CES 2025 is over, with retailers and suppliers questioning whether this years show was worth the investment to attend, several Australians who we spoke to said this was their last show.
“There was not a lot of products that are going to trail blaze new categories” said a Harvey Norman franchisee.
“CES is losing the gloss that bought people in” said another.
Others complained of the show losing it’s retail heritage, with more products on show that retailers would struggle to sell in an Australian store.
I have done 30 CES shows and this year’s show was slow compared to previous years. There was no queues for taxi’s like there use to be and getting into restaurants was a lot easier, but a lot more expensive with a beer and a main course costing A$150.
So what os coming, holograms from Samsung, robots and an abundance of AI products were on show along with electric cars and stands manned by Chinese and Korean Companies looking to flog components to automotive manufacturers.
At this stage it’s abundantly clear that AI whether it be good bad or indifferent is being baked into every product despite the lack of breakout CES CE products, with several attendees including Best Buy executives that AI appears to heading in the same direction as 3D TVs.
A fad then a failure.
Some of the big standouts for retailers were a new range of AI TV’s from Hisense, Samsung and TCL.
In the US Hisense is moving to use Google TV as their operating system while the Australian operation is sticking with their house brand Veda system which will use a variation of Open AI as their generative AI engine. Samsung is going with Microsoft Copilot and their own AI offering while TCL is going with Google’s Gemini.
All these AI suppliers have made significant strides in natural language processing and other AI applications, so it will be interesting what happens in a TV shootout back in Australia when we line up all the key players in the TV market.
At CES 2025 major tech companies including US giants Google and Amazon, as well as South Korea’s Samsung and China’s Hisense and TCL exhibited new AI-powered TVs which they are pitching as the transformative technology which they hope will motivate consumers to upgrade to a new model.
The AI scene was set by Jensen Huang, chief executive of NVidia, the US$3.5tn chipmaker whose stock has risen more than 150 per cent over the past year on the back of huge sales of its market-leading graphics processing units needed to power advanced AI models.
Other companies such as Ray Ban who have struggled to get traction in Australia revealed more niche products, including new models with lightweight glasses with a built-in AI assistant.
Japanese grog Company maker Kirin showed off a flavour-enhancing electronic spoon that sends a small electric current to the tongue to provide the sensation of additional saltines, no pricing or availability was announced but it was being pitched as a wellness product.
Both Samsung and LG had new robots with the best chance of success for retailers is most probably going to be Samsung’s new Ballie which the Company has been talking about since before COVID.
Robots try to steal the limelight, but TVs have always been at the heart of CES. And this year’s show’s most significant TV trend was undoubtedly RGB backlighting tech for LCDs.
Currently, most mini-LED backlights use a grid of blue LEDs, which pass through a colour filter to create the final picture.
Instead, RGB backlights use red, green, and blue backlights, which means the color filtering layer does much less work and allows the brightness to shine through.
Samsung’s ‘RGB Micro LED Backlight’ will likely come in a 4K TV this year, with TCL’s following in 2026. These TVs are tipped to be expensive, but they do deliver a brilliant picture.

TCL Free Built-in Refrigerator
Hisense’s 116-inch TV with its ‘TriChroma RGB Backlight’ will also land later this year in Australia
We reckon it’ll be a toss-up between RGB backlighting and wireless connection boxes for the TV trend of 2025.
What will make to retail stores are new robotic vacuum cleaners from the likes of Ecovacs and Roborock.
The new Roborock Z70, for example, has a mechanical pincer arm that picks up stray socks you’ve inconveniently left in its path and tosses them in a laundry basket.
Ecovacs’ new X8 Pro Omni is the company’s latest robot vacuum and mop, released with an extendable OZMO roller mop instead of rotating mop pads. The mop technology, developed by partner Tineco, ensures the robot always mops your floors with clean water instead of dragging a dirty pad. The mop is continuously scrubbed clean within the robot’s body, which features two clean and dirty water tanks.
Ironically it was two Australian brands Cygnett and Swann who had some of the best offerings for CE retailers in Australia.
Both are Melbourne based Companies, with Cygnett rolling out a neat new $99 adapter that eliminates the need for headphone cables on flights along with new bag tag options and an extended range of backup batteries.
Housed in a neat little travel case the new audio adapter is one of those products that I believe will become a must have especially for those who hate airline headphones, and have chosen to use their own choice of headphone for noise cancelling on flights but don’t want the hassle of having to plug in a cable and hope that it’s long enough to use during the flight.

Cygnett Voyager Wireless Elite Audio Adapter

Cygnett Voyager Wireless Elite Audio Adapter
Home security took several impressive steps forward at CES 2025 with Swann leading the pack with a new home security camera lineup with a range of new products that include the MaxRanger4K Mini, Solar, Pro and Video Doorbell models that operate via a Wi Fi hub.
One of the standout features of the MaxRanger products is it’s ability to record clearly over large distances as we saw at CES with cameras placed up to a kilometre away from the suite at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.
My favourite notebook is the Lenovo Yoga Book 9i which I used every day at CES.
Now Lenovo has a new dual screen offering.
We’re not talking about big-screen laptops – instead, we’re referring to a standard-size notebook that with the press of a button grow some extra screen estate from seemingly nowhere.
I played with the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable and it’s pretty neat as you can extend the screen with the wave of your hand or the press of a button.
Debuted at CES 2025, this ThinkBook is the first of its kind – a notebook with a ‘rollable display’ that you’ll actually be able to buy, but it is going to cost owners close to $6K.
The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus expands to 16.7 Inches and that’s pretty neat.
As for unusual, Chinese startup PETPA unveiled a AI-powered multi-pet feeder designed for pets needing weight management or specialized diets.
The feeder utilizes advanced recognition technology, combining microchip identification and image recognition, to ensure precise portions for each pet and prevent food sharing.
With two storage compartments for different types of pet food, the feeder allows users to customise feeding schedules for individual pets via an app. It features exclusive food bowls for each pet, rotating between bowls as the device identifies which pet is eating.
As for what will make it into retail stores in Australia following the Las Vegas 2025 CES show is anyone’s guess, but what I do know is that retailers can be very fussy over what is ranged and what fails to make with over 70% of what is revealed at CES failing to make it to retailer shelves in Australia.