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For many of us, computers have become central to our work, which means it’s having access to the latest and most widely used software and applications is vital for success. Microsoft’s Windows OS and productivity tools like Word and Excel are acclaimed worldwide and used by schools and businesses across the globe. Getting your hands on that software for yourself can cost a pretty penny, but right now you can score lifetime access at a serious discount.

Woot has knocked hundreds off of essential Microsoft programs like Windows 11 Pro and Office Pro 2021 so you can upgrade for less right now. But these deals expire Jan. 17, so be sure to make your selections before then if you don’t want to miss out on these savings.

Whether you have an older computer you’d like to upgrade or you aim to build your own and need to invest in an operating system, Woot has the latest Windows OS available at a discount. You can get a digital download of Windows 11 Home for just $20 — that’s an 86% savings over its list price. For $5 more, you can snag Windows 11 Pro. That saves you 88% and may be a better investment for anyone who works from home or relies heavily on their computer thanks to its enhanced security features and simplified user interface.

Windows 10 Pro is also available for just $25 right now, but remember that this OS was released in 2015 and will reach the end of its support in October 2025. We recommend going with one of the newer OS options. Also, note that Windows OS software is not compatible with iOS, Android or Chromebook devices and you will need an internet connection for online activation.

For those looking to add some of Microsoft’s most popular productivity apps, Woot has multiple versions available at a deep discount right now. Window users can snag Microsoft Office Professional 2021, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher and Access for just $35, which saves you $405 compared to Microsoft’s price. If you’re a Mac user, you can pick up Microsoft Office Home and Business 2019 for $30, but note that it only includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Microsoft’s extended support for this older version will expire on Oct. 14, 2025.

A few other software deals are available, including lifetime AdGuard subscriptions for just $13 and Microsoft Visual Studio Pro 2022 for $45, along with some online course options to help you learn how to use some of the most in-demand software.

When making a software purchase from Woot, you’ll receive a redemption code via email within a few business days so that you can register your product. Woot also has a helpful installation guide that will walk you through the process if you need a little help getting started. It’s worth noting that each of these products is a one-time purchase that you can use for one device only. You cannot redeem your code on multiple devices, so be sure that you install it on the device you plan to use.

Earfun has consistently released decent-sounding noise-canceling earbuds in the $30-$70 price range that offer good bang for your buck. It also makes portable Bluetooth speakers but until now hasn’t offered over-ear noise-canceling headphones. That’s about to change in March, as we’ll see the new Wave Pro headphones hit Amazon, Earfun announced at CES 2024. They’ll list for $80 but could end up costing closer to $70 with discounts, based on how Earfun has priced its products in the past.

Read more: Best noise-canceling headphones under $100

Earfun is billing the Wave Pro as high-res headphones. They have 40mm “Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) composite film dynamic coil” drivers and feature LDAC audio codec support when paired with devices like Android smartphones that support LDAC streaming over Bluetooth (LDAC is capable of delivering audio at higher bit rates so you may see a slight bump in audio quality if you use a high-res streaming service such as Qobuz, Tidal or Amazon Music).

Earfun says the 268-gram Wave Pro is equipped with a “5-Microphone AI-powered algorithm” for voice calling, a low-latency (<55ms) game mode, multipoint Bluetooth pairing and an auxiliary port for wired listening (there’s no mention of USB-C audio). Battery life is rated at up to 80 hours with noise-canceling off and 55 hours with it on and a 10-minute charge gets you 10 hours of listening time.

While I haven’t tried the Wave Pro headphones yet, at first glance they seem to check a lot of boxes for what you might hope for in a pair of value headphones. If they manage to sound as good as Earfun says they do — or even 75% as good — and also be comfortable, they could make out a list of the best noise-canceling headphones under $100.

Wave Pro’s key specs, according to Earfun:

• Hybrid active noise cancellation up to 45dB and anti-wind noise reduction
• 268 grams
• Hi-Res audio certified with LDAC audio codec support
• Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) composite 40mm dynamic drivers
• Frequency response range of up to 40kHz
• Hands-free calling with advanced ENC and 5-mic Al-powered algorithm
• Up to 80-hour battery life (55 hours with ANC on) with fast charging
• Multipoint connection allows you to switch between devices quickly
• Game mode with extremely <55ms low latency
• Aux wired connection mode (cable included)
• Price: $80
• Shipping: March 2024

At CES, Earfun also unveiled a new Bluetooth boom box speaker, the UBoom X ($180), which is due to ship in June and will compete with Tribit’s Stormbox Blast and Soundcore by Anker’s Motion Boom Plus speakers. I suspect its real price will be less than $150.

