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• The SE940 is Adata's first USB 4 portable SSD
• It reaches up to 4GBps on read/write
• Expect far more USB 4 external SSDs to launch in 2025

At CES 2025, Adata introduced a range of new storage products, including the Adata XPG SE940, a portable SSD which marks the first time Adata is using USB 4 technology.

Adata is also tipping the SE940 as the smallest USB 4 external SSD to be commercially available.

It can reach speeds of up to 4,000 MB/s for reading and writing data. This makes it not only the fastest portable SSD in Adata’s line-up but also a contender in the broader external storage market.

New benchmark for portable SSD performance

The SE940 uses a modern single-chip controller from Silicon Motion, which gives stable performance, uses power efficiently, and works smoothly.

It also has a built-in fingerprint reader, and comes with storage options of up to 8 TB, providing plenty of space for big files, multimedia work, or backups.

Adata also announced several other SSDs at CES. The XPG MARS 970 Storm and Blade are Gen 5 M.2 NVMe SSDs (up to 8TB) that offer up to 14 GB/s read and 12 GB/s write speeds.

The company also announced the SR800 and SR820, portable SSDs that offer up to 20GB speeds, USB 3.2 Gen 2 and up to 4TB capacity.

To wrap things up, Adata announced the SDXC SD 8.0 Express memory card which leverages PCIe 3.0 x2 for speeds up to 1600 MB/s reads and 1200 MB/s writes.

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Anyone who’s been following the news from CES 2025 will know that one word (or two letters if we’re being pedantic) dominated the conversation at the year’s biggest tech conference: AI. Artificial intelligence is being shoehorned into everything, from cars to coffee machines – often whether we like it or not.

Even if it’s an area of our lives where artificial intelligence doesn’t feel like a natural fit, tech companies are dead keen on inserting it to better ‘personalize our experiences’ (or make good use of all the data that’s been harvested over the past decade).

That goes double for fitness kit. CES 2025 showcased a lot of AI-powered fitness tools that are set to invade our homes and gyms in 2025 and beyond. The Amazfit Active 2, which we’ll be reviewing for our best cheap smartwatch buying guide, will arrive with voice-activated AI assistant functionality.

The beautiful amp fitness machine and the Gym Monster 2 are home gym setups that use AI to monitor your training and recommend workouts via the kit. Similarly, Therabody, makers of some of the best massage guns, will use data from the best Garmin watches to recommend recovery programs.

(Image credit: Therabody)

This follows emerging trends in fitness and doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. Oura Ring 4 has an Oura Advisor chatbot service in Beta. It's trained on Oura users’ data and can answer basic health and fitness questions or recommend courses of action based on your individual data. PUSH, one of the best fitness apps for strength training, can program workouts for you, as can a slew of others. However, recent data suggests remote personal trainers won't be replaced any time soon.

Garmin, COROS and other manufacturers of the best running watches were doing this a long time ago. They didn't call it AI, just utilizing their algorithms to recommend workouts based on your training plan and recovery scores. So CES 2025’s AI offerings are giving us nothing new, even if companies now use LLMs or Generative AI instead of algorithmic flowchart-style decision-making to achieve the same effect.

Therabody, amp, Amazfit and the rest have just expanded these old functionalities to new devices and services. No one, as far as I can see, is doing anything different or revolutionary in fitness this year. Is this the AI revolution we were waiting for?

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Part of it, I believe, is that unlike computing, content creation, and communication, there’s a limit to what AI can do in a predominantly physical space. You can instead consult a real-life personal trainer, they can write you a program in Microsoft Word, and you can print it off and take it to the gym.

What AI can do is recommend changes to that program and provide expert advice on new exercises – but, as my colleague Stephen Warwick and I found out, using AI to design your workouts is not a perfect process yet. It needs to be combined with a bit of common sense – if you’re feeling ill, tired or sore, dial the training back a bit, and perhaps ask a member of the gym staff for some guidance on new or unfamiliar exercise.

I’m not saying there’s categorically no place for AI in consumer health and fitness devices, of course; people do find it very useful, to say nothing of the applications already prevalent in the healthcare industry. However, I was expecting some more imaginative AI use cases from CES, and as the conference drew to a close, I was left disappointed.

