Engadget Podcast: We've survived two days of CES 2025

Devindra: [00:00:00] What's up everyone, this is Devindra Hardwar, Senior Editor at Engadget.

Cherlynn: I'm Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low.

Devindra: We are here what is this, the beginning of night one of CES officially?

Cherlynn: I guess, yeah. I

Devindra: guess we have already suffered through basically day minus one. Minus

Cherlynn: one and today's zero.

Devindra: One thing I want our listeners to understand is that we have already seen a lot of things we kind of know where the CES is headed. And, I think this is a cursed show Cherlynn. How do you feel about that? For all of us. For our

Cherlynn: team. Yeah, I think I mean, Devindra, I'll let you speak to your situation, but we've had team members who have fallen deathly ill.

We have also, like, people who have completely had to miss their flights, international flights. It's been quite Engadget team, but we have a really, really good team of people. Everyone's got great attitudes and, like, our spirits are high. Okay. You want to just get the stuff going. So, yeah, no, and Devindra, you have been struggling a little [00:01:00] bit.

Devindra: So, yeah, update here is I basically threw my back out the the day before I had to fly. So, I kind of was mentally just preparing how to fly without caring much and just being really easy on my back. But, you know, I survived. And

Cherlynn: sitting in a plane for as long as you did couldn't help either, right?

Probably didn't help.

Devindra: Thankfully I did a smart thing and I bought a Comfort Plus upgrade with my points ahead of time. And I was like, I was going to be chill on the flight and it turned out that was just necessary. Yeah, so CS is officially beginning. We have seen we've just went through CS Unveiled yesterday.

A lot of embargoes and news came out today too. You know, some of the biggest news we've seen. Dell's rebrand away from its own PC names. To Dell, Dell Pro, Dell Pro Max. There's some new hardware from Intel and AMD. Yay! that they showed off and, you know, just kind of a typical CS stuff. What were the weird things you saw, Cherlynn, at at Unveiled?

Because you were there amidst all the weird gadgets.

Cherlynn: Yeah, and to be clear, given Devindra's [00:02:00] injury, we are, we are having Devindra stay in place where he is, you know, able to recover a little bit. So, Devindra wasn't at Unveiled with me, so I'm going to tell you about all these funny things we saw at Unveiled.

Somehow the most intriguing thing so far is the trend of Putting things in your mouth at CES Unveiled.

Speaker 3: Okay.

Cherlynn: So, we have like, at least two things that are saliva detecting devices. Uh huh, huh. Or like, you put a drop of saliva or you put your like, a stick in your mouth or something. We

Devindra: are not going to call this the Hawktwa CES, let's not do that.

Dan

Cherlynn: Cooper definitely not coming up with a story based around that. But the idea is that using your saliva. Companies can tell how much cortisol or other types like progesterone types of things, hormones are inside your Or in you, right? And so it's a bit to help with burnout a bit to help with like stress and health and then there is It's the salt spoon that everyone was licking at CES on day one.

That

Devindra: doesn't seem like a good [00:03:00] idea at a, at a conference. It

Cherlynn: was so, yeah, everyone's felt like it was, initially it seemed a little icky, but the booth was so crowded I went over and it turns out they actually had like individual disposable versions of this spoon, the salt spoon per its name. It's a gadget that will mimic or simulate the, the flavor of umami or salt made by a company called Kirin.

Devindra: Okay.

Cherlynn: Which I believe makes some kind of condiment. That's the,

Devindra: they're a soy sauce company. Exactly.

Cherlynn: And so, it's the idea that like, people want to live healthier, eat better, and not have such a high sodium diet. So, but they still crave this taste. We love it. We

Devindra: love umami. Exactly. Why don't

Cherlynn: we, why don't we use electric on your tongue?

Devindra: That is some dystopian, I hope the story about this is how it's made. That is very dystopian. That's very like, you know, Soylent Green or something where we're not really eating food, but we're feeling these sort of like electrical impulses of food.

Cherlynn: Triggering your tongue to feel like it's tasting something.

Just to feel alive. That's horrible. I know. I, it's, it's, you asked me weird. And I was like, yeah, that [00:04:00] is pretty horrifying. But I'm very intrigued. I almost, so I was kind of waiting in line, but it was so crowded always. And I had so much other stuff to check out that, I didn't really get around to it.

