This year HP is making an important change by taking its name off its gaming hardware entirely and letting its HyperX branding take center stage. At CES 2026, the company is celebrating this transition in a big way with Omen Max 16, which is being heralded as the world’s most powerful gaming laptop with fully internal cooling.
Now the last part of that claim is a bit of a cop out, but considering that most gamers probably don’t want to lug around a notebook with hoses coming out the back, it’s an understandable qualifier. Plus, with a total platform power of 300 watts that includes support for the latest chips from Intel and AMD and up to an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, this thing certainly won’t be lacking in speed. Under the hood, the Max 16 features a third cooling fan to prevent throttling under sustained workloads along with HP’s Fan Cleaner tech that reverses the direction of the laptop’s fans to prevent dust from building up inside.
As for its design, the Max 16 doesn’t stray too far from HyperX’s signature matte black color scheme, though I do appreciate that the company kept a handful of accents like the RGB lightbar mounted on the laptop’s front lip. The notebook also features a per-key RGB backlit keyboard with a 1,000Hz polling rate, which should all but eliminate any issues with ghosting or rollover during hectic facerolling sessions.
However, one quirk about the system I noticed when checking it out first hand is that even with above average brightness of 500 nits for its 2.5K OLED display, the screen also comes with an unusually glossy coating. The benefit of this is that colors appear super saturated. The downside is that especially in well-lit rooms with a lot of sunlight, there’s more glare and reflections than you might expect.
Another nice improvement about the Max 16 that might go unnoticed if you only look at its spec sheet is that despite having a TPP of 300 watts, its power brick is relatively compact. It wasn’t all that long ago that a laptop with this kind of performance might have required dual power cables in order to supply the notebook with the amount of juice it needs. That said, weighing between 6.1 and 6.5 pounds depending on the exact configuration, the Max 16 still isn’t the kind of laptop you’re going to want to carry around on a frequent basis.
Regardless, if you’re in the market for what is essentially an old-school desktop replacement laptop without moving up to even larger 18-inch machines, HyperX’s latest flagship gaming laptop should be a strong contender that won’t be lacking in speed.
One change for 2026 is that HP is taking its name off of its gaming systems and letting the HyperX brand take center stage.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Unfortunately, HP doesn’t have concrete info about how much the HyperX Omen Max 16 will cost or when it will go on sale. However, we should know more when it becomes available sometime later this spring. And finally, if you’re looking for something slightly smaller or a more affordable system (we don't have official pricing, but the Max 16 won't come cheap), HP is also updating the Omen 15 and Omen 16 with fresh components and new HyperX branding for 2026 as well.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/ces-2026-hp-says-the-hyperx-omen-max-16-is-the-most-powerful-16-inch-gaming-laptop-in-the-world-230000272.html?src=rss
Jensen Huang took to the CES stage on Monday to share the latest from NVIDIA, and while the presentation was more a refresher of technologies the company has been working on for the past few years, there were a couple of notable announcements.
NVIDIA announced Alpamayo, a family of open-source reasoning models designed to guide autonomous vehicles through difficult driving situations. The centerpiece of the release is Alpamayo 1 , a 10-billion parameter chain-of-thought system NVIDIA says is capable of approaching driving more like a human being would. The model works by breaking down unexpected driving situations into a smaller set of problems before finding the safest path forward. At each step of the way, the model can explain its reasoning.
A sister model named AlpaSim allows developers to do closed-loop training for driving scenarios that are rarely encountered in real life. Huang said the 2025 Mercedes Benz CLA will be the first vehicle to ship with NVIDIA’s entire AV stack, including Alpamayo. "Our vision is that someday, every single car, every single truck, will be autonomous," Huang said.
Following the Alpamayo announcements, a pair of BD-1 droids from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order joined Huang on stage. We saw one join the executive at last year’s CES. After that, Huang turned to Vera Rubin. NVIDIA first announced the GPU architecture in 2024, and now the company has begun production on a super computer that makes use of the new tech. One Vera CPU has 88 custom Olympus cores and 1.5TB of system memory for a total of 227 billion transistors. Meanwhile, one Rubin GPU features 336 billion transistors. Each Vera Rubin supercomputer has a pair of both components.
Following the presentation, NVIDIA held a separate briefing where it announced DLSS 4.5 and G-Sync Pulsar. The latest version of NVIDIA’s upscaling technology was trained on a second-generation transformer model, which should reduce ghosting and shimmering, leading to a more stable image, even when there’s a lot of movement on screen. As part of DLSS 4.5, NVIDIA is also adding support for 6x multi-frame and dynamic generation. The two features will arrive sometime in the spring. The former allows a 50-series GPU to generate five frames for every traditionally rendered frame. The idea here is to allow a powerful GPU like the RTX 5090 to saturate a 4K, 240HZ display with as many frames as possible. Dynamic frame generation, meanwhile, is exactly what it sounds like. DLSS 4.5 can dynamically scale the number of generated frames to fit the scenario. In demanding scenes, your 50-series GPU will generate more frames, while scaling back during less hectic ones so it only computes what it needs.
