So for this week’s WIRED Gadget Lab podcast, we come to you (alive but a little exhausted) from Las Vegas, Nevada, to talk about the big trends from CES and how they might shape our tech experiences for the rest of the year. Follow WIRED’s liveblog of all the news from CES. Or just check out the coolest stuff from the event. Read all of WIRED’s coverage of CES. Julian recommends not feeling that you have to see everything at CES. Adrienne recommends the AeroPress Pro and a collapsible travel kettle. Mike recommends not partying until your last night of CES, and taking showers at bedtime instead of in the morning. Adrienne So can be found on Twitter @adriennemso. Julian Chokkattu is @JulianChokkattu. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Lauren Goode (who will be returning to the show next week) is @LaurenGoode. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys. You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how: If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for Gadget Lab. If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Podcasts app just by tapping here. We’re on Spotify too. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed. [Gadget Lab intro theme music plays] Michael Calore: Hi everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Calore. I’m a senior editor at WIRED. This is our first episode of the year, so you know what that means. We are at CES in Las Vegas, and you of course may notice that the audio is a little different this week. Maybe a little less crystal clear than you’re used to. That’s because we are recording this episode in a hotel room. It is very late at night, so very late. And we’ve just gotten back from a long day of touching various gadgets, eating bad food, and breathing on strangers. This is what CES is all about. In the room with me here are WIRED review editors Adrienne So and Julian Chokkattu. Welcome back to the show everybody. Adrienne So: Hi. Michael Calore: This is the first CES that we’ve attended in two years. In 2021 the show was canceled because of the pandemic. It resumed in 2022, but we covered it remotely. So how does it feel to be back in Vegas? Adrienne So: I missed it. Michael Calore: Did you? Adrienne So: Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of things you miss in a remote experience, which is mainly things going wrong. I’ve enjoyed all the in-person bloopers, the Panasonic turntables that didn’t work for the grand finale with the Olympic break-dancers, and I rejoiced for that. I love seeing all the people who make our stuff a little bit more human. Julian Chokkattu: Yeah, I mean that’s the same thing. I missed seeing stuff, and there’s so much you miss from not seeing the product in person and seeing how it interacts, and playing around with it with your hands—I missed that. But at the same time, I feel like I completely forgot how to budget my time, and I feel like I’ve barely written about anything, because I’ve tried to see too many things—trying to make up for the past two years or something. Adrienne So: Yeah, I totally forgot how to be a human interacting with other people. I’ve had PR people tell me to stop to eat. I’ve had my editors tell me, just like, you’re a human who needs to sit down occasionally, drink some water. Michael Calore: Yeah, I feel the same way. I’ve had that all-too-familiar experience of staring at the clock on my laptop and it’s 1 o’clock in the morning, but you’re in Las Vegas, so there’s all kinds of stuff going on, and people are still texting you and Slacking you, and it’s like, “OK, I remember what it’s like to be in the fray now.” I don’t know if I necessarily missed it … I am a lot older than I was last time I was here. Adrienne So: Do you know who is cool? In that bar at the base of your tower here in Vegas, Mike. The past two nights that we’ve been here, every time I’ve walked past, the musician has been pretty great. Michael Calore: Oh, yeah. Julian Chokkattu: Johnny Hazard. Michael Calore: Johnny Hazard. Adrienne So: Johnny Hazard, my pal. Michael Calore: Shout out. So we have actually been seeing some products, quite a few of them, because CES is where hundreds and thousands of products are debuted every year. And there’s way too much for us to talk about on this show. There’s all kinds of 4K TVs, action cameras, electric cars, robots, and stuff that we saw today, but we only have half an hour here. So I want to concentrate on a few key areas where we’re seeing things that are actually exciting to us. I want to start with the smart home. CES is always a big launching pad for connected-home stuff. This year we’re seeing just as much of it, and one trend we’re watching is the release of Matter. This is the new smart-home standard that promises true interoperability between all your smart-home