The Vergecast - 2023's laptops and wearables we may (or may not) see

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

The Verge’s Alex Cranz talks with senior reviewer Monica Chin about the laptops she saw at CES this year and what it means for 2023’s computer trends. Verge reviewer Victoria Song joins the show to discuss the FDA regulations behind health tech, and whether the stuff we saw at CES will ever be available in the United States. Further reading: The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 3i is the CES 2023 gadget I’m most excited for Lenovo Yoga Book 9i hands-on: the dual-screen future OLED plus E Ink: Lenovo’s ThinkBook Twist is halfway to my dream laptop  Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola hands-on: a ThinkPad’s best friend The new Asus ZenBook Pro 14 leads a line of impressively refreshed OLED laptops  Acer’s new Predator Helios laptops can pack a bright 250Hz Mini LED screen The LG Gram Style might be the prettiest laptop of 2023 With PC sales down, laptop makers turn to services The HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook is neat, but what's with the RGB? The regulatory maze behind health tech vaporware Withings wants you to pee on its latest device  How do you sell over-the-counter hearing aids when nobody knows who you are? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, and you're listening to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of laptops with a ton of screens. I'm your friend Alex Cranz, and I am currently walking through the streets of New York to try to tire out my dog after he slept for the last three days on our drive back from Texas. Found a whole bunch of cool gadgets in my mom's house. Really excited to play with them, but first I've got to get this dog worn out. And we've got to do a whole Vergecast episode about CES. I know, I know. We've done a ton of episodes about CES so far, but there's just a little bit more left to do. So we're going to be talking to Monica Chin about all the laptop she saw, and when we're going to actually see them in 2023, and what they mean for laptop trends this year.

And then we're going to talk to Victoria's song, because health technology was a really big deal at the show this year. And she's been looking into what the FDA is doing to make sure that when we use all these new health gadgets, we don't die. But first, I got to go wear this dog out. I'll see you right after the break. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools

means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompt something like, Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data, in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast.

We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Okay, and we're back. So there was a ton of laptops announced at CES.

I know we've talked about a bunch of them on the show already, but I had to talk to Monica Chin because she was actually there. She got to play with these laptops. And she wrote about almost every single one announced at the show, it seems like. So we're going to talk about the Lenovo's and the Razors and the LGs and the Souss, all of them. And then we're going to talk about the state of the laptop business

in 2023 and what you're going to see from all of these companies this year. It's a super fun conversation, very nerdy. Let's get into it. All right. Monica, have you recovered from CES yet? Did you get a funk? A funk? Yeah, the CES funk. Are you like snoddy right now? No, actually, I was so sure I was going to come back like deathly ill, but I'm like very fine right now. I'm raring to go, which I think might be the first time that has ever happened to me after CES where I haven't come back with like the flu. So knocking on wood, you never know what could happen. But this was a remarkably good recovery. Awesome. Well, that is great because I'm just going to be like grilling you today about CES. I'm very jealous that I didn't get to go. I didn't get to go to like that weird room that Lenovo always has.

It's not weird. It's fine. We missed you in that room, Alex. I know. They were probably like, where was she? There were laptops with your name on them everywhere and you weren't there. It's so sad. Oh, my God. You're giving me a lot of FOMO right now. But you should, you should, saw a bunch of stuff. I know there was the really, really kick-ass Lenovo that I'm glad I didn't go, because I would have been just playing with that the entire time. What was your favorite thing that you saw at CES this year? I would have to say the Lenovo dual screen. Basically what it is, is there's a 13.3-inch OLED screen on the top. There's a 13-inch OLED screen on the bottom, 2.8K, same size, same resolution. You can fold it in half. You can unfold it. So when you unfold,

it's just like this super tall thing, and then you, like, put it on a kickstand, and it's just like this one massive long window with like a hinge in the middle, but whatever. And then you can fold it into a clamshell laptop mode where you have like one screen in the top and one screen on the bottom. You can put it sideways so it's like a book. You can fold it backwards so that it's a tablet and but like the keyboard's not awkwardly on the back. There are a lot of ways you can use it.

It's like a surface new reimagine kind of like this sort of form factor isn't new. But it feels a little more similar to me to using like a foldable like Lenovo's done a foldable before ASUS has a foldable. Various people have foldables. This is like that, but like if it didn't suck. Because like foldables are like a lot of fun to fold, but like they're fun to use a tablet. When you fold them into a clamshell form factor, the problem is that like cuts the screen size you have in half and like makes it like really impractical to use often.

Like even the 17 inches when you fold them, they still become like pretty small and pretty cramped because of like the bezel space on the side. Because you're talking about the foldables that are like one. one big display. Like the Zenbook fold. Yeah, the ThinkPadX one fold. Yeah. This is like that, except when you fold it, it actually, you can actually still use it.

It's just like a regular 13 incher, which I really, I really like. And I think this is actually, like, really versatile and practical. I know you only got to spend a little time with it. You didn't get to spend days and days with it. But how is the typing? So there is a keyboard. There's like a keyboard that you can like snap on and off. That is what I would use most of the time, just because, like, that's a keyboard.

I want to type on a keyboard most of the time. You can also type in it, plug in an external keyboard, which is what I assume some folks will do if they don't like the flat one. I liked the flat one. I thought it was fine. It did not feel like super, super flat. I would not say it was, I mean, it doesn't feel like using like a great keyboard from Aesuits or someone.

But like I thought it was like acceptable. I would have been happy to like type on it. It had a nice click. You can also use a haptic feedback keyboard on the flat screen on the bottom if you fold it into clamshell mode. But is it good? So obviously I think most people aren't going to prefer to like type on a flat screen because like it's typing on a flat screen. I much prefer it to typing on like an iPad.

The haptic feedback is like very good. There's like a real click. The keys are really roomy because it is full size. Like it is the size of that it would be on a 13 inch laptop. So it wasn't like riddled with typos the way that like it often is when I'm typing on an iPad because it's so tiny. Yeah. And so it was like usable. It was probably the best on screen keyboard I've ever tested, which again the bar for that is on the floor.

but it is not difficult to meet that standard at all, but it is a nice haptic keyboard that you could use it in a pinch, you feel like you are clicking keys a little bit, which, again, is more than, for example, you get from the Windows on-screen keyboard most of the time. I'm honestly not surprised by that because Lenovo's always been pretty good at keyboards, more so on the ThinkPad than the Yoga lines,

but, like, I've always liked a Lenovo keyboard. Yeah, Think Bad Keyboards are legendary. Unfortunately, this one, not being a think pad, does not have a haptic little red thing in the middle. That would have been the best. But, you know, you can't have everything in life. But it is really fun. And the other cool thing about clamshell mode is when you use that on-screen keyboard, regardless of whether you are using the haptic one or the physical one that you, like, plonk on,

there is a touchpad that they put, like, on the bottom. Because, like, one of my big concerns when I first saw this announcement, I was like, where is the touchpad? There's no touchpad on this. Like, how do you navigate this? And the answer is that there are a number of different ways, but one of them is there is a haptic touch pad that they put on the bottom. The buttons are actually like physical buttons.

