What’s the buzz at CES 2020? Weird TVs, weirder vehicles and more

LAS VEGAS — What’s the buzz this year at CES, the consumer tech industry’s biggest annual showcase? Weird new TVs, even weirder modes of transportation and internet-connected pleasure devices. CES is huge — 2.9 million square feet, to be exact — but it’s no longer where the most influential tech products launch. The tech giants like Apple, Google and Amazon save the real stuff for their own events in the spring and fall. Still, we walk miles of the show floor at CES each year to hunt for emerging ideas, practical new gadgets, adorable robots, and you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it gear. (We’re looking at you, people-moving egg.) A few trends have us excited this year. We’ve not yet run out of ways to measure information about our bodies and health through wearable gadgets. TVs are getting the ability to fix their own darn picture settings, finally. And security and privacy are moving from afterthoughts to headline features and even their own products.

Vertical TV: Samsung Sero

People keep shooting video while holding their phones vertically. That works fine when you’re watching Instagram or TikTok on your phone, but it looks terrible on a horizontally oriented TV. No longer: Samsung’s latest TV rotates to switch between horizontal and vertical orientations. You sync the Sero TV to a Samsung Galaxy phone, and it automatically switches orientation to match what you’re watching. It’ll only work if it’s wall-mounted.

Smartwatch that detects sleep apnea: Withings ScanWatch

Add one more to the list of health concerns that smartwatches can detect: sleep apnea. Withings, a pioneer wearable maker, added to its new ScanWatch an SpO2 sensor that measures oxygen saturation levels and identifies when they’re too low — an indicator of the common sleep condition. (It does this by emitting and absorbing a light wave passing through blood vessels.) The ScanWatch tracks sleep length, depth and quality, and provides a nightly sleep score. It also does other now-common smartwatch things, including activity tracking, heart rate and detecting arrhythmia (AFib). Even better, its battery lasts 30 days.

Temporary tattoo printer: Prinker

Temporary tattoo technology hasn’t changed much in recent years. You can buy them, order custom designs online, or print your own on special paper at home. But a new device called the Prinker makes temporary tattoos mobile for spontaneous people who don’t want to commit to forever ink. The handheld printer can apply cosmetic-grade ink to the skin in black or color just by passing it quickly over the chosen body part once. Images are selected from a companion app, or you can add your own. It can only print graphics up to an inch wide, so a full tattoo sleeve would take a while, but the only limit on the length of a tattoo is the length of your body. While the final product doesn’t smudge or fade much, it does wash off easily with soap and water.

A self-balancing people mover: Segway-Ninebot’s S-Pod

The WALL-E comparisons for Segway-Ninebot’s new people-moving S-Pod are unavoidable, but the company says it was actually inspired by the pods in “Jurassic World.” A cross between a comfortable recliner, a scooter and a giant egg, the new mobility device is designed to move people around non-road locations like malls, airports and (dinosaur-free) theme parks. The self-balancing pod, which goes up to 24 mph, is controlled by a panel and knob system that can be removed from the pod for remote steering. It’s just one of many mobility options announced by transportation companies at CES, which is packed with remote-controlled scooters, electric dirt bikes, and real cars inching closer to full self-driving status.

A sleep trainer: Hatch Restore

This bedside lamp and white noise machine in one promises to help you fall asleep and wake up with more ease. The Restore changes color and brightness to match your personal sleep routine — yellow for wind-down reading time, bright white for waking up — and pairs each stage with calming sounds or even recorded meditation routines. You find and set the right nightly sleep routine for yourself through its companion app. The gadget’s creators, who were also behind a children’s sound machine and night light called Rest, say the Restore’s sounds and colors are based in cognitive behavioral science that finds routines lead to better sleep.

Home privacy helper: Winston

We’re finally getting some help in protecting our privacy. This box that you install between your Wi-Fi router and modem takes evasive maneuvers to reduce the data footprint of all the devices in your house. More than just a virtual privacy network (or VPN), Winston scans the traffic coming and going from your house to block ads, filter tracking cookies, fight website “fingerprinting” and cloak your internet address. There’s an $8.25 monthly service fee, with the first year included with purchase.