(Image credit: Consumer Technology Association)

December may be a slow month as far as gaming tech is concerned, but January immediately sends us electronics nerds into a full-on digital sprint. That's because the Consumer Electronics Show (or CES) is a grouping of some of the largest companies in the world, all trying to show off what they've got in the pipeline for the next year or so.

Though AI is ever becoming the buzzword when it comes to major tech events like CES, that doesn't mean there won't also be some interesting hardware to grab your attention. After all, last year saw some excellent GPUs, need laptops, great handhelds, and even actual good uses of AI. Who knew?

AMD at CES 2026

(Image credit: AMD)

AMD has the opening keynote speech this year, so it will naturally be trying to wow the audience. However, it's worth noting that CES is a general consumer event, rather than a gaming-focused one, so we can't expect all of its gaming offerings for 2026 to get announced here.

With seemingly little fanfare, the Ryzen 7 9850X3D popped up (and was subsequently removed) from AMD's own driver pages earlier this month. Previous leaks put the chip at a 120 W TDP with eight cores, 16 threads, 96 MB of L3 cache, and a boost clock speed of 5.6 GHz. That's 400 MHz above the 9800X3D. Given we know all of this, and it still hasn't officially launched, it seems likely it will finally come out around CES 2026.

Though a tad less concrete than the last chip, AMD reportedly planned to put out a desktop Strix Point APU in 2025 (named Ryzen 9000G), but pushed it back, so we could see more information on that at CES.

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We've also seen leaks of the Gorgon Point-like Ryzen AI 9 465, and given the leaks are so close to CES, we could see an announcement there. Gorgon Point does seem to be mostly a rebrand of Strix Point, though, so we aren't expecting huge performance bumps.

Though we expect AI to poke its head into AMD's announcements, we hope part of that is to talk a little more about the future of FSR, post-Redstone (which we recently got to test out).

Intel at CES 2026

(Image credit: Intel)

Intel has officially confirmed that CES 2026 will mark the global launch of Panther Lake in the form of Core Ultra Series 3 processors. This is the first chip from Intel to be based on its 18A manufacturing process.

Panther Lake popped up in Geekbench last month with okay numbers, but naturally, that doesn't paint the whole story of what the chips are capable of. We're expecting to see a whole bunch of Panther Lake laptops on the showfloor.

Intel's Nova Lake chips are reportedly still coming at some point next year, though we don't know if they, or Intel's discrete GPUs, will make an appearance at CES.

Handheld gaming PCs of CES 2026

(Image credit: Future)

As we saw from the MSI Claw 8 AI+, Intel's mobile chips put up a fight against even AMD's best, so it seems likely we will spot handhelds with both Panther Lake and the latest Ryzen APUs. We could see a few more Strix Halo handhelds, as we've seen in the GPD Win 5 and Ayaneo Next II, but it seems like that chip's power and thermal considerations will still be a struggle for many.

There are currently only a few AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme handhelds on the market (Lenovo Legion Go 2, Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, and MSI Claw A8 BZ2EM), so we could see more of those pop up, too.

A big push for the company, Qualcomm reckons its latest Snapdragon X2 chips offer 44% more CPU performance per watt than an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H, and 75% more performance per watt than an AMD Ryzen 9 AI HX 370. With gaming on Arm looking more and more achievable, we could see some impressive Qualcomm-based handheld gaming PCs this year.

Nvidia at CES 2026

(Image credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

On Nvidia's dedicated site for the annual consumer tech show, it says that this year it will be "lighting up CES 2026 with the power of AI." It also says that it will have "hands-on demos at our showcase in the Fontainebleau Las Vegas to inspiring talks and an ecosystem of partners bringing breakthrough technologies to life."

Nvidia's press conference on the CES website has an equally vague description, stating it would showcase "solutions driving innovation and productivity across industries." Again, I imagine this has something to do with AI, as most tech jargon does now.

Team Green owes all its phenomenal growth over the last few years to AI, so its showcases at CES will be as important for shareholders and potential investors as general consumers.

However, don't expect to see much in the way of anything gaming-related, as Nvidia will almost certainly be keeping that for its own GTC show in March.

