The Vergecast - CES 2025: the biggest stories and best gadgets (Live)

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

In this special live episode of The Vergecast, from the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas, it's time to talk CES. Nilay and David run through some of the show's biggest stories, plus the Meta news that dominated the conversations all week in Vegas. Then Allison Johnson, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, and Victoria Song join the show to talk about all the newest, best, weirdest, and worst gadgets they've seen this year. AI is everywhere, everyone's making smart glasses, the smart home might be turning a corner, and we've seen it all this week. Thanks to everyone who came out to the live show! And if you couldn't make it, stay tuned — this won't be the last time we all get to hang out. Further reading: Zuckerberg, inspired by Musk, ditches fact checking for Community Notes Zuckerberg says he’s moving Meta moderators to Texas because California seems too ‘biased’ Meta’s fact-checking changes are just what Trump’s FCC head asked for Meta is leaving its users to wade through hate and disinformation Here are some of the horrible things that you can now say on Instagram and Facebook Samsung announces The Frame Pro: could this be the perfect TV?  LG’s 2025 OLED TVs are its best yet — but they risk going overboard with AI LG’s StanbyME sequel adds a carrying strap to the portable TV  Dell kills the XPS brand: Dell, Pro, Max / Premium, Plus, Base Afeela has a price: 89,000, 102,000 TCL NxtPaper max ink mode  Roborock debuts a robot vacuum with a robotic arm at CES This toaster-looking gadget boosts your phone’s battery in seconds A SodaStream for your Hydro Flask! Aqara launches three touchscreen smart home control panels at CES 2025 The Schlage Sense Pro smart lock is one of the first with hands-free unlocking using UWB Bird Buddy’s new camera tracks plants and insects in your garden Mirumi is a furry little companion bot that imitates a shy infant Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. Prompts 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. Hello and welcome to Vergecast, the flagship podcast of bowling. Can we pivot to that?

This feels good. It does feel good. I'm your friend, Neelai, David Pierce is here. Hello. Do you spin the ball when you bowl? Like, does it go? Does it do the way? I don't want to tell you my moves.

We are live at CES. We're a Brooklyn Bowl. We have a live audience. Say hello to the live audience. audience, live audience. Say hello to the listeners. It's crazy in here. Delta has taken over Brooklyn Bowl on our behalf. There's Verchcast logos at the bar and all the screens. This is a super cool room. Thank you all so much for being here with us. If you're listening, we're going to try to keep this on the rails as much as we ever keep a Vergecast on the rails. But I have to be honest with you. Just the presence of this crowd has me knowing that things are going to get super weird on this episode of the Vergecast. It's going to be great.

Jen, Allison and V are going to join us. We're going to talk about everything that's happening and see us across their beats, across other beats. There's a helicopter that lands in a van that I really, really want to talk about. You've brought this up so many times now. And you keep bringing it up in such a way

where you're like, you don't think it's cool, but you've now said it so many times that I'm like, Neil, I actually thinks this is very cool. It's a lot. We're going to get in. I don't want to waste that. We're going to get into it.

But there's, and we're going to have lightning rounds, obviously. Searchcast. sponsored by all these people Sponsored by these people David, tell me, what's your vibe on CS this year? It's been a weird CES.

There hasn't been, like, the thing. Like, I think, like, last year, the Rabbit R1, which sucks, was the thing at CES. It was, like, it was the gadget that a lot of people were talking about and interested in. And this year, it's, like,

it's almost, like, too practical. Like, all the stuff I'm excited about and that we're going to talk about as like real things that real people are going to use, which is not what CES is about. CES is about, like, deranged ideas about technology. And there are lots of those, and we will get too many of them,

including helicopters that come out of the back of cars. But it just doesn't feel like there has been, like, the one sort of breakout thing yet, which in terms of, like, stuff that regular people will actually buy, it's probably a good CES on that front, but it doesn't feel quite CES-E-S-A that way. Does that make sense?

So I have another theory about what's going on CES. and it's like my face hugger theory of technology. Okay. Or like, you know, an alien's like brushed out of the chest. There's CES, the show that we all think we're coming to

with the gadgets and the TVs and whatever. And then at the ARIA, there's the marketing people. Yes. There's some marketing people here. Be careful, they're going to latch onto your face. You can tell it's like,

it's literally it's like much better dressed people walking much more intentionally at the Aria than at the Venetianian. Well, I'll get to that one second. They're definitely better dressed. Intentionally seems maybe... So if you just think about what's going on in technology broadly, right? We all have screens.

The screens have apps. They show you video. They show you AI slop, whatever they're showing you. And in the middle, all that's fun about advertising. And sometime, over the past decade, the advertising industry realized that they should be here where everyone is going to talk about next to your screens. And then they have the money.

And, like, the car. helicopter car guys, like, I'm here, too. And so it's just like this other parallel CES is here, where if you want to meet 300 meta executives, they're at the ARIA. They're not on the show floor. If you want to see the entire Amazon's ads team or all the TikTok people, they're here.

Like, a lot of the major company executives are here. They're just dealmaking about ads somewhere else. And the show floor is like, it's not what it used to be. And so I think that's where you get to, like, there's not one big thing that everyone's talking about, because the one big thing everyone's talking about is, like, programmatic advertising. Well, and the other one is AI,

which I was talking to one of them, I'm going to steal our thunder from one of our guests here, who was saying basically, like, the strange thing about AI is you can't demo it to anybody. Yeah. Like, it's just, it's just like a thing that happens, but it actually just looks like a television. So you're like, this television has a chat bot,

and it's like, well, A, what does that mean? And B, how do you show that on a show floor? So it's like, Samsung just had a ship, because that's the only thing there is to show is, look, it's a... The Samsung booth has a sign in it, and if you have been to the show floor, the Samsung booth has a sign in, it says smart things for ships. This is real, which seems dangerous to me as a person who runs smart things in his home. We'll have Jen on later.

We can ask her if she thinks smart things is appropriate for sea-bound navigation. You spend a tremendous amount of time talking about how your goal is boat money, and I feel like smart things for ships, boat money. Like there's a straight line in there for you. So right next to Smart Things for Ship is a sign It says society. It's not even like connected society. It's just the word society.

And it's like Samsung is announcing society. And next to society, their vision for it is that your ship will have smart on technology on it. And you're like, I think this is a dangerous approach to what we're doing. But it's really weird. Like Samsung is showing all these like solutions. There's no products in their booth, which is really weird. There's a model of a ship in the word society.

And we're going to talk about the frame TV. I promise you. We're going to talk about frame TV. Those are the two wolves inside of each of us. The frame TV is not even being demoed in that booth. The art gallery, the frame TV is being demoed in that booth. So it's just a very odd moment for, I think, a lot of these companies where they're over the hardware race.

Yeah. And then a bunch of the younger companies, the TCLs are like still super in the hardware race. I will say, and we should talk about this quickly. We're going to talk about us a lot, I suspect, for the next four years. Because there are so many marketers here and because there are so many major technology company executives here, Meta announced yesterday, that they're getting rid of fact-checking, they're changing their community standards.

And we've been able to do a bunch of reporting about that because everyone's here. And then sort of like, what does it mean to advertise on meta when their community guidelines are changing is a thing that I've just had conversations about because all of those folks are here. And that's not usually what you expect from CS.

I'm assuming you came here to hear me rant about the frame TV and not about meta's community guidelines, although it's the vertcast. I'm hoping that you all understand both things will always happen at the same time. But that to me has been the story of the show, just because of the rooms I have happened to be in. Everyone is talking about it. Oh, for sure.

Because it feels like the whole tech industry is now in a much more transactional place, cynically transactional. And that announcement coming on the first A of CS, I think, is no accident of timing. Because all of META's marketers are here with their clients explaining what they mean when they say, you can now refer to women as household objects on meta, which is a rule that they have changed. That's a rule that you can do. And the reason they announce it here is because their salespeople are sitting with their biggest clients being like,

here's how this is actually going to play out. And I think that has gotten a little bit lost, right? Like, yes, the timing is weird. Yes, Mark Zuckerberg made what appears to be like a hostage video. Is anyone here good at makeup? Can someone help him so he's not always blown out in the T zone? Like, I'm only, I look great in eyeliner and that's all I know how to do. But my goth phase did not.

he always looks like he just needs to get evened up. Facts. But this is also just what he does every four years now is make one of those videos where he takes the opposite position of the one that he took four years ago. Right. And it's super cynical. I think he's gotten a little bit radicalized.

