Electric spoons, AI running shoes: The best (and worst) tech gadgets
By David Swan
The world’s largest technology show, CES, offered a heady glimpse of the future: an optimistic - and in other parts, occasionally dystopian – world full of technology designed to make your life easier and more connected.
The Las Vegas expo this month was a physical representation of the best and worst of the technology sector in 2025, in which Nvidia rules the roost, AI is now embedded in everything, and a gamut of connected gadgets will enter our homes, many of which really have no good reason to exist.
People look at an exhibit of LG Signature OLED T 4K transparent wireless TV’s at the LG booth during the CES tech show Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)Credit: AP
The best of CES
Kirin’s electric salt spoon
It might sound decidedly low tech – a soup spoon that makes your food taste saltier – but this device is anything but. An imaginative innovation from Japanese giant Kirin Holdings, which is better known for its beer and beverages, this high-tech spoon uses a weak electric current to add umami and salt flavours to your food, without actually adding any salt.
Kiyohiro Izumo uses the Kirin Electric Salt spoon which intensifies salt flavour by flowing a mild electric current through the food around the tongue to attract salt towards the tongue.Credit: Jack Dempsey
According to Kirin, the spoon concentrates sodium ion electrons, and should help consumers reduce their salt intake. The device is already on sale in Japan for about $200, and will be available globally from 2025. The spoon was one of the hits of CES, with journalists and attendees queueing up en masse to try the salt hits for themselves.
Samsung’s smart home robot, Ballie
2025 is shaping up as the year of the robot. Samsung has been showing off its bright yellow home robot Ballie since 2020, and announced at this year’s CES that it is finally becoming available to purchase this year. The AI robot companion comes packed with sensors, and a projector that lets it play games and project films onto various surfaces. It can monitor your pets when you’re not home, and can connect to and manage your home appliances.
The cute little guy is voice-activated – answering to ‘Hey Ballie’ – and has wheels to move around your house with ease. It also boasts two cameras – a 2K camera on the rear and a 4K camera on the front – and a launch is coming in the first half of 2025. Pricing and an exact release date are yet to be unveiled.
Samsung’s Ballie is billed as an AI home companion robot that follows you, and your pets, around the house.
Dr Timothy Wiley, from RMIT University, said Samsung may have finally cracked the code on household robots. “It doesn’t try to be a human or a pet, and it strikes a balance between approachability without being a toy,” he said. “Its projector and mobility encourages us to want to take it places, and being hands-free makes it more than a phone or tablet. Ballie could very well redefine consumer robotics.”
Nvidia stole the show
Donning a $US9000 Tom Ford jacket, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang filled a 10,000 person arena for his keynote speech that was more rock show than a tech address.
In fact, it was so popular that more than 1000 attendees had to be turned away. The 90-minute event cemented why Nvidia is 2025’s most consequential technology company: It is currently responsible for some 80 per cent of the world’s current AI compute, and isn’t slowing down, launching a slew of AI advancements including new artificial intelligence models, GPUs, and a personal AI supercomputer dubbed DIGITS.
“It’s been an incredible year,” Huang said. And he wasn’t just referring to Nvidia’s share price: the company this week once again claimed the title of the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company, surpassing Apple. Its shares are up by more than 2000 per cent over the past five years.
Flying cars are ready for launch
A stroll around the CES show floor provided insight into the future of driving, and in Xpeng’s case, flying. Chinese start-up Xpeng showed off its impressive Land Aircraft Carrier, a ‘modular flying car’ that is part van, part eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft. The Land Aircraft Carrier is essentially an electric minivan that comes with a small eVTOL tucked into the back, that can be rolled out and flown. Customers will be able to drive the car to an eVTOL take-off and landing site, deliver a “single command” to detach and unfold the small aircraft, then take off.
The company says it has already had 3000 orders for the vehicle, which will be priced “below $300,000”, and first deliveries are planned for 2026. The company plans to launch in China first before rolling out to international markets.
The Xpeng Aero HT Land Aircraft Carrier.
Connected kitchens are finally useful
The expo featured a host of cooking robots, smart refrigerators and home automation features designed to make cooking – and meal planning – as easy as possible.
Hisense announced some new upgrades to its ConnectLife platform, which brings intelligent cooking features into the kitchen and allows hungry users to easily plan meals and keep track of food. Dish Designer, a feature built in collaboration with Microsoft, is an AI-powered recipe assistant that suggests personalised recipes based on available ingredients, dietary restrictions, and user preferences. Hisense’s ConnectLife Meal Planner, meanwhile, uses AI to help families plan their weekly meals using ingredients that are already in the fridge. The Hisense Smart Hub refrigerator will be coming to the Australian market in 2025.
LG unveiled its latest microwave, which boasts a 27-inch full HD display, perfect for watching YouTube or Netflix. The Korean tech giant says its microwave offers “an immersive entertainment experience right in the kitchen” and has built-in Wi-FI and speakers. It also comes equipped with cameras inside the microwave, above the induction range and facing out into the kitchen, so you can capture your dinner from all angles.
Not to be outdone, Samsung has upgraded its kitchen range to also heavily feature AI, including a new double wall oven that can detect food that’s placed in the oven and suggest cooking times via AI recognition. Samsung’s connected app will also allow users to enter their own recipes and will learn from frequently cooked recipes to suggest when a dish should be added.
The worst of CES
AI is becoming meaningless
AI has infiltrated seemingly every facet of our culture over the past year, and CES was no different, with virtually every device now touting some sort of new AI functionality. The tech sector is at its worst when it’s being dominated by buzzwords, and AI really is the buzzword to end all buzzwords.
The term is now so overused that it’s virtually meaningless. Some of the new features are useful, but many of the devices on show were claiming AI functionality for the sake of it. Do I really need an AI-powered spice dispenser, AI running shoes (which were promoted by Nike at CES) or an AI-powered birdbath? I’m not convinced.
Enron prank falls flat
Enron was, of course, one of the biggest corporate frauds in global history, and the company surprisingly re-emerged during CES under new ownership. In a flashy keynote, the new-look Enron unveiled a fake at-home nuclear reactor, dubbed the ‘Enron Egg’, promising to power a home for 10 years straight and revolutionise the “power,” “independence,” and “freedom” industries. The hoax, from a parody company, is the brainchild of Connor Gaydos, who was previously behind the Birds Aren’t Real conspiracy theory, and who bought the Enron domain for $US275 in 2020. He said in the reveal video he had been “living with an egg” for months and that his “little ones freakin’ love it.”
The brainchild of Connor Gaydos, who was previously behind the Birds Aren’t Real conspiracy theory, the new-look Enron unveiled a fake at-home nuclear reactor, dubbed the ‘Enron Egg’, promising to power a home for 10 years.
Some parodies can be hilarious, others decidedly less so. In this post-truth era of fake news and information – not to mention countless devastating corporate scandals – this prank fell flat.
Las Vegas itself
It’s the epitome of a first-world problem, sure, but Las Vegas is – by and large – the pits. Unlike other conferences, CES is sprawled across a dozen different hotels and convention centres, and getting between venues can take 45 minutes or more due to traffic in what should in normal circumstances take five minutes. Add to that the incessant flashing lights, crowded casino floors and the plunging Aussie dollar, and you have a recipe for tedium. Despite all the cool, innovative tech on show, of course.
David Swan travelled to Las Vegas with assistance from Samsung, LG and Hisense.
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