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• 47 percent of Gen Z and 46 percent of Millennials claim to have had passwords hacked in Yubico’s latest annual report
• But they’re also the demographics supposedly most aware of and keen to adopt hardware security keys
• 73 percent of Gen Z are also worried about the rise of AI in cyberattacks

Gen Z and Millennials are just as at risk to password breaches as anyone else, a new report from Yubico has claimed.

Its survey found 47% of Gen Z and 46% of Millennials reporting their social media accounts passwords had been breached at some point, findings which appear to run at odds with 63% of respondents across the 20,000-strong sample size claiming they felt secure about cybersecurity measures in place to protect their personal information.

And yet, the report also reveals 70% of respondents reported being the victim of a cyberattack in the past twelve months, indicative of overconfidence and a lack of cybersecurity education. 40% of respondents claimed they haven’t received any cybersecurity training at work.

Gen Z and Millennial cybersecurity attitudes in the workplace

Things get worse when considering nearly half (49%) of respondents reported being more concerned about their personal data than that of their company or workplace, demonstrating business and enterprise owners can’t view computer and cybersecurity literacy as an innate skill in the youngest generations when considering the resilience of their own digital infrastructure.

It also seems silly to imply that younger generations are more likely to take to and understand the implications of new technologies more easily, when 58% of survey respondents reported their concern about AI’s continued “sophisticated” role in cyberattacks.

Yubico’s view on authentication methods

The primary purpose of the report appears to be to advocate for alternative authentication methods in the workplace, with just 21% of workers reporting that they use a mobile authenticator app. Yubico’s report does note workers may have valid reasons for not using this method, such as not wanting to use a personal smartphone for work or simply not having one

To this end, Yubico advocates for passwordless MFA solutions such as software-based passkeys (seeing widespread support in the tech industry), plus physical security keys.

“In addition to being highly secure, passkeys greatly simplify the user experience," noted Derek Hanson, Yubico’s VP of Standards and Alliances.

“By removing the need for users to remember complex passwords, it reduces the friction associated with logging in and eliminates the frustration of forgotten passwords. This can lead to increased user satisfaction and productivity, especially in enterprise environments where employees often juggle multiple accounts and passwords.”

“When we look at today’s options for passkeys, those that are device-bound on security keys provide the highest level of phishing-resistance and meet the strictest security standards.”

The report concludes by suggesting, “embracing emerging [technology] like hardware security keys and passkeys will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in safeguarding our digital identities and securing the systems and services we rely on every day”, a utopian notion that’s nicely bookended by the reveal that 39% of respondents believe that a standard username and password combination is the most secure authentication available.

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(Image credit: Emil Stach)

(Image credit: Future)

The TechRadar team was on the ground at CES 2025: you can check out our main CES 2025 news hub for the highlights or catch up with every CES 2025 story. We saw everything from 8K TVs and foldable displays, to new phones, laptops, smart home gadgets, and the latest in AI.

And don’t forget to follow us on TikTok and WhatsApp for all the highlights from the CES show floor!

Part of the appeal of the CES show every year is that we get to see some pretty unusual and out-of-the-box products, alongside the regular slew of TVs, laptops, speakers, and standard electronics. And CES 2025 certainly didn't disappoint when it came to launches and unveilings that were a little out of the ordinary.

Here, we've collected together the most eyebrow-raising sights we came across on the CES 2025 floor in Las Vegas. We've got cute little robots, weird-looking face masks, systems to project makeup on to your face, and more besides.

While you might not want to get in line to buy all (or any) of these various products, they're definitely worth a look if you're interested in tech. They also all provide evidence that tech companies are still capable of innovating and surprising us, even if the best iPhones have looked very much the same for the past decide or so.

1. Mirumi robot

Here's looking at you (Image credit: Yukai Engineering)

Tiny robots are nothing new to us here at at TechRadar, but you don't often see cuddly ones designed to latch on to your bag, which is what we have with the Mirumi robot from Yukai Engineering. It might just be the strangest thing we saw at CES 2025, even though it's been a particularly strong weird tech field this year.

The robot has just one party trick really, which is to steal glances at passing people, thanks to the motion sensors built inside it. The idea is – we think – that it's a bit like having a little toddler or a pet to carry around with you, something that's a curious companion rather than anything that offers any functionality.

2. Electric Salt Spoon @techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

Too much salt is bad for you, if you didn't know, but the taste and tang that salt adds to food makes it hard to cut down on it or do without it entirely. Enter the Electric Salt Spoon: a device currently only on sale in Japan, which has a clever way of making your food taste saltier without any extra condiments.