He gets yelled at a lot. I think none of the big tech companies liked working with the Biden administration because the Biden administration's approach to the big tech companies or what was effectively, what if you didn't exist? Right.

It's true. They all hated Lena Kahn. They all hated this department justice. Google has two antitrust cases brewing. Meta has a big one coming up in April that's, I think the FTC is running about Instagram and WhatsApp and potentially breaking out apart. So I think they all just made their deal with the devil to be like, we give Trump money, maybe these problems will go away. And I think part of that is Mark literally using a lot of, like he says the legacy media is lying to you, like in that video. He says transgenderism.

and he says that the rule is now you can refer to being gay or transgender as a mental illness. These are explicit, these are dog whistles to a community that is very, very receptive to them. And all of that is transactional. Right. Whether or not he believes that, I don't know, there's a lot of gay and trans people who work at Meadow. Like, he has to support his own team in some way, and I think he's going to have to explain that. It also doesn't matter. Like, I think the lesson we're learning here really quickly is that what Mark Zuckerberg believes or what Tim Cook believes or what any of these folks believe,

Actually, it doesn't matter. Like, they will run their companies as business people. And I think the thing that is happening is we either have to decide to stop being surprised or, like, dedicate ourselves to continuing to be angry that this happens. But this is just, everyone has just said what it is now. I was with another big tech company executive yesterday, and they were just like, we're treating this time it's business. And that was just the point of view that they had.

It's just been business the whole time. But I think there was a long period of time where there was a sense that like, okay, maybe we are going to buy into this new world where young people care about values and each other and we're going to save the world. And, you know, ESG is going to be a part. And then everybody has decided, oh, never mind,

that's actually not what it is. We're just going to win at capitalism. And that is the game. Yeah. So we're going to cover this a lot, I think, over the next four years. We already have some further coverage scheduled for next week on both this site and the podcast. But I just wanted to call it out

beginning, one, because we're like, what's the story of CES? For me, part of the story of CS is the marketing industry is here, like in force. It is driving the show in a way that is basically invisible, even on our site. Our site is basically like, look at this laptop, it folds in half, and that's really fun, and I love it. But the money here is all in the area. It's all a lot of people talking about how to command attention. And the story of the show over there has been the biggest advertising platform around has made this big, capitulation, this very transactional, very cynical capitulation. And I think that's going to have repercussions across the tech industry.

Yeah. Because if you don't have to spend $270 million in Pennsylvania, you don't, you won't. And I think they're all going to learn that lesson from Mark. And I think the question is like, is anybody, does anybody here think Mark Zuckerberg is not like a ruthless transactional business man? Bowling? Yeah. You can get one of these. Yeah.

Like a half and half. Does anyone think Tim Cook is not a ruthless? transactional businessman. Like Tim Cook famously, the Why Are You Still Here Story? You guys know a story? We're like, they were talking about some problem

with the supplier in China. And his lieutenant was here and he looked at him and said, why you're still here? And the guy got up, left the room and flew to China. Yeah, that guy, he's going to be able to handle it, right? He handled Trump excellently the first time.

Bezos ruthlessly transactional businessman. And then you've got like, Sundar. Like, can he do it? Like, can Evan Spiegel roll up to Mar-a-Lago and be like, I've redesigned the Snapchat interface again? I think all, like, this is going to have huge repercussions across the tech industry

because you need to be all kind of personality. And so we're going to cover it, I think, for the next four years. But now we should cover gadgets. Can we talk about the biggest question of CES? This is the, all that stuff is, you know, more important, whatever. The question I have about CES is, is the frame pro actually a good television? All right. I mean this question sincerely.

So Chris Welch on our team wrote about the Samsung, the frame. I've learned that it's not called the frame television. It's called the frame, which is ridiculous and I hate it. But the frame pro is a new TV. And he started by being like, oh, this thing might kick ass. It's very cool. Lots of new stuff. And over the course of like 72 hours has come to basically I have been lied to,

this thing might be awful. And so I want to know how you feel. I want one. I have not spent any time with Chris. He came to that conclusion independently. As America's foremost frame owner, which is a thing, you just have to wear it. do own one. How many people here have a frame TV? All right. Bowlers.

Neil I owes all of you money. Yeah. That was just a fist in the air. You're just like, yeah, frame TV. Lots of frame TVs. I have a frame TV. Everybody knows it's a frame TV. The frame TV represents the death of Hollywood. I want you to, every time you turn on this TV, I want you to be like, what I'm doing is killing Hollywood. And I mean that. I mean that in a very real sense. It is also Samsung's biggest success. It is a cultural product, not a tech product. You buy this thing because it looks good when it's off. You buy this thing because it has an art store. How many people are paying the $50 a month for the art store?

How many people are, that one person will admit it. How many of you are paying for it and you just don't want to admit it in this room with me? I pay the money too, all right? It is a cultural product. It is not a technology product. And that is the thing everybody wants. The iPhone is a cultural product. It's not a technology product.

It's a very high-end technology product, but inherently it's a cultural product. So Samsung can have influencers and HGTV and interior designers sell the frame TV is like a statement piece that you put in your living room. I have a frame TV. I have a new neighbor. They readed their living room and they were like, we bought the frame TV and they're like, it's not a real frame TV. And I was like, why are you bidding this to me? No one like shows me any other product and is like, it's not the real one. That doesn't happen. But the frame TV has achieved the status. And the fact that it is a bad TV is like totally secondary to its status. It is a shit TV. I'm sorry. You don't you don't have you don't have you can just, it's fine that I

know it and you know it. You don't have to tell anyone else. But it is a seven-year-old edge-lit panel that Samsung has long since made its margin on. And now they're selling them for like three bills. Like a lot of you paid thousands of dollars for your frame TV when the core component of it is like a $200 Samsung panel from seven years ago. But it's all the stuff they've layered on to it, right? The mat display, they break out the box. They can make it flat. You can buy the frames. I have a lot to say about the frames in the art store. So they're making. They're making all of this margin based on a lifestyle value of the product on the product itself. And so the frame pro...

This is such a long way of explaining why you bought a terrible television that has not yet answered my question. So Samsung, the thing this time was they were like, what if we made it a good TV? And it sounds like they didn't do that. They didn't do that. So they got to use some words. So an edge lit TV has the lights around the edge of the screen that light up the LCD panel.

The new hot tech is mini LED backlights. to have lots and lots of small backlights. You can turn on off the zones. You get true blacks, and then you have OLEDs, which are the, that's what I have. That's actually what I have. Our frame TV is in our bedroom,

and my daughter watches Moana. I don't want she's sick. That's why we own that TV. So Samsung is saying, we've made it mini LED, which everyone you're supposed to think, they're on the cutting edge of the technology. Because they can't use OLED,

because if you put art on an OLED picture for days at a time, you'll burn out the OLED. So they can't use the best technology. So they say they're using this, up-and-coming disruptive technology called Mini-LID, where every other Mini-L-A-D TV has thousands, if not tens of thousands of dimming zones to let them simulate an OLED black level.

But Samsung isn't doing that. They just put them around the fucking edge of the TV so they can crank them really bright so the TV can get brighter. So they still have an edge-lit panel. Like, they haven't done anything. Well, they did something. What did they do?

But they didn't do the thing that they should have done, which is make it a better television. I don't think it matters. When I say it's the death of Hollywood, What I mean is you all bought this tea. I keep pointing at all of you. It's like, how dare you?

These monsters bought this television. Every Hollywood celebrity you know is mad at you. Tom Cruise is going to come in here and turn off motion smoothing, one by one. But you bought a TV that is better when it's off, like substantially better in its off state than it's on state. Like the picture quality when the frame TV is off is better than when it's on. And that's cool. Like that's why we have one in our bedroom,

because it's mostly off. It's such a small step from there to just hanging a real picture on your wall. It's such a small step from there to, what's the, there's an e-ink, like color, e-ink frame that they're selling here. It's a poster. You have to charge it once a year.

It has an art store. It's such a small step to that. It's such a small step to not having a TV. Because your TV is off showing you $50 a year content from the MoMA while you're on TikTok. Can I offer you a different? which is the new LG Standby Me Too, which is just a thing you carry with a strap.

