It’s hard to believe, but Intel’s just-launched Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) laptop graphics may, in fact, be as good as a laptop from as little as two years ago running a discrete RTX 4000-series discrete GPU. That was the challenge that Intel put before reporters at a special benchmarking session of Panther Lake here at CES 2026. We were invited to take a prototype Lenovo laptop with a Core Ultra X9 388H inside of it, configured with twelve integrated Xe3 GPU cores inside of it, which Intel calls the Intel Arc B390. Reporters were invited to test games and only games, but whatever games and at whatever resolutions we’d like. Unfortunately (maybe?), Panther Lake’s performance was so good that I stopped trying to test multiple games, and instead started running the tests to reflect our own benchmarks recorded on gaming notebooks. Is Panther Lake as good as a RTX 4050 creator-class laptop? The short answer? If not, it’s certainly close. Real proof from real tests; Intel’s Panther Lake.Mark Hachman There’s a wrinkle: Intel supports its latest XeSS technology inside the Arc B390, which supports resolution scaling (render in a low resolution, then upscale it) as well as AI-generated frames — specifically, three AI-generated frames for each rendered frame. Some games let you turn this feature on and off, and I wanted to let Panther Lake render each frame, but also see what would happen when the frame generation technologies were turned on. Core Ultra Series 3: early test results Keep in mind that we were given less than 90 minutes for testing, which limited our available runs. We were also prohibited from testing synthesized benchmarks or those which focused on the CPU — those will be restricted to the formal review process, which should begin sometime soon. We weren’t prohibited from unplugging Lenovo’s laptop, but that wasn’t done for want of time, either. Finally, not all runs were performed thrice, which we do to eliminate any one-time glitches. Lenovo’s prototype Panther Lake notebook.Mark Hachman With that said, Panther Lake’s integrated Arc graphics are the real deal. I compared Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chip to the Series 2 chip (Lunar Lake) as well as the Core Ultra Series 1 (Meteor Lake) that Intel has launched over the past few years. I also added Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X1 Elite and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 chip, Note that I’m eager to benchmark the latest Snapdragon X2 Elite as well as the Ryzen AI 400 laptop processor, but neither company has made those chips available to test. In my Lunar Lake review, I tested the chip against a slew of benchmarks, including two games, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk:2077. The former is a few years out of date, but with lots of testing to back it up. I tested Cyberpunk at 1080p resolution on Low settings, but with all rendered frames. Mark Hachman / Foundry Compare the 81 fps from the Panther Lake notebook versus the 37 fps from a couple of years ago. That’s incredibly impressive! I then turned to the older Shadow game, where the Core Ultra Series chip shone again when run at 1080p in Low settings. A 112 fps frame rate is more than playable. To my knowledge, these were all rendered frames as well, as the games was released long before XeSS shipped. Mark Hachman / Foundry Those framerates push into gaming laptop territory. So why not use the settings that we use for our gaming laptop tests? The difference isn’t that great: 1080p settings at the Highest setting for Shadow generated a frame rate of about 75 fps, which puts it a bit below the other laptops I quickly assembled, but it still incredibly great for integrated graphics — on par with the RTX 3060 from just a few years ago. Mark Hachman / Foundry Ditto for Cyberpunk, whose Panther Lake scores are just below the others — all of which pack discrete GPUs rather than integrated on-CPU graphics. Basically, these two charts show that Intel still has a little work to do when purely rendered frames are considered, as least compared to laptops with standalone graphics cards. Intel believes (and why wouldn’t they?) that you’ll turn on frame generation when you can, however, simply to smooth out the gameplay. And when you do that, things change dramatically. When image upscaling and frame generation were turned on in Cyberpunk (1080p, Low), the frame rate jumped from 81 fps to a whopping 169 frames per second. Again, that was evidence that I was wasting my time comparing Panther Lake to other integrated graphics; those scores are something that a dedicated gaming laptop will deliver. My tests showed, however, that you can’t get too crazy — not quite yet, anyway. At 1080p Ultra settings, the Lenovo laptop with the Core Ultra Series 3 chip inside produced 47 frames per second in Cyberpunk with frame generation and upscaling turned off. Though, to be fair, that remains incredibly impressive for integrated graphics, and is more than playable for people unfamiliar with hulking gaming machines. Mark Hachman / Foundry With XeSS turned on, the benchmark score leaped to 111 fps — again, fantastic for integrated graphics! But set to the maximum Ray Tracing Overdrive setting, the laptop produced scores of 8 fps with frame-gen off, and 34 fps with it on — barely, barely playable. On-chip graphics aren’t quite ready to challenge discrete GPUs (Nvidia ones specifically) when you’ve got all the bleeding-edge visual bells and whistles turned on. Still, if you’ve wondered if you should take Intel’s claims seriously…yes, you probably should. I’m eager to give Panther Lake a more thorough examination soon. Read...

