This Week's Sponsor:

Winterfest 2024

The Festival of Artisanal Software

Posts tagged with "CES 2025"

CES 2025: What to Expect from NPC and MacStories

Today, I began packing my bag full of the gear I’m bringing to CES. I’m excited because it’s shaping up to be a very NPC CES.

Brendon, Federico, and I started NPC: Next Portable Console because we each sensed that handheld gaming had reached a tipping point. Thanks to the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck, companies around the world have spent the past year experimenting with new ways to make gaming more portable.

I’ve covered CES from afar for years at this point and always enjoy it. Sure, a lot of CES amounts to incremental changes to TVs and new attempts to embed screens into kitchen appliances. But if that’s all you see, you’re not paying close enough attention. The fun of CES is discovering what’s new and trying to separate the vaporware from truly innovative ideas. Plus, Weird CES never disappoints, bringing truly bizarre gadgets to life that everyone should know about. Who can forget Qoobo the headless cat robot?

This isn’t technically my first CES. Until the mid-‘90s, the show was held in Chicago and New York, and it was open to the public. I went a few years before it moved to Las Vegas and had a blast. That was a long time ago, but with the rise of handheld gaming, the time felt right to return.

Over the summer and into the fall as the rumors of new Windows and SteamOS devices gained momentum, it became clear that handheld manufacturers were targeting CES for splashy announcements. That’s the main reason Brendon and I are heading to Las Vegas. We’ll be roaming the show floor to see what’s coming next and get a sense of where handhelds are heading in 2025 and beyond.

However, as excited as we are about portable consoles, that’s not all we’ll be covering. There’s a lot more to CES, so we’ll also be on the lookout for the latest in smart home hardware, AR glasses, headphones, speakers, anything with an e-ink screen, and more.

What we plan to bring to you here and on the MacStories YouTube channel is something uniquely NPC and MacStories: insights into what to expect from the next wave of portable videogame hardware and the other gadgets worth keeping an eye on in the new year, plus a sprinkling of the weirdly wonderful “what were they thinking?” hardware.

To follow along, you can find our coverage on MacStories.net under the tag ‘CES 2025’ and this dedicated RSS feed. You’ll also find two playlists on our YouTube channel: ‘NPC @ CES’ for handheld gaming news and ‘MacStories @ CES’ for everything else. Plus, be sure to visit Brendon’s blog Wavelengths for even more coverage from him.

What’s in My CES Bag?

Packing for CES has been a little different than WWDC. The biggest differences are the huge crowds at CES and the limits the conference puts on the bags you can carry into venues.

My trusty Tom Bihn Synapse 25 backpack isn’t big, but it’s too large for CES, so the first thing I did was look for a bag that was small enough to meet the CES security rules but big enough to hold my 14” MacBook Pro and 11” iPad Pro, plus accessories. I decided on a medium-sized Tomtoc Navigator T24 sling bag, which is the perfect size. It holds 7 liters of stuff and has built-in padding to protect the corners of the MacBook Pro and iPad as well as pockets on the inside and outside to help organize cables and other things.

Tomtoc's medium Navigator T24 sling bag. Source: Tomtoc.

Tomtoc’s medium Navigator T24 sling bag. Source: Tomtoc.

I don’t plan to carry my MacBook Pro with me during the day. The iPad Pro will be plenty for any writing and video production I do on the go, but it will be good to have the power and flexibility of the MacBook Pro when I return to my hotel room. For traveling to and from Las Vegas, I appreciate that the Tomtoc bag can fit everything I’m bringing.

A surprising amount of stuff fits in the T24. Source: Tomtoc.

A surprising amount of stuff fits in the T24. Source: Tomtoc.

With little room to spare, my setup is minimal. I’ll write on the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, carrying the iPad with me tethered to my iPhone for Internet access. That’s a tried-and-true setup I already use whenever I’m away from home.

Read more