I mean, they're like virtual physical buttons. Like, they're not like real buttons. But like they are outlined as buttons. When you click, they feel like you're clicking buttons. Again, it doesn't feel like you're clicking like great buttons, but it is like, I would say it is better haptic feedback than like some other haptic touchpats out there. Yeah, I deeply enjoy Lenovo products. Think pads are like, if I had to own a Windows PC that wasn't one I built myself, it'd probably be a think pad. But the bloatware can be kind of bad in Lenovo products. Did this feel like bloaty at all, like all this extra software? Because this isn't Windows stuff. This is like Lenovo made all of this stuff to make it work. So there is one, as far as I know, there is one Lenovo like control center where you sort of control everything. And,

other than that, it really is just, at least in my, what I was doing, it was Windows with, like, a bunch of extra gestures that they put in. So there were not, like, as far as I know, it was not like an Acer experience where there's, like, Lenovo Experience Center and Lenovo Game Center and Lenovo Sound Center. Like, I do, there might be those, but I didn't have to interact with them if they were there. I didn't have things popping up everywhere. Again, this was a pre-production unit, so that is somewhat difficult to extrapolate to, like, what's going to be on the shelf and, like, what you're going to get if you buy one of these. but this really felt very much like using Windows. And they actually plan to ship it. Yeah, they are putting this out is their claim.

Like it's not Windows 10X or it's not like the fancy Microsoft thing that they were going to ship. Like this is regular Windows. It feels like using Windows. Lenovo has put a bunch of gestures in. And the Lenovo Control Center, which is where you can play with the haptic touchpad and you can toggle with the keyboard and fool around with some of the dual screen stuff. That actually seemed pretty responsive. It didn't. Again, I only had a little bit of time with it and it was supervised, but sometimes those things are, like, super glitchy when they first ship and, like, require you to restart the computer when you, like, do a single thing.

This seemed pretty responsive and pretty, like, well developed and, like, time was put into it. And reasonably well laid out, like, the part I think you're going to access the most, which is the please pull up the touchpad part was, like, really easy to get to and not buried. So that was great. That's very cool. And it comes out, what time this year? It's supposed to arrive in June. Okay. And they gave me $2,000 price.

So like somewhere in that range we're expecting. That's a similar. Did they talk about processor at all? Like what's the internals on this thing look like? So yeah, it has the 13th gen Intel core I7 U15 processor. So that's a U-Series processor. It's a thin and light processor. It's not going to be like your huge gaming laptop stuff.

But I have had a lot of people ask and even some of our video people ask, like could you edit on this? And like I think you could try. Like I wouldn't, you know, and I think this will be obvious most people work in the space, but a U-Series processor isn't going to give you, like, the best Premiere pro experience, but I have had U-Series machines where I've had to dive into Premiere and, like, do some quick things, or I've had to go do some photo stuff. And, like, it's kind of slow to load, but, like, will work.

And that's, like, again, without making any, like, strict pronouncements, not having used the thing for it, that's what I would, like, generally expect out of this kind of category processor. Yeah. No, I'm just excited because I feel like we've been seeing this form factor. How many times have you gone? I know I've done it a bunch. And you have two. You go to a place and they get really excited. And they're like, okay, you can't share this with anyone. It's not ready yet. It's like three years away. But look. And it's what Lenovo is doing right now. Yeah, they've had prototypes of this thing at their CES booth before in various years. And other people have too, right? Like I feel like Intel was always showing Intel's always like the new way Intel's so good that soon this is going to be. your computer. Yeah, I mean, I think what that highlights is like this is not like a new form

factor. Like that's like people have done this before. This has been floating around. I see this really as a software announcement. Oh, interesting. Lenovo has said that they've invested in putting real gesture control on this thing. They've ingested in an ecosystem where this is easy to use. They have put in the work to make to address the question of where is the touchpad, for example. And like the fact that everyone hates on screen keyboards and doesn't, and virtual touchpads are kind of hit or miss when other companies try them. They really, I think, have put thought into that stuff and effort into that stuff, how that's

going to pay off, you know, we're going to have to see. But that to me is the significant thing here, less so the fact that you can like open and close it and there's a screen on the bottom. Although that is cool. It is cool. And it's also just $2,000. I say just. That is a lot of money for something that is not actually test.

with lots of people using it yet. But this feels kind of cheap to me. Yeah, I mean, that 2000 is more than a lot of people are going to want to pay compared to foldables. It's a bargain. Like the Asu's endbook 17 fold started at like over 4,000, I think. Like it was like some ridiculous amount of money. So this is like not that. It is, you know, it's still a premium product in the premium space. We hope to see that drop. Lenovo prices often do drop very quickly. Lenovo often sets their MSRP's like much higher than things tend to sell for. So I'm hopeful that we'll see it. We'll see it go for lower.

Did at any point you flip it around and pretend like you were in Star Trek? No. Just shut me down. I haven't seen Star Trek, so I don't know what you're talking about, unfortunately. All right. We're not going to take a break yet, but that made me want to take a break real bad. I'll survive. I'll survive.

What other cool stuff did you see at CES? So also in the Lenovo booth, one of the things I thought was really cool was they had the Lenovo Think phone by Motorola. and this is essentially if a think pad made a wish on a star to become a smartphone then that wish came true like it's this little smartphone

that like is designed to look like a thing pad it has like if you've used a think pad and you'll and you see this phone you'll sort of get out and talk about like it has the textured back that it's all black it has like the little logo with the red dot on it

there is a little red button on the side which is not a keyboard nub but like that's probably the best you can do on a literal smartphone is like a little red button on the side. You can remap it, which if you're a thinkpad user, you may have experience remapping some of their keyboard keys. I certainly do. So it's made to sort of seamlessly interact with the think pad in some similar ways that the iPhone interacts with like Mac computers.

So there's like one of the most obvious sort of glaring examples there is that they have a similar feature to continuity camera where it can use a think phone as like your webcam when your video conferencing on a think pad, and that's like super easy to set up. I got to try that. There's a number of other connectivity features. There's one called the, I think it's the United clipboard where you can like take a photo with your phone and then like press control V on the think pad and it like automatically paste that photo like right into whatever's open on the think pad. So kind of like what you can do with an iPhone and a Mac. So sort of yeah. And there's there's a lot of other sharing like to find each other really easily over Wi-Fi. There's like tethering stuff

happening. It was a lot of fun to use, and I think it's like, like, if I had a think pad, I think it would be like a really, I think it would make my life easier in a lot of ways. So that was a lot of fun to try. Who is the audience, though? Like, think pad lovers. Like, think pads are like one of the most beloved lines of all time. I mean, I know they're beloved, but like, are there enough people out there who are like, I'm going to get rid of my iPhone or like my fancy Samsung foldable or whatever and be like, I'm going to, I'm going to to fully embrace think pad. I mean, I think the audience is fairly specific in that, like, it's really for hardcore think

pad people who, like, only use think pads and really want something that will complement their think pad use. I think, like, those people definitely exist, though. And I think it'll certainly be interesting to see how many people actually buy this. I mean, it's been, like, how many years in the making since Lenovo bought Molderola. So I'm not the phone reviewer. So I didn't spend a ton of time testing like the dustproof ratings or any of that like phone stuff. That wasn't what I was there to do.