As for G-Sync Pulsar, it’s the latest improvement to NVIDIA’s flicker reduction technology. By pulsing a display’s backlight, NVIDIA says it can deliver perceived motion clarity relative to 1,000Hz, leading to greater clarity. Those same displays will also ship with the ability to automatically adjust their brightness and color temperature to ambient lighting conditions. Pre-orders for the first batch of G-Sync Pulsar displays will open on January 7.
Update 01/06/26 9:30AM: Added information about DLSS 4.5 and G-SYNC Pulsar.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/everything-nvidia-announced-at-ces-2026-225653684.html?src=rss
When I first heard whispers about the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold, I immediately felt conflicted. On one hand it felt like the natural evolution of bi-fold phones like the Z Fold 7. But on the other, all this fancy tech comes with an even higher price — around $2,500 based on current conversion rates from Korean won — not to mention the added bulk you get from a third folding panel. So even as someone who has used a foldable as my daily driver for almost a decade straight, it felt like Samsung’s latest high-end phone was going backwards in terms of both portability and affordability. But then at CES 2026, I got a chance to go hands-on with the Galaxy Z TriFold and all of my concerns pretty much instantly disappeared because with this thing, flexing is believing.
My initial consternation comes in large part from using the Z Fold 7, which hit a major milestone this year thanks to a revamped design that doesn’t come with any added size or weight even when compared to comparable candybar-style phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. That’s a major breakthrough considering how hefty and chunky the original Galaxy Fold was back in 2019. And when you compare the Z Fold 7’s dimensions (7.58 ounces and 8.9mm thick when folded) to the new TriFold (10.9 ounces and 12.9mm when folded), there’s no doubt that Samsung’s new flagship foldable comes with a lot of extra bulk. To put things into context, we have to go back several generations to the Z Fold 5 just to find a comparable phone with similar thickness (13.4mm). And even then, that handset is still significantly lighter than the TriFold at 8.92 ounces.
There's simply no denying that the Z TriFold (left) is a much bulkier device than the Z Fold 7 (right).
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
But then I opened it up and my concerns were quickly pushed aside because suddenly you’re greeted with 10 inches of vivid AMOLED goodness. As a phone that can pull double duty as a tablet, the jump up from the Z Fold 7’s 8-inch main display cannot be understated. Not only does it make multitasking so much easier, when combined with Samsung’s DeX desktop mode, you basically get a miniature laptop experience from a device that fits in a pocket. Especially if you don’t mind carrying around a travel-friendly mouse and keyboard. Plus, you can connect the TriFold to an external display (either wired or wirelessly) to access even more screen space. Way more than with the Z Fold 7, I can honestly see myself leaving my PC at home and using the TriFold as my primary work device.
Another important but easily overlooked upgrade on the Galaxy Z Trifold is the 4:3 aspect ratio for its 10-inch main display. Compared to the Z Fold 7 and its almost perfectly square screen, you just get so much extra room on the sides for widescreen movies and shows. I tested this out by watching the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and even though that movie uses a super wide aspect ratio due to being filmed entirely on IMAX cameras, the viewing experience was just so much better. Peak watchability is something the regular Z Fold line has sort of left by the wayside as the company moved to larger exterior displays, which resulted in the series’ primary screen becoming more square. The one downside though is that the TriFold may make you more of a resolution snob, as it’s a lot easier to tell the difference between 1080p and 2K or 4K on a larger 10-inch panel.
The final pillar of the TriFold’s kit is all the engineering that Samsung put into making it easy to open and close. Simply moving from one hinge to two while adding a third folding panel undersells the complexity of its design. Samsung actually uses two different types of magnets that push or pull depending on where they are, which makes accessing the TriFold’s primary display practically just as easy as on the Z Fold 7. That’s no small feat. Opening and shutting this thing is just so satisfying on a tactile level, and that’s before you consider that there’s basically no downgrade in terms of image quality.
While there’s only one way to unfurl the TriFold, which might seem confusing at first, Samsung addressed that too by throwing up a warning and making the whole phone vibrate if you try to do it wrong. And then there are components like the glass-reinforced carbon panels Samsung uses to add strength and durability to its chassis while keeping it as thin as possible. The one potential concern in the future is that unlike Samsung’s older foldables, there’s not as much room for improvement to shrink its dimensions much further, as the TriFold’s slimness is currently limited by the size of its USB-C jack. So if the next model wants to make big gains there, it may need to go completely portless.