What it does is group together the sodium ions in whatever you're eating, so they're more concentrated on the spoon. That makes the food taste saltier, even if there's no extra salt on it – and while we haven't been able to test out the smart piece of cutlery for ourselves, we're definitely impressed by the idea.

3. Willo AutoFlo Plus @techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

Anything that encourages kids to brush their teeth more often and for longer has to be good, and that's what the Willo AutoFlo Plus has been made to do: it automates as much of the tooth-brushing process as possible, piping through the toothpaste and adding some movement to help get teeth clean and shiny.

The device even takes care of the rinsing for you, so that's something else you don't have to worry about, while the accompanying app keeps track of teeth-brushing habits. Pricing starts at $249 (about £200 / AU$400), and you get a choice of brush sizes and toothpaste flavors when you place your order.

4. Wonder Blocks and Petal @techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

Bug watchers can take their hobby to a whole new level with the Wonder Blocks and the Petal camera. It's a high-tech system that attracts bugs, butterflies and bees, and lets you monitor them from an app on your phone – there's even built-in AI that'll identify the small creatures you're looking at on the units.

It's a modular system, so you can combine blocks and cameras as you need to fit whatever space you've got (and you can of course add on your own foliage and other extras). The Petal camera, which looks like a flower, has a solar panel attached too, which cuts down on the number of recharges required.

5. Kosé Mixed Reality Makeup @techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

Imagine being able to see how your makeup might look before you actually apply it: that's the promise of a new Mixed Reality Makeup system from Kosé, which uses high-speed projection mapping to paint your face virtually, and lets you try out a whole host of styles to see which ones you like the look of most.

The tech is doing more than just projecting an image – it's actually looking at and measuring the contours of the face it's working with in real time, to create a realistic effect with no actual makeup required. For now, it's not available outside of Japan, but we're hoping it comes to international markets before too long.

6. Nanoleaf LED Light Therapy Face Mask

A fashionable look (Image credit: Nanoleaf)

This isn't a gadget you'd really want to wear out in public, but the Nanoleaf LED Light Therapy Face Mask can apparently do wonders for your complexion. As you might have figured out by the name and the image above, it uses light (both red and near-infrared) to rejuvenate your skin and treat a variety of conditions.

There are actually seven different skin conditions the mask is designed to tackle, and you can switch between them as needed – the device has FDA regulatory approval in the US, adding credibility to its claims around skin healing and wellness. It'll cost you $149.99 in the US – that's about £120 / AU$240, though at the moment we don't have any official word on global pricing and availability.

7. Nékojita FuFu

Keep your drinks and food cool (Image credit: Yukai Engineering)

From the same Yukai Engineering company that brought us the Mirumi robot (see above), we have the Nékojita FuFu. This little bot is designed to sit at the side of your cup, bowl, or plate, and then gently blow on whatever you're drinking and eating, so it cools down more quickly to let you comfortably consume it.

There's a little bit more tech involved here than you might imagine, including seven different blowing modes that are cycled through at random (to make the bot seem a little more natural and spontaneous). Like the look of it? There's going to be a crowdfunding campaign to make this little robot an actual product.

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Nobody really expected Nvidia to release something like the GB10. After all, why would a tech company that transformed itself into the most valuable firm ever by selling parts that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, suddenly decide to sell an entire system for a fraction of the price?

I believe that Nvidia wants to revolutionize computing the way IBM did it almost 45 years ago with the original IBM PC.

It may be time to introduce Jensen’s law to complement Moore’s law: At equal AI performance, it takes about 100 months to cut the price per FLOP by 25.

D. Athow

Project DIGITS, as a reminder, is a fully formed, off-the-shelf super computer built into something the size of a mini PC. It is essentially a smaller version of the DGX-1, the first of its kind launched almost a decade ago, back in April 2016. Then, it sold for $129,000 with a 16-core Intel Xeon CPU and eight P100 GPGPU cards; Digits costs $3,000.

Nvidia confirmed it has an AI performance of 1,000 Teraflops at FP4 precision (dense/sparse?). Although there’s no direct comparison, one can estimate that the diminutive super computer has roughly half the processing power of a fully loaded 8-card Pascal-based DGX-1.

At the heart of Digits is the GB10 SoC, which has 20 Arm Cores (10 Arm Cortex-X925 and 10 Cortex-A725). Other than the confirmed presence of a Blackwell GPU (a lite version of the B100), one can only infer the power consumption (100W) and the bandwidth (825GB/s according to The Register).

