CES 2024 is in the books and that means the tech world can kick back and re— oh, wait, there's the small matter of a Samsung Unpacked on the horizon. Samsung is running its first event of the year a little earlier than usual. It will start on January 17 at 1PM ET. However, barring a major shock, Samsung will unveil its Galaxy S24 smartphones.

Samsung Galaxy S24 lineup

As is always the case, the rumor mill has been churning for weeks when it comes to Samsung’s Galaxy S24 smartphones. Thanks to leaker Evan Blass, who claimed to have obtained a spec sheet for all three of the devices, we have a decent idea of what Samsung has in store for the Galaxy S24, S24+ and S24 Ultra. As in years past, Samsung has a "reserve" page up now on its site as well for those who want to be first in line to buy the latest smartphones.

It’s likely to be another year of iterative changes on the hardware front. There will very likely be spec bumps to most of the components and the S24 devices will probably offer faster and more efficient performance than their predecessors. However, you shouldn't anticipate having a wildly different looking phone if you tend to upgrade to the latest handset every year or two... except in the case of the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is slated to have a flat display and a titanium frame.

The most important hardware upgrade is arguably in the engine room. Samsung is expected to employ the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. That’s significant given Qualcomm’s efforts to support on-device AI operations with its CPUs and Samsung’s recent work in the generative AI space.

To that end, the biggest change to the Galaxy lineup this year is likely to come in the form of AI features. Samsung recently unveiled its own generative AI models, which can handle tasks such as translations, summarizing documents, drafting emails, helping out with coding and, yes, whipping up images based on text prompts. 

It's widely believed that Samsung's Gauss generative AI tech will make its public debut in the Galaxy S24 smartphones, and it's likely to be labeled as Galaxy AI. The company has been hinting at some of the AI updates, such as with this tease of a feature called Zoom with Galaxy AI.

Everything else: Generative AI, fitness trackers and laptops

The new smartphones will undoubtedly be the star of the show and Samsung will probably spend quite a bit of time going over the generative AI functions. That might not leave much bandwidth for other announcements. There is a chance that we might see the Galaxy Fit 3 fitness tracker, according to some rumormongers. The event may mark the release of One UI 6.1 for Galaxy devices too.

Beyond that, there have been suggestions that Samsung will show off several Galaxy Book Pro laptops, while there's also a possibility the company will unveil new tablets, smartwatches and earbuds. We'll find out soon enough just what the company has planned for its first mass market devices of 2024.

The show floor at CES 2024 is open, and people have been racking up their steps, canvassing Las Vegas’ vast convention centers and hotel ballrooms to see all the latest and weirdest tech products. The Engadget team has been getting our cardio in, braving both vehicular and human traffic to get face and hand time (and other body parts?) with the most intriguing demos here, while companies haven’t stopped holding press conferences and announcing new items. If you don’t have time to parse through every individual headline or are here in Vegas and want to know where to go, here’s a recap of the biggest news out of CES 2024’s second day.

One of the biggest booths at the show is, as usual, Google, and the company also had a fair amount of news to share. In keeping with the same theme it’s been doing the last few years of “Better Together,” Google shared updates to its inter-device software like Fast Pair and announced it’s working with Samsung to integrate and rename its Nearby Share feature to Quick Share, which is the current name of Samsung’s version of the same thing. This should hopefully simplify things for Android users, and give them a more cohesive alternative to Apple’s AirDrop. Details were pretty scarce on whether there are changes coming to Samsung users, but those who have Nearby Share should see a new icon pretty soon. 

Google also added support for people to Chromecast TikTok videos to compatible TVs and screens and is bringing its apps to some Ford, Nissan and Lincoln vehicles later this year. Android Auto will also be able to share your electric vehicle’s battery levels to Google Maps so it can factor in recharge stations, charge times and stops into your routes. This is, again, similar to a feature in Apple's next-gen CarPlay.