devices, regardless of which manufacturers make them. As long as all the gadgets you buy are Matter-compatible, in theory, they can all talk to each other, change each other’s settings, turn each other on and off. Matter launched at the end of 2022, so we were expecting to see a ton of Matter-ready devices here—and we actually haven’t. Are people talking about Matter? Does Matter still feel like a thing? Michael Calore: There are still a lot of products that work with Alexa, which kind of defeats the purpose of Matter. Adrienne So: It still feels like there’s a bit of walled garden happening. Michael Calore: Well, one cool thing we saw today, Samsung had its big press conference, and there were a lot of Samsung announcements that happened outside of the press conference. But one of the things the company concentrated on in the press conference was the idea that we’re making it easier to connect everything together. And when they say that, it’s like, “OK, well, here comes the presentation about Matter.” And they did show off a new product, the Smart Things Hub, which is a wireless charging pad that has a smart home hub inside of it. And because it’s all Matter-compliant, you can use it in innovative ways to talk to all of your things at once. So the idea is that you’re lying down at the end of the day to go to bed, and you put your smartphone on the hub to charge it, and there is a little button on the hub that you can press and it runs a routine. So that routine can be anything. It can be turning on the Sonos and going to your favorite NPR station, or it can be setting the temperature on your thermostat. But the dream that Samsung was selling was that you put your phone down to charge and the hub automatically changes the temperature, it turns off all the lights, it turns off your television, it does this bedtime routine that puts your whole house to sleep, basically, whenever you’re putting your phone down and getting ready for bed. Julian Chokkattu: Right, and I guess the selling point is it works with any device that you have, so it doesn’t have to be Samsung’s specific home devices, for example, if you have another product from a different brand, because it’s all Matter, it’ll all work together. Michael Calore: Yes. Adrienne So: Oh my gosh, what a crazy paradox—the fact that Matter doesn’t actually matter, that you can buy whatever product as long as it’s Matter-compatible and nobody’s marketing it at all. Oh my gosh. We’re trapped in a Matter Möbius strip of marketing. This is terrible. Julian Chokkattu: Yeah, I would agree with that. Michael Calore: All right, we’re going to take a break and come back to talk more about what we’re seeing at CES. [Break] Michael Calore: All right, welcome back. One other thing we always see a lot of at CES is health tech. Things like blood pressure monitors, smart scales, wearables, various devices with biometric sensors that connect to an app on your phone. We’re seeing some interesting health-related things this week. Adrienne, this is sort of your jam, so I want to ask you what you’ve been excited about. Adrienne So: So this is perhaps not going to appeal to my cohosts, who you may or may not have noticed are male-identifying people. But the thing I was the most excited about was the EV Ring. Last year, we saw the Movano Ring, which was going to be a competitor to the Aura Ring. And this year’s iteration is more women-specific. It’s the EV Ring now, and there’s a specific population of women this ring is aimed at. And when I asked Movano about it, they said it’s not fertility tracking, it’s not ovulation, it is for perimenopausal women, which is a population that nobody really knows anything about. It is the 5, 10, or 15 years that happen after you stop getting your period. And it’s basically a complete mystery. All of these things happen to you as you are ending your time as a fertile woman, and none of them have been monitored. Women even experience sleep apnea differently than men do. And nobody has tracked that, because all the studies on sleep apnea have been on men. So this is a fascinating new field of study, and it is not affected by the ending of Roe v. Wade, which I was pretty, I had a lot of trepidation about concerning data privacy. So that was one thing that I got really excited about. Michael Calore: So it’s a ring that you wear on your finger. Does it look like a regular ring, or does it look like a super-thick ring or what? Adrienne So: I mean, it’s comparable to an Aura. If you’ve ever seen one of those before, it’s maybe a quarter of an inch thick. And there’s sensors on the inside. The inside is resin, the outside is gold-plated metal. I mean, the major visual difference is that there’s a little notch cut out of it. So it’s pretty wearable. But it’s also not quite for sale yet. So I’m not sure