a day ago

Last year, Spectricity gave me a demo of a multispectral camera sensor and how it had the potential to disrupt several different product categories. Now, the company integrated it into a prototype smartphone to better showcase its utility. A multispectral camera sensor can capture far more colors than your typical smartphone. In one example, there was a Barbie in a lightbox against a pink backdrop surrounded by blue LEDs—the Pixel 7 Pro turned the Barbie’s skin blue because it was struggling to find a marker for white balance. Spectricity’s prototype phone had no issues, and even after changing the color temperature a few times, it always delivered the most accurate colors. It was remarkable.

Another example showed the frustrations of trying to find the exact color of an item. Let’s say you wanted to shop for paint—even with a Pantone color card and Pantone’s app, an iPhone suggested a completely different hue of orange than Spectricity’s phone—the team showed me a physical color swatch as a third comparison and the prototype’s result was indeed incredibly accurate. You can imagine the utility of this in other applications from skin health, skincare, and more.

You might have seen mentions of a spectral sensor in some phones last year, but Spectricity says those sensors are only capturing a single point of information—spectral information without the spatial information needed to get a clearer, whole picture. It says seven of the eight key smartphone brands in the world are currently evaluating its technology, and you’ll likely start seeing this tech in a device in 2025. Don’t worry, this won’t mean all phone cameras will deliver the same results—phone makers will still have the opportunity to add their style—now just with far more accurate data.

a day ago

You might have noticed that there’s been an explosion in digital notebooks over the past year and a half—so much so that we now have a guide picking out the best. First, everyone was making an ebook reader, then it was mostly just Amazon and the Kindle, and now there are several companies all-in on digital notebooks that let you write, type, and read. E Ink tells me most people’s early experiences with e-readers were the slow refresh rate, but it has come a long way, and it takes some time for consumers to catch on. It’s been putting a lot of focus on color E Ink screens lately—last year we saw the BMW concept car with color-changing E Ink panels—now there’s a smartphone with a color-changing E Ink Prism backplate.

This new smartphone hails from Infinix, a Chinese brand whose phones are available in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and it’s purely for aesthetics. Since E Ink is a low-power technology, it’s not going to impact battery life much, and you’re able to change up colors (though the design itself is limited to the shapes of the E Ink Prism segments). Expect to see color in more kinds of E Ink devices, like digital notebooks coming soon, as the company tells me it has always been the most requested feature from its partners and consumers.

I also got a chance to see and don the upcoming Sol Reader E Ink glasses. It’s an e-reader for your face, and you use a wireless puck to navigate and turn pages. Since you can look straight ahead to read, it’ll put a lot less pressure on your neck. It does a good job of blocking out the world so there are fewer distractions too. They put a new meaning to “reading glasses.”

2 days ago

Feeding your pets a balanced diet can feel daunting, if not impossible. And it’s expensive! (Shout out to my cat and her $80-a-bag dry food.) Enter the ChefPaw Pet Food Maker. It’s part food processor, part cooker, and part app. Enter in your pet’s activity levels, weight, and age, and you’ll be met with a slew of customized recipes, each with balanced nutritional notes and ingredient lists. You can also create your own recipes or browse the ChefPaw community to find others’ tried-and-true options. And there are filters for allergies, affordability, and other factors. In the future, you’ll be able to order your pet’s groceries for delivery from within the app. The app also provides step-by-step instructions, like adding a specific weight of rice followed by a specific portion of sweet potatoes. Press start, wait 40 minutes, and you’ll have six pounds of nutritious pet food that’s ready to be served or stored. Six hundred bucks might seem like a lot of money for a pet food maker, but ChefPaw’s recipes cost as little as $1.80 per serving. In a multi-pet household, the machine pays for itself in a few weeks. Right now it’s limited to dogs, but cats will be added soon, with small animals to follow. ChefPaw launched in August of 2023 and makers are shipping now.