UBoom X’s key specs, according to Earfun:

• Bluetooth 5.3
• JumboBass technology
• 4-Driver design and 80 watts of power (2×4-inch mid-woofer + 2x20mm tweeter driver)
• IPX7 Waterproof
• Up to 30-hour battery life with quick charging
• Lightweight design with carry handle and strap
• Multi-color LED lighting
• Supports USB-C charging output and can also be used as a power bank to charge external mobile devices
• Customize the sound with EarFun Audio App
• Pair it with another UBoom X for stereo sound or link with up to 50 Earfun speakers via Party Connect mode
• Built-in microphone for hands-free calls
• Price: $180
• Shipping: June 2024

I’ll have hands-on reviews of both products when they’re released later this year.

Not everybody wants a bunch of speakers in the living room, and to make matters worse, a traditional surround sound system requires them to live in specific places. Center speakers go above or below the TV, fronts to either size and rears at the back corners of the room. But what if there’s a doorway or open space right where a speaker should go? Dolby will soon have an app for that.

The audio company demonstrated a speaker setup system at CES 2024 called Dolby Atmos Flex Connect, and I was able to experience it myself at the company’s private demo suite. A TV at the front of the room joined three speakers placed seemingly at random, one on a bookshelf to my left and two more to my right. Dolby’s representatives handed me a phone with the demo app queued up, and I hit the “I am where I normally watch the TV” button to start the calibration process.

Following a series of simple prompts, I measured first the TV’s speakers then the other speakers by simply aiming the phone at them in turn. The phone’s mic listened to the sound from the speakers then entered a calibration mode for a few seconds. After the process finished, the message “Calibration complete!” appeared on the TV and phone along with a graphic depicting the location of the speakers in the room, and I was able to listen.

The results were impressive. Yes, I could still sort of detect the location of the speakers by listening hard, but for the most part their locations blended into a single field of sound. I appreciated that the side of the room with two speakers didn’t sound massively different from the side with one, and the low-quality TV speakers blended in nicely with the other speaker set.

Dolby says Flex Connect accounts for different performance between speakers, for example, lack of bass from TV speakers, and directs frequencies to other speakers or a subwoofer accordingly.

The demo I got was meant to show off the system and won’t appear in the market as shown. Instead, partner companies will be able to add Flex Connect to their own TVs, speakers and apps. The system will debut later this year on the high-end Hisense 110UX as well as TCL TVs. In both cases the system uses the TVs’ built-in mics, not a phone app, for calibration, but the Dolby demo I got was designed to show off how it could work with lower-end TVs that lack built-in mics. Note that the speakers themselves, in addition to the TV, would also have to be compatible with the Atmos Flex Connect.

Of course, if you just use the TV’s speakers or have a single soundbar, like many TV watchers, you won’t need the capabilities of something like Flex Connect. But if you upgrade to add more speakers, and don’t want to have to worry about exact placement, the system could be really useful.

A startup called Spectricity hopes its special purpose camera that captures 16 different colors will mean your future phone will be able to handle the subtleties of real-world color more capably.

The company has developed a very compact form of what’s called a multispectral camera, a module that captures many more frequencies of light than the red, green and blue of traditional digital cameras. By marrying its multispectral image data with the photo taken by a traditional camera, the system can better navigate tricky lighting situations, improve skin tones in photos, boost apps for makeup choices and dermatology diagnoses, and help with online purchases where accurate color matters.

“Smartphones are colorblind. It’s a problem all smartphone makers are trying to solve,” said Chief Executive Vincent Mouret, who leads the 35-person spinoff from Imec, a prominent chip research and development center in Belgium. He spoke from the CES 2024 show, where Spectricity is showing off its S1 multispectral camera, now squeezed down to fit in a phone.

Indeed, the company has at least three customers that he expects will include Spectricity’s camera in 2025 phones.

Cameras are arguably the highest profile aspect of any new phone and the main reason many of us upgrade. They’re getting steadily better as phone makers increase sensor size, add new cameras for ultrawide and telephoto perspectives and improve computational photography software that milks better shots out of small image sensors. Phone makers are desperate for an edge that helps them stand out over rivals.

It’s not clear just how often Spectricity’s technology would improve a photo. Not every shot is complicated by unusual lighting or difficult situations, like mixed lighting with both warmer-toned indoor lights and cooler outdoor sunshine.

But color problems can be significant, as evidenced by the effort companies like Google and Apple are investing into truer rendering of skin tones, especially for people of color.

