CES 2024 Live Blog: More News, Photos, and Videos From Tech’s Big Show

The Withings BeamO, which debuted this week at CES, is what’s known as a multiscope. You can use it to measure your temperature and blood oxygen levels or take an EKG reading, and you can use it as a stethoscope to listen for heart irregularities. All in one little wand. It doesn’t dispense medical advice—the idea is that you can send the data reports to your doctor and then discuss them together—but it’s nice to have this level of diagnostic capture in something that’s accessible and easy to use. It will cost $250 once it wins FDA approval.

With all the outdoor gear at this show, it seems a shame that we have to spend so much of our time scurrying around inside fluorescent-lit convention halls. That’s why I was thrilled to get off the Vegas Strip for a little bit for a Bosch test ride with about a dozen different Bosch-powered electric bikes from several different brands that use the company’s electric drivetrains, including Riese & Muller, Gazelle, Trek, and Tern. I joined a group of journalists at Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area just outside the city.

The theme was Bosch’s e-cargo and SUV bicycles (I was on a Trek Fetch+ 2, although I did take turns on several other rides). Probably the most noteworthy update to the Bosch eBike system that I found was the Auto eShift system, which automatically adjusted the power output to maintain my level of effort and speed. It’s amazing but takes some getting used to. I stopped on an uphill to put my phone back in the mount and was shocked to find how easy it was to get restarted; I also found myself fiddling with the shifting a lot, because I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t hard to pedal up a trail with 1,100 feet of elevation gain.

The integration with the updated Bosch eBike Flow app was also pretty nice. I connected my bike to the app and mounted it on the handlebars, which charged my phone with the bike battery. Buttons by the handlebar let me easily flip through the screens, and the app is also compatible with other major health and fitness platforms and equipment—you can export data from the Bosch app to Apple Health or Strava, for example. Given all the software upgrades, it was difficult to concentrate a lot on the bikes themselves.

It’s worth noting that I’m fine with any and all software updates, as long as the experience of biking remains the same: completely fun, whizzing up and down through picturesque hills in the desert sun. There were definitely stray yells and whoops as we sped along, and not all of them were from me. At one point during the ride, Bosch general manager Claudia Wasko turned to me with a big grin and said, “This is work!” And it is! The most fun work possible.

It’s hard to justify engaging in stunt journalism at big, physically demanding events like CES, but WIRED’s senior reviews editor Julian Chokkattu is always game for a challenge. Today at CES, he has decided that he won’t use a regular computer all day. Instead, he is only allowing himself to use this Nimo Planet Spatial Computer. The smart glasses plug into a tiny palm-sized computer called the Core. The Core has a touch-sensitive top for pointer input. It also has an accelerometer, so it can be used like Wiimote to point and click. The Bluetooth keyboard completes the package. Passersby keep stopping to stare and take photos, and I cannot blame them one bit.

The number of ebikes that straddle the line between motorcycle and bicycle is growing quickly. The latest model from Segway, the Xyber, is one such hybrid beast. It houses two 1,440-watt-hour battery packs in the middle of the frame, and with both installed (as shown here) the range of the two-wheeler extends to almost 100 miles. That’s a whole lot of adventuring. The suspension has four and a half inches of travel, and the knobby tires can handle gravel and unpaved backroads, but it’s still incredibly zippy and fun on pavement. The X-shaped headlight lets everyone know they’re about to be passed by a cyberpunk commando.

Who head? What head? It’s Wehead, a table-top hardware interface for ChatGPT. If it looks like four Samsung phones stuck together to approximate a human face, that’s because it is.

Petcube is known for its affordable pet cameras, and now the brand has launched its first wearable for dogs. Attach it to your pet’s collar to set up a track their location, monitor daily activities, and set and track their fitness goals. You can also set up a geofence that alerts you if they wander too far from home.

In the app, you can pull up your pet’s location at any time, but if they actually get lost, Lost Dog Mode speeds up the updates by reporting your pet’s location once every second rather than once every 1 to 3 minutes. This does drain the battery faster since it’s more data-intensive, but regular use should give you about 30 days of battery life.