Here's what The Odyssey trailer looks like on the Z TriFold (right) compared to the Z Fold 7 (left). It's such a better experience.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
On a certain level, I kind of hate how much I like the Galaxy Z TriFold. I really don’t want to go back to bigger, heavier phones that are even more bulky and expensive than the Z Fold 7. But the appeal is impossible to deny and for people who love a good multitasker, I can easily see how these tradeoffs are worth the upside of Samsung’s latest apex foldable.
The Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold is currently on sale in South Korea, though we’re still waiting for official pricing and availability for the US and North American market.
The Galaxy Z TriFold is one of many new technologies Samsung announced at CES 2026. On the home entertainment side of things, the company revealed updated OLED TVs and showed off a massive 130-inch Micro RGB TV, the latter of which representing a trend we’re seeing at the show this year. There’s also a new Samsung soundbar that offers impressive bass performance sans subwoofer. Samsung’s Music Studio 5 and 7 speakers have unique designs that could blend in nicely with your home decor, and the forthcoming Galaxy Book 6 series of laptops are thin-and-light notebooks powered by Intel Panther Lake chips.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/samsung-galaxy-z-trifold-hands-on-flexing-is-believing-at-ces-2026-224343480.html?src=rss
Why is the world's most valuable company reportedly bringing back such an antiquated graphics card? You know the answer. It's the endless gaping maw known as AI. Tech companies have been hoovering up PC parts for AI applications with reckless abandon. It has become a legitimate challenge for a regular person to buy RAM and graphics cards, which has led to price increases across the board and companies like Crucial closing up shop.
It's particularly difficult to get ahold of GDDR7 RAM, which is needed for the newer RTX 5060 cards. So NVIDIA's solution looks to be a hop in the time machine to 2021. Gamers will need something, after all, and the 3060 technically gets the job done. Any downgrade in graphics and performance will be worth it once you watch an AI-generated video of Kurt Cobain singing in heaven with Albert Einstein, am I right? It's hilarious because they never got to meet in real life.
One would think that five-year-old technology could easily hit a much lower price point, but NVIDIA has us in a chokehold here and it can pretty much charge whatever it wants. Again, no price is too high when considering the magical wonders of generative AI. You can watch Tupac hang out with Mr. Rogers for five seconds.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/nvidia-is-reportedly-bringing-back-2021s-rtx-3060-gpu-because-ai-is-eating-all-of-the-newer-cards-194241706.html?src=rss
Dolby introduced its FlexConnect technology a few years ago, vowing that it would allow customers to position soundbars and speakers anywhere in a room. The company said the platform would then reconfigure the sound automatically, taking into account any locations that may be further away from the center sweet spot. At CES 2026, LG is the first to put Dolby Atmos FlexConnect in a soundbar, offering the so-called Sound Suite that also includes satellite speaker options and a subwoofer. You don’t need every member of the lineup to use Dolby’s tech, so you can pick and choose which items work best for your living room.
The centerpiece of the Sound Suite is the H7 soundbar. This 9.1.6-channel speaker is configured for spatial audio (Dolby Atmos) and supports lossless audio up to 24 bit/96kHz. The standout on the spec sheet for me is the six up-firing channels, which should enhance the sensation of overhead sounds. Most of the soundbars I review have only two of those.
What’s more, the H7 is equipped with a feature called Sound Follow that tracks the location of your phone to reconfigure the audio when your position changes. Maybe you move to a comfy chair instead of the sofa right in front of the TV. The idea is that you don’t have to suffer through subpar audio during a movie or show just because you aren’t in the best spot.
LG Sound Suite H7 soundbar
Billy Steele for Engadget
Then there are the M5 and M7 speakers. When used with the H7 soundbar, these are the satellite speakers, but LG cautioned me against calling them “rear” units. While it’s true a pair of them will be positioned behind most people’s sofas, the company explained that there’s more audio content coming out of them than traditional rear channels provide. As such, two of the M5s or M7s that are used to complement the speakers inside one of LG’s impressively thin TVs are doing more work than just beaming sounds that are designed to come from behind.
The M5 is a 1.1.1-channel speaker while the M7 is 2.1.1. Like the H7, both support Dolby Atmos and lossless music. What’s more, the entire Sound Suite arsenal has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, including AirPlay 2, Google Cast and both Spotify and Tidal connect. The whole shebang also employs LG’s own AI Sound Pro and Room Calibration Pro, and all of the settings are customized in the ThinQ app for Android and iOS.
Each speaker can be used independently should the need arise, and as I already mentioned, you can pick and choose which components will work best for you — up to four total speakers. So you can opt for the H7, sub and two speakers or four of either the M5 or M7. You can also get a smaller setup with two speakers or just the soundbar and subwoofer. Dolby Atmos FlexConnect is still in play no matter what combination you decide on. I should note the optional W7 subwoofer is quite large, but you can use it standing upright or laying flat, according to LG.
