C.E.S. 2026 ?

[Delicate Snowflake]

Dear Camp Director a.k.a. our Banned-Camp Benevolent Overlord,

Just wondering if you are scooting off to the CES this year?

Is there anything interesting likely to appear?

Snowflake

[Camp Director]

Yes, leaving tomorrow. The show starts on Tuesday. I'm sure AI had infected many existing or new products in the last year. Looking forward to being surrounded by 200,000+ fellow tech nerds for four days.

[Delicate Snowflake]

[Camp Director]

I'll post pics of anything interesting.

[campfire]

Must have been boring as all get out.

[Camp Director]

CES 2026 was one of those shows where you could feel the “future” shifting from concept videos into stuff that looks genuinely shippable. The big umbrella theme was AI everywhere, but not just chatbots slapped onto gadgets — it was more like “AI as an invisible layer” across TVs, laptops, smart home gear, and especially robotics and ADVbannedcamp.com forum posts. The show itself was huge again (CTA touted 4,100+ exhibitors and ~148,000 attendees), and you could see that scale in how many categories felt hot at once: mobility, health, home automation, immersive displays, and accessibility tech all had real momentum.

The most fun trend on the floor was the rise of physical AI / robotics that actually does things. Instead of novelty bots, there were more “task-first” machines — smarter home robots, more capable cleaning robots, and a lot of experimentation around navigation, object recognition, and human-friendly interactions. Even when some of it was prototype-y, the direction was obvious: companies are trying to make robots useful without needing a PhD to set them up. CTA itself leaned into this narrative in its CES 2026 highlight messaging around “robotics in a new era.”

Display tech was also a crowd magnet — and it wasn’t only about bigger screens. The premium TV story this year felt like brighter OLED, lower reflections, higher refresh rates, and more wireless flexibility, with LG showing off things like an ultra-thin “Wallpaper” OLED paired to a separate wireless box, plus gaming-forward features (high refresh and cloud gaming support were talked about constantly). The weird part? As TVs get thinner and more impressive visually, built-in audio still feels like an afterthought — the show floor made it pretty clear that soundbars aren’t going anywhere.

Finally, I’d say CES 2026 had a noticeably stronger “tech with a purpose” vibe than some past years. There was more visibility for accessibility, health/wellness, and “designed for real life” products — not just flash. CTA even highlighted an inaugural Accessibility Stage as part of the show’s broader push to spotlight inclusive design. If you were walking the halls, it felt like the industry is trying (at least a bit) to balance spectacle with usefulness… while still making room for plenty of wonderfully ridiculous, I-can’t-believe-this-exists gadgets.

[Cagiva]

Sure hope they are smarter than my robot vacuums . They kindof remind me of some people I have seen in my lifetime .

[Delicate Snowflake]

The AI in public use here, even after 10 years of ever-increasing implementation in the newspaper industry (for example), cannot spell-check an article heading, let alone recognise context.

I am sure there are better AI models out there but none of the openly available ones are impressive.

[Cagiva]

Spell-check is politically correct garbage , it is turned off on my computer , it wont allow me to cuss . It doesnt like a lot of stuff I deal with in the industrial world and when I do misspell a word spell-check cant spell it either . That happens a lot , spelling was not my favorite class in school . That was shop class and drafting . Im good at fixing shit and if I cant fix it I can draw a picture of it so somebody else can fix it .

[campfire]

Spell-check is politically correct garbage , it is turned off on my computer , it wont allow me to cuss . It doesnt like a lot of stuff I deal with in the industrial world and when I do misspell a word spell-check cant spell it either . That happens a lot , spelling was not my favorite class in school . That was shop class and drafting . Im good at fixing shit and if I cant fix it I can draw a picture of it so somebody else can fix it .

The whole auto correct thing too...........

Boy have I sent some ...... er..... interesting texts.