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There’s an element of predictability when it comes to what we’ll see every year at the Las Vegas tech bonanza CES. Big TVs? Tick. Home robots that never go on sale? Tick. An unnecessarily overdesigned toothbrush? Tick.

Every CES also brings its standout trends that dominate the big, flashy press conferences, the show floor and the late-night chatter at casino bars. Some of the biggest trends at this week’s CES 2024 were easy to foresee; a massive emphasis on AI, for example. Others, such as transparent screens and new solutions to take your house off the grid, were only discernible once we’d scoured the show floors of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Here are our key takeaways, distilled for you based on everything CNET’s editors have seen, tested and played with.

AI in everything

You have about as much chance of winning at the slot machines as finding a company that doesn’t boast of its AI prowess at CES 2024. This is far from the first time AI-powered products could be found amid the booths, but this is truly the year that AI is dominating the show.

Read more: The Most Captivating Tech at CES 2024

The way it’s showing up, says Forrester principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee, is “a layer of intelligence that sits atop a traditional product or service to enhance the customer experience.” He points to products such as bird feeders to identify birds and pillows that adjust to reduce snoring as key examples.

AI Is Everywhere at CES 2024. Here’s the Coolest Tech We’ve Seen So Far

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What we’re witnessing right now is the integration of major breakthroughs in AI that have occurred in the past year or so — such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT — into devices. “There’s no question that AI — specifically generative AI — is going to be a big driver of new products and services,” says CNET’s AI guru Connie Guglielmo.

Guglielmo highlights Microsoft’s decision to change up the Windows keyboard for the first time in nearly 30 years, adding a button that provides a direct link to launch its AI Copilot, as a key example. Another is Volkswagen adding ChatGPT as a standard feature in its vehicles later this year. “You can literally talk your car in a Knight Rider kind of way,” she says.

Along with the AI products we’ve experienced firsthand, companies are dropping hints left, right and center at CES about what we can expect to see from them in the year ahead. In an interview with CNET Senior Editor Lisa Eadicicco, Google’s Sameer Samat, general manager and vice president of Android, Google Play and Wear OS, said that AI will play a key role in the evolution of how we interact with our phones.

That supports Guglielmo’s take that “we’re just starting to see how this foundational tech is going to change the way we work, live and engage with the world.”

We’re already curious to see how this rapidly evolving technology will have changed the game again by the time CES 2025 rolls around.

The screen, reinvented

Screen technology is always a big deal at CES and this year is no exception, with exciting display advancements seen in everything from massive TVs to concept bendable phones. As CNET’s TV expert David Katzmaier puts it, “TVs are even bigger and brighter this year. Hisense and TCL, both made their mini-LED lineups twice as bright for the same money as last year, and both introduced huge, expensive models with eye-watering specifications at 110 and 115 inches.”

Neither model has been priced yet, but they’re expected to cost many thousands of dollars. New screen tech never comes cheap, and nowhere is that more obvious than in C Seed’s wild, folding N1, which splits its 137-inch display into five sections to neatly fold away — and which comes with an astonishing $200,000 price tag. What cost-of-living crisis?

“A new trend this year is transparent displays” Katzmaier says. “LG has made transparent OLED screens for the last few years for businesses, but its newest model will go on sale later this year for consumers.”

The idea behind that new model, the OLED T, is to allow a screen to blend more seamlessly into the surrounding room when it’s not in use, rather than simply being a gigantic black rectangle. When not in use, the display looks more like a window, with fish, stars or other objects dancing across the glass and a black film rising to cover the rear when you want it to function as a regular TV. As Katzmaier puts it: “It’s one of the coolest TVs I’ve ever seen.”

Not one to let LG have all the fun, Samsung showed off its own transparent display technology using micro-LEDs which look brighter and more colorful than OLED screens. While the demo was cool, it’s more likely we’ll see Samsung’s see-through screen in commercial applications in the near future, rather than for your next TV.

Samsung showed off new screen tech for its phones, too. Its Flex In & Out Flip concept caught Eadicicco’s eye. “The concept is a Z Flip-style phone that can bend both ways,” she says. “With a device like this, you’d be able to use the screen whether the device is opened or closed, potentially making your phone much easier to use in one hand.”

Terrible product name aside, the Flex In & Out Flip shows that companies like Samsung –along with Motorola and its awesome rollable phone concept shown last year — aren’t ready to settle on one folding phone design just yet.

