CES 2026 and the Shape of the Stack

What Matters When the Demos Fade

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has always been a strange ritual. It lands immediately after the holidays, just as everyone is trying to remember how calendars and Zoom work again. Thousands of people descend on Las Vegas to sprint through ballrooms, squint at demos, and declare the future before their coffee has kicked in. I’ve attended enough times to know that, for me, it’s rarely the best way to understand where things are actually heading.

This year, I skipped it. Instead, I did what I increasingly prefer to do with CES. I watched how others processed it. I listened. I read. I let the noise settle.

Tom Merritt and the Daily Tech News Show team were on the ground and, as usual, did an exceptional job covering the breadth of what was announced. The Verge, Reuters, AP, and several others filled in the rest. Between them, there was more than enough signal to work with once you filtered out the gadgets designed mainly to survive a demo floor.

I think that filtering matters. CES still…