Lenovo’s Yoga Mini i is Lenovo’s answer to one of the hottest categories around: the mini PC. And yes, it’s round, with a light bar that’s as productive as it is fun. Lenovo claims that this devices takes up a liter of volume. It does not, according to a rather indignant product manager that insisted that the total volume might be closer to 0.85 liters instead. In any event, the Yoga Mini i will ship in June for an estimated starting price of $699. Mini PCs have begun to surge in popularity, partly because they can offer a substantial amount of computing horsepower in very little space. They’ve become the territory of ambitious Taiwanese and smaller Chinese vendors, but Lenovo, traditionally at or near the top of the PC vendor list, is determined to make its mark. How? Though a nifty little light bar that runs underneath this mini PC. Naturally, you can configure the color within a Windows application, and you can tell the Mini i to light the bar or flash it in a variety of scenarios: when it detects your presence, when something happens (like an email), or any number of other configurable situations. The Lenovo Yoga Mini i mini PC can be controlled via the Lenovo AI Turbo Engine app.Mark Hachman / Foundry The Lenovo Yoga Mini I uses Wi-Fi sensing, a technology that Intel debuted in the Core Ultra 200, or “Lunar Lake.” Imagine sitting by a still, foggy pond, whose surface begins to ripple and splash as something moves through it. Wi-Fi sensing can’t tell the Mini i who’s there, but it can wake up the device. The mini PC has an integrated fingerprint sensor to identify and authenticate the user. Lenovo’s demo showcase proclaimed its close alliance with Intel, and no wonder: the Mini i includes the core Ultra X7 358H inside of it, one of the “Panther Lake” chip variants due for a more formal unveiling here at CES 2026. This mini PC can be literally held in the hand, but the Lenovo Yoga Mini i really isn’t portable.Mark Hachman / Foundry The Lenovo Yoga Mini i weighs just 1.32 lb, and Lenovo feels that it’s small enough to be moved from room, or even into a backpack. I don’t agree; disconnecting all those cords and cables will be a pain. It’s 5.12 inches in diameter, and just under 2 inches thick. On the outside, there’s a Thunderbolt 4 port, two 10Gbps USB-C ports (one designed to accept power), an HDMI 2.1 interface, and a 5Gbps USB-A port, too. An Ethernet jack accepts up to 2.5Gbps inputs. Ports, ports, ports adorn the Lenovo Yoga Mini i .Mark Hachman / Foundry Lenovo is still saying that the Mini i can include up to 32GB of LPDDR5x memory and up to a 2TB PCIe SSD, apparently banking on what the company says is a stockpile of memory and storage components to help offset sharp price increases. We also don’t know the minimum specification. But $699 is a pretty diminutive price for this mini PC. Read...

If you’ve been waiting — like we have — for truly useful artificial-intelligence applications to land on your laptop, Lenovo has an answer: Qira, a Lenovo-authored AI app that will live on new, select Lenovo PCs and Qira smartphones in the first quarter of 2026. Lenovo describes Qira as an “ambient” intelligence, which might be both good or bad; Windows’ Clippy was famously an assistant which tried to understand what you were doing and offer assistance. Qira sounds like something similar, though with the intent that it “follows” you from Lenovo device to Lenovo device, or on to a Motorola smartphone as well, using a combination of agents and other tasks. Lenovo says that this will be marketed as Lenovo Qira, launching on “select” devices in the first quarter, and as Motorola Qira on smartphones later on. Lenovo says that Qira was designed for privacy, running locally as well as in conjunction with “secure” cloud services. “Every aspect of the Lenovo Qira experience is designed to be secure, ethical, and accountable,” Lenovo says. I didn’t really have a chance to see Qira in action before CES 2026, where Lenovo launched the technology. But the company describes Qira as performing three key functions: presence, actions, and perception. Yes, Lenovo Qira looks a bit like an LLM.Mark Hachman / Foundry Qira can “proactively surface suggestions,” or it can be invoked by saying “Hey, Qira” or by clicking the app’s icon. Lenovo says that you’ll be able to specify documents or “memories” for Qira to access, but that it also “orchestrates actions across apps and devices, coordinates agents, and moves work forward without forcing users to manage every step themselves,” using agents or even offline. The idea is that will develop a “living model of the user’s world,” understanding “context, continuity, and personal patterns over time.” Naturally, a Windows PC like Lenovo’s will already have Microsoft’s Copilot running. It will be interesting to see if the two can interact, or if Lenovo will try to push Copilot to the background instead. That’s a lot of buzzwords that could mean just about anything, depending on the context. Native applications are polarizing enough already: some users like an absolutely “clean” Windows installation, while others appreciate apps like Lenovo’s Vantage software, a centralized command and control center for configuring various aspects of Lenovo laptops, such as function keys or whether a laptop’s charging ports work while the laptop is in a sleep state. Lenovo Qira, presumably transcribing voice input.Mark Hachman / Foundry I personally like Vantage, but