Speaking of EVs, Honda also debuted new EV concepts called the Saloon and the Space Hub. The Saloon is a sedan with an aerodynamic design and rides low to the ground, while the Space Hub is a minivan that is a little boxier and its seats has its passengers facing each other. Honda said it will develop a model based on the Saloon concept car for North American markets in 2026, with no word yet on the Space Hub.

In other transportation news, Hyundai brought an updated version of its S-A2 Air Taxi to the show. The S-A2 is an electric vertical take off and landing vehicle that has a cruising speed of 120mph when it reaches an altitude of 1,500 feet. It’s designed to fly short trips between 25 to 40 miles and the company envisions it as an everyday transportation solution for urban areas.

We also got more smart home news from companies other than Google, including Amazon, which said it will adopt the Matter standard for Casting, but it won’t support Chromecast or Apple’s AirPlay. How nice. We also saw new face-scanning and palm-reading door locks, smart outdoor lights by Nanoleaf and a new Weber Searwood smart grill that’s cheaper and more versatile.

There has been a smattering of mobile news, including the Clicks iPhone keyboard case and a surprising, adorable device called the Rabbit R1. It’s pitched as an AI-powered assistant in what’s basically a cute squarish walkie-talkie co-designed by Teenage Engineering. It has a tiny 2.88-inch touchscreen, an analog scroll wheel, two mics, a speaker and a 360-degree camera you can spin to face toward you or through the back of the handset. You’re supposed to talk to the Rabbit AI by pushing down a button (like a walkie talkie) and ask it to do anything like book an Uber or look for a recipe tailored to your specific list of ingredients.

There’s been a lot more at the show, but I wanted to take some time to shout out a bunch of intriguing accessibility products. We saw the OrCam Hear system that’s designed to help people with hearing loss isolate the voices of specific speakers in crowded environments. There’s also the GyroGlove, which is a hand-stabilizing glove for people with hand tremors, as well as the Mouthpad, which lets you control your phone, tablet or laptop by using your tongue.

We also saw an update to the Audio Radar system that provides visual cues for gamers who are hard of hearing to see where sounds are coming from and what type of sounds they might be. It’s very heartening to see all this development in assistive technology at CES, especially when the industry often spends so much time and money on less-worthy endeavors.

We’re nearing the end of the show and as we get ready to do our final sweeps of the show floor, the Engadget team is also looking back and contemplating the best things we saw at CES 2024. We’ll be putting together our Best of CES awards list soon, so make sure you come back to see what we decided were the winners of the show.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

While MEMS drivers may be the next big thing in true wireless earbuds, the first models with the solid-state components still require a hybrid setup. These products pair a MEMS speaker with a dynamic driver to ensure proper bass performance. The current-gen driver from xMEMS, a California-based company that develops the audio components, is called Cowell and it's already available in earbuds from the likes of Creative and Noble Audio. 

The next-gen MEMS driver is called Cypress, and while it won't arrive in new products until 2025, I got a chance to hear the difference been it and Cowell at CES 2024 here in Las Vegas — and it's quite striking. With Cowell, there's bass, but it's subdued and the emphasis is on the highs and the mids. It sounds great, on both complete products and reference designs, offering punchy highs, full mids and great clarity. With Cypress alone though, there's a blanket of warm, bassy low-end that really fills out the soundstage. It will be a massive improvement for what MEMS drivers are capable of doing for wireless earbuds. 

"We moved to a sound from ultrasound principle where we have ultrasonic modulation and demodulation to deliver 30 to 40 times greater low-frequency pressure for anti-noise generation for ANC earbuds, while still delivering all of the benefits of our solid state speakers," xMEMS vice president of marketing Mike Housholder explained. "Wide dynamic range, with excellent low-frequency performance for deep bass and noise cancellation."