You should be able to connect two of these devices (but not more) via Nvidia’s proprietary ConnectX technology to tackle larger LLMs such as Meta's Llama 3.1 405B. Shoving these tiny mini PCs in a 42U rack seems to be a near impossibility for now as it would encroach on Nvidia’s far more lucrative DGX GB200 systems.

All about the moat

Why did Nvidia embark on Project DIGITS? I think it is all about reinforcing its moat. Making your products so sticky that it becomes near impossible to move to the competition is something that worked very well for others: Microsoft and Windows, Google and Gmail, Apple and the iPhone.

The same happened with Nvidia and CUDA - being in the driving seat allowed Nvidia to do things such as shuffling the goal posts and wrongfooting the competition.

The move to FP4 for inference allowed Nvidia to deliver impressive benchmark claims such as “Blackwell delivers 2.5x its predecessor’s performance in FP8 for training, per chip, and 5x with FP4 for inference”. Of course, AMD doesn’t offer FP4 computation in the MI300X/325X series and we will have to wait till later this year for it to roll out in the Instinct MI350X/355X.

Nvidia is therefore laying the ground for future incursions, for lack of a better word or analogy, from existing and future competitors, including its own customers (think Microsoft and Google). Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s ambition is clear; he wants to expand the company’s domination beyond the realm of the hyperscalers.

“AI will be mainstream in every application for every industry. With Project DIGITS, the Grace Blackwell Superchip comes to millions of developers, placing an AI supercomputer on the desks of every data scientist, AI researcher and student empowers them to engage and shape the age of AI,” Huang recently commented.

Short of renaming Nvidia as Nvid-ai, this is as close as it gets to Huang acknowledging his ambitions to make his company’s name synonymous with AI, just like Tarmac and Hoover before them (albeit in more niche verticals).

(Image credit: Storagereview.com) Why Mediatek?

I was also, like many, perplexed by the Mediatek link and the rationale for this tie-up can be found in the Mediatek press release. The Taiwanese company “brings its design expertise in Arm-based SoC performance and power efficiency to [a] groundbreaking device for AI researchers and developers” it noted.

The partnership, I believe, benefits Mediatek more than Nvidia and in the short run, I can see Nvidia quietly going solo. Reuters reported Huang dismissed the idea of Nvidia going after AMD and Intel, saying, “Now they [Mediatek] could provide that to us, and they could keep that for themselves and serve the market. And so it was a great win-win”.

This doesn’t mean Nvidia will not deliver more mainstream products though, just they would be aimed at businesses and professionals, not consumers where cut throat competition makes things more challenging (and margins wafer thin).

Reuters article quotes Huang saying, "We're going to make that a mainstream product, we'll support it with all the things that we do to support professional and high-quality software, and the PC (manufacturers) will make it available to end users."

Gazing in my crystal ball

One theory I came across while researching this feature is that more data scientists are embracing Apple’s Mac platform because it offers a balanced approach. Good enough performance - thanks to its unified memory architecture - at a ‘reasonable’ price. The Mac Studio with 128GB unified memory and 4TB SSD currently retails for $5,799.

So where does Nvidia go from there? An obvious move would be to integrate the memory on the SoC, similar to what Apple has done with its M series SoC (and AMD with its HBM-fuelled Epyc). This would not only save on costs but would improve performance, something that its bigger sibling, the GB200 already does.

Then it will depend on whether Nvidia wants to offer more at the same price or the same performance at a lower price point (or a bit of both). Nvidia could go Intel’s way and use the GB10 as a prototype to encourage other key partners (PNY, Gigabyte, Asus) to launch similar projects (Intel did that with the Next Unit of Computing or NUC).

I am also particularly interested to know what will happen to the Jetson Orin family; the NX 16GB version was upgraded just a few weeks ago to offer 157 TOPS in INT8 performance. This platform is destined to fulfill more DIY/edge use cases rather than pure training/inference tasks but I can’t help but think about “What If” scenarios.

Nvidia is clearly disrupting itself before others attempt to do so; the question is how far will it go.

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A new year always brings with it a slew of new devices to get excited about – and it all starts at CES.

The annual show in Las Vegas is a festival of technology, with everything from new TVs to laptops to weird and wacky robots on display – and we've rounded up the best of it below.