there’s a major difference between clicking through a series of actions in a centralized app, and then giving access to personal documents to an unknown AI. I can’t help but suspect that Lenovo will have a kill switch in place for certain customers. What, specifically, can Lenovo’s Qira do? Some of Qira’s abilities sound familiar: “Write for Me,” for example, is something most AI’s can do, penning some text in an appropriate style or voice. Catch Me Up is something apps like Slack offer: the ability to summarize an active chat Here, it “highlights what matters, and helps you re-enter your work.” Similarly, “Pay Attention” provides translations and transcriptions when enabled, as well as AI summaries, similar to Otter.ai or other transcription services. Another use case for Lenovo Qira.Mark Hachman / Foundry Others feel a bit more experimental. A Live Interaction feature “enables real-time, multimodal interaction while you are sharing your screen” — whatever that means. “Next Move” sounds like the weirdest, offering “proactive, contextual suggestions based on what you’re doing in the moment, with continuity across devices evolving over time,” Lenovo said. “It surfaces useful next actions to help you move forward without extra steps.” Qira, naturally, is a big bet for Lenovo. Corporate customers are sure to give Qira a doubtful eye…but many of those same customers are being actively encouraged to use AI to save time and resources. A vocal cadre of consumers actively hate it. We still don’t know which devices Qira will debut on. But as one of the largest PC companies in the world, Lenovo is almost obligated to give AI a try. We’ll have to see if it can pull it off. Read...

Smart appliances that can be controlled with voice commands are nothing new, but IAI Smart is showing a new line of Emerson Smart appliances at CES that respond directly to voice commands. They don’t need a smart speaker in the middle, and they don’t rely on a broadband connection, an app, or anything other infrastructure—everything is processed locally. If you’re leery of the privacy and security vulnerabilities of IoT devices, this could be the answer. Emerson Smart devices—tower fans, space heaters, air fryers, and smart plugs, to start—use IAI Smart’s proprietary SmartVoice technology, which embeds natural-language voice processing directly into the appliance. Each device has an integrated microphone, so you can speak a wake word relevant to the appliance you want to use: “Hey Fan,” “Hey Heater,” or “Hey Air Fryer,” for example. Most also include an onboard speaker to provide audible confirmation of your command without relying on an intermediary device or an internet connection. There’s nothing new about smart plugs, except that this Emerson Smart model can be controlled with voice commands without depending on Wi-Fi.IAI Smart Emerson Smart is not marketing its technology as a replacement for Alexa- or Google-powered smart homes, but SmartVoice’s disconnected nature will be a compelling feature to many. Since all processing occurs on the device itself, recordings of your voice—and your usage data—will never leave your home. And if you have slow or limited broadband service—or an onerous data upload cap—they eliminate the need for persistent connectivity to the internet. The Emerson Smart SmartVoice Air Fryers (one is pictured up top) are the most ambitious products in the new lineup. Available in 5.3-quart ($129.99) and 10-quart ($169.99) sizes, the cookers support more than 1,000 voice commands and have more than 100 cooking presets. Users can issue commands such as “Cook salmon,” “Reheat pizza,” or “Increase temperature,” allowing basic meal prep without ever touching the controls. The company is also showing three SmartVoice tower fans: 29-inch ($89.99), 40-inch $99.99), and 42-inch models ($119.99). The fans have 15-hour sleep timers, wide-angle oscillation, and LED touch controls. The 42-inch model also features an integrated aroma diffuser. SmartVoice Fan-Heaters will be available in two sizes: 25-inch ($129.99) and 32-inch ($169.99). Both provide up to 1,500 watts of heating power, with oscillation options and multiple heat modes. Safety features include tip-over protection and automatic shutoff timers. There will also be Emerson Smart tower fans and fan-powered space heaters with local voice processing.IAI Smart To control lamps or dumb appliances, there will be SmartVoice Electrical Plugs in two configurations: A single-outlet ($24.99) model and a dual-outlet ($29.99) SKU that includes USB charging ports ($34.99). Using the wake phrase “Hey Emerson,” users will be able to issue more than 30 preset voice commands to turn devices on or off, set timers, schedule routines, or group multiple plugs–all without a Wi-Fi connection. Emerson Smart has started with the basics (aside from the air fryer), possibly to find out if there’s a market for its offline approach. If there’s a sizable contingent of buyers who want all the features with none of the connectivity, can refrigerators, washers and dryers be far behind? As novel as these appliances sound, they aren’t the first household products we’ve seen that have local voice-command processing. Simple Human introduced a pricey garbage can that responds to simple voice commands (“open can,” “close can,” “stay open”) way back in 2020. If you’re attending CES in person, Emerson Smart appliances are on display at the Venetian Expo Center, booth #52808. Read...

