Your cell phone can handle basic language translation, but bespoke tools can offer a much more immersive experience. Hans Christian Andersen once said, "To travel is to live," and while that's a romantic notion, he probably wasn't careening through Gyeongju, South Korea, at midnight in the back of a taxi with a driver who didn't speak a lick of English. Today's world traveler has it awfully easy when it comes to understanding the local lingo, as even a basic modern cell phone app can offer a pretty good translation of common phrases delivered in everything from Abkhaz to Zulu. Type or speak a sentence or two into the app, tap a button, and out it returns in the language of your choice. Tap another button, and your phone can even speak those sentences aloud.

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 have the best active noise cancellation on the market, and they very rarely get cheaper. Bose's QuietComfort Ultra 2 earbuds are the best noise-canceling earbuds you can buy. Right now, they're $50 off, which matches the best price we tend to see outside of special events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you want to wait until November, they might hit $200 again, but otherwise $250 is a very fair deal--especially since they pop back up to $300 regularly. The discounted price applies to all five color options, including Black, Deep Plum, Desert Gold, Midnight Violet, and White Smoke (another rarity, as usually only the vivid colors go on sale).

They don't cope well in certain situations and the'transparent' mode lets in unwanted noise

Widely available earbuds equipped with sensors (also known as earables) can be combined with a sleep event detection algorithm to offer a convenient alternative to laborious clinical tests for individuals suffering from sleep disorders. Although various solutions utilizing such devices have been proposed to detect sleep events, they ignore the fact that individuals often share sleeping spaces with roommates or couples. To address this issue, we introduce DreamCatcher, the first publicly available dataset for wearer-aware sleep event algorithm development on earables.

A growing collection of pocket-sized gadgets lets you record your meetings and extract value from them. Whether sitting in class, a meeting, or an interview, I've never been fond of taking notes, and I'm far from alone. Not only does the process of scribbling something down cause me to miss what was said immediately after, but I also suffer from awful handwriting, meaning that I can rarely read the notes anyway. Recording interviews has long been a solution, but transcribing interviews is another step (with extra cost) that can leave you with thousands of words of material to sift through, much of it irrelevant. AI notetakers--massively popular at CES 2026 --have emerged to offer a new way of making IRL notetaking easier and faster, putting the power of AI into (or at least adjacent to) a portable device that evokes the microcassette recorder of yesteryear.

From jogging and cycling to multi-tasking or puttering around the house, open earbuds are an excellent way to jam out in the real world. If you've done any wireless earbuds shopping lately, you've likely noticed a new design category cropping up everywhere. They're called open earbuds (or open-ear buds, depending on the brand), and just about every audio brand has a pair (or three). They come in a slew of styles, but most either loop around your ears like older Beats buds, or clip on like funky-futuristic earrings. Whatever the style, they're designed to deliver satisfying sound while keeping your ear canals open to the sounds of the world around you.

Apple could unveil Gemini-powered Siri in Feb. These open-fit earbuds actually make a difference with background noise. Rarely does a set of open-fit earbuds actually impress me. I tend to find them underwhelming because overall sound quality is subpar compared to the more "traditional" in-ear models. The first time I used the Shokz OpenFit Pro ($249.95)

We're in Las Vegas with two ears and a heart, on the search for the best in immersive open earbuds, portable Bluetooth speakers, powered stereo setups, and more. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. When it comes to audio systems at CES, held January 6-9 in Las Vegas, we always hope to find new ways companies have found to make music feel bigger without making your life harder. Sometimes that means earbuds you pull out of your pocket to pull previously unheard details out of tracks. Sometimes that means a wireless headset that considers limited bandwidth a personal insult.

At CES 2026, Everything Is AI. Integrated chatbots and built-in machine intelligence are no longer standout features in consumer tech. If companies want to win in the AI era, they've got to hone the user experience. The New Year's Eve champagne isn't even warm yet, and CES week is already upon us. The giant annual celebration of consumer tech kicks off the first full week of January as companies across the world convene in Las Vegas to hawk their latest innovations.

Technology Best of What's New 5 personal care products that solved real problems in 2025 We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. In a market saturated with wellness products that promise to fix your whole life but rarely deliver much of anything, this year's personal care winners stand out for actually solving real problems. The 2025 class represents genuine inclusivity and thoughtful design--from a breast pump that goes old school to level up its wearability, to world-class headphones that double as hearing aids and workout coaches. Instead, they address overlooked challenges with smart engineering: making fragrance bottles easier to grip, transforming sleep routines for exhausted parents, and rethinking recovery gear so athletes can soothe strained muscles while on the move. Each winner proves that meaningful innovation happens when companies consider users' actual needs--and use that knowledge to make good products great.