View in browser

January 10, 2025

Brittney Ho/NYT Wirecutter

	By Brittney Ho Brittney is a newsletters editor at Wirecutter.

I, alongside nearly 20 other Wirecutter journalists, spent this past week in Las Vegas covering CES—wading through everything from cosplayers on stilts to dancing robot vacuums—to check out what’s coming in the world of consumer tech.

The week is important not because we’ll immediately start testing sleep-tracking bed frames or recommending nail polish-applying gizmos. Most of the products on display are overhyped nonsense—like the five-second dishwasher our appliance expert Andrea Barnes called “a very fast faucet.” But CES is important more as a(n imperfect) forecast, a hazy crystal ball offering some signals amid the noise.

Unsurprisingly, AI was the biggest trend across the board. It was inescapable. Companies were touting it for nearly everything: a machine that scans your face to apply your lipstick, an automatic lawn mower that can differentiate between grass and flower beds, glasses that display language translations live as they’re being spoken. Some cool and potentially useful, others extraordinarily dubious.

But another somewhat unexpected thing I heard from Wirecutter’s experts over and over? This was a big year for little robots. And by that, I mean little animal- or human-like robots that help with household tasks, especially for kids and older adults aging in place. I saw fuzzy pet dogs designed as companions for medical patients, a table lamp on legs that skitters like a spider, and—perhaps most chilling—an AI-powered baby robot designed to be a companion-slash-smart assistant for kids.

This cutesification—coupled with taglines like “affectionate intelligence” attempting to rebrand AI into something compassionate—struck me.

“Robots are here every year,” said senior tech editor Caitlin McGarry. “But making them small and fuzzy pet replacements is new. It’s super interesting that we’re seeing a lot of them as really specific solutions for things like aging or dementia, too.” Using AI can be cuddlier than a faceless prompt on your laptop—it can look like an “empathetic” friend that serves coffee or grows herbs.

Will all of our homes be overrun with these little guys? Your guess is as good as ours. It’s incredibly rare for any one launch or trend to revolutionize things overnight. In the meantime, we’re always going to reserve judgment until we actually test the products—and eye everything with some skepticism. “If you look at CESs past, it’s littered with corpses of things that over-promise and under-deliver,” said editorial director Jason Chen. “I’m honestly very loath to say ‘I’m super confident to say this one thing will deliver’ until we see the real-world experience from our experts and our testers.”

In the meantime, hidden among the AI animatronic of it all, our experts did spot some actually useful (and not particularly glamorous) products they are excited to put through robust testing. For instance, an annoying quirk of many smart homes is that flipping off a switch stops a smart bulb from being, well, smart. But we found a smart light dimmer that lets you control your bulbs with the actual wall switch, rather than your phone. As supervising editor Jon Chase put it: “It’s not a robot, there’s no AI, but it’s a simple, seamless way to make a smart home work even better.”

Everything we were (actually) impressed with at CES→

We independently review everything we recommend. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Learn more ›

“Charging my electric vehicle was a pain. So I bought the dumbest, sturdiest charger.” This fuss-free EV charger works quickly, is fully weatherproofed, and doesn’t waste anybody’s time with pointless connectivity features→

6 tips for better Wi-Fi, according to our router expert Here’s how to be your own tech support→

A phone-sized e-reader we love This little gadget is comfortable to hold and is also just very, very cute→

NYT Wirecutter

I lost track of how many preposterous sentences and I overheard at CES, but this one takes the cake. It came from a person manning the Roborock booth, debuting the company’s new robot vacuum with a retractable arm that can pick things up and put them away. Our vacuum experts plan to test it to see if it lives up to the hype, but until then, please enjoy these … synchronized dances?

The robot vacuums we recommend (without arms)→

Thanks for reading.

You can reach the Wirecutter Newsletters team at newsletters@wirecutter.com. We can’t always respond, but we do love to hear from you.

Was this email kindly forwarded to you? Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.

Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for The Recommendation from The New York Times. To stop receiving The Recommendation, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request.

Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app

Connect with us on:

Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices

The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018