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

Indeed, that 30 to 40 times louder bass response was clearly evident when on a Cypress reference design. The prototype was built to showcase the MEMS drivers on their own, without that secondary dynamic driver today's true wireless models require for bass. The results are the pristine clarity you'd expect in a send of high-end wireless headphones or even some audiophile-grade cans. The additional bass isn't loud and boomy, but instead it's warm and full, inviting you to stay and listen a while. And that I did: I had a hard time putting the Cypress prototype down even when I felt I'd overstayed my welcome. 

On the whole, MEMS drivers offer a host of benefits over coil speakers that should all lead to better audio quality in your earbuds. They're more efficient in terms of mechanical response, with faster speeds there contributing to increased detail and clarity — something I certainly noticed on the Noble Audio FoKus Triumph wireless earbuds. This model pairs Cowell with a 6.5mm dynamic driver, but the boost in fidelity in the mids and highs is apparent. And getting a set of earbuds with MEMS drivers doesn't mean you'll pay more. The two models Creative has already debuted are $130 and $150. The same will be true for upcoming products with the ultrasonic Cypress drivers, according to Housholder. 

"We see ourselves going to market first in flagship products," he said. "As with our current products, we really see the sweet spot for our products anywhere 150 and up, [which] is easily achievable day one. And then over time and over volume, getting down to that $100 price point."

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

And that's really the big takeaway from me. For years, companies have offered true wireless earbuds with some of the features of more premium flagship models, but usually lacking the sonic performance of pricier options. With MEMS drivers, the audio quality is greatly improved in affordable models that are half the price of the top-of-the-line Sony or Sennheiser noise-canceling earbuds. And with Cypress, xMEMS can offer audio companies the ability to improve overall sound quality without having to raise prices. 

xMEMS has also developed what it calls a DynamicVent to relieve occlusion in sleep earbuds. The component can automatically open or close depending on if the buds detect ambient noise like a snoring spouse. When open, the DynamicVent offers a semi-open fit like AirPods, but when it's closed the ear will be completely sealed off. The open vent should also keep sounds of your own breathing or the earbuds rubbing against a pillow from disturbing your sleep. xMEMS is showing off the DynamicVent at CES in a set of reference sleep buds equipped with its Cowell MEMS drivers. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

A year since Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) announced its debut EV concept, the Afeela, the company is back at CES 2024 to offer more details, more collaborations and a driving simulator.

The name of the concept vehicle hasn’t changed since last we saw it. What is new, however, is the car's ability to be driven around with a PlayStation controller. I didn’t get to do that — it was a stunt operated by one of the company's employees — but there was a DualSense controller involved in my demo.

So let’s begin where SHM left off. At last year’s CES 2023, it revealed the Afeela Concept EV, which packed in 45 cameras and an expansive “media bar” that spread across the vehicle's dash, showing a mix of car information, navigation, music players and more. The steering wheel was redesigned as a yoke so that the driver can better view that sumptuous dash. The company also further teased some mixed-reality tricks in collaboration with Epic Games.

The Afeela EV itself looks mostly the same as the prototype from last year, although it now has a substantial LiDAR bar above the windscreen that looks like a giant smartphone notch. The company says that the car will be available for pre-order in 2025 before going on sale in the US the following year.

At CES 2024, I got to step inside an Afeela, while an SHM representative gave me a tour of everything that’s so far been crammed into this concept vehicle.

Combining both Sony and Honda’s expertise, the Afeela will create its own noise cancellation bubble, apparently “tailoring the cabin for entertainment” using Sony’s Spatial Audio technology. According to SHM’s renders, there appear to be roughly 30 speakers, although that’s more than likely to change as the concept further evolves. A spokesperson added that over 42 sensors grace the Afeela’s initial spec sheet.

Photo by Mat Smith/Engadget

In one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had at CES, I also got to play Horizon Forbidden West on the Afeela's expansive dashboard display. No, there isn’t a PS5 baked into this concept EV — why not, though? — but a demonstration involving PlayStation’s long-running Remote Play feature. Sure, the Bluetooth connection to the controller was temperamental (CES is just hundreds of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signals clashing), but conceptually, you get that it’s possible. The two screens for passengers sitting in the rear would also be able to display games, movies and more; however they were just dummy screens in this demo car.

