Hardware Asylum at CES 2026

The Consumer Electronics Show is an amazing trade show and while PC components are largely absent from the program you can still find them if you know where to look.  What is mind boggling is the sheer size of CES and how much of Las Vegas it occupies. 

For instance, you have four halls attached to the Las Vega Convention Center (LVCC).  West is the newest and is one of the two major entrances to the convention center.  I say two since it is technically across the street from the existing LVCC location.  From the West Hall you have access to the North and Central Halls.  These are where the majority of the consumer electronics are located.  The South Halls were divided across two floors and of two sections each.  This is where the PC components used to be located for the longest time but is now where the mass market products are located.

From the West Hall you also have access to the Fontainebleau hotel which has been opened to host the CES Foundry.  I suspect these are learning events with speakers but, since I didn’t attend I have no idea. 

The Venetian and Sands Expo hall hosted a number of private meeting suites and more convention space.  Eureka park reminds me of a college science fair with exhibitors from all over the globe while the expo upstairs had some amazing exhibits such as consumer robots (Rovar X3) and some laser and 3d printing companies.  The Venetian ballrooms hosted the majority of PC component vendors and since they were “rooms” the companies took every excuse to also gate access.  This means that unless you had an appointment you couldn’t get in.  Some even put up signs saying “Overbooked come back later” (and then left them up all day)

CES doesn’t stop there, across the Las Vegas Strip at the Aria is the C Space meeting rooms.  I suspect these are similar to the Foundry but might also be overflow for special but, not that special, customers.

According to CES 2026 material there were over 4100 exhibitors registered to attend, not counting companies in Las Vegas attempting to take advantage of CES by hosting their own events in area hotels.  It is not practical to attempt to see everything and if you try, not only will your feet hurt but, you won’t actually get to experience much.  There is simply too much to see and is where additoinal planning would be helpful.

For me CES is about making contacts, in fact I have enough acquired knowledge that looking at the exploded view of a robot servo is kinda boring and yet I saw quite a few influencers get super excited about the mechanics of how an electric stepper motor works. 

While there were humanoid robots on display, they were not AI but a system calling tools (programs) so they could move around and do flips.  That isn’t all that interesting to me since I already know how they make it happen.  However, what really annoys me is finding that Chinese company A copied Chinese company B just two rows over and then seems oblivious to it happening.

I think in the future I’ll just need to spend some time to research the exhibitor list and find some really interesting things see and maybe sign up for a few personalized booth tours.  While you are still looking at the same OLED TV with special AI color processing and internal dynamic upscaling it is sometimes to hear someone give you the official marketing pitch.