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TCL’s new QM6K TV features the company’s Mini LED technology at an aggressive price for a premium entry-level TV. And in a rarity for CES, it’s actually available to preorder.

Some fine-tuning and adjustments turned the TCL S55 TV into a monster home entertainment set – and it has received a huge discount as part of a new sale.

I reviewed Surfshark One Antivirus to find out whether a VPN service can protect your devices against malware.

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