SHM also announced during Sony’s CES show that it’s already teamed up with Microsoft to use its Azure OpenAI technology to create a “Mobility Personal Agent” — a conversational in-car virtual assistant for drivers and passengers alike.

It’s also working with Polyphony Digital, the company behind Gran Turismo, on a nebulous goal of developing vehicles that “fuse the virtual and the real, mainly in the area of human senses.” For now, that collaboration has resulted in an Afeela you can drive in Gran Turismo.

But it’s the new dash, combined with AR graphics overlays and that LiDAR notch, which intrigues me most. The EV will draw information and imagery from its sensors and create 3D models of the outside world. This can be used for frivolous things, like Godzilla-styled monsters on your dashcam feed and augmented reality games. Or more simply, rich, detailed overlays for navigation to nearby businesses and destinations.

While we weren’t driving the Aveela EV around Las Vegas, SHM tried to offer the next best thing: a car simulator made in collaboration with Epic Games (and what appears to be that Unreal Engine 5 Matrix demo). Steering around the virtual world, in an Aveela cockpit (in a moody black colorway, different to the light-gray showroom car I sat in earlier), the digital wing mirrors also displayed the same highly realistic 3D world. The dash display then offered an AR overlay, showing vehicles, objects and pedestrians, flagging nearby hazards in red.

SHM is still putting a lot of its focus on developing its autonomous driving technology and advanced driver assistance systems, the latter are non-autonomous helper features, similar to Tesla’s Autopilot. With Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride SoC powering the concept vehicle’s advanced driving features, the Aveela could reach limited Level 3 autonomous driving capabilities. At that point (and we’re not there yet) a vehicle can manage most aspects of driving without any human intervention. A spokesperson added it would be capable of Level 2 Plus autonomous driving in urban settings. SHM also teased traffic monitoring through the sensors, detection for objects like traffic cones, and apparently, using what it calls a Vision Transformer that will work to detect environmental characteristics “in a broader perspective” — this could translate into predicting future traffic jams before you meet them or alternative driving routes.

The car will also utilize all those sensors more frivolously, to detect drivers' approach and open the door for them. The same sensors, including LiDAR and cameras, will guide the Afeela as it parks itself.

Many of us still wonder if SHM’s EV will ever exist as a consumer vehicle. The commitment to getting its car on roads by 2026 is still there, and while CES may be the perfect audience for the hype being served up, will car buyers think the same?

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

When I’m away from home and don’t have access to my big desktop displays, it feels like I’m missing a limb. Unfortunately, there’s a limit to how big a portable monitor can really be. After a certain point, it’s not going to fit in a reasonably sized bag. ASUS’s ZenScreen Fold solves that problem through the use of a bendy OLED panel.

Measuring 17.3 inches across, the ZenScreen Fold is still a far cry from the 27-inch monitors I have at home, but it’s a huge step up from typical 14 or 15-inch portable displays. And thanks to the fact that you can bend it in half, it can collapse down to something not much larger than a hardcover book and just 0.38 inches thick. Though it is a bit heavier at two and a half pounds. It also comes with a handy travel case and, because its display is protected when closed, you should be able to toss it in a bag without worrying about damaging its soft plastic panel.

The display’s specs are more than decent too, as it boasts a QHD+ resolution (2,560 x 1,920), a gamut that covers 100 percent of DCI-P3 and VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500 compliance. That said, this shouldn’t come as a complete surprise as the ZenScreen Fold is based on the same basic panel as what ASUS used in the Zenbook 17 Fold.

The difference this time is that the panel is a slightly newer revision, so it’s a bit more durable. And, thanks to a redesigned hinge that creates a waterdrop-shaped fold, there’s even less of a crease — you have to look hard to see it. Even its kickstand is better than the one on ASUS’ bendy laptop, as it offers solid stability in either portrait or landscape. And for a portable monitor, there’s more than enough connectivity including mini HDMI, two USB-C ports and a 3.5mm audio jack.

