In the middle of the Las Vegas Convention Center, amidst the world’s largest tech trade show, an awards show was taking place. The audience included nominees ranging from large companies like Nvidia to scrappy startups introducing themselves to the world, alongside journalists, tech insiders, and enthusiasts gathering to watch the Best of CES 2026 awards. After days of scouring showroom floors, speaking with innovators about their new technologies, and deliberating for six hours, finalists and winners were chosen by experts from CNET, PCMag, Mashable, ZDNET, and Lifehacker. I had the privilege of helping to judge and present several awards, and aside from my gratitude for the experience, my takeaway was simple: There’s a lot of new technology worth being excited about.

CNET Group, in partnership with the Consumer Technology Association, awarded winners across 22 categories, plus a ‘Best Overall’ award. To qualify for a Best of CES award, a product or service had to be an official exhibitor at CES 2026 and either include a compelling new concept or idea, solve a major consumer problem, or set a new bar in performance, design, or quality. The official Best of CES 2026 winners were announced live Wednesday, Jan. 7, at 4 p.m. PT. Here are all the finalists and winners of Best of CES 2026.

Best of CES 2026 award winners

Best Age Tech

• Tombot Jennie (Winner)

  Tombot’s Jennie has been capturing hearts at CES for years, but the realistic robot puppy is finally launching in 2026. Designed to comfort seniors with dementia and help combat loneliness, Jennie is packed with sensors and motors, allowing it to move its head to look at you, raise its eyebrows, wag its tail, and bark when you ask if it wants a treat. Seniors at a memory care facility we visited loved Jennie.

• iGuard

  iGuard is a smart stove shutoff that helps older adults age in place. This new version of the device uses radar to tell when a person is in the kitchen, and has a configurable five-minute grace period. It can also report to a caregiver app if your loved one didn’t show up in the kitchen to make breakfast as usual.

Best AI Tech

• Lenovo Motorola Qira (Winner)

  Qira is Lenovo’s answer to Apple Intelligence, a hybrid AI assistant that leverages a mix of on-device processing and cloud-based models for a powerful personalized assistant that’s available anywhere, even as you switch from the phone in your pocket to the laptop or tablet in your hand.

• Nvidia Rubin

  Nvidia is once again the talk of CES, and the biggest announcement by the world’s most profitable company is the Rubin AI platform. Nvidia’s six new Rubin chips work together to reduce the costs of data processed by AI, known as tokens. That’s important for big tech companies, and all of us, as AI models become more compute-intensive.

• Pebble Index 01

  This AI wearable brings it back to basics. Users can jot down quick notes throughout their day that they don’t want to forget by clicking on the button and speaking into the ring. Then, an LLM on the app will process what you said for easy access and even take actions for you.

Best Audio Tech

• Samsung Music Studio 5 (Winner)

  The Samsung Music Studio 5 houses a 4-inch woofer and dual tweeters in one of the most compelling designs we’ve seen in a home speaker. In addition to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, it supports the Samsung Seamless Codec for compatibility with other Samsung Galaxy ecosystem products.

• xMEMS Sycamore-N loudspeaker chip

  As smartglasses become more mainstream, they require an audio chip that is as advanced as their AI features. The xMEMS Sycamore-N loudspeaker chip enhances the smartglasses audio experience. Based on our listening tests, they provide a high-fidelity listening experience, and at one millimeter thin, directly aid in keeping smartglasses form factors thinner and lighter.

• LG H7 FlexConnect soundbar

  As a part of LG’s Sound Suite, the H7 Soundbar extends the usefulness of Flex Connect to any TV with an HDMI input. The soundbar looks good and it sounded great with movies. The only drawback is that you can only add LG branded Flex Connect speakers to the soundbar and not those from other brands.

Best Deep Computing Tech

• Intel Core Ultra 300 (Panther Lake) (Winner)

  Intel’s Core Ultra 300 Series “Panther Lake” platform is our winner for delivering bar-raising integrated graphics performance to the mass consumer market. The top chip offers up to 12 new “Xe3” Xe cores for (by far) the best-ever integrated graphics performance from Intel silicon, enabling graphics and gaming workloads for a huge range of portable laptop categories through 2026 and beyond.

• Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Plus

  It’s all about the TOPS: The mainstream version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 laptop processor family maintains the 80 trillion operations per second of the higher end X2 Elite chips. Expected in laptops starting around $800, it promises field leading NPU performance at a lower price.

• AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 392, AI Max Plus 388

  AMD’s expanded Ryzen AI Max+ platform democratizes workstation power with the 392 and 388 models, featuring 40 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, 60 TFLOPS of compute, and 192GB unified memory. These chips bring elite local AI and GPU-free performance to thinner, more affordable devices with a superior price-to-performance ratio.

Best Energy Tech

• Willo (Winner)

  After developing alignment-free wireless power for two years, Willo demonstrated the ability to deliver power over the air for multiple devices simultaneously, regardless of their position or movement. This represents a breakthrough in energy technology, offering wireless charging without the need for a pad, coil, or dock.

• Jackery Solar Mars Bot

  Jackery’s solar energy-seeking robot showed an ability to follow you around like a puppy, but its real job is to follow the sun, collecting energy with its retractable 300W solar panels. The idea is that this autonomous bot can always find the sun, and then bring you the power when you need it.

• Superheat

  A water heater that automatically generates bitcoin with daily use. It utilizes the excess heat generated from bitcoin mining to heat running water in a home, offsetting up to 80 percent of electricity and water costs with the earnings from the process. You can control and manage it with an app or web console for ease of use.

Best Future Tech

• Lego Smart Play System (Winner)

  A single 2-by-8 Lego brick filled with light, sound, and proximity sensors to enable new ways to play. This little block, and the tinier snap-on tab that gives it instructions, can drive anything from lightsaber duels to board games, adding color and sound effects based on what you build and how you play.

• Ixana Wi-R

  Ixana’s Wi-R is a chip that sends data through a hyperlocal field generated by your body. This alternative to Bluetooth and WiFi is still a concept, but it has some upsides to conventional data protocols such as less power drain and less potential for clogged signal.

Best Gaming

• Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable Concept (Winner)

  Rollable OLED displays have been a thing for a couple years, but they’ve been limited to enterprise laptops, if they ever even come out. The Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable concept uses this tech to bring ultrawide gaming to a laptop for the first time. Is the future rollable? We don’t know, but either way it’d be the perfect portable battlestation.

• Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo

  A gaming PC with multiple monitors has become the norm, and while portable monitors have been around for a while, there haven’t been many ways to have this experience built-in to a laptop. The Asus Zephyrus Duo takes the multiple-display idea Asus has been playing with since the original Zephyrus Duo and expands it to something actually useful: a full second display.

• Asus ROG Xreal R1

  Xreal’s AR glasses are some of the best, and now PC company ASUS is partnering with Xreal to make them better, especially for gamers. These AR glasses have everything even the pickiest player needs, giving you a virtual 171-inch screen right on your face. That screen is OLED and 1080p, but the real kicker is the 240hz refresh rate. It’s smooth big-screen gaming, on the go.

Best Kitchen Tech

• Ecoldbrew (Winner)

  The Ecoldbrew combines a portable grinder and brewer into a compact gadget that whips up a batch of cold brew coffee in five minutes. The cleverly designed device slots onto its own thermos, but it’s a common size so you can easily attach it to the top of your own thermos if you have one that you love. Slated to launch on Kickstarter soon, it starts at an affordable $99.

• C-200 UltraSonic chef’s knife

  Seattle Ultrasonics’ C-200 UltraSonic Chef’s Knife has a Japanese steel blade that vibrates about 30,000 times per second. Its movement is so subtle that you can’t see or hear it move, but you will notice how effortlessly it slices through food without clinging to it. The C-200 retails for $399, a similar price point as other nice knives. The first batch ships this month.

• AISO AI Smart Oven

  We’ve covered our fair share of smart ovens at CES but Apecoo has boiled it down to the essentials. This compact cooker uses a camera above and scale below to ID food type and size and then deploys a precise cooking program pulled from a deep AI algorithm. Perfectly cooked steak, anyone? This machine can determine the exact thickness of meat or volume of veggies like no oven before it. The oven even recognizes multiple types of food at once and uses appropriate cooking times and temps for each. Best of all, it’s about half the size of a typical smart oven.

Best Laptop

• Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 Aura Edition (Winner)

  Modular laptop designs for greater serviceability and sustainability are a definite trend at CES 2026, and the latest ThinkPad X1 Carbon is the best example of it. Lenovo’s flagship business laptop introduces its Space Frame design that lets you access and replace individual parts when something breaks instead of needing to buy a new laptop.

