This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has officially ended, and with the
HotHardware crew back home, it's time to look back on the trip and highlight some of our favorite, stand-out products. As is usually the case,
CES 2026 was packed with an array of new technologies, from high-powered AI accelerators to low-power laptops, desktops, displays, and everything in between. It’s impossible to cover the entirety of such a large event, between all of the live unveilings, keynotes, and various venues, but we did our best to see all of the hot new and upcoming products our core audience would love. Here’s some of the best-of-show products and devices that we think you’ll enjoy checking out (in no particular order)...
Dell Ultrasharp 52 Thunderbolt 4 Monitor:
The
Dell Ultrasharp 52 is the world's first 52-inch curved 6K monitor, and according to Dell, it's also the first monitor to achieve the highest tier of TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light certification, by emitting up to 60% less blue light compared to the competition, to keep eye fatigue at bay. A 6K resolution works out to a 6144x2560 resolution, and the Ultrasharp 52 also boasts a reasonably fast 120Hz refresh rate, 400 nits brightness, a 4200R curvature, picture-by-picture (PbP) and picture-in-picture (PiP) support, and an auto USB KVM with Ethernet Switch Mode control supporting up to four input sources. Our own in-depth review of the Ultrasharp 52 should be posted soon, so stay tuned.
Dell XPS 14 & XPS 16
After a yearlong hiatus, Dell's XPS is back! Dell announced the return of the iconic brand at CES, the same event where it was officially retired last year in an effort to streamline Dell's product categories. We had a chance to go hands-on with new XPS laptops,
which you can check out here. Dell is using the launch of Intel's Core Ultra Series 3 processors based on Panther Lake as the starting point for the return of its XPS brand in laptop form, with 14-inch and 16-inch models on tap. After experiencing the new XPSes in person, part of what stood is that this isn't just a relaunch of an iconic brand, nor is it simply a hardware refresh, but yet another refinement of Dell's premium laptop line. We can't wait to test them out.
Lego SMART Play System "SMART Brick"
If you've ever played with Legos, you're going to love this one. The
Lego SMART Brick is a 2x4 Lego brick that recognizes nearby Lego SMART Tags and SMART Minifigures. The SMART Brick also has a built-in accelerometer which can detect how it is being moved through the air, and reacts accordingly. The SMART Tags are little tiles tell the SMART Brick what it should become, while SMART Minifigures, when positioned near a SMART Brick, reacts differently to the environment with "unique sounds, moods and reactions", which are all played through the SMART Brick. There were an array of cool Star Wars related demos running on the SMART Brick, which Dave Filoni, Lucasfilm's Chief Creative Officer, actually helps launch on stage at CES 2026.
Lenovo ThinkPad Rollable XD
One of the wildest laptop concepts to debut at CES 2026 comes by way of Lenovo. While it's just a concept at the moment, the
Lenovo ThinkPad Rollable XD already seems fairly refined and it incorporates a number of intriguing design elements that not only give the machine a distinctive look, but also make better use of all the screen real estate available on its rollable display, regardless of what configuration the laptop is in. When rolled up, part of the screen was obscured an unusable on Lenovo's previous-gen rollable laptop. That's not the case with the ThinkPad Rollable XD. In "normal" mode, it looks pretty much like any standard, compact 13.3-inch ThinkPad, perfect for travel and cramped airplane tray tables. However, with a simple swipe gesture, the flexible OLED panel unravels upward, expanding into a 16-inch vertical workspace, thus providing over 50% more screen real estate. When fully extended, the ThinkPad Rollable XD effectively transforms from a portable sub-notebook into a productivity powerhouse or a doom-scroller's dream machine.
MSI GeForce RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z
One of the coolest things we saw in person at CES this year was
MSI's new GeForce RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z. A flagship GPU like the GeForce RTX 5090 is capable of standing on its own for noteworthiness, but what separates this one from the crowd is that it features an integrated 8-inch color LCD panel to display system vitals, artwork, animations, and so forth. That's a first for a graphics card -- but it's not the only first on this beast, though. MSI is also touting what says is the world's first full-copper, full-cover cold plate on a GPU, and even more interesting is the claim that it's the first consumer GPU to reach 1,000W from the factory -- that's a lot off firsts. The card is factory overclocked with a 2,730MHz boost clock in its default 800W OC mode, which is 13.4% higher than NVIDIA's 2,407MHz reference clock. However, there is a 1,000W Extreme mode (accessible via MSI Center) that pushes it further to 2,775MHz for around a 15.3% gain compared to NVIDIA's reference boost clock.
Roborock Saros Rover
At the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show,
Roborock unveiled the Saros Rover, a two-legged robotic vacuum. While other vacuums have attempted to solve the stair-climbing issue, the Rover features a revolutionary "wheel-leg" setup that also cleans as it climbs, something other concepts by Dreame and Eufy can't do. The stork-like leg design means the vacuum can literally stand up and roll over obstacles up to 10 centimeters high. For anyone who has ever had to rescue a confused robot spinning its wheels helplessly on a thick rug or a stray Lego brick—let alone stairs—the sight of a vacuum simply stepping over an obstacle like an Olympic hurdler is nothing short of a suburban miracle.
AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D
AMD unveiled its latest flagship CPU for gaming at CES 2026,
the new Ryzen 7 9850X3D. To put things simply, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D is essentially a Ryzen 7 9800X3D with an extra 400 MHz of boost clock. This will give systems a little extra "oomph" in lightly-threaded games, but the TDP isn't any higher, so multi-core performance won't move much. It's position as the "best" PC gaming CPU was essentially a given, considering the 9850X3D leverages the same architecture as existing parts, but we're not going to complain That 400 MHz clock speed boost will help overall system responsiveness and give lightly threaded games -- which is most of them -- a nice kicker in frame consistency and performance.
NVIDIA G-SYNC Pulsar
One of the biggest consumer announcements out of NVIDIA at CES 2026, was the news that
G-SYNC Pulsar is coming to market. We've been excited about Pulsar since we first heard about it a couple of years ago. If you're not familiar, this technology allows gamers to combine G-SYNC variable refresh rate smoothness with ULMB clear motion. While ASUS (with its ELMB Sync) and other vendors have released displays that can combine VRR and motion clarity strobing, NVIDIA's solution was built from the ground up for this purpose, and promises perfectly clear motion without overdrive foibles, or having to worry about staying in a monitor's "VRR range". NVIDIA's also adding an interesting new feature to G-SYNC Pulsar that wasn't previously disclosed; apparently all G-SYNC Pulsar monitors will include "Ambient Adaptive" technology that will auto-adjust brightness and colors based on your ambient lighting.
Samsung Odyssey 3D 6K Monitor
"3D is dead," say the naysayers, but for die-hards who fell in love with real, stereoscopic 3D, this might have just been the best thing at the show.
Samsung's Odyssey 3D is a 32-inch 6K (6144×3456) IPS LCD with a native 165-Hz refresh rate and dual-mode support for 3K at 330 Hz. That's not the exciting part, though—this display features eye-tracking that enables a true glasses-free 3D effect. Seeing it in person, it works much better than you'd expect, and the 3D mode still works in 3K mode. You might not think much of 3D movies, but stereoscopic 3D games are a whole other experience, and they don't have to be limited to VR. Samsung says that it's working with game publishers to add stereoscopic output to current games, including titles like Stellar Blade, Lies of P, and The First Berserker: Khazan.
Intel Core Ultra 3 Series 12Xe 'Panther Lake'
Intel officially launched its Core Ultra Series 3 processors at CES 2026. These are the long-awaited "Panther Lake" chips, and if Intel's claims hold up under our own testing, they look impressive. Intel made some big promises at the show: 24% improved multi-threaded performance versus its own Arrow Lake processors (despite having fewer P-cores), 50% better power efficiency than AMD's Ryzen AI 300 series, and a whopping 73% better gaming performance against the competition, at least for the models outfitted with the larger 12xe core GPU tile.
Core Ultra Series 3 processors will offer up to 16 CPU cores in a 4+8+4 configuration, support up to 96GB of LPDDR5 or 128GB of DDR5 DIMMs (with LPCAMM support and transfer rates up to 9600 MT/s), next-generation architectures for every single IP block, up to twelve Xe3 cores in the integrated GPU, and so on. We've actually already written at length about Panther Lake's new technologies, so we're not going to rehash everything again here. If you want all of Panther Lake's technical nitty-gritty, hit up our
write-up from Intel's Tech Tour 2025.
HP EliteBoard G1a PC
HP brought all of its latest and greatest designs to CES 2026, including what the company views as a new way forward in the all-in-one PC category,
the HP EliteBoard G1a. The HP EliteBoard G1a AI PC is a compact, small form factor design that packs all its components within the frame of a full-sized keyboard, which is perfect for those who are looking for a clean and minimalist setup. It’s not just a sleek package, though, as it's sporting high-end features fit for business and enterprise users, powered by AMD's latest Ryzen AI 400 series processors. HP will have two flavors of the EliteBoard G1a for buyers to choose from. One has an attached USB4 cable that handles 65W of power delivery, DisplayPort 2.1 and up to 40Gbps of data transfer, while the other has a detachable USB4 cable and a 32Whr replaceable battery. The latter is meant for hybrid workers that split time between working at the office and working from home who need a device that can seamlessly go back and forth and connect to virtually any monitor.
Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus
Qualcomm used CES 2026 to expand its upcoming Snapdragon X2 line-up with a couple of lower core count models,
dubbed the Snapdragon X2 Plus. Qualcomm will be offering two SKUs to get the X2 Plus party started, including the 10-core X2P-64-100 and 6-core X2P-42-100. It's possible that more models will follow, considering four SKUs comprise the previous Snapdragon X Plus lineup, but we'll have to wait and see on that. The 10-core model is made up of 6 Prime cores with a 4.04GHz single-core boost frequency and 4GHz max multi-core clock speed, and 4 Performance cores with a 3.4GHz max multi-core clock. It also wields 34MB of total cache, an Adreno GPU that can crank to 1.7GHz, and a dedicated hexagon NPU delivering up to 80 TOPS of AI muscle. Other features include support for up to 128GB of LPDDR5X memory at 9,523 MT/s on a 128-bit bus for up to 152GB/s of memory bandwidth. The 6-core model consists solely of Prime cores at the same boost and multi-core frequencies (4.04GHz and 4GHz, respectively), while reducing the total cache to 22MB and dialing back the GPU clock speed to 900MHz. Otherwise, it has the same NPU and same memory support.
As we mentioned earlier, it's almost impossible to cover every new release during CES week, but we did our best to cover much of it. We published over 50 CES 2026-released articles over the last couple of weeks. The products, devices, or chips in this post are our picks for the most promising or exciting unveiled during the show.
Did we miss something you're excited about? Let us know in the comments below...