Sadly, while ASUS may have made a big travel display that’s easy to carry around, this thing is really expensive at a cool $2,000. But if you want a portable monitor that gives you the most screen space in the smallest physical size, the ZenScreen may be it.

The ZenScreen Fold is expected to go on sale sometime in Q2. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Sony shared its upcoming PlayStation Plus free games for January on Wednesday. Headlining this month’s batch are Capcom’s 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake and the Borderlands spinoff Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. PS Plus Extra and Premium subscribers can claim the 14 new games on January 16.

The Resident Evil 2 remake (PS5 / PS4) is far from just a fresh coat of paint. Although the revamp retains the core gameplay elements from the 1998 original, it’s visually unrecognizable, now running on Capcom’s RE Engine. “It feels like a contemporary title,” Engadget’s Jessica Conditt wrote in a 2018 preview.

Capcom

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands: Next-Level Edition (PS5, PS4) takes one of Borderlands’ most memorable NPCs and drops you into a genre-blending fantasy world conjured from her macabre and erratic imagination. Expanding on the ideas from the Borderlands 2 DLC Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, Gearbox’s spinoff (and Dungeons & Dragons parody) includes magic, guns and chaotic instant revisions to the game world. It also has star-studded voice work from Andy Samberg, Wanda Sykes and Will Arnett.

Other claimable titles this month include salvaging sci-fi physics sim Hardspace: Shipbreaker (PS5), Lego’s rare non-IP installment Lego City Undercover (PS4), 2015 action-adventure title Just Cause 3, tactical stealth game Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun (PS4), narrative RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong (PS5 / PS4) and post-apocalyptic strategy title Surviving the Aftermath (PS4).

Capcom

This month’s redeemable classic (retro) titles include the Street Fighter: 30th Anniversary Collection (PS4), which collects 12 classic games in the fighting series, including the original installment and the trendsetting Street Fighter II. Secret of Mana (PS4), Legend of Mana (PS4), Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace (PS5 / PS4) and Rally Cross (PS5 / PS4) will also be available for subscribers starting on on January 16.

My experience with smoking meat has been entirely outdoors, using a mix of grills that burn charcoal, wood or pellets. Not everyone has the space for one of those setups, but thanks to GE Appliances' latest device, you can bring the barbecue indoors. Plus, you don't even have to been there while it's cooking. At the company's CES 2024 booth in Las Vegas, I finally got a taste of that the GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker is capable of cooking.

Lousiville-based chef and Food Network Chopped champion Dallas McGarity is with GE Appliances at CES this week. He explained that he's been using the Smart Indoor Smoker in his restaurant for infusing flavor in everything from spices to cheese and deviled eggs. Of course, when most people think of smoking foods, they think of meat. McGarity prepared a one-bite sampler to showcase the type of flavor we can expect from the device: beef tenderloin with a sweet and spicy rub, roasted garlic barbecue sauce, Southwest breadcrumbs and scallions. An elevated taster, for sure, but not too far from something you might prepare at home.

After just a couple of hours in the Smart Indoor Smoker, the beef had noticeable flavor from the wood pellets. McGarity was also preparing a pork butt, but it still had several hours to go before it would be ready. Given my experience with outdoor smokers, even just one bite gave me a sense of what the GE Profile model was capable of. My main concern was the amount of smoke flavor it would impart, and it was great to see that the device managed infuse an ample amount in a limited time period. That bodes well for an 8- to12-hour low-and-slow smoke session. 

One other aspect of the Smart Indoor Smoker that I was able to see in action was the Clear Smoke function. Or, I should say, I got to see what happens when you don't use it. McGarity was keeping the beef bites warm in the device and, rather than make me wait 10 minutes for the cooking chamber to clear of smoke, he opened the unit and smoke wafted up in the air. Ideally, you wouldn't want to do this in your kitchen, but he worked fast and the cloud was minimal. Even still, the Smart Indoor Smoker recovered quickly, getting back to its target temperature with visible smoke returning in seconds. 