• MSI Stealth 16 AI Plus

  Yes, it’s clearly inspired by the MacBook Pro, but MSI’s big, redesigned Stealth pours on the special sauce. This thin rig deploys Intel’s Core Ultra 300 (Panther Lake) CPUs and GeForce graphics up to a roaring RTX 5090, alongside amped-up cooling and airflow. Plus, a new, subtler MSI design and a 240Hz Gorilla Glass panel will excite gamers and prosumer creators alike.

• Asus ZenBook Duo (2026)

  Asus’ Zenbook Duo is a niche device, but it’s the most elegant expression of a dual-screen laptop we’ve seen yet. The 2026 Zenbook Duo has matured on its design with notable improvements from last year: thinner bezels, a more sturdy kickstand, and a better hinge. Powered with up to an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H CPU, it’s well-equipped for diverse creative workloads.

Best Mobile Tech

• Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold (Winner)

  The culmination of Samsung’s efforts to make a sleeker and more versatile folding phone. It’s a true hybrid gadget that’s a standard phone when closed and opens up to a sprawling 10-inch display, making this a practical, two-in-one device that fits securely in your pocket.

• Motorola Razr Fold

  The Motorola Razr Fold is a solid entry in the book-style folding phone category thanks to its large screens, clean software, and powerful cameras. Together with stylus support, it’s a fine option for those who need a device that’s focused on productivity

• OhSnap Mcon

  The OhSnap Mcon is a Bluetooth controller with a slide-out plate to mount your iPhone (via MagSafe) or Android phone (via magnets) for a portable gaming experience. The pocketable accessory can be used in three ways: as a mounted handheld device, a wireless gaming controller, and a docked gaming console when your phone is connected to an external monitor.

Best Parent Tech

• Coro (Winner)

  Coro feels like a product that should have existed for years. It solves the problem of measuring how much your baby is eating in a simple and meaningful way. I wish it was around when my babies were young.

• Earflo

  Earflo is a medical device designed to look and work like a sippy cup for kids as young as two. When you sip from the cup, a small mask forms a seal on your nose, and with each swallow, air flows through the nose. The pressure on the nasal cavity helps releasing trapped fluid in the ear. In a peer-reviewed study, after four weeks of Earflo use, 90 percent of children did not need ear tube surgery three months later.

• Lego Smart Play System

  Kids and parents already spend quality time building with Lego. Now, in Lego’s CES debut, the company is launching its new Smart Bricks as part of its new Smart Play platform, which brings Lego creations and characters to life. Lego Smart Brick includes a tiny chip inside that enables Legos to tell color, direction, distance, sound and more. Now Lego creations can interact with families, enabling more time together.

Best Pet Tech

• Satellai Collar Go (Winner)

  Satellai’s new collar (Satellai Collar Go) and software (Petsense AI) are proactive tools that could flag subtle behavioral shifts in your dog before they become obvious health problems. It can also warn you when your dog has left your yard, and retails for a reasonable $79.

• Pawport

  Pawport launched its smart pet door in late 2025. The pet door uses ultra-wideband technology, which can detect how close your dog is to the door. That lets you customize how close your dog needs to be before the door opens, both coming in and out of the house. It also extends the collar tags’ battery life from 12 to 18 months.

• Petkit Yumshare Daily Feast

  One of the devices debuting is the Yumshare Daily Feast, an automatic wet cat food feeder Petkit describes as its first entry into robotic wet feeding. The unit can dispense scheduled meals over seven days while monitoring consumption through an integrated camera, and can automatically discard spoiled and leftover food.

Best Robot

• Boston Dynamics Atlas (Winner)

  Of the many humanoid robots to have made their debut at CES 2026, it’s Boston Dynamics’ Atlas that stands out as the best of the bunch. The prototype version demoed at the show impressed us with its naturalistic walking gait, meanwhile the sleek product version is ready to be deployed into Hyundai manufacturing facilities from this year, where it might just be working on your next car.

• Jackery Solar Mars Bot

  The Solar Mars Bot may never make it to Mars, but it solves several problems with portable generators. It’s far easier to move wherever you need and it can chase the sun without intervention.

• Beatbot RoboTurtle

  RoboTurtle is both a perfect study in biomimicry and a robot with a mission. This swimming robot is designed for environmental research and once deployed, will monitor underwater ecosystems with minimal impact on wildlife.