Next-gen gaming technology

Gaming tech remains a staple of the show floor at this year’s CES. New Intel 14th-gen mobile chips were found inside new laptops from Alienware, Lenovo, Asus, Razer and others along with expected updates across the board for higher performance. Many products, including HP’s new Omen, are eschewing the typical “battlestar” aesthetic of many legacy gaming machines, instead giving options for those of us wanting a “one size fits all” machine for working during the day and fragging noobs at night.

We’ve also seen new graphics cards from Nvidia, vibrating gaming seats from Razer and refreshed gaming-focused phones from Asus.

But we’ve also been treated to the first handheld PC gaming console using Intel chips. Valve’s SteamDeck gave us our first experience of playing PC games in a hand-held format when it launched back in 2022, and both Asus and Lenovo were quick to bring out their own versions. But while the models from Valve, Asus and Lenovo all use AMD processors, MSI’s new Claw handheld packs Intel Core Ultra 5 or 7 processors, which CNET Principal Writer Scott Stein reckons could make it the most powerful PC handheld around.

Windows-based PC handhelds have been generally well received, allowing keen gamers to enjoy their polygon punching from the comfort of their couches without having to always fire up a gigantic, LED-strewn gaming rig. MSI’s Intel-based model will bring a fresh injection of competition to the burgeoning category.

“What the Claw symbolizes may be even more important than what it does,” Stein says. “Intel is joining the party on new handheld-ready gaming chips, which suggests that hardware manufacturers should be even more able to create Steam Deck-like handhelds running Windows.”

Whizbang CES 2024 Tech Concepts We Wish Were Already Real

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Energy tech evolution

At previous editions of CES, the lack of home energy tech and serious solutions to help us tackle the environmental crisis has left us a little puzzled. There’s no time like the present to right those wrongs and declare green technology a major trend of the show this year.

Over the past few years, we’ve been buffeted by cost-of-living and environmental crises, amid skyrocketing energy prices, a greater need for more sophisticated heating and cooling tech, pressure on the electrical grid and waves of power outages. Smart homeowners everywhere are more aware that they need to take their energy management into their own hands, and CES 2024 has shown us how tech companies are responding.

Products such as a portable, whole-home backup battery from EcoFlow and new solar technology in the form of electricity-generating stained glass are just some of the innovations in energy technology. Meanwhile, our road to increasing self-reliance is being paved with things like moisture-farming tech that can generate water from thin air and smart energy services that let you switch between on-grid and off-grid energy sources with a single button.

Are the products at CES 2024 enough to make a serious statement about the tech industry’s commitment to sustainability? No. But as Forrester principal analyst Thomas Husson said ahead of the show, it’s “a small step in the right direction.”

“The next stage would be to embed sustainability and circular economy principles into the very design of new technology and product offerings,” he added.

In the meantime, the new technologies we’ve seen this year can help us imagine what a livable future looks like as the realities of climate change, particularly extreme weather, continue to set in.

Barely making it to your flight gate — or even missing your flight — due to long lines at checkpoints could soon become a thing of the past. Here’s why: Transportation Security Administration is testing a new self-service system that could let you complete the screening process on your own.

The idea is to reduce the number of pat downs and bag inspections performed by transportation security officers (TSO) to free them up for busier parts of screening operations. It also lets you move through checkpoints at your own pace without feeling rushed.

“Like self-ordering kiosks at fast food and sit-down restaurants, self-service screening allows passengers in the Trusted Traveler Program to complete the security screening process on their own,” said Screening at Speed Program Manager Dr. John Fortune.

The Screening at Speed team and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which are partnering with the Department of Homeland Security, are giving the public a virtual reality walkthrough of the self-screening system at CES in Las Vegas this week. Here’s how it works.

What exactly is a self-service screening checkpoint?

The self-service screening pods are for TSA PreCheck passengers to use as individual screening consoles. They come equipped with a carry-on screening system to check bags for any prohibited items — for instance, weapons or liquids exceeding the maximum ounce capacity. It also has a panel that screens the passenger. If you need assistance, there’s a button to press to ask a TSO for help.

The self-service checkpoint serves as an alternative to going through TSA checkpoints, which typically requires a full body scan with your arms up while your carry-on items go through a separate screening checkpoint. And if there’s an issue found, TSA will either have to search you or your bags. That’s not the case with the self-service screening checkpoints.