The cooker costs $1,000 and, unlike many other gadgets launched at CES, is already available at some retailers. 

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

The first unofficial day of CES 2024 has come and gone and it feels like we’ve been run over by a giant metaphorical eighteen-wheeler full of press conferences. From home robots to electric vehicles to AI, laptops and processors, there was news from pretty much all areas of tech. There were pleasant surprises like Samsung’s cute new Ballie robot ball and Sony’s spatial content creation headset, and intriguing concepts like Razer’s vibrating cushion for gamers. We also got exactly what we expected in the form of new processors from the likes of AMD, Intel and NVIDIA, as well as the subsequent flood of laptops carrying the just-announced chips for 2024.

And for everyone else, this CES also saw the launch of things like headphones, electric vehicles, gaming handhelds, grills, gaming phones, e-ink tablets, strange hybrid devices, noise-suppressing masks, standing desks and more. It’s a free for all and we’re nowhere near done. Here’s just a small selection of the biggest news out of CES 2024’s press day, right before the show officially opens.

Samsung and Sony’s press conferences had some of the best surprises this year. Samsung showed us a new version of its Ballie robot, which is cute as heck. It’s basically a yellow bowling ball with a projector built in and can send you text messages and video clips of what’s at home while you’re out. You can ask it to close your curtains, turn on your lights or stream your favorite yoga video to your ceiling while you lie on your back for a meditative session. Samsung told The Washington Post that Ballie will be available for sale some time this year, but did not say how much it would cost. I guess that’s another surprise we can look forward to in the coming months.

Meanwhile, Sony brought us a few unexpected demos, starting by driving its Afeela concept electric car onstage using a PlayStation controller. Then, it showed off its mixed reality headset for “spatial content creation,” which sounds somewhat similar to Apple’s Vision Pro and Microsoft’s HoloLens. Sony’s does appear to target content creators, though, and looks like a pared down PSVR2 headset. It’ll be powered by a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset, sport dual 4K OLED microdisplays and have user and space tracking. The new Sony headset still has no name, no price, but it will be available later this year.

Also dominating our news feeds on Day 1 was the barrage of chip news coming from Intel, AMD and NVIDIA. AMD, for example, launched a new Radeon RX 7600 XT GPU, which is a slight upgrade from last year’s entry-level model. The company also brought processors with neural processing units for AI acceleration to its desktop offerings by announcing the Ryzen 8000G series. Meanwhile, NVIDIA unveiled the RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super and RTX 4070 Super, which will cost $999, $799 and $599 respectively. It also announced updates for its GeForce Now cloud gaming service, adding G-Sync support and day passes for streaming. Intel kept things fairly tame and tidy, simply giving us its complete 14th-generation CPU family, including HX-series chips like a 24-core i9 model. It also launched the Core U Processor Series 1, which is designed to balance performance and power efficiency in thin and light laptops.

Speaking of laptops, most PC makers followed up the chip news flood by announcing all their new models containing the latest silicon. We saw notebooks from Alienware, Lenovo, MSI, Acer, Asus, and Razer, among others. MSI also had a new gaming handheld to show us, which is the first of its category to use Intel’s just-announced Core Ultra chip.

Asus also put that chip in a non-laptop product, debuting a new homegrown NUC. Meanwhile, Lenovo continued to challenge our notions of what a laptop with its ThinkBook Plus Gen 5, which is a weird gadget mermaid of sorts. Its top half is a 14-inch Android tablet, while its bottom half is a Windows keyboard and all of it is just funky.

Speaking of odd Android tablets, TCL was here with a new version of its NXTPAPER e-ink-ish tablet. This year’s model can switch between a matte e-paper-like display and a full-color LCD at the push of a button. The company also showed off a miniLED TV, which, at 115-inches large, is the biggest MiniLED TV with Quantom Dot technology to date.

