Hottest Smart Tech Revealed at CES 2026 | San Diego Living

Sponsored by: Techish.com | This year’s Consumer Electronics Show kicked off in Las Vegas this week. CES 2026 showcases innovations, robotics and some of the hottest gadgets and cutting edge technology that will shape our lives for years to come. Tech-Life Expert Jennifer Jolly joins our Laura Cavanaugh with a first look.

This year’s big theme is all about making gadgets more useful to solve common problems.

The LUBA 3 AWD robot lawnmower is the perfect example of a gadget upgrade that makes your life easier. It’s built for real lawns — hills, weird edges, trees, kids’ toys — real life. No perimeter wires, just take it out of the box, map your yard once with your phone, and it uses cameras, sensors, and GPS to know where it is in the world — accurate down to about a centimeter. It detects more than 300 obstacles — it’s super quiet — and you can buy it now.

Health tech is another major headline this year, including Phonak’s new Infinio Ultra Sphere hearing aid. It has a dedicated AI chip that pulls voices out of background noise — in restaurants, airports, classrooms — making conversations clear in busy places. That’s huge, and kind of amazing going “ears-on” in the noise convention center. Connectivity is another really important upgrade here. It can pair with up to eight Bluetooth devices and stay connected to two at once. That means you can watch TV on your tablet and, when your phone rings, the call comes straight through your hearing aids — no reconnecting. This is more important than ever — with recent news that with one in five teens already shows signs of hearing loss, and one in ten kids in America has noise-related hearing damage that can affect learning. This isn’t an ‘older adult’ issue anymore — it’s a family one.

Speaking of kids and families, the new Toniebox 2 raises the bar on another critical need — screen-free fun. It’s a soft, kid-proof speaker that plays stories and songs when you put a Tonie — this little figurine — on top. No screens. No ads. No internet. The big upgrade this year, though, is Tonieplay — interactive audio games, so kids don’t just listen — they make choices and guide the story. For parents, it’s a big, safe win: keeping kids engaged without notifications, scrolling, or bedtime meltdowns. This isn’t anti-tech — it’s kid-first tech.

For years, CES TV news has been: 8K! Curved! Transparent! But the most meaningful upgrade this year? You can open the curtains — and still see the screen. Most TVs look great at night — but get washed out the minute sunlight hits. TCL’s new X11L fixes that. It uses a next-gen SQD- mini-LED backlight to get extremely bright while still keeping deep blacks and the colors exceptionally accurate— so movies, sports, and games look great any time of day. It’s also incredibly thin — about 0.8 inches — roughly the width of a thumb — so it hangs flat like wall art instead of sticking out like a giant black box.

How many times a day do you lose your glasses or your phone and run around looking for them in a panic? OVAL: The AI Home Hub Security is a new kind of smart-home hub that can tell you exactly where you left it. The hub understands context, not just motion. It can tell the difference between kids playing in the yard and someone at the door at midnight — or helps you find your glasses or warns you if you left a burner on, or the garage door open. It basically fixes all the stuff we hate about smart home gadgets today — too many apps, non-stop alerts, and privacy concerns. OVAL runs its AI inside the device — so your video, sound, and activity data stays in your house. And it works with the devices you already own, acting like the brain of the smart home instead of one more gadget to manage. Coming out this spring.

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Hottest Smart Tech Revealed at CES 2026 | San Diego Living

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