How does the self-screening process work?

When a passenger steps inside the screening pod, they’ll show their ID and then the machine will begin scanning them and their bags. Each station includes a video monitor with step-by-step instructions.

There are automated entry and exit doors. So if someone doesn’t pass the screening on the first go — maybe they forgot to pull keys out of their pocket — the entry door will reopen so they can remove the items and get re-screened.

The exit door will not open until the passenger passes inspection. Once the screening process has been completed and the passenger is cleared, the automatic exit door will open and the traveler can grab their belongings and head to their flight gate.

Voxel Radar, in partnership with the Screening at Speed team, is working on developing in-motion panel sensors so passengers are screened in near real-time while removing belongings.

Which airports will the self-service checkpoints be available?

For now, the self-screening is a pilot program at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. The airport will use Vanderlande’s prototype, the PAX MX2, which has an automated screening lane for carry-on bags. There are four integrated stations for one checkpoint lane.

The prototype that’s getting shown at CES this week is the Micro-X self-screening system. This self-service screening pod is scheduled to be tested in 2025.

For more CES products announced, check out this ChatGPT enabled electric car and the most captivating tech at CES so far, including foldable TVs.

Each January, tech companies and members of the press descend on Las Vegas for a festival of demos and concepts. There’s plenty to see at CES 2024, but many of the products unveiled at the show won’t be available in stores until much later — if ever. While flashy tech promos are sure to attract attention during the event, CES has a long history of delayed launches and vaporware. Luckily for us, there’s plenty of useful tech doesn’t that’s ready to hit digital and physical store shelves.

All of the products below are available to preorder or buy right now. From clicky iPhone keyboards to smart indoor meat smokers, here are the best products of CES 2024 available right now. While you’re here, these are our CES favorites so far, and here are the weirdest gadgets at the show.

We’ll be keeping tabs on all of the CES announcements and bringing the immediately-available options to you here. And for all of our coverage, from stained-glass window solar panels to 115-inch TV sets, be sure to hit up our full CES 2024 roundup.

In my two decades as CNET’s TV reviewer, I have seen a lot of TVs — but nothing like this. C Seed makes incredibly expensive custom-built televisions for the ultra-wealthy, and the N1 is its latest offering. The 137-inch version I saw at CES 2024 is one of two N1 models in existence.

The most incredible thing about the N1 is the way it folds into a compact rectangular chunk when not in use. Press a button and the screen divides into parts that slowly butterfly together, then descend into the rectangle, hiding the screen entirely — a process that takes about 2 and a half minutes. The folded N1 looks more like a solid metal bench than a TV.

Unfolded, the N1 has a stunning, bright, seamless picture, and the screen can rotate 180 degrees. The divisions between the different sections of the screen were invisible to my eye. That’s because the company uses a proprietary system it calls Adaptive Gap Calibration. It automatically measures the distance between the edges, uses sensors to detect offsets and calibrates the brightness of adjacent LEDs. I couldn’t detect any seams in the image.

The TV uses micro-LED technology, the same display tech found on Samsung’s The Wall — another massive, super-expensive TV that happens to be C Seed’s major competitor. C Seed says the gigantic 4K resolution screen can achieve 4,000 nits peak brightness, with HDR and wide color gamut. In my brief viewing time with C Seed’s demo material, the picture quality looked great. As with The Wall, I could discern individual pixels when I was very close to the screen, but from any normal seating distance, the image looked smooth and sharp.

C Seed makes other huge folding TVs. The company rep told me C Seed has sold around 200 units in the 10 years it has been in business, each one custom-built. Clients typically wait six months between ordering and delivery. The 137-inch indoor N1 costs $200,000, a price that includes installation and setup, and the outdoor version is $240,000. If you’re so inclined, you can order a 165-inch ($300,000) or a 103-inch ($110,000) version instead.

Normally, this is the part when I say I look forward to reviewing a TV in CNET’s lab — but in this case, that’s not gonna happen.

SAG-AFTRA, the world’s largest labor union representing performers, announced Tuesday at CES 2024 that it has signed an agreement with artificial intelligence voice technology company Replica Studios. The agreement will allow union members to license digital replicas of their voices for use in video games.

