9 gadgets I saw at the biggest tech show of the year that you might actually want

It’s still a dream to type on, it can still bend backwards to become a mini TV, and you can still get it with an OLED panel, giving it what is arguably the most gorgeous notebook screen in existence.

Now, it’s got the latest Intel Core chips, what should be a more precise trackpad, LTE support, all the ports you could want (save an SD card slot), and a truckload of configuration options, including options for a fingerprint scanner, IR camera, NFC, and plenty more power. It even has an Ethernet port! And it all comes in a design that’s neither thick nor heavy.

We’ll have to test it for ourselves to be sure, and the whole thing will cost more than $1,500 either way, but based on past experiences the X1 Yoga should be a wonderful mix of portability and productivity.

LG calls this the “Wallpaper TV” — and given that it measures just 2.6 millimeters thick, the nickname fits. LG has put out beautiful OLED TVs for the past few years, so there’s little reason to think this 4K HDR set will be any different.

It’s going to be obscenely expensive, though — likely five figures — and it can only be mounted to a wall. Fortunately, CES 2017 was the show where OLED TVs started to signify they’re here to stay: Sony’s new Bravia A-Series OLEDs, Samsung’s QLEDs, and LG’s standard OLEDs all looked wonderful as well.

And if you can’t afford to drop thousands on the best of the best, TCL’s newest P series of Roku TVs start at $500 and promise better picture quality, 4K HDR support, and the same nifty Roku interface.

While the Rokus, Chromecasts, and Fire TVs of the world get more attention, Nvidia’s Shield TV has spent the past two years as a powerhouse at the top of the media streamer market.

Now, it's been updated with a smaller design, a better game controller (which you can use to play games with Nvidia’s limited but quietly improving GeForce Now service), and Google Assistant support, which lets you control smart home appliances as if it was a Google Home speaker. There’s 4K and HDR10 support, too (just no Dolby Vision).

You’ll still have to deal with Android TV’s shortcomings, but given that the Shield will support Amazon Video, one of its biggest gaps has been filled. At $200, it’ll likely be overkill for most, but it’s taking the “all-in-one” idea more seriously than any of its peers.

We’ve told you about these things before — to sum, the Here One are a pair of truly wireless earphones that can also manipulate the sounds of the world around you. With a few taps and swipes in its app, you can activate noise-cancelling, layer streaming audio over the real world, or even make it so you can hear what’s happening in one direction more clearly than others.

I was able to try a finalized design of the Here One at CES, and suffice it to say they shouldn’t garner as many stares as the AirPods. They fit comfortably and sounded pretty solid as well — though, at $300, they'd better.

We’ll still have to test their Bluetooth quality and battery life — the two things that have held almost all of these things up thus far — but if everything holds, the Here One could kick off the “hearable” onslaught in earnest.

Here’s a fun one. The Sevenhugs Smart Remote is a universal remote for the Internet of Things. You pair it with your Sonos, Apple TV, Philips Hue lights, Xbox, Nest thermostat, or what have you, place a handful of discrete motion sensors around your living room, tell those sensors where your stuff is, then watch as the virtual controls on its 3.5-inch display change based on where it's pointed. Essentially, it melds the companion apps of various connected home devices into one gadget, with WiFi, Bluetooth, and an IR blaster all built in.

So, when you point at Hue lights, you get sliders to change their color and intensity. When you point at a media streamer, you can adjust the volume or pick from a handful of app shortcuts. If you point somewhere with multiple gadgets, you can swipe through separate icons and change accordingly. You can also make it so pointing at a particular spot in your room calls a service like Uber.

Sevenhugs says it’s got support for most of the major home devices and services already — the PlayStation 4 is the big missing one, for now — and that the battery should last two to three days on average. We can’t say how accurate and smooth it is until we’re able to use it ourselves (though it felt fine in a during a quick demo), and the device itself will cost a very pricey $300. But if you’re all-in on the smart home, there’s the potential for a delightful little accessory here.

That’s the idea on paper, at least — just because the $130 Smart Assistant has Alexa doesn’t mean it’ll work as smoothly as it does on the Echo. If it does, though, it might be harder to justify paying the extra $50 for Amazon’s smart speaker. Either way, the competition is good. You can read more on it here.

Mohu has been making simple HDTV antennas for years, but the AirWave is its first stab at making them smarter. You don’t actually wire it into your TV; instead, you download a companion app, connect it to your local WiFi network, then have the AirWave's tuner pump free over-the-air channels like Fox, CBS, and so on pumped over the internet and into the app. It'll present what’s on those channels in a tidy little channel guide, too.

You won’t be able to watch those stations outside of your home network, but if don’t want to be planted in front of the TV just to watch what's on, the AirWave should give you the freedom to move around. Mohu says it’s working to build free online streaming channels into the app as well. Again, we can’t confirm how reliable it’ll be — worst case scenario, there’s an Ethernet jack in the back. And again, it’s going to be expensive — expect it to cost a whopping $150 when it arrives this spring. But the idea is sound for cord-cutters.

For $250 (or $200 after a $50 rebate), you get an impressive metal design, a big 5.5-inch 1080p display, a fingerprint scanner, and dual cameras on the back, much like the iPhone 7 Plus. I’ve been using it for the past few days, and my first impressions are positive.

You’ll still have to make do with Huawei’s middling software, but its next update might fix many of the current annoyances, and downloading a good launcher can clean much of it up today. We’ll see how it compares when the next Moto G rolls around, but for now this an affordable phone well worth considering.

Though CES 2017 was a light show for phones in general, we’ll also make mention of ZTE’s Blade V8 Pro, which looks like a similarly strong value with a less substantial design, and Huawei’s Mate 9, a higher-end option that’s now coming to the US (with Alexa support, no less) after strong reviews overseas.

This one should be obvious enough. It’s not the only case to profit off Apple’s "courage," but the Reserve’s battery boost is also a nice plus. It’ll cost a hefty $100 when it arrives in Q2 2017 (for the iPhone 7 only), but hey, that’s the future for you.