New technology that we expect and hope to see in Las Vegas

The holiday season has barely begun, but some of us are already gearing up for CES 2025. Shortly after New Year’s Day, many of the Engadget team will be packing our bags to fly to Las Vegas, where we’ll be covering the biggest annual event in tech. conference. As usual, our inboxes are already full of presentations from companies planning to be there, and our calendars are filled 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 conference’s focus has expanded into areas such as TVs, automobiles, smart home products, and personal health, with a small number of laptops and accessories. At CES 2025, we expect to see AI more prevalent across the board. From the show floor. But we’ll also likely get the usual slew of new processors and subsequent laptops, as well as all sorts of wearables, trackers, bath devices and massage chairs. Oh, massage chairs.

If you’re already looking ahead to 2025 and seriously researching what might come in January, here’s a glimpse at what our team expects to see at the show.

New video cards from AMD and NVIDIA

There’s no doubt that 2025 will 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 that we will see… Next generation RDNA 4 GPUs early next year. Of the two companies, AMD could use an upgrade more. that it The latest batch of Radeon 7000 cards It was a good mid-range performer, but it lagged well behind NVIDIA’s hardware when it came to ray tracing, and AMD’s FSR 3 upgrade also couldn’t compete with NVIDIA’s AI-powered DLSS 3.

“In addition to the 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 the new NVIDIA devices, a rumor has emerged from the leaker OneRaichu (via Digital trends) suggested that the RTX 5090 could be up to 70 percent faster than the RTX 4090. (This is the GPU I used previously He described her as possessing “unholy power.”) They also note that other “high-end” cards may see performance increases of 30 to 40 percent. These gains may be enough to entice wealthy RTX 4090 owners to upgrade, but RTX 4070 and 4080 owners may want to skip this generation. For NVIDIA machines with RTX 3000 and older GPUs, next year may be the perfect time to upgrade. — Devendra Hardwar, Senior Reporter

AI Computers Round 2

Last year, I predicted that AI-powered PCs would dominate CES, and that turned out to be mostly true. As we move into 2024, we’ll see more powerful NPUs in Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm chipsets. Microsoft has also doubled the production of AI-enabled personal computers Copilot+ initiativewhich gave a major marketing boost to its AI features and premium specifications (such as having at least 16GB of RAM).

Expect more of the same at CES 2025, along with the introduction of more AI into every product category imaginable. This year, in particular, PC makers are likely poised to capitalize Windows 10 support will end next year. Instead of just upgrading your old PC to Windows 11, companies like Dell and HP prefer to buy a whole new AI-enabled PC with the new operating system pre-installed.

While 2024 was a year of endless hype for AI personal computers, 2025 may finally be the year of reckoning. Microsoft’s long-awaited recall feature is slowly starting to reach more users, but it’s already showing some glaring security vulnerabilities, such as Failure to clear Social Security and credit card numbers from screenshots. We were You’re often mystified by Apple Intelligence’s image generating capabilities. PC makers have been eager to talk up the potential of AI-powered features so far, but in 2025, they’ll have to prove they can live up to their fanciful claims. — Dirham

Earbuds that follow Apple’s lead when it comes to hearing health

I fully realize that not every audio company has the ability to build Clinical hearing test and hearing features In their applications. However, Apple’s latest update to the AirPods Pro 2 could inspire competition to offer some form of hearing health kit on its flagship products. Jabra is perhaps best equipped to do this since parent company GN has extensive experience in hearing aids. Unfortunately, the company announced this earlier this year You won’t make earbuds anymore.

It’s possible that Samsung and Google will integrate something like what Apple did for the AirPods, given both companies’ existing health platforms. If they do, these announcements are unlikely to be made at CES, as both companies prefer to host their own standalone hardware events throughout the year.

This makes Sennheiser the largest audio company to consistently launch earphones and headphones at CES. Last year, it was offered Multiple new modelsincluding a device with heart rate tracking during workouts. Additionally, it already provides hearing assistance through dedicated devices like the True Wireless device The conversation is clear plus. These earbuds focus more on hearing than general content consumption, so it would be great to see Sennheiser bring some of the features from this into their products. Momentum’s flagship line of earphones. A Momentum True Wireless 4 Pro or Plus may be in the cards, but the current model is only nine months old.

Of course, there’s plenty of room for other companies to innovate here, and there won’t be a shortage of new earbuds in Vegas next month. We also tend to see a lot of Launching assistive devices and technology at CESone of the major access companies Like Orkham And all kinds of small brands. I just hope some of the new technologies include audio tools that are more general to the models that most people want to use. — Billy Steele, Senior Editor

Car electrification is sky-high

With the growth of electric cars approaching 10 percent of new models sold In the United States, it’s easy to forget that wheeled vehicles aren’t the only type of transportation seeing the shift to battery-powered propulsion. Flying taxis have been a mainstay of CES over the past few years, with concept cars from big brands like Hyundai Dripping the show floor in Vegas.

These devices certainly look more like giant drones with cockpits than anything the Jetsons ever dreamed up. But with companies like Archer Aviation and Gobi Aviation With eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) services promised to launch in 2025, the era of air taxis may have already arrived this time. — Sam Rutherford, Senior Reporter

Extended dialogue enhancement features on audio bars

When it comes to the key aspects of speakers, there really isn’t a lot of innovation from year to year. Heck, it was Samsung’s biggest update last year Added HDMI 2.1 support For its main model, which should have been there already. Companies have also focused on moving to cable-free everything, whether that’s wireless Dolby Atmos or Wireless transmission boxes. Audio enhancement features are a place where businesses can rise above the fray, and tools like Sonos TV audio sharing software and Bose Personal Surround Sound They are great examples of this. One key area that almost every company can improve is dialogue boost, a feature that raises the volume or separates spoken words from background noise and music for better clarity.

Sonos has made a huge leap in this regard Ultra bowwhich offers two additional settings for what is called speech enhancement. Previously, this was an all-or-nothing toggle, which is how most companies handled their versions of this tool. Not only is Sonos’ update a little more customizable, it’s also better, thanks in part to the redesigned architecture of its new premium speaker. This is a clear area where other companies can improve.

LG and Samsung usually announce new speakers at CES, and there are plenty of smaller companies making their debuts as well. I’d like to see them all take the dialogue improvements a step further and at least offer multiple options for how to apply them. LG has been using AI Sound Pro from its TVs since 2021 and Samsung is offering something called Adaptive Sound on its home theater speakers. I expect them to improve the quality of their features overall, but I hope they expand the capabilities as well. — Bachelor’s