As AI expands into more areas of life, its ability to mimic famous voices has been controversial. In 2023, an artist who goes by the name Ghostwriter released Heart on My Sleeve, a song that uses generative AI to mimic the voices of Drake and The Weeknd, though apparently neither of those stars had anything to do with the track. That song sparked a debate about Grammy eligibility, and Ghostwriter said at the time that he believed artists should financially benefit if AI copies their distinct voices.

Tuesday’s announcement marks the first time a group such as SAG-AFTRA has attempted to codify consent and compensation for AI replicas of performer voices.

AI and the Hollywood strike

AI was a major issue in the union’s 2023 strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which saw actors join already-striking writers on the picket lines in July. The strike ran until November, and was the longest movie and television strike in the union’s 90-year history. As a result, studios are now required to obtain consent from and pay actors for use of their AI-generated likenesses.

“Artificial intelligence has dominated the headlines, and for most performers, the best protection against the unauthorized digital simulation of their voice, likeness and/or performance is a SAG-AFTRA contract,” union president and actor Fran Drescher said in a statement Tuesday. SAG-AFTRA has over 160,000 members.

National executive director and chief SAG-AFTRA negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said at CES that the union had been involved with AI issues for almost a decade.

Replica Studios CEO Shreyas Nivas, who signed the agreement with Crabtree-Ireland at CES, called the agreement “groundbreaking” in a post on LinkedIn.

“This partnership will allow voice actors to safely explore new opportunities for their digital voice replicas while establishing protections around consent, contracts and compensation,” Nivas wrote. It also includes stated conditions for safe storage of such digital assets.

A turnaround for studios on AI

In a podcast that aired in December, SAG-AFTRA general counsel Jeffrey Bennett said that studios had earlier claimed they did not need performers’ consent to replicate their voices with AI.

“Before we started negotiating these terms, the position of the studios was [that] they did not need consent to create replicas,” Bennett said. “So, if you fast-forward from the position that they took as early as January 2023 to the position we now have with these contract terms and some of the legislation that’s coming, we have flipped that whole narrative on its head. They recognize now they can’t do this without consent.”

While this agreement is specifically about video games, Crabtree-Ireland said other agreements might be reached for other kinds of vocal performances, such as music and TV commercials.

The agreement does not cover the controversial use of performer voices to train large language models, Crabtree-Ireland said. That training has come under fire from notable figures such as Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, who, along with other authors, has sued artificial intelligence company OpenAI for allegedly using his published works to train the AI technology that powers generative AI chatbot ChatGPT.

Crabtree-Ireland also said he saw no reason why the estates of dead performers could not agree to the use of those voices under the new licensing agreement.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

A new company says its phone app can “translate” your baby’s cries and tell you whether they’re hungry, uncomfortable, tired or in need of a diaper change. Showcasing its tech at CES 2024 in Las Vegas, Cappella says it uses AI and machine learning to decipher an infant’s needs.

Read more: The most eye-catching tech gadgets at CES 2024

According to Cappella, its technology is about 95% accurate — that’s versus roughly 30% for humans who try to guess their babies’ needs. Take that figure with a grain of salt, of course: You know your baby best, and you can hit an “I disagree” button on Cappella’s app if you don’t think it’s correct.

The app costs $10 a month, and Cappella is still working on temperature — whether your baby is crying because they’re too hot or cold — as another data point for analysis.

Another product that claims to translate your baby’s cries, Qbear+, was shown off at CES last year, and even won an innovation award. The big difference here is that you don’t have to buy a new device: You can just use Cappella’s app on your own phone.

You can also use Cappella as a more general parenting app, as it can track sleep, feedings and diaper changes. It’s also working on using AI to soothe your baby, too.

“With our groundbreaking AI-powered baby cry translator, we accurately understand your baby’s needs and use AI-generated sounds to soothe your little one without requiring your constant attention,” Cappella’s site says.

Cappella is already available in the Apple App Store, and you can join the waitlist for the Android app in the Google Play Store.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

AI Is Everywhere at CES 2024. Here’s the Coolest Tech We’ve Seen So Far

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CES 2024 is in full swing in Las Vegas, where the CNET team is on the ground scouring the show floor for the best, and weirdest, cutting-edge tech. Here at the world’s largest technology show, we’re getting our eyes and hands full of everything from futuristic concepts to practical products you can preorder or buy today. As you might expect, AI is everywhere at CES this year, especially in the form of ChatGPT and similar generative AI chatbots.
We’re also seeing plenty of new car tech, gaming gear and robots — there’s even a robot for your dog.

