The weird and wonderful gadgets of CES 2025
10 January 2025, 16:54
The annual technology show has been serving up its usual range of strange and interesting new gadgets.
A solar-powered car, an air purifying cat tower and a phone charger designed to provide a day’s power in two seconds have been among the eye-catching gadgets drawing crowds during the CES tech show in Las Vegas.
The annual event has been running this week, with more than 100,000 attendees from the tech sector on site to examine the thousands of new devices on show.
Those on display have been a mix of close-to-launch and more concept products aiming to roll out in years to come, and covering all aspects of gadget type from smart home accessories to electric vehicles.
Among the more eye-catching new products has been from Aptera Motors, which has come to CES with what it says is a production-ready solar electric vehicle.
The car includes solar panels built into the bonnet and rear of the car, which Aptera says has a range of up to 400 miles from a single charge.
In addition, the firm says drivers can gain up to an extra 40 miles of free driving a day just from the sunlight captured, with the firm estimating that in sunny climates, users could get more than 10,000 miles per year of solar-powered driving – reducing reliance on home or public charging.
But the Aptera is not the only electric vehicle grabbing attention at CES, with electronics giant Sony announcing that its electric car, Afeela 1 – made in partnership with Honda, is now available to order for the first time.
The car, which is expected to start being delivered in 2026, will start at just under 90,000 dollars (£72,000), which includes a three-year subscription to a range of in-car features including semi-autonomous driver assist and an AI-powered personal assistant.
Robotics have traditionally been a key trend at CES, and this year has been no different, with a wide range of robots on display at the show, aimed at supporting humans in a variety of ways.
Two which have caught the eye are both robot vacuum cleaners, but offering contrasting additional features aimed at making them more useful.
The X50 Ultra, from Chinese firm Dreame, includes a set of retractable legs to help the bot “leap” up small stairs or ledges around the home so that it can reach areas not possible for other robotic vacuums.
Just across the aisle in one of the CES convention halls has been fellow robot vacuum manufacturer Roborock, which has brought the Saros Z70 to the show.
What makes Roborock’s device unique is it includes a foldable mechanical arm, which it can use to pick up and move, or tidy away, small obstacles that it encounters while cleaning.
Another type of smart home robot, Samsung’s Ballie, is back at CES this year too.
First showcased at the convention five years ago, Samsung says the device is set to be launched publicly for the first time in 2025.
Ballie is designed to be a smart home companion, but also includes a built-in projector which can be used to show users reminders or other information in response to voice commands, and can also project video onto walls at a user’s request.
Meanwhile, one of the surprise success stories of the tech show has been a phone charging system showcased by start-up Swippitt.
It has created a smartphone charging system which it says can provide a full charge of battery for a phone in two seconds.
It does this through a clever combination of a phone case which houses a battery pack to wireless charge a user’s smartphone, and the Swippitt Hub, a toaster-like device which swaps out the battery pack in the case for a fully-charged one in seconds when the user drops their phone in to it.
The company says the system can double a user’s phone battery in two seconds, and also comes with a number of spare batteries built into the Hub, so multiple users in a family can get powered up for the day.
And at the more unusual end of the announcement scale is a device from tech giant LG which combines an air purifier and a cat stand.
The AeroCatTower has a cat seat on top of the purifier itself, with that basket also being heated to keep felines warm and has a built-in scale so users can track their cat’s sleep time via LG’s ThinQ smart home app.