We also got to check out Razer’s Project Esther, which is a proof of concept vibrating cushion showcasing the company’s new Sensa HD haptics platform for more immersive gaming experiences. That might be one of my favorite demos so far because… well... It vibrates. It’s a vibrating cushion for most office or gaming chairs.

There was plenty of car and transportation news, too, like Kia’s new fleet of modular vans and Volkswagen adding ChatGPT powers to its in-car voice assistant. The CES 2024 showfloor was also littered with piles of headphones, earbuds (and earwax) thanks to announcements from JBL, Sennheiser and less-known names like Mojawa, which put an AI-powered running coach in its bone-conducting headphones.

At the Pepcom showcase, we also saw some intriguing and fun products, like the Skyted Silent Mask that lets you talk in private in public, as well as the LifeSpan standing desk bike that lets you cycle really hard to generate enough power to charge your phone.

Intrigued? Check out our articles and videos with more details on everything I’ve mentioned and more. Or if you prefer, we’ll be back tomorrow to recap all the biggest news again to make your life easier. We’ve got plenty of press conferences coming up, and the show floor has officially opened, which means there’s still lots of stuff to check out in the days to come. 

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

Samsung's Ballie robot is one of the more delightful things we've heard about at CES 2024. The spherical robot was a surprise from Samsung yesterday, though the company first showed off a version of it back in 2020. Ballie's now a lot bigger, growing from a tennis ball to a bowling ball, and it has a built-in projector.

Unfortunately, Samsung isn't letting us get any one-on-one time with Ballie, but the company did show off a demo at its booth. It was obviously tightly scripted and controlled, but at the very least it gave us an idea of how the company envisions Ballie being used. The actor asked Ballie to start a workout routine for him and it started projecting a workout video on the wall and started some tunes. Sure, you could just use your TV for that, but when one of the exercises called for laying down, Ballie shot the video to the ceiling so the actor could continue following along. 

In another example, Ballie was able to give a visual representation of the house's air quality, pulling data from a connected air purifier. In addition to showing some stats on the wall, Ballie noted that a filter needed to be changed. The idea here is to show that Ballie can talk to all your smart home devices and display info from them, even if they don't have a dedicated display. 

Naturally, Ballie can also display events on your calendar and place phone calls, and it can show video from things like the inside of your Samsung fridge or oven as well as when someone is at your doorbell. Basically, Ballie feels like a smart home hub on wheels that can also display stuff when you want it to. 

It's cute, and it was fun to see Ballie confidently rolling around the floor of the demo area, but I can't help but think that it's solving exactly zero real world problems either. We'll have to see how development progresses, but Samsung says it'll be on sale by the end of the year. I'm not fully convinced, as we've seen a lot of, but I am definitely rooting for the little robot.

We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.

The modern classic mystery game Immortality is finally coming to PS5 on January 23 and it’ll cost $20, which is in line with the price on other platforms. It already exists on PC, Xbox Series X/S, Android and iOS. The game was originally released back in 2022.

For the uninitiated, Immortality is more of an interactive film trilogy than a video game, recalling full-motion titles from the 1990s. The surreal narrative tasks you with solving the disappearance of an actress named Marissa Marcel. You do this by scrubbing through video clips and gathering clues. Creator Sam Barlow has likened the gameplay to a “mental Metroidvania”, in that you return to previously-viewed clips once you have a new understanding of some aspect of the mystery.

We loved the title upon release and it made our list of the best games of 2022. The script, penned by writers behind films like Wild at Heart and TV shows like Mr. Robot, is not just good for a video game, but engaging throughout. The atmosphere is moody and tense, recalling the cinematic stylings of Alfred Hitchcock and, especially, David Lynch. Immortality is geared more towards cinephiles than mainstream gamers, so don’t expect a lot of action. The acting performances, however, are excellent.

Sam Barlow made a similar game called Her Story, which was also well-received, and the less popular Telling Lies. He’s been involved with several entries in the Silent Hill franchise, including Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered.