It’s the first week of a new year and there’s no time for the tech world to slowly ease back into things following the holidays. That’s because CES 2026 is in full swing, with all manner of companies descending on Las Vegas to reveal their latest innovations and what they’re planning to bring your way in the near future.
Many of the Engadget crew are on the ground to check out as much of the new tech as possible. Of course, we’re keeping tabs on all of the major CES press conferences too. Samsung held its First Look presentation, which focuses on home products, while LG has shown off a wide array of TVs and Lego unveiled its new Smart Brick technology. We’ve heard from the major chipmakers, gone hands-on with Samsung’s trifold phone, checked out some funky laptops and seen some cute robots. There’s some hot gaming gear at the show too, not to mention some weird tech.
You don’t necessarily have to wait to get your hands on all of these gadgets either. Some are available to buy right now.
You can catch up on all of the big CES 2026 announcements (and some of the more offbeat gizmos we’ve seen) right here. We also had CES live updates with all the latest news from the event. Be sure to check out Engadget’s best of CES 2026 as well, in which we highlight 15 winners across several categories, and name our best in show award winner.
Lego
In its first CES appearance, Lego announced the Smart Brick, a standard-sized brick with a 4.1mm ASIC chip inside that’s designed to respond in different ways depending on what set you’re building and how you’re building it. Using what Lego calls the “Play Engine” and integrated copper coils, each brick can sense things like motion, orientation and magnetic fields, plus its own distance, direction and orientation in relation to other Smart Bricks. Each brick also has a teeny tiny speaker built in that will play audio “tied to live play actions” rather than only pre-recorded clips.
Accompanying Smart Bricks are Smart Tags and Smart Minifigures, which have their own capabilities — one of which is letting Smart Bricks know what context they are being used in. All of these pieces tie together via a local wireless layer dubbed BrickNet that, in part, lets Smart Bricks know where they are placed in relation to other smart components.
The first “Smart Play” partner is, unsurprisingly, Star Wars, which will launch three “all-in-one” sets using Smart Bricks, Smart Tags and Smart Minifigures. The 473-piece Darth Vader TIE Fighter set will cost $70; the 584-piece Luke’s Red Five X-Wing set comes in at $100 and the 962-piece Throne Room Duel & A-wing set will set you back $160. The speakers in these sets can emit lightsaber swooshes, fighter sounds and The Imperial March.
Engadget deputy editor Nathan Ingraham got to check out Lego’s Smart Play system in person and I’ve never been more envious of him. One of the Star Wars sets allows you to have an interactive lightsaber duel between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Not only does the Vader minifigure have his signature heavy breathing sound, the speaker emits the Sith Lord’s “nooooo” yell if he loses the duel.
All of this seems extremely cool. I’m looking forward to seeing what else Lego and fans can do with the Smart Play tech.
LG
Along with some TVs (which we’ll get to momentarily), LG brought plenty of other products to CES. For one thing, the company shone the spotlight on its CLOiD robot. Like the far creepier-looking 1X Neo, the CLOiD is designed to help with household tasks such as starting laundry cycles, folding clothes, unloading the dishwasher and serving food.
This appears to be more of a concept than something you’ll be able to buy anytime soon. During an in-person CES demo, Engadget senior reporter Karissa Bell saw CLOiD competently pull off some household tasks, albeit very slowly.
The company also debuted the LG Sound Suite, a modular home audio system it developed in conjunction with Dolby to take on the likes of Sonos. Just ahead of CES, LG pulled back the curtain on a new batch of xboom speakers as well as some monitors and ultralight Gram laptops that are made with a material it’s calling Aerominum.
The chipmakers
It’s CES, so of course we’re going to see a bunch of laptops and desktops, along with announcements about the tech that powers the new models. That means NVIDIA, Intel, AMD and Qualcomm are all in town to talk up their latest chips and other innovations.