But that's not been the only source of news this week, and outside of CES we got more rumors around the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S25 phones (arriving in January) and the Nintendo Switch 2 console (due sometime this year) – so in terms of tech leaks, 2025 is starting much as the previous year ended.

7. We failed to find any faults with the OnePlus 13

The OnePlus 13 is a genuinely impressive piece of kit (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

The OnePlus 13 went global this week, which means those of us outside China can get our hands on it – and judging by the official TechRadar review from US Mobiles Editor Philip Berne, it's a fantastic flagship. Try as he might, he couldn't find anything to complain about, though there's lots to talk about in terms of positives.

It's described as "beautiful to hold", "pleasing to use", and the most powerful phone you can currently buy (until the next Samsung Unpacked, at least). Find out how the phone ranks in all the key areas that matter, from the quality of the screen and the photos it takes, to the battery life and the on-board Android software, in our review below.

• Read more: OnePlus 13 review: I'm dumbfounded, I can't find anything wrong with this phone

6. We reviewed the first six episodes of Severance season 2

Are you ready for more Severance? (Image credit: Apple TV Plus)

Another big review that went live on TechRadar this week was our take on the first six epsiodes of Severance season 2, and this time it was Senior Entertainment Reporter Tom Power doing the reviewing. In short: this new season is likely to be a hit with existing Severance fans, as well as winning the show some new ones.

If you don't mind some light spoilers about how the first six episodes progress, read on to find out why Tom called this second season "a terrific and coherently written sophomore season that's packed with melodrama, sci-fi sensibilities, black comedy, and enough mysteries to keep Sherlock Holmes busy for years to come."

• Read more: Severance season 2 review: Apple TV Plus' superb mystery thriller gets back to work with a bigger, bolder, and more brilliantly bizarre entry

5. We saw more Nintendo Switch 2 leaks

The Nintendo Switch is due a successor (Image credit: Shutterstock/Kyli Petersen)

Judging by the number of rumors we're now seeing, it can't be too long before the Nintendo Switch 2 is made official, and we had another flurry of leaks this week.

One leak actually gave us a mockup of the expected Switch design: it looks like it'll be new but familiar, with a larger screen than the current series of consoles.

Nintendo has actually stepped in to comment, so steady have the leaks and rumors been. It described the aforementioned mockup as "unofficial", so make of that what you will. It looks as though the updated console might see the light of day within the next couple of months, when all will finally be revealed.

• Read more: Nintendo has finally commented on the Switch 2 leaks, but it's only left me with more questions

4. Samsung Unpacked got its official date

What's in store at the next Unpacked? (Image credit: Google / Future / Samsung)

Samsung has confirmed that it's holding another Unpacked product launch event on Wednesday, January 22, but we don't know too much more than that in terms of specifics – well, not officially. The rumors and leaks around this event have been non-stop, however, so we've made some educated guesses about what's coming.

In short, the Samsung Galaxy S25 series will be leading the new gadget charge – there might be as many as four of them this time around – but we could also see news about Samsung's virtual reality headset and a successor to the Galaxy Ring that launched last year. Whatever happens, TechRadar will be there to cover all the news for you.

• Read more: 5 things to expect at Samsung Galaxy Unpacked, from the Galaxy S25 Ultra to Project Moohan

3. Nvidia unveiled the RTX 5000 series

The RTX 5090 leads the way with Nvidia's new GPUs (Image credit: Nvidia)

One of the biggest announcements at CES was the reveal of the long-awaited RTX 5000 series from Nvidia, led by the high-end Nvidia RTX 5090. These GPUs look like substantial upgrades over their respective predecessors, and as well as the levels of performance on offer, we're also excited about support for smaller cases.

Laptop and PC makers wasted no time in unveiling new machines with RTX 5000 series components inside them, and we heard about models from Acer, Asus, Razer and others. There was also the first laptop we've seen with a rollable screen from Lenovo, giving users instant access to a larger display at the push of a button.

Read more: Nvidia unveils new GeForce RTX 5090, RTX 5080, RTX 5070 Ti, and RTX 5070 graphics cards at CES 2025

2. We saw TVs get bigger and bigger

Hisense unveiled a TV measuring 163 inches corner to corner (Image credit: Future)

CES is always packed with TVs, and this year was no different, giving us a preview of the televisions that'll be rolling out across 2025. Some TV makers went all in on the 100-inch-plus end of the spectrum, with Hisense going all the way up to 163 inches – though these giant sets are going to cost you a pretty penny.

