The Better of CES 2026 - glowvoyages.com

The jetlag has rescinded, the bags is unpacked, and the climate is depressing. This may solely imply one factor: I am again within the UK after attending CES 2026, and this yr’s present certain had a load of tech to indicate off.

Positive, we have been greater than a bit of dissatisfied by the relentless march of AI bulletins, significantly in a present with “client” within the title, however we nonetheless managed to discover a host of gaming gear to get enthusiastic about. It wasn’t the richest of years for PC avid gamers, however hey, you possibly can’t win ’em all.

Greatest gaming monitor of CES 2026

MSI MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36. It makes use of what MSI refers to as “fifth gen” Samsung QD-OLED panel tech, full with a vertical RGB stripe pixel configuration that delivers smoother font rendering, higher textual content readability, and easily luxurious picture high quality.

Does not sound that thrilling? Effectively, this newest panel tech basically fixes one of many greatest points with OLED gaming displays—which leaves, err, value because the final massive hurdle to overcome. Oh, and worries about burn-in, though the newest long run testing suggests it isn’t fairly as massive a difficulty as many concern.

Anyway, at a CES crammed with distinctive monitor tech (a real spotlight in an in any other case fallow yr), MSI’s 34-inch ultrawide left us surprised, incomes itself many admiring glances on the MSI sales space and a 92% evaluation rating from our resident monitor skilled, Jeremy Laird. That is a person who can inform you what panel a show is utilizing from throughout a crowded room, so when he breaks out the large scores, you’d greatest consider you need to begin paying consideration.

Asus G1000 stood out for 2 causes. One, it is completely large, dwarfing even the Alienware Space-51 in proportions. And two, it has been fitted with not one, not two, however three holographic fan shows.

I am used to seeing whizzing followers with anime projections solid throughout them at these kinds of occasions, however the G1000 is the primary world’s first system to cram them right into a PC case. The AniMe Holo tech lights up each the aspect window and the entrance panel with shifting holographic imagery to create a show-stopping impact, leaving my jaw genuinely dropped.

The Asus ROG G100 gaming PC at CES 2026

The holo-fan impact actually does not translate to digicam cellphone shutter speeds. I attempted, I actually did. (Picture credit score: Future)

Seeing this mega-rig in particular person is a bit like standing in entrance of an enormous ship in dry dock. The proportions are troublesome to precise in phrases, and whereas the holo-imagery does not converse to my preferences, we as a crew could not let this one slip with out giving it an award. Keep in mind when CES was all about outrageous PC gaming tech reveals? Asus has remembered, and for that, it will get a gold star.

RTX 5090? Sure, the MSI GeForce RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z takes the crown for the perfect graphics card we noticed at this yr’s present, as MSI has thrown the kitchen sink at Nvidia’s top-tier GPU to show it into one thing that redefines PC gaming extra.

Or one thing like that, anyway. Sure, the reveal was stuffed with overwrought fighter jet metaphors, and sure, it is more likely to be extremely costly. However, as {hardware} fanatics, it is troublesome to not admire a water cooled graphics card with its personal 8-inch show, twin 16-pin energy connectors, and a 1000 W energy restrict.

Picture 1 of 4

An MSI GeForce RTX 5090 32G Lightning Z graphics card emerging from its super special box — (Picture credit score: Future)

Truly, that final one’s not strictly true. MSI says there will be a 2500 W+ BIOS for “excessive overclockers”, though the retail card will swap between 800 W and 1000 W variations with the assistance of a helpful (and sadly lightning-bolt themed) keyring, or throughout the customized software program.

There’s even a cell app for GPU tuning, which, together with the hand chosen parts and too many further options to listing right here (devoted multimeter connections, anybody?) makes the Lightning Z probably the most outrageous graphics card we have seen thus far—gold-plated Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 Dhabab Version be damned.

Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo may be the one to alter my thoughts. It is form of a dual-screen pill/gaming laptop computer hybrid, with a wi-fi magnetic keyboard that may be connected to the highest of the underside display screen to create a conventional laptop computer format.

I will be sincere, it is fairly chonky when it is all put collectively, and heavy too. Nevertheless, as somebody carrying a comparatively weighty, single-screened 15-inch laptop computer of their backpack for almost all of the present, I could not assist however lust over the probabilities.