The case is transparent, which doesn’t just look cool—’90s clear tech is my special interest—but the clear plastic also glows in the dark and has built-in LEDs for nighttime safety. Sound alerts can also be activated to help locate a hiding animal.

The tracker costs $53, though it’s discounted to $40 right now. You’ll have to pay a monthly fee to get the data services, and there are several options available. If you pay for a year, a basic subscription costs $84 ($7 a month) and the premium version costs $96 ($8 a month). There are monthly, two-year, and five-year options too. A premium subscription also comes with vet connection right in the app and a lifetime warranty. Petcube’s app can be aggravating to use—the cost alone usually makes the app issues bearable—but we’ll test this tracker when we can.

Owlet has been making baby sock monitors for a few years now, but the newest models are approved by the FDA for tracking your baby’s vitals. There’s two different versions of the new sock: the Dream Sock, which anyone can purchase, and the BabySat, which promises hospital-grade monitoring and can only be purchased with a prescription from a doctor. Both models can track the pulse rate, oxygen, wakings, and sleep trends of babies ranging from newborn to about 18 months old. Owlet describes the two as the same, just one requires a prescription. The pulse rate and oxygen monitoring are likely a little over the top for most parents monitoring their baby’s sleep habits, but I’m still planning to test it on my one year old to see what the experience is like. I’m more intrigued about the prescription BabySat, and how often parents of premature and NICU babies might be prescribed it now that it’s on the market. It’s something I’ll be watching this year.

Now Wi-Fi 7 is official, several companies are showing off new routers and mesh systems. TP-Link boasts by far the longest line-up, with a range of Wi-Fi 7 Deco mesh systems and Archer routers that goes from the relatively affordable Archer BE9300 ($250) router up to the Deco BE95 mesh ($1,800 for a 3-pack). The new kid on the block is its first Wi-Fi 7 gaming router, the Archer GE800 ($600), which will land in the second quarter of 2024. Do you really need a special “gaming” router? Frankly, no, but it does boast dual 10 Gbps ports, gaming prioritization software to ensure your gaming session hogs the connection, and it kinda looks like Darth Vader’s shuttle.

Acer also showed off a pair of Predator-branded mesh router systems aimed squarely at gamers. The Predator Connect X7 5G CPE is determined to keep you online no matter what, with support for 5G and Wi-Fi 7. It also promises gamers low latency (1 millisecond) and RGB lighting. The more conventional Predator Connect T7 Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Router is a tri-band system. There’s no word on pricing yet, but if you have to ask… (they will be expensive).

MSi also released a new Wi-Fi 7 mesh line-up at the show. Branded Roamii, there are three new systems that are refreshingly affordable compared to recent releases like the Netgear Orbi 970. There’s the 21 Gbps BE Max Mesh ($500 for a 2-pack), the 11 Gbps BE Pro Mesh ($400 for a 2-pack), and the 5 Gbps BE Lite ($300 for a 2-pack).

Last but not least, Asus took the wraps off the ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro, ZenWiFi BQ16, and ZenWiFi BT10 mesh WiFi systems. The Pro is a quad-band beast with two 6-GHz bands, offering combined speeds up to 30 Gbps. The other two systems are slightly more modest. While there is no pricing yet, and they are likely to be expensive, Asus does at least offer security software and parental controls for free, so there’s no need to worry about a subscription on top. More choice is good, but if you can exercise a little patience, Wi-Fi 7 routers will likely get a lot more affordable later this year.

It’s easy to over feed and over treat your pets when they give you those puppy dog eyes, but their weight is something that should be on your mind. Ilume’s Dog Wellbeing Smart Suite adds targeting obesity to the list of pet care tech we’ve seen at CES this year.

A collar tracks your pup’s activity level and sleep, outlining distance traveled and steps taken within the connected app. After learning your dog’s routines and behavior patterns, it calculates just how much food they should be eating to prevent over- or underfeeding. Ilume says it takes into account “more than 14,000 data points each day to ensure a truly personalized nutrition plan.” The smart bowl takes the work out of it too. As you pour in the food, a light ring illuminates. The right closes when you’ve added enough. You don’t even need to worry about calculating the calories on the back of the food bag or measuring.