Love or hate it, upscaling technology like Nvidia’s DLSS have expanded the definition around gaming performance. And while hardware enthusiasts still want to know what to expect for raster performance, free of any software tricks, we’ll have to wait a while longer for a definitive answer. When PCWorld’s own Adam Patrick Murray asked about the RTX 5090 and the future of AI gaming GPUs at a CES 2026 Q&A session for media and analysts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dove briefly into his current view on GPUs, AI, and gaming—one where upcoming video games will house layers and layers of AI: (Transcript lightly edited for clarity.) PCWorld: Adam, with PCWorld, I’d like to talk about gaming for a second— Huang: Yes, it’s awesome. Me too! PCWorld: So Nvidia continues to push DLSS to be better and faster with what’s been introduced— Huang: Pretty amazing, right? Just quickly: Before GeForce brought CUDA to the world, which brought AI to the world, and then after that, we used AI to bring RTX to gamers and DLSS to gamers. And so, you know, without GeForce, there would be no AI today. Without AI, there would be no DLSS today. That’s great. PCWorld: It’s harmonious, yeah. My question, one of my questions, is—is the RTX 5090 the fastest GPU that gamers will ever see in traditional rasterization? And what does an AI gaming GPU look like in the future? Huang: I think that the answer is hard to predict. Maybe another way of saying it is that the future is neural rendering. It is basically DLSS. That’s the way graphics ought to be. And so, I think you’re going to see more and more advances of DLSS. We’re working on things in the lab that are just utterly shocking and incredible. And so I would expect that the ability for us to generate imagery of almost any style from photo realism, extreme photo realism, basically a photograph interacting with you at 500 frames a second, all the way to cartoon shading, if you like. All that entire range is going to be quite sensible to expect. You should also expect that future video games are essentially AI characters within them, and so it’s almost as if every character will have their own AI, and every character will be animated robotically using AI. The realism of these games is going to really, really climb in the next several years, and it’s going to be quite extraordinary, you know. And so I think this is a great time to be in video games, frankly. With the surprise announcement of DLSS 4.5, which will offer RTX gamers further resolution boosts and frame rate bumps, Nvidia does appear to be focused less on where gaming performance improvements come from. Its launch of G-Sync Pulsar display tech (available in select monitors starting this Wednesday, January 7) also reflects this stance, improving motion clarity with a combination of high-end panel specs and clever software control. Read...

