CES 2025 Live Blog: News, Photos, and Videos From Tech's Big Show

Accessory company Belkin is once again going after the creator marke. Last year, its auto-tracking iPhone mount let budding TikTokers dance around a room while the camera followed their movements. This year, Belkin has the Stage PowerGrip, a camera grip that magnetically attaches to the back of your iPhone and offers a dedicated button to snap a photo. It also doubles as a 10K power bank that wirelessly charges the phone, and has a retractable USB-C cable if you want to juice up faster.

This is hardly the first time we’ve seen a camera grip like this—they’ve been around for a while, and ShiftCam is a notable competitor—but Belkin is trying to carve some space for itself within this category. Accompanying the grip is the Stage Creator Bundle, an all-in-one kit with a tripod, magnetic phone mount, and Belkin’s first-ever wireless microphone system—not unlike the kinds from DJI and Rode. Pricing hasn’t been confirmed yet for the Stage Creator Bundle and Stage PowerGrip, but they’re expected to arrive in May.

Belkin has a slew of other smaller updates to its accessory lineups, like a 45-W Dual USB-C wall charger, a 15-watt Qi2 wireless charger, and charging cables, but the main takeaway is that most of the new products will consist of up to 85 and 90 percent post-consumer recycled materials. The company says it has already replaced 432 metric tons of virgin plastics with PCR materials. Many of these accessories hit the market this spring.

New year, new Dell. The company announced a full-blown rebrand for its PCs at this year's CES—complete with new product tiers. The new product lines are named Dell (replaces the Inspiron and XPS models), Dell Plus (replaces the Inspiron Plus), Dell Pro (replaces the Latitude), and Dell Pro Max (replaces the Precision).

Depending on the amount of power and mobility you need, you’ll also have the choice between three sub-tiers for each: the Base, Plus, and Premium. Still with me? It’s very confusing, I know. (Imagine how I feel writing it!) However most of these are for the commercial market. If you’re looking for an everyday laptop to get work done, allow me to direct you to the new Dell 14 Plus and 16 Plus.

The Dell 14 Plus has a 14-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, stereo speakers (complete with spatial audio by Dolby Atmos), and a variety of ports including a USB-C, a USB-A, Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. Under the hood, you'll have the choice between a variety of Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processors (starting with the Intel Core Ultra 5 up the the Ultra 9) and an Intel Arc graphics card (130V or 140V both of which are locked to different processors).

If you need to go bigger, the Dell 16 Plus comes with the same features as the 14 Plus but with a larger and brighter display. Both sizes are also available as 2-in-1 versions, with a 360-degree hinge that allows you to position the laptop in tent or tablet mode. And these are CoPilot+ PCs, with access to AI features like Recall, Cocreator, Live Captions, and Windows Studio Effects.

The Dell 14 Plus starts at $1,099 and the Dell 16 Plus starts at $1,149. Both laptops go on sale February 18.

John Deere firmly believes that now is the time to ramp up automation in farming. Population is booming, our food needs are growing, and all the while, farmers in the US and Canada are suffering through an intense labor shortage. So putting more—and more capable—robots into our fields and orchards is a key part of the company's plan to serve the agriculture industry.

Deere showed off its first self-driving tractor at CES 2022. That system used two cameras for stereoscopic depth sensing and navigation. Deere's new tech stack upgrades that sensor array to use multiple cameras, all calibrated in real time by an Nvidia GPU. This new second-generation array can be attached to the self-driving tractors already in the field. The upgraded rolling bots will be able to see more around them, work faster, and suffer less downtime.

Today the company also announced two new fully electric tractors that are specially made for orchards that grow "high value crops." These are things like stone fruits, nuts, grapes, lettuces, and other crops that demand more attention, and require a different kind of tractor than the type you'd use in the open field. These two orchard tractors are smaller and powered by liquid-cooled batteries. They use Deere's new second-generation autonomy kit, but they also have lidar sensors; a nose-mounted bulb about the size of a microwave holds the lidar. This helps the vehicles recognize and avoid orchardy things like pumps, fence posts, and bee boxes.

There were more robots, including a fully electric autonomous articulated dump truck for quarry work that Deere has nicknamed "Dusty." For the landscaping folks, there's a new autonomous battery-powered lawn mower that does not look intimidating at all.

HMD—the mobile manufacturer most recently of Barbie Phone Fame—has now charged off in the opposite direction with the HMD OffGrid, a backcountry satellite communicator designed for use with both Androids and iPhones. The wee device weighs a little over two ounces and connects to the L band satellite radio spectrum to get your phone 24-7 satellite connectivity via HMD’s OffGrid app. You get three days of battery life and a MIL-STD-810H durability rating, which means it’s withstood some very harsh environmental tests.

There are two separate subscription tiers, at $140 a year for unlimited messaging, or an $80 plan for up to 350 messages. Both tiers offer live tracking of the device, two-way messaging, and Overwatch x Rescue, the emergency SOS service. HMD’s $200 price is a lot more affordable than some of our other picks in this category, all of which also require a data subscription. Still, I’m a little skeptical of any backcountry device that relies on that fragile glass and metal pocket computer that we call a phone. It doesn’t really matter if the OffGrid survives if you can’t use it because your phone fell out of your pocket and off a mountain. I say get yourself a lanyard, just in case.