Category: Tech

Looking for a great new mid-range gaming PC? Best Buy has the one for you with the MSI Codex Z2 enjoying a huge $300 price cut.

A fully autonomous passenger aircraft emerges from the back of the Land Aircraft Carrier, an ambitious new vehicle from Chinese manufacturer Xpeng.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a great option for anyone working on the move. It’s currently on sale with a huge discount at Lenovo.

Automotive heads up displays (HUDs) have been around as far back as 1988, and while they’ve gotten brighter and more colorful over the years, even today’s most sophisticated implementations still feel a bit primitive. But after seeing what Hyundai Mobis (which makes auto parts for Hyundai, Kia and Genesis) is calling the world’s first full-windshield holographic display at CES 2025, it felt like I was looking at a major evolution in-car infotainment.

Unlike traditional reflective HUDs, Hyundai Mobis’ holographic windshield display (HWD) consists of two main components: a projector (or in this case multiple projectors) hidden beneath the dash and a special optical film with a carefully tuned wavelength sensitivity embedded inside the windshield itself. This combination allows the HWD to pump out brighter and more colorful images with much shallower viewing angles. Unless you’re sitting in the right spot, you may not even see the HUD at all.

Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

On the Hyundai Mobis Kia EV9 demo vehicle, the HWD isn’t limited to just a small corner at the bottom of the windshield. Instead, it’s split up into three different zones that span the entire width of the car: two for the driver and one dedicated to the passenger. For the driver, the HWD can display basic stuff like the car’s speed, directions and more. But where things get interesting is when it shows holographic 3D maps that can adjust in real-time based on your position, adding an entirely new dimension to help you reach your destination.

For passengers, their dedicated section of the HWD can be used independently for checking vehicle information or simply watching a video or playing games. Critically, because of the limited viewing angles of Hyundai Mobis’ tech, the driver can’t see the passenger’s side of the HWD, so there’s no distraction risk. The whole system is rather impressive, because so much of the tech is hidden beneath the dashboard. The only evidence that this HWD is different from more traditional implementations is that if you look really closely at the windshield when it’s off, you can see a faint outline where the optical film is sandwiched between the glass.

After checking out Hyundai Mobis’ demo, I also got a chance to talk to one of the engineers behind the HWD, Dr. Minho Shin, who added additional context and insight about the tech. Through a translator, Dr. Shin told me that the company envisions its HWD as a way to augment the main display found in most modern cars, which will most likely serve as the main control center for manipulating what you see on the windshield. And for passengers, it’s possible they will be able to control what they see on their side of the HWD simply by casting content from their phones. Furthermore, the placement and size of the holographic display makes it easier for the driver to see and interact with helpful tools like real-time 3D maps compared to current tech. Dr. Shin even said that it’s possible to create a version of the HWD that would cover both the entire width and vertical height of the windshield, which seems like something straight out of every sci-fi or cyberpunk movie ever made. However, due to laws in many countries, that kind of functionality isn’t widely permitted.

Photo by Sam Rutherford

Now it must be mentioned that at CES 2025, BMW demoed similar technology with its Panoramic iDrive system. The Bavarian automaker’s approach is arguably a bit further along, at least when it comes to being integrated into its existing infotainment system and its availability, which is slated to arrive on all new models by the end of 2025. However, when you look closer, it almost seems like BMW is cheating a bit by using a black film that goes along the bottom of the windshield instead of being completely transparent like with the HWD, which may give Hyundai Mobi’s tech significantly improved driver visibility and awareness.

While BMW’s panoramic HUD is slated to arrive first, Hyundai Mobis won’t be far behind as the company hopes to put its HWD into production by the end of 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/a-holographic-windshield-from-hyundai-mobis-is-a-big-upgrade-for-in-car-huds-at-ces-2025-230050196.html?src=rss

Companies have been smashing together multiple gadgets into one product for a long time, and there are plenty of examples at CES 2025. However, LG’s latest projector, the PF600U, which is a mash up of a projector, a lamp and a Bluetooth speaker may be one of the few compelling examples of the genre. If nothing else, the device could allow you to hide your A/V gear in plain sight within a floor lamp when you’re not using it. LG intends for it to be tucked away in a living space, at the end of couch or behind an end table for example.

