CES 2025 promises to light up Las Vegas once again, showcasing some of the most exciting and groundbreaking tech announcements of the year.
From Monday, January 7, you can expect to see everything from highly anticipated product launches to revolutionary gadgets and inventions that could reshape how technology integrates into our lives. The biggest names in the tech world will unveil everything from next-gen TVs and smart home innovations to cutting-edge AR and VR solutions -- all with tightly integrated AI smarts.
The Tom's Guide team will be on the ground, exploring the show floor to deliver the latest news and our first impressions of the hottest new tech.
Expect detailed coverage throughout the event, and be prepared to see many of these products featured on our site in the months to follow as we dive into in-depth reviews. If you're looking for a daily recap, rest assured, we'll have you covered every step of the way.
For now, I've asked our experts for predictions on what to expect from the show.
While I've yet to see a truly useful (and exciting) AI-driven TV feature, I'm wise enough to know that most major TV brands are champing at the bit to make AI functionality a key part of not just their next TV lineup, but their entire brand identity.
I think we're about to see a slew of software-based features that promise to leverage AI responsibly, delivering exciting and useful new ways to interface with your TV. I'll be interested to see if their claims hold up.
On the hardware side of things, you can all but guarantee that we're due for a brightness bump for 2025 OLED TVs -- particularly those whose displays are enhanced with quantum dots or Micro Lens Array technology (like Samsung and LG's flagship models).
With some clever engineering, these impressive displays have seen slow-but-steady upticks in brightness with each passing year. The brighter they get, the better they tend to look. The display tech still has quite a ways to go if it's to match the scorching highlights of high-end Mini-LED TVs, though.
Speaking of Mini-LEDs, I very much expect CES 2025 to be a victory for viewers vying for more value-forward Mini-LED TVs. Hisense broke the dam a couple of years ago when it announced that its entry-level U6 series would begin implementing Mini-LED backlighting at an ultra-affordable price point.
We've yet to see any competing brands join Hisense in its efforts to bring Mini-LED TVs to the masses, but I suspect that's about to change. Keep a particularly close eye on rival brand TCL, a perennial purveyor of affordable TVs with premium features.
AI was the buzzword of CES 2024. This specific abbreviation was mentioned over 300 times during our seven days in Vegas earlier this year (yes, we counted). But what has it really amounted to when it comes to consumer tech? That's a little unclear.
The start of this year was defined by companies trying to figure out what an AI device actually looks like, and the results? ...Well, they were bad. The Humane AI Pin was rather essentially ethered into obscurity to the point that the company has pivoted to doing software, and the Rabbit R1 left a bad taste in a lot of mouths.
Really, the only one that made any headway (emphasis on head) was the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses for the sake of actually being a wearable that made sense for its position, and also rather stylish too. So when it comes to AI hardware, expect to see a whole lot more smart glasses come to Vegas.
Elsewhere, I anticipate that AI will play almost like a dual role between more thoughtful implementations into the likes of TVs, kitchen tech and audio, while also being off the walls in enabling some truly impressive robotics prototypes.
For a while now, new laptops at CES have become as inevitable as day turns to night. You get a little spruce up in the hardware design, a bump in performance and you call it a day. But see, we're heading to a point where I predict three things are going to happen: new GPUs, new CPUs, and more developed tech to flirt with new form factors.
You'll see the usual suspects -- Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Razer and more -- all bring new systems sporting either:
And finally, I think we're fast approaching whatever the next stage of laptop design is. Companies have dabbled with the foldable display/dual display format for a while now. Some have been successful like the Asus Zenbook Duo, and others a little less so like the HP Spectre Fold.
The only real barrier here is the parts: namely the reliability and capability of them. You'd find a lot of these foldables sporting older internals, so expect progression in foldable displays, improved reliability of the mechanical parts, and some evolution in the core parts to keep a form factor like this so slim (such as the fans).
It's a new year, so I expect to see the new best gaming laptops sporting equally new CPUs and GPUs during CES 2025. This isn't a bold prediction given how we always see spec bumps with new laptops, but it's still worth getting excited about. I'm especially intrigued by whatever new CPUs the likes of Intel, AMD and Qualcomm might announce. And of course, I'd be shocked if we didn't get official word on the next Nvidia laptop GPUs.
While companies will no doubt boast about greater performance and new cooling solutions, I want to hear more discussions centered on enhancing the player experience. To be specific, I'd like apps such as Legion Space and the Omen Gaming Hub to allow us greater control over how machines allocate resources when gaming and not gaming.
The ability to automatically optimize a game's settings to maximize performance (similar to the Nvidia Experience app's solution) would be fantastic. And of course, we can't forget about RGB lighting control.
A trend I noticed in 2024 that I expect to carry over in 2025 is more gaming laptops that don't look like gaming laptops. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy flashy and wild designs of old Alienware laptops, but I wouldn't want to be seen in public using a laptop that screams "WATCH OUT! THIS GUY'S A GAMER!" I fully expect (and hope) to see more laptops like the subdued HP Omen Transcend 14 and Asus Zephyrus G14 at CES 2025.
Wi-Fi is something most people take for granted until their connection drops or they can't get a signal which is why networking companies and device makers will be pushing Wi-Fi 7 hard this year. At CES 2024, we saw a few new Wi-Fi 7 routers but this year, TP-Link, Netgear, Asus and others will likely be showcasing their mid-range and budget options in a much bigger way.
The first wave of Wi-Fi 7-equipped routers and mesh routers were prohibitively expensive for all but early adopters. Now though, mid-range options and even a few more budget-friendly ones are starting to hit store shelves. A big reason for this is dual-band Wi-Fi 7 routers which forego the faster 6 Ghz band first introduced with Wi-Fi 6E in favor of affordability. They still have most of Wi-Fi 7's new features though.
Cheaper Wi-Fi 7 routers and a greater selection of them is just the push smartphone and laptop makers need to start adding this new wireless tech to their devices. However, I expect we'll start seeing Wi-Fi 7 show up in other devices like TVs and even consoles now that the PS5 Pro has it.
Mini PCs are having their heyday too and I expect there will be loads of them at CES this year. The launch of the Mac mini M4 helped renew interest in them across the board and I wouldn't be surprised if we see some Windows-based mini PCs trying to emulate its slick and smaller design. Desktops and laptops both have their place and mini PCs fit nicely between the two.
Finally on the computing front, I think that spatial computing will see a big push now that the Meta Quest 3S has made it more accessible as well as affordable. The Apple Vision Pro wasn't quite the hit we initially expected and now other companies will look to bring this very futuristic tech to even more people.