There were other things, I think, that turned up that, as unveiled, that were very interesting. Our team saw a stringless guitar. There were, like, about a zillion robots that all kind of look very weird. And then, lots of mirrors that you can, like, stand in front of and scan yourself. And, finally, I think, the Stern Pinball Machine of the Year is themed Dungeons Dragons.

Okay.

Devindra: Really, just really hitting the nerd market perfectly. We did see Roborock's flagship new robot vacuum and that thing looks cool because they just added an arm to it. Like it has an extendable arm that can pick up socks and small things from the floor. And I am really interested in seeing the race between Roomba all these other companies.

I think was one of the first to do like, okay, self cleaning. We're going to dump your vacuum into this bigger container than the vacuum [00:05:00] can keep going. Now everybody's doing that. Then Roomba and others people started doing like combo mops. And now it's just like, we're getting appendages. We're getting, I think one can climb stairs.

I saw news about that.

Cherlynn: So Carissa is on the robot vacuum for us, I guess. And she got a chance to check out the, yeah, the Roborock I can't remember the actual. name, how it's pronounced, Safi or Safu Z70 and it we have a video on the article on our website as well as on our Twitter. It's

Devindra: the Saros Z70, yeah.

Cherlynn: So close, that was so close. And yeah, that video shows the robot's arm kind of coming out of its round disc like body and then picking up a sock that was in front of it. And not only that, I thought it would just pick it up and then like, wipe and then move away and put it back down. No, it took it to a basket nearby, like a laundry basket almost, And placed it in there.

So basically

Devindra: we're almost there. We're almost there to real robot helpers.

Cherlynn: So close. This thing is very close. Who knew Roborock of all companies would do it. I was like,

Devindra: it's a, it's really interesting to watch because Roborock, I think, yeah, it's a [00:06:00] Chinese company and these folks, like, especially when they're doing robotic stuff, like they're just barreling forward because they can invest more in R& D and stuff.

I want, I've said this before. I want something that can like unload my dishwasher,

Cherlynn: which is the

Devindra: process that I think like

Cherlynn: my dishwashing unloading therapy.

Devindra: You know load it up clean the kitchen just like a real rosy robot situation. That's what I need

Cherlynn: I mean the other robot vacuum that you're talking about that can climb upstairs.

I believe is the dreamy And yeah, it's interesting to see or I was like why why would we need a robot vacuum that can climb upstairs? But I guess there are actual functional uses for the x50 robot I don't know, man. 1, 700 just for it to, like, climb.

Devindra: I think this is a bad idea. This is a bad idea, because Generally, you want your robot to be on one floor.

Yeah! Once you have stairs in the equation, then, like, it could fall. There could be all sorts of issues. To me, that's not super useful. I've been room building for a while, and only recently with two floors. You pick it up, and you move it to another floor when you need to. If you're super [00:07:00] bougie, you have more than one Roomba.

You have a Roomba port per floor. Or you have

Cherlynn: the cheap one on the floor that doesn't matter as much as the expensive one in the place that matters. And they're

Devindra: cheap Roombas. You could get a refurb Roomba for like 200, 300 bucks.

Cherlynn: Yeah.

Devindra: Relatively, that's relatively cheap compared to how much they used to cost.

Cherlynn: Well, this one, I mean, I guess the, the shtick with this dreamy robot is that it climbs up like a human. So it's not like sort of propelling itself up in some strange way, going up on an incline, getting his rollers. It's like, God, some kind of like climbing mechanic. That's like. Bipedal? Is it bipedal? Is it like

Devindra: I have to take a closer look.

The

Cherlynn: video looks like wild and I'm in such a CES fever dream that like, I have forgotten what it looks like. So much

Devindra: stuff. Another thing I want to talk about, the TVs seem like, it seems like wireless TVs are morbid thing right now. Like LG and Samsung are fully doing it. All their flagships have wireless boxes.

They say the lag is pretty good for gaming. I would have to, I would have to see that to see how much it works. But I do think that's a good pain point for a lot of [00:08:00] people. People hate Wires. Moving behind their TVs. They hate, like, if you're mounting a TV, you have to, like, figure out where all the wires are going to go.

So there's that that company Displace, which last year had the suction TV with the battery, which I think I called it vaporware last year. I don't think they actually shipped any. This year they're back. They have a soundbar. They say they're going to actually ship stuff. I don't believe it. But, they're back.

They're here.

Cherlynn: Is one year enough time to see if the TV that will stick itself to your wall has fallen off yet? You know what I mean? Like, is it time to call it safe if it hasn't fallen off in a year? Or should we give it another year? I don't know.

Devindra: It's my whole thing about trusting gadgets and trusting devices, I will not trust it.

Multi thousand dollar device that is just hanging by my wall by suction cup.

Cherlynn: It's like one thing if it falls off and hurts itself, it's another if it like takes down my wall with it, right? Like, and my bed and my glass table or something. So yeah, there's a lot of stuff to be concerned about, I think.

Devindra: Boy AIPC is still a running theme this year.

AMD was really big on a whole bunch of [00:09:00] new chips. They announced the Ryzen AI Max chip, which they say is going to be in Halo products, Halo Copilot Plus PCs. It's supposed to be really powerful. It has more graphics than their other ones. They also say it does better rendering, like 3D rendering, better than Intel's chips.

Because AMD's graphics tend to be better. They have like built in Radeon cores. So, you know, they're kind of killing it. Intel was just like, hey We have AI chips too. They're coming to gaming desktops. They're coming to other things.

Speaker 3: Yeah,

Devindra: they have core PC, core AI laptop chips that will be coming to gaming laptops as well.

So, that's a thing. You know, the good thing about CES is that you can see people and talk to people. So, I had a good chat with Pavan Davaluri, who is like the head of Windows and Surface devices from Microsoft. That was an off the record chat, but I can say it was good to have. That conversation to see what they're thinking about AI PCs.

Hopefully we'll have him on for another section of the gadget podcast, [00:10:00] but I guess like CS is happening. Like when news is happening, these companies are taking it seriously. We're talking to high level people. So it feels like a CS of your, I'd say, despite being so cursed early on,

Speaker 3: I guess,

Devindra: yeah, like stuff, it feels legitimate and real in a way that hasn't for the past couple of years.

But I mean, for

Cherlynn: you, maybe two part of it is the return to the physical. Yes. Right, because it's been a while. And I think that my general sense is that interest in CES might have waned. I think this year too you know, we've, we've had different observations about shows from the recent years and this year feels even more like it is something you could, it's like commoditizing things for the sake of commoditizing things a little bit and more than ever actually.

And it's very much like the Radio Shack show a little bit. But you know, I would say, I don't want to give away what we're working on. So I would say like, we're, Come to Engadget. com come to our social media channels where we've got a lot of videos going up We've actually are bringing back our youtube channel for a little bit And the live blog we I am in [00:11:00] live blog hell every day for a little bit but it is a fun time because live blogs allow me to be a bit more I think personal with our audience Which is fun like this podcast But I do want to shout out like to your point like amd and intel Both have made their announcements as of the time.

We're recording this but We still don't know technically what NVIDIA is going to announce. And Nvidia has one of the, I wanna say the most hyped keynotes or speeches, this CES mm-hmm . What are you thinking that they'll do for CES?

Devindra: I mean, for the keynote, they typically hype up their AI projects or robotics projects.

And honestly, things that we don't typically report news on because it's kind of pie in the sky stuff that will only exist for a car manufacturers or something. They don't really touch consumers. We will eventually hear, most likely, about the new GeForce RTX GPUs. Maybe not tonight, but I have a good sense like sometime this week, NVIDIA will make that announcement.

And that is the thing people are really waiting to see. And I think AMD sensed that a bit too. They briefly teased some information about the RDNA 4 [00:12:00] GPUs. Yeah, AMD also teased their RX 9070 GPUs. And that's interesting too, just the name is interesting. Because you know, AMD's used to follow a fully different Radeon naming scheme.

Now they're kind of aligning with what NVIDIA's doing. So, this Radeon RX 9070 will be comparable to whatever NVIDIA announces as a 5070 video card. Okay. So, it should make shopping a little easier. So there's that. The RDNA 4 technology is going to have AI upscaling, which is a thing we've knocked AMD against before.

Because their fidelity affects a super resolution for stuff. But just couldn't compete with NVIDIA NVIDIA's DLSS, so they're gonna have an answer to that. But again, just like, brief teases the news post I wrote is like the bare mini