Why have a television when you can have a television with you all the time? Have you guys seen this stand by me too? It has a strap, then it also has a, so it's just a TV with a battery and the battery lasts like four hours. It's very funny. You know, the first one was a suitcase.

It came in like a James Bond style suitcase, but then he would play Solitaire on it. So you'd like, I'm James Bond. And then it'd be like, we're playing Solitaire. But now it has a strap. It has a giant surface-style kickstand. attachment so you can just make it a giant tablet computer, which is very cool. Everyone I saw encounter this thing in the LGBT was captivated by it.

It's literally just a huge iPad without a touchscreen, which is both ridiculous and kind of great. And they're showing it. There's like the big idea is like you'll hang it up at your coffee shop to show the menu or whatever. And that's all fine and good. But I want this thing to just like wander around my house with me and just I just sit it next to me as I watch shows. like that's what I do with my phone all the time now. I'm like, it's a hop to not having a TV.

What you are describing is a person without a television. And every now and again, you're going to bring out your little shoulder strap TV and you're going to like watch a show and you're going to put it away. And once that happens, like the culture of the world changes once the default is we don't have TVs.

And I promise you the Samsung frame TV is the leading indicator of eventually not having TVs. I mean, and the frame pro is a con. And I just want to be very good about it. Like what professional needs this stuff? What are we doing? But we're fully in the lighting around, by the way. I just want to be clear.

Yeah. So can I just burn you through some more news before we bring out our friends to talk about more interesting stuff than your weird ideas about television? Can we talk about Dell? Just for like a minute. I just need to be very mad at Dell out loud on this podcast. Yeah. So Dell. That's a CES tradition.

Dell, which had a million names of products for its laptops that no one could ever make sense of, now has fewer names for its products that make somehow even less sense. So Dell has completely renamed its whole... They got rid of XPS. Right. Which was a good brand. It was like the best Windows computer

and they're like, ah, never mind. So now there is the Dell. Just Dell. Just Dell. So you just like, I'll have a Dell, please. It's like a thing you can do now. There's also the Dell Pro and there's the Dell Max. And if you're like, David, that doesn't make sense.

I have more for you. Within each of those tiers, there is a premium a plus and a base tier. So there is now a Dell base. I'd like a Dell base, please. Sure. That's like a rental car. All the way up to a Dell Max premium.

Del Max premium. I assume it costs $16 million. Are they different products? I honestly couldn't tell you. I don't think Dell knows. I really don't. I think they just had a bunch of laptops and they were like, we don't know

what any of these are anymore because we just have infinite skews of things and just put a bunch of them in buckets. And we're like, ship these to Best Buy. And the middle one is plus. The middle one is plus. You can get a Dell Max plus.

You can't. That's correct. Or a Dell Pro Plus. I hate this so much. You're so mad. I have always said that my future is to just start a consultancy where I will walk into your boardroom,

say that name is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Leave and you owe me $50,000. Like, I'll be the one to say to your CEO, that's the stupidest idea you've ever had. That's why people hire consultants. This is what I'm saying. I will do that for so cheap if it saves us from stupid names

like this. But anyway, so that sucks. The computers, I'm sure, will be fine. DEL has made fine computers for a very long time. Can we talk about the Sony-A-Fila car for just a hot second? Do we think this exists now? We have a price. This thing has been at CES in various forms of prototype for three

years now? Four years? They over... Have you guys seen the Aphila? It's just a sedan. I don't want to... It looks like a lucid air, but Sony did it, you know? It's $89,000. I was just some people today, like, walking on the show floor. And I was like, this is Sony's car.

It's a sedan that costs $89,000. And just a group of people gathod. Like, I feel very bad for Sony and Honda. They announced this thing five years ago at the height of infinite demand for Tesla, like where Tesla is like, we can't make model-wise fast enough. And every car company was like, well, what if we announce a car that we're going to ship five years from now to fill some of that model wide demand. And our only idea about it is that it has PlayStation in it somehow.

Yeah. So, I mean, so Sony's giant worry is that the cars will drive themselves and then people, you'll, you'll have more free time because you're like living room on wheels going to wherever you're going in your autonomous car. And Sony should program the content and advertising that you consume during that time. And I've heard this idea from multiple entertainment companies, multiple car companies that once we have autonomous cars and you drive around living or run wheels, whoever wins that fight to program that screen is the next winner.

And I'm just like, you know that people still have phones. You have to beat my iPhone still. Like, I get in an Uber all the time. The Uber drives around just fine. I'm not like, I hope somebody, like, I turn off this screen in the back of the taxi. I want to look at my phone. I do play the trivia games back there every once in a while. Oh, no.

They're being so ruthlessly tracked. Oh, yeah, it's fine. They know how good I am at trivia. But I, so they have announced a price. And then I think a really funny thing is, you know, the EFILA is the Sony Honda Mobility Joint Venture where Honda's doing a car and then Sony's programming the experiences and it's on the car. And you can, like, you can in fact play PlayStation in the back of the EFELA.

Great. But at the same time at this very show, Honda is showing off its own cooler cars. And you're just like, it's an $89,000 to the end that you don't like. Like, this thing is doomed. I hope none of you have pre-ordered in Ophila. If you, you know, have fun. You know, life is a series of experiences that you're allowed to have.

but the actual Honda cars look way cooler like much more futuristic they keep calling it a saloon which is just what British people say instead of station wagon and it's like just a long I just learned that this week by the way it's awesome that's such a better name than station wagon

yeah like a saloon car is cool but it does imply that there will be like swinging doors and the British have once again lied to us but it's like just such a cool looking car it makes a lot of sense like you can see Honda's really thought about repackaging a car around a battery instead of what most car makers are doing, which is like putting a battery in existing design and playing it safe. But no price, no ship date. We're like ages away.

We're still in vapor where a car land. And then the other thing that's really interesting is none of the other car makers are here. And so for years, you know, Mercedes would be here and like, this car has OLEDs on the outside. And then BMW, like, our car has E-ink on the outside. And they'd be like, what about the inside of the car? And then they would show you crazy ideas for, you know, interactive cockpits. And they would talk about EVs endlessly and autonomy endlessly, and none of them are here this year. We've seen such a trend, like, in the last 12 months of all

of these companies walking back from these wild ideas. Because there was a minute where it was like, this is the future and it is coming right now. And now everybody's like, this is potentially the future and it's coming in a very long time because we can't figure out how to charge these things. Right. They were counting on two-barterdeme shapes. They're counting on

widespread electrification, which they have largely achieved in China, but they can't talk about it here. And they are counting on autonomy. And those things are just not happening at the rate that anyone wants them to. Waymo is here, and they're showing the Hyundai Waymo car that they're going to be doing next year, which is an Ionic 5.

And so you go from a Jaguar to Anionic 5, it's like a hard thing to be excited about, but they're trying really hard. Listen, everybody's just out here doing their best. All right, we are already threatening to go way over. So let's get to some of our friends who have been doing much better reporting than we have. All right, we've got to take a quick break, and we will be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

Every thriving successful business has to start somewhere. A good place to start is a relatively simple question. What if, given the right tools, I've really put my all into this. One tool that can help grow your sprouting business to new heights is Shopify. Millions of businesses around the world rely on Shopify for e-commerce. They offer a host of helpful tools you can take advantage of, from payment processing to analytics to website design. Their design studio includes hundreds of templates to help you create the

exact website you've been envisioning for your business. If you're wondering, what if I need help, then no worries, because you're never left to fend for yourself. Shopify's award-winning customer support is available 24-7. It's time to turn those what-ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash Vergecast. Go to Shopify.com slash vergecast. That's Shopify.com. That's Shopify. dot com slash vergecast. Alison Johnson's over here. Allison, come hang out with us.

Let's talk about CES. Welcome, Allison, everybody. Allison has been talking about a phone toaster, nonstop for several days, which I feel like you bring your mic over. There's a bunch of stuff we should talk about, but can we just talk about the phone toaster? I feel like you've really oversawled the phone toaster.

Phone toaster. So the story is I got the press release in my inbox and I was so annoyed immediately with phone toaster. I was like, I don't want to hear about this. And then we got here and I was like, well, I should go see the phone toaster. Is it actually called the phone toaster? No. I called it that once in my head and then it was just phone poster after that.