The PF600U isn’t a great name, so I hope LG comes up with something better before this thing goes on sale. As a projector, the PF600U offers an LED FHD (1,920 x 1,080) image and 300 ANSI lumens of brightness. It doesn’t produce the crispest views, but you can beam a picture up to 120 inches with it. I thought the results in LG’s booth were perfectly useable for casual TV and movie watching, especially in a small apartment where space is at a premium. 

I didn’t get a chance to hear the PF600U’s sound quality, but LG says the device has passive radiator speakers embedded inside. Like the picture quality, it’s probably enough for low-key TV and music audio, but purists will certainly want something more robust. Again, it seems like the idea is saving space over producing pristine sound quality, so this was never for them anyway.

When it comes to the lamp features, there are nine dimmable color LEDs to set the mood. The top, where all of the tech resides, tilts so the ring or lights on the bottom can be projected on a wall or other surface. And as you might expect, the whole thing is controlled by webOS. Plus, there are buttons for positioning, changing modes, power and more on the top panel, encircled by the speaker’s grille. 

LG hasn’t announced pricing or availability for the PF600U yet. Those details will likely come closer to launch day. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/ces-2025-lgs-swiss-army-knife-projector-hides-in-plain-sight-225224199.html?src=rss

PUBG: Battlegrounds will add non-player characters powered by NVIDIA ACE generative AI. These PUBG Allies are being dubbed Co-Playable Characters, and they can have real-time conversations with a player about what’s happening in a match. They can also adapt their strategies and gameplay to work with the player’s style. Krafton, the battle royale’s publisher, demoed this technology at CES 2025.

“We will continue to innovate user experiences by integrating CPC into our games and aim to establish it as a benchmark for the gaming industry,” said Kangwook Lee, head of Krafton’s deep learning division. Krafton will also publish upcoming life simulator inZOI, and had a CES demo of a CPC in that game as well.

NVIDIA introduced its generative AI tech, the Avatar Cloud Engine, during a keynote at Computex 2023. The ACE generative AI is also present in the multiplayer title Mecha BREAK, which appeared at Gamescom last year. The Krafton games are using on-device small language models built with NVIDIA ACE. The publisher did not specify in its press release when it will start rolling out CPCs.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pubg-will-get-ai-powered-npcs-220218057.html?src=rss

AMD’s Ryzen AI Max chips came as a huge surprise at CES 2025. They’re basically super-powered versions of the company’s Ryzen AI hardware with up to 16 CPU cores and 50 RDNA 3.5 graphics cores, alongside a pool of as much as 128GB integrated RAM. AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max chips will deliver up to 2.6 times faster 3D rendering than Intel’s Core Ultra 9 288V, as well as 1.4 times better graphics performance.

Squint a bit, and you might think AMD was taking a bit of inspiration from Apple Silicon, with its powerful CPU cores, graphics and unified memory. But according to VP Joe Macri, AMD was building towards this long before Apple. “We were building APUs [chips combining CPUs and Radeon graphics] while Apple was using discrete GPUs. They were using our discrete GPUs. So I don’t credit Apple with coming up with the idea.” AMD also had experience stuffing gobs of memory into its Instinct data center GPUs.

Still, Macri gives Apple credit for proving that you don’t need discrete graphics to sell people on powerful computers. “Many people in the PC industry said, well, if you want graphics, it’s gotta be discrete graphics because otherwise people will think it’s bad graphics,” he said. “What Apple showed was consumers don’t care what’s inside the box. They actually care what the what the box looks like. They care about the screen, the keyboard, the mouse. They care about what it does.”

With the success of Apple Silicon, Macri was finally able to get approval to spend a “mind boggling” amount of money developing the Ryzen AI Max. “I always knew, because we were building APUs, and I’d been pushing for this big APU forever, that I could build, a system that was smaller, faster, and I could give much higher performance at the same power,” he said.

I briefly saw the Ryzen AI Max in action while testing the latest ASUS ROG Flow Z13 at AMD’s CES booth. I was able to play Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart in 1080p at well above 60fps, with tons of graphical flourishes. It was tough to tell on such a small tablet screen, but the overall performance looked on par with a base PlayStation 5 (albeit at a slightly lower resolution). AMD claims the Ryzen AI Max is also comparable to Apple’s 14-core M4 Pro chip (which it also beats out in the Vray benchmark).