Given its lofty position in the industry (and the economy) NVIDIA’s CES press conference is always one to keep an eye on. This year’s edition was laregly a recap of the company’s recent moves, but it did have some news to share.
NVIDIA announced Alpamayo, which is a group of open-source reasoning models designed to help autonomous vehicles handle difficult driving scenarios. The company also revealed that a super computer built on the Vera Rubin GPU architecture NVIDIA unveiled in 2024 is in production.
Things haven’t exactly been going great for Intel for a while, but the company is surely hoping that its Core Ultra Series 3 chips can help it right the ship. These are the first chips to be built using Intel’s 18A (18 angstroms, which is just under 2nm) process. The company says they offer improved performance — 60 percent more than the previous-gen Lunar Lake processors — and battery life improvements for laptops.
The Ultra Series 3 includes a new Arc B390 integrated GPU, with 50 percent more graphics cores, double the cache and 120 GPU TOPS of performance. Put all that together and these chips should deliver up to 77 percent faster gaming performance than Lunar Lake models, Intel said. To that end, the company teased a Ultra Series 3-powered gaming handheld for later this year.
Engadget senior editor Devindra Hardawar played some Battlefield 6 on a Core Ultra Series 3-powered Lenovo IdeaPad Pro 5 (an ultraportable) and came away impressed. The game ran at up to 190 fps in 1080p with the graphics settings on high, even without a dedicated GPU. That’s a promising sign for the embedded Arc graphics on Intel’s chips, as well as the company’s upscaling and frame generation tech.
Of course, AMD wasn’t going to be left out of the CES party. The company announced several CPUs for laptops and desktops, while chillingly declaring that “AI is everywhere” and “changing the face of gaming.” Ick. There was a lot of AI chat during the two-hour(!) keynote, along with a “a jet-powered flying robot.”
And then there’s Qualcomm. The company revealed the Snapdragon X2 Plus chip at the show. It’s more of a mid-range chip that isn’t quite as powerful as the higher end Snapdragon X2 Elite — it doesn’t have as many CPU cores, for one thing. Still, Qualcomm claims the X2 Plus offers as much as 35 percent faster single-core performance over the previous gen. The company also says the Adreno GPU offers a performance boost of up to 29 percent compared with the last generation.
Laptops
What would CES be without some new hardware that makes use of those new chips? As ever, laptop and desktop makers were at the show to offer up their latest models for your consideration. (Be sure to check out our dedicated roundup of all the laptops that grabbed our attention at this year’s show.)
Samsung’s Galaxy Book 6 Ultra, Galaxy Book 6 Pro and Galaxy Book 6 boast Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips and revamped designs that are said to improve heat management. You can read our story on the Galaxy Book 6 series for the specs of these laptops, though we don’t have pricing or a release window as yet.
Dell realized it messed up by killing off the XPS name as part of a broader rebranding effort and we’re glad to see that the company is making a U-turn on that front. A full lineup of XPS laptops is coming this year, including an all-new XPS 13 (a long-time Engadget fave on the Windows ultraportable front). Dell also has 14- and 16-inch XPS models in the hopper, along with others it’s keeping under wraps for now.
We love an odd laptop and ASUS didn’t disappoint by bringing the ROG Zephyrus Duo to CES. This is a dual-screen gaming laptop with two 16-inch OLED panels, one of Intel’s new CPUs and up to an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU. The keyboard is detachable and can work wirelessly. A kickstand can help you set up the Zephyrus Duo in all kinds of orientations. You can even position the dual screens in an upside-down “V” tent mode. We don’t know the price of the Zephyrus Duo as yet, but it surely won’t be inexpensive.
That’s not all ASUS brought to the dance. The company made a special edition of the ROG Flow Z13 some that’s styled after the works of the famed game designer Hideo Kojima. The ROG Flow Z13-KJP has visual flair that’s draws from the likes of Death Stranding and Metal Gear. Kojima’s Ludens mascot is here too. There’s no pricing or release date for this variant or its matching accessories just yet.
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