What to expect at CES 2018: from energy efficient laptops, high-end TVs, and self-driving car tech to AR/VR gaming, robots, and smart home tech
It's January, which means that Las Vegas, or the bit that pretends not to be Las Vegas for tax reasons, will play host to CES.
Context & Ripple Effects
The CES 2017 preview promised a deluge of wireless audio, VR headsets, drones, TVs, and self-driving cars; a year later, Engadget's 2018 rundown keeps most of those bets and adds energy-efficient laptops and robots to the slate. Read alongside the 2016 edition — virtual reality demos and smart home products — the throughline is that these categories are no longer one-show novelties but fixtures of the Las Vegas calendar.
First-order effects
- Laptop, TV, automotive, AR/VR, robotics, and smart home vendors get the industry's January stage, with each category's exhibitors competing for the show-floor attention that early-year coverage concentrates on.
Second-order effects
- Outlets like Engadget and The Verge are locked into an annual preview arms race — each year's 'what to expect' piece now implicitly benchmarks against the prior year's list, so a category dropping off the slate reads as much as one appearing on it.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, CES functions less as a debut venue than as an annual validation ritual: categories like smart home and VR survive on the list across multiple years regardless of any single product cycle, shaping what buyers and press treat as mainstream.
The trend: Consumer-tech launches are consolidating around CES's January calendar, where recurring category lineups — VR, smart home, self-driving — turn the show into a yearly scorecard rather than a series of one-off reveals.