Ryzen AI Max systems will roll out in the first and second quarter of the year, including the aforementioned ROG Flow Z13 as well as HP’s ZBook Ultra G1a.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/amd-vp-explains-why-the-ryzen-ai-max-likely-wouldnt-exist-without-apple-220034111.html?src=rss

The Detroit-based company Astrohaus has been making its “distraction-free writing tools” under the Freewrite name for about a decade. So far, those have all been standalone, single-purpose devices meant simply for drafting text, but Astrohaus is branching out at CES 2025. The company just announced a mechanical keyboard called the Freewrite Wordrunner, a device designed specifically with writers in mind.

This comes more than three years after Astrohaus quietly revealed intentions to build a keyboard, originally known as the Maestro. But the company eventually pulled the plug on its planned 2022 launch, and I hadn’t heard anything about it since then — it seems that they’ve just been working away at it this whole time. CEO Adam Leeb said in a press release that the company had been iterating and developing it for almost four years.

Freewrite

Mechanical keyboards have largely become the domain of gamers; the company wanted to build a device for people who make their living writing instead. Without spending some quality time with it, I can’t say if they’ve hit that mark yet, but there are some fun ideas on display here.

The Wordrunner has a tenkeyless design that looks familiar at first glance, but you’ll quickly notice that the function row has been replaced by a custom set of keys that’ll make zipping around text documents faster. That includes find and replace, undo and redo, paragraph up and down as well as back, forward and reload keys. I’d be upset about losing media controls from the function row, but the Wordrunner has it covered with the bright red joystick / button. It moves in all four cardinal directions and can also be pressed in vertically to skip tracks, play media or adjust volume.

Freewrite

On the other side, you’ll find three customizable macro keys with the cutesy names “zap,” “pow” and “bam.” They’re programmable for anything you might want, but Astrohaus suggested using them to launch specific writing apps, converting text to title case or inserting the date. I don’t yet know what I’d use them for, but having customizable keys is a table-stakes feature for most enthusiast keyboards so I’m glad to see them here.

Probably the most visually striking thing about the Wordrunner are the two mechanical counters you’ll see up top. One is a timer you can use for writing sprints or just staying focused for a bit. More intriguing is the Wordometer dead-center at the top of the keyboard. It’ll track your words with its whopping eight-digit mechanical counter, and since it saves your word count as long as you want, you could try and max it out someday. Of course, you can also reset it at any time or pause it if you don’t want it to advance while you’re chatting with friends or sending emails.

Freewrite

Beyond that, the Wordrunner features an aluminum body that I’m looking forward to seeing in person — I love the aluminum shell of the Freewrite Smart Typewriter and I’m hoping that the keyboard feels similar.

The mechanical keys are backlit, but Astrohaus isn’t saying who is making them yet. But it also has some sound dampening built in so you can use it without subjecting everyone around to you overly loud key clacks (this may be a plus or minus depending on how you like your keyboards). As for connectivity, the Wordrunner uses Bluetooth or USB-C, and you can pair the keyboard with three different devices and quickly switch between them with dedicated hotkeys.

Finally, there’s the ever-present question of availability. Astrohaus is launching the Wordrunner on Kickstarter, as it has done with most of its other hardware over the last 10 years. The campaign should start in February with early bird pricing, but we don’t know what that price will be yet. Fortunately, there’s a pretty low-commitment way to get the best price if you’re curious. Astrohaus says you can place a $1 reservation for priority access and the best possible pricing, with plans to deliver the first batch of keyboards before the end of the year. That’s a long ways out, but a buck isn’t a bad investment if you’re interested.

Astrohaus is showing off a protoype of the Wordrunner at CES, and I’ll be updating this post after I get my hands on it and see how it feels at this stage of development.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/the-latest-freewrite-device-is-a-fancy-mechanical-keyboard-built-with-writers-in-mind-220005961.html?src=rss

I have to admit — I used to be very skeptical of LED devices that purport to be good for your skin. When they first started being sold for home use, I felt like they were mostly expensive, ineffective appliances that were obvious cash grabs. Nowadays, though, as is usually the case with any burgeoning category of products, the technology has improved. We’re seeing more sophisticated offerings that not only use better components, but are more comfortable to wear. Full face masks from the likes of Therabody, Dr. Dennis Gross and Omnilux have exploded in popularity, taking over social media and constantly selling out. After hearing rave reviews from friends and family, and undergoing more light treatments in salons myself, I have grown more convinced there’s room for devices like these. 

