, there’s some weirder stuff on show too, from robot vacuums with retractible arms to strange, furry robots that may well haunt our nightmares. For a first look at some of the most intriguing tech we’ve found so far, read on for all of our highlights from day one (or day zero) of CES 2024.
1. Halliday Smart Glasses
- Best feature: Digi Window microdisplay for cheating in meetings
Smart glasses that don’t look like smart glasses are going to be one of the big trends of CES 2025 – and the most intriguing ones we’ve tried so far are Halliday’s attempt at “proactive AI eyewear”.
You can’t tell by looking at these classic-looking spectacles, but the Hallidays pack in a lot of tech – most notably, a tiny Digi Window microdisplay. To the wearer’s eye, that screen looks like a 3.5-inch monochrome display, and it means the glasses can act like an all-knowing AI sidekick.
For example, Halliday’s AI agent can (with your permission, of course) listen to conversations and answer questions during meetings, or do live translation when you’re traveling. There’s also turn-by-turn navigation, a teleprompter mode and voice control on board – with the smart glasses due to land in the first few months of 2025.
2. Garmin Instinct 3
- Best feature: 24-day battery life plus solar charging
The biggest sports watch news of CES 2025 may have already landed in the form of Garmin’s new Instinct 3, which looks like being ideal for extreme adventurers.
The Instinct series are Garmin’s range of super-tough sports watches and this third model has a new AMOLED display. That screen will apparently give you up to 24 days of battery life, which should last you for most trips – including those where you get hopelessly lost.
With solar charging and an enormous list of health-monitoring features, including advanced sleep monitoring, the Instinct 3 is highly tempting new timepiece for outdoorsy types – and you can order one from January 10.
3. Samsung S95F OLED TV with Glare Free 2.0 tech
- Best feature: Next-gen Glare Free tech that works
We named the Samsung S95D as our ‘TV of the year’ in 2024 and the tech giant has just announced its successor at CES 2025 – with some impressive new Glare Free 2.0 tech.
The Samsung S95F has lots of AI-powered features including Upscaling Pro, but the one we’ve been most impressed with in person is its ability to overcome screen reflections from lamps and other light sources.
Previously, this mode came with a slightly annoying side effect, namely blacks that looked more like dark gray when viewed in bright rooms. But Glare Free 2.0 on the S95F appears to have fixed that, and the mode is also coming to Samsung’s flagship 8K and 4K mini-LED TVs for 2025, too.
4. FiiO JM21
- Best feature: A genuinely affordable price tag for a hi-res audio player
If you recently rediscovered your old iPod in a drawer and wistfully longed for the simple charms of portable audio players, the new FiiO JM21 could be for you.
Not only is his pocketable, hi-res audio player a fine-looking musical sidekick, it’s also impressively priced at $149 / £139 (around AU$277), considering its specs. You get 32GB of internal storage (expandable to 2TB via microSD card) and it has a 4.7-inch display.
Because it’s aimed at audiophiles who’d rather stick hot pins in their ears than listen to 16-bit files, you can also use it as a DAC with Mac or Windows computers, with support for sampling rates up to 384kHz/32-bit. Ah, that’s better.
5. Circular Ring 2
- Best feature: FDA-approved Atrial Fibrillation detection
If you’ve decided that 2025 is going to be the year you finally get a smart ring, the new Circular Ring 2 could be a contender for your shortlist.
While rivals like the Oura Ring 4 and Samsung Galaxy Ring beat the original model in our guide to the best smart rings, the Circular Ring 2 brings two intriguing new features.
Firstly, it uses an app to calculate your ring size, which should spell an end for those clunky plastic sizing kits. In another first, the smart ring also has an Atrial Fibrillation detection algorithm that’s been approved by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
The Circular Ring 2 will launch in a crowdfunding campaign later this month, with the price expected to be $380 (around £300 / AU$600) and shipping tipped to start in March.
6. Roborock Saros Z70
- Best feature: A retractible mechanical arm for sock tidying
Robot vacuums have learned a number of new tricks over the years, but the Roborock Saros Z70 has our favorite one for a while – a robo-arm that can tidy your space before it commences cleaning.
We got a preview of its OmniGrip 1.0 arm, which hides beneath a mysterious hatch, and branded it “absolutely mesmerizing”. Your cat needn’t worry, because you can specify the objects that the S70 can clear away with its arm and pincer.