But I did from the laptop side get a chance to see like how well it interacted with the think pad. And it was pretty well. Awesome. Allison's just furious right now. She's like, you didn't take any notes on this? Yeah. Yeah, I was funny. And I was sort of talking to Allison about it.

And she was like, oh, yeah, it has this is such a cool phone. It has like this like military grade durability feature and like this number of. this number of years under warranty. And I was like, oh, cool. I just like that you could, like, take a photo with it, pastes out with ThinkPad. I thought that was cool.

Alice, she's just like, well, she'll be very excited. She's going to have so much fun reviewing it. We're going to learn all about Allison's secret love of think pads. It's going to be great. You have to be, like, looking over her shoulder. It's going to be wonderful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, hey, do that, do that. You saw a bunch of stuff at the Lenovo booth. What other brands were doing interesting stuff? So Razor has its biggest blade ever, the Razor Blade, The Razor Blade 16 has a, it's a big boy. The mini LED display on the Razor Blade 16 is really cool.

These both just look like Razor blades. I mean, they all look same in the Razor Blades. So it's still like just absorbing your fingerprints? Yep, absorbed fingerprints, RGB keyboards. They got the little Razor logo on the back that everyone knows and loves. Blade 16 has a mini LED display, which looks really cool. We sort of were in like a dimly lit hotel room, which is where they had all this stuff laid out. They had their Razor Edge, which is like their gaming handheld.

This wasn't announced here, but this was the first time that I got hands on time with it. Yeah. It's an Android tablet with like little controllers attached to it. It runs stuff from like, I was like, what services does it have it? They gave me like 20 services. Like, G-Force Now is on there and Steam links on there. Like all, yeah, all that stuff is on there. And they were playing some different games with it.

It's fun. It's going to come like with five. G and cellular connectivity and without it. So, like, if that's something you're interested and you want to just be out doing Android tablet stuff with it, and you want to pay more, that's an option for you. So I have a question for you about this. I remember I think Cameron wrote about it for the site.

He's a giant cloud gaming nerd. He's probably softly weeping that Stadia is dead, but not as much as Tom Warren. There's a lot of berefts people here about Stadia. Yeah, for sure. But it kind of reminded me, it mainly, to me, it looked more like they have these little control. that you can attach to your phone to the Kishi, I think is how you say it.

Yeah, it looks a little like that. And it felt kind of like that, but you're buying a tablet from Razor to stick in it instead of just your phone. Yeah, I mean, their pitch for this, I sort of asked them, I was like, so like, like, is this just an Android tablet controllers? And their pitch is, like, no, because of the high refresh rate screen is, like, much higher than you'll get on, like, most, like, Android tablets. It's, like, specifically for gaming. it looks very smooth, and because of the extra, like, all the gaming services that are, like, come natively on it. Okay.

So those are, like, the two main different things that you're paying for. But, like, at minimum, it is, like, an Android tablet. Like, you could just buy this and, like, use it as a very expensive high-refreshright Android tablet with controllers if you wanted to. Like, that option would be open to you. And they have this mini-L-D laptop. I know we've seen, like, Apple's, I think, has done some mini-L-ED laptops. Is this the first we're seeing from, like, a Windows? maker? No. So it's sort of been a trend that is like slowly and gradually been picking up speed

over the past couple of years. This is a big year for it. We had a number of mini LED displays come out. And this one had like, I think they said a thousand local dimming zones, which is higher than we turn from other laptops. And it looks, it looks very cool. These will not be cheap laptops. But razor blades are not cheap. But it's cool to look at. And they had a little demo like on the side where they were showing. They had a little. little panel that had all the local dimming zones, like, arranged in a grid, and it would, like, show each little dimming zone lighting up when the dimming zone on the blade was lighting up, or dim concurrently. So that was really cool to just see, like, how tiny these things actually are,

how many than there are and, like, how hard they're working, basically, like, while this device is displaying an image. This is technology we've seen from TV makers for years now. Like, they've been doing this a very long time, and it's taken a super long time. It feels like to laptops. to catch up. I mean, you said you saw a lot of them this year. Is this going to be kind of one of those things they're hoping will drive upgrade cycles and they're hoping people will see that display and be like, yeah, that's my reason to go get a new laptop I just bought one two years ago? Yeah, I suspect so. I mean, I think display was definitely a focus of many gaming manufacturers this year. You know, in the past couple years, it's really been like you could get an OLED or you can get a high refresh rate screen,

but like you couldn't get both. Or you could get QHD or you could get get like 240 hertz, but you couldn't get both of them. And you're starting to see those converge a little more so that it's the expect, it's not as much the expectation that you'll have to give up like a ton of premium features in order to get one. Okay. So we saw a lot, for example, we saw a number of glasses free 3D displays. And one of the big pitches for those is like, you don't have to give up other stuff

to get this glasses free 3D. It's also OLED. It's also high refresh rate. So like you can still game on it. We're seeing high refresh rate OLED. We're seeing high refresh rate QHD. That's definitely a space where, like, the arms race is picking up. Do you think we're going to see a moment where laptop makers stop shipping laptops with absolute garbage displays?

I mean, they're always going to do that in the sub-thousand-dollar category, right? Like, they're never going to put a good display in something like there. Yeah, I was going to say. But in those more expensive ones, do you think we're going to see a moment where they're just like, you know what? We're done with garbage displays. We're going all in on L-L-L-L-ED. We're going all in on micro-L-ED. And from now on, if you want a Dell XPS-13,

it's going to be a really kick-ass display. You're not going to have to, like, look at your wallet and decide what's worth it. What I do think is we will definitely see this stuff start to come to lower-priced devices. Whether that will completely eliminate the need to have, like, 1920 by 1,200 on lower-priced devices, I don't entirely know,

but I do think that while the stuff is in the premium space right now, it will, I would expect that, like, in the next couple years, like getting a 240 Ehertz QHD display will get significantly less expensive. Then often when you see this kind of, like, fancy stuff debut on fancy laptops, that is an important announcement, not just because it's going to be on those fancy laptops, but because that sort of starts the clock for when we're going to see it on stuff in the sub 1,000 range. Because that is where most people are shopping. Like stuff like the G14, stuff like the Asian Hydro.

