CES 2025: all the news, gadgets, and surprises

JMGO’s N3 Ultra Max projector simplifies setup with a motorized gimbal that handles alignment automatically. Once positioned in a room, you can change where it’s projecting using its motion-sensing wireless remote. The all-in-one projector will handle the rest of the fine-tuning, including focus, optical zoom, and keystone adjustments to ensure the image is level and perfectly aligned.

Although the 4K N3 Ultra Max debuted in China late last year, JMGO is announcing a new version for the global market at CES that includes improved software, Google TV, and native Netflix support. The company expects it to be available globally, including in the US, sometime in the fourth quarter of 2025, but pricing details haven’t been finalized yet.

Samsung’s smart fridges will soon be able to identify when you’re running low on something and add items to your Instacart app so you can order what you need from the grocery delivery service right from your fridge.

Today, Samsung announced a multiyear partnership with Instacart that will let you shop for groceries from the screen on your Samsung Bespoke fridge — the 32-inch one or the one with the new 9-inch screen the company is debuting at CES this month.

LG has announced additions to its ultra-light Gram and Gram Pro laptop lineup, adding cloud-based and on-device AI-powered features that go beyond its current Gram laptops.

The 16-inch Gram Pro will also be the first Copilot Plus PC in the LG Gram lineup and is further distinguished as the only model using the Intel Lunar Lake Core Ultra V-Series processors. The 17-inch Gram Pro and 16-inch 2-in-1 use Intel’s Arrow Lake Core Ultra H-Series processors.

LG has developed a new lamp that doubles as an indoor garden. The lamp, which LG will show off at CES in January, serves as an adjustable grow light for the tray of up to 20 plants beneath it, while also brightening up your room.

It has two different lighting modes: downward-facing lighting during the day that helps grow your plants, and upward-facing lighting at night to help brighten up your home. The lamp comes equipped with a 1.5-gallon water tank and “automatically dispenses the right amount of water and nutrients for the number and variety of plants being grown,” according to LG.

“The future of gaming handhelds is coming to CES ‘25 and you have a front row seat!” the email in my inbox exclaims.

Let me translate: it looks like Lenovo just tacitly confirmed it will announce its first SteamOS handheld in Las Vegas on or before January 7th, 2025. We’re expecting it to be the Steam button equipped Legion Go S that leaker Evan Blass revealed last week.

Samsung just announced new hybrid cooling tech coming to its refrigerators in 2025. They’ll use a traditional compressor alongside a new Peltier module — a semiconductor device that transfers heat from one side to the other when current passes through it. This approach results in a fridge with reduced temperature variations inside to keep foods fresher longer while better utilizing interior space, according to Samsung.

The Peltier effect is something we’ve seen harnessed by wearable personal air conditioners, microclimate chairs, and hobbyist coolers in the past. This is the first time we can recall seeing it used in a full-sized refrigerator sold by a major brand.

Often at CES, you’ll see a very impressive new technology debut at exorbitant prices before trickling down to more affordable models a couple years later. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what we’re seeing with LG and its Zero Connect Box. We got our first look at it with the M Series OLED in 2023. Now the company is bringing that Zero Connect Box, which beams audio and video to the TV panel, to one model of its still-terribly-named QNED Evo LED lineup.

The box can transmit 4K video at up to 144Hz, and by all accounts from reviews last year, it works as advertised and poses no issues for gaming. The only cable that runs to the TV screen itself is the power cable.

In August, an Asus thermal engineer goofed by revealing the existence of possibly the most powerful tablet PC ever made — an Asus ROG Flow Z13 powered by an unannounced AMD “Strix Halo” chip, one boasting an incredible 80 watts of power for its GPU alone.

Now, VideoCardz is reporting that the chip (and tablet) are about to become official at CES 2025 next month — as the AMD Ryzen AI Max 395 Plus, a Zen 5 processor with Radeon 8060S graphics.

Nvidia’s new RTX 50 series graphics cards are looking like more of a lock for CES 2025 than ever, with Zotac and Acer now having leaked as many as five new GPUs — ones which may also have a new AI trick up their sleeves that we’ve never seen before.

Inno3D, an Nvidia graphics card partner, says it plans to “highlight” a wide slate of Nvidia AI features at the Las Vegas show, including “Neural Rendering Capabilities” that are allegedly “Revolutionizing how graphics are processed and displayed.” HardwareLuxx spotted the news.