Once you’ve decided those, it’ll pick them up and move them to a new location (with a disappointed sigh, we like to think). You’ll be able to buy Roborock’s helpful robo-vac sometime before the end of June, with pricing yet to be announced.
7. Belkin Stage PowerGrip
- Best feature: Turns your iPhone into a point-and-shoot camera
Buying a MagSafe power bank for your iPhone is a perfectly sensible investment, but if you want one that does more than just top up your juice, then the Stage PowerGrip could be for you.
This charming little accessory packs both a 10,000mAh battery (enough to charge an iPhone at least one-and-a-half times) and also gives you a much better grip for taking landscape photos, which you can do with its built-in shutter button.
With the ability to act as a stand for holding your iPhone in landscape or portrait orientation, the PowerGrip could be one of our favorite accessories from CES 2025. It’s landing in May for an undisclosed price.
8. Amp Fitness machine
- Best feature: AI-powered system that adapts workouts in real-time
Yes, it’s January, which means our thoughts are reluctantly turning towards ways we can restore our pre-Christmas fitness. We could just go running, but that’s not quite as exciting as shelling out for Amp, a smart strength machine that genuinely looks like it could be the next Peloton.
A highly adjustable cable machine with a camera and a companion app, the Amp attached to a wall in your house and adapts workouts in real-time – for example, becoming more resistant as you reach the peak of your movement, like resistance bands.
With workouts, challenges and leaderboards to tap your competitive side, we’re looking forward (in some ways) to being put through our paces by the Amp Fitness machine. It’s available for pre-order now for $1,795 (or round £1,450 / AU$2,900).
9. Lymow One lawnbot
- Best feature: Tank-like tracks to help it traverse tough inclines
Not everyone has small, neat lawns that are easy for the average lawnbot to get around. If you have a big yard that’s packed with obstacles and slopes, you may be relieved to see the arrival of the Lymow One.
Launching at CES 2025 following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the Lymow looks a bit like a gardening-mad ED-209, only it’s far more adaptable on tricky terrain.
It can apparently cover up to five times as much lawn as rival models (up to 1.73 acres each day), while clearing two-inch high obstacles and making light work or 45-degree inclines. The Lymow One is expected to be delivered to gardens from April for $2,999 (around £2,400 / AU$4,800).
9. LG PF600U projector
- Best feature: It doubles as a mood lamp and Bluetooth speaker
At last year’s CES 2024 show, we saw XGIMI cleverly hide a projector in a ceiling light – and this year LG has taken the baton and launched a 3-in-1 combo of a projector, standing lamp and speaker.
The LG PF600U’s pole design means it can serve as your light source and Bluetooth speaker, but it has decent projector chops too. It can manage 1080p Full HD resolution images with 300 ANSI lumens of brightness, and can project from 30 to 120 inches.
If you want to use it with streaming services, there’s also LG’s built-in webOS interface to help with that. We don’t yet have pricing or a release date, but we’re looking forward to auditioning it at CES 2025.
10. Withings Omnia
- Best feature: It’s a compelling glimpse of where health tech is going
Okay, we haven’t actually seen the Withings Omnia smart mirror in-person at CES 2025, because it’s currently just a concept. But we wanted to include it here anyway as it’s a compelling vision of where health tech is going.
Because this smart, AI-powered mirror is connected to other Withings gadgets, it promises to give you a full health assessment (as well as showing you how haggard you look in the mornings).
In theory, the Omnia should be able to give you feedback on almost anything to do with your heart health, and will display stats on-screen alongside feedback from an AI assistant. There’s no price or release date yet, but given Withings’ track record we’re hopeful that it’ll become reality in the not-too-distant future.
11. YuKai Engineering Mirumi robot
- Best feature: Come on, it’s a furry robot with a motorized head
No CES is complete without a strange, furry robot – and CES 2025 has duly obliged with the Yukai Engineering Mirumi, which we’ve called the “strangest thing” we’ve ever seen at the tech show.
This “mascot robot” attaches to your bag and, for some reason, “spontaneously turns its head to steal a glance at a nearby person”. For something so innocent-looking, it has a surprising amount of tech inside, including sensors to notice people and a motorized head.
Why would you want it? We’re still not quite sure, but we’re expecting one to be clinging to our luggage as we try to leave Las Vegas at the end of the show.
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mark.wilson@futurenet.com (Mark Wilson)