If you're in the market for a new television this year, then you'd be able to shop TV tech that's better than ever: some of the key TV innovations we saw at CES 2025 included variations on RGB backlighting, upgrades to wireless connection boxes, and improvements in OLED tech that mean brighter pictures with better color.

• Read more: Big-screen TVs are everywhere at CES 2025, but I doubt they'll replace projectors anytime soon

1. We chose our favorite gadgets from CES 2025

It was another very busy CES (Image credit: Future)

There was an awful lot on show at CES 2025, but the TechRadar team did its very best to get hands on time with as many gadgets and gizmos as possible during the course of the week (see our TikTok feed for details). Now the Las Vegas dust is beginning to settle, we've picked out our favorite 25 gadgets from the expo.

The range of new tech products here gives you some idea of just how busy CES was: we've got gaming consoles, TVs, wireless earbuds, turntables, laptops, phone chargers, augmented reality glasses, AI-powered gym equipment, and more besides. We also came across some rather weird and wacky robots this week.

All told it was a dizzying and dazzling showcase of what the next year will have to offer us – and based on this, there's plenty to look forward to.

• Read more: The 25 best gadgets we saw at CES 2025, from next-gen TVs to better portable gaming to a smart grill

As one of TechRadar's Homes Editors, I've been following the robot vacuum market closely for some time now. While I'm enthusiastic about efficient home cleaning, it's rare I'll get wind of any robovac news that will make me do a double-take at the press release. Today's best robot vacuums are very impressive but rarely exciting.

As CES 2025 – the world's largest consumer tech event – approached, I was expecting more of the same: robot vacuums that are more capable, efficient and intelligent than their predecessors, but nothing overly dramatic. I was wrong. The robovac brands are going truly off-piste this year, and I am here for it.

It started with a call about a robot vacuum with a giant mechanical pincer arm attached, and it just escalated from there. Next thing I knew, I was hearing about a bot that could hoist itself up on stilts to climb over doorways. Then there was a robot vacuum that wasn't content with cleaning your floors, it also wanted to be able to deliver your granny a sandwich. Whether these innovations will turn out to be useful remains to be seen, but they're certainly interesting.

Now CES has wrapped up for another year, here's my pick of the most weird and wonderful robot vacuum innovations to debut at this year's event.

1. Bionic arms

Roborock launched three new robot vacuums at CES 2025, but by far the most eye-catching was the Saros Z70. And that's because it has a big mechanical pincer arm. This arm remains hidden beneath a mysterious hatch on the top of the bot until called upon, whereby it emerges to do its owner's bidding. I got an early, pre-CES preview, and it was pretty mesmerizing.

The Saros Z70 can tidy up before it vacuums (Image credit: Future)

At this point, the main function of the arm is to tidy away your mess. For example, you can instruct it to pick up anything it identifies as a sock and deposit it next to the laundry basket. This leaves the floor clearer for more effective vacuuming.

Perhaps more exciting is that this isn't a technology of the far-flung future – last I heard, the Saros Z70 was due to go on sale in the first half of this year. Moving forward, Roborock seems enthusiastic about adding further functionality too – it's working on training the arm to play with your cat, for instance.

Dreame is also experimenting with robotic arm technology (Image credit: Dreame)

While Roborock is furthest along in its journey, it's not the only brand that's experimenting with handy robots. Dreame used CES to demo a robot vacuum with a 'Bionic Multi-Joint Robotic Arm'. Unlike Roborock's efforts, this arm can pivot in various directions, theoretically enabling it to operate in tighter spaces.

On the SwitchBot event homepage, there's a video showing a bot with two arms ending in human-looking molded hands. However, these aren't addressed anywhere else, so I'm assuming the idea is still in the early development stage.

Read the full story: Roborock’s new robovac has a mechanical arm that can pick up your socks and maybe also play with your cat

2. Robovacs that can also be fans, air purifiers, security cams...

Many of today's top robovacs can mop as well as vacuum. But what if that's not enough? What if you want your robovac to keep you cool, or hold up a tablet while you make a video call? What if you want it to deliver a sandwich to your grandma? These are issues SwitchBot thinks are plaguing the general public right now, and it's come up with a solution.