how long it will take to come out, given that the Movano Ring in its original iteration I never saw a tester for. Adrienne So: Yeah. Julian Chokkattu: Yeah. One thing I’ve noticed specifically walking around the show floor has been, there’s a lot of products that are trying to focus on helping you de-stress and just finding some peace in all the chaos that’s out there. Specifically, Citizen has a WearOS 3 smartwatch, so like most WearOS watches, it works functionally similar with Android and iOS. You get your notifications and all of that, but they are trying to branch out from all of those other watches and trying to add something new to the table. And that is this partnership that they have with NASA and IBM, which is kind of a very strange partnership for a watch brand. But their whole idea is that they’re gathering all of this data based on some research that NASA did for astronauts a long time ago, and using IBM’s Watson platform to basically try and monitor your daily routine, your daily habits, using all the sensors on the watch. And essentially, as you go through the day, it’ll sort of map out your peak performance and the times of day that you are at your best. And it can know all of these things based on the data it gathers. And what it’s trying to do is, if it starts to detect that, “Oh, you are entering a high stress period, or maybe within an hour you’ll feel really stressed out, based on the data that we’ve gathered for you right now.” Then it’ll start suggesting things for you to do to potentially prevent that. And I mean, some of the things can sound a little basic. Some of the examples are drink some coffee, take a 10-minute nap, take a 30-minute nap, go for a jog. But the nice thing—what I did like about it is that they actually annotated all of these things with all the research that they’ve found. And it’s not just the Citizen app is telling me to get some coffee, because if I saw that, I would just be like, “No.” Yeah, but it actually says, “Here’s the research.” And says that why this might actually help you, and there’s sort of reasoning there, and yeah, it is just sort of a potential way for you to actually prevent feeling stressed out. But again, this is all based on a very brief demo, and I don’t know if it actually works. So that would be kind of interesting to test. It’d be fun to walk the CES show floor to see if I can actually prevent myself from getting stressed out or not. Adrienne So: Julian, what if the watch can tell me that I get stressed every time I check my email. And so it just says stop doing that, and also don’t respond to texts. Julian Chokkattu: That should be one of the activities. Turn off your watch, turn off your phone. That’s the ultimate stressor, which actually is a good segue into the NOWATCH—or I think they actually wanted you to call it the Now Watch. And this actually was the— Julian Chokkattu: Yes. And weirdly enough, there is actually no watch on the watch. It’s literally just sort of a gemstone on the watch face, and, well, I guess I shouldn’t say “watch face” because there’s no watch. It’s basically just a gemstone on the face. But it has a bunch of sensors. It actually uses the same processor as what you’ll find in the Aura Ring. And their whole shtick is to monitor your sweat glands, to also predict your stressors and things like that, and suggest things to help you feel a little more at ease. And also to record moments in your day so that you can just record the time where you might be feeling at ease. And then you can open the app and sort of see a picture of what you’re actually feeling. It’ll be like red if you’re not in a good mood or not in a good state, or blue if you’re in a nice pleasant state. So I don’t know how useful something like that is. I’ve seen so many of those mindfulness bands, so it just feels—I don’t know, I think it’s probably best for a certain group of people that are using those types of things. But it looks really nice. You can hange out the gemstones. It’s quite expensive, I think starting at 299 euros. But the packaging, everything is sustainably made. The packaging is kind of fun. It comes with this mushroom seed packaging that, if you plant it in your backyard, you’ll sprout mushrooms. So that’s weird and fun. So yeah, just a strange kind of stress-free product. Michael Calore: That’s very cool. One thing I’m particularly excited about is all of the over-the-counter self-fitting hearing aids—something, the US government, the Biden administration, put out this directive and said we should have more cheap hearing aids out there in the world. And now there are more cheap hearing aids showing up. We saw some today from Ergo, which is a company that’s been making hearing aids for years and years, and has recently just gotten its last two models certified for