What to expect at CES 2024

No event of the year delivers more tech news than CES. The annual trade show is the kickoff of every year in tech, giving companies the chance to announce their next wave of products or tease the ambitious, far-flung and often strange new projects they've been working on behind the scenes.

This year's show kicks off in Las Vegas on Tuesday, January 9 and runs through Friday, January 12, but you should expect news to start breaking as soon as, actually, right now. Companies have been releasing announcements over the past week, and many will try to get ahead of the conference with announcements in the days before the show floor opens.

There is also a full day of keynote presentations before the official start of the program. On Monday, expect news from LG, Samsung, Nvidia, Sony and many more, as a host of companies from the tech and automotive worlds make back-to-back presentations.

As usual, The edge will cover the show inside and out. These are some of the great stories we hope to see this year.

CES is first and foremost a show about new televisions. But it looks like we're in for a relatively quiet and iterative year when it comes to new TV hardware. Last year, we saw significant advances in the brightness of OLED TVs, making them suitable for brighter rooms and more viewing environments. And Mini LED became the status quo for mid- and high-end LCD TVs, for starters, at relatively affordable prices.

But LG has already announced its 2024 lineup and there are no major panel updates planned for this year. Instead, the “new” from LG, Roku and presumably other brands focuses on artificial intelligence processing. We've seen TV makers use ai and machine learning to optimize picture and sound for a few years now, but they're really leaning into it at CES 2024. Perhaps this isn't a surprise given the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT, Bard and others. . With home theater, ai is being used to modify settings that many consumers never bother to adjust themselves and give content greater depth and clarity. Image purists will no doubt turn off many of these ai tricks, but the trend is undeniable.

The wild card, as always, is Samsung. Will the leading TV maker play it safe like many competitors, or does the company have something more innovative in its back pocket? We'll find out in Las Vegas in a matter of days. —Chris Welch

While CES is often passed off as a car show, this year is likely to be different. Ford, General Motors, Stellantis and many other notable names will be absent from the event. For that, you can thank the United Auto Workers strike over the summer, which led the Big Three to cancel their CES plans this year.

But there will still be plenty of auto-focused announcements, from a new “global electric vehicle series” from Honda to an avalanche of car technology. And of course, all of this will probably come with some of our favorite tech buzzwords, including ai, LLM, and machine learning. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

In addition to Honda, major automotive companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and BMW will have news to share during CES. And big tech players like Intel and Amazon will be burnishing their status as emerging auto suppliers with some sneak peeks of new products coming in the future. So while there will be less car news to analyze than in previous years, CES will likely still offer a few surprises for all the gearheads and mobility fans in attendance. —Andrew J. Hawkins

Intel just announced a whole new line of Meteor Lake family chips, and that means you can expect to see plenty of laptops at CES with the updated silicon. But an increase in processor specifications is usually not enough to turn heads at the world's largest consumer electronics show.

CES is where laptop makers like to show off some of their flashiest new designs and original little experiments they've been playing around with. That means we should see at least one or two quirky devices that will make us think about the evolution of laptop design.

I'm also betting we'll see some larger laptops. An adage in The edge It's just that people love big screens and that love is not limited to phones and televisions. They also want them on their laptops. Given that Apple has recently embraced larger 14- and 16-inch displays, I wouldn't be surprised if many of its competitors started to do the same, slowly moving us away from the standard 13- and 15-inch laptop sizes toward something a little more spacious. —Alex Cranz

Expect to see a lot of smart home innovations based on two words: artificial intelligence. Samsung sets the tone with its press conference titled ai-for-all-connectivity-in-the-age-of-ai“>”ai for everyone: connectivity in the age of ai“ (See how they put ai in there twice?!). The electronics giant has already announced smart ai-connectivity-enable-expansive-kitchen-experiences-ces-2024/”>kitchen countertops, vacuum cleaners and refrigerators with built-in ai, and I hope there are more to come. LG will show off an ai-powered home robot with the catchy name “Smart Home ai Agent” that it claims will “understand context and intent, as well as actively communicate with users.”

