The vacation season has barely begun, however a few of us are already preparing for CES 2025. Shortly after New Yr’s Day, many from the Engadget crew shall be packing our luggage to fly to Las Vegas, the place we’ll be protecting tech’s largest annual convention. As standard, our inboxes are already flooded with pitches from firms which are planning to be there, and our calendars are filling up with appointments for briefings and demos.
Based mostly on our expertise, in addition to remark of current business tendencies, it’s pretty straightforward to make educated predictions about what we’d see in January. Through the years, the main target of the convention has spanned areas like TVs, vehicles, good house merchandise and private well being, with a smattering of laptops and equipment thrown in. At CES 2025, we count on to see AI get much more pervasive in all areas of the present ground. However we’re additionally more likely to get the standard slew of recent processors and subsequent laptops, in addition to all method of wearables, trackers, toilet home equipment and therapeutic massage chairs. Oh, the therapeutic massage chairs.
If you happen to’re already waiting for 2025 and are studiously researching what is likely to be coming in January, right here’s a style of what our crew expects to see on the present.
New video playing cards from AMD and NVIDIA
There’s little question 2025 goes to be a momentous yr for PC avid gamers. NVIDIA is anticipated to debut its long-awaited RTX 5000 video playing cards at CES, whereas AMD CEO Lisa Su has confirmed we’ll see next-generation RDNA 4 GPUs early subsequent yr. Of the 2 firms, AMD might use the improve extra. Its final batch of Radeon 7000 playing cards have been first rate mid-range performers, however they lagged far behind NVIDIA’s {hardware} when it got here to ray tracing, and AMD’s FSR 3 upscaling additionally couldn’t compete with NVIDIA’s AI-powered DLSS 3.
“Along with a robust improve in gaming efficiency, RDNA 4 delivers considerably larger ray-tracing efficiency and provides new AI capabilities,” AMD CEO Lisa Su stated in an October earnings name.
As for NVIDIA’s new {hardware}, a rumor from the leaker OneRaichu (through DigitalTrends) advised that the RTX 5090 could possibly be as much as 70 p.c quicker than the RTX 4090. (That’s a GPU that I beforehand described as having “unholy energy.”) In addition they word that different “excessive degree” playing cards might see 30 to 40 p.c efficiency bumps. These positive factors is likely to be sufficient to tempt rich RTX 4090 homeowners to improve, however RTX 4070 and 4080 homeowners may wish to skip this technology. For NVIDIA holdouts with RTX 3000 and earlier GPUs, although, subsequent yr will be the good time to improve. — Devindra Hardawar, senior reporter
AI PCs spherical 2
Final yr, I predicted that AI PCs would dominate CES, and that principally turned out to be true. As 2024 rolled on, we noticed much more highly effective NPUs in chips from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm. Microsoft additionally doubled down on AI PCs with its Copilot+ initiative, which gave an enormous advertising and marketing push for synthetic intelligence options and premium specs (like having a minimum of 16GB of RAM).
Anticipate extra of the identical going into CES 2025, alongside much more AI being stuffed into each class of product possible. This yr, particularly, PC makers are more likely to gear as much as reap the benefits of Home windows 10 assist ending subsequent yr. As an alternative of simply upgrading your outdated laptop to Home windows 11, the likes of Dell and HP would somewhat you purchase an entire new AI PC with the brand new OS pre-installed.
Whereas 2024 was a yr of infinite AI PC hype, 2025 may find yourself being a yr of reckoning. Microsoft’s long-delayed Recall function is slowly trickling out to extra customers, but it surely’s already exhibiting some obtrusive safety holes, like failing to wash social safety and bank card numbers from screenshots. We’ve additionally been principally underwhelmed with Apple Intelligence’s picture technology capabilities. PC makers have been keen to speak up the potential of AI-powered options till now, however in 2025 they’ll have to truly show they will reside as much as their fantastical claims. — D.H.