Laptops of CES 2026

(Image credit: Razer)

CES tends to have tonnes of laptops (it did last year), so we expect we'll see plenty with dedicated Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs, but also some purely driven by high-end APUs.

Though performance gains will be mostly incremental, it will be a big year for Intel. With its launch of a new mobile-focused processor across multiple SKUs, showcasing new CPU and GPU architectures, the success of Panther Lake will be critical for Intel. So expect a heavy focus on laptops for business, general use, and gaming.

Though it won't have a dedicated presentation, Razer will be on the show floor for CES, as well as other laptop manufacturers. For example, we know that Asus will be there, and as already mentioned, we're expecting to see some Qualcomm laptops, too. As monitors continue to get better, so do laptop screens, so here's hoping for more OLED screens and a slimlined chassis to go with it. The benefit of these beefy yet power-efficient APUs is that companies can make the whole laptop even thinner.

However, laptops, Nvidia, AMD, and Intel will all be feeling the effects of the DRAM supply crisis, so pricing may be a bit hard to nail down across the board. Well, almost across the board.

Monitors of CES 2026

(Image credit: Alienware)

I asked resident monitor expert Jeremey Laird what he expects will pop up, and he said: "2026 isn't shaping up to be a revolutionary year for PC monitors. But we will see incremental improvements. Both LG and Samsung will be rolling out their latest OLED panel techs, already seen in numerous TV sets, more broadly into PC monitors next year.

"That means full-screen brightness beyond 300 nits, higher peak HDR performance and other enhancements. We'll also see OLEDs in an even wider range of formats. Look out for 5K2K 40-inch OLEDs by the end of the year. That could be a new high-end sweet spot."

Samsung is confirmed to make an appearance at CES and will be talking about the DX Division, which is the combination of Consumer Electronics and IT & Mobile. I expect we'll see updates on what it's cooking up in the monitor department.

CES tends to be all about innovation, so it's not unthinkable to think we could see a 6K gaming monitor or two. We have seen 6K monitors for high-end productivity setups, but nothing for gaming yet. To be fair, getting use out of anything with such a high resolution is unlikely, but that's never stopped gamers before. We could always start to see more 5K gaming monitors.

Both MSI and ASRock announced 500+ Hz monitors just days before CES last year, and they were IPS rather than the more common TN and VA, so we're likely to see more of the same this year.

AI all over CES 2026. Again

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Boy, CES 2025 was an exciting time. We saw the start of the current generation of graphics cards from big hitters like Nvidia and AMD, and a fresh new batch of handhelds alongside it. However, with those launches now out of the way, and the prices of memory and storage spiking, all eyes are on the cause of those shortages: AI.

One look through the CES schedule shows all manner of AI applications. Lenovo will be giving a keynote presentation on Tuesday, January 6, to "discuss how AI is reshaping how you live, play, and work." AMD's presentation will also focus on Lisa Su's "vision for delivering future AI solutions." Of course, last year's CES also had a heavy focus on AI, but AI has only continued to balloon over the last year.

One of the only ways I've found myself not groaning at the next completely necessary injection of AI into some piece of tech is by turning it into a game. Think of a piece of tech, then think of a way that feeding all your data to a company could possibly improve it, now add "AI" before it. You have something worth a round of funding. AI carpet? Sure. AI capo? Why not. AI toilet? Sorry, we already have plenty of those.

Cynicism aside, we have seen AI tech like FSR, DLSS, and frame generation take the stage at CES, and we've seen advancements in robotics, too. In fact, our Dave said the best thing from CES 2026 wasn't the new GPUs, but instead advancements made in DLSS 4. It even got awarded most innovative AI in our roundup of the best things at CES 2025.

As long as there's some way to pick through the unnecessary parts to find the best bits, AI innovation can be a fascinating part of CES. Luckily, that's what we've got a team on the ground for. I, however, will be curled up nice and warm, enjoying the sights of CES from a safe distance.

James is a more recent PC gaming convert, often admiring graphics cards, cases, and motherboards from afar. It was not until 2019, after just finishing a degree in law and media, that they decided to throw out the last few years of education, build their PC, and start writing about gaming instead. In that time, he has covered the latest doodads, contraptions, and gismos, and loved every second of it. Hey, it’s better than writing case briefs.

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