Best Smart Home Tech

• Roborock Saros Rover (Winner)

  The Roborock Saros Rover can traverse the biggest obstacle for robot vacuums: stairs. It’s the first model that can navigate to different floors on its own without the help of a separate attachment. It pulls off this feat thanks to a pair of bendable legs that it controlls independently to avoid obstacles, and it can even clean stairs as it climbs.

• Lockin V7 Max

  The Lockin V7 Max is a new smart lock that doesn’t require recharging or replacing its batteries. Instead of using a removable battery, the V7 Max uses Lockin AuraCharge, an external device that you plug in approximately four meters away, sending a light beam to a receiver on the lock. The lock converts the light into energy to charge its battery.

• Robotin R2

  The Robotin R2 is the first robot vacuum that can wash and dry a carpet, just like a carpet cleaner. It comes with a core module and two modular attachments that let it switch from vacuuming and mopping to carpet washing and drying. It takes about one hour to clean a 300-400 square foot room and two hours to dry. There’s also an absolutely massive base station with two clean water tanks, a large dustbin and a dirty water tank.

Best Startup

• Allergen Alert (Winner)

  This might save lives. A French startup has created a $200 portable device to test food samples for allergens. The startup, Allergen Alert, only had mock-up devices at CES, but it’s licensing the tech from French biofirm bioMérieux. If the startup can pull off the food testing, the impact could be huge. Expect it to arrive in this year’s second half.

• Pebble 2 Duo

  If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Pebble was the first company to popularize smartwatches in 2010s. After several company moves, the brand is back as a startup with a new lineup of affordable watches with battery life improvements and improved form factors. It also has a new AI ring.

• Nirva AI jewelry

  The Nirva AI jewelry is a startup that aims to continuously learn from your real-world behavior by recording your audio throughout the day. From those recordings, it offers advice on work, relationships and everyday decision-making. Nirva positions itself as a personal AI companion, designed to understand your life as you live it. Think of it as “audio journaling” after a long day.

Best Sustainability Tech

• Clear Drop Soft Plastic Compactor (Winner)

  Anxious about plastic waste? Clear Drop’s Soft Plastic Compactor can mash them into dense bricks to send off to be recycled into products like patio furniture. Clear Drop’s product and subscription ensures none of your recycled soft plating ends up in a landfill.

• Beatbot RoboTurtle

  RoboTurtle is both a perfect study in biomimicry and a robot with a mission. This swimming robot is designed for environmental research and once deployed, will monitor underwater ecosystems with minimal impact on wildlife.

• Cambridge Consultants Ouroboros smartwatch

  Ushering in the new age of right-to-repair legislation is this concept smartwatch design from Cambridge Consultants. It’s proof that you can make a smartwatch that allows for self repair without compromising on design or user experience.

Best Transportation

• Strutt Ev1 (Winner)

  There’s plenty of talk about autonomy in cars, but Stutt brings the next-generation technology to an accessible application. The Ev1 mobility scooter can map and then navigate spaces autonomously, allowing people to get around via voice commands. It can also autocorrect manual navigation to prevent bumping into obstacles. This is the rare device that combines mobility, accessibility and autonomy, and it’s hard not to be impressed.

• Pioneer Sphera

  Dolby Atmos adds a literal new dimension to car audio. However, not everyone can buy a new luxury car just to upgrade their listening experience. Pioneer’s Sphera receiver allows almost anyone to add Dolby Atmos via Apple CarPlay to the car they already own with the speakers already installed and immerse themselves in spatial audio.

• Donut Labs solid-state battery

  Promising huge improvements in energy density, charging speed and safety, solid state battery tech is a holy grail for electric cars, home energy, drones and a host of other applications. Donut Lab is first to market with a solid state battery in a production EV which can be found in partner Verge Motorcycles’ TS Pro Gen 2.

Best Travel Tech

• WheelMove (Winner)

  Wheelchairs are available at airports, hotels, resorts, theme parks, and cruises, but standard wheelchairs require ongoing effort, and they can struggle through difficult terrain. WheelMoves is a portable wheelchair attachment that turns any standard wheelchair into an electric one, allowing people to travel more easily wherever they are.

• Jitlife Rideable Luggage

  The Jitlife JS07i is a rideable suitcase that travelers can use to drive long distances through airports. It’s the size of a standard cabin bag but carries up to 250 pounds, has a maximum speed of 8 miles per hour, and can travel six miles on a charge. Already popular overseas, rideable luggage is making its way to the US, and Jitlife is the best we tried.