LG Sound Suite M5 speaker
Billy Steele for Engadget
Of course, none of this means anything if Sound Suite doesn’t actually sound good. I’m happy to report LG’s collection of speakers are sonically impressive. I was able to get a good sense of how they’ll perform in a quite demo room at CES. Watching a variety of movie clips in Dolby Atmos, I flipped back and forth between a setup with four M7 speakers and a more robust configuration of the soundbar, subwoofer and M7 speakers. While I preferred the overall tone and tuning of the four M7s, I can concede the bigger collection offered more immersive sound and better directional audio. That said, they both provided excellent clarity and pristine detail.
With Sound Follow, you can quickly have Sound Suite reconfigure the audio based on the location of your phone with just a tap. Let’s say you move from the couch to a comfy chair and want to adjust the sound to that spot. You can do that in the app. And while I could tell a slight difference in a side-of-the-room location and the center sweet spot in front of the TV, the correction did offer an improvement over the unadjusted audio.
I was also able to test standalone mode, where you can quickly use any Sound Suite speaker individually for music. Sound quality was consistent here too, and the system allowed me to add a second M7 speaker for a stereo pair with a few taps in LG’s app. Overall, the Sound Suite lineup offers lots of flexibility in terms of features and configurations. In fact, LG says that between the H7, W7, M5 and M7, there are 50 possible combinations.
Unfortunately, LG hasn’t announced pricing or availability yet. Given the capabilities of the Sound Suite system, I don’t expect the more robust collections to come cheap. However, I do think the company will offer a few different bundles that will hopefully provide a discount over buying each component individually.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/lg-sound-suite-hands-on-at-ces-2026-home-theater-powered-by-dolby-atmos-flexconnect-192709499.html?src=rss
TVs are a staple of CES, and so far, manufacturers have not disappointed with their announcements at CES 2026. Companies including Samsung, LG and others came to the event ready to show off updates to existing display tech and some genuinely new technologies. OLED and Mini LED remain central to most lineups, while Micro RGB has emerged as one of the most talked-about developments at the show so far, especially at the higher end of the TV market.
Below are the TV announcements that stood out most from the pre-show events and early press conferences, with more expected as CES continues. Also, be sure to check out our best of CES 2026 list.
Samsung Micro RGB TVs
Samsung's flagship Micro RGB TV
Engadget
Samsung’s Micro RGB push at CES 2026 isn’t just about big screens — it’s also about how the technology tries to redefine color accuracy and brightness in LCD-based TVs. Unlike traditional Mini LED backlights that rely on white LEDs and filters, Samsung’s Micro RGB TVs use microscopic red, green and blue LEDs in the backlight plane, which help deliver a wider color gamut and more precise local luminance control than conventional backlit LCDs.
The standout of the lineup so far is the jaw-dropping 130-inch Micro RGB concept, shown suspended on a massive gallery-style stand at Samsung’s First Look event. It’s powered by Samsung’s Micro RGB AI Engine Pro, a processing suite that includes Micro RGB Color Booster Pro and Micro RGB HDR Pro to refine contrast and push color depth and detail frame by frame, with HDR10+ Advanced support built in. Compared with previous Micro RGB models, Samsung says this expanded family will start at more practical sizes — 55- and 65-inch — and go up to sizes as large as 75, 85 and 100 inches, all with next-gen AI-driven picture and sound features baked in.
Samsung’s Micro RGB sets also carry the company’s Glare Free anti-reflection finish and tie into its broader Vision AI platform, which supports things like conversational search and contextual content discovery. While the 130-inch concept may remain more of a statement piece than a consumer product, the move underscores how Samsung continues to push next-gen TV tech forward.
Samsung OLED TVs
Samsung’s new 2026 OLED slate — including the S95H, S90H and S85H models — continues the brand’s use of quantum dot-enhanced OLED panels, bringing brighter highlights and richer colors than older WOLED approaches. These TVs also benefit from Samsung’s continued refinement of processing and anti-glare screen treatments, which make them more adaptable in bright living rooms than traditional OLEDs.
The flagship S95H retains its position as the most premium, using a quantum dot layer to help improve brightness and color purity. Below that, the S90H brings glare-reducing optical layers and robust picture processing to a slightly more affordable price point, while the S85H is designed to offer core OLED benefits, like deep blacks and wide viewing angles, in a more accessible package that now includes a new 48-inch size for smaller spaces or gaming setups.
Across the OLED family, Samsung’s Vision AI-powered tools such as AI Motion Enhancer Pro and AI Sound Controller (which dynamically adjusts audio based on content) are also part of the story, making these sets not just about panel tech but about richer, more adaptable viewing experiences.