I’d talk to your vet too and do your own research, but this is a great step of cutting out a lot of unwanted noise. I have cats and have gotten loads of conflicting opinions on the amount of food they should be eating. Hopefully a version for them is on its way too.

The Dog Wellbeing Suite is available now. Early bird pricing ranges from $250 to $300, depending on how many units are left when you check out, and should ship out over the next three months, as marked. After that, it will cost $350.

Acer has been experimenting with its 3D SpatialLabs line for a few years now, with expensive workstations and gaming monitors. But the new Acer Aspire 3D 15 SpatialLabs Edition laptop is the most affordable model Acer has ever had. The laptop uses cameras to track the eyes of the user–just a single user, as the laptop’s cameras have a sweet spot to position yourself, and the cameras only track one eye and redraws the 2D onscreen images so that they appear 3D to the user. We tried it out at the show and it works well when you’re correctly centered and the cameras have locked onto your eyes. The laptop is created with designers and students in mind who could use the laptop’s software for different projects they might want to view in 3D. The laptop can switch between 2D and 3D viewing.

The only thing the new Aspire doesn’t have is the power for gaming. But Acer didn’t leave gamers hanging–the company announced several new Predator monitors, including the Predator SpatialLabs View 27 monitor, which is a gaming monitor with the same SpatialLabs 3D technology as the laptop. The monitor will be available for $2,000 later this year, while the laptop will cost $1,400 and be available in February.

We all know two screens make you a heck of a lot more productive than one. I’m currently writing this on my laptop hooked up to a portable monitor in my hotel room! Asus is thinking the same thing because the Zenbook Duo is a pretty smart two-screen solution for a laptop. It’s not the first time we’ve seen such a thing (see Lenovo’s Yoga Book 9i), but the Zenbook Duo looks fairly normal at first glance, even after you open the laptop up—it’s just a bit chunky. Lo and behold, you can lift out the keyboard, and there’s a second screen underneath it. You can then prop up the two 14-inch connected OLED screens via the built-in kickstand and place the Bluetooth keyboard wherever it’s convenient for typing. Asus did go overboard and introduced a ton of confusing gestures in case you want to use the bottom screen as an interface, but I don’t really want any of that. Just gimme the screens! I also like that you can use it as a normal laptop for when you don’t have the space to bring out the second screen. It costs $1,500 and will go on sale in the next few months.

In the same vein, Asus also showed off a folding portable OLED gaming monitor. The ZenScreen Fold OLED MQ17QH is a proper folding device—the screen itself folds in half and the hinge doesn’t have a gap. The crease is also surprisingly minimal, though the screen did attract a lot of glares. You get a massive 17.3-inch screen to work with and connect to a laptop via MiniHDMI or USB-C, and you can use the built-in kickstand to keep it up in portrait or landscape orientation. When you’re packing up, it folds down to a 12.5-inch size, making it very easy to stow away. Asus hasn’t shared pricing or availability yet, but I know what’s going to be in my bag next CES.

DJI wasn’t at CES this year, so this isn’t strictly a CES announcement. But the company decided to put out its news right smack dab in the middle of the world’s biggest tech event, so it’s getting pulled into the gravity of it.

Today, the Shenzhen, China based drone company announced that its FlyCart 30 delivery drone will be coming to an international market. It’s the biggest drone DJI has made, capable of hauling more weight than any of the company’s other models. It can handle winds up to 26 mph. It can carry up to a 66 lbs load over a distance of 10 miles on a single battery charge. For a much reduced range of about five miles, the drone can hold a maximum 88 lbs.

DJI is positioning it as a drone that can be used in emergencies when remote locations need supplies or parts for repairs, or in disaster situations like hurricanes or wildfires. The big flying machine has been operating in China since August 2023, flying parts to solar farms and other remote use cases. The payload can be lowered on a built-in cable and winch system, and guided into tricky landing situations via a camera that feeds back to the operator’s controller handheld.