2 days ago

All-in-one appliances usually get a bad rep. They try to do too many things and the end result is a mixed bag. That’s often the case with most combo washer/dryers, but Samsung wants to prove otherwise with its new Bespoke AI Laundry Combo. This smart washer/dryer combo integrates many of the features available on Samsung’s existing Bespoke AI Laundry appliances, like Fabric Care, which identifies some of the materials and changes the settings to make sure your clothes don’t shrink or get damaged. There’s also the 7-inch AI Hub display, which is how you control the machine and these same settings can be viewed on a Samsung TV or the SmartThings app on your phone, so you can start a cycle remotely. The Flex Auto Dispense System automatically chooses the right amount of detergent, the Auto Release Door opens the door when drying is done so that your clothes don’t get damp if you forget to take them out, and there’s a Less Microfiber cycle that purportedly reduces the shedding of microplastics by adjusting the motor’s revolution speed.

Three years went into developing the Combo, according to Samsung’s Moohyung Lee, head of the Customer Experience Team of Digital Appliances Business, and a large part of that involved getting the heat pump technology just right. Heat pumps have soared in popularity over the past year as a more energy-efficient way to heat and cool homes. Samsung has been using it in its prior Bespoke washers and dryers—it uses the refrigerant with the compressor instead of electricity to heat the air for the dryer. The company hopes its implementation in the AI Laundry Combo will change people’s opinions of combo washer/dryers. “Ultimately the path forward will be this type of combined model,” Lee says.

In the second half of this year, Samsung says it’ll start to add generative AI to Bixby (of course), allowing you to communicate with all your Samsung appliances in a much more natural, conversational way, not just to control the appliance either. For example, if you’re unsure whether you should put a silk shirt in a dryer, just ask Bixby. The Bespoke AI Laundry Combo is expected launch in the first quarter of 2024, though the price hasn’t been announced yet.

2 days ago

Rabbit's AI-powered walkie-talkie is one of the stars of CES. In the above video, WIRED's Julian Chokkattu gives a hands-on look at the device.

2 days ago

Humidifiers are certainly useful for those with dry indoor air, but, to prevent the growth of mold and bacteria, you have to clean them often and thoroughly. Mila Halo is here to help make maintenance easier, by designing a humidifier (which also doubles as an air purifier) with a fully enclosed water system that keeps contaminants out of both the water and the air. Equipped with a dual-stage water filtration system, it removes microbial contaminants along with inorganic solids found in tap water. According to Mila, the entire system can extend tank life by up to 50 percent and keeps moisture from building up on surfaces. And, depending on whether the room is occupied, it can adjust its humidity accordingly. The price remains unclear, but the company says the Halo will be available later this fall.

2 days ago

Dean Khormaei burned his fries, and the rest, as they say, is history. After popping frozen fries in his air fryer and charring them to a crisp, he called up his longtime friend Max Deng. The two have since developed Chef AI, an air fryer that uses artificial intelligence to remove the guesswork from cooking. (As someone who is constantly googling “bagel bites air fryer instructions”, I for one am very excited.) Whether it’s a handful of pizza rolls or an entire steak, the air fryer can figure out how to cook your food. Onboard sensors track temperature and mass, and there’s a camera inside that works with Chef AI’s deep learning model. By their powers combined, your fries will never be burned again. The co-founders said they’re hoping for a ship date in Q4 2024 with a price point around $250. And yes, you’ll be able to override the AI and just cook your food if you want to. But why would you want that?

2 days ago

The fruit of Sony's EV partnership with Honda, the Afeela, has previous form of being a highlight of CES, so we thought we’d go check out how the collaboration electric car project was coming along before its scheduled production arrival in 2025. Our hopes of a even a slow car-park-restricted first drive were dashed however when, upon arriving at Sony’s show booth, the demo offered comprised a static sit in the car, then a gamified setup with a facsimile of the Afeela’s front interior.