Shark, the maker of vacuum cleaners, air fryers and assorted kitchen gear, has unveiled its take on the LED face mask device here at CES 2025. Launched under its three-year-old Shark Beauty arm, the new “CryoGlow under-eye cooling + LED anti-aging and skin clearing face mask” has quite a long name. I’m just going to refer to it as the CryoGlow mask from here on. At a meeting here in Las Vegas, Shark’s senior vice president of global product development Danielle Lessing described a number of ways the CryoGlow is different from what’s currently out there.

First of all, as its name implies, there is a cooling component to this device. In addition to the 160 “interlocking tri-wick LEDs” on the mask, there are two metallic plates on the cheeks that are shaped like eye masks. This is the conduit for what Shark is calling its “InstaChill” technology and basically are a pair of cold plates that, in my brief time with the CryoGlow, felt satisfyingly soothing. In fact, that might be my favorite part of the device (and frankly its differentiating trait). 

After putting on the CryoGlow for maybe about a minute, and after I took several hilarious pictures and selfies with it, I really appreciated how cold it felt in my under-eye area. To be clear, the plates felt chilly immediately after I wore the mask, but it was the prolonged coolness that I enjoyed. And after removing the device, I still relished the sensation that remained, even after a few minutes. I don’t feel like I had the mask on for long enough to know if it’d start to feel clunky after prolonged wear, but at least during my demo, I didn’t feel strained, nor did the wired remote control get in my way.

I also want to note that, unlike the Therabody option, Shark’s CryoGlow does not vibrate. Lessing said “This is a skincare system and vibrating doesn’t affect the skin.”

Lessing stressed to me the importance of the tri-wick LED bulbs each being able to produce red, blue and deep infrared light, as they differ from some other products on the market that might only use single or dual-wick bulbs instead. In those cases, manufacturers may choose to lay red-only bulbs or blue-only bulbs in alternating layouts or various arrangements that allow them to claim to provide both types of light, while effectively covering less area per bulb.

Cherlynn Low for Engadget

It’s this sort of math that Lessing enthusiastically highlighted in our quick meeting, as she told me that the company worked hard to calculate the ideal combination of factors like distance of the bulbs from the wearer’s face and apart from each other. To that end, the CryoGlow will sit in a way that the LEDs are about 15mm from your skin — a good balance between effectiveness and coverage. The bulbs themselves are spaced 10mm apart, and the four programs that Shark offers also consider the duration of the lights on your face. 

Lessing said the company wanted to make something that was more inclusive, not just of different head sizes and types, but also of skin concerns. Most of the products that are currently available tend to target signs of aging on women, she said. Shark wants to buck that trend, and part of that effort involves making a mask that should fit people of all types — from women with smaller faces to men with larger heads. 

When I first laid eyes on the CryoGlow in person, I couldn’t help but smile. Unlike the Theraface or Dr. Dennis Gross masks, which look a little robotic or cyborg-like, the Shark device is, strangely enough, cute? The shape of its mouth cutout is slightly upturned and the whole thing just looks like it’s smiling at you. I also instinctively reached out to stroke the textured sides of the mask, which look like lines raked in sand. I could see making this my pet. 

Cherlynn Low for Engadget

The CryoGlow not only looks adorable, but also felt comfortable to wear. It was big enough for my larger-than-average head, but didn’t feel too heavy. That might be thanks to the adjustable T-shaped head strap that reminds me of the Apple Vision Pro. Lessing said the team also drew inspiration from ski goggles for the design, especially for the protective guards around the eye cutouts. 

There’s also the fact that the CryoGlow is fairly lightweight, likely due to the fact that it’s powered by a battery in the attached remote control. This handheld controller is connected via a cord, which is a slightly less elegant approach than competing products that have on-mask buttons. But I do appreciate that it looks and feels like a Nokia 3310 with a much nicer screen and a dial plus two buttons below it. 