Juggling a number of home windows and tabs round on the cramped display screen of a conventional lappy can significantly decelerate your workflow, and a part of me needed to slide the Asus machine into my backpack and ferret it again to my lodge room for a night session.

Picture 1 of 6

The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo hybrid gaming laptop in various configurations at CES 2026 — (Picture credit score: Future)

The Zephyrus Duo could be specced to the hilt with one of many newest Intel Core Extremely Sequence 3 Panther Lake chips (see under), and even manages to cram the RTX 5090 cell into one half of its body for gaming duties. It is doubtlessly a laptop computer that may do all of it, with the additional bonus of being tent-able (my time period) for native co-op gaming prospects.

Will all of it work in apply? We’ll have to offer one a correct evaluation for ourselves. However within the meantime, this can be a gaming laptop computer with severe potential—and for that, it will get a shiny badge.

Core Extremely Sequence 3, Panther Lake-based chips constructed on Intel’s previously-troubled 18A course of. Regardless of the tech large’s wobbles in recent times, its new silicon appears to be like very spectacular, significantly in regard to iGPU choices.

The Core Extremely X9 388H and Core Extremely X7 368H each sport the brand new Intel Arc B390 iGPU with 12 Xe3 cores and devoted ray tracing {hardware}, whereas the Core Extremely 5 338H will get the B370 iGPU variant with 10 Xe3 cores. Name us gaming obsessed in case you should (it is within the title, in spite of everything), however it’s the on-chip graphics tile right here that is received us actually excited for the brand new chip’s prospects.

Skinny and lightweight, dGPU-less laptops with good gaming efficiency? You’d greatest consider it, a minimum of from what I noticed once I received an opportunity to do some fast and soiled benchmarking of the highest finish Core Extremely X9 388H at this yr’s present. The efficiency additionally bodes nicely for future gaming handhelds, particularly if the wonderful efficiency of the Lunar Lake-equipped MSI Claw 8 AI+ of yesteryear is something to go by.

A CES 2026 presentation of the new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake mobile CPUs

(Picture credit score: Future)

That individual Intel iGPU-sporting handheld managed to high our benchmark sheet for a lot of moons, a minimum of till the Asus ROG Ally Xbox X got here alongside to steal its crown. And it solely had eight Xe2 cores to play with. Ought to extra handheld producers go for Intel chips, we could possibly be seeing some significantly spectacular Arc B390 efficiency coming to handheld gaming PCs within the very close to future.

We have but to place one in every of Intel’s new beasties below the microscope, however after we do, we’ll be concerned to see if these tough figures maintain up. Till then, the blue crew will get to take residence our greatest processor of CES 2026 award—and a particular point out for focussing on client {hardware}, not AI frippery, for its massive reveal.

Lenovo Legion Go, and fell head over heels for its slimmed down variant, the Legion Go S. In reality, the SteamOS variant of the latter handheld at the moment sits on the very high of our greatest handheld gaming PC information, so all of us anxiously clamoured round our respective displays to take a look at the brand new Lenovo Legion Go 2.

As anticipated, Lenovo has executed the apparent factor and imbued the brand new mannequin with an AMD Ryzen Z2 Excessive APU. The unique made do with the Z1 model (a mighty handheld chip, nonetheless), however Lenovo has introduced the brand new version bang updated with some recent AMD silicon.

So, now you get 16 RDNA 3.5 compute items (CUs) compared to the 12 RDNA 3 CUs discovered within the Z1 Excessive. This could translate to round 33% extra graphics rendering efficiency, and it isn’t like the unique Legion Go was a slouch to start with.

A seeming Lenovo Legion Go 2 prototype handheld being held, showing the Windows desktop

(Picture credit score: in yo @ YouTube)

All that is simply as nicely, because the Legion Go 2’s 8.8-inch, 1200p 144 Hz show will take some driving. It will nonetheless probably want a healthy dose of upscaling to take advantage of it, however hats off to Lenovo for pushing the {hardware} that one step additional. Like the unique, it is nonetheless received two detachable aspect controllers, and in any other case appears to be like like a really related design total.

That is high quality by us. Up the inner energy, maintain the perfect bits of the unique, and hopefully it is received a shot of touchdown in our good books as soon as once more. The one actual bugbear, nonetheless, is the value tag: $1,100 is a severe chunk of change, particularly when the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X (a handheld we have criticised many occasions for being too costly) is a full $100 cheaper.