Much like the Honda e, the Afeela’s interior features a dashboard-wide screen with sections either end for video from digital wing mirrors (still a terrible invention). The screen can hold multiple windows that can be shifted around, and here is where you’ll be able to remote-play PlayStation games, too. The demo of this was odd, though. On picking up the PS controller in the car, Sony’s representative had trouble controlling the Horizon Zero Dawn character’s actions on the dash display, so I asked if I could try, which revealed that the remote-play demo was just streamed video of gameplay. Am sure this will work eventually, but still there’s no need to seemingly try and pretend a feature is working when it isn’t.

The drive simulator was almost as disconcerting. You sit in a full mock-up of the front section of the Afeela’s cabin, complete with accelerator and brake pedals, the full-screen dash, and the digital wing mirrors, as you then “drive” around a city sticking rigidly to a predetermined path. Go off this path and the simulation immediately resets. The Sony rep seemed particularly excited at a feature where, when you select an option on the central display, it switches to a monster-strewn augmented reality representation of the view ahead. This is meant to be “fun.” I found it unbelievably distracting. We’ll see if this feature makes it to the final car. For now, it feels like Sony should hold off on future Afeela demos until it’s further along with its EV.

2 days ago

A month ago, I bought a $20 air filter for my HVAC in my home. I’m supposed to change it every one to three months, but I wish I could know the best time to replace it. This is what Woosh wants to help with through its Smart Air Filter. The filter is from 3M, but it’s the frame that’s smart—affix it into your HVAC duct without screwing anything in, and it can measure when your HVAC system is running. With this information, it offers a better measure of exactly when to replace your filter. In the companion app, you can buy replacement filters or set them to arrive automatically when your filter ends its life. The filter has a MERV 13 rating and costs $22 for refills, but the frame is $149. You can pair it with Woosh’s Air Quality Monitor ($99), which works with smart home thermostats from Nest, Ecobee, and Sensi. You can see the air quality rating in your area, and if the monitor detects a drop in your actual home, it can ask your smart thermostat to run the HVAC fan to filter the air (without running the heating or cooling).

The company has had a few stumbles though. It originally launched a Kickstarter in 2022, then received some funding after appearing on Shark Tank, but Woosh missed its shipping deadline. It only started shipping out to backers late in 2023. Still, the concept is neat, and we’ll be testing it out soon.

2 days ago

If a minifridge could paint your nails, it would probably look something like Nimble. Load up a color capsule pack, rest your fingers in the slot (which looks like a UV nail dryer), and press ‘start’ on your smartphone app or the machine itself, and in as little as 25 minutes you’ll have a fresh manicure. (Note that thumbs are painted separately!) Inside the machine there’s a robot arm that paints nails similarly to how a human would. It picks up the color, wipes off excess, and applies a coat of color. A fan dries nails between coats. AI is used to determine the difference between your nails and your skin, so the machine and its users improve over time. There’s a slight learning curve—as it turns out, fidgeting can throw off even the most advanced of nail technicians—but the company compensates by applying slight pressure via a pad on the top of the finger slot. Reviewer Nena Farrell experienced Nimble firsthand at CES this week, and she said the pressure was similar to a weighted blanket holding her hand steady. Right now the machine is limited to single-color nails, but Nimble said more designs and applications are coming down the pipeline based on customer demand. The machine does require a Wi-Fi connection, and the faster your connection is, the faster your manicure will be finished.

There are over 30 variations of the vegan, cruelty-free nail polish capsules available. Each includes a base coat, a color, and a top coat. There’s enough polish for two manicures in every capsule. They cost $10 each, making the manicure cost $5, while the machine is available for $599. That’s a hefty investment, but for folks regularly getting their nails done at a salon, it’ll pay for itself eventually. For a limited time, pre-orders come with $50 worth of bestselling polish capsules for free. Delivery is anticipated to start in March 2024; You can place a $99 deposit to reserve Nimble here.