I'll be watching closely to see what substance these companies put behind their ai claims. Context is definitely an area where ai could help improve smart home experiences, and generative ai has huge potential to simplify the smart home. I will look for solutions that take the burden of programming our smart homes off of us and transfer it to computers. Smart home companies that can implement this effectively in their products will be one step ahead.

The other buzzword for the connected home at CES 2024 will, once again, be Matter. Called The edge's Best in Show last year, the new smart home standard stuttered in 2023. To regain momentum, I expect product announcements in the newly supported categories of robotic vacuum cleaners and home appliances (Ecovacs, Roborock, GE Profile and Whirlpool are showcasing this) . year), plus more products in underserved areas such as smart locks and smart thermostats.

Overall, I predict it will be a quieter year on the devices front. Many companies need to regroup and reevaluate their approach as the combined forces of Matter and ai begin to shape a brave new smart home. —Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Occasionally, CES can host a number of PC gaming announcements ahead of Computex in the summer, and it looks like the show will have plenty for us this year. At CES 2024, we expect to see Nvidia announce its first Super RTX 40-series cards, the first Super variants since the RTX 20 series. AMD is also rumored to launch its own RX 7600 XT GPU later this month, potentially after it concludes. CES.

What I'm most interested in are the latest OLED monitors for PC gaming. At last year's CES, we saw the first round of 240Hz OLED monitors and it looks like they will expand into different shapes and sizes by 2024, along with improved refresh rates. LG has previously announced half a dozen new OLED gaming monitors, including one capable of 480Hz at 1080p or 240Hz at 4K. LG Display even has a 27-inch OLED that can run up to 480Hz at 1440p coming later this year. Samsung has also introduced a new line of Odyssey OLED gaming monitors, with refresh rates of up to 360Hz.

We may even see another portable gaming PC. Both Asus and Lenovo have offered their own alternatives to Valve's popular Steam Deck, but there are a variety of other Windows alternatives as well. MSI has dropped a big hint that it is about to release a ROG Ally and Steam Deck competitor. I'd be surprised if CES goes by without another portable gaming PC in the mix. —Tom Warren

As far as phone news goes, the weeks between October and mid-January are like baseball's All-Star break. Sure, some of your favorite players are on the field and there's a game going on, but the real action comes later. This year, Samsung's Unpacked is scheduled immediately after CES on January 17, followed by Mobile World Congress at the end of February. That will make this year's CES a quiet one for mobile news.

Still, CES probably won't be a total opt-out. The first phones with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 have been appearing and we may see one or two more in Las Vegas. Qualcomm's new flagship chipset leans heavily toward generative ai, and that will definitely be a big theme throughout the year. And who knows? Maybe we'll see some wacky flexible display concepts from TCL. Those are always fun! -Allison Johnson

Smartwatches have taken a backseat in recent years at CES, so don't expect to see much on that front. Case in point: Fossil is usually a CES fixture, bringing a mini horde of Android watches to Las Vegas every year. However, it won't be there at all this year. That's okay, though: CES is where the strangest wearable ideas shine.

I would expect to see something strange from Withings. It may not be as flashy as last year's at-home urine testing device, but CES tends to be where the company shows off its vision for our telehealth future. Smart rings have also been simmering for a while, and while many aren't ready for prime time, I expect to see companies showing their thoughts on a smaller, more discreet health tracker. We're also likely to see a new round of over-the-counter headphones at the show, as well as concepts for AR smart glasses, especially now that Apple's Vision Pro is lurking around the corner.

I've written about this before, but CES is where we see a lot of health tech ideas that never seem to reach consumers (or won't for several years at least). I have no doubt there will be some exhibitors exploring non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, wearable blood pressure devices, and smart home telehealth devices. Beauty and wellness technology has also become a growing presence at the show. L'Oreal, which has a greater technology presence Than you might think, he's scheduled to give a keynote this year, so I imagine they have something cool planned too. —Victoria Song