CES 2026: The 15 Most Exciting Products We Actually Want to Buy

Screens & TVs: The Wall Gets Thinner, the Picture Gets Wilder

LG brought the most jaw-dropping display of the show: the OLED W6, a wallpaper TV measuring just 9mm at its thinnest point. When you see it in person, it doesn’t look like a TV — it looks like someone applied a thin film of moving light directly to the wall. There’s no visible bezel, no bulge, and the included magnetic mounting system means installation genuinely is as simple as hanging a painting. The W6 ships in 65-inch and 77-inch variants, and the price reflects the engineering ambition: this is a premium product for premium buyers, but it represents the form factor that most large TVs will aspire to within five years.

Samsung’s answer to LG came in the form of Micro RGB — a new display technology that uses individual red, green, and blue micro-LEDs rather than the white-LED-plus-color-filter architecture of conventional LED panels. The result is a measurable improvement in color volume (the range of bright, saturated colors the display can reproduce simultaneously), reduced blooming in high-contrast scenes, and a claimed 30% efficiency improvement over equivalent QLED panels. Samsung is pitching Micro RGB as the successor to QLED rather than a direct OLED competitor, and the pricing is meant to be more accessible than LG’s ultra-premium wallpaper products.

Hisense showed up to CES 2026 with a statement: a 116-inch RGB Mini-LED TV that produces peak brightness levels that are simply disorienting in a demo environment. The set uses a combination of RGB Mini-LED backlighting (similar in concept to Samsung’s Micro RGB but at a different scale) and AI-driven local dimming that the company claims can address zones as small as 1/40,000th of the panel area. Whether those specs translate to real-world picture quality advantage over competitors at real-world viewing angles remains to be verified in independent testing, but as a technology demonstration, the 116-inch Hisense was one of the most immediately impressive displays at the show.

Laptops & Computing: Intel Fights Back, Asus Goes Dual

Dell’s XPS 14 is not a new product — but the CES 2026 version is a significant enough refresh that it warrants fresh attention. The big news is the display: a 3K OLED panel that Dell is positioning as the best laptop screen ever shipped in a mainstream premium notebook. The combination of OLED’s perfect blacks and near-infinite contrast with a 3K (2880×1800) resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate creates a panel that makes everything look noticeably better — documents, photos, video, code. It’s the kind of display where the first time you open the lid, you start mentally calculating whether your current laptop is worth keeping.

Asus took a more dramatic swing with the ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 — a gaming laptop with dual 16-inch OLED displays stacked vertically. The primary screen faces you as normal; the secondary folds up at an angle behind the keyboard, creating a second workspace for Discord, monitoring dashboards, or game maps. It’s an idea Asus has tried before in earlier Duo models, but the execution here is considerably more refined — the secondary display hinge mechanism feels solid, the thermal management has been redesigned to handle the extra display power draw, and the overall footprint is more manageable than the previous generation.

Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 was the processor story of the laptop segment at CES, both for its performance numbers and for the political context surrounding its launch. The Panther Lake architecture, built on Intel’s own 18A process node, represents a genuine comeback from Intel’s manufacturing struggles of recent years. Independent testing has shown competitive performance against Apple Silicon and AMD’s Ryzen AI chips in certain workloads, though direct comparisons are complex because each architecture has different performance profiles across different task types.

The political context: the US government announced a 10% equity stake in Intel around the same time as the Core Ultra Series 3 launch — a move framed as supporting domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity. The optics of a government bailout alongside a major product launch are complicated, but the underlying industrial policy logic is straightforward: the US cannot allow its only significant domestic CPU manufacturer to fail, regardless of competitive pressures from ARM-based alternatives.

Wearables & AR: Xreal 1S Is the First AR Glasses Worth Wearing in 2026

The Xreal 1S is the most important wearable at CES 2026, and it’s not particularly close. At $449, it’s the first AR glasses that thread the needle between “nerd prop” and “thing a normal person might wear on the subway.” The frame is noticeably slimmer than the previous Air 2 model, the optics have been updated to reduce the rainbow artifact effect that plagued earlier Xreal products, and the display brightness has been boosted enough that outdoor use is now genuinely viable on bright days.

The Xreal 1S connects to phones and laptops via USB-C and renders a virtual screen that floats in your field of view — up to a claimed 140-inch equivalent at comfortable viewing distance. The practical use cases include travel entertainment, remote desktop work, and hands-free document viewing. It’s not the spatial computing experience that Apple Vision Pro promises, but it’s achievable, portable, and priced at a level where enthusiasts will actually buy it.

Razer’s Project Motoko was the other AR announcement worth noting — a more aggressive form factor that pushes the display brighter and adds an integrated camera for mixed-reality passthrough, at the cost of a larger frame profile. Razer is positioning it as a gaming peripheral first and a general AR device second, which is a narrower market but probably a smarter launch strategy for a first-generation device. Price and availability were not confirmed at the show.