There wasn’t an enormous variety of handhelds to select from at this yr’s present, however Lenovo received the soar on the competitors and appears to have delivered one thing we’ll be very excited to check within the close to future. Take a bow.

Sensible Brick. The Danish toy large has managed to cram a ton of tech right into a single Lego brick, together with accelerometers, mild and sound sensors, a mini speaker, and a customized ASIC.

To be truthful, Lego says it consulted with specialists from the “worlds of video gaming”, digital engineering, and an entire lot extra to create its fancy new electro-brick, so there is a beating PC gaming coronary heart someplace in that tiny plastic body.

Lego says the bricks could be mixed with Sensible Tags and Sensible Minifigs to answer actions with “applicable sounds and behaviours”, bringing the world of digital digital enjoyable occasions to its decidedly-analogue brick-building toys.

Lego Smart Tag with Smart Brick and Minifig in the background

(Picture credit score: LEGO)

The Sensible Brick may also reply to modifications in acceleration and movement, and makes use of its speaker and ASIC combo to create audio by way of an onboard synthesiser. In essence, by altering audio frequencies, the Sensible Brick could make itself sound like… nicely, virtually something, which ought to open up an entire new vary of prospects for inventive builds and play.

As a Lego fanatic myself, I am unable to wait to get my palms on one in every of these to see what it could actually do. And the youngsters may prefer it as nicely, I suppose. Arms off, young children. Electronics is my remit, and you will have to take your flip.

not simply MSI making use of V-Stripe QD-OLED expertise.

By re-arranging the subpixels into rows (just like a way utilized in LG panels) and making use of its quantum dot tech in tandem with a blue backlight, Samsung has managed to unravel one of many greatest issues with OLED displays in a single fell swoop.

Many a time have I written that “textual content fringing could also be a difficulty” when recommending an OLED monitor, however with this intelligent new pixel association/backlight answer, it appears to be like like I will be typing it far much less typically in future.

Positive, the tech has its limits, as pixel density remains to be a bit of decrease than we would ideally like. However Samsung has delivered a panel that is had all of us in raptures since we first noticed it, and it will probably be coming to a slew of gaming displays close to you within the close to future. Brilliant, daring, near-infinite distinction QD-OLED shows with crisp textual content? Yep, OLED tech simply retains getting higher, and Samsung appears to be like to be main the cost.

gaze upon an Nvidia G-Sync Pulsar-equipped gaming monitor in motion. It is troublesome to explain in phrases simply how good its refresh rate-matched backlight strobing tech appears to be like in particular person (and even tougher to seize on video), however I am going to have a go anyway.

Basically, the expertise makes use of a gaming monitor’s onboard MediaTek chip to strobe totally different areas of the display screen with the backlight, moments earlier than the scan out updates the picture, whereas concurrently adjusting the frequency in time with the refresh charge.

That is a sophisticated precept to wrap your mind round, however the finish impact is straightforward to know: it improves movement readability by an element of 4.

In particular person, this implies fast-moving textual content and objects seem crystal clear—and the distinction this makes to the best way your eye reads the picture total is profound. It is not simply fast-paced video games the place the tech stands out, both, as even one thing sedate like Anno 117: Pax Romana is noticeably simpler to “learn” when the digicam is moved round.

Picture 1 of 4

Nvidia slide explaining new G-Sync Pulsar technology. — (Picture credit score: Nvidia)

Assume icons over a map staying in excellent readability, even while you’re shortly searching round to search out the one you need. I hadn’t realised simply how a lot perceived movement blur I used to be experiencing on an everyday monitor till I noticed G-Sync Pulsar in motion, and now I am unable to unsee it. The distinction actually is night time and day, and Pulsar-less gaming displays have been ruined for me ceaselessly.

So, thanks Nvidia, for sending me again from Las Vegas a modified man. It wasn’t the intense lights and unending consumerism that received to me in the long run, nor the jetlag and the shortage of sleep.

Nope, monitor tech is altering ceaselessly, and in a world the place AI appears to be main the (doubtful) cost in the direction of the long run, it is good to see there are nonetheless {hardware} engineers beavering away to make our video games higher on the base stage. I do know, it was virtually definitely AI-assisted at a number of factors within the growth course of. I did not say there have been no advantages, now, did I?

Greatest gaming rigs 2026

Supply hyperlink