Like that is better selling stuff than like the fanciest ACE or predator Triton and Helios. I feel like laptops are in this unique space where you have a whole bunch of different model types, right? Like a TV manufacturer is going to be like, okay, you get your 55 or your 65 or you're 75, that's it. Laptop makers are like, okay, you can get your 13 inch. Now would you like it with an 1980 by 1200 or a 1980 by 1080? You know, like, they're asking for, they just ask you for tons of different things to choose. And you're inevitably, like, that laptop that's advertised for $1,000 and seems like a great deal, the one that actually makes sense is $3,000 and now you have no money.

I'm just curious if we're going to see it at condensing in the, at least in the monitors element of laptops as these OLEDs and many LEDs become more popular. Yeah, like I think gamers, like in general, what I hear from companies that they like to have choice. and that part of the reason that many of these models are like so, like, they're like a dizzying number of models compared to like the four options that there are for the XPS 13 or whatever, is that like just gamers are really, really picky about the kind of stuff that they want. So I wouldn't necessarily think that we'll see models condensing, but like if the question of like whether we'll see displays get better and better in the sub 1,000 space, I think is like absolutely true.

So we're seeing the trickle down. It's happening. All right, well, we're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about why this is all happening because you have been writing a bunch about how the laptop space is in a difficult spot right at the moment. So we're going to take a break, and we'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will even work.

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And we're back. Monica, you wrote this great piece that should be up by the time people are listening to this episode. We're editing it right now and having a great time. That's all about how laptops are in kind of a bad place at the moment.

People aren't buying them. Nobody wants to buy them. And the technology, the hardware, maybe isn't always keeping up. So laptops are starting to pivot. Is that right? So I don't know if I would call it a pivot, but one of the big things that sort of hung over this year's CES going into it was the fact that the PC market is like way, way down. You know, 2020 and 2021 were a huge, huge years for the PC.

And there's been a lot of decline year over year throughout 2022. Because everybody bought their laptops. Every manufacturer besides Apple had declining sales and laptops in particular. saw a lot of decline. And there's a lot of, you know, there's stuff about refresh cycles, and there's the fact that Apple is, like, eating everyone's lunch in, like, the portable laptop space. And in the processor space. And in the processor space, some in for the thin and light in particular. So one of the big questions going into the show was, like, how are, how are manufacturers going to deal with this? Not only, like, how are they actually going to deal with it, but how are

they going to try to convince me that it's not a problem and, like, what angle are they going to take when I asked them. Did they convince you? Yeah. So there are a couple different tacts that companies took. In general, the task they have is to like, you know, they have to get people to buy, to keep buying laptops, even if they may have laptops that they bought in 2020 that still work pretty well.

And how do they keep the market exciting so that people will be like, oh, I need that, even though this MacBook Air works fine. And so there are some directions that involve like how cool. the laptop looks. And Lenovo is like kind of an example of that with like the fancy dual screen. There are companies like LG that released like really like beautiful color changing laptops. Wait, what part of them is changing colors? So the LG gram style. What a name is covered in an irid, it's stylish, it's covered in an iridescent finish. So like when you hold it up to the light, it can look like silver or purple or like orange sometimes depending on like the angle and like

where the sun is. It's very, so, like, there's, like, cool stuff like that some companies are trying to do that's, like, eye-popping and just sort of, like, is something that could jump out at you if you were shopping around. Yeah. Another tact that some companies are taking is, like, going hard on services, on, like, AI stuff and on features. So when I spoke to Alex Cho, HP's president of personal systems, who is great, his pitch was really hard on, like, we're not a PC manufacturer. like don't think of us as just PCs. We're building an ecosystem. And like we, this year, our big pitch is like services.

And HP has like their booth that they're sort of showcase that they had here in New York before, CES. The big front and center thing was like webcam features. And so they had, there's like a dual webcam thing that some of their laptops support now where you can have like two webcams plugged into one laptop. And it'll like switch between the feeds depending on like where you're looking because it's tracking your eyes. Fancy. They had, yeah, they have like this present, this new present software that a bunch of stuff is built on that tracks where your head is and tracks where your eyes are. They have just a lot of different webcam stuff. And that's sort of something you're seeing across the line like Razor I mentioned earlier.

They have this like sound bar that tracks like where your head is and based on that it like adjusts like what the audio sounds like to make it still sound like it's moving with you essentially. There's as I mentioned earlier there's like 3D displays. that rely on knowing where you're looking to be able to show you the two different images in order to create the 3D. So, you know, HP has this new, like, concierge service that provides, like, 24-7 live support. There's a lot of emphasis on cloud gaming this year. I mentioned Razor's new, like, cloud gaming handheld. HP has, like, integrated GForce now with its HP Omen software client thing. Yeah, there was all that.

work we talked about in the first segment about Lenovo and the stuff they were doing with the phone and the stuff they were doing to make this this dual screen laptop work. So yeah, but these companies aren't known for their software. Like anyone who's used an HP printer is familiar with HP's software. Anybody who's first opened an HP laptop knows that software, why should I be inspired or like want to more regularly engage with them, especially when Samsung, who's actually pretty good at software, and Apple, who's made it their deal for a long time now, also kind of struggle with services sometimes.

So on the commercial side, they're really pushing it for like the hybrid worker and the freelancer. Oh. And that's the pitch they have for their concierge service, which I don't entirely buy. But their claim is like, you know, if you're a, if you're someone who, like, is running your own business from your laptop and you just don't have an IT department, but you really want to be able to quickly access service, you can press this button and pull up at HP concierge to service your laptop. Yeah.

I'm not convinced that that's the target audience as much as, like, my parents might, like, buy this laptop and, like, have no idea why it, like, won't turn on or something. But the pitch they're making is that it's more for, like, people who, who are a small business or, like, who don't have a huge IT department and want their Zoom calls to look really professional and want to have access to all these cool features, but don't have a company doing it for them. Again, I don't know. When I look at this stuff, I sort of, the question I always ask is like, is this new fancy thing addressing a need that is actually there or is it creating a need that I am not sure people actually have right now? What I think is addressing a need that's already there is the Lenovo dual screen. Like, I think there are, like, a ton of times in my life when I'm, like, doing some work. And I'm like, wow, I'd really love to have, like, a second screen here right now.

Yeah. I'm not sure if all this, like, presence sensing, fancy webcam, fancy sound, 3D screen stuff is quite, I am more on the fence about that kind of stuff. Yeah. I think, like, that makes sense if you're a recruiter and you want to look just, like, tip top for all of your remote interviews that you're doing throughout the day, it makes less sense if you're just, like, using your laptop for. for QuickBooks and sending emails to vendors, which is I assume what small businesses do. And freelancers. Just email, yeah. Yeah.