Here’s what’s captivating us at CES 2024. We’ll bring you more news on the best tech highlights as we come across them this week in Las Vegas.

Foldable phones? How about a foldable TV?

What to do with a TV when it’s not being used? You could make it see-through (more on that below) or, if you happen to have a couple hundred thousand dollars lying around, maybe you opt for a foldable TV like the 137-inch one C Seed showed off at CES 2024.

The custom-built N1 features a stunning, bright, seamless picture,and its screen can rotate 180 degrees to face different directions. Divisions between the different sections of the screen were invisible. But when when not in use, the N1 folds up into a compact rectangular chunkin about 2 and a half minutes with the touch of a button, forming something that looks more like a metal bench than a large expensive TV.

Oh, and it costs $200,000 for the 137-incher, but hey, that includes installation and setu.

Steam Deck has a new challenger

After years of near misses such as the Steam Machine, the Steam Deck was an unexpected success for Valve, and the console is the current standard for mobile PC gaming. While the competing Asus ROG Ally looked cool, using Windows on it was apparently pretty clunky. Now that situation might change with the help of Intel — the company has a lot of experience making Windows machines. MSI’s Claw handheld obviously owes a debt to the Steam Deck, but it has Intel’s new Meteor Lake chips onboard instead of AMD chips. CNET’s Scott Stein says this development means more manufacturers will have the opportunity to design their own Steam Deck-alikes that can also run Windows.

This phone bends over backward for you

As phones with screens that fold in half get more consumer attention, Samsung appears to be poised to flip the market again. The electronics giant showcased a concept handset at CES 2024 called the Flex In & Out Flip that can fold in both directions and completely backward, allowing you to use the phone’s 6.7-inch screen even when the device is shut.

When bent backward, one side is slightly shorter than the other, to avoid covering the camera, while the larger side was big enough to show several icons in the phone’s quick settings menu, media playback controls and the time and battery level. Although the handset is only a concept design right now, CNET’s Lisa Eadicicco points out that it might offer a hint at the future of devices that roll, flex, bend, fold and otherwise contort to adapt tech to our unique needs.

Get to work with this gaming laptop

More and more, we’re asking our laptops to do double duty. In addition to strong gaming performance, we want to be able to use these thinner, lightweight devices for work or school. The HP Omen Transcend 14, which made its debut at CES 2024, is light enough for a daily commute but sports a 14-inch 2.8K OLED display with a 48-120Hz variable refresh rate backed up by an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070.

The 14-inch laptop weighs only 3.6 pounds (1.6 kilograms) — light for a gaming laptop and has battery life good for up to 11.5 hours with the integrated graphics and an Eco mode. The new 14-inch size starts at $1,500. A 16-inch version will also be available with the option for a 4K 240Hz OLED starting at $1,900.

This thermometer also checks your heart and lungs

If you ever wanted to hold up a single device to your head for a quick health checkup, the Beamo might be just what the doctor ordered. The BeamO, which looks like a game stick, is a four-in-one thermometer,electrocardiogram, oximeter and stethoscope made by Withings and it wasunveiled this week at CES 2024. Depending on where on your body you “beam it,” the device can give you clues about your health.

The device, which Withings describes as being “portable and smaller than a smartphone,”combines the simplicity of taking your temperature at home with some ofthe wellness metrics newer-grade wearables and smartwatches carry, likeblood oxygen and heart rate readings, as well as chest sounds when usedas a “digital stethoscope.”

Following expected clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration this June, you can get one for $250.

Forget a projector, get a huge TCL instead

CNET’s projector reviewer Geoff Morrison has been extolling the benefits of projectors for many years, but even he has come around to technologies like OLED and Mini-LED of late. What would he think of the new TCL 115QM891G? This is a 115-inch 4K LCD TV that’s up to five times brighter than most TVs, and with better blacks too, according to TV reviewer David Katzmaier.

As TV reviewers ourselves we’ve seen large TVs, but in the old days they were stuck at HD. The pixels on Panasonic’s 103-inch 1080p, for instance, were huge and easily noticeable. This is why 4K technology is so great — it means you can install a TV as big as a wall, and not see black lines between the pixels. The TCL also going to be a lot cheaper than that $100,000 Panasonic too, at under $20,000.