“This is more like a pickup than a Tesla,” Wayne Baker, a former fire chief and emergency management coordinator in Texas who now works for DJI, told WIRED. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s an affordable consumer-level drone—the FlyCart 30 starts at $42,000.

Satechi is known for its line of PC and Apple accessories and already offers a variety of standard Bluetooth keyboards. But at CES, the company announced it’s expanding its catalog by introducing its first-ever mechanical option. Called the SM1 Slim, the new mechanical Bluetooth keyboard comes with a 75 percent layout, low-profile brown switches with removable keycaps, and an adjustable white backlight (with 14 different patterns).

In addition to Bluetooth support, you’ll also get a 2.4 GHz USB receiver to wirelessly connect to another device. You can connect the keyboard to four devices in total—allowing you to switch back and forth between different gadgets like your laptop, tablet, or phone. If you want a wired connection, the keyboard comes with a USB-C port that you can also use to charge the keyboard. It’s cross-platform compatible too, with support for Apple’s ecosystem (macOS, iPadOS, and iOS), Windows OS, and Google Chrome OS. It’s currently available for purchase through Satechi’s site for $100.

Wi-Fi 7 is still new, but we’re already seeing a bunch of routers coming out with support for the protocol. And Acer’s taking it a step further with its Predator Connect line of routers. The Predator Connect X7 5G CPE bag of letters router not only supports Wi-Fi 7, but tacks on a 5G antenna capable of up to 3.5Gbps speeds. This is particularly handy if you want to not only build out your mesh Wi-Fi system, but bolster your own 5G coverage as a fallback, or for other devices not on your network.

Wireless accessories are great for a variety of reasons. Without those pesky cables, it’s a lot easier to keep your desk looking nice and neat. You also don’t have to worry about having the right ports and cords. But you do have to worry about battery life—starting your workday with a dead keyboard or mouse isn’t always fun. Lenovo’s Mechanical Energy Harvesting Solution aims to solve this issue. The lineup, which consists of a mechanical keyboard, mouse, and headset, uses mechanical movement and solar irradiation to power it rather than external charging. It’s worth noting this is a proof-of-concept, so Lenovo doesn’t have any plans to sell or ship it any time soon (if at all). But it’s still an interesting idea.

The mechanical keyboard is compact, with 68 keys, and comes with RGB backlight. The built-in lithium battery is rechargeable using solar power (you can keep it near a well-lit area like a window) or mechanical rotation—by rotating the built-in knob, it’ll collect mechanical rotating kinetic energy and convert it into electric energy. According to Lenovo, the keyboard can hold more than 30 minutes of charge. It also comes with support for 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth wireless connectivity, but there’s also a port for wired connectivity. The mouse comes equipped with a 2-way scroll wheel (up and down) along with a variety of shortcut buttons. The battery recharges via mechanical rotation using the ring mechanism on the bottom. Meanwhile, the headset comes with a Switching Mode button, a volume knob, a trackpad, and a toggle switch. Like the keyboard, it supports 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth, and wired connectivity. It doesn’t come with a knob or ring to rotate for more battery life, but it’s rechargeable using solar power.

The Go Kart Pro 2 is honestly the most fun I’ve had in a while, which is, in all honesty, not something I was expecting to say about a product manufactured by Segway. It’s a 3-in-1 vehicle—it converts from a punchy little go-kart with a maximum speed of 26.7 mph that leaps when you touch the foot pedals and corners nicely on Segway’s tester track (the fact that I immediately flipped it into race mode didn’t hurt.)

Once you’re done with that, pop out the back to find a floating hoverboard. When you bring it home, you don’t even need to worry about storage. Just roll it in front of your 75-inch television, for your go-kart is now a racing sim. The body of the go-kart flexes as you stomp on the gas and shudders with 360 haptic feedback when you crash into a wall or unsuccessfully try to drift. It’s compatible with all major gaming platforms and can go online so you can race against your friends with their crummy racing wheels attached to their dumb gaming PCs. It will be on presale exclusively at Best Buy as soon as today and will ship shortly thereafter.