What it is is the whole thing is called Swip It. It's a... It's called Swip It? Swip it. They had phone toaster in their back pocket and they went with it. Swip it. I know. You know,

they went to slip it. It's like a charging system for your phone where you have the phone case. There's a battery packed in it

and you use it like you would in a phone with a case and a battery. And when it's time to charge, you stick it in the phone toaster and it goes and it swaps out the battery

and you take it out. You get to go. Two seconds. And I was like, I'm still kind of like not understanding this. And they're like, well, you just, you never charge your phone again. You just sweep it. The truth is you perfectly understand it. Yeah. Do you need, how much does it cost? Okay. So that's the thing. I don't know, that's not a good, okay. The phone toaster itself, the hub is for, it's the hub. Okay. The phone cases are the link. Yeah. Phone toaster is $450. Sure. Yeah. And the phone case is $120. It doesn't come with a case?

Do you have to buy? Because you have to buy the one. Can you get the case without getting the toaster? You could. But why would you? Why would you? Okay. That's fair.

You need the toaster. And you need multiple. How many batteries are in each toaster? There's five batteries in the toaster. Do you ever say sentences and be like, how did we get here? I'm like, this is what I'm paid to do. And just to drive me, so you would need like two.

You need like one at home and one in your office or something. So you're like a thousand dollars deep into a cell toaster. Yeah, you got to invest in $1,000 in your toasters. And then you never have to charge your phone again. I feel like I can never charge my phone again for $1,000 in a variety of different ways. I know. You could have chargers like in every corner of your house. I just think like there's something I appreciate it.

I feel like I have two phones. You could have a lot of phone. I'm sorry. Are you just telling me you don't. find the idea of being able to just like walk into your like living room when you get home and just go like funk and if your phone is magically charged again yeah that kicks ass you know it's it's it makes me think of like in in action movies when the guy can do like a really cool like hot swap of of magazines of ammo and it's like they like flip their guns around that's us that's what we get

now with the phone toaster for 450 this is a whole thing for what honey it's called the sweep it Again, pay my consultancy. I will tell you it should have been the phone toaster. It's a phone toaster. Yeah. I'm saying. This does remind me that when I got my first Sony Cleet and had the little flip-down microphone, I did practice trying to make that a cool move.

Was not successful and remained single throughout high school. Carry on. What else have you seen that's cool? You've been running around seeing all kinds of stuff. I feel like you've had less of a like focused goal at CES and you're more just like, what weird things can I encounter? Which is the correct way to do CES? I have the best job.

And I've never had this job at CES before. This is my sixth CES. Yeah. Because you spend a lot of your time not at CES with phones. And there are just no phones here. Yeah, yeah. No phones. Not a phone show.

I reviewed the 1 plus 13. It's awesome. And then I just left it in my hotel room and I went into the show floor. No, it rules because, like, I've had the CES experience where you run from meeting to meeting and you're, like, sweating and you're talking to people. and you don't get to see anything. So this year I got to see things. And I wandered through the West Hall.

I was like, I'm just going to like see what's hearing. Get out real quick. Like an hour and a half later, I was like taking pictures of myself with every like massive tractor. I could find, I was like, this is the coolest thing. There's like massive, you know, electric vehicles. And I was like, oh, I got to move on. Like I can't spend my way. Did you do the demo?

I think it's catar pics. has a great demo where you can sit in a cockpit and remote operate a digger that's like hundreds of miles away. No. And there's just a line I got. And it's like they have a drone looking at the digger. Can you see a great? Yes, it's all 5G.

Finally the promise of 5G is been realized. And it's three guys standing in line to operate a digger 500 miles away. I knew it. It's fun. It all happened. We've run the race. We did it. FU China.

Remote control digger. there's a long line of people who just sat in this thing and they're like scooped up some dirt and they put the dirt away. And it's like they're watching it on a TV. It's like, this isn't actually cool. That's what I'm going to do tomorrow. You should go back tomorrow. But it was very fun.

One guy ran into like he couldn't do it and the guy was like, let me find you some looser soil. And I was like, that is the harshest burn. All right. Now I'm nervous. Let me find you some looser soil as like a motivational poster that I would like to exist. Oh, no. It's rough.

When life gets hard fun, looser soil is like, that means something. That's powerful. Have you seen in Central Hall, next to the Samsung booth, there's a little booth for just an LED manufacturer. Like,

they don't make the displays, really. They make the LED component tree. And they're very proud of, apparently they've invented a million things first, like the first wire-free LED circuitry that can do a thing, like all this stuff,

the first heat-resistant, whatever. but their tagline, I swear to you, this is the tagline of this company, birth is not fair, but opportunity must be fair. And it's like in huge letters. And then right below it, it's like the future of OLED signage. Wow. Like, stick to your guns.

Like, I go for it. Like, shout it from the rooftops. Opportunity must be fair. It's like right next to the Samsung group. So all these people are walking by it and like taking selfies with it because it's so weird. And I think it's working. Like, I think a lot of people are being radicalized into, like, an inherently progressive agenda. But it's O-Lid manufacturer.

They wanted to see the frame pro. And said that's what they. I feel like, that's where your opportunity is to go over and be like, actually, OLED isn't really massively available yet. It's still too expensive. If we could just work on O-led becoming more commercially. Find looser soil. What else have you seen?

That's great. So I got to wander around the Central Hall. So I used to cover cameras full time. I stopped by Nikon. And you might be bummed to hear that there are like zero cameras at the Nikon booth. I was scandalized. There's like airplanes. And then someone like doing a fake weather forecast for some reason.

But I found. Yeah. I was like, sure. But there's a camera they're going to take to the moon and it has a little jacket on. I thought that was so sweet. Yeah. You got really excited about the jacket. I did.

I came back like three times and I was like, I want to make sure I get all the facts right about the moon camera. No, I got to just like see this show from the perspective of someone who's just like, wants to go see cool shit. The LG booth is awesome. There's a whole thing with the translucent TV panels where like, you know, you stand around, you watch it and it's like jellyfish and then it morphs into other stuff. And then all the panels kind of come out and it's stained glass.

And it looks like Jesus is about to like emerge from the TVs. I was like, this is a spiritual experience right here for some people. But yeah, like I just, I got to check out Eureka Park. I got to, I went to the spear. Oh for the Delta Tijuana. Yeah, yeah, I went for that. I was never been there before. I wasn't prepared for the smell of vision, like.

portion of it. They did a thing with Uber Eats where it was like a bit. There was a guy on like a moped like delivering Uber Eats and then they like pump in this smell of like hazelnut and everybody's kind of like, do you smell that? It's kind of sweet. And then they were like, oh, a hazelnut coffee. Just how I like. I was like. That's a lot. It was a lot. The one thing that I've been dying to ask you about is TCL Next Paper phone. Yeah. I don't know if you've seen it. As you know, David is the number one retail agent for the Bukes Palmer here in America, which, by the way, it currently is in some sort of weird Chinese AI data privacy scandal.

So well done, David. Thank you. Wait a minute. Wait a year for it. Wait a new app on the people of America with your weirdie paper phone. I believe I advocated for mostly using that thing in airplane mode, so I'm good. I feel fine about it. So we've just seen a lot of interest in these like minimal phones.

And it's a secondary device, right? It doesn't make any sense to me to have an E.NK phone as your primary device. And so TCL, this is like their second or third next paper phone. And they have matte displays and then you can switch them to black and white mode. But this year they look almost like E ink. Yeah. Yeah, they've been doing this next paper thing. And it was in the tablets first and then they brought it to the phones.

And the thing that I'm most excited about, and I think you are too, is the next paper key, which is just a little slider button on the side of the phone that puts it into max ink mode. And that just... That's where it looks the most like E-Inck mode. Yeah, that's the like E-Inc mode. And it's like monochrome... David's consultancy approves of that.

Yeah. You just like pretend your phone is an E-ink phone for a minute. Does it work? Like I feel like we've seen a lot of companies do this thing where they're like it's an LCD, but it's a better one to look at. What was the little startup just now? The daylight? The daylight.

