Everyone told me CES 2026 would be the “Year of AI.” Again. I walked onto the Las Vegas floor expecting the usual barrage of generative slop—chatbots that hallucinate, smart fridges that judge my diet, and vague promises of a “seamless future.”
I was wrong.
Well, mostly. While the AI hype train was certainly chugging along, the stuff that actually stopped me in my tracks wasn’t software. It was weird. It was physical. It was stuff that made me want to reach out and touch it, or in one case, bite it. The industry seems to be waking up from its digital coma, realizing that we still have bodies. And hands. And ears.
Here are the five things that actually woke me up.
1. The Blackberry Ghost Returns
I miss buttons. I don’t mean the haptic feedback lies that modern phones tell us. I mean the satisfying, plastic clack of a real key.
Apparently, I’m not alone.
Walking past the Clicks booth felt like stepping into a time warp. The Clicks Power Keyboard isn’t some cheap plastic dongle you find in a bargain bin. It feels serious. Heavy. It snaps onto your phone with a magnetic thud—MagSafe or Qi2—and suddenly, your slab of glass is a tool again.
Why does this matter? Because typing on glass is terrible. We’ve just accepted it for fifteen years like a collective bad habit. This keyboard fixes that. It connects to tablets and TVs too, but that’s not the point. The point is the friction. The resistance under your thumb. It’s a physical pushback against the frictionless, soulless slide of modern UI.
And yes, it charges your phone while you type. Which is good, because I spent twenty minutes just writing nonsense emails to myself because it felt so good.
2. Screens That Actually Move
Rectangles are boring. They’re rigid. They sit there, demanding space even when you aren’t using them.
Lenovo clearly agrees. I saw their Legion Pro Rollable, and for a second, my brain didn’t track what was happening. One minute, it’s a 16-inch laptop. Then, with a mechanical whir, the screen just… grows. It unspools. It stretches out to a massive 24-inch ultra-wide monitor (they call it “Arena Mode,” which sounds intense).
It’s powered by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090, so it screams. But the specs aren’t the story. The story is that the hardware is finally getting flexible.
Then there’s Samsung. Their 130-Inch Micro RGB TV isn’t a TV. It’s a wall. It doesn’t look like a piece of furniture; it looks like a hole in reality. It’s trying to stop being a “device” and start being architecture.
3. The “Friend” in the Jar
This one freaked me out.
I stood in front of the Lepro Ami, and it watched me back. Not in a surveillance way (though, let’s be honest, probably that too), but in a… social way. It’s a desktop bot with a curved OLED face that looks like a little person trapped in a jar.
It tracks your eyes. It reads your micro-expressions. If you’re stressed, it knows. It even has a sensor to check your heart rate, which feels wildly invasive for a desk ornament. But here’s the kicker: I found myself smiling back at it.
It’s the “Uncanny Valley” weaponized.
Then you have the Vinabot AI Talking Frame. It takes a photo of your grandma, animates it, and uses voice cloning so she can talk to you. Is it comforting? Or is it Black Mirror horror brought to life? I couldn’t decide. It blurs the line between memory and simulation in a way that made my stomach turn. But I couldn’t look away.
4. Finally, A Robot That Does the Dirty Work
I hate folding laundry. It’s the Sisyphus myth of domestic life. You finish, and two days later, the pile is back.
LG’s CLOiD might actually end that cycle.
This isn’t a Roomba that gets stuck on a rug. This is a humanoid bot with arms that have seven degrees of freedom. I watched it pick up a delicate glass, then handle a pile of clothes. It has fingers. Real, articulating fingers. It’s clumsy, sure. It moves with that slight robotic hesitation. But it works.
And Roborock’s Saros Rover? It has legs. Well, wheel-legs. It climbed over a threshold that would have defeated my current vacuum in seconds.
The “Zero Labor Home” has been a marketing lie for fifty years. But watching CLOiD fumble with a shirt, I thought: Okay. We’re close.
5. Music inside Your Skull
“Open your mouth,” the rep said.
I hesitated. But it was a lollipop. Specifically, the Lollipop Star.
I put it in my mouth and bit down. Boom.
The floor was noisy—thousands of people shouting, booths blasting techno—but inside my head, the music was crystal clear. Bone conduction. The vibrations travel through your teeth, into your jaw, and right into your inner ear.
It’s a weird sensation. You feel the bass in your molars. It’s private, visceral, and kind of silly. But it’s a reminder that tech doesn’t have to be serious. It can just be candy that plays pop music through your skull.
So, What Now?
I left Vegas with aching feet and a pocket full of brochures. But for the first time in years, I wasn’t bored.
We’re moving past the “screen era.” We’re moving into something messier. Keyboards you click, screens that stretch, robots that fold your pants, and ghosts in jars. It’s not seamless. It’s not “optimized.” It’s strange.
And honestly? I’m ready for strange.