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CES 2023: These are the gadgets that caught our eye from LG, Withings and more
From a wireless TV to a pee-tracking device, there was a lot to get excited about at this year’s show
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It’s been a whirlwind few days at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, with thousands of wacky concepts, prototypes and actual legitimate gadgets heading for the shelves, giving us a glimpse into the future.
While CES 2023 was still a little quieter than it typically would have been pre-pandemic, companies large and small still showed off some fascinating products that previously only ever lived in our dreams.
Samsung unveiled an AI-powered oven that’s able to recognise the food inside and provide ideal cooking instructions, alerting users if their chicken is about to burn. There was a new smart ring from Movano that can track menstrual cycles, giving the Oura ring a run for its money. And, yep, we saw that colour-changing car from BMW, too.
Although a large number of the gadgets unveiled at CES will never launch, with the companies using the trade show to reveal bonkers proof of concepts, there are gadgets with release windows and release dates, and some are even up for pre-order now.
We’ve handpicked the CES gadgets we’re most excited about and outlined when exactly you’ll be able to get your hands on the futuristic gizmos in the UK. While there are run-of-the -mill products with more concrete release dates, these 2023 launches might genuinely change how you live, work and play. Expect a lot of “world’s firsts”.
Read more:
HTC Vive XR elite: £1,299.99, Amazon.co.uk – available 25 February
One of the most exciting products to come out of CES happens to be a device you can pre-order right now. Giving the Meta quest pro a run for its money is the HTC Vive XR elite. It’s a VR and AR mixed-reality headset that is lighter and cheaper than its rival. It features support for 3840 x 1920 2K resolution on each eye, as well as built-in hands-tracking, passthrough and a 90Hz refresh rate. You can still hook it up to a computer as well.
It does run on an older processor compared with the quest pro, however – the Qualcomm XR2 chip vs the XR2 pro – and it doesn’t have face tracking. If you want those, the more expensive quest pro (was £1,499.99, now £1,345, Amazon.co.uk) is still the better choice. The XR elite launches on 25 February.
LG Signature OLED M3 TV: Price TBC, expected availability in 2023
Fans of clutter-free minimalism, this one’s for you. As it does most years, LG announced a whole host of TVs at CES this year, but the most interesting out of the lot was the LG M3 OLED – a 4K TV that is completely wireless, save for the power cable.
Unlike every other TV in existence, which require devices to be plugged into the TV’s ports at the rear, the 97in signature telly connects to LG’s Zero Connect box to receive audio and video signals. It’s basically an HDMI box that you plug your games consoles, Fire TV sticks, Sky boxes and more into, with LG claiming reduced latency. The TV’s speakers support Dolby Atmos and voice commands, as well. There’s no release date or price for the M3 just yet, but we expect it to be costly.
Razer leviathan V2 pro: £399.99, Razer.com – available 10 February
A soundbar for gamers, the Razer leviathan V2 pro is the first beam-forming PC soundbar with AI-powered head tracking. The soundbar features an integrated IR camera, which can help detect sound directly at your ears. This essentially envelops you in a game as if you were wearing a pair of headphones, but you get a wider soundstage because it’s a soundbar. There are five full-range 2in drivers with a down-firing subwoofer. This one launches on 10 February and is available to pre-order now.
JBL tour pro 2: £220, available January 2023
The JBL tour pro 2 was actually announced last year, but it got its grand unveiling at CES 2023. It’s the first pair of wireless earbuds with a smart charging case. That’s right, the case on these buds has a 1.45in LED touch screen, letting you control your music, answer calls and read notifications right from the case itself.
The earbuds feature active noise cancellation, and ambient modes, as well as a fairly lengthy eight hours battery life and three extra charges from the case. Gimmicky, perhaps, but you won’t have to take your phone out of your pocket to read your messages anymore. Who knows if this one will take off, but we’re intrigued to test the earbuds. The tour pro 2 is slated for launch this month and will reportedly cost £220 – cheaper than the Apple AirPods pro.
Asus ProArt studiobook 16 3D OLED: Price TBC, expected Q3 2023
Asus is bringing 3D back with the ProArt studiobook OLED laptop. Said to be the world’s first 16in 3.2K 120Hz 3D OLED display, it features Asus’s spatial vision technology, providing users with a glasses-free 3D (that can be turned off and on). There’s a stylus-compatible haptic touchpad and a dial rotary control. Inside, you’ll find a 13th-gen Intel Core i9 HX processor, and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card.
But why the 3D? Well, it’s said to increase the depth and immersion for creators, who are ProArt’s key demographic. There’s no information on pricing yet, but it’s expected to launch in the UK in the third quarter of 2023.
Withings U-scan: £433.70, expected Q2 2023
Health and fitness tech firm Withings always makes a splash at CES, and this year was no different. The company announced a – wait for it – pee scanner. Yep, Withings has made a 90mm-diameter urine scanner that sits at the front of your toilet bowl and provides an immediate snapshot of your body’s biomarkers found in your urine. You fit one of two cartridges into the reading machine – a nutri balance cartridge for monitoring your metabolism, nutrition and water intake; and a cycle sync, for monitoring menstrual cycles.
A U-scan starter kit costs €499.95 (£433.70) and comes with one U-scan reader and cycle sync or nutri balance cartridge, providing three months of testing. That works out as €166.65 (£144.57) per month for three months. Users can then subscribe to automatic refills costing €29.95 (£25.95) per month on a subscription basis. Withings says the U-scan will first be made available in Europe from the end of the second quarter of 2023.
Read more on Withings’s website
Lenovo smart paper: £336.26, available spring 2023
Hot on the heels of Amazon’s Kindle scribe comes Lenovo’s answer – the smart paper. It’s a 10.3in dual-colour ereader with an auto-adjustable front light that doubles up as a note-taking machine. You can store up to 50,000 pages of notes, and there’s a stylus pen, which is said to replicate the feel of pen on paper. You can convert your handwritten notes into text, translation services and voice transcription via a subscription service.
Lenovo says the smart paper will launch in spring 2023. Although there’s no UK pricing as of yet, it will be available in the US for $400 (£336.26), which is slightly more expensive than the Kindle scribe.
GE Profile smart stand mixer with auto sense: $999.95 (£822), Crateandbarrel.com
While it doesn’t look like this one is going to be available in the UK any time soon, we thought we’d give a special mention to the GE Profile smart stand mixer, a device that’s going to revolutionise baking and will certainly threaten the market dominance of KitchenAid.
The GE Profile stand mixer features a seven-quart mixing bowl that doubles up as a smart scale, measuring ingredients as you drop them in, including the ones already in the bowl. There’s also a feature called ‘auto sense’, which monitors the texture and viscosity of the bake and stops running when it’s at the optimal consistency (think auto sense on Ninja’s blender). There are pre-loaded recipes, so you can get baking straightaway. You can already purchase it in the US for $999.95 (£822).
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