Top 7 Disappointments of CES 2025

Our video guru David Katzmaier says he was disappointed that major TV brands didn't really trot out anything innovative at this year's show that people would be able to buy. Last year, LG announced pricing for its new transparent OLED as Samsung detailed the availability of its first glare-free OLED screen. Neither company announced anything as innovative that it would be bringing to market this year, though they did display a few innovative concepts. Katzmaier says he was also disappointed that TV makers Hisense and TCL both held off announcing their full mainstream lineups at the show, only teasing them.

Alas, LG Display, the group that showed rollable and transparent OLED displays before LG Electronics brought them to market, skipped the show this year. Katzmaier says he would have liked to have seen the new super stretchy OLED displays for autos and textiles that LG Display announced in November in Korea. But at least he got to see Samsung's stretchable concept screen that creates 3D effects without glasses.

Similar to TVs, there just wasn't a whole lot of interesting news on the laptop and computer front at CES, according to editor Josh Goldman. He says there were plenty of speeds-and-feeds updates with the new Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Nvidia hardware, but no interesting concepts or unique designs with the exception of the Lenovo rollable display that, while interesting, is not a serious product and solves a problem that can be handled with a $100 portable monitor.

A few editors weren't impressed with the AI announcements at the show. "With the exception of Nvidia, most of the AI was gimmicky or meh," says editor David Katzmaier. And editor Eli Blumenthal said that much of what he saw on the show's floor bored him when it came to AI.

"Of all the AI-related demos at CES, I have yet to find a compelling use case that will actually be helpful to people anytime soon," Blumenthal says. "There are plenty of creative applications for audio mixing, photography, video, etc., but they're all somewhat similar to what we've seen from Google, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft at their events. Nothing I saw makes me say to myself 'This is the future, I can use this.' This is doubly true for localized use cases that take advantage of NPUs in the latest computers. If you're in a creative industry it could be a game changer, but for many it's a cool trick right now that you may use once in a while, if ever."

"So much of the AI that people today actually use requires an Internet connection, and that requirement has been something people have been fine with so long as Google Gemini, ChatGPT or Microsoft CoPilot actually function properly."

Editor Mike Sorrentino was says he missed seeing phone concepts with unique displays that "stretch like taffy." With foldable phones becoming more standard, companies didn't feel like doing that party trick this year, he adds. For instance, we didn't see anything like last year's concept wrist phone from Motorola. 

While we got a few ground-breaking EV solutions at CES 2025, most of the automotive industry didn't show up. "There's was no Audi, no Mercedes and none of the American Big 3 came," says CNET auto editor Antuan Goodwin. Hyundai and Kia weren't really at CES, either. (Hyundai Mobis doesn't count," Goodwin says.) And it also seems like there were fewer flying cars/taxis than previous years.

Sony Honda Mobility returned with its Afeela 1, but that EV had already made an appearance at last year's show. The good news is that you can now preorder the Afeela.

Dreame managed to get a lot of attention for its new X50 Ultra robot vacuum because the company's pitch gave reporters the impression that it would be able to climb stairs, which would be a huge innovation for folks who live in multi-level dwellings and need different robot vacuums for each floor or have to carry a robot vacuum up the stairs. But this "robot with legs" had far smaller legs than some folks were expecting. (It also had an arm for picking up small objects in its way.) The company's demo showed the X50 climbing over some small ledges but not up or down any stairs.

Ajay Kumar and Jon Reed report: "That's not to say this makes the X50 Ultra useless. The demo we saw at CES had the vacuum climb two small ledges and then return to its home base. It slammed pretty hard into the first ledge before realizing it should deploy the legs. Two little wheeled appendages popped out and lifted it up just enough to get some traction on the top of the ledge. It seemed to notice the second ledge a little earlier and stopped ahead of it to lift up and drive more smoothly overtop. A Dreame rep said the robot's capable of both sensing a step and adapting to one that's more unexpected."

New audio products, including home-theater and mobile audio products, have been featured prominently at CES in previous years. But the number of new audio products and innovations was decidedly slim at this year's show. I covered the arguably groundbreaking Shokz OpenMeet headset along with the company's new and improved OpenFit 2 true-wireless ear-hook style open earbuds. I also wrote about Panasonic's new Technics EAH-AZ100 earbuds that have "Magnetic Fluid" drivers and JBL's Tour One M3 headphones that include an audio transmitter that doubles as a remote control for the headphones.

But as our home audio editor Ty Pendlebury says, "There were no major audio announcements this year. The only thing of note was Eclipsa Audio, the new Google Samsung 3D audio format that's an alternative to Dolby Atmos." Samsung says Eclipsa Audio will be integrated into its 2025 TV and soundbar lineup.