You can rotate the wheel to scroll through the menu, and I liked the aesthetic Shark used for the interface, too. The system offers four treatment modes: an under-eye “revive” that delivers “cryo-inspired tightening and soothing,” a 6-minute “Better aging” option, an 8-minute “Skin Clearing Treatment” that targets acne and a 4-minute “Skin Sustain” maintenance mode that’s meant for daily use. There are also three chill levels available, which you can control with this system. Shark says its tests indicated clearer skin can be observed in four weeks of use, while two months of consistent application might result in firmer skin.

Shark

Shark says its programs are all backed by clinical testing, and most intriguingly, it actually put its CryoGlow device to the test against competitors. According to Shark, this image “captures a demonstration conducted featuring light absorbing, photochromic paint to show the even coverage of CryoGlow’s iQLED technology vs. a competitor’s uneven coverage.” I will point out that while it does seem like Shark’s device had a more even and generally larger spread, it does leave the two patches below the eye bare.

It’s unclear what this competing device is or how much it might cost, but considering the CryoGlow is priced at $349 while the Theraface Mask and the Dr. Dennis Gross SpectraLite FaceWare Pro start at $599 and $455 respectively, I’m already intrigued. This feels like a sophisticated device that’s at least within the range I might be able to afford. And I loved my brief experience with it, too. I will likely have to test other competing products before I can definitively evaluate how well the CryoGlow fares against what’s out there, but for now, and for the price, I’m very impressed by Shark’s LED mask debut. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/shark-joins-the-high-tech-skincare-mask-war-with-an-impressive-ces-2025-opening-shot-214804543.html?src=rss

There’s no denying the staying power of Samsung’s The Frame. The company struck gold in 2017 when it debuted the TV that blends in with your home decor and shows art pieces when not in use. As popular as the model has become, it wasn’t great for all of the other things you need a TV for — like watching shows and movies or gaming. Of course, there have been various imitators over the last five years too, including some of the competition here at CES 2025. 

Samsung is hoping to win over even more customers with its newly announced The Frame Pro. This new model has two significant upgrades that should make it a much better TV and not just an alternative to the black rectangle that takes up space when you aren’t using it. First, and perhaps most importantly, The Frame Pro now has a Neo QLED display — the same Mini LED tech that powers the company’s high-end QN900 series TVs.

The Verge reports that Samsung’s use of Mini LEDs on The Frame Pro doesn’t work like it does on most TVs. Typically, there are dimming zones behind the display for precise control over which sections should be illuminated and which should be darker or black. Samsung didn’t do that on this model, relying instead on a row of Mini LEDs along the bottom of The Frame Pro and promising a degree of local dimming. 

Billy Steele for Engadget

At CES, Samsung’s demos were focused on showing off art on The Frame Pro more than any content that would’ve confirmed if the approach to Mini LEDs hampered performance. But, in a side-by-side with a still image from a movie, The Frame Pro was brighter, with more detail and deeper blacks that the existing Frame. You can also tell a difference looking at the same art on the two TVs beside each other. Details like texture and strokes pop off the matte screen more on The Frame Pro, making the art TV even better at its primary function. Plus, Samsung says its boosted the refresh rate to 144Hz to improve the gaming experience, and the 2024 Frame also supports variable refresh rates for smoother gameplay. So, it stands to reason The Frame Pro would as well.

The second big upgrade on The Frame Pro is a new Wireless One Connect Box that’s similar to what LG has been hyping for its M-series TVs for years now. Samsung’s version is much smaller, looking more like a game console than a cube, and it relies on Wi-Fi (up to Wi-Fi 7) to wirelessly transmit content and audio from connected streaming gear and game consoles. The company says you can place it in a cabinet without interference and at distances up to 10 meters away. 

The Wireless One Connect Box will replace the larger One Connect Box that still required a single cord running to The Frame. This should offer more versatility to where customers place the TV, since it doesn’t have to be physically connected to a box to receive signal from HDMI inputs.

The Frame Pro should be a big upgrade to The Frame given the Neo QLED panel, but we’ll have to wait and see if that holds true in “regular” TV use. And of course, it will be more expensive than the current Frame that starts at $600 for the 32-inch size (final pricing is still TBD).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/home-theater/samsung-the-frame-pro-at-ces-2025-a-big-upgrade-for-the-art-tv-214300273.html?src=rss