CES 2020 was the last normal CES for a while — and it was a spectacular one. The show, held January 7–10, delivered some of the most memorable product moments of the decade’s opening year. LG’s rollable OLED TV made its final bow as an actual announced product: the LG Signature OLED R would retail for a reported $100,000 and retract completely into its soundbar base at the press of a button. Technically breathtaking, commercially irrelevant, but no less impressive for it.
Samsung Ballie — a small yellow rolling ball robot with a camera and AI capabilities — became the breakout meme of CES 2020. It was cute, it was vague, and it somehow captured everyone’s imagination about home robotics in a way that more serious products hadn’t. Sony surprised the show with the Vision-S concept EV, a genuinely convincing electric sedan that nobody had expected from a consumer electronics company. It planted the seed of what would eventually become Sony Honda Mobility.
Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 865 at CES 2020, the platform powering the first wave of 5G Android flagships. Amazon and Google engaged in a full-scale smart home standards war, with both parties vying to make their ecosystem the default for everything in the home. The Matter standard — which would eventually resolve this — was still years away.
Nobody at CES 2020 knew that COVID-19 would cancel the next in-person show for two full years. It remains a particularly memorable edition by virtue of that fact alone. ces.tech