Best TV or Home Theater Tech

• Samsung S95H (Winner)

  The Samsung S95H is the most impressive TV we saw at CES for a number of reasons, firstly, it’s 35 percent brighter than before. Secondly, it’s a wired TV which is great for gaming, but it has a wireless option for a cleaner look and which enables more connections. Thirdly, it’s the first OLED that can show artwork from the Samsung Art Store — the S95H has anti-burn-in technology that enables it to work like a Frame TV, but with even better image quality.

• Hisense 116UXS

  The 116UXS builds on the still very new and promising RGB LED TV concept by adding even more color to the mix. Its mini-LED backlight array uses red, green, and blue LEDs, then adds a fourth sky blue (cyan) LED that Hisense says lets it cover 110 percent of the BT.2020 color range.

• LG W6

  The W6 is LG’s “wallpaper” TV, an OLED TV only 9mm deep that can be mounted nearly flush against a wall. It’s one of LG’s brightest OLEDs yet, and it’s almost completely wireless thanks to its Zero Connect box you can place up to 30 feet away to send it video and its Dolby Atmos FlexConnect-powered LG Sound Suite support for building a spatial audio system around it.

Best Weird Tech

• Lepro Ami AI soulmate (Winner)

  Having a tiny animated girl living on a small screen inside a physical cylander case is certainly very weird. Lepro’s new AI companion Ami is exactly that. Its not quite an AI assistant meant to help with actual tasks. Its an AI meant for a loney person looking for some interaction. The characters dance and gyrate inside the case and can do so at the user’s request as well, upping the weirdness factor.

• Lollipop Star

  Suck on this lollipop and listen to a song directly from your mouth to your ears using bone conduction technology, so you can “experience music you can taste.” I tried it out, and though you had to bite down on it a bit to hear the music, it did work. It’s a weird, fun novelty item. It costs $8.99.

• iPolish digital nail polish

  iPolish touts itself as the “world’s first digital color-changing nails.” They take the form of press-on nails that you can individually put into a little wand to instantly change the color via a selection of over 400 shades on an app.

Best Wellness Tech

• Peri (Winner)

  Perimenopause affects people transitioning to menopause, and is commonly marked by symptoms such as anxiety, hot flashes, and night sweats. Peri is a wearable designed to track those symptoms, and help you make informed decisions about how to manage them — whether that’s through lifestyle changes and supplements alone, or hormone replacement therapy.

• OhmBody

  A majority of those who menstruate report severe period pain. This wearable neurostimulation device aims to reduce period symptoms and cramps. By attaching near the ear and delivering gentle neurostimulation, the device targets the auricular branches of the trigeminal and vagus nerves to regulate menstrual cycle symptoms and help the body return to a rested state.

• Allergen Alert

  Food allergies are common and can cause a wide range of unpleasant symptoms. Severe reactions can be deadly. Allergen Alert is a mini, portable lab that allows you to test food for common allergens on the spot at a restaurant, school, or anywhere you dine out. A single-use pouch analyzes the food sample inserted into the device and displays results within minutes.

Best Yard or Outdoor Tech

• Beatbot AquaSense X ecosystem (Winner)

  Beatbot has introduced the world’s first self-emptying pool robot cleaner. In addition to its industry leading navigation and suction, the AquaSense x Ecosystem removes the worst chore associated with robot vacs — cleaning the debris baskets filled with soggy leaves, slime and bugs. The standalone cleaning dock empties debris into a disposable bag in a bin waiting below. Next, it rinses the internal mechanisms with fresh water fed from an attached hose, keeping the filter, debris baskets and vents clear and clean.

• Luba 3 AWD

  The Luba 3 AWD stole the show at CES 2026, easily climbing slopes up to 80 percent thanks to its four-wheel drive design. This smart mower also offers wire free navigation enhanced by LiDAR and AI vision, plus adjustable cutting heights. This attractive robot lawnmower can also overcome and avoid obstacles in your yard, from tennis balls to rogue hedgehogs.

• Birdfy Hum Bloom

  Birdfy’s smart 4K hummingbird feeder has a beautiful, unique design that more closely resembles an actual flower. Most importantly, it captures slow-motion video at 120 frames per second, letting you see the flap of hummingbirds’ wings as they flit through your backyard. Using AI and its 8MP camera, the Hum Bloom will identify 150 different species of avian visitors.