self-fitting. So you don’t need to go visit an audiologist and have a doctor’s appointment to getting a hearing aid. You can just buy it on the internet. Still quite expensive. So its newest one is a little bit lower-priced, and it is going to be available over the counter this year. There’s also a pair from Nuheara that’s making the rounds, and I know, was it JLab that has a super-cheap hearing aid coming? Adrienne So: JLab has a $99 set of hearing aids coming, which is absolutely incredible. If you don’t know anyone who has hearing aids, I mean, it’s just a pair of earbuds. My father-in-law has lost his in the ocean. He’s left them on the restaurant table and had them thrown into the garbage by a server. The fact that hearing aids cost like $3,000 and are only covered by your health insurance every three years, that’s such an extravagant expense. You should be able to replace these when you step on them or throw them out the window, whatever you do. Adrienne So: Yeah. Julian Chokkattu: Yeah. It’s kind of sad that it took so long. I mean, obviously they had to go through a process before, but it is sad that it took that long, and how quickly the devices came to market meant all of that tech was there, and people could have had it for a long time. But because of the directive, now we finally have it. Adrienne So: I mean, we’ve been seeing that conversation pop up in the Gadget Lab for years. Why are there no readily available hearing aids? And so now they’re here … unlike Matter. Michael Calore: So Adrienne, what’s one thing—doesn’t have to be health related at all—just anything that you’ve seen so far that you thought was interesting, that you want people to know about? Adrienne So: I would be totally remiss if I didn’t mention Sony’s new electric car. I’m pretty sure that their electric vehicle was the reason why the line to get in that press conference was stretched to the end of the universe. And they included one feature, which I pray to whoever is listening that it isn’t a joke. They said that the car can emote just like Knight Rider. The lights will flash on and off in different patterns like the car is angry, don’t drive red, and car, car is feeling mildly introspective. A little bit of yellow. I mean, it cannot be a joke. Please let it happen. Please let the Qualcomm Snapdragon chassis bring, I don’t care about ADS. I don’t care about damage detection and different parts of the car. I just want my car to tell me … What feelings do cars have? Have you ever gotten a car and thought, “Suzie feels grouchy?” What would that be like? I want to communicate with mine. Michael Calore: Well, you also have to tell us the name of the car. Adrienne So: Oh my goodness, I totally forgot. So the Sony Afeela. Michael Calore: Afeela. Adrienne So: Afeela. Because you’re feeling it. I just had to remind myself to pronounce it correctly, because the urge to say, “I feela” you Mike—it was too much to resist. Michael Calore: Julian, what’s the thing that you most want now? Julian Chokkattu: OK, well this is a hard question, because I’ve seen a lot of great things, but they’re all somewhat mundane, and I don’t want to talk about something mundane. There is one thing that I haven’t written about yet. It’s so stupid, but I cannot get it out of my head because it’s kind of mind-boggling. And it’s the Rollkers, the thing that doubles your walking speed. Adrienne So: Oh my God. Julian Chokkattu: Because I saw the guy demoing it for me, and so many questions came into my head. I’ve just been thinking about them. The fact that it’s been in development for 12 years, the fact that they debuted it at CES 2015 for the first time, and they’re still showing up and saying that maybe it’ll come to market in one to two years. But basically how a tank has treads on it to help it move—it’s a thing that you attach to the bottom of your shoes and just strap on, and you walk and take normal footsteps, but because it also sort of rolls while you move, it’s kind of like a walking escalator, letting you double your walking speed. And I saw him walk around the show floor, and he doubled his walking speed, so it worked. He sounded like a robot because it has an electric motor. And I was like, can you do it in the rain up a hill? And he seemed to say yes. And I asked him why, and he said, well, he’s living in Paris and he wants to get around fast. So I mean, I can understand that, being from New York. And I get the whole fast-paced nature of the world, but it’s still, I think it’s $700. There’s just so many questions that came to mind. But it was definitely the funniest thing I saw so far. Julian Chokkattu: Well, they kind of also remind me of the—what were they called when we were kids—Heelys? Adrienne So: Yeah, everyone loves the Heelys. Julian Chokkattu: Yeah. So it’s like that