The holiday season has just begun, but some of us are already preparing for CES 2025. After New Year’s Day, many of us on the Engadget team will be packing our bags to fly to Las Vegas where we’ll be covering tech’s biggest annual event. meeting. As usual, our inboxes are already full of pitches from companies scheduled to be there, and our calendars are full of briefings and demo appointments.
Based on our experience and observations of recent industry trends, it is fairly easy to make an educated guess about what we will see in January. Over the years, the conference’s focus has also included laptops and accessories, spanning areas such as TVs, automobiles, smart home products and personal health. At CES 2025, AI is expected to become more prevalent in all areas. on the show floor. But we’ll also get a slew of new processors and follow-up laptops, as well as a wide range of wearables, trackers, bathroom appliances, and massage chairs. Ah, a massage chair.
Just by taking a cursory glance at the lineup released by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), we already know a lot. In addition to numerous panels and lectures, keynote addresses will include NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Delta CEO Ed Bastian, as well as top executives from companies such as Panasonic, SiriusXM, Waymo, and Volvo Group. This lets you know in advance who will be making the big announcement on the show.
In fact, some companies didn’t even wait until January to announce the news. LG, for example, is continuing its annual tradition of sharing upcoming CES launches a few weeks before the show by revealing a 2025 refresh for its QNED evo line of LCD TVs. Meanwhile, Hyundai Mobis announced that it plans to introduce the world’s first ‘holographic windshield display’. Hyundai Mobis also revealed what its CES 2025 booth will look like. A photo of the convention center booth might be interesting.
If you’re already looking ahead to 2025 and eagerly researching what’s coming in January, get a taste of what our team expects from the show.
New video cards from AMD and NVIDIA
There’s no doubt that 2025 will be a big year for PC gamers. NVIDIA will debut its long-awaited RTX 5000 video card at CES, and AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed that the company will debut its next-generation RDNA 4 GPU early next year. Of the two companies, AMD could use more upgrades. The last batch of Radeon 7000 cards delivered decent mid-range performance, but they fell far behind NVIDIA’s hardware in terms of ray tracing, and even AMD’s FSR 3 upscaling couldn’t compete with NVIDIA’s AI-powered DLSS 3.
“RDNA 4 not only delivers significant improvements in gaming performance, but also delivers significantly higher ray tracing performance and adds new AI features,” AMD CEO Lisa Su said in an October earnings call.
As for NVIDIA’s new hardware, here’s the rumor from leaker OneRaichu. digital trend) suggested that the RTX 5090 could be up to 70% faster than the RTX 4090. (This is the GPU I previously described as having “unholy powers.”) They also point out that other “higher level” cards may see 30-40%. Poor performance. These gains may be enough to tempt wealthy RTX 4090 owners to upgrade, but RTX 4070 and 4080 owners may want to skip this generation. But for NVIDIA holdouts using RTX 3000 and earlier GPUs, next year might be the perfect time to upgrade. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Reporter
AI PC Round 2
Last year, we predicted that AI PCs would dominate CES, and most of them turned out to be true. By 2024, we could see much more powerful NPUs in chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. Microsoft has also doubled down on the AI PC market with its Copilot+ initiative. This led to a huge marketing push for artificial intelligence features and premium specs (e.g. having at least 16GB of RAM).
Not only will we see a lot more AI in every product category imaginable, but CES 2025 is also expected to feature more of the same. In particular, this year, PC manufacturers are likely to begin preparations to take advantage of Windows 10 support, which ends next year. Instead of upgrading existing computers to Windows 11, companies like Dell and HP prefer to buy completely new AI PCs with the new OS pre-installed.
2024 may have been the year of hype for AI PCs, but 2025 could be the year of reckoning. Microsoft’s long-delayed recall is gradually rolling out to more users, but it’s already showing some notable security holes, including an inability to remove Social Security and credit card numbers from screenshots. We were also mostly disappointed with Apple Intelligence’s image creation capabilities. PC makers have been eager to talk about the potential of AI-based features for some time now, but in 2025 they’ll have to actually prove that they can live up to their fantastic claims. — DH
Earbuds follow Apple’s guidelines for hearing health
I fully realize that not all audio companies have the ability to build clinical-grade hearing testing and hearing aid features into their apps. But Apple’s recent AirPods Pro 2 update may inspire its competitors to offer some sort of hearing health tool for their flagship product. Jabra is probably best equipped to do this job, as its parent company, GN, has extensive hearing aid experience. Unfortunately, the company announced earlier this year that it would no longer produce the earbuds.