Best Overall

Samsung Galazy Z Trifold (Winner)

A vanguard in melding eye-catching design with genuine utility, the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold achieves CES’s highest honor, Best Overall. This slim device lives up to the promise of a foldable, full size tablet-phone hybrid that’s as functional as it is pocketable. Its futuristic allure and seamless practicality elevate the tech while keeping it within reach.

Robot vacuums are a convenient way to keep your house clean without actually putting in much work, but they’ve all got one major problem—what if your house has multiple stories? At CES this year, I saw two attempts to fix this problem, but one of them was much more fabulous than the other.

Roborock has a robot vacuum with legs

This is the more unique of your stair climbing robot vacuums, and the one that’s new for this year. At CES 2026, robot vacuum company Roborock introduced the Roborock Saros Rover, which has two fold-out and individually articulated legs built into it, with wheels on either one.

This lets it act like a standard robot vacuum when it’s on flat terrain, but when it hits a pair of stairs, it will use its legs to slowly pull itself up and over them. And because those legs are individually articulated, unlike other solutions, it can clean those stairs while it climbs.

Plus, it can also run through fun programmable routines, like dancing and even hopping. Honestly, it looks a lot more cute than the other bipedal robots I’ve seen littering this year’s CES. Maybe that’s because it still serves a concrete purpose.

The problem? You’ll need to get the new model to benefit from the stair climbing, whereas competitors are introducing solutions that work with existing vacuums.

The Roborock Saros Rover also doesn’t have hard pricing or a release date yet, but Roborock assured me it isn’t a concept, and will make its way to market eventually. I was told the goal is this year, but the company couldn’t confirm that.

Dreame’s stair climbing robot vacuum dock

Next to Roborock’s booth, I also saw another approach to a stair climbing robot vacuum from competitor Dreame. This actually showed up at German tech conference IFA last year, but it’s still worth bringing up, if only to highlight how different the Roborock is. Essentially, instead of building a single robot vacuum model with individual legs, Dreame instead built a dock that your existing robot vacuum can drive into, and then the dock will take it up the stairs like a taxi.

The catch is that, because the dock needs to be able to drive to the stairs, it does not use individually articulated legs to climb, and instead uses treads that move in sync with each other. This gets it up and down stairs with no problem, but unlike Roborock’s solution, it’s not able to clean while doing so.

However, I’ll note that I did personally see Dreame’s dock go down a flight of stairs, something Roborock’s unit didn’t do in the demo I watched. Maybe this is a more stable approach.

Unfortunately, while Roborock said it’s definitely planning on bringing the Saros Rover to market, Dreame’s dock, called the Cyber X, is still just a concept, and may not actually ever make it to consumers.

Gaming controllers are just one of those things that I love to collect, but living in a small New York apartment, eventually enough is enough. At CES this year, I saw three new controllers that are all trying to be the last ones I’ll ever need to buy (for specific systems, at least). It seems like modularity is in, and all three of these devices want to meet all of your needs. However, they’re not settled on what the best approach is.

GameSir x Hyperkin X5 Alteron

The GameSir x Hyperkin X5 Alteron is probably the cutest controller on this list, especially if you grew up playing GameCube or Nintendo 64. Essentially, it’s a telescopic mobile controller that stretches to fit around your phone or small tablet, but the gimmick is that all of the face buttons and sticks come in hot swappable modules, and can be freely mixed-and-matched for multiple configurations.

You could do a standard Xbox style layout. You could opt for a layout with symmetrical, PlayStation style thumbsticks instead. You could use GameCube or Nintendo 64 style face button configurations, which is a unique touch. There are even options for a six-button arcade style layout or a Steam Deck style trackpad.

Essentially, play your cards right, and this thing could fit any need you might possibly have, so long as you’re playing on mobile. You could even get weird and slot in a GameCube layout for your left hand and a Nintendo 64 layout for your right hand.

The different configurations all pop in and out easily, but don’t feel loose when you’re using the controller. And there are also bells and whistles like back paddles and trigger stops, for extra buttons and quicker reaction times. The sticks are also capacitive, which essentially means they shouldn’t drift, but also won’t cause magnetic interference like Hall Effect or TMR sticks (other popular anti-drift technology) can.

The catch? While this isn’t a concept, pricing and availability aren’t set in stone yet. GameSir also told me it’s still figuring out distribution, so it’s unclear how many control modules will come with the controller, if you’ll be able to buy them separately, and how much they’ll cost if you do. The company did say it’s targeting a $100 release, but that could change, and it’s still figuring out how to make that a reality.