except— Michael Calore: Tank treads. Julian Chokkattu: Yeah. Adrienne So: That have been in development for 12 years. Julian Chokkattu: Yeah. I mean, I hope he gets the funding, and I hope it becomes a thing. I won’t use it, but I’ll enjoy watching other people use it. Michael Calore: That is the way I feel about the ElliptiGO. Whenever I’m walking around San Francisco and I see somebody on an ElliptiGO. Julian Chokkattu: What is that? Michael Calore: Like an elliptical machine. So imagine an elliptical machine and the movement of an elliptical machine, but it’s mobile. So it’s like a bicycle crossed with an elliptical machine. So a person is holding onto— Julian Chokkattu: This is an existing product? Michael Calore: Yes. It’s called the ElliptiGO. So yeah, I see somebody go by on one of those and I say to myself, “Oh, good for them.” Adrienne So: See, that’s the kind of thing that, if you read it—this is one of the major appeals to me of being here in person. If you got an email that was overtly stupid, you’d go, “Meh,” and delete it. But when I’m here, with the determined optimism—maybe unwarranted optimism in many cases—I cannot help but be charmed every single time I come to CES. I’m like, “All of you just get a hug for participation. Here is your participation trophy from me, and it’s a high five.” Julian Chokkattu: I looked up a picture of the ElliptiGO, and I didn’t know you could make an escooter seem cooler. So thank you for teaching me about that. Michael Calore: You’re so welcome. Adrienne So: I thought I looked really cool on the electric in-line roller skates, thanks to our social media managers—shout-outs to Cameron and Alicia. Yeah. Michael Calore: Oh, you watched the video and— Adrienne So: I did watch the video. The coolest part was as Alicia gets me scooting by going, “I like roller skating.” That was definitely the part where I looked and felt the coolest. Julian Chokkattu: Alicia and I did get to ride a go-kart this morning, and we drifted in a parking lot —a very, very small parking lot. But that’s a highlight. I can’t do that remotely. [Break] Michael Calore: All right. This is the last part of the show, where we have our recommendations for our listeners, and we’re going to do a special behind-the-scenes edition. As technology journalists, we come here to CES every year. I mean, not the last two years, but every other year we come here, and every time we’re here, we end up learning a little bit more about ourselves and what we’re capable of and what it takes to turn our brains to mush. So we have adopted strategies for surviving this very, very long week of CES, and I would like us to go around the table and talk about some of our strategies for coping and what we do to make it through this very, very long week. Julian, you go first. What’s your power move, your CES power move? Julian Chokkattu: I mean, the easy answer is to take a Lyft everywhere, because you guys walked, we all walked to the first thing the other day, and it was a lot longer of a walk than I realized, which was fine. But after, you end up walking and on your feet for much of the day, and I was quite exhausted at the end of that. And so I decided I’m going to take a Lyft home. And that was definitely a very nice luxury. So if you do that most of the show, then all the time you spend standing up while you’re walking the trade show and all that stuff, makes it a lot easier. But I guess maybe a better answer would be to just not care as much about things. You think that you have to do so much and you have to write everything and see everything. I still have that all the time, which is why you guys had to do a manhunt to find me at the end of the night. But I try to also think, you don’t have to hit every embargo. You don’t have to write about every single thing. Try to delegate to other people, things like that. Trying to just be better about that. Yeah, I don’t know if that’s really a hack. It’s just trying to help my mind feel more at ease. Michael Calore: I think that’s something people can apply to whatever job they have. Julian Chokkattu: Sure. Yes. That is just life advice, actually. Adrienne So: I did run after a man because he carried his bag in his hand the exact same way that Julian did. And I was like, “There he is.” And I sprinted off after him and then did an abrupt, obvious U-turn and came right back. So no, it was not. Michael Calore: So what’s your strategy? Adrienne So: I have one very specific strategy. This is my power move, and it’s unparalleled, you guys. I brought an AeroPress Go and a travel kettle. Julian Chokkattu: Smart. Adrienne So: Because by God, I will not be standing in a line for terrible coffee for 20 minutes when I have to get to a press conference. I’m just going to brew that up in my room while I’m getting ready, getting dressed