LG OLED evo W6 Wallpaper TV
LG's 2026 Wallpaper wireless OLED TV
Devindra Hardawar for Engadget
LG’s OLED evo W6 Wallpaper TV makes a striking return at CES 2026, and this year’s version manages to blend design flair with high-end performance. The panel itself is an astonishing 9mm thick, designed to sit almost flush against a wall, and pairs with a Zero Connect Box that hosts all inputs and delivers wireless video feeds up to 10 meters away.
Under the ultra-thin exterior, the W6 uses LG’s Hyper Radiant Color technology coupled with Brightness Booster Ultra to push improved brightness and color saturation compared with previous Wallpaper models. It also received Intertek’s “Reflection Free with Premium” certification, indicating some of the lowest reflectance levels yet on an OLED TV. Gaming shooters and fast action fans might appreciate support for up to 165Hz refresh rates and both G-SYNC and FreeSync Premium compatibility, making this one of the most technically ambitious Wallpaper designs LG has shown.
LG Micro RGB evo TVs
LG is also entering the premium RGB-backlit arena at CES with its Micro RGB evo lineup, bringing a similar focus on wider color gamut and intense brightness. Early coverage indicates the Micro RGB evo models will arrive in 75-, 86- and 100-inch sizes, and are built around LG’s α11 AI Processor Gen3, which handles advanced upscaling, local dimming and dynamic HDR optimization.
LG’s Micro RGB evo TVs have been certified for full coverage of BT.2020, DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB color spaces, suggesting an exceptionally wide palette and precise color fidelity. Under the hood, the Micro Dimming Ultra system is said to deliver 1,000+ local dimming zones, which narrows the gap between LCD-based displays and self-emissive technologies like OLED in terms of contrast management.
This early positioning of RGB LED tech by LG also highlights a growing industry shift, with multiple brands teasing similar systems designed to improve brightness and color performance on large screen sizes — especially where OLED’s peak luminance traditionally struggles.
LG OLED TVs (C6 and C6H)
OLED remains a core focus for LG, and CES 2026 brought updates to its popular C-series. The LG C6 OLED continues the company’s tradition of balancing performance and price, while the C6H OLED steps things up with a new Primary RGB Tandem panel designed to deliver higher brightness and improved color volume.
These models are clearly aimed at buyers who want OLED’s deep blacks and wide viewing angles without jumping to LG’s most expensive designs, making them likely to be among the most popular TVs LG releases this year.
TCL X11L SQD-Mini LED TV
TCL used CES 2026 to make a strong case for Mini LED’s continued relevance with the X11L SQD-Mini LED TV, its new flagship model aimed squarely at large-screen home theater setups. Rather than chasing Micro RGB, TCL is refining its own approach with SQD, or Super Quantum Dot, technology, which combines an enhanced quantum dot layer with a dense Mini LED backlight to improve color purity and brightness.
The headline number here is brightness. TCL claims the X11L can hit up to 10,000 nits peak brightness, putting it among the brightest TVs shown at CES this year. That’s paired with an extremely dense local dimming system, with up to 20,000 dimming zones, which is designed to improve contrast and keep blooming in check despite the extreme luminance. TCL also says the panel covers 100 percent of the BT.2020 color space, a bold claim that, if it holds up in real-world testing, would put it in rare company.
The X11L is a 4K TV available in 75-inch, 85-inch and 98-inch sizes, with the largest models clearly intended to rival premium OLED and Micro RGB sets in dedicated home theaters. It supports a 144Hz refresh rate, making it appealing for gaming as well as fast-moving sports, and includes support for advanced HDR formats, including Dolby Vision, with further enhancements expected via software updates.
With CES press day underway and the show floor opening on January 6, more TV announcements are expected from major manufacturers. As additional models are revealed or details are confirmed, we’ll continue updating this roundup with the latest information.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/the-biggest-new-tv-announcements-at-ces-2026-from-samsung-lg-and-tcl-190929614.html?src=rss
Lego bricks come in a bunch of shapes and sizes, but they’re getting a big technical upgrade in 2026 thanks to news announced at CES this year. Meet the Lego Smart Brick, a standard-sized 2 x 4 brick that’s packed with modern technology to enable sets that can respond to how they’re played with or the sets you build. The company’s new initiative, Smart Play, encompasses the Smart Brick as well as Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags. It’s remains to be seen how diehard Lego fans will take to this new system, but it’s fair to say this is the biggest move Lego has ever made to infuse its products with connected technology.
The Smart Brick has a 4.1mm ASIC chip inside of it that Lego says is smaller than a standard Lego stud. It runs something called the Play Engine that can sense things like motion, orientation and magnetic fields. Thanks to this and some integrated copper coils, the Smart Brick can sense distance, direction and orientation of other Smart Bricks near it when you’re building. The brick also has a tiny built-in speaker, an accelerometer and an LED array. Lego says the speaker can produce audio that is “tied to live play actions” rather than just playing pre-recorded clips.
