Coming back to CES after a decade-long break was a trip

Twelve years ago, I could have told you exactly what happened at my first CES and what happened at my third. Each was a chapter with a beginning, middle and end; the lines between them are clearly drawn. But now, 15 years since I attended my first CES, the situation has become much more blurred. I know I missed my flight home at that first show. I know that at first I saw a lot of cameras and then over the years there were fewer and fewer cameras. I know there were team dinners and early meetings, but I can’t tell you what happened or when.

What am I do What I know about my first CES is that I had – and I can’t stress this enough – I have no idea what I was doing. The same thing, to varying degrees, applied to the second, third and fourth CES. I think a colleague lent me a Pentax DSLR camera. I had a work BlackBerry, and I’m pretty sure I wore pretty dresses and impractical shoes to evening events. In the beginning, there was no Uber, and you could spend an hour waiting in line for a taxi at the airport. We stayed at the MGM Grand where there were live lions at the time.

I broke an 11 year streak No going to CES this year, which gave me a rare opportunity. It’s not often in life that we get to take a step back and look at what has become routine with fresh eyes. But that was more or less my assignment at CES 2025. There aren’t a lot of smartphone options for me here, so my job is to just walk around the show floor, find cool things and post them on the site. I took this task very seriously, scheduling very few meetings, loading Edges CMS in my phone’s browser and comfortable shoes for the many miles of walking that lie ahead of me.

The journey begins on the first day in the Western Hall. There’s a Dunkin’ with a fast-moving line, plenty of seating, and electrical outlets built into the booths. None of this matches my memories of decaying seating areas, so small and crowded that I often ate lunch sitting on the floor. Later I realized that it was because this entire hall simply did not exist The last time I was at the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). I tell myself I’ll quickly walk around this place and then go to the Central Hall to see the big kiosks, but then I notice them: Big Tractors.

They are huge, and only a few of them are tractors. The first one I spotted was an autonomous articulated dump truck, a John Deere representative told me. I have no real reason to be here, but it’s damn cool. Forty minutes later, I have photos of myself in front of tractors, a garbage truck, and an electric fire truck. I return to where I started an hour later and head towards the Central Hall in search of robots.

There’s always a thing at CES. I remember the days of watching demos of 3D TVs. This year it’s robots: both hardware and built into software. Robots collecting socks, going up the stairsoffering companionship or just be nice guys. And of course, robots in the form of AI. There is artificial intelligence in everything, from TVs to glasses, whether it has any meaning there or not.

Robots certainly not new to CESbut this culture does seem to be able to do things for us, although the reliability varies. I watched as one adorable little robot suddenly jumped off the table and rushed towards my colleague. “It’s durable,” the robot operator said, picking it up and placing it back on its perch. I don’t think we have anything to fear from the current generation of robots, well, from the point of view of the overlords.

Getting around Las Vegas during the show (the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) says about 140,000 people will attend this year) remains a major hurdle. A decade of transport innovation has failed to improve the situation. I still walk between sites to avoid traffic jams on the streets and in passenger pick-up areas.

At one point, I climb into a Tesla with two other participants and descend into the Vegas Loop. It feels like a short, slightly futuristic Uber ride and saves me the long walk between the West and Central Halls. Cool I guess? But there’s still no good way to get from LVCC to The Venetian, and I’m sitting on a bus that creeps along for 15 minutes through half a dozen traffic light cycles, waiting to make the final left turn before the exhibition stops.

Outside the convention center, I observe how Vegas has changed (and not) over the past decade. Tourists still line the banks of the gondola route through the Venetian as the gondolier’s voice echoes off the Banana Republic storefront in a slightly mournful tone. There are still men standing on the street handing out cards for dubious entertainment and slapping papers to get your attention.

A woman standing at the front desk outside the restaurant exclaims, “Allison! Is that you?” when I’m rushing to a meeting. I’ve fallen for this tactic once or twice in previous years, but now I know enough to remember that she just read the name on my badge and I don’t break stride. In Vegas your attention is drawn to a currency second only to real currency.

There’s one new gadget on the strip that’s impossible to ignore: the Sphere. One of my meetings in a hotel room overlooking the Orb is interrupted so we can watch an animation of what appears to be an alien breaking glass and climbing out. The most important item on my agenda for the second day of the show is Delta’s performance in “The Circle” (that’s Sphere, No That The sphere, the Delta media reminds us). This isn’t the first time it’s been used as a CES site, but this is the first keynote presentation in the space.

And the keynote is a real show. Delta uses the Sphere’s huge internal screen and other experimental effects in every possible way. The plane rolls towards the spectators, and as it turns to taxi, the wind picks up as if from the plane’s engines. A simulated plane lands later and our seats shake, simulating the impact of landing on a runway. At some point, a thick, sweet smell filled the room, which turned out to be coffee with hazelnuts, delivered by an Uber Eats driver on a moped. Tom Brady made an appearance, which I didn’t understand, but overall it promised a spectacle and it delivered.

Towards the end of the presentation, the lights dim and an image of the Earth appears on the screen as a giant floating glass ball spinning in front of a stained glass window. Light appears to be captured and reflected in a three-dimensional object, and although I know I’m looking at an illusion on a flat screen, my brain convinced that there’s a giant floating ball in front of me. Even watching it again in my recorded videos, I can’t believe it’s not there. It’s been 15 years and I think I finally got a great 3D demo at CES.

What struck me most about CES was… show-the meaning of it all. I know it’s a show. We all call it a show. We say things like, “Have a great show!” to each other when we’re here. After years of attending CES, it can feel like an assignment, a series of things to do the length of the Las Vegas Strip that you cross off one by one, one step at a time. But first and foremost it’s a show. There is no acrobatics or stunts, but we are still expected to feel something.

Like a good Strip show, it requires some sleight of hand. Someone behind the scenes controls the “autonomous” robot. A concept car that will never go on sale. The giant glass ball is simply a collection of precisely spaced pixels on a curved screen. Like any other show, it has a beginning, middle and end – whether we remember them or not.

The details of this year’s CES will probably fade over time, like all others, but I’ll remember the experience for much longer. And even for those who’ve seen CES come and go many times, it turns out you can still feel a slight sense of surprise. But I’m not holding my breath for the release of any of these concept cars.

Photo by Allison Johnson/The Verge