Stained glass gets a new lease on lifelong power

Solar panels are great — they produce electricity from one of the most abundant resources we have, and they pay for themselves in quick order — but no one has ever called them pretty. Fear not! Japanese company inQs has worked out a way to make solar cells out of colored glass. The company is exhibiting a number of objects at CES 2024, including a stained glass pane that generates electricity. The devices are small, and one was able to power only a desk fan, but we like how they point to a rethink of how solar panels should look and work.

Disguising weird-looking things has been a perpetual trend at CES, as with LG’s ArtCool air conditioners. And this year the Samsung Music Frame lets you put art inside a smart speaker.

Hey, Ida, which is better: Alexa or Siri?

AI is already everywhere here at CES 2024 — and adding to the list of products it’ll be appearing in is cars. Volkswagen has announced a deal with ChatGPT that enables users to ask all sorts of questions of their car, in the same way they would of a traditional digital assistant. At the moment, VW’s voice assistant lets users say, “Hey, Ida,” to ask a question about something basic, like requesting tire pressure. But the automaker’s cars are incapable of answering more advanced questions like, “When did the New York Jets last win the Super Bowl?” Under the new deal, if the car’s assistant can’t answer the question, it’ll hand off the query to ChatGPT. (Yes, the Jets did win one. But it was a very, very long time ago.)

It’s worth noting that competitors like Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri have been completing these queries natively for many years, so teaming with ChatGPT is an easier way for VW’s Ida to catch up.

Must-see-through TV

TVs are getting bigger every year, which means there’s a bigger slab of black plastic taking up a significant portion of the living room wall when it’s not in use. But what if we could make it disappear, without actually pulling it off the wall?

LG has apparently done just that with a transparent OLED screen that converts from a “fish tank” to a 77-inch television (pictured above). Unlike Samsung’s competing technology this will apparently be a real product, shipping later in 2024.

Meanwhile Samsung is showing off the first transparent version of its Micro-LED display tech at CES 2024. While transparent OLED and even LCD-based screens have been around for a while, Samsung says its Micro-LED display technology produces brighter, clearer images and is more transparent than the current tech. But Samsung says its transparent Micro-LED tech isn’t available in the market, so what Katzmaier saw (or didn’t see?) is essentially a concept.

A 2-minute ice cream maker

Coming soon to a restaurant near you: freshly made ice cream, ready from start to finish in just 2 minutes.

We’ve loved trying the vanilla ice cream churned out by the speedy ColdSnap — first in 2021 and then again this year. We’re still a year away from being able to buy one of these innovative ice cream makers for our homes, but the company came to CES this year with the news that its restaurant partners will have hold of the machines much sooner.

The countertop ice cream maker uses Keurig-like pods to make a bowl of the cold stuff in less than 2 minutes. The finished result has a gelato-like consistency that had us coming back for more every time we passed the ColdSnap booth.

Robot stain fighter

Here’s a product sure to clean up — literally. Samsung’s new Bespoke Jet Bot Combo, a smart robot vacuum with a mop, does more than just get rid of dust bunnies and dog hair. It’s designed to roam your rooms scouting for stains on hard flooring and scrub them out so you don’t have to.

The robot taps AI-powered object recognition to identify stains on hard flooring. Yes, it can tell the difference between the surfaces, presumably making adjustments to its cleaning technique accordingly. You can also tell this likely $1,000-plus household helper where it can and can’t go as it attacks stains as bad as a puppy piddle or a zinfandel spill with a spinning mop that hits 170 rpm. (Pricing details aren’t yet available.)

Teeth tech

AI isn’t just helping keep your floors clean, it’s also being used to make sure your teeth are as clean as they can be. The Oclean X Ultra Wi-Fi Digital Toothbrush features an algorithm-controlled motor, five brush modes tailored to specific needs, an interactive touchscreen that shows you areas you missed and, brilliantly/weirdly, an AI voice guide that speaks into your brain via bone conduction to help you improve your technique.

It also features Wi-Fi connectivity so you can pair it with your home network, and it will store information about your brushing history until you can download it to your app. It also offers 40 days of battery life through wireless charging. It will go sale in the US in the fall for $130.

What’s old is new

If you consider yourself an old-school smartphone user, you may yearn for the physical keyboards that used to be a mainstay of the phones of yesteryear. The iPhone’s on-screen keyboard ushered out the full physical keyboards that were popular on BlackBerry devices.

The Clicks keyboard, from Clicks Technology, will transform your iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, adding a keyboard that’s actually integrated into a wraparound case. This $139 wraparound slides onto your device and runs off the phone’s battery, so no charging required.

It’s all in the wristwatch remote

Imagine using your wrist to control everything around you. A flick this way, and you can turn off the lights or scroll through the offerings on Netflix. Finnish startup Doublepoint has developed software that can turn an Android watch into a general-purpose controller for any device via a Bluetooth connection.

The software will come to developers in the first half of this year,but it’s up to developers and app-makers to decide what a small gesture, such as tapping fingers or rotating your wrist, will actually do.

Steven Musil, Sareena Dayaram, Katie Collins and Ty Pendlebury contributed to this article.

iPhone owners who were part of the 2020 class-action lawsuit against the company should finally be receiving their piece of the payout after Apple admitted to slowing down its older phones.

With so many phones to choose from, people buy their handsets for the features, like cameras or messaging apps, or simply for the brand name. But with so much of our lives oriented around the phones we’re using all day long, the less glamorous aspect of battery life is often front and center. Especially when it’s suddenly at a very low percentage.

Owners of older iPhones noticed back in 2017 that their phones were running more slowly, and their batteries draining quickly. They were right. That same year, Apple admitted that its iOS software had slowed down the performance of older iPhones, but said there was a reason for it: As the lithium-ion batteries in the older phones aged, they didn’t hold a charge as well, and could unexpectedly shut down. The software slowed performance of those phones to prevent this, the company said.

As former CNET reporter Shara Tibken wrote, some people have long believed Apple hinders older devices to encourage customers to buy new models, which is something Apple has denied. But that belief only aggravated debate over Apple’s lack of transparency about the phone slowdowns.

The lawsuit was successful, and in August 2023, a judge cleared the way for payments to proceed. Some iPhone owners are reporting online that they are already seeing the money — here’s what to know.

How did Apple respond to the lawsuit?

The company apologized for its lack of transparency, updated its software and offered battery replacements. In 2017, the company said, “We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down,” and said it has never done anything to “intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”

The company has a lengthy page on its site discussing iPhone performance in relation to the battery. It warns that on older phones, iOS “dynamically manages performance peaks to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down so that the iPhone can still be used.”

How much will class members receive?

Apple agreed to pay a minimum of $310 million and a maximum of $500 million to settle the lawsuit. The settlement agreement required the company pay owners of certain iPhone models $25 per device, with that amount dependent on the number of claims.

According to SiliconValley.com, there have been around 3 million claims, meaning class members will receive about $65 per eligible phone.

However, as MacRumors reported earlier Saturday, several class members received payments of $92.17 per claim, beginning on Jan. 6.

“Nice thing to wake up to on a Saturday morning — especially after 3.5 years of waiting!” wrote Michael Burkhardt on X (formerly Twitter), sharing a snippet of a deposit statement showing he received six $92.17 payments.

A representative for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Why did payments take so long?

As is perhaps appropriate for a lawsuit about slowed-down phones, the payouts were slowed down. Two iPhone owners who objected to some of the terms of the settlement lost their appeal in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals back in August. The effective date of the settlement is Nov. 6, 2023.

Who is eligible to receive a payment?

The iPhones included in the settlement were the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus and SE running iOS 12.2.1 or later, as well as the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus if they were running iOS 11.2 or later before Dec. 21, 2017.

It’s too late to get in on the settlement if you haven’t already done so; the window for joining the class has closed. The deadline for submitting a claim was Oct. 6, 2020. More details about the settlement are available here.

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NordVPN provides additional transparency with a fourth no-logs audit

At the end of 2023, professional services firm Deloitte performed an audit of NordVPN’s claims that it doesn’t log its users’ online activities. During its evaluation, Deloitte analyzed Nord’s privacy features, including its base VPN, obfuscation, Onion over VPN (Tor), double VPN and P2P servers (which are meant for use with file-sharing software, like torrent clients). Onion over VPN and a double VPN further encrypt your web traffic for enhanced privacy, making it even harder to determine potentially identifying information like your IP address. Obfuscation tries to trick websites and apps from realizing that you’re using a VPN.

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