January’s annual Consumer Electronics Show promises the future.
Which apparently involves a smart toilet.
The 2018 edition of CES held court last week in Las Vegas.
Set across nearly three million square feet of convention space, it offered plenty of insight about the future of technology (along with at least one hilariously ironic power outage).
To help you review, we put together an alphabetized list of our 26 favorite tech finds from the show, from flying taxis to “Artgasms” to VR everything.
And you better get used to the phrase, “Alexa, flush.”
A is for Artgasm, which featured works of art based on data captured from Lioness’s $229 smart vibrator, provided by volunteers who, um, operated them.
B is for Bodyfriend’s Rex-L Plus massage chair, which looks like it belongs on a spaceship and has the functionality to match: a patented “brain massage” facilitates concentration or meditation.
C is for Canary View, might be the most affordable security system you can buy, available now for just $99.
D is for DeepFrame, a 4K OLED window through which images and videos — from sharks to rocket launches — can be overlaid onto everyday life without the need for special eyewear.
E is for Energous, who took their wireless charging tech and put it in … underwear?
F is for Fingernail wearables are coming soon, thanks to L’Oreal’s sunlight-powered UV Sense.
G is for gym workouts will be more game, less pain when Black Box VR opens its virtual-reality gaming gym later this year.
H is for Helite’s Hip’Air, a wearable airbag on a belt that needs just 200 milliseconds to detect a fall. Supposedly for the elderly, also great for the klutzy.
I is for IotaTrax, or that thing you’ll see in Brooklyn soon that’s a cross between a hoverboard and a self-balancing unicycle.
J is for Jabbawockeez, for all the CES attendees who needed a masked, hip-hop dance crew break. (Yes, the same crew from Master of None.)
K is for Kohler Nui, which rhymes with poo-ey, and constitutes the smart toilet that no one asked for.
L is for Live Planet, which delivers live or recorded stereoscopic VR and 360° video captured in a “grapefruit-sized” device sans bandwidth issues (or, what Pied Piper was trying to solve).
M is for Mars, which, ironically, could bring our own world closer together. It’s a language-translating set of earbuds — one for you, one for the person you’re talking to.
N is for NERDS!, who will still awkwardly rule the world, as evidence by a debut trailer for the upcoming fifth season of Silicon Valley.
O is for Omron’s Ping-Pong-playing robot, which had a ball in Vegas. Sadly, what happens in Vegas really does stay there — the Japanese firm has no plans to sell the artificially intelligent bot.
P is for Peloton’s $4,000 treadmill and its 32-inch touchscreen display. Sweaty and swanky, they come with an option to take virtual running classes hosted by a Manhattan gym for $39/month.
Q is for Qi’s wireless chargers, which were all over the place at CES and shaping up to be THE new industry standard for cord-free charging.
R is for Roll-up televisions. They’ve been done before, but LG’s 65-inch OLED version is the first one we could envision bundling up and stashing under our arm while commuting on the subway.
S is for Sennheiser, who equipped their new HD 820 headphones with a patent-pending Gorilla Glass back that exposes the inner workings of the cans … as well as reflects sound waves back toward the ear.
T is for Tetra, a countertop dishwasher that requires no plumbing and can be controlled remotely using an app. Also functions as a sous vide cooker.
U is for Uber, who are partnering with NASA to create a flying taxi service.
V is for Voxels, the new pixels. Intel plans to use these data points to access every single angle of sports contests for your VR viewing pleasure. For our money, it’s the biggest thing to happen to live sports broadcasts since Madden.
W is for The Wall: at 146 inches, it’s quite simply the largest TV ever announced for consumer release.
X is for X-rated, in the form of an eerie sex robot named Solana that Abyss Creations, uh, revealed.
Y is for Yale (not the school), who are pairing 177 years of badass lock-making know-how with Nest’s home tech gadgets.
Z is for Zombies, who roamed free in Arizona Sunshine’s location-based VR immersion.
And your extra special numeric bonus entry: 3E Robotics, a fleet of good-guy robots built by Honda that will help firefighters, farmers and the elderly. Kind of adorable, too.
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