The Smart Tag and Smart Minifigures are a lot simpler. The Tag is a 2 x 2 studless tile with a digital ID embedded in it that the Smart Brick can read via “near-field magnetic communication.” This obviously sounds a lot like NFC, but we can’t be sure that these new Lego pieces will be able to communicate with any other NFC devices. Similarly, the Smart Minifigure also has a digital ID readable by NFC.
The purpose of the Smart Tag as well as the similar tech in a Smart Minifigure is to let the Smart Brick know what kind of context it is being used in. As Lego puts it, “The role of the Smart Tag is to tell the Smart Brick how it should play back with you.” The Tag tells the Brick what kind of object, animal, vehicle and so forth it should become. A Smart Tag in a Lego Star Wars X-Wing set, for example, will contain the unique ID and instructions for how the Smart Brick should behave.
If this isn’t enough, Lego has also built a local wireless layer that connects this all together called BrickNet. It’s based on Bluetooth and uses Lego’s proprietary “Neighbor Position Measurement" system, which is what lets the Smart Bricks know how close they are to each other and how they’re oriented. Lego says that this lets the bricks “talk” to each other directly without the need for apps, internet connections or external controls. It sounds like the idea is all three of these new Smart pieces can communicate and interact without any need for setup, which should make it refreshingly like a traditional Lego set.
That said, these bricks naturally will need some power. Lego says that their batteries should still perform even after “years” of inactivity, and the coils and power system is designed so that multiple bricks can be charged wirelessly on a shared charging pad.
Lego Star Wars set with Smart Bricks
Lego
Speaking of sets, Lego is unsurprisingly launching the Smart Play system with its biggest licensed partner: Star Wars. There will be three “all-in-one” Star Wars sets available, all of which are on the smaller side and definitely geared towards kids, rather than the 1,000 piece and up sets that the company has released to get adults (like me) interested.
The prices are inflated compared to non-smart sets, but not outrageously so. Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter is a 473-piece set with a smart Darth Vader Minifigure, one Smart Brick and one Smart Tag, priced at $70. Luke’s Red Five X-Wing is a 584-piece set with two Smart Minifigures, one Smart Brick and five Smart Tags, priced at $100. The Throne Room Duel & A-wing is a 962-piece set with three Smart Minifigures, two Smart Bricks and five Smart Tags, priced at a slightly shocking $160.
It’s an entirely new direction for Lego, and you won’t have to wait long to check it out. The company is putting those three sets up for pre-order on January 9, and they’ll launch on March 1. There’s obviously a lot of technology here that’s entirely new to Lego, and as such it’s hard to imagine just how this will all look when it comes together — but we’re hoping that Lego will have some sets on hand here at CES so we can get a closer look at how the Smart Play system works.
In the meantime, you can find a few videos on how Smart Play works here.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/lego-unveils-a-technology-packed-smart-brick-at-ces-2026-190000511.html?src=rss
Micro RGB TVs first arrived last year with little fanfare and a confusing name, so you may have mistaken it for other panel tech or not even noticed. That is not likely to be the case this year, though — it’s the hot new “luxury” display technology and is all over the place at CES 2026. So why do we even need these new TVs and how are they different from OLED, Micro LED and Mini LED models? Here’s how it works and how it compares.
A brief history of flat panel display tech
To better understand Micro RGB, it helps to see how flat panel display technology has evolved over the last 20 years. The first LCD TVs used liquid crystals that become transparent to light when voltage is applied, letting a rear backlight shine through as a pixel. Those pixels combine to create moving or still images, with color created via an RGB filter layer placed in front.
The main problem is that LCD crystals let some light partially leak through, so blacks are dark grey instead of pure black. And for a backlight, early LCD TVs used a white screen lit by dim and power-hungry fluorescent lights, which caused uneven light distribution. And finally, the RGB filter color layer reduced a panel’s brightness.
The next step up, then, was to use LED backlights instead, placed at first at the edges of the white screen and then later directly behind it (the first TV with this tech was Sony’s 2004 Qualia). That added the benefits of higher brightness, lower power consumption, improved color balance and even light distribution. It also allowed individual dimming zones that improve contrast by allowing near-pure blacks in shadow areas of an image.
Samsung's Neo QLED 8K TV from CES 2025
Samsung
Quantum dot (QD) technology came on the scene around 2013 with Sony’s Triluminos televisions. This type of LCD panel employs a semiconductor nanocrystal layer (rather than an RGB filter layer) that can produce pure monochromatic red, green, and blue light when struck with a blue backlight. Unlike previous LCDs, they offer higher brightness and color accuracy thanks to the purity (narrowness) of the base RGB colors. The best-known TVs using this tech are Samsung’s QLED models.
