What surprised us the most at CES 2026

But CES always manages to reserve a few surprises, whether with what has been announced, what doesn’t is emerging and trends that no one saw coming. We’ve rounded up the biggest curveballs from CES 2026 so far.

Motorola has really taken over with its flip-style flip phones over the past few years. They fit naturally into the Razr legacy and Moto has done some really fun things with them. Years passed and it seemed like the company was content to focus on flip phones, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. Almost as surprising: the book-shaped fold also bears Razr branding. I guess Motorola is ready to move past the nostalgia factor with its brand and embrace the future. — Allison Johnson

Although Asus, Broadcom, and MediaTek announced Wi-Fi 8 routers and chipsets at CES 2026, the IEEE 802.11 billion successor to Wi-Fi 7 is not fully ratified and won’t be until late 2028. Nonetheless, they plan to start selling hardware built on the draft specification later this year. This will be a truly forward-thinking product, likely requiring a firmware upgrade to comply with the final 2028 standard. Hopefully this won’t be a repeat of the “Draft-N” fiasco suffered from 2007 to 2009, when the draft 802.11 Wi-Fi specification changed significantly over the same two-year period, leaving some devices orphaned. — Thomas Ricker

Robot vacuum cleaners with arms? You don’t even need to remind me that these came out in 2025. It’s now 2026 and we live in a future where robot vacuums have legs. Roborock’s new Saros Rover prototype has swapped out its appendages, trading the ability to pick up socks for some very convincing locomotion. He can climb stairs! This alleviates my biggest worry about releasing my little robot vacuum near my cat hair-covered stairs: that it will fall to its death (which, ironically, I’ll have to clean up with another vacuum). Like my colleague Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, I’m also looking forward to the time when Roborock can put both arms and legs on a robot vacuum cleaner. — Cameron Faulkner

CES is still a showcase for huge TVs, but it’s also a way to see the more reasonable TVs we should expect next year. In 2025, TCL launched the QM6K – the most affordable in the QM line – and teased the QM7K, LG showed off the G5 with all-new OLED panel technology (although we needed Panasonic to confirm what it was), and Samsung and Hisense showed off a range of reasonably sized TVs. There was a lot to look forward to for regular consumers. But this year has been almost exclusively about big, expensive TVs. Sure, Amazon is showing off its affordable Ember Artline, LG has the C6 and G6 on the floor, and a bunch of people will buy the Wallpaper TV. But companies aren’t focusing on sets that people can actually afford. We have no information from Hisense, TCL put the QM8L on the floor with no information, Sony TVs are (as usual) absent from CES, and Samsung focused on larger RGB LED instead of smaller sizes. It’s fun to be ambitious, but it’s also good to know your options for a new, more sensible TV. — John Higgins

I expected this to happen at some point, but not at CES this year. Samsung demonstrated a foldable display without creases, meaning we could get even closer to foldable phones that mainstream consumers will actually buy. Why it matters: Samsung supplies displays for Apple, and Bloomberg reported in November that Apple’s foldable iPhone is expected to launch in the fall. Samsung, which removed the demo from its CES booth, said The edge that the CES display was an R&D concept with no current timeline or commercialization plan. Still, I guess Apple won’t release a foldable phone until the fold is invisible. This was perhaps our first look at this screen. —Todd Haselton

CES was once one of the largest auto shows in the world. But this year, cars have been replaced by AI chatbots and humanoid robots. Hyundai, one of the biggest sellers of electric vehicles, showed off a production version of Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot. BMW announced the integration of Alexa Plus. Mercedes has unveiled its new driver assistance system powered by Nvidia. The only concept car to grace the stage was Sony and Honda’s Afeela SUV – and it came from a company that hasn’t even sold cars yet. CES used to be a showcase for strange mobile machines, but there was a notable absence this year. Blame the EV slump, business anxiety or something else. Hopefully next year we can get back to cars. — Andrew J. Hawkins