Our experts will be in Las Vegas to see what’s in store for the world of PCs, components, wearables, smart home, and more in 2026. Spoiler: They’re all going to have AI inside.
It’s that time again. PCMag is headed to Las Vegas for CES 2026 this weekend to bring you all the details on what the major consumer electronics companies have in store for the year.
Expect announcements from PC and component makers, as well as news about smart home and wearable innovations. Mobile news is usually reserved for MWC in March, but there could be a few new phones and tablets on the CES show floor, too.
In Vegas, PCMag will be collaborating with our sibling sites—CNET, Mashable, ZDNET, Everyday Health, IGN, and Lifehacker—to pick the Best of CES. We’ll announce the finalists in 23 categories on Wednesday, Jan. 7, at 8 a.m. PST ahead of a 4 p.m. Best of CES Awards show hosted by PCMag Mobile Editor Iyaz Aktar and CNET Editor at Large Bridget Carey.
Until then, look back at PCMag’s picks for the Best of CES 2025 and where they are now. And then check out what our experts expect to see on the ground at CES 2026.Artificial Intelligence
At CES 2026, artificial intelligence will be hard to escape; expect companies to weave it into anything they can. (We’ve already seen it pop up in portable projectors, next-gen TVs, and more.) AI-ready hardware will be in every PC as AI PCs continue to evolve, and we expect the major chip makers to also make announcements for AI infrastructure, with new hardware from data centers to edge devices. But AI hardware could show up in other ways, with dedicated gadgets that you can carry or wear, and that take your favorite AI assistants everywhere you want to go. Whether any of them will be any good is the bigger question, but we expect to see several companies vying to be that breakthrough device. Ruben Circelli and Brian WestoverLaptops
For starters, expect a wholesale rush of refreshed versions of the laptops we know and love. Why? In the fall, we were briefed on Intel’s upcoming “Panther Lake” Core Ultra laptop processors, as well as Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X2 Elite line. We’d fully expect the usual system-maker suspects to roll out their latest hits—existing designs and new ones in consumer and business laptops—built around those new chips. If AMD follows suit with a third 2026 laptop-CPU entrant—a follow-on to its powerful Ryzen AI 300 family of 2024, which would seem due—that would complete the CPU trifecta.
Effective, muscular neural processing units (NPUs) are now a part of—or will soon be part of—almost all new mainstream laptop chips. With Panther Lake, Snapdragon X2, and the existing Ryzen AI 300, dedicated AI processing adequate for Microsoft Copilot and emerging AI background tasks will be showing up en masse in most new machines in early 2026, with the possible exception of gaming laptops and mobile workstations. (Intel, at least, has not shown its hand yet with CPUs featuring bulked-up NPUs, suited for those kinds of systems.) But soon, on the whole, the emerging “AI PC” of the last few years will be just “the PC” once again; AI processing will be a given. And the AI software ecosystem should keep evolving and improving.
The one thing we don’t expect intense action on? Gaming laptops. The Panther Lake and Snapdragon X2 chips detailed so far are more focused on efficiency and everyday content creation/productivity than on powering brutish gaming rigs. But if AMD throws a chip curveball, or Intel is holding an HX-grade CPU surprise in its back pocket, we could be wrong. —John BurekDesktops and PC Components
CES in 2025 was all about new hardware, with AMD, Intel, and Nvidia announcing new, cutting-edge graphics cards and processors with a key focus on AI prowess. We’d like to see the same at CES 2026, but we don’t see much new core desktop silicon on the immediate horizon.
On the CPU front, AMD and Intel could both push out limited refreshes of their desktop processor lines. (We’ve heard rumors of a desktop “Arrow Lake Refresh” for a while, for one thing.) If either company does so, these new products will likely be based on the same silicon as last year (Intel “Arrow Lake” Core 200S Series, AMD Ryzen 9000) with refinements or mild upticks.
What that means: We could see some new processors that are more or less the same as those currently on the market, but with subtle increases to clock speed to boost performance. AMD and Intel tend to launch something new each year, usually around the same time as the previous year. For now, expect only minor updates. Larger launches are more likely later in 2026.
The graphics card industry, meanwhile, has seen some turbulence lately due to the cost skyrocketing for all kinds of memory. This could upend any plans that AMD (Radeon), Intel (Arc), or Nvidia (GeForce) have to release new graphics cards in the near future. Persistent rumors have circulated about Nvidia releasing a new GeForce RTX Super line of its RTX 50-series graphics cards (similar to earlier generations of Super card), as well as rumors of Intel introducing a new Arc graphics card.