This bot docks under a wheeled platform, where other appliances can be mounted (Image credit: SwitchBot)

On its own, the SwitchBot K20+ Pro looks like a regular, albeit pint-sized, robot vacuum. However, dock it under the so-called 'FusionPlatform' and a whole world of possibilities opens up. SwitchBot has designed a range of attachments that fit onto this wheeled mounting platform, at which point the robovac essentially serves to drive these around.

So, you could pop a tray on top and use it to deliver things to others in your household, or you could mount a phone or tablet and turn it into a mobile tripod. It's also compatible with a fan, air purifier and security camera. That's about it for the current offerings, but SwitchBot seems keen that you experiment further, highlighting that it can be integrated with custom-made attachments, 3D-printed components, and third-party devices.

Read the full story: This robot vacuum can also bring you a sandwich

3. Tiny little robot legs

Robovacs are getting ever more capable, but they have always had one ultimate nemesis: stairs. Like The Doctor's greatest foe, robot vacuums have remained cruelly bound to a single floor only. But Dreame is going to change that. Maybe.

The new Dreame X50 Ultra Complete has tiny little feet that it can use to hoist itself up over steps. To be clear, it's steps rather than stairs – it can climb over obstacles up to 4.2cm in a single bound, or 6cm tall in two. Even though it won't be climbing the Eiffel Tower any time soon, it's still a big step up (pun intended) for anyone with a taller-than-usual threshold between rooms.

The Dreame X50 Ultra Complete has tiny legs to hoist it over steps (Image credit: Dreame)

Bots with feet feel like the logical conclusion in the growing trend for robovac brands trying to figure out more effective ways of dealing with uneven floors. Back in September, Roborock released a robovac with quadbike-like suspension, and Shark has one that'll kind of twerk itself over thresholds – but Dreame's approach looks especially promising.

Read the full story: Eat your heart out Daleks – Dreame's newest robovac can climb stairs

4. Pop-up navigation pucks

Most leading robot vacuums have a raised central puck, which plays a key role in navigation, offering the bot a more complete view of its surroundings. That's great, but the downside is that it also adds height, which means the robot might not be able to venture under low-lying furniture, where dust can quickly collect.

Roborock has found a way to solve this issue in its new Saros 10R (an armless sister model to the Saros Z70 I discussed above). This robovac has a navigation puck that pops up and down like a periscope. That means it can still use the brand's tried-and-tested LDS system for mapping, without limiting where it can clean.

The Roborock's Saros 10's central puck pops up and down like a periscope (Image credit: Roborock)

The LDS puck has an extra ToF (time-of-flight) sensor that points upwards to detect vertical distance. When the robot senses it's entering a reduced-height area, the puck will retract, automatically emerging again when the surroundings allow. It also features a wide-angle vision module designed to offer improved mapping, meaning the bot is less likely to lose its way when its puck is down.

With the puck down, the 10R is just under 8cm in height. That's impressively shallow for a robot vacuum, and short enough that it'll be able to boldly go into the dusty depths beneath most people's sofas.

Read the full story: Roborock's new robovacs are determined to get under your sofa – here's how

5. Moonwalking carpet cleaners

Robot vacuums tend to have less suction power than manual vacs, which means they can struggle to pull dust from carpets – especially if they're of the deep pile variety.

Narwal has come up with a couple of ways to tackle this issue and added them to its soon-to-be-released Narwal Flow robot vacuum. Upon encountering carpet, the Flow will start in the usual way: driving forward and vacuuming. Then, things get a little more jazzy, with the bot backing up, Billie Jean-style, along the same section of floor. As well as tackling the ingrained dirt and hair from the opposite direction, this motion should also help lift the carpet fibers and release anything trapped deeper down. I haven't seen this approach anywhere else, and it seems to make particular sense for thick carpets.

It's not the only carpet-focused feature to grace the Flow. Finding itself on carpet, a cover next to the brushroll will descend, creating a slight vacuum (in the non-appliance sense of the word) in the area, and enhancing suction.

Read the full story: Narwal’s new robovac will moonwalk your floors to get even the thickest carpets clean

6. Bots with super-vision

Robot vacuums are getting ever more intelligent when it comes to correctly identifying objects they encounter, and responding appropriately. This is important because it means if the bot encounters, say a sofa leg, it knows to vacuum as close up to it as possible, but if comes across your sleeping cat, it will give it a wide berth rather than trying its best to suck it up.

The Eureka J15 Max Ultra takes things one step further because it can see things that are invisible. Or at least transparent.