You also, I know you saw a lot of processors stuff at the show. And you did like that scathing takedown of the Intel P series last year, which was tip-top, loved it. Absolutely wild that they were like, what if we just made a processor that was the exact same as our super fast processor? Yeah. But kind of tweaked it to go a little slower and use a little less energy, and that sucked. Yeah.

But were things a little more exciting this year? Do you feel like AMD and Intel and these companies are finally going to be catching up to Apple in that laptop space? Because Apple's just kicking everybody's ass. It's really hard to know from the charts we have right now. They definitely both made a splash. AMD released this, like, absolutely massive 16-core chip. Now, Intel released a 24 core chip, but that is like eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, whereas the AMD chip is like 16 like full firings and four cores. So I think that's that stag got to be very competitive.

These are, but like, I remember I saw and Tom and John and I were like looking at these like AMD, like the chart that AMD sent us that had all the chips. And we were just like, what, how is AMD putting that in a laptop? Like that is wild. there definitely is exciting stuff coming out of these processor announcements. Will these be laptops that have like any kind of battery life at all is really the question we're going to have to wait and see. Will this last longer than 30 minutes on battery? We really don't know. The target audience for these chips doesn't necessarily care about having laptops that last eight hours,

but that doesn't mean that they'll be happy necessarily with the battery that only lasts like five minutes. Who is okay? Who is the person buying a laptop that is okay with? having five minutes of battery life. Yeah, so I will say whenever I write a review, like, and I say like, I don't like that this didn't last very long on battery for me. Without fail, there are people in the comment saying, well, I don't care about battery life. All my laptop, so, yeah, your review's wrong. There are certainly groups of people who don't need very long battery life on their laptops. However, I do think that, like, there is

some amount of battery power a laptop should have in order to justify its existence as, like, a laptop rather than like a PC, like a desktop. A PC that you can just pick up and go with. Right. Part of the appeal is that you could, like, move it around her house or potentially, like, use it at a friend's house or, like, you know, that you don't necessarily need to be plugged in an outlet all the time. So that is, like, a big question mark that we'll have to see.

But, of course, it's not the most important thing about these chips. Okay. So they seem to really focus not on battery life where Apple is just crushing. them, but more on power. Oh, definitely. And they had, I mean, they very much hedged that, like, when I was talking to Jason Banta from AMD, he very much hedged like, these are not going to have good battery life, basically. Like, he was like, you know, we're really targeting an audience that doesn't care about

battery life as much as they care about, you know, X and Y and Z, which, you know, is a fair audience to target. Are they planning to ever target audiences that like battery life? Well, not with this particular, the 16-core chip. I mean, their other chips, I think, are. But this was where they were announcing their high-power laptop chips. So, like, the H-Series for Intel. And I don't know.

What is the series called for AMD? So the 70-45 series is Zen 4. Okay. That goes up to 16 cores and 32 threads. There's the 740 series, which is going to be, that's the Phoenix. That's going to be for, like, thinner gaming laptops. There's the 735 series, which is Rembrandt R. That's for like the premium thin and light space.

Monica, what are these names? These names make no sense. There's the Ryzen 7030 series, which is for mainstream thin and light. Is it called the Picasso? No, that's called the Barcelo R. What does that mean? I have no idea. And that goes up to 8-416 threads as do the previous two that I mentioned.

And then there's the Risen 720, which is like your Athlon. So that's going to be for like very low power budget devices. And that goes up to four cores. So there's a whole, there's a whole range of stuff on here. Well, I'm very excited for your one minute long battery tests for all these HX series. It's going to be a lot of fun. Was there anything else that like you saw at CES, any kind of trends that you feel are coming for the laptop space? What do we need to brace ourselves for this year?

For brands we didn't get to, like I said, LG has the style, which is that really cool. color-changing one. It is the ultra-slim, which is, I think it's its, like, thinnest and lightest LGgram ever. It's either the thinnest or the light, but it is so light. Like, you pick that up, and it's like, it feels like you're holding like a dummy chassis. It's, like, absurdly light. I've no idea who's going to, like, want that, but it, like, it's, it's, it's, it's, that thing is remarkable. H.P. has a new, it's called the Dragonfly Pro Chromebook. It has an RGB keyboard because, you know, why not? Put that on a Chromebook that's not for gaming. Yeah, I think Neely's planning to get that for his parents.

Go for it, Neely. I'm the godspeed. I'm very happy for you. They have the Dragonfly Pro, which is not the Elite Dragonfly. That remains, that also had a refresh. There's the Dragonfly G4 now, but that is for businesses. That's a business laptop. The Dragonfly Pro, despite having pro and its name is for consumers. So, you know, a very simple name that makes sense to everyone. But that is sort of a push from them to target, who I mentioned earlier, like the freelancer or like the mobile professional. The contractors. Right.

The contractors. Yeah, in terms of trends, this is definitely going to be a big display year, especially in the gaming side we're seeing, like a lot of convergence of, you know, buzzwords like OLED and mini LED and refresh rate and resolution. And I can't believe I'm saying this in 2022 or 2023, 3D. Glasses-free 3D is a thing now that is coming to some laptops. I refuse to be excited about it. I refuse to be excited about 3-D.

Acer had one last year, but it's like updated it this year. Dell has like a 3-D thing. We're seeing all that sort of come together and that we're able to get more of those features on displays than where previously you had to sacrifice some of them together. So displays are definitely getting better. I think there was a big focus on video conferencing this year, as there was last year. and AI, the role in that was a huge part of it. AMD and Intel both are planning to have AI architecture on the dyes of some of their processors, which is at the moment the most relevant application of that to like most people is going to be stuff like Windows Studio Effect,

and AMD had Panos Panay on stage to talk about that. But it's going to be like more webcam presence sensing stuff for now and then the pitches that later on we're going to see people. come up with more heavy-duty AI use cases for that stuff. But that's really other big thing. And there's definitely, as there has been for the past few years, focus on like how laptops will respond to changing work patterns. So like last year, I think there was a lot of focus on work from home and remote work. I think this year it's shifted a little more towards hybrid and people who like want a laptop that they can use both in the office and at home. Isn't that just every laptop?

Some companies are trying to pitch it more. It's like, here, you only need one cord to plug this into this monitor where before it was more complicated. They're embracing the dock again. It's that and it's a lot more of a focus on, and there's always kind of focus on like laptops getting thinner. But this year, I think a lot of it's really being pitched as like, this is thin so that you can bring it to the office. Or like, so that you can bring it to Starbucks and focus on the quote unquote mobile professional or mobile freelancer. Do you think, so one of the best laptops ever made was the Apple Powerbook Pismo G3? Uh-huh.

This thing came out on like, you sound so enthusiastic and excited about this question. And this thing came out in like 1998, 1999, I think. Please tell me more. It had a dock and all of the ports were on the back. So whenever you wanted to plug in, you just went thump and you just shoved it into the dock. And it looked pretty and it worked so nice. And every doc sense has been like, it's a dongle and you plug it in. Do you think we're going to get back to that point where you're like, thump?

Because the satisfaction was wonderful. There definitely is a focus, I think, on making monitors simpler to use, which is great for me because the current monitor I have, I have to plug, like, four computers into it a week. And it is difficult right now to figure out how to plug them all in. So that is definitely, I think, a trend you'll seem more in peripherals this year is simplifying. They're moving them between use cases and making those more versatile to connect. So we're not quite to thunk yet, but we may be. I'm not sure if we're to that yet.

Well, Monica, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. We're going to take a break. When we're back, I'm going to be talking with Victoria'song, all about all the health stuff that came out of CES. what's going on with the FDA there and how long it will take for this health stuff to actually get into our homes. It's going to be great. Thanks again, Monica.

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Claude.a.ai slash vergecast. Okay, and we're back. And as I teased at the beginning of the show, there was a lot of health tech at CES this year. There were the smart watches and the makeup tools and the P sensors and a ton of hearing aids. A lot of this stuff is very cool. It's super exciting.

But it almost never reaches the United States, mostly because of FDA regulations around medical technology. It's a tricky issue. So I wanted to talk to our reviewer, Victoria Song, who just wrote a really fantastic piece explaining this regulatory maze behind all that health tech. Victoria, are you recovered from your CES funk that you got without actually being at CES? That's how powerful CES is. I got the CES flu without going. And, like, you know, I'm still a little sniffly.

And I don't know if my voice is 100% back to normal. But I don't sound like Marge Simpson anymore. So good stuff. Level up. Level up. I mean, that would have been great. It would have been like we have Mark Simpson on the Vergecast today. Tell us about health tech.

It would be nice. Yeah, I mean, it was cool. It was interesting at CES this year because a lot of it is very, it's kind of a mix between what's conceptual and what's actually real and everything that's in the gray area in between. So, you know, like that's always CES, right? There's always a degree of vaporware at CES. Big degree. A lot of vaporware. A lot of vaporware.

but particularly in the health sector where you're just like, wow, this concept is going to change the medical industry as we know it. Five years later, the product comes out and it's nerved. Yeah. And it's not nowhere near as cool as what they said it was going to be. And I think the coolest, I don't know about coolest, but the most interesting thing I saw this year was why things you scan. That was the peace sensor. Yes. It is a little sensor that you stick in your toilet.

and to pee on. And it's got all these things in it, like a thermal sensor and a radar sensor so it can identify your individual urine stream, which is just like, wow, what amazing technology for your toilet. Use a radar. It's like, are P streams different?

Yes. Well, it claims that it can differentiate people by their P streams. So, like, it's one user per P scanner. Okay. So, you know, like, let's say you have multiple people in your house and you don't want your roommate's urinary test results. You want yours. Yeah.

So it can identify you by how you pee. And it also can tell the difference between, like, your pee and the water due to temperature sensors. So it's just really amazing, thoughtful, like, technology that's gone into this thing that sounds absurd, but it is actually, like, medically very cool. especially like I think the most relatable use case would be for diabetics, right? Like they have to take urine tests all the time to, you know, make sure they're not in ketoacidosis. So this would make things easier for them because first of all, if you've ever had to take a urine sample, I really hope you know what your aim is because that could be real messy. And this is just you peeing anyway.

Oh my God, the number of like pee facts that I had to learn while writing. You learned a lot. I learned so much. Did you know there's 3,000 metabolites in your pee? You do now. I didn't even know what a metabolite was until you just said that. It's just stuff that tells you about your metabolism, like ketones, which are a byproduct of breaking down fat. This actually seemed like a cool thing because we're starting to see more of these tests in people's homes instead of just going to the doctors. I feel like COVID really changed things for us. Oh, yeah. And so now it's much more acceptable. and people feel okay taking this test at home.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, you know, I'm sure everyone's really familiar with the rapid antigen tests, but there were actually molecular tests that you could have at home. Like Google sent out the Q health test, and, like, of course, these are really expensive. Yeah. But, you know, I had a bunch. I was testing them because I was writing about them a few months ago, and it's amazing.

It's just like this little machine that is there, and it uploads your results wirelessly to your phone. And so it really makes things easy because you don't. don't have to send things out to a lab. And that kind of instantaneous knowledge can be really helpful for remote patient monitoring, which a lot of the health tech that we saw this year was kind of around the idea of remote patient monitoring, which is, you know, it's a big foundational gap. But at the same time, isn't there like a lot of approval thing we have to do?

Because right now we do it in the lab because the lab is a controlled setting. You're not as likely to screw up your results because you pick your nose before you handle something. Don't do that. Just don't do that in general. your hands, but like, but there's a lot of opportunity to screw up those tests at home. And and so there is there a lot of, is there regulation oversight? Like, you wrote a big story of this last week, I believe, on this stuff. Is it happening? Are we getting oversight? So I actually

think that the FDA is going to play a lot bigger role in CS going forward just because, you know, the FDA exists for a very important reason, and that is to protect public health. And that's so that when you get a health tech gadget, it doesn't kill you, doesn't hurt you. It doesn't put your life in danger in any, like, shape or form. So, like, the Wything's P-scanner, it has to go through the FDA clearance process before it can ever be sold, which is why it's not going to be sold in the U.S., even though it's slated for European release sometime this year. European release.

Yeah, you're a P. Yes! Yeah, so, like, it was really funny because I was writing this story, and I was just like, Oh, my God. Here I am again talking about my arch nemesis, the FDA. And they're not actually my arch nemesis. I'm very appreciative of the work that they do. But, you know, when you're a health tech writer, when you cover wearables, you just kind of learn a lot of jargon. And, you know, FDA clearance is not the same thing as FDA approval. Right.

So if you ever see, like, a report that's like the FDA approved this product or if you're ever shopping for something that says FDA approved, that's the number one tell that they are lying through their pants because the FDA does not approve products. It clears them. It's just like we've cleared that this has gone through the appropriate testing so that you won't likely die. Yeah. It's basically what it is. So it leaves a really big, wide range of things that makes everything really confusing in my beat. Yeah. Especially like I see products all the time, especially in wearables, where they're like clinically validated. No, it's not. You're not an FDA regulated device. How are you clinically validated? And then if, you know, you click on things and you're like, oh, you wrote a white paper that's funded by you. Of course, you're getting positive results on

XYZ. Yeah. Shocking. Shocking. Very, very not shocking, really. But like the whole reason why you would want FDA clearance is that, you know, you can buy it and you can be. confident that it's safe for you, that it's going to work in the way that it's supposed to work. And we're seeing that right now with over-the-counter hearing aids and hearables, which I'm telling you, that's going to be a really big thing coming out of wearables this year. Well, let's talk about that because we talked about the P sensor, and it doesn't have FDA clearance yet. Nope.

But it's hoping to have it at some point this year. You know, it's really funny. Every single time I'm like, hey, are you going through the FDA clearance process? these companies, like the heads of them, they're always just like, oh, yes. I can't tell you when it's coming out because who knows when the FDA is going to approve everything. And, you know, why things is a really good example, because they're constantly coming to CES with these really cool health tech products

that never make it to the U.S. because it takes like two, three years. Okay. Or like it'll take two, three years before it ever gets to the U.S. So I think there's like one smartwatch that I saw at CES 2018 that's still not out here. It's really funny. Yeah, there was like a watch that was like a blood pressure monitor cuff that I feel just never got approval. Or did that one finally get approval?

There was the Omron blood pressure monitor cough and that got approval like two years later. But it's not like a really fun device for normal people to wear. It's if you have hypertension. Yeah. You're going to wear that. I reviewed it many moons ago for Gizmodo. There you go. I vaguely remember that product.

But let's talk about the hearables in the hearing aid place. Because I think last year kind of set the stage for that, right? Like, was it last year that they said we were going to do over-the-counter hearing aids? You won't have to go to an audiologist. You won't have to go to it. Just go buy it. Yeah, no. This has actually been in the works for five years.

Wow. This is what I'm telling you. Tech moves fast. Medicine moves slow. So health tech moves at the speed of a snail. Like, it's just like inching along all the time. But so this has been in the process for over five years. It took, like, I think Trump was the first president to be like, yeah, we're going to do this.

And then, I mean, he's gone now, right? Yeah. It just got approved. The ruling got approved last year in the middle of the year. And then the products didn't start hitting shells until mid-October. So we're still in the very, very, very, very early stages of over-the-counter hearing aids. But, you know, this is a whole minefield. Because if I tell you over-the-counter hearing aids versus over-the-counter self-fitting hearing aids versus hearing aids, these are all different things.

They all fundamentally do the same thing, right? Like they all go in your ear and they assist you in hearing better. Fundamentally, they go in your ear and you hear better. Okay. Yes. But they do different things to different degrees. And it's very confusing. I have been reporting on this for like three months at this point talking to a lot of different audiologists.

And it's a nightmare. Like, yeah. I just, it's very confusing. And it's going to be confusing until like the dust settles a little bit. But with regard to the FDA, it's great that they have over-the-counter hearing aids because now you can go into the store. They'll be at your best buy. They'll be at your local, like, I don't know, your Dwayne Reed or Walmart. Yeah, like those places.

And you can buy them and you can know that the FDA tested it. And you're not going to damage your hearing because they regularly. the output levels of sound. There's going to be a degree where you're able to kind of self-fitting means you'll be able to have a little hearing test in an app, and it'll be personalized

to you. Okay. So great, cool. There's already products out here that kind of do that that are not hearing aids and that do not have FDA regulation. Like I'm wearing AirPods.

Air pods are one of the things that are really interesting, right? Because they have conversation boost. Conversation boost, you know, it makes people's voices easier to hear in louder environments. That's what a hearing aid does. The AirPods are not hearing aid because they have not been regulated for output levels. They don't necessarily do everything that a hearing aid needs to do.

And I think what's going to be interesting going forward is you might see some consumer audio companies just like pull back their features. Oh, interesting. Well, it's because like the question, and I get into this in my piece, the question that they have to ask, themselves is, well, do I want to be regulated by the FDA and go through everything that involves an FDA clearance process? There's a lot. There's a lot that goes into that. Well, do they have to go into the FDA clearance process? Like, is Apple going to have to get new generations of AirPods approved? That is unclear at the moment because this is so new and everything is shaking out. But say the FDA were to look at a feature, like, is all hypothetical.

But say the FDA were to look at a feature like AirPods, conversation boost on the pro. And they went, hey, that's really similar to hearing aids. And we think that that should be regulated. So that we don't bust ear drums with loud noises. Right. So let's say that they say that aspect is really similar to a hearing aid, an over-counter hearing aid.

You now need to go through compliance. You need to show us that you are able to meet all of these factors. And, you know, that involves a lot. Like, I talked to Movano Health, and they're a really fascinating company. They're making a smart ring. That's for women. Women first. Love this.

That's going to be a fully FDA-cleared medical device, which is amazing because, you know, you have the Apple Watch. That's not an FDA-cleared device. It's a device that has an FDA-cleared feature. So now you see why I rip out my hair every single time I write about this stuff. It's very nuanced, very complicated. But, you know, I was talking to their CEO, and he has, like, a wealth of knowledge because he spent like 30 years making products for people with diabetes.

Okay. And those are all medical devices. Right. So he was telling me that, you know, we focus on like accuracy a lot with FDA clearance. Accuracy is less than 1% of what goes into an FDA filing. They have to be HIPAA compliant. They have to show that, you know, your data is encrypted. They have to show out what the communication protocols are.

They have to have that tested by an independent party. They have to have their devices manufactured at a medical device factory. They can't go to like consumer grade for that. That's like a whole nightmare. And even even even with the clinical accuracy testing, like he described the process to me and like the hypoxia trial, which is, you know, oxygen deficiency. You basically have to take a person, both genders and all skin tones and lower their oxygen levels bit by bit.

and then blind check all the data. So it's like incredibly intense, expensive, and like the regulatory paperwork. I just, I don't want to be the person who handles that paperwork. It's a nightmare. But it also is good in the long run because then we don't, like people of various skin tones can go and get a device and know that it will work. I've actually been asking a lot of these wearable makers about skin tones because I think there was a thing that came out a while back that was saying that, pulse oxymeters were not equally good for people of darker skin. And all these companies will tell you like, yeah, that's true just because of the way the technology works. It works by

reflecting light into your skin and people with more melanin will reflect less light back. That's just kind of a flaw of the actual technology itself. Right. But you know, I'm asking them about what their protocols for testing with people of different skin tones are. And if you're FDA regulated, you have to prove, you have to prove that you work just as well across all skin tones. If you're not FDA regulated, you don't really have to prove nothing, right? Yeah. You can say that we're super accurate, and we just have to trust that you've done the testing. And then you, Victoria, have to go find a bunch of people and test it for a wonderful video on the verge.com.

I mean, yeah, it's going to be super unscientific, but yeah, like it's, you know, and, you know, I've been asking them recently about tattoos as well because that's a another thing where you see all these people online going like, oh, my God, my Apple Watch doesn't work. And it's because they have a tattoo. Because I have tattoos. And it's like, yeah, that's actually a real problem, again, because when you tattoo your skin, you're putting ink there and making it really difficult for the light to reflect off. So these are problems where if you were FDA regulated, they would be less of a problem because before it could ever go to market, you'd have to prove that you are clinically, like clinical grade accurate. it. Whereas, you know, most of the consumer products out there that claim to do SPO2, they don't have to do that. I've tested a bunch of products and you can read my reviews where they say I have an SPO2 level of 83%. If you have an SPO2 level of 83%, you best be in an ambulance on your way to the hospital. That is below what is acceptable for people with Kopty. So it's just like this device. Call 911. And they get away with it because they say we're a wellness device. We're not a medical device.