A day after AMD announced the Ryzen AI 400 (Gorgon Point) processor for laptops, PCWorld and a handful of other reporters sat down with Rahul Tikoo, senior vice president and general manager of the client business at AMD, to ask about AMD’s client processors: its mobile Ryzen processors, the Ryzen AI Max, desktop processors, and more. Below are excerpts of the interview, edited for space and clarity. Client played a very minimal role in Lisa Su’s keynote last night. What does that mean? Tikoo: It was supposed to be about a 75-minute keynote, and client was about 15 of the 75 minutes, right? So if that gives you a clue, it’s roughly 25% to 30% of the time, and client business is roughly 30% of our revenue right now, right? I mean, so it’s an important part of our revenue profile, and it’s very, very important to us. This is just my characterization, but it appears that the Ryzen AI 400 is a modest upgrade to the Ryzen AI 300, which was a very good chip. How do you see it? I mean Qualcomm, kudos to them for continuing to fight the good fight. But you know, Arm is a big challenge in this marketplace, just because of the application compatibility, I feel really good about our [Gorgon Point] portfolio. Of course, we haven’t had a chance to get our hands on the competitive products yet, but everything that we heard yesterday did not surprise us, because, you know, we have our own market intelligence and what’s happening and what the competitive landscape look like, and so we didn’t see any surprises there. Based on that, what I would say is we have a pretty good head [of steam]. You had a certain number of design wins heading into the Ryzen AI 300, and a number of wins with the Ryzen AI 400. If you can’t give us specifics, which are larger? It’s about the same. What we’re going to see is about between the Ryzen AI 300 and 400 product, and the Ryzen Halo product, we have roughly a little over 250 designs that will be in the market. That’s all three chips. All three chips, yeah, roughly a little over 250 designs, give or take, that will be in the marketplace by the middle of this year, right? Because we just have notebooks that are coming out this month. Desktops will come out in early Q2. [The additional] Strix Halo is also coming out this month. Pro is March. So let’s just call it, the first three-to-four months of the year are going to be busy for us launching the portfolio. You mentioned the AI 400 desktop. It’s going to be a socketed AM5 part? Yeah. It’s a socketed AM5 part. I think the interesting thing about the desktop Gorgon part is that it’s going to be the first Copilot+ part, so the first part with a 60 TOPS NPU. We’ve been working with Microsoft and our partners on optimizing for desktop, because you can imagine desktop has a different set of challenges, right? I think we have a lot of opportunity in that space, and we weren’t there two years ago. We weren’t playing as heavily. We didn’t have enough of a portfolio last year, we had a really reasonable portfolio. This year, we’re going to have even better portfolio. What we’re seeing is a lot of interest in mobile on desktop, even small desktops and even in large desktops, they’re actually putting mobile on because the socket infrastructure is cheaper on mobile. Even traditional desktops? Okay, yeah, even traditional desktops, we’re seeing mobile on desktop now. It’s more relevant in the smaller form factors, like, you know, you have the one liter boxes, the eight liter boxes, the small form factor. So that’s where it’s more relevant, right? But we’ve seen all kinds of desktops use mobile parts. There was a time a few years back where mobile shifted into two categories, high performance and thin-and-light, right? And it’s sort of the same inflection that you see in desktops. Let’s talk about what the prices of RAM and storage are doing, and the effects they’ll have. What are your customers telling you about how they’re going to configure their systems? Are they going to continue on pushing upwards to 2TB SSDs or 16GB of RAM? It depends on the market segment. If you think about creators, they want all the capabilities they can get. Let’s talk about a car company. They’re designing a car. They’re running wind tunnel simulations on a car. Are they going to sweat a 20% or 30% increase in price and say, well, you know, my seven-year research on the car is going to have to be slower? No, they’re going to invest. Now, consumers, on the other hand, you and I, you know, when we sit at home and we’re using the laptop for basic internet, web browsing, or email, we’re going to have to make a choice, right? Do we really need the highest end components in the laptop, or not? Now, we do know there’s a floor. A floor has been set where people like 1TB SSDs are the norm. Nobody buys anything smaller, you know? I mean, even phones, nobody tends to buy anything smaller than a certain capacity, right? So, I think consumers will have to make a choice based on that. But I do expect gamers will continue to invest. Creators will continue to invest. There’s a rumor that AMD was going to launch a Ryzen X3DX2, which didn’t materialize. What’s going on there? X3D dual-cache, right? Stay tuned. Stay tuned. I just came back from Intel, where they planned to invest heavily into the handheld space, which you’ve dominated. They claim that you’re selling “ancient silicon.” What’s your strategy going forward in the handheld space? We’re very committed to the handheld [space]. I mean, we created the space, so it’s a space that we’re very committed to. Here’s the beauty, though, of AMD and why we have a much higher chance of success in that space: because of our console business, or how we develop semi-custom silicon for the console business. You can’t just use mobile silicon and put it in the handheld. You can, but the handheld or the consoles, they care about high graphics. They don’t care about as much compute, and they don’t care about the I/O. So, if you’re putting a notebook chip like Panther Lake in there, and you’re not purpose building it, you have all this baggage that Panther Lake is going to carry around their chiplet architecture. You know, the interconnects of the chiplet architecture, the I/O that they have in there. I mean, it’s a Swiss army knife, and it’s good for certain things. We can do that, too. In fact, we do that in the