Wirecutter - Wirecutter’s favorite things from CES

Michael Hession

The most game changing thing I saw isn’t a thing. It’s an operating system for headphones. In the near future, you will be able to download apps to your headphones in the same way you can your iPad or iPhone.

I don’t think this will be something most folks will be buying this year, but much in the way true wireless took off about 2-3 years after the first clunky models rolled out at CES, I think headphones with increased processing power are the future of headphones.

—Lauren Dragan, senior staff writer

Jon Chase

The smart home buzzword of CES is Matter, an emerging tech standard developed in cooperation with every major smart home brand that should make the next generation of smart devices work together without worry about compatibility, while also being far more secure (here’s our early look with more details).

Matter-compatible products are only beginning to trickle out, and Nanoleaf’s newly announced Sense+ Control line are among those that piqued my curiosity. 

A real spine tingler for smart home fans is the Learning Bridge, a plug-in device with a modest nightlight and also ambient lighting and motion sensors. Inside is a wireless Thread border router that enables other battery-powered Thread devices to stay in contact and talk to each other and in turn your home Wi-Fi network. It’s too early to say how that will pan out, but I love that once Matter is up and running I ought to be able to use all those built-in sensors to elevate and automate the skills of all my other smart devices.

—Jon Chase, editor

Grant Clauser

Kitchens have steadily been getting smarter as Wi-Fi and voice control find their way into more household devices. One of the latest is Moen’s new Smart Faucet with Motion Control, which replicates the convenience of touchless faucets at home with a lot more control. The one downside? The price: all that control will cost you $1,100.

—Grant Clauser, senior editor

Sabine Heinlein

So much dirt, so little time! Who doesn’t want a smart little machine that does everything everywhere all at once? The Noesis Florio 2-in-1, a robotic floor cleaner that will become available this February, aspires to come awfully close to being your perfect cleaning genie. It can be programmed to switch automatically between vacuuming, dry mopping, wet mopping, and vacuuming-and-wet-mopping combined.

—Sabine Heinlein, staff writer

Lenovo

Many laptop makers have tried to reimagine what a laptop can be—with touchbars, screenpads, E Ink displays, bizarre hinge decisions, and more—and so far all of them have missed. Lenovo is taking yet another swing with its new Yoga Book 9i, a thin and light laptop with not one, but two 13.3-inch OLED screens that can be used in a variety of positions.

We’re excited for the potential, but we’ll have to wait and see if the finished device is a home run, or yet another swing and a miss.

—Kimber Streams, senior staff writer

Fellow

For two years coffee geeks have lusted after the pricey Fellow Ode grinder, a wonderfully compact and quiet black metal grinder with custom-designed flat burrs. The catch was the cost, about $300 for a machine that was designed almost entirely for pour-over styles of coffee. The Opus is designed for more mainstream coffee drinkers. It has a lower price tag and it is theoretically designed to handle all kinds of coffee styles, and even comes with an internal blue adjustment wheel for dialing in a fine grind for espresso.

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—Rachel Wharton, senior staff writer

Hatch

Hatch released a new version of its sunrise alarm clock: the Hatch Restore 2. Like its predecessor, the Hatch Restore 2 aims to help build healthy sleep habits and reduce stress-induced insomnia via customizable sunrise and sunset simulations and personally-curated soundscapes.

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— Annie Chou, updates writer

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This was just a small sampling of the exciting announcements we saw at CES. To see our full round-up of first impressions on cutting-edge product teases—like a football-sized speaker that delivers fat bass, new TVs from Roku, and a dash cam from Ring—check out our full CES coverage here.