So you just, I guess what I'm getting at is, like, you're going to see the lines blurring between what is and what isn't a medical device, which means the FDA is going to have to, you know, like put on their big boy pants. Not that they aren't on already, but even bigger big boy pants and just go like, okay, we kind of have to sort out the mess that is the consumer health tech product world because it's a mess. It's a real mess. Like, I got to tell you.

Do you think they're going to? I mean, they kind of have to with the hearing aids because they open. in this can of words. So they're kind of stuck with hearing aids. They're stuck with hearing aids. They brought this upon themselves. They have to do that. But I think you're going to start to see it more and more often. Like Apple was a really good example when they brought out EKGs, right? Right. When they brought out EKGs on the Series 4, it had to go through the FDA de novo clearance process. And basically, they had to do that because they were having some sort of diagnostic capability. It's not really diagnosing, but it's saying, hey, you might have AFIP. You should go see a doctor.

Yeah. It even says when you go and run one, it's like, this is not the same thing as going to the doctors. If you feel bad, call 911. Don't just check it on your watch. Yeah. Like, there's a lot of like medical descriptions down there. But, you know, it does have some sort of a detection capability, right? Yeah. So the thing with SPO2 sensors and why you see all these SPO2 sensors, even though functionally, they don't do Jack right now, at least, is, you know, Fitbit has been doing this for a really long time, but they're trying to detect sleep apnea using your blood oxygen. Now, if they were to say that they could detect sleep apnea, well, the FDA would have to get involved. And what they would like to do is for someone else to figure it out and go through the process,

so then they can ride those coat tails, basically. Right. And then, you know, have this thing out there. So they have the sensors on there, just hoping that someone else is going to do the dirty work. And I see a lot of that of just these companies going around putting the sensors in for future proofing and then hoping someone else does the dirty work to get the clearance. Because once one person gets it cleared, the rest of them will follow. So there's a lot of that going on. Just the FDA just sits there. And it's very, like, I want to emphasize that it's very

good that the FDA does this because, you know, I think the next frontier of wearables is going to be non-invasive blood glucose monitoring. Right. Which will be. So great for diabetics. But that's life or death. You cannot F that up. You cannot screw up someone's blood sugar levels. You will kill someone. You will kill someone.

You will be sued. You need the FDA to regulate the hell out of that. And the same goes for blood pressure, which was another thing at CES with Valence Cell, which, you know, I love catching up with Valen Cell every year because nobody knows. They did the finger one, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I've been talking to Valen Cell for the last five, six years at every single. D.S just going, hey guys, what's up? Because they make optical sensor tech that goes into a lot of wearables that you may already have,

like Jabras, Bose, LG. Like, their tech is in a lot of stuff. Yeah. But you've never heard of them because they're a B2B company. But, you know, this year they're like, we're going to make our own thing because the gosh, dang, FDA won't approve our tech unless it's in a commercial product. And we tried to get other people to make it and they wouldn't. So now we're here and we have to make this tech ourselves. because this is just the state of things.

And it's really cool tech. It is a fingertip blood pressure monitor that looks like one of those fingertep pulse oxymeters. Right. And, you know, it supposedly will be able to take an accurate blood pressure reading without you having to use a cough and without you having to calibrate anything. So that would be like, you know, that would be huge to have in like the consumer world. That would just change hypertension treatment. It's like mind staggeringly amazing what that could be. do if it gets FDA clearance.

Yeah, I mean, as somebody who has blood pressure issues, you know, if I want to take my blood pressure, I have to like make sure my arm is bare because if you take it over a sweater, you'll look like you're dying and then you'll have panic and talk to your doctor who will say, no, take your shirt off. Like, reveal your arm. And so it seems like a really, really cool thing. But also it seemed like it was also still kind of not accurate just from the reports we were getting out of CES.

I mean, you are on a show floor, so there's going to be a degree of whatever's. But if they pass FDA clearance, that's going to assure a degree of accuracy, you know. So, like, if they get FDA clearance, then you can be like, oh, well, maybe that was just because it was on the show floor. It was a prototype. You know, it's hard to really gauge what the accuracy is going to be in, like, a CES type setting. But, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's like huge. It's innovative tech. It's stuff that we should be pursuing.

But, you know, companies look at that and they go like, oh, Jesus Christ, I don't got the time. I don't get the time for this. The time, the money. Hopefully someone else will do it. It's expensive. Yeah. So much paperwork involved. And, you know, you want that.

You want to be safe. You want to not die. Like, whenever Elon Musk, if he ever actually does Norrelink, I want the FDA involved. Like, you don't want to put a chip in your brain without FDA approval that it won't kill you. Like, it's killed mini, many, many monkeys. shocking. I want documentation to be there that this is like safe for the marketplace. I don't want to have to like, like, and that's the really frustrating thing about my beat because so much of it conceptually is really cool and we have the technology. But the willing, and this is capitalism, like the willingness of companies to invest in this technology versus the effort that's going to go in to getting through the FDA regulation process is nil. It's just nothing. It's, they would rather play. in the wellness space because the FDA don't care. If you want to log every night of sleep from now until you die, they're cool with that

because that's just for you. That's for your knowledge. That's not like substantially if your sleep tracking is inaccurate to a degree, you're not going to die from that. Reasonably speaking, you're not going to die from that. You're just going to be like, oh, my God, it's inaccurate, which, you know, it's all inaccurate anyway. So, yeah.

Now you know why, like, when my editors come to the FDA articles, they're just like, God, okay. You have to brace yourself. Whenever, whenever I'm about to edit one of your stories and it's got FDA in it, I'm like, okay, I have to like put on my, like, I have to think really hard. It's like reading, it's like editing anything, anything legal, but those FDA ones are rough. They're super rough. Wonderful copy, though. The copy is beautiful. Thinking about FDA regulations, terrible. Well, Victoria, thank you so much. This has been a fantastic, very interesting conversation. Maybe you want to read more. The story is called The Regulatory Mayes. Mind, health tech vaporware. It's super, super good. I highly recommend everybody go check it out. It's there on theverge.com.

Thank you so much. Thank you. And I swear the story's more articulate than me. You were wonderful. Okay, that's it for the Vergecast today. Thank you for listening. As always, there's a ton more coverage on everything we talked about

on Theverge.com. If you have thoughts, feedbacks, feelings, you can always email Vergecast at theverge.com. Any of questions, call the hotline. 866, Verge 11. Send us all. your big thoughts and questions about all things tech. This show is produced by Andrew Marino and Liam James. Norie Donovan is our executive producer and Brooke Mentors is our editorial director

of audio. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media podcast network. Neil I and I will be back on Friday to chat with more of the Verge crew about whatever is happening this week. Until then, I'll see you later. Rock and roll.