handheld space in some segments. But when you think about the core of the handheld space, they want purpose-designed, purpose-built chips that have great graphics technology, great software like FSR, integration with game developers on Xbox, PlayStation, etc. We can have high battery life, good fidelity of content, high frame rate, and we do that very well. Intel believes their low-power E-cores give them an advantage, as they extend battery life. Does AMD have a response to that? We haven’t seen any issues there. I’ll tell you this, Intel does play games sometimes, and it’s very interesting. We had a customer. They said the same thing. They’re like, hey, I can get more battery life with Lunar Lake against the 300 series. So, we’re like, okay, let’s do a quick experiment. And we did this in the lab. And actually, Qualcomm did a video on this too, because we didn’t want to go out and do a video and everything. Qualcomm did a video on this: Lunar Lake has great battery life when measured with MobileMark with the power connected. As soon as you go in DC Mode, battery life climbs and performance drops. The Core i7 performs like a Core i3. So, the E-cores are very good for efficiency, very bad for performance. We balance the two, and we’re already making those choices for our customers and saying, hey, you don’t have to worry about it. Can you talk about the desktop X3D processor and the direction that it’s going? It’s a very critical part of our portfolio. I mean, the channel market overall. If you look at IDC, the DIY market is about 30, 35 million units. And give or take, we’re close to 60 points of share in that market, right? We’re pretty high. And then as you look at X3D, which is the top of that market, we have over 80 points of share in that market, and it’s driven by the fact that there’s really nothing else that comes even close in terms of performance. And then with the new X3D part that we just announced, the new part to the stack that, with that boost clock you see on it, it now separates us even more, right? We used to be about 20% better now, or 27% better, when you look at average game performance, and so we’re very committed to that space. That customer base is very demanding, as you can imagine, right? And they’re very vocal. Do you have anything to say about AMD’s ability to supply chips to its customers? We’re using the biggest and the best supplier in the world, TSMC. And our Gorgon portfolio is based on four nanometer technology and is a fully ramped, highly yielding, very proven technology. So, we don’t have the same challenges our competition has where they’re bringing up a new technology. We feel very good about it. No challenges. Threadripper, X3D, and the Ryzen AI Max: these are all innovative though niche products. Does AMD remain committed to all three? We are very committed to those spaces. We’re very, very committed to those spaces. How do you see the Ryzen AI Max going forward? First of all, we will continue to invest in that space. That’s an important space for us. Stay tuned. There will be more announcements in that space over the course of this year. Our focus has been in ramping developers and gamers around that product. You know, thin-and-light gaming is a space where that product has done well. Creative users is another space that product has done well, and now AI. Read...

Smart home device manufacturer Aqara is showing its new Smart Lock U400 at CES. It’s among the first devices of its kind to combine Apple Home Key technology with an Ultra-wideband (UWB) radio to deliver hands-free unlocking when an authorized user approaches the door. Provided you’re wearing your Apple Watch or your iPhone is in your pocket, purse, or backpack, you won’t need to touch the deadbolt to unlock it (compatibility with other smart devices is promised down the road). The trick is made possible by an UWB radio inside the lock, along with support for Matter-over-Thread, although it will also require you to have a Thread-enabled Matter controller inside your home. For Apple Home Key users, that means an Apple TV or HomePod. Using its UWB radio, the Aqara U400 measures time-of-flight (the precise time it takes for a radio signal to travel between the lock and your smart device) and angle-of-arrival (the direction of that radio signal) to determine your location with accuracy down to the centimeter. This ensures that the lock will only open when an authorized user is outside the home approaching the door and not simply walking past it or while they’re inside the house. Family members who don’t use Apple Wallet can unlock the Smart Lock U400 with Aqara’s app for iOS or Android, with a PIN code, fingerprint, or physical key.Aqara Aqara says this approach offers better security since UWB technology is more resistant to relay attacks than Bluetooth-only proximity systems. A built-in gyroscope enables automatic locking once the door is closed, helping prevent homeowners from accidentally leaving their door unlocked. Power comes from a 7.3V rechargeable lithium-ion battery rated for up to six months of use per charge under typical conditions. If the battery runs out, the lock can be temporarily powered via USB-C from a phone or power bank for emergency unlocking. If you’re not an Apple user, Aqara says it will add support for devices that use Samsung Wallet later in the first quarter of 2026. The Aqara Smart Lock U400 also supports tap-to-unlock via Near-field Communication (NFC, via a smartphone or an Aqara key card), as well as with the lock’s fingerprint scanner; personal codes entered on its PIN pad (including one-time and scheduled access); mobile apps; voice control through Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, Siri; or a conventional mechanical key. The Aqara Smart Lock U400 It uses a standard 60/70mm deadbolt and supports door thicknesses from 35mm to 55mm, making it compatible with most U.S. residential doors. The exterior keypad panel carries an IP65 rating for dust and water resistance, meaning that the lock is dustproof and can withstand being sprayed with water jets (short of a pressure washer). The Aqara Smart Lock U400 is available now for $269.99 at Amazon or Aqara’s e-commerce site in silver or black (satin nickel and “shadow” black finishes are also promised). This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart locks. Read...