And they were all in. They were like, this will save you. Yeah, and it was one of those like it had some interesting ideas, but it is a little bit like the sort of jack of all trades and master of none thing

where it's like it almost accomplishes all of its goals, but it actually accomplishes none of them. And I feel like this has been true with a lot of these things, which is why I end up going back to Eink because it's like sure it's slow refresh rate and it doesn't work super well in certain conditions,

but like it does the thing it's supposed to do which is not Blair light in your eyes all the time. Does next paper like, can it do the middle thing? Kind of. I mean, there's like, they have a mat kind of finish on the screen, and they,

they say all this stuff about it's, like, you know, rated to be really easy on your eyes and the blue light and all that. But, like, really, it's just... But really the thing that happens is you flip the switch on the side of the screen, and, like, smoke comes out from the middle of the screen. Like, there's an animation that's, like,

E-ink is eating your display from the inside out. It's very sci-fi. And then it, like, takes over, it shuts down the screen and comes back as an eating screen. Also, for some extremely convoluted reason, it quits all of their apps. Yeah.

So it's not great in that sense. I literally believed you when you said smoke comes out. Like, I was honestly like, that makes sense. Yeah, the TCO made a phone. The phone explodes in your left with a Kindle. Yeah. When you flip it back, like a purpley smoke emerges from the middle of the screen. Yeah. It's like a ripple.

It's fabulous. And there's a middle one, which is like a desaturated color e-ink. And it's just like the thing. I've watched people cruise by all kinds of dumb AI ideas all day today, and everyone stopped at the next paper booth. Because the idea that you have a phone where you're reading it looks more like paper is inherently very compelling. And to me, it's like, maybe that's like the most interesting phone we're going to see for a while.

Because it's not like AI is going to do any. I know. Yeah. Right, Alison, before we ruthlessly kick you off the stage. Okay. We have to talk about the thing that you and I both got, I would say, unnecessarily excited about it, CES unveiled. Yeah, I scooped you.

You did. It was honestly, we have a Slack room where we were talking about the stuff we were going to write about. And I was like, I'm doing this now. So it's like, I did it already. It's the meanest thing that's ever happened to me. It's a top for your water bottle. What's the whole thing? Explain this to the people.

Who should all buy this thing immediately? Soda stream, but for a hydroflask, like, that's it. It's a little top. You screw onto the top of your water bottle. You put the CO2 canister in, and there's like a little plastic lid you put on top. and it does the carbonation thing. And then you have sparkling water and you can be free and walk with it. It's honestly, it's all I've ever wanted.

I don't know why I got so excited about this, but the idea of like, and they make a specific water bottle. And they're like, you can have your still water bottle and your sparkling water bottle. You like drop the little capsule in. All I want. How many uses you get out of each capsule? Who cares? Don't ask questions.

Don't worry about. You can feel. It's fine. It's $50. It's a $50 water bottle. It's fine. It has a subscription. It's tracking it.

Yes, and you have sparkling water for the rest of your life. It's important. You know, sparkling water is freely available. Okay. We don't all have that LaCroy money, Eli. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Allison, thank you.

You're going to come back when we do some Q&A stuff, but for now, go away. Okay. We have to move on. Thank you, Allison. Jen Tui, come hang out with us. Let's talk smart home things. Jen Tui, everybody should know this. All of our team is wonderful, but no one at CES.

is a celebrity quite like Gen Tuey is a celebrity. Anyone who makes a smart home anything, which is everyone at CES, is largely obsessed with Gen TIE. Welcome. We're very excited here. I was with Owen. I'm a geographer today,

and I had quite a few people. In fact, I see some in the audience who I, yeah, come up to me and was like, said how wonderful they love The Verge, but that I'm their favorite. A few also said they were going to subscribe. There you go. We have a subscription fee

But you get sparkling water Can we talk about robot vacuums? All I want to talk about in the whole world is robot vacuums I have become completely sold on all weird robot vacuums ideas this week That's good because there are a lot of them There's so many of them I just want to I want you to explain the ones that you've seen

And liked the best but the one that I got to see that is my favorite Was there's a Robo Rock one that is just it's just a Roomba-looking thing, but it has a robotic arm that comes out, I mean, so slowly, so slowly. It just slowly comes out, and it kind of goes like this. And then if it, like, sees a sock next to it, it just sort of gently reaches over and picks up the sock

and then just moves with it somewhere and then just puts the sock down in a different place. And there was a person at the Robo Rock's booth whose job was to reach over and put the sock back in the vacuum's way. And it was the bet. I stood there for like much too long watching this person just slowly fight with the vacuum about where the socks should go.

Did you see them doing their dance? No. There's a dance? They had a whole row of them stacked right at the front of the booth and they had them dancing and sink the arms. Incredible. I know. It was pretty great.

Can I just say I'm, and everyone wants to talk about humanoid robots? I'm afraid of the vacuums that have limbs. Before we got on stage, Jen was like, one of them has legs. That's just the thing she casually said. I'm going to find out more soon. Legs and arm.

That was, that was, you know, we, they elevated throughout the week. So it started and we actually got to see the Robo Rock a sneak peek last month. So we were all prepped for the arms. And in fact, when we were all prepped for the arm, the uprising, the robot uprising is coming. And then the other, so there are lots of competitors in the Robo Rock, RoboVAC space. And Roborock came out with the arm, and then Dreamy came out with the legs. And then that was their debut. And these are robots that are coming.

You're going to be able to buy in the next couple of months. These aren't concept vacuums. And then I went to the Dreamy booth, and they're like, oh, but now we have one that has legs and an arm. So this is, and that they said actually that will be out by the end of the year. How fast can it run? So this is, it's the legs are a little, I mean, it's, they just basically raise the robot up far enough so that it can kind of get over a transition. Like if you've ever had a robot vacuum that can't get into your bathroom because you've got like a high ledge

and then it kind of the legs kind of collapse from under it and it goes forward. So it's not like it's going to climb up your staircase to the second floor. You can almost like hear it go every time. Like lunging over. Well and when I was watching the one with the legs and the arm, he said, well, we kind of modeled it after a horse. And you can see the legs go up and then the arm goes up and it's like I want to be clear this is a vacuum cleaner so the idea is if anyone's ever use a robot vacuum they often get stuck or if you've left your socks out

they'll suck up your socks and then there's AI powered obstacle avoidance which is supposed to help them get around the sock but then they haven't cleaned the floor where the sock was so this idea is it's going to pick up your sock you can tell it where to put it and so it'll go put it in a basket or the dreamy one can pick up shoes so it can go put shoes.

It's strong enough to pick up a shoe? 500 grams. It's over now. It can hop like a horse and pick up shoes? Yeah. I don't like this. And this one actually, the new dreamy one can use tools. So.

We actually don't like that. I've changed my life. They've all seen the movies, right? But the ultimate idea is they'll clean everywhere. Because right now they are kind of spotty. But it'll, and it'll, and it's, It can, this little arm kind of goes into a toolbox and takes a tool out. But yes, I could, I mean, right now it's a soft brush, but, you know, when it's like little chainsaw.

It's a full, like, battlebots situation you're describing. Well, I kept saying, you know, can we, you're across the way from each other? Can we just get the two robots together and go for it? No, they weren't having any. Like, are, is there a list of acceptable tools? It's just little brushes. It's like, mostly brushes. Brushes.

Because, like, you give this robot a hammer, like, all kinds of weird. Checking. Just shocking. But they're everywhere. Robots with arms, legs, all sorts of things. It does seem like in terms of just like household robots, it's the vacuums that people are like, these are the ones people actually buy. And everything else is kind of.

And so there's just a tremendous amount of weird vacuum ideas. It's where the innovation is, definitely, in the robot space. Because, and I've talked about this before, you know, the whole kind of dream is the Rosie, the robot, the humanized. But that's, you know, if and when that ever comes. comes is going to be, no one's been able to afford it. And it's going to be kind of scary. So for me, the idea of like modular single purpose robots or robots that can do one or two tasks rather than like a big, powerful humanoid robot roaming around your house makes a lot more

sense. And in fact, Switchbot, who's kind of known for quite innovative, slightly janky products, came out with a modular robot platform. So it has a little robot with something it's called a fusion platform that goes on top. And then you can put different accessories and it will drive around your house and bring you things. You can put a fan on it

so you can have it come and keep you cool, purify the air. So this is like, you know... Wait, you forgot the one where it'll do a teleprison robot. It's just a big, big ass selfie stick that you can just get your phone on and then it'll just wander around your house. Yes, that one.

All the way back to an iPad on a segue. That's what it is. Yeah, but it also cleans your floors at the same time. But 10 years ago, I walked around CS and people were like, The Future of Work is an iPad on a Segway. We actually, we have a great video from ages. James Vincent just came to our office from his home in London as an iPod on a stick or an iPad on a stick.