The Eureka J15 Max Ultra can see liquid spillages, even if they're transparent (Image credit: Eureka)

Previous robot vacuums from this company used something called 'IntelliView AI' to intelligently tackle wet cleaning tasks. When met with spilled coffee, the bot would rotate, raise its roller brush to keep it dry, and prioritize mop cleaning to clear the liquid. The only problem came if you spilled a clear liquid because the ambient light could confuse the robot's vision sensors.

However, the new IntelliView AI 2.0 is designed to recognize even transparent liquid spills. It creates two types of views – one using an infrared vision system and another an FHD vision sensor – simultaneously and in real-time. It uses these images to generate a high-definition image of the area, which isn't as affected by lighting variations. The bot then uses AI to identify subtle differences in surface texture and reflections, thus highlighting any liquids, including clear ones. It then knows to respond appropriately and clear the spillage.

Read the full story: This new robot vacuum-and-mop is so eagle-eyed it can even spy clear liquid spillages

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• Adobe will eliminate its cheaper 20GB storage tier for Creative Cloud
• Move takes effect on January 15, 2025
• This is aimed at encouraging users to migrate to costlier yearly subscriptions

The 20GB Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan is designed for hobbyist and professional photo editors, offering low-cost access to the industry-standard tools Photoshop and Lightroom.

However, as of January 15, 2025, Adobe is phasing out this popular plan - and as per our previous report, existing users will still be able to retain their subscriptions, albeit at a higher cost.

In the US, the 20GB plan will rise from $9.99 to $14.99 monthly for users already subscribed to it; a 50% increase. The 1TB plan for both Photoshop and Lightroom remains unchanged at $19.99 monthly. The 1TB Lightroom-only plan increases from $9.99 to $11.99 monthly, a 20% hike.

Big (cost increases) in Japan

Recent reports from Japan (originally published in Japanese) reveal the 20GB Photography & Lightroom plan will get a similar treatment there.

Currently priced at 1,180 yen per month, the monthly plan will increase to 1,780 yen upon renewal after January 15, 2025.

As in the US, any user who does not subscribe to the 20GB plan before January 15 will no longer be able to do so.

The report also claimed the annual lump-sum payment option, costing 14,080 yen (equivalent to approximately 1,173 yen per month), will remain available and unaffected by the price hike.

Additionally, Adobe will provide a pro-rata refund for any remaining period on the monthly plan for those transitioning to the annual option.

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• Orico's MiniTower turns your Mac Mini M4 into a hybrid NAS
• HDD, SSD, SD 3.0 and USB 3.2 slots and ports for data capacity
• Also includes RAID 0 and 1 support for data backups

The ORICO MiniTower is a new hybrid storage solution designed for Mac Mini M4 users, essentially turning one into a NAS device.

Clad in brushed aluminum with a silver finish, the MiniTower appears sleek and polished with a minimalist ORICO logo on the top lid.

It supports up to 48TB in HDD space, plus a single 8TB SSD, alongside 10Gbps USB 3.2 and SD 3.0 ports to extend storage capacity.

Orico MiniTower for Mac Minis

The MiniTower, set to retail for $139.99, is designed to accommodate both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives, with accessible slots beneath its detachable top cover.

This device features a high-speed SSD zone with dual-protocol M.2 SSDs for smooth editing and fast software loading.

This hybrid approach allows for the separation of frequently accessed "hot" data and long-term "cold" data, reducing wear on hard drives while benefiting from the fast read and write speeds of SSDs.

For backups, the device supports flexible RAID configurations, including RAID 0 and RAID 1, or a standard non-RAID setup for those preferring straightforward storage management.

The MiniTower gives the Mac Mini several new ports. At the front, the device includes an SD 3.0 slot, two USB-A ports for peripherals like keyboards and mice, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The rear adds an RJ45 Ethernet port and a USB 3.2 10Gbps for high-speed data transfer, plus a dedicated power input.

Underneath is a built-in silent fan, complemented by strategically placed vents, including a rear vertical vent and bottom ventilation, ensuring consistent heat dissipation.

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• We've listed the best laptop docks for MacBook Air
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• Key Nvidia partner unveils a tiny mini PC build for AI that has a unique feature: 3D-printed designs

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 11.

If you have skin that gets extra dry or sensitive in cold temperatures, these are the best winter skin care products.

Here are some hints — and the answers — for Connections: Sports Edition No. 110 for Jan. 11.