The latest evolution of QD LED technology is Mini LED. That combines the accuracy of quantum dot tech with hundreds or even thousands of LED dimming zones. Those models offer high brightness and color accuracy along with good contrast, but still don’t deliver perfect blacks and can display “blooming” in scenes with bright points of light due to leakage into neighboring pixels.
Both of those problems were solved with OLED technology, which first came on the market in 2007 with Sony’s XEL-1 model. The panels are made using sheets coated with organic LEDs, each paired with a transistor that can switch the LED on or off. On regular OLED TVs, OLED pixels are white and a filter layer generates colors, much as with LED TVs. However, with QD-OLEDs, OLED pixels are blue and color is created via a quantum dot layer, like LED QD displays. The latest version of QD-OLED featured on several new monitors at CES 2026 (Samsung’s 5th-gen QD-OLED) uses an RGB stripe pattern to reduce color “fringing” on text.
This is the first, and still the only widely commercialized TV tech that can switch its light source off on a pixel-by-pixel basis, allowing perfect black levels and near-infinite contrast. However, due to their organic nature, OLED TVs suffer from a lack of brightness and the potential for “burn-in” that can kill pixels.
There is another type of self-illuminating tech called Micro LED. Rather than organic, it uses microscopic inorganic LEDs to form the individual pixel elements. Those can also be turned on or off individually, so they offer the same pure blacks and sky-high contrast as OLED. At the same time they’re potentially brighter than OLED and don’t suffer from burn-in. The tech is still prohibitively expensive to manufacture, though, so none have arrived to market other than Samsung’s The Wall, which costs a cool $40,000.
Micro RGB
Devindra Hardawar for Engadget
Before talking about Micro RGB, let’s look at color space and gamut both for HDR, which uses the BT.2020 standard, and SDR, commonly associated with the REC.709 standard. REC.709 is ideal for regular HD content like TV broadcasts and YouTube videos. It can display a limited set of colors and brightness is generally capped at 100 nits.
BT.2020, however, is designed for high-end HDR streaming and 4K or 8K content creation (via Dolby Vision, HDR 10 or HDR10+). It has a much wider color gamut, meaning it can display a wider variety of colors and a bigger chunk of the visible color spectrum. It’s also designed for significantly higher brightness levels of 1,000 nits or more.
To achieve the color accuracy required for BT.2020, TVs must have extremely accurate red, green and blue pixels. Up until last year, the most color-accurate TVs used quantum dot technology and achieved a maximum of around 85 percent BT.2020 coverage (some projectors can cover 100 percent or more of the BT.2020 spectrum as they use RGB lasers to create colors).
That brings us to Micro RGB (also known as RGB Mini LED), the most advanced LED panel yet. Unlike the uniform white or blue backlights found on Mini LED models, it features individually-controlled, precise red, green and blue LED backlights that shine through a liquid crystal layer. It also offers more local dimming zones. The net result is higher color accuracy and better contrast than regular Mini LED displays, but with potentially greater brightness than OLED. Since each pixel still can’t be turned on and off like OLED or Micro LED, though, contrast falls short of those technologies.
Wikipedia
So far, there is one and only one Micro RGB TV on the market, Samsung’s 115-inch 4K MR95F model. The color accuracy is impressive with 100 percent coverage of the challenging BT.2020 HDR standard, an industry-first and huge leap over quantum dot tech. That means it can produce billions of colors natively and display a higher percentage of them in the visible spectrum than any TV to date.
Samsung left out a few key specs like the local dimming zone count, only saying that it has four times more than its similarly-priced 115-inch Q90F QLED model (so likely around 3,600). The company also failed to disclose the total brightness in nits, but the figure should be impressive given the potential of Micro RGB.
We were gobsmacked with the MR95F Micro RGB model in person. Engadget editor Sam Rutherford said it produced “stunningly rich and vivid colors that put Samsung’s other top-tier TVs to shame,” including the aforementioned Q90F. It also came with an equally stunning $29,999 price tag.
A couple of other manufacturers including HiSense have also released RGB Mini LED models similar to Samsung’s Micro RGB, but they differ slightly in that the RGB modules are larger than the ones found on Samsung’s latest TVs.
Which companies will have Micro RGB tech at CES 2026?
Samsung
Luckily, the number of Micro RGB TVs is about to dramatically increase. Earlier this month, Samsung announced a full lineup using the technology with 55-, 65-, 75-, 85-, 100- and 115-inch screen sizes, saying they’d set “a new standard for premium home viewing.” Those sets will also offer 100 percent BT.2020 HDR coverage under a new certification standard called Micro RGB Precision Color 100. While certainly likely to carry more reasonable prices than the first model, they’ll probably still be Samsung’s most expensive TVs when released later this year.