Better known for its smart TVs than its smart home products, TCL has nonetheless impressed us with its highly affordable smart locks. At CES today, the company announced an upgraded version of its TCL D2 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock and the entirely new TCL D2L Fingerprint Lever Lock. Both locks feature Matter-over-Thread support and ANSI/BHMA Grade 3 certification (those are the upgrades to the D2 Pro). TCL D2 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock TCL When we reviewed the first-generation TCL D2 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock in September 2025, we praised its ease of installation and the speed with which it unlocked upon recognition of enrolled palms. TCL says this second-generation model is even faster, thanks to local AI learning that also improves the palm vein scanner’s accuracy. Meanwhile, the new lock’s support for Matter-over-Thread should both increase its smart home ecosystem support and increase its battery life compared to the Wi-Fi radio in the original model. On that note, TCL says the D2 Pro will operate for up to 8 months on a single charge. TCL didn’t publish ANSI or BHMA certifications for its earlier lock, but it says this new model is certified BHMA Grade 3. That actually means it’s rated ANSI Grade 3, and while that’s the lowest of the three ANSI grades, that standard is for commercial locks (BHMA certification is for residential locks). So, the new D2 Pro should prove to be very durable. TCL D2L Fingerprint Lever Lock TCL If your door uses a lever lock instead of—or in addition to—a deadbolt, the TCL D2L Fingerprint Lock features an integrated fingerprint reader that’s positioned so you can grip the handle with your thumb on the scanner, and then lift up or down to open the door. TCL says its biometric technology can recognize an authorized fingerprint in just 0.3 seconds. Matter-over-Thread support endows TCL’s new lever lock with even better battery life than its new smart deadbolt: up to 12 months on a charge. The TCL D2L Fingerprint Lever Lock is likewise certified BHMA Grade 3, and it features Matter-over-Thread support for broad compatibility with smart home ecosystems, including Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. TCL has not yet published prices for either the D2 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock and D2L Fingerprint Lever Lock, but says both smart locks should be available for purchase in the second quarter of 2026. This news story is part of TechHive’s ind-depth coverage of the best smart locks. Read...

If you’re into the Mac mini aesthetic, Satechi has something for you: a new Thunderbolt 5 dock with the same dimensions as Apple’s mini computer. The Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock with SSD Enclosure isn’t cheap. It will retail for $399.99 and ship during the first quarter of 2026, the company said here at CES 2025. Satechi is pairing it with its own $39.99 Thunderbolt 5 Pro cable, which will connect the dock to your laptop. As the name suggests, the CubeDock includes an M.2 slot for inserting an SSD. (Dock makers have said that this was part of the original Thunderbolt 5 reference design Intel circulated, the reason why many other dock makers have gone this route.) It can be a real plus, however, as inserting an SSD (which you’ll have to supply) into the slot can offer I/O speeds that an external USB SSD can’t match. (In this case, PCIe 4×4 with up to 8TB of capacity at 6000 MB/s.) Of course, SSD prices continue to head up sharply from where they were in the last weeks of 2025, so it’s not clear whether that SSD will be an investment you’re willing to make. The other question is whether Thunderbolt 5 will be a viable option, given that it’s not natively supported in the upcoming Intel “Panther Lake” mobile platform or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite. AMD, expected to announce its next “Gorgon Point” processor platform for laptops, hasn’t said either. Satechi’s Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock with SSD Enclosure just has that Mac mini vibe.Satechi This would be the second year that Thunderbolt 5 would be left as an additional option for PC laptop makers to add rather than being built in. Thunderbolt 5 takes the 40Gbps of Thunderbolt 3/4 and ups it to 80Gbps, with an option to go to 120Gbps in a single direction under certain circumstances. It’s the future of Thunderbolt laptop docking stations, though Thunderbolt 4 is the key PC technology for now. Instead, Thunderbolt 5 has been built into the Mac mini and MacBook Pro powered by Apple’s M4 chip, making Satechi’s choice a smart one, aesthetically. Photos of the dock supplied by Satechi show the new CubeDock with roughly the same dimensions as the Mac mini, and with the same silvery color scheme. Ports sprout from the front and back of Satechi’s dock. On the front are a 10Gbps USB-A port and a 10Gbps USB-C port, along with UHS-II SD/microSD slots, a headphone jack, and a power button. On the rear are 2.5Gbps Ethernet, a 10Gbps USB-A port, another 10Gbps USB-C port, three Thunderbolt 5 ports, and a fourth Thunderbolt 5 port connect to your laptop. The rear also includes a Kensington lock and the power port, which accepts 180W and delivers 140W to your notebook and 30W to attached peripherals like smartphones. Satechi’s Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock with SSD Enclosure has a USB-C and USB-A ports on the front…Satechi Each Thunderbolt 5 port (which will require a dongle or adapter if your displays don’t support USB-C or Thunderbolt) can drive three 8K60 displays or three 4K displays at 144Hz. The bottom of the dock pops off to allow you to insert the SSD. There’s grillwork on the sides and rear of the aluminum chassis to allow for airflow, which is pushed through with an active cooling system. The Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock with SSD Enclosure also includes support for three 4K displays at high refresh rates.Satechi Satechi’s dock isn’t cheap, but Mac vibes rarely are. Read...