And his conclusion was like, no one respects me. It's like, it's hard. All right. I'm saying, good luck. everyone. I do like the idea of them, though. Like, the idea that you have this little tiny thing that A, does a thing, it cleans your floors, but it also increasingly, like, understands and has mapped your house, knows how

to move around. The idea that there's more stuff you can use tools and throw shoes. Yeah, that I'm less excited about it. The can you can open a box and use tools could go sideways. But air purifiers and selfie sticks are into it. Yeah, it's going to roll up in like a puff of smoke is going to come out and you're going to fall to the ground. Yeah.

Yeah. Wake up without a kidney. What is going on? Use tools. Yeah. Think about it. I'm just saying. I'm fine with this.

It doesn't look like a person, so it's less creepy. Well, actually, the switchbot is they are working on an arm to the switchbot. All right. We just... All right. Speaking of horror, so let's talk about matter. There's a lot of matter stuff here. There is an entire door lock camera biometric handle.

It's the year of the door lock. I called it. Yeah. The product you listed here is most likely to buy is the new Schleglock that has ultra-wideband. And I believe I was reading Jen's right up and it's like it calculates your velocity as you approach the door, which is just not a thing that you think a door lock needs to do. Well, so the idea is actually got a demo of it this evening. They're not shown on the show floor. That was all they released, but they did give me a little sneak peek just before I came here.

And the idea of the velocity is if you're, so UWB is like what we, what's in use in cars now for automatic unlocking. So it's precise positioning. So it knows how you're approaching. So this way, if you're walking sideways across your front lawn, your door's not going to unlock, right? It knows that your trajectory towards the lock. So as you're walking towards the lock, if you're running, it will unlock faster. Like, say you want to get in your house quick. Does it like whip open the door if you really want to surprise?

somebody. It's like the vacuum is coming. Unlock the door. But it's a great. I think the UWB technology is really what's going to push smart locks into the mainstream. Because to date, access control has been kind of fiddly. The fingerprint is my favorite option, but for a lot of people, it's not a great option. Fingerprints can be, you know, don't always get recognized. It's fidly to set up. And then the keypad, obviously, that's almost takes as long time as getting your key out if you're putting there. And then they've had this idea of automatic unlocking for a while, but it's never been very good because it uses Wi-Fi and geofencing and a few different radios. So like there's so many failure points, whereas this is just point-to-point radio to radio.

As you approach, the door will unlock and it unlocks before you get there. So you're not standing there like a lemon for like 30 seconds, waiting for your door to unlock, which has happened to me regularly. So quick question. How do lemon stand? It's an English term. Backing up bits. I'm super fascinating this because there's also a new, there's standards on top of standards, right? Yes.

So this is Alero. It's called Aliro. So this isn't, so Alero is coming this year. The classic Swarton story. Yes. And it's been known, like so Alero is like matter. Lero has been, it's like an industry collaboration between Apple, Google, Samsung, and then all the lockmakers.

And it's an access control standard to basically make it so that any smartphone can unlock, any door lock, obviously, authorized, not just. So rather than having to have a specific platform to use your smart lock or a specific smartphone, any UWB device or NFC, so it's bringing Apple Home Key, the idea of Home Key to all phones. So right now, if you've ever used Apple Home Key, it's very convenient. Tap your watch to your lock, tap your phone to your lock, unlocks it. But you can't use that if you have an Android phone. But now that's with Alero.

We're going to get NFC unlocking for all phones and UWB unlocking for all compatible phones. Obviously, you have to have UWB and NFC in your phone. But that's been coming for a while. There's a lot of phones and watches that now have that. So I think, I mean, it's going to take a while. The Alero standard is going to be announced, like what it is, the spec this year. But I think the lot manufacturers are already starting to make the locks to work with it.

And Apple announced at WWC last year, yes last year, that they are supporting the UWB hands free unlocking. So there's a lot of momentum there. And it's a really seamless experience compared to most of the other ways that you use smart locks.

So I think we're going to see a real uptick. Do you have a smart lock? Yeah. I've got the encode plus, which is Homekey. Yeah. And then I have the cheap Aquara one, which is also Homekey.

And that one, you get what you pay for. It's just like sort of straightforwardly you get what you pay for. But it's great because we just tap the phone on the door and it unlocks. And the problem is sometimes I have an Android phone and then I can't do that.

And like it seems like all this is just one turn too late. I know you're calling it the year of the smart lock. And there's a rumor that Apple will make a lock this year, which is very funny. We have all the products. With a video built in. And that's the other thing we saw, video doorbells built into smart locks everywhere and palm unlocking. I'm not so

about the palm on locking you just like wave your palm at it yeah i did it a few times i think phillips not phillips hugh what does it like your palm yeah they say it's a lot more um secure than a fingerprint apparently your palm has more sure things going on i don't know what we're beating is like a like a key and a lock like i think a fingerprint's probably fine we're we're still moving in the right direction but then it's the hands free element you know you just know this is not hands free but it is because you're not actually touching this is like the most hands There's no physical contact. Very much hand.

Yeah. I'd say it's in between. Sure. This is why I want it to just whip open the door when I walk up. See, that it doesn't do yet. Can you set the velocity? Can you feel like this is how fast I can run? No, it, so that's what I hadn't, Schleg was the first company I'd heard talk about velocity.

So, but I think that's neat because if you are in a hurry, rather than it, you suddenly have to stop. it can anticipate. It's reacting to you, and that's really where the smart home is going, I think. It anticipates your needs rather than you needing to tell it what you want to do or program it or put buttons in, you know, push buttons, put your fingerprint, and your home is starting to react to you. And that's kind of where we're moving, I think.

So what's really interesting is, you know, Apple, this is kind of the second time they've pulled this move, right? They did HomeKit, and then they gave a lot of HomeKit away to become matter. Then they did home keys and they gave a lot of home key away to be O'Leo and we'll see if that comes to anything. Right. But like you can see like they're moving more things into the industry ecosystem because they they just need the ecosystem to exist. Very, very few companies want to make stuff for just one platform, especially at the scale most these companies operate at. But then the rumors are like Apple will just make a lock with a like face ID built into it and that makes no sense

to me. And then the rumor is this year Apple will do like a smart home iPad situation. That would get. But then I'm just like looking at the other news here, which is Aquara has announced like a wall mountable smart home controller. And you're like, oh, they're just going to

kill their, this ecosystem of products they need to make this work that they keep giving the standards away to. They're just going to eat them. The Aquara thing is wild. So has anybody ever policies here? I know he has. The CEO of Home Assistant is here.

I know this person has done it. But has anybody ever been like, I'm going to put an iPad on my wall to control my Spark Home stuff? It's this, yes, it's our audience. I know more of you than subscribe to the art store on the Framed TV, is that's what I want to say. And it's like hard. It's just like a fundamentally complicated idea

because you've got to get power to the iPad. You got to keep the iPad in kiosk mode or you got to run an Android tablet. You end up with a bunch of weird matter. Can you tell how much therapy I do with Jen in like a day-to-day basis about farm stuff? And so Aquara has these new ones. I think you've actually seen them where they just replace your light switches in the way that has anybody ever seen the new like aftermarket screens you can put in cars where you just like take out the old radio and they're just like, fuck it, tablet.

Yeah. Covers up all the vents. And now it's like, what if we do that in your house? It's like we're going to take out your light switches and we're just going to mount a seven inch display where your light switch was. And guess where the power comes from? the power to your light switch, and then this will be the panel. And this feels like the new thing to me. Yeah, this is smart home control interfaces,

which is something I go on about a lot on the site. It's like, because voice and phone control are just not compatible in a household where there's more than one person. Like, you need ways to control your smart home. And Brilliant was the first sort of company in this space that did, replacing the light switch with a touchscreen panel. But what's happened now is that with Matter, you're not locking yourself into an ecosystem.

The problem had been, even though Brilliant tried with integrations, is that there just weren't enough things. If you're going to wire something to your house, it needs to control everything. And Akara, right now, it is not quite there, but with matter, they're saying they're going to be able to, you'll basically eventually be able to control any matter-compatible device straight from the touchscreen.