The other issue, of course, is that this is mobile only, although GameSir said it might make a more traditional version in the future. This isn’t the first controller with hot swappable modules, but others are usually pro-level and don’t have nearly as many options as the X5 Alteron does.

8BitDo Ultimate 3e

8BitDo is one of my favorite controller companies, especially for retro style controllers. Last year, it already dipped its toes into modularity with the 8BitDo Pro 3. That was a PlayStation-style controller that allowed you to individually swap out any of the main four face buttons to place them in whatever order you wanted, which made it easier to swap between Xbox (ABXY) and Nintendo (BAYX) style layouts. Now, the 8BitDo Ultimate 3e is taking that concept and really running with it.

Officially licensed by Xbox but also compatible with PC and mobile devices, the 8BitDo Ultimate 3e looks like a standard Xbox controller at first, but has a removable face plate that gives you access to a bunch of options. Take it off, and you can lift out the sticks, D-Pad, or face buttons to swap them for ones with a different feel.

Your overall control layout will still be the same—there’s no mimicking the GameCube, swapping the order of the ABXY buttons, or changing your stick position here. But you could opt for either a four-way or circular D-Pad or sticks with different lengths or grips, for instance. The ABXY button modules also come in both quiet silicone versions or clicky, micro-switch versions.

That’s a lot of control, and it comes on top of 8BitDo’s standard Ultimate controller features, like the included charging dock, extra macro buttons, trigger stops, a gyroscope, and 1,000hz polling.

8BitDo says the Ultimate 3e controller will cost $150 and will come with all your control options. It’s set to ship later this year.

New models for the MCON

When I reviewed the MCON magnetic gaming controller late last year, I wanted to love it. It was my favorite product from last CES, but when it came to market, I had a few issues with it that made me feel like it wasn’t quite complete. Well, they’re still in the prototype phase, but MCON makers OhSnap are now working on two new MCON models that are looking to fix pretty much all of my problems with the original device.

Called the MCON Slim and the MCON Lite, these versions of the device are much smaller and should be much cheaper than the version that’s on the market now, but retain almost all of its features. There are a few compromises to make that happen, but ultimately, they look like moves in the right direction.

First, both the MCON Slim and the MCON Lite have manual sliding mechanisms for their controls. That means the controls normally slip tucked away behind your phone, but can be pulled out like an old-school Android keyboard. I actually prefer this. The original MCON instead uses a spring-loaded sliding mechanism, and it’s pretty violent, and can send your phone flying if you’re not careful.

Second, when I say these are smaller, I mean it. If the original MCON felt like attaching a MagSafe battery bank to your phone, these feel a lot more like using a MagSafe wallet. I didn’t mind the size of the original too much, but it really is impressive how much the new models have slimmed down.

Finally, while pricing isn’t finalized yet, MCON told me to expect the new models to be somewhere between 1/3rd to half the price of the current one. That’s a huge markdown on the pricey $150 original, even as these fix some of my problems with it.

To be fair, you do lose out on a little bit here, but not much. The MCON Slim and MCON Lite still have a kickstand mode, and still feature a full set of buttons, but they handle their shoulder buttons and thumbsticks differently. Both the Slim and Lite have “inline” shoulder buttons, which means the L1/R1 and L2/R2 buttons are next to each other horizontally rather than stacked. Not a big deal for me, but some people may prefer a console-like layout. The bigger differences come in the thumbsticks.

The MCON Slim uses 3DS-style circle pads instead of Switch-style thumbsticks, which is how it’s able to save so much space. They aren’t my favorite, but I’ve never had any problems making them work. The MCON Lite, then, uses dual-trackpads instead of thumbsticks. That makes it even smaller than the Slim, but I’ve never had great luck using trackpads for analog style inputs. It could be useful for games that need a mouse, though.

So, what makes these modular? Well, aside from giving you more model options and carrying forward the removable kickstand mode from the original MCON, part of what allows these models to be so thin is that they use custom backplates designed for certain phones, whereas the original model used a bulkier solution that fits all phones.

The MCON Slim and MCON Lite are the most conceptual of the devices on this list, but OhSnap assured me that at least one will make its way to market, hopefully this year. Apparently, there are still internal debates about whether the model with trackpads is worth releasing or not.