Getting between hotels at CES is such a struggle. Making a meeting means budgeting an hour of shuttling, monorailing, navigating huge lines and crowds, dealing with carsickness in Ubers or cabs, or just giving up and walking for hours through Vegas city streets (I did this today.) So imagine my delight when Julian and I discovered electric pedicabs waiting in front of the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. “How much do they cost, you think?” I asked him. “It doesn’t matter, it would be worth it,” he said.

In fact, the pedicabs were free, paid for by Dailymotion.com. This is the most incredible advertising that I’ve ever seen (and honestly a missed opportunity for the hundreds of electric bike companies that are currently here). Instead of slowly getting hungrier and more carsick on a shuttle, we whizzed through streets in the fresh air and around cars. The pedicabs will be here today, too. The best part of it is riding past everyone else waiting in line.

There’s nothing like the joy of new parenthood–or the stress of having a crying baby in the middle of the night and trying to determine what’s wrong while half asleep. Maxi Cosi’s new baby monitor promises to fix that. The See Pro 360° Baby Monitor has built-in AI called CryAssist that will translate a baby’s cries into five main categories: sleepy, hungry, fussy, gassy, or agitated. I saw it in action at CES, and the monitor will alert you that the baby is crying, analyze it for you, and then tell you the type of cry. The app will also describe what cues it’s using to identify it; for example, urgent and energetic are two descriptors for a hungry cry. There’s also an option to say if the AI was wrong.

The audio of your baby crying is uploaded to the cloud for analysis, but the Maxi-Cosi team said there’s no identifying information uploaded with it. The app will also track what types of cries it heard when in a little calendar, so you can look back to find out if you’re getting consistent hungry cries at the same time. The AI only works over Wi-Fi since audio needs to be uploaded to the cloud, but the included Parent Display doesn’t need Wi-Fi to work, which makes it easy to travel with or use for older children whose cries you aren’t analyzing.

Nobody should have to sleep with the lights on, but that’s exactly what Dhaval Patel found himself doing one night. The Founder and CEO of Lotus has spent periods of his life on crutches due to an intermittent disability. We’ve all experienced the frustration of getting into bed only to realize we left a light on, but for folks with limited mobility or other disabilities, it’s not always as simple as getting back up again to check.

The Lotus Ring is a wearable that uses infrared light and magnetic switch covers to control lights, fans, and other on-and-off gadgets. The magnetic switch covers eliminate the need to rewire existing electrical infrastructure—even those at hotels or in rentals. And the portable design means any light switch can be converted into a smart light switch. The ring’s simple point-and-click interface doesn’t have a learning curve or require that all of your smart home gadgets play nicely with one another. The system is completely offline, so you don’t need a smartphone or a speaker that sometimes gets it wrong. (That also eliminates the privacy concerns that stem from a gadget that listens to you.) While this tech can be useful for anyone, it’s refreshing to see a company that prioritizes those of us so often underserved. The Lotus Ring is available for pre-order via a $5 deposit here; Shipment is tentatively slated for Fall 2024.

The City Car looks like a golf cart, but if golf carts were beachy and fun. The first thing I noticed were the surfboards loaded on the back rack and the Jeep Wrangler-esque roll bars on the swappable door panels. It has a top speed of a modest but capable 30 mph and is powered by four moped-sized li-ion batteries. You can swap them in and out, but you probably won’t have to since it recharges itself via solar panels on the roof.

It’s as long as a typical parking space is wide, so you can nose it in anywhere head first. It seats two, or four, if the other two are children tucked into the back. But for such a small vehicle, there’s plenty of storage space—Squad CEO Robert Hoevers showed me how to put the seats down for even more storage, and there’s plenty of space under the seats. (When I exclaimed that the dainty vehicle was the perfect size for 5’2” me, he responded, “Hello! We are Dutch! We are the largest people in the world!”)

Hoevers says that while the vehicle is regarded as a second car replacement in Europe, in the United States it’s generally used as an additional vehicle, or for food delivery—on college campuses, company lots, gated communities or for beach properties. If an electric bike seems too dangerous for you, this is a very attractive solution. Or it is for me, at least—if it was on, I probably would’ve tried to drive it around the show floor.