It's wired to lights, so you're solving the problem of your lights. You can, you know, dim, change colors, set scenes, using the touch panel for the light that it's wired to, and then any other lights in your home or maybe your door lock. It's also a video intercom. So if you have a video doorbell, it'll pull up when someone rings. You can talk to them. It has a little microphone. It's big and chunky, though. And then there's a spousal approval factor when it comes to light switches.

So my actual favorite one of the Akara, they showed off three. three touchscreen panels. And one has a little dial. It has a tiny little screen in it that you can swipe the screen to choose what you want to select. So say, I want to turn on the living room lights, or dim them. And then it has this lovely tactile dial that you can just turn. And that's, you know, it's like cool and tactile as light switches. They're like, they feel so good. Spousal approval through the roof on light switches. He's a smart home phyllisdine. But you can't, but light switch turns your light on and off or maybe dims it. This, I can, can swipe and touch one button and like all the lights in my house or in my living room will set

to a mood, you know, the movie time, dim to a certain light, maybe throw in a little funky color just for some, you know, fun. No, I'm not selling you on it. How many people in your household know successfully how to operate this thing? Well, that's the thing. These, this would be much more intuitive than anything to date that I've had in my, and that's what, you know, because I struggle, My family struggles with my smart home a lot. And I've left them for a week, and I'm terrified of what I'm going to find when I get home. Jen once told me that her teenage children don't know how to use keys because she's had smart locks for so long. They've never used to.

And it just seems like a life skill that we should come back to her. I don't like that. I don't think my daughter will notice how to use keys. She doesn't encounter them. They're not going to need a key. But, I mean, what's he going to? You just be like, run faster. The door will open.

Just speed it up. Just back up and try it again. It'll unlock. this time. All right, Jen, you're going to come back for Q&A because there are, I know for sure, people in this audience who want to yell at us about matter. But for now, thank you. It's not allowed to be powerless, then. He's here. It's allowed. Thank you, Jen. All right, we got to take a quick break, and we will be right back. Support for the show comes from Upwork. The days of doing it all, all by yourself, are over.

There's no romance and burning out while you're trying to scale. Instead, you can check out Upwork. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent across more than 125 categories so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale without committing to full-time headcount. And finding the right talent is easy. You can browse profiles, review pass work, and get help scoping the role so you can get started quickly. Seriously, you could connect with the right freelancer in just a few hours, especially when you sign up with Business Plus. Their AI-powered shortlisting pairs you with the top 1% of talent in under six hours. No endless searcher required. You can visit upwork.com right now to post your job for free.

That's upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's upw-w-R-K.com. Upwork.com. V's job this week was to wear all of the smart glasses and also all of the wearables. which I think means, like, touching gross things more than most people who go to CES. You've had a lot of, like, close encounters with gadgets that we don't recommend at this show. Thanks for reminding me, David. I actually hadn't thought about that. So your job is putting stuff that's been on other people's face in your face. How are you feeling?

Which violates every rule of CES. Can we talk about smart glasses for me? Yeah, let's talk about smart glasses. If there is, like, a device category that everybody was excited about this week, I feel like it's smart glasses. Can I just read you the names of these companies that be typed in the list? And these are the ones that I was like, okay, in my inbox, there's like at least 500,000 smart glass pitches. These are the ones that I selected as worthy of talking about.

Okay. Rocket. That's spelled R. O KID. Nuance. X-real. Everyone knows nuance. Vuesix.

Camillo. Camelo. Camelo. Even realities. And then Halliday. Yeah. these are just people are just coming up I'm pretty sure holiday is a reference to ready player one right because holiday and ready player one seems right but it's just like we're

we're entering a new zone of companies like we're like reality hacker labs like it's like that's what we're going to do well it just makes me think like this stuff must have gotten a lot easier to make in the relatively recent past phenomenally easier to make this is a thing that so I've been a smart glasses skeptic for a really long long time because they're just I mean we all know what happen with Google Glass, right? Glass holes, like, eh, that's not really a thing. But I think in the last two to three years, the technology has miniaturized and basically expanded to a point where it's like, oh, crap, this could actually happen. And that's kind of what we're seeing on the floor. So I think we've gotten to a point where everyone has agreed, oh, smart glasses, they're a thing. This is happening.

Wait, can we just put a little definition around smart glasses? Because it's pretty wide open, now. So the meta Raybans, I think meta will call smart classes. Yes. But they have no display component. Yes. Right. That's a camera and... There's like categories. Right. Voice assistant. And I think meta is dramatically

overselling. Does anybody here have them? You see? You see? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people have them. Substantially more people than pay for the art store. I just want to be clear about that too. You're is there you, do you have them because they're a camera or because you're talking to meta AI all the

How many of you are talking to meta AI all the time on your ribands? No, I would point out, either everyone's embarrassed or no hands have gone up. How many of you are too embarrassed to admit that you're talking to weird meta AI all the time? How many of you are using the camera all the time? Because it's really convenient to have it. That's a lot of hands. And so I think meta is dramatically overselling the smart glass, the smartness of its smart

glasses, because it's not a display. It's just a camera on some glasses that look okay. Sure. But all the ones that we're talking about CS are display. phase. Right. That's the new category. Everybody, including meta, agrees, that's the next thing. Yeah, but like meta is like, this is a surprise hit. Like smart classes are the future. I'm like, weird little cameras of the future for you.

Well, it's, it's kind of both. It's kind of both. I just think meta rolled out the AI in such a way that people just don't know how to use it properly. And if they say multimodal one more time, I'm going to lose it. That's just like where I'm not. But, you know, the interesting thing was like, let's talk about Rocket, right? So Rocket, it does everything that the metaglasses do. They have a camera in it, but there is a display. And it's a pretty cool display, but it's a, I think what they call this type of display is a monocular monochrome display. Monocular monochrome display. I like that.

Monocular monochrome display with micro-etched displays in the lenses. So, like, you look at them, they look like a normal pair of glasses. they are much lighter than the meta ray bands. Because we've talked about this a lot, the weight is kind of a deal breaker sometimes when you're wearing them. So they're quite light. You can't actually see the display

unless you like the light hits you in a certain way. It's etched into the actual glass. But when you look into it, you can see kind of like if you're thinking of a military fighter jet and that type of green laser-looking display in there, you can see it. It's an actual display.

And in the demo, I got, the person was speaking to me in Chinese and I could see the translation happening in real time. Really? And then I could say something to her and she would answer me in Chinese. And there was no external commute. Was this going out to a cloud? Was this happen locally?

Well, that was a hard question because, again, she's speaking to me in Chinese. I was just wondering, like, if you can do that locally on a pair of glasses with a reasonable battery left, that's, I mean, it is attached to your phone, right? Sure. That's basically we're still at the point where your phone is powering all of this and it's over Bluetooth. It's not like computing everything locally on that particular thing. But it's pretty wild. And as like journalists, you can have a teleprompter on there.

You're wearing a pair of glasses. It does not look like you're seeing anything. And this kind of subsect of the monocular green laser thing, I saw three of them at which I was like, oh, that's a mini trend within a big trend. Cool. Cool stuff. Right, there's a component here that everyone has decided they can use. Right. And the reason why is because they have solved in a certain aspect, the ambient light problem.

So the ambient light problem with smart glasses is that you walk out into the sun and you can't see shit. Because it's the sun. It like blinds everything out. So there's no point in a smart glass if you can't see the display that you paid a lot of money for. But with the green, it's easier your eyeball. So like green light is apparently the healthiest for your eye. It's the easiest to see. and it borrows from military technology

because the contrast is really great. I will say what you just said is alarmingly similar to how Humane described with the projector on the pin and that didn't go super great. No, it didn't. But it's like a little different. Did you mean ever say they borrowed from military technology?

No, but they were big on green lasers and how they were going to be used for in sunlight. And then you go outside and it's like, what if it didn't work at all? But that's because it's outside and the sunlight. Like that's the, so like Halliday's solution to that. And I found Halliday to be the most finicky of the three with the smallest amount. Because it's like this tiny little.

dot, it's held in like the bar of it. So like when you think about wearing smart glasses and where the display appears, it's actually like in the bar itself. So when you're talking to someone, they're just basically doing this the entire time, looking up into the corner. And so it looks like they're rolling your eyes at you the entire time. Well, so I'm curious for this because you got to see them. Yeah. You know, earlier we were talking about like, is there a product at CES that everyone was talking about? And like the holiday glasses are the closest to it. And then I think a lot of people got the demo and had that experience and it stopped being the thing that everyone was talking about. Yeah, it seemed much more exciting at the beginning of the week than I think it turned out to be once people started trying it.

So, like, here's the thing, smart glasses. Yeah, but you, the most annoying thing about X-Star smart glasses, any of these things, is that you have to see it to believe it. And, you know, when we're thinking about making videos for these things and trying to, like, convey to people like, oh, this is actually cool, literally you're taking these glasses, you're taking your phone, and I'm like, if I angled the thing in the right way, I can get a really. blurry half portion of the green laser that you're going to see. So it's really hard to convey to people that. And like the holiday thing, I think they got in early at the show, which was like good for them. But like you're literally like, I don't know.

And it's not as discreet because when you talk to someone, you can see a green dot in their eye. Like just a green dot in their eye. And you're like, that's weird. That's my targeting laser for the robot. That's my target. I'm an Android robot with a green dot. So you see, you talk to the demo of the translation.

Like we've always talked about, there's a lot of problems between here and the dream of AR glasses, right? So you need a display, which it seems like some people are getting closer to one display solution that you can put on reasonably lightly glasses. You need compute, and it sounds like we're offloading that to the phone. Right now, yeah. Then you need a battery that is not heavy, but horizon of battery lives. You need a battery, the more advanced it is for sure. And then you need stuff to do. Yeah.

Right? Like you need to like augment reality. Like the goal is like I, I say this all the time. If you can just make me a pair of glasses where you can just tell me your name, like I'll buy them in a heartbeat. The problem is you need to build like a worldwide facial recognition database. Just give me the surveillance state and everything will be fine.

And it's, you know, we're headed there anyway. So like, let's give me the glasses. But you need to like build all this other stuff. Yeah. And it seems like the ones here, they're really focused on like display. So like what it is now, and what I've seen on the floor is that we have all agreed that smart glasses, we've agreed on smart glasses,

was all these companies. What we've not agreed on is how to do them. So what you have at CES is a bunch of people going smart glasses, and now we're going to throw so much spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks. So they're trying to figure out, and like, Google told me that's when I went to see the Android XR demos of their smart glasses prototype, is that you cannot approach it from one way. You have to approach it from all other ways.

The thing about META's glasses that kind of really kicked the door open is it got normal people thinking, like, oh, I have a use for this. I'm going to take a, well, for me, I'm going to take so many videos of my cats, and they're not going to be freaked out because I have a phone in their face. And it sounds really stupid, but that actually is a thing that gets people going toward it. And then for some of these people, they're like, oh, you know what, teleprompters. How many people would, if you have to speak on anything, how many of you would love to have a little teleprompter in front of your eyes, that you can read that no one knows that you're reading. Like, it's great. You could have notes in something. Like, you can travel to a different country.

And yeah, your phone's in your pocket, but you can talk to someone and understand what they're saying. Like, that's pretty cool if you think about them. Yeah. So those are like real-life use cases. So you have people approaching from the style first, like the SLR Luxottica people. They're just like, you know, I saw them today. They were very Italian, very stylish. I felt like a schlub next to them.

But they were like, we want things that people use. So the nuance audio ones, they are always. they are over-the-counter hearing aids in a glasses format because it reduces stigma. It can still, like, noise cancel to a certain is really cool because if I look at David and he's talking, it'll amplify his voice, but then if I turn away from him, it'll cancel him out. So, like, that's just... That's the goal. That's a great idea you want.

Yeah. So it's pretty cool. And it supports all prescriptions. And it's, like, kind of geared towards the elderly who need glasses to see and can't hear. So that's, like, a real use case that they have. And then you have people on like the other end of the spectrum, like the VEux's and the Xreal and they're like, we are the future. You will be watching movies on your glasses and like everything will be seen and there'll be a little.

So they had me like AI prompted fat cat with unicorn wings that I could just like pinch to be large. And I'm like sure, that's a thing. That's smart. But like that's a display. Like what they're saying is like we can put a display in front of your eyes. But we don't know what's going to be on there. Nuance has no display. That's just audio only.

So, like, I think in the transition, like, Bose kind of kicked it off with the glasses with just making them audio. That's cool. Camelo has no display. The cool thing about Colmelo, and this is the only cool thing, is that you slide, you press a button, and it changes the color of the lens. And I'm like... That's why I thought it was called Camellio.

I just want to be very honest. Yeah. It probably should be. But you hear that on paper, and you're like, that's stupid. Then you go into the thing, and you're like, oh, it changes colors. I'm so cool. Or like you change the tint. So it's like, oh, it's really bright out.

I need the tint to be full all the way. Or if you're like me and you're shady, you're like, oh, I don't like this person. I'm going to pull it all the way to dark so I can make eyes at them. I love the idea that you're wearing your glasses and just ruthlessly like sub-tweeting people. Oh, for sure. Like you're like, goodbye. Goodbye. And you're like, turn your head.

You're like, I can't hear you anymore. I can't. I was like, oh, yay. It does seem like all of this. Right. There's some part of it's like, I think, really fun, right? This is all very innovative. We're all going to try a bunch of stuff.

But it also feels like, well, we can't make a watch. Right. Like, no one's going to buy a smart watch that isn't an Apple or a Google or a Samsung ecosystem device. So we're going to mount a computer to your face. Here's a bunch of face stuff. I mean, the number one problem with the face stuff is that we are so vain as a species. Like, kids cry when they find out they have to wear glasses because, oh, my God, they have to wear glasses. If you're David, who teamly tells me as 2020 vision, thanks David.

People say I have the best vision. Okay. People say that David has the best vision. Many people have been saying. Like, why would you wear glasses, right? Unless there's a function for it. I would like people to know that I don't need glasses. Yeah.

Like, I want the opposite of glasses. Right. But if you're like me and you're basically a blind bat and if you look at my phone, the text is so large, you know, you're used to wearing glasses. And so then it becomes more functional because it's something you're already wearing. But that's a huge point. problem. Prescriptions are a huge problem. If you're blind, like, negative nine, negative eight, huge astigmatism. Some of these glasses can't support my actual thing. So then it's like,

eh, you know, and everyone's face is different. Everyone's aesthetic is distant, different mass producing these things. There's so many different challenges towards smart glasses. So it's not like we're all going to be wearing these tomorrow, but I do think they've decided, for whatever reason, yes, this is possible. Throw everything at the wall. See what sticks. See what, what is, the way forward and they all believe that it will converge at this point where we have computers on our faces. I mean, that's the CES story right there. That's the CES story.

Just pick a thing that maybe will happen in a decade and let's try some weird stuff about it. Yeah, basically. I love that. I will remind you, of course, of my chart of whale bullshit. Do you know about the chart? Two axes. One is utility and one is fiddliness and you need to have vastly more utility than fiddliness or your failure and face is like a minus 500.

I propose. If you put something on your face, it has to be. so useful. It does, but I also propose that we actually visualize this graph, and every single time I do a wearable review, we have the graph in here. We can do this. AI can do this for us. AI can do this for us. It will be lies. It will not be accurate. When I take briefings, I can go, okay, here's, here's the verge-approved graph. Please point to where on this graph your product is. That would make my life so much easier. I'm just saying. I'm correct about this. I think Joanna has stole this in the journal recently, so now we have to take it back.

It's putting it out there. Okay, last thing I want to talk to you about Vian. We have to quit. We've gone way over. We need to let these poor people go. Okay. Yeah. And we can, we'll hang out after, but we got to, let's end the podcast and go hang out with these nice people. I just wanted her to talk about Marumi for one second. No, you can't. It's not allowed. There's a weird robot that just hugs you. It's like a hugging robot. Go

find the hugging robot. Go find the hugging robot. All right. There's the title of the episode. Thank you all for joining us. We have gone way over. It's wonderful to be here with you. Thank you to Delta for bringing us Brooklyn Bowl, which is amazing. Just like looking at my giant face next to our logos on filling alley screens this whole time has been delightful for me. My

ego is very healthy. I appreciate all of you. Frame TV owners. We can get a drink in the corner and really work through it. That's it. That's Rushcast rock and roll. And that's it for the Vergecast this week. Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call at 866, Verge 1-1. The Vergecast is a production of the Verge and Vox Media Podcast Network. Our show is produced by Liam James, Will Pore, and Eric Gomez. And that's it. We'll see you next week.