The Pebble Watch 2 was the comeback story of the wearables segment. The original Pebble smartwatch developed a cult following before the brand was acquired and effectively killed in 2016. The 2026 revival brings back the e-ink display (best battery life of any smartwatch), the physical side buttons, and the straightforward notification-and-fitness approach that made the original so beloved — all at $225, which undercuts the Apple Watch SE by a meaningful margin. Pebble 2 isn’t trying to compete with Apple on features; it’s competing on values: battery life, simplicity, and price.

Robots & AI Hardware: The Year Robots Got Practical

The Roborock Saros Rover is the most immediately practical robot at CES 2026. Roborock has been making robot vacuums for years — reliable, well-regarded products — but the Saros Rover takes a large conceptual leap: it can navigate stairs. Not metaphorically, not “in future firmware” — in the demo, it physically climbed a standard residential stair step using a set of articulating legs that deploy from its otherwise standard round chassis. This matters because stair-limitation has been the single biggest constraint on robot vacuum deployment in multi-story homes. If Roborock can ship stair-capable navigation at a competitive price, it fundamentally expands the addressable market.

The HoverAir Aqua Drone was the most delightful product demo at the show. Building on HoverAir’s previous self-flying pocket drones (which generated considerable YouTube attention for their one-button operation), the Aqua adds full waterproofing — the drone can fly in rain, land on water, and even submerge briefly for underwater shots. The target use case is adventure sports and travel photography where conventional drones are too fragile. The Aqua maintains HoverAir’s core proposition: it weighs less than 100 grams, fits in a jacket pocket, and requires no piloting skill to produce usable footage.

The Uber-Lucid-Nuro robotaxi announcement was the mobility story of CES 2026. Three companies — a ride-hailing platform, a premium EV manufacturer, and an autonomous vehicle software specialist — announced a joint program to deploy purpose-built autonomous taxis in select US markets in 2026. The Lucid chassis brings long-range battery capacity that addresses one of the key operational challenges in robotaxi deployment (vehicles need to run 20+ hours a day to be economically viable), while Nuro’s software stack handles the autonomy layer. Uber provides the demand-side platform. It’s a vertically integrated bet that no single component company could make alone.

Gaming & Fun: The Stuff We Actually Want to Play With

The 8BitDo FlipPad is a foldable game controller that channels the design language of classic Game Boy accessories into a surprisingly modern product. Folded, it’s the size of a credit card (slightly thicker), easily pocketable. Unfolded, it springs into a conventional two-grip controller form with a satisfying mechanical click. The d-pad and face buttons have the tactile quality 8BitDo’s fans expect. Bluetooth 5.3 with sub-10ms latency makes it viable for competitive mobile gaming, and USB-C passthrough means you can play while charging. It will retail at a price that’s firmly in impulse-buy territory, which is exactly where 8BitDo wins.

Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 is the gaming laptop chip story — Panther Lake architecture brings meaningful improvements to the integrated GPU that matters enormously for thin-and-light gaming. The arc GPU clusters in the new chips are capable of running current titles at 1080p with reasonable settings, meaning for the first time in years, the integrated graphics option on a premium ultrabook is not an immediate disqualifier for light gaming. Discrete GPU gaming laptops will still dominate enthusiast use, but Core Ultra Series 3 expands the “casual gaming on your work machine” segment significantly.

Razer showed multiple gaming peripherals beyond Project Motoko — updated mechanical keyboard switches, a refreshed line of ultra-lightweight mice targeting competitive FPS players, and concept gaming chair designs with integrated haptics that vibrate in sync with in-game audio. The haptics chair concept is interesting but needs significantly more development before it’s a product — the demo was impressive in short bursts but showed clear limitations in sustained play sessions.

3 Products That Are Pure Hype

Not everything at CES is worth your attention. Here’s where we’re being honest about what impressed on stage but has serious questions around shipping, pricing, or usefulness.

CES 2026 Products at a Glance

Our quick-reference guide to the 15 products worth your attention

Xreal announced the 1S at CES 2026 with availability in H1 2026. Check Xreal’s official site and major electronics retailers. At $449, it’s the most accessible AR glasses with genuine outdoor usability we’ve seen.

Yes — the Pebble Watch 2 was confirmed to work with both iOS and Android via Bluetooth. The companion app handles notification syncing and health data. Battery life is claimed at 7+ days, which is the main differentiator over Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch alternatives.

The W6 is genuinely innovative but will command a significant premium. If you need a TV now and your budget is under $3,000, the current LG C-series or Samsung S90D provide excellent picture quality at accessible prices. If the form factor matters to you (and it might — the W6 looks extraordinary), wait for W6 pricing and reviews before deciding.

The Saros Rover deploys articulating legs from its chassis when it reaches a stair edge. The legs extend, grip the stair riser, and lift the body to the next level before retracting. In the CES demo, this worked cleanly on a standard residential stair step. Multi-stair navigation was not demonstrated publicly. Watch for independent reviews before purchasing.

The US government announced a 10% equity stake in Intel as part of a broader industrial policy to support domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Intel is the only major US-headquartered CPU company still manufacturing chips domestically, and the government stake is designed to ensure Intel has capital to continue the 18A process development that Core Ultra Series 3 depends on. It’s less a “bailout” than a strategic investment in semiconductor sovereignty.