My CES Confession: I Accidentally Deleted My Footage, But Still Had a Great Time

I deleted my footage, but still had a great time at CES

I hit the ground running on day one of CES by visiting the ten booths that were part of the Hackster Gadget Giveaway CES scavenger hunt. At the Makera booth I enjoyed seeing the Z1 CNC machine in action; it’s evident why it was recognized with Kickstarter’s “Best of Kickstarter 2026” award. I would love to add such a tool to my workshop in collaboration with my 3D printer.

All throughout the day I had exciting experiences and I filmed a ton of fun videos.

Unfortunately… I can’t show you any of that.

When I got back to my hotel room that night, I deleted ALL of my footage in the most irreversible way possible.

But luckily, after that horrendous first night, I bounced back! You can see my full CES experience here (minus the first day):

Flint Paper Battery

Flint was a standout booth for me. Visually, it was hard to miss, the entire booth was made out of cardboard, but what really caught my attention was the technology behind it: cellulose-based battery chemistry, something I hadn’t been aware of before CES.

I’ll be honest, I’m pretty skeptical of bold marketing claims. Walking the floor, I saw more than a few companies openly peddling what I’d generously describe as vaporware. Flint, however, felt like the exception rather than the rule.

They’re developing batteries using more sustainable, biodegradable, and non-toxic materials, and they’re aiming to launch production units of AA and AAA battery replacements later this year in collaboration with Amazon and Logitech.

While there aren’t widely published, peer-reviewed performance numbers yet, Flint is claiming parity with conventional alkaline batteries across the board. The excitement around their booth made it clear that people are ready for a more sustainable alternative. I’d still love to see independent validation, but for now, I’m cautiously optimistic.

Old school robotics

We’ve all seen the highly polished sizzle reels Boston Dynamics drops every few years: dancing robot dogs and parkour-capable humanoids. CES was no different. Boston Dynamics was showing off the latest version of Atlas, along with Spot the robot dog demonstrating how it integrates into human workflows on a factory floor.

And as impressive as all of that was, I found my attention drifting somewhere else entirely.

Tucked away was a 1990-era 3D biped robot, and it completely stole the show for me. It was a reminder that even the most polished, high-performance robots start as deeply DIY projects: hand-soldered circuit boards, plywood structures, scrap metal, and a whole lot of experimentation.

New design tools

I stopped by the Autodesk booth and got to chat with Jason Lichtman about new developments in Fusion, including intent-driven design, potential AI-assisted tools, and electrical design workflow optimizations such as using the Avnet Add In for Fusion.

I had a great time talking with Jason, and if you want to see our conversation you can watch it here:

Afeela

From boats to planes, drones, and cars, transportation is always a major focus at CES. And if I’m being honest, I’m usually skeptical. Not just about how many of these concepts will actually make it onto the road, but whether they’ll ship with anything close to the promised feature set.

One of the most heavily pushed vehicles this year was Afeela, the collaboration between Sony and Honda. Sony has packed the car with screens, a great sound system, and an integrated PlayStation platform, but with an estimated price tag around $100,000, I’m left wondering… who exactly is this for? At that price point the vehicle's performance specs lag the competition and I’m not sure how big a demand there is for a premium infotainment system.

One of its unique features is a screen embedded directly into the front grille. All I can think about is how absurd future road rage incidents of the future are going to look. Imagine checking your rearview mirror and seeing angry emojis being flashed back at you.

Sony and Honda are promising initial deliveries in California later this year and have already announced Afeela 2, a new concept vehicle targeting production in 2028. Call me jaded, but anytime a company starts hyping the sequel before the first product ships, I start paying closer attention, and not always in a good way

Feel the world with haptic feedback

The most fun I had at CES was easily at the Haply Robotics booth.

I’ve been hearing about haptic feedback devices for years, but I’d never actually experienced one. Trying Haply’s devices felt like stepping into a sports car after spending years riding a bicycle.

Describing haptics is difficult because it’s such a fundamentally physical experience. Haply did a great job showcasing different use cases: interacting with a virtual gel surface, teleoperating a robotic arm while stacking Jenga blocks, playing a game of Operation (and feeling every tiny collision), and even running a bone-grinding demo using real patient scan data.

That last demo was especially immersive. Not only could I feel the surface geometry of the bone, but I could also feel differences in material density as I moved through different regions.

I had an incredible time using Haply’s devices. I’m still not entirely sure how I’d integrate them into my own workflows, but if you ever get the chance to feel the world through a Haply device, I can’t recommend it enough.

Vegas is rigged!

I knew going to Las Vegas for the first time that the house always wins. I just wasn’t expecting to get hustled on the CES show floor.

At the Zhaowei Electronics booth, I played rock-paper-scissors against a robotic hand about a dozen times, and lost every single round. Turns out my luck wasn’t bad. The game was rigged.

Using a camera and image recognition, the robot could detect my hand gesture in milliseconds and update its own move fast enough to beat me consistently. While biased, it was still an impressive demonstration of the hand’s speed and dexterity.

Chatting with the team, I was blown away by the engineering packed into the hand itself: up to 20 actuators, with the control electronics shaped to fit entirely inside the palm. The resistive touch sensors in the fingertips were equally impressive: 96 contact points capable of detecting both touch location and pressure with high precision.

AI in this and that…

… and honestly? I don’t care.

Every year, there’s a new set of buzzwords tech companies latch onto to chase that sweet VC funding. This year, it was physical AI, agentic AI, and edge AI, all being slapped onto everything from AI doorbells to an AI fridge.

AI is undeniably changing the world, and in the right contexts, it’s incredibly powerful. But much of what I saw at CES felt less like meaningful integration and more like marketing padding. Add in vague explanations, questionable data mining practices, and unclear user benefits, and my enthusiasm drops off pretty quickly.

Which brings me to LEGO.

Call me a luddite, but

I’m happy to keep playing with the traditional “dumb” Lego bricks.

LEGO made its CES debut this year with its new SMART Play system. As someone who grew up loving LEGO, I feel conflicted. New products are exciting, but I genuinely don’t know if this will be a hit.

The SMART Play system consists of Smart Bricks, Smart Tags, and Smart Minifigures. The Smart Bricks include embedded lights, speakers, proximity sensors, accelerometers, and more. The Smart Tags and Minifigures tell the Smart Brick what to do. For example, placing a Smart Brick next to a Smart Minifigure R2-D2 causes the brick to squeal with excitement, or attaching a Smart Tag and Brick to a car triggers engine sounds. It’s a novelty for sure, but maybe one that wears thin quickly.

Perhaps my LEGO experience was unusual, but I don’t remember ever really “playing” with assembled sets. I wasn’t running around the living room dogfighting TIE Fighters. For me, LEGO was always about the build, and then the rebuild. I’d follow the instructions once, tear it apart, and start making something entirely my own.

SMART bricks that light up and play sounds are neat, but without deep customization or programmability, they feel more like a novelty than a platform. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up as a short-lived experiment that quietly fades into the background.

Ultimately, though, it won’t be up to me. The kids will decide whether this is a hit or not.

In closing

This was my first time at CES, so everything felt new and flashy. I didn’t have a personal baseline to compare it against, but after talking with plenty of CES veterans, the general sentiment seemed consistent: incremental progress, wrapped in a lot of hype.

Still, buried inside the noise were moments of real curiosity, clever engineering, and genuine inspiration. And despite deleting an entire day of footage, I’d call the experience a win.