2 days ago

I love portable monitors, mostly because I need a second screen wherever I’m working to feel efficient. One of my favorites I’ve tested is Mobile Pixel’s Duex Plus, which magnetically attaches to the back of your laptop and has a screen that slides out, so you don’t need additional desk space. At CES 2024 I saw a version of this style of portable monitor that seems far more elegant. It’s called the Xebec Snap and it was announced last summer but only started shipping to consumers in December 2023. You affix a shell over your laptop’s screen—it’s a clamp, so it can fit screens up to 17 inches—and on the sides are magnetic attachment points where you can pop on up to two 13.3-inch Full HD screens. There’s even a built-in kickstand on the back of the clamp to prevent your laptop’s screen from tipping backward from the weight.

The clamp has two USB-C cables (you can also use USB-A) for hooking the system up to your laptop, but the screens themselves are wireless, which makes for some nice cable management, and it also means you can use the screens in landscape or portrait orientation. The company also showed off concept accessories it hopes to make later this year that can attach to the same magnetic points, like a video light to light up your face during video calls, and a MagSafe wireless charger for docking your phone next to your laptop. Smart! You can purchase it now, with the dual-screen option starting at $549, and the Tri-Screen costing $999.

2 days ago

Keychron makes some of my favorite mechanical keyboards—they’re weighty and well-built, satisfying to type on, and quite customizable. The company skyrocketed to popularity over the last few years and this is its inaugural appearance at CES 2024. Its latest ware? The Keychron Q1 HE (the HE stands for “Hall Effect”), a 75 percent wireless magnetic switch keyboard. Companies like Wooting have used analog magnetic switches before, but Keychron’s peripheral can connect wireless via Bluetooth or a 2.4-GHz dongle.

Essentially, HE keyboards have magnets inside each keyboard switch (the piece under the keycap that registers your keypress). There’s a sensor in the keyboard that responds to changes to the magnetic field from keypresses, allowing much more granular control over the sensitivity of each key. That means you can configure keypresses to actuate from a very light touch—or the opposite—which can be helpful in fast-paced shooter games. You can customize all of this with Keychron’s new web app, which you can also use to remap keys. You can preorder the Q1 HE now for $219, and it ships in April.

3 days ago

The Withings BeamO, which debuted this week at CES, is what's known as a multiscope. You can use it to measure your temperature and blood oxygen levels or take an EKG reading, and you can use it as a stethoscope to listen for heart irregularities. All in one little wand. It doesn't dispense medical advice—the idea is that you can send the data reports to your doctor and then discuss them together—but it's nice to have this level of diagnostic capture in something that's accessible and easy to use. It will cost $250 once it wins FDA approval.

3 days ago

With all the outdoor gear at this show, it seems a shame that we have to spend so much of our time scurrying around inside fluorescent-lit convention halls. That’s why I was thrilled to get off the Vegas Strip for a little bit for a Bosch test ride with about a dozen different Bosch-powered electric bikes from several different brands that use the company’s electric drivetrains, including Riese & Muller, Gazelle, Trek, and Tern. I joined a group of journalists at Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area just outside the city.

The theme was Bosch’s e-cargo and SUV bicycles (I was on a Trek Fetch+ 2, although I did take turns on several other rides). Probably the most noteworthy update to the Bosch eBike system that I found was the Auto eShift system, which automatically adjusted the power output to maintain my level of effort and speed. It’s amazing but takes some getting used to. I stopped on an uphill to put my phone back in the mount and was shocked to find how easy it was to get restarted; I also found myself fiddling with the shifting a lot, because I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t hard to pedal up a trail with 1,100 feet of elevation gain.

The integration with the updated Bosch eBike Flow app was also pretty nice. I connected my bike to the app and mounted it on the handlebars, which charged my phone with the bike battery. Buttons by the handlebar let me easily flip through the screens, and the app is also compatible with other major health and fitness platforms and equipment—you can export data from the Bosch app to Apple Health or Strava, for example. Given all the software upgrades, it was difficult to concentrate a lot on the bikes themselves.

