Standout Products I Saw At CES 2025

CES 2025 attracted 140,000+ people, had 2.1 million square feet of exhibit space, and featured thousands of product launches. Trying to find the products that stand out or break new ground is challenging. No one can see all of the show or products at an event this large and so spread out.

The best way to approach this show is to list the four or five product categories you are interested in and then go and see them in person. I also rely on known tech publications that attend the show. I look for what they point out as products of interest daily and then add them to my go-see list while I am at the show.

After the show, I look for tech publications to share what they call the "best products or trends at CES 2025".

For example, my Forbes colleague, Sandy Carter, shared 14 highlights in AI, Robotics, Glasses, and Health.

The folks at CNET shared their Jaw-dropping Next-Gen Tech: The Most Stunning Reveals from CES 2025.

ZDNet shared CES 2025: The 25 best products that impressed us the most.

My friend and former editor Lance Ulanoff and his team at Techradar shared The best 25 gadgets we saw at CES 2025.

As a tech analyst, I am pulled into a lot of meetings, so my time on the show floor is limited. However, I did carve a half day to check out products on my list, and here are the ones that stood out to me.

Smart Glasses-A major theme of CES 2025

At the show, at least ten new smart glasses were released. While I could not see all of them, I did get to check out four that were really interesting. The first was the new smart glasses from Xreal.

The company unveiled its One Pro AR glasses with enhanced optics and hardware. The new model has a 57-degree field of view and displays 100 nits brighter. It also comes with a camera attachment, which makes it possible to capture images and videos on these new smart glasses. I got to try them out in a demo, and these new models help set Xreal apart from many of the other smart glasses vendors.

This model can connect to any device you have, whether it is a PC, tablet, or smartphone, and can show a screen that has increased from 100 inches to 171 inches now. I have the original model, and I connect my Xreal glasses to my iPad when I fly, which gives me a theatre-like experience when sitting in a cramped plane seat.

Another smart glasses I got to test was from Even Realties. Its G1 smart glasses look like regular glasses but are more like what we expect AR glasses to be. When you ask for information, it displays the data on the lenses themselves. In a demo given by their CEO, he was speaking Chinese, and the lenses translated what he was saying. I will have more to share about these glasses in the future once I spend time testing them, but I was quite impressed with what they offer today and their roadmap for the future.

I saw another very interesting pair of smart glasses from Halliday. I did not get to test them as their booth was always busy but did get to look at what they are offering. They call them the "world's first Proactive AI Glasses with invisible display." Like the Even Realities G1, the Halliday smart glasses also deliver the information on an invisible display. But they add a twist I had not seen in smart glasses: they offer discreet control in a ring that is worn that controls every action you take on the glasses themselves. These glasses also translate 40+ languages. And one feature that intrigues me is a teleprompter feature. I hope to test these smart glasses in the future and see how well they work in real-life experiences.

One last smart glasses I want to mention is from Solo. I just started testing them and they, too, show a lot of promise. They can translate, give AI-driven information and use touch sensors on the side of the glasses to navigate.

These smart glasses are ones to watch in the new year.

Speaking of translation, this is one of the features that I believe will be incredibly important in smart glasses and earbuds.

Over my 40-year career, I have traveled to over 40 countries, many of which do not speak English. I have dreamed about real-time translation, and only now are we starting to see this functionality become available. It first showed up in smartphone apps and is now becoming available in smart glasses and earbuds.

At the show, I had a chance to test earbuds from Vasco called the Vasco Translator E1. It can translate 51 languages straight to your ear. These earbuds detect your selected language, so the translation starts automatically. The set includes two earbuds for the right ear. You can share one with the person with whom you want to converse. These work amazingly well, and CES, with participants from over 40 countries, was a great place to test them. I visited the booths of China, Korea, and Italy in the Eureka Park area of the Venetian Exhibit Hall, listened to many speaking these languages at the booths, and could understand what they were saying.

The Vasco Translator E1 was a game-changing experience for me. I have made dozens of trips, especially to Asian countries, and I would have loved to have had these during those trips.

Vasco also has a handheld translator called the V4. It can translate up to 112 languages and speaks in 82. They also have a pocket version called the Vasco Translator M3, which speaks in 76 languages.

The inclusion of translation and advanced AI functionality in smart glasses and earbuds could have a serious impact on international relations and is a welcomed technology.

Revolutionary PCs

As a PC analyst, I also researched new and revolutionary technologies in personal computers and found two that are of real importance. The first one was from a company called Ventiva.

They showed a fan-less proof-of-concept laptop design powered by Intel Lunar Lake processors at CES. By collaborating with Dell Technologies and Intel on the PC design, this concept introduces a new level of silent productivity for sub-12mm laptops. Their technology is based on the company's patented Ionic Cooling Engine (ICE®) technology, which eliminates the need for mechanical fans, using intelligent software control to enable optimal performance in electronic devices—without any moving parts, noise, or vibration. The ultra-compact ICE9 solution enables laptop designs with a height of less than 12mm, rivaling the thinnest laptops on the market today. Its space-efficient form factor supports sleek, thin designs and provides original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) the flexibility to integrate additional functionalities into their products.

Today, almost all laptops use some type of fan to cool them. However, fans draw power and add height to laptops. Ventiva's technology is a big deal and could change the way all laptops are designed in the future.

The other PC related product I saw was Lenovo's new rollable laptop. The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable extends the screen upward rather than folding it (or folding two screens together) like almost every dual-screen laptop we've seen. However, it is a real product, not just a concept or prototype. The ability to turn a laptop screen from 14 to 16.7 inches with a press of a button sounds like something I want.

I got to test this rollable laptop, and it really is a breakthrough product. Although pricey at $3500 when it ships in Q2 of 2025, because it can go from a 14-inch display to a 16.7-inch display, it gives you two monitors in one laptop. I could fit two full web pages in the 16.7 display.

I have seen many rollable displays over the years, mostly in handheld devices. But using one in a laptop is significant, and we could see new laptops with rollable screens in the near future.

Huge announcement in AI and desktop computing

Nvidia announced its Project Digits, a personal AI desktop supercomputer that provides AI researchers, data scientists and students worldwide with access to the power of the Nvidia Grace Blackwell platform.

Project Digits features the new Nvidia GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, which offers a petaflop of AI computing performance for prototyping, fine-tuning, and running large AI models.

With Project Digits, users can develop and run inference on models using their own desktop system, then seamlessly deploy the models on accelerated cloud or data center infrastructure. It will be available in May with a starting price of $3000.

Nvidia's Project Digits was probably the most important product launched at the show. It brings AI inferencing of large data sets to a desktop computer. Janakiram, MSV of Forbes, does a deep dive on Project Digits and is a must-read to understand what this new desktop is all about and what it can do.

CES, produced by CTA, proved to be a landmark event, showcasing a variety of revolutionary products and innovations across multiple sectors, from AI and robotics to smart glasses and personal computing, to name a few. As the technology landscape continues to evolve at an accelerated pace, the show highlighted not only groundbreaking hardware but also the promising integration of AI and real-time translation technologies that have the potential to reshape industries and improve global connectivity. CES will continue to be the benchmark for technological innovation. Although I have been to 50 of these shows, I continue to look forward to them each January and hope to be at next year's show as well.

Disclosure: Lenovo, Dell, Nvidia and Intel subscribe to Creative Strategies research reports along with many other high tech companies around the world.