And on Sunday, Samsung also revealed a 130-inch Micro RGB prototype meant to showcase the technology. Once again, it blew us away partially just because of the huge size, but also due to the incredible "color accuracy and richness," as Engadget editor Devindra Hardawar put it. "I couldn’t help but notice how everyone just looked a bit stunned, like the monkeys from 2001 seeing the monolith for the first time," he added.
At the same time, LG announced its first Micro RGB “evo” TV lineup in 75-, 86- and 100-inch models. The company is also promising 100 percent BT.2020 color gamut coverage and said the sets will have over a thousand local dimming zones for color control. Not only that, it said that its new TVs will deliver 100 percent coverage in SDR modes as well, both for Adobe RGB and the challenge P3 standard.
It was interesting to compare LG's Wallpaper and other OLED sets with the new Micro RGB tech, with our editor Devindra again being amazed. "LG already announced its Micro RGB set a few weeks ago, but that didn't prepare me for standing in front of the 100-inch demo TV it brought to CES," he said. "Throughout a variety of clips, colors looked wonderfully rich, and the overall texture of the images looked surprisingly life-like."
For its part, Hisense also unveiled a lineup of "evo" TVs that it calls RGB Mini-LED instead of Micro RGB. It's offering them at two price points, called the UR9 and UR8, with sizes ranging from 55 up to 100 inches. The company is promising an even wider color gamut than Samsung and LG with up to 110 percent BT.2020 coverage and "color control achieving 134 bits," the company said.
On top of that, HiSense had a surprise up its sleeve with the launch of an enormous 163-inch Micro LED TV to compete with Samsung's The Wall. The company actually calls it RGBY Micro LED, because it introduces a fourth yellow color into the RGB mix. The reason, according to the company, is that yellow expands the color spectrum "where human vision perceives the most nuance."
Update January 5, 2026 at 5:18 PM: The article now includes information about HiSense's latest RGB Mini LED and Micro LED TVs.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/what-are-micro-rgb-tvs-and-why-are-they-everywhere-at-ces-2026-182441543.html?src=rss
One trend emerging from CES 2026 is wearable microphones you can use to dictate your thoughts. Vocci is one such gadget, a titanium ring with a single button capable of recording audio for up to eight hours on a charge. Unlike someof itscompetitors, Vocci isn’t just for catching your own thoughts as they spring forth from your scalp. Instead, you’ll be able to record whole conversations and meetings from the comfort of your proximal phalanx.
Users can start and end recordings by double clicking the ring’s single button, while single clicks are used to mark important moments within the recording. Tagged moments will instruct the AI app to add more context, highlights or reminders, where appropriate. Once the file has been processed, you’ll receive a transcript, complete with a summary and commentary.
I’m told the ring has a range of five meters, but I was unable to hear an example recording or see a working demo of the technology. I did ask why a ring would be more effective at capturing a room’s worth of chat over, say, using a recording app on one’s phone laid on a table. But the response was to point out a user may forget to start the recording, and you can’t disagree with that.
Vocci will ship with a charging case, and will be able to recharge to full in half an hour, but it’s not clear yet how much (if at all) power will be stored in the case’s batteries. We also don’t know how much the ring will cost, but it’s likely to be available for pre-order at some point in February. As for the ring’s pedigree, it comes from Gyges Labs, the company which leant its name, manufacturing and engineering expertise to last year’s Halliday Smart Glasses.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/voccis-ai-note-taking-ring-aims-to-do-much-more-170536442.html?src=rss
Audeze has unveiled the second generation of its Maxwell gaming headset at CES 2026. The Maxwell 2 is a comprehensive refresh aimed at competitive players and anyone seeking more immersive audio when gaming on PC or consoles. The original Maxwell headset was our pick for best premium gaming headset in 2025.
The headline upgrade is Audeze’s patent-pending SLAM technology, which the brand claims improves spatial cues while delivering “punchier” bass. Maxwell 2 pairs that with 90mm planar magnetic drivers, which offer a wide frequency range of 10Hz to 50kHz. Audeze says the result is clearer detail for every in-game sound from subtle directional footsteps in competitive FPS games to bass-heavy moments like big explosions with near-zero distortion.
An upgraded suspension strap with ventilation holes aims to ensure comfort during longer sessions and a new earpad design gives your ears more space. A new magnetic attachment system should make earpads easier to swap.
The Maxwell 2 headset includes an AI noise-canceling mic setup with AI-assisted noise removal on a removable hypercardioid boom mic. The headset can connect with a wireless USB-C dongle as well as Bluetooth 5.3. Battery life is rated at over 80 hours of wireless playback and the headset supports USB-C fast charging.
Pricing is set at $329 for the PlayStation version and $349 for the Xbox model (which supports Dolby Atmos on compatible devices). Both versions also support Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch and they’re available now.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/audeze-has-unveiled-the-maxwell-2-gaming-headset-at-ces-2026-170056068.html?src=rss