Samsung and Google could probably integrate something similar to what Apple created for AirPods, given both companies’ existing health platforms. If so, these announcements likely won’t 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 earbuds and headphones at CES. Last year it introduced several new models, including one with heart rate tracking for exercise. We’re also already offering hearing assistance through dedicated devices like the truly wireless Conversation Clear Plus. These earbuds are more focused on hearing than general content consumption, so it would be nice to see Sennheiser bring some of the features from those products into its flagship Momentum line of earbuds. Perhaps a Momentum True Wireless 4 Pro or Plus is in the cards, but the current model is only nine months old.
Of course, there’s a lot of room for other companies to innovate here, and there will be no shortage of new earbuds in Las Vegas next month. We also tend to see a ton of assistive device and technology launches at CES, from both major accessibility companies like OrCam and all the smaller brands. I hope some of the new technology includes more general hearing tools for the models most people want to use. — Billy Steele, Senior Editor
Automobile electrification is skyrocketing.
As the growth of electric vehicles approaches 10% of new models sold in the U.S., it’s easy to forget that wheeled vehicles aren’t the only type of transportation transitioning to battery-powered propulsion. Flying taxis have been a mainstay of CES for the past few years, with concept vehicles from big brands like Hyundai taking over the Las Vegas show floor.
Of course, this device looks more like a giant drone with a cockpit than anything Jetson could have dreamed of. But with companies like Archer Aviation, Joby Aviation and others promising to actually launch eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing) services in 2025, the air taxi era may be in full swing this time around. — Senior Reporter Sam Rutherford
Convert more phones to satellite phones
Satellite communications development has increased significantly since Apple introduced emergency SOS via satellite in the 2022 iPhone 14. Not only has Apple expanded its capabilities to allow communication in non-emergency situations, but component manufacturers like Qualcomm have also tried to bring similar features to Android devices. The Snapdragon satellite was announced at CES 2023 as a project between Qualcomm and Iridium, but the plan did not receive much response from smartphone companies and was eventually terminated in November of the same year.
Since then, Google has launched satellite calling on its Pixel 9 phones, and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite text messaging service has launched in New Zealand via Telco One NZ. In the U.S., T-Mobile launched beta subscriptions for its Starlink-based satellite cell service this year. The skies are also becoming more crowded, with AT&T and partner AST SpaceMobile launching five satellites in September and Amazon’s Project Kuiper seeking to power its satellite internet network with space lasers.
This year, Garmin launched the inReach Messenger Plus, which it describes as “an SOS satellite communicator with photo and voice messaging capabilities.” Satellite hotspots like these have been around for years from companies like Iridium and GlobalSat, but they historically cost $800 to $1,000 and lacked the ability to send more than a few lines of text. Garmin’s products can be an indicator of what’s to come. Not only will we see major phone manufacturers embed satellite communications capabilities into their future phones, but we’ll probably get plenty of hotspots in the meantime, so we’ll never lose out. It doesn’t matter how far off the grid we are. And I wouldn’t be surprised if CES 2025 is filled with devices that utilize satellites to get help and talk to other people. — Cherlynn Low, Associate Editor
Soundbar’s expanded dialogue enhancement features
When it comes to key aspects of soundbars, there really isn’t a ton of innovation every year. Heck, Samsung’s biggest update last year was adding HDMI 2.1 support to its flagship models, which already should have been there. Companies have also been focusing on going cable-free for everything, whether it’s wireless Dolby Atmos or wireless transmission boxes. Audio enhancements are where the company can really set itself apart from the competition, and tools like Sonos’ TV Audio Swap and Bose’s Personal Surround Sound are good examples of this. A key area where almost every company can improve is conversation boosting. This feature increases the volume or isolates your voice from background noise and music for better clarity.
Sonos has taken a huge leap forward in this regard by offering two additional settings for so-called voice enhancement on the Arc Ultra. Previously, this was an all-or-nothing toggle, which is how most companies handled versions of this tool. The Sonos update not only allows for a degree of customization, but it also gets better, thanks in part to the new premium soundbar’s redesigned architecture. This is a clear area where other companies can improve.
LG and Samsung typically announce new soundbars at CES, and a few smaller companies are expected to show off as well. I’d like to see them all take the dialog one step further and at least provide multiple options for how to apply it. LG has been using AI Sound Pro on its TVs since 2021, and Samsung offers a feature called Adaptive Sound on its home theater speakers. I expect both to improve the quality of features in general, but I’m also hoping to expand functionality. — bachelor’s degree
Update, December 17, 2024, 12:40 PM ET: This story has been updated to include the companies and CEOs who will be keynoting at the show.
Update, December 20, 2024, 11:55 AM ET: This story has been updated to reflect the announcements made by LG and Hyundai Mobis ahead of CES 2025.
Update, December 25, 2024, 10:00 AM ET: This story has been updated to include predictions that satellite communications devices will be ubiquitous by CES 2025.
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