Segway is taking its robot lawn mowers to a space they’ve never been before—the commercial market—as it tees up its updated Navimow-brand models at CES in Las Vegas this week.  Segway’s new Terranox series will be the first of the company’s commercial-oriented robot mowers, capable of covering up to six acres of grass, while the flagship X4 residential mower will arrive with four-wheel drive, improved navigation, and the ability to tackle steeper slopes.  In all, Segway is showing off five new lines of its Navimow robot lawn mowers, from the budget i2 series with LiDAR navigation to the commercial-grade Terranox Series, which boasts network RTK (real-time kinematic) positioning, a 360-degree VSLAM camera, and turf-safe Xero-Turn technology.  Slated to arrive later this year (Segway hasn’t revealed pricing yet), the Terranox Series comes in two models: the CM120M1, which can cover up to three acres of lawn, and the CM240M1, which will tackle up to six acres of territory, or roughly the size of a football field.  Both Terranox mowers will offer four-wheel drive as well as a suite of drop-and-mow navigations technologies, including tri-frequency network RTK, a 360-degree VSLAM camera, and VIO (visual-inertial odometry), good for pinpointing its position within centimeters and without the need for perimeter wires or antenna reference stations  The flagship X4 ($2,499 for the 1-acre X430, $2,999 for the 1.5-acre X450) takes the Terranox’s four-wheel drive and navigational features while also adding Segway’s MowMentum Cutting System, which boasts a dual-cutting deck, 12 thickened cutting blades, and twin 180-watt cutting mowers, all combined with a smart cutting algorithm and the brand’s EdgeSense technology.   Segway The IPX6-rated X4 (meaning the robot is resistant to rain, lawn sprinklers, water splashes, and wet grass) will have an 84-percent slope capability, good for climbing slopes up to 40 degrees, and it’s also designed to scale steps up to 2.8 inches high. VisionFence 2.0 tech will allow the X4 to detect and avoid roughly 200 types of objects, from pets to swings, while its turf-safe Xeno-Turn functionality helps the mower to make tight turns without tearing up the grass.  Available in 0.25- and 0.5-acre models, the three-wheel drive H2 Series (no pricing details yet) employs a combination of LiDAR, network RTK, and RGB vision technology for navigation, allowing the unit to find its way under trees or through narrow passages even at night, while the LiDAR-powered Terrain Adapt and Electronic Stability Control functionality keep the mower balanced on inclines as steep as 24 degrees.  Segway Next up is the i2 AWD Series, which is getting the X2’s Xero-Turn capabilities as well as the ability to climb 24-degree slopes and 1.6-inch steps. The robot’s adaptive drive technology, which only engages the unit’s third wheel when the additional traction is  needed, is designed to boost battery life by up to 30 percent, while LiDAR and network RTK are also on board. Segway The i206 AWD model ($999) will offer a coverage area of 0.15 acres, while the i210 AWD ($1,299) expands that coverage range to 0.25 acres.  Finally, the two-wheel drive i2 LiDAR (pricing is TBD) navigates and avoids obstacles via a combination of solid-state LiDAR and AI-powered vision, and it promises a range of up to 0.37 acres.  All the new Navimow robot lawn mowers will support GeoSketch, a mapping feature on the Navimow app that allows users to customize mowing areas on a 3D interactive map, while Find My functionality will let Apple users locate the robots.  This article is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best robot lawn mowers. Read...