in the morning. And I’m prepared to face the hoards of people the minute I get out of my tower. This is a total game changer. This was the first year where I was just like, “Oh, I am a pro at this. I am fully caffeinated and ready to go.” Michael Calore: Is this a collapsible kettle? Adrienne So: Yes. It’s one of those collapsible silicone kettles. Michael Calore: Nice. Michael Calore: Never heard of it. Adrienne So: I know. It’s about an inch thick when it’s fully compressed, and it’s totally big enough to brew one cup of coffee with an AeroPress. Julian Chokkattu: And you brought your own ground beans, I assume? Adrienne So: I brought the filters, I brought the beans. I felt really bad about it actually. I felt like I should tell all of you guys that I have coffee in my room. But then it was just like, “But then they’d be in here waking me up.” Michael Calore: Secret’s out. Adrienne So: I know. Michael Calore: My AeroPress Go has been to three CES’s now. Adrienne So: Mike, is your power move my power move? Michael Calore: Well, I mean, I passed it along, I subconsciously passed it along. Adrienne So: No you didn’t. No, it was not subconsciously. I think I saw your … Did you bring a Fellow kettle one year? Michael Calore: No, it was my Bonavita swan neck. Adrienne So: Oh my God. Totally different. Julian Chokkattu: Wait, what? Michael Calore: My temperature-controlled swan-neck kettle. Julian Chokkattu: Wow. Michael Calore: Yeah, I had to carry recording equipment so we could record the podcast. I have new recording equipment now, which is much smaller. So I didn’t need the second suitcase, so the kettle had to go. I’ve just been drinking like … I’ve been drinking plebeian coffee from the coffee shop downstairs. Not the nice bougie Adrienne coffee. Adrienne So: I know. So, OK, so my actual hack is that I didn’t bring the swan neck. The hack is the collapsible travel kettle that you can put in your carry-on. Julian Chokkattu: I feel like kettles should just be a thing in every hotel room, right? Michael Calore: They should be. Julian Chokkattu: They should be. Adrienne So: Yeah. But people just do horrible things to or with them. Is that why they don’t have them? Let’s not speculate. I don’t know. Would they wash their underwear in them. I don’t know. This is how you could tell I haven’t had coffee. I’m sorry. Adrienne So: Yeah. Julian Chokkattu: So Mike, what is your recommendation? Michael Calore: So I have a very simple biohack, and I give the same recommendation to everybody who comes to CES, which is advice that’s also applicable to anybody who attends a multiday conference. Don’t party until your last night. You can have a glass of wine or stay up a little bit late the first couple of nights. But if you get really excited and you go out drinking, then you’re going to slow down a lot sooner than everybody else. So I know it requires some self-discipline, and it’s not a lifestyle choice that everybody wants to make, but that’s what I’m saying. You just say no until your last 24 hours, and then you can do whatever the hell you want. Adrienne So: Yeah. It’s really hard to land in Vegas and be self-disciplined, but we’ve all managed it somehow… Say the people who are still recording a podcast close to midnight. Julian Chokkattu: That’s why we are still working. So just work until the end of the night and then go to sleep, and then you won’t be invited to any parties. Michael Calore: That’s right. That’s right. My other power move is a practical one that I also use at home, which is: Shower at night right before you go to bed. Take your shower, go to sleep, wake up, you don’t have to shower right when you wake up, and you can just head right out the door. You wash the day off, you sleep better, clean. It’s such a great feeling, sleeping clean in clean hotel sheets. Julian Chokkattu: I understand the benefits. I just can’t, because I think for me, a morning shower is the trigger of a new day, fresh start, kind of clean now. So I think that advice will work for a lot of people, but I don’t know. Adrienne So: You just keep a squirt bottle of Febreze by your bed. I’m ready to go. Michael Calore: All right, well that is our show for this week. Thank you Adrienne and Julian for flying all the way to Las Vegas just to sit here in this hotel room and talk about CES with me. Julian Chokkattu: Thank you for having us. And because we were also forced to come up to this hotel room. Adrienne So: No, I joyfully skipped as much as I can after being on my feet for 14 straight hours. Michael Calore: Thanks to all of you for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on Twitter. Just check the show notes. Our producer is Boone Ashworth, and we will be back in the studio next week. Until then, goodbye. [Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]