Earbuds that comply with Apple’s lead on listening to well being
I’m absolutely conscious not each audio firm has the power to construct out a clinical-grade listening to take a look at and listening to help options of their apps. Nonetheless, Apple’s current replace for the AirPods Professional 2 ought to encourage the competitors to supply some type of listening to well being instruments on their flagship merchandise. Jabra was most likely the very best geared up to do that since mum or dad firm GN has in depth listening to help expertise. Sadly, the corporate introduced earlier this yr that it wouldn’t make earbuds anymore.
Samsung and Google might most likely combine one thing like what Apple made for the AirPods, given each firms’ present well being platforms. In the event that they did, these bulletins are unlikely to be made at CES, as each firms choose to host their very own standalone {hardware} occasions all year long.
That leaves Sennheiser as the largest audio firm that persistently launches earbuds and headphones at CES. Final yr, it showcased a number of new fashions, together with one with heart-rate monitoring for exercises. Plus, it already gives listening to help with devoted units just like the true wi-fi Dialog Clear Plus. These earbuds are extra listening to targeted than for common content material consumption, so it might be nice to see Sennheiser carry some options from that product to its flagship Momentum line of earbuds. Maybe a Momentum True Wi-fi 4 Professional or Plus is within the playing cards, however the present mannequin is simply 9 months outdated.
In fact, there’s loads of room for different firms to innovate right here, and there shall be no scarcity of recent earbuds in Vegas subsequent month. We additionally are inclined to see a ton of assistive units and know-how launch at CES, from main accessibility firms like OrCam and all method of smaller manufacturers. I simply hope among the new tech consists of extra common listening to instruments on the fashions most individuals will wish to use. — Billy Steele, senior editor
Automobile electrification goes sky excessive
As the expansion of electrical vehicles nears 10 p.c of recent fashions bought within the US, it’s straightforward to neglect that wheeled autos aren’t the one type of transportation seeing the shift to battery-powered propulsion. Flying taxis have been a mainstay of CES for the previous few years, with idea autos from manufacturers as giant as Hyundai dotting the present ground in Vegas.
Granted, these contraptions look extra like large drones with cockpits than something the Jetsons ever dreamed up. However with firms like Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation pledging to truly launch eVTOL companies (electrical vertical take-off and touchdown) in 2025, the period of air taxis might have landed for actual this time. — Sam Rutherford, senior reporter
Expanded dialog enchancment options on soundbars
With regards to the primary elements of soundbars, there actually isn’t a ton of innovation from yr to yr. Heck, Samsung’s largest replace final yr was the addition of HDMI 2.1 assist to its flagship mannequin, which ought to’ve been there already. Corporations have additionally been targeted on the transition to cable-free every thing, whether or not that’s wi-fi Dolby Atmos or wi-fi transmission bins. Audio enhancement options are a spot the place firms can actually rise above the fray, and instruments like Sonos’ TV Audio Swap and Bose’s Private Encompass Sound are nice examples of this. A key space almost each firm can enhance is dialog enhance, a function that raises the quantity or separates spoken phrase from background noise and music for higher readability.
Sonos made an enormous leap on this regard on the Arc Extremely, providing two extra settings for its so-called Speech Enhancement. Beforehand, this was simply an all-or-nothing toggle, which is how most firms deal with their variations of this software. Not solely is the Sonos replace customizable to a level, it’s additionally simply higher, thanks partly to the redesigned structure of its new premium soundbar. That is an apparent space the place different firms can enhance.
LG and Samsung sometimes announce new soundbars at CES, and there are many smaller firms that can debut some too. I’d like to see all of them take dialog enhancements a step additional and on the very least give a number of choices for the way it’s utilized. LG has been utilizing AI Sound Professional from its TVs since 2021 and Samsung gives one thing known as Adaptive Sound on its house theater audio system. I might count on them each to usually enhance the standard of their options, however I’m hoping they’ll develop the capabilities too. — B.S.