It’s worth noting that I’m fine with any and all software updates, as long as the experience of biking remains the same: completely fun, whizzing up and down through picturesque hills in the desert sun. There were definitely stray yells and whoops as we sped along, and not all of them were from me. At one point during the ride, Bosch general manager Claudia Wasko turned to me with a big grin and said, “This is work!” And it is! The most fun work possible.

3 days ago

It's hard to justify engaging in stunt journalism at big, physically demanding events like CES, but WIRED's senior reviews editor Julian Chokkattu is always game for a challenge. Today at CES, he has decided that he won't use a regular computer all day. Instead, he is only allowing himself to use this Nimo Planet Spatial Computer. The smart glasses plug into a tiny palm-sized computer called the Core. The Core has a touch-sensitive top for pointer input. It also has an accelerometer, so it can be used like Wiimote to point and click. The Bluetooth keyboard completes the package. Passersby keep stopping to stare and take photos, and I cannot blame them one bit.

3 days ago

The number of ebikes that straddle the line between motorcycle and bicycle is growing quickly. The latest model from Segway, the Xyber, is one such hybrid beast. It houses two 1,440-watt-hour battery packs in the middle of the frame, and with both installed (as shown here) the range of the two-wheeler extends to almost 100 miles. That's a whole lot of adventuring. The suspension has four and a half inches of travel, and the knobby tires can handle gravel and unpaved backroads, but it's still incredibly zippy and fun on pavement. The X-shaped headlight lets everyone know they're about to be passed by a cyberpunk commando.

3 days ago

Who head? What head? It's Wehead, a table-top hardware interface for ChatGPT. If it looks like four Samsung phones stuck together to approximate a human face, that's because it is.

3 days ago

Petcube is known for its affordable pet cameras, and now the brand has launched its first wearable for dogs. Attach it to your pet's collar to set up a track their location, monitor daily activities, and set and track their fitness goals. You can also set up a geofence that alerts you if they wander too far from home.

In the app, you can pull up your pet’s location at any time, but if they actually get lost, Lost Dog Mode speeds up the updates by reporting your pet's location once every second rather than once every 1 to 3 minutes. This does drain the battery faster since it's more data-intensive, but regular use should give you about 30 days of battery life.

The case is transparent, which doesn’t just look cool—'90s clear tech is my special interest—but the clear plastic also glows in the dark and has built-in LEDs for nighttime safety. Sound alerts can also be activated to help locate a hiding animal.

The tracker costs $53, though it’s discounted to $40 right now. You’ll have to pay a monthly fee to get the data services, and there are several options available. If you pay for a year, a basic subscription costs $84 ($7 a month) and the premium version costs $96 ($8 a month). There are monthly, two-year, and five-year options too. A premium subscription also comes with vet connection right in the app and a lifetime warranty. Petcube’s app can be aggravating to use—the cost alone usually makes the app issues bearable—but we’ll test this tracker when we can.

3 days ago

Owlet has been making baby sock monitors for a few years now, but the newest models are approved by the FDA for tracking your baby’s vitals. There’s two different versions of the new sock: the Dream Sock, which anyone can purchase, and the BabySat, which promises hospital-grade monitoring and can only be purchased with a prescription from a doctor. Both models can track the pulse rate, oxygen, wakings, and sleep trends of babies ranging from newborn to about 18 months old. Owlet describes the two as the same, just one requires a prescription. The pulse rate and oxygen monitoring are likely a little over the top for most parents monitoring their baby’s sleep habits, but I’m still planning to test it on my one year old to see what the experience is like. I’m more intrigued about the prescription BabySat, and how often parents of premature and NICU babies might be prescribed it now that it’s on the market. It’s something I’ll be watching this year.