Michael Jacobs, a Spectricity application engineer, demonstrated the company’s technology by taking a photo of a doll portraying a Black person against a pinkish background. Google’s Pixel 7 Pro shifted the color dramatically, giving the doll’s face a blue cast and turning the wall purple. The same shots modified by the Spectricity color information showed much more natural tones.

“We can detect the face in this multispectral image and then find the illuminance that is shining on that face,” Jacobs said. “We use that information to correct illuminance and then end up with the correct color for that face.”

Spectricity isn’t alone in its interest. Marc Levoy, a researcher at Adobe and formerly at Google, who pioneered computational photography, sees multispectral sensors as an avenue for smartphone photography improvements.

Fitting a multispectral camera into a smartphone

Spectricity’s S1 camera module, including the image sensor and the company’s own lens, fits into the small volume of a regular smartphone camera module. It’ll cost only about $3. A more significant concern for smartphone makers could be the volume the camera occupies, since every cubic millimeter inside a phone is precious.

The image sensor filters light by using interference patterns that thin transparent films can cause, either transmitting or reflecting particular frequencies of light depending on the thickness of the film. It’s what causes the rainbow patterns you can see when oil is spilled on a puddle in the road.

Spectricity’s sensor has a 5-megapixel resolution, but since each pixel captures only one color, it yields a 640×480 image with all 16 colors per pixel. Processing those color combinations for each pixel is what allows Spectricity’s technology to infer the true colors of a scene, the company says.

The S1 produces a relatively low-resolution image compared to smartphones that typically take 12, 24 or 48 megapixel photos. But the color data can be mapped to the full-resolution shot. The S1 works in conjunction with a phone’s camera and doesn’t replace it.

Google is laying off hundreds of employees across its Pixel, Nest, Fitbit, and Assistant divisions, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Google’s augmented reality team was also hit with layoffs, according to a report by 9to5Google.

“To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”

The Alphabet Workers Union, the organization representing Google employees and contractors, said the layoffs were “needless” and accused Google of continuing to “fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter.” It recommitted to its goal to protect workers.

Tonight, Google began another round of needless layoffs. Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter. We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!

— Alphabet Workers Union (AWU-CWA) (@AlphabetWorkers) January 11, 2024

Some of these layoffs could be due to organizational changes, and it’s likely that affected employees could reapply for open positions at Google.

Google’s layoffs come as the tech industry saw massive firings early last year. Not only did Google lay off a significant amount of employees, so too did Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter. There were 263,000 people laid off in tech last year alone, according to Fortune. The reasons for the layoffs were numerous, with some companies downsizing after sizing up extensively during the pandemic while others were looking to prioritize other product categories.

2024 is already showing that the tech layoff trend will continue. This month, layoffs have hit Amazon Prime Video and Amazon-owned video game streaming website Twitch, as well as software developer Unity Technologies and Xerox. Discord, the chat platform popular with gamers, also said it would be laying off 170 people, or 17% of its workforce, earlier Thursday. Duolingo laid off 10% of its contractors, with their roles reportedly being taken over by AI.

It’s not clear how much the rise in AI adoption might have influenced these layoffs or how consumers will be affected by the changes. But 2024 is off to a familiar start for the tech industry.

A report by TechCrunch says that over 1,000 employees at Google were laid off. CNET hasn’t independently verified the report.

CES 2024 in Las Vegas, as in years past, is a flurry of dazzling gadgetry: giant televisions, robots, EVs and foldable phones. But underpinning just about every piece of tech at this year’s show is AI, the technology that’s captivated millions ever since ChatGPT stormed onto the internet in late 2022. It’s not hard to imagine C-suite executives pounding on boardroom conference tables demanding AI be a cornerstone in future products.

And who could blame them? When ChatGPT launched on Nov. 30, 2022, it took only five days for it to attract 1 million users. By comparison, it took Netflix three and a half years to accomplish the same feat. Two months later, ChatGPT had an estimated 100 million users.

“AI is reshaping industries beyond technologies and has the power to make lives easier and more inclusive for all,” J.H. Han, CEO and head of the device experience division at Samsung, said during the company’s keynote on Monday.

Read more: AI Chatbots Are Here to Stay. Learn How They Can Work for You

Across the CES landscape this year, there was no shortage of AI-infused products angling for attention: lamps, lawn mowers, vacuums, mirrors, meat thermometers, dog collars and even pillows. Samsung showed off an AI robot named Ballie and refrigerators with AI vision that can recognize foods to suggest recipes or tell you when the expiration date is near. Samsung’s washing machines will use AI as well, learning your habits and suggesting cycles.

AI isn’t one singular thing. Apps such as ChatGPT are built on generative AI. It uses massive troves of training data, synthesizing information much like the human brain, to create text, images or even computer code in seconds. It’s a transformative technology that has Big Tech titans like Google and Microsoft investing billions in a quest to lead the market. McKinsey estimates that generative AI could add the equivalent of up to $4.4 trillion in economic benefit annually, increasing global GDP by 7%. In Big Tech’s AI wake are hundreds of smaller companies floating to the surface, finding specific ways of using generative AI tech for bespoke applications, like helping high schoolers with college essays or creating online dating profiles.

CES 2024 has been packed with product reps, CEOs, investment bankers and keynote speakers all vibrating their vocal cords to the tune of AI. It’s not just major tech brands, but also the likes of Walmart, McDonald’s, L’Oreal and Volkswagen all filling the Las Vegas Convention Center to appeal to CES’ 130,000 attendees – and to a wider world looking to figure out how AI will fit into their lives.

“You don’t want to show up at the costume party in plain clothes, right?” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, principal analyst at Forrester. “Everyone’s going to be there saying AI. You’re probably going to look like a fool if you don’t.”

The Consumer Technology Association, the trade group that runs CES, expects that over 230 million smartphones and PCs arriving in the US this year will use generative AI in some form or fashion.

For many products on the CES 2024 show floor, AI is more of an evolution than a revolution. A few years back, refrigerators and toasters were “smart” with Amazon Alexa or Samsung Bixby integrations. While the ideas were cool, being able to ask your fridge to order some milk didn’t substantively change people’s lives. Voice recognition technology felt half-baked at times, as if these smart home assistants were only as smart as their pre-programmed answers allowed them to be.

But the new wave of AI is, in a sense, a rebranding of smart tech. This conversational technology is multilayered, allowing you to ask question upon question, shimmying in more parameters without hesitation.

For instance, you can ask the upcoming ChatGPT-powered Volkswagen ID 7 to find a nearby Chinese restaurant. It might point you to Panda Express, but you could instead request something more upscale. Heck, you could request five upscale options and ask which has the best seafood options. Pretty clever stuff.

Walmart said it’s using AI to make product searches more dynamic, allowing shoppers to look beyond brand names. People can query “football watch party” and get results for wings, chips and big-screen TVs. Even TVs themselves are now on the AI train, with LG’s top-end OLED devices promising better picture processing and upscaling, thanks to AI.

It’s not about tech for tech’s sake, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said during the company’s keynote on Tuesday. The goal of adding something like generative AI should be one in which the “benefits of technology are pursued but people are considered along the way.”

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger sees technology as impartial and says it’s up to those who use it to shape how it’s used. AI is just the latest development in humanity’s technological evolution and will eventually become a mainstay of everyday life.

“Would you go to a radiologist that wasn’t using AI-assisted radiology? Absolutely not. Just like you wouldn’t have gone to a finance guy who didn’t use a spreadsheet,” Gelsinger said in an interview with CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevolos during the company’s keynote on Tuesday.

Anyway, don’t expect a $3,500 AI-powered toaster to send you on an existential crisis. Actually, most of the products shown off at CES tend to be conceptual, showing what’s possible but seldom materializing in the market, at least not in the short term. But some features do trickle out to consumers, slowly changing the tech landscape.

“What [brands] don’t want to do is go back home and compete on price,” Chatterjee said. Instead, he said, brands find more value in delivering features you will continue to rely on, learning more about your habits as you continue to use their product.

“You’re basically hooked.”

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

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. Fortunately, 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. 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.

Just about all of us are online these days, and that means it may be time to think about investing in a virtual private network, or VPN. VPNs are generally a good idea for everyone, because they help encrypt your connection to the internet, which protects your data while you’re online. They also open up a wider variety of globalized streaming entertainment options.

If you’re looking to a VPN to help you surf the web with confidence, there are a number of deals that can save you some cash available right now. One of our favorite VPN services, Surfshark, is offering a stellar discount, slashing prices on plans by up to 82% and throwing in up to four months for free.

Surfshark is easy to use and offers plenty of security features that make it a solid option for folks looking to protect themselves online. Surfshark also allows you to use your subscription on an unlimited number of devices, which is convenient for large families, and the cost is competitive as well, which is why it earned a CNET’s Editors’ Choice Award for Best Value VPN in 2022.

There are three major offerings happening now. For the lowest month-over-month cost, you can sign up for the Surfshark Starter plan. It knocks 82% off the price and offers four free months on a two-year subscription, providing you a total of 28 months of Surfshark VPN for only $1.99 a month, billed at $55.72 up front.

If you’re looking for more comprehensive protection, you may want to opt for the Surfshark One plan. It’s also 82% off right now and comes with four extra months of service, bringing you a total of 28 months at just $2.69 a month, billed at $75.32 up front. It also comes with antivirus protection, alerts you of data breaches and gives you access to a private search engine.

And if you want to nab the subscription with the most features, Surfshark One Plus may be the right plan for you. Like the others, it’s available at an 82% discount and gives you four months of free service on a two-year plan, meaning you’ll get a total of 28 months of Surfshark VPN for only $3.99 a month, billed at $111.72 up front. You’ll get all the features listed above, plus access to Surfshark’s sister Incogni service, which will help remove your data from both company databases and people-search sites. That should make you less vulnerable to someone acquiring your information, at least for a while.

Whichever plan you choose, you’ll benefit from a secure internet connection and nab a great price for more than two years of service. However, if you want to see what other options we recommend, check out our roundup of VPN deals happening now.

Barely making it to your gate at the airport — or even missing your flight — due to long lines at security checkpoints could soon become a thing of the past. Here’s why: The 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 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 John Fortune, Screening at Speed program manager.

The Screening at Speed team and the Transportation Security Administration, 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 transportation security officer 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 have self-service checkpoints?

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. Vanderlande is one of the three companies working with the TSA and the Screening at Speed program.

The prototype that’s being 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, check out this ChatGPT-enabled electric car and the most captivating tech at CES so far, including foldable TVs.

At last year’s CES, I drove all the way to Vegas just to see a prototype of a next-generation display called nanoLED. If you haven’t heard of it, you might have heard of the technology it’s based on: quantum dots. While the prototype was cool enough for me to drive eight hours over two days, it was still just a tiny prototype. The screen was more Nintendo Switch than home theater size.

Things have moved quickly in the last year. At CES 2024, Nanosys showed off a significantly larger prototype. Not TV sized just yet, but it’s a big step.

NanoLED, specifically electroluminescent, aka “direct-view” quantum dots, are even more advanced than current TV tech like LED, LCD or OLED. They boast improved picture quality, energy savings and manufacturing efficiency. And they’re theoretically so easy to produce, they could usher in a sci-fi world of screens on everything from eyeglasses to windscreens and windows, similar to transparent OLED and Micro-LED. Here’s what we know.

Read more: Best TVs of CES 2024

Direct-view quantum dots grow up

At 12.3 inches, the new nanoLED screen is pretty much a usable size. Not for a TV, of course, but definitely for tablets, small laptops and automotive uses. Resolution of the new prototype was a lot higher too, at 1,920×720. Sure, 167 ppi is not mind-blowing resolution, but again, this is very much preproduction.

While perhaps not as interesting as pixels and screen sizes, one of the most important aspects of this prototype is that it was made at atmospheric pressure. The previous prototype required a vacuum chamber. That’s a big step towards cost-effective manufacturing.

Sharp is Nanosys’ manufacturing partner. While Sharp has been out of the US TV business since 2015, it didn’t abandon the TV market entirely and reacquired its brand name for use in North America in 2019. The company has a lot of firsts in the TV market, including the first LCD TV, all the way back in 1992, and it sold the first 8K TV in 2016. It’s also worth noting that it’s majority owned by a little company called Hon Hai Precision Industry Company Limited, aka Foxconn, a massive manufacturing company that makes iPhones, Kindles, PlayStations and more.

What does the future hold? Neither Nanosys nor Sharp are revealing that. It’s not difficult to guess we’ll see an even larger prototype, maybe even before next CES, probably with even higher resolution. Already Sharp has revealed in a recent white paper that it’s been able to achieve 3,994ppi on a silicon wafer, with promising results up to 6,048ppi, which potentially gives it even higher resolution than Apple’s much-hyped micro-OLED. TVs don’t need that kind of resolution, but it is promising for the technology’s scalability. Regardless, it will still be a few years before we see production nanoLEDs, and those first displays will be on smaller devices, but this is a promising tech that seems to be marching steadily towards production.

To whet your appetite, check out our tour of the factory where they make quantum dots.

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As well as covering TV and other display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations around the world, including nuclear submarines, massive aircraft carriers, medieval castles, epic 10,000-mile road trips, and more.

He wrote a bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines, and also Budget Travel for Dummies. You can follow him on Instagram and YouTube.