The eight strangest things I saw at CES 2025

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CES is a week-long showcase of new products and services from various industries. Some products are real innovations, others are definitely duds. However, some are just plain weird.

As I strolled through CES this week, from the convention halls to media-only events, I had a lot of fun trying out the weirdest tech I could find. Because just because something is weird doesn’t mean it’s boring or useless. On the contrary; Some of these items were some of the most interesting things to see. However, these eight products caught my attention the most:

Electric salt spoon

That was The CNET Group’s Choice for CES’ strangest and most unexpected product, and it’s not hard to see why. Kirin’s electric salt spoon makes food taste saltier, not with added sodium, but via electricity.

According to Kirin, the salt spoon uses a mild electrical current to attract sodium molecules in your mouth that would otherwise be lost in your taste buds. This makes the food on the spoon taste saltier than usual. You choose one of four intensity levels (the company recommends the lowest setting for beginners), press the button and you’re ready to go. However, the spoon is huge, making it difficult to activate the power while eating at the same time.

It’s strange but also noble, as it could allow people who need to reduce their sodium intake to still enjoy “salty” foods.

I only saw the spoon at the trade fair and didn’t have the opportunity to try the product. However, Mashable’s Matt Binder did it: At first he wasn’t sure if it worked until the spoon stopped halfway through a sip of broth because it was so awkward to hold. The loss of effect when eating with a spoon showed how this made the food saltier.

Body friend

I didn’t think one of the weirdest things I’d see at CES would be a massage chair, but that’s because I didn’t think anyone would make a Transformers-style massage chair – and a massage chair at that , which is so clearly inspired by Bumblebee.

To be clear: Hasbro has nothing to do with the chair. That is Body frienda massage chair with arms and legs that can move like a robot. This is intended to help people stretch muscles that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to move. However, to me it seems like a slow moving robot that has fallen and can’t get back up.

The chair consists of 733 parts and can measure your heart rate and of course also offer massages. You can see CNET’s Bridget Carey Check it out at CES Unveiled:

petal

Do you love your plants? Have you ever wondered how they feel? Do you wish they could text you? Of course you do. That’s why Petal existsfrom the creators of Bird Buddy.

Petal is a flexible stem camera that you can add to your garden to keep an eye on your plants and flowers. Of course, since we are in 2025, Petal is also powered by AI and can detect potential threats to your flora, such as insects and bees. There’s even an interactive option that allows you to “chat” with your flowers via Bird Buddy’s chatbot, so you can learn how many things your flower has “seen” today.

Nekojita FuFu

If you hate your drinks being too hot, you don’t have to cool them yourself; instead you could Use Nekojita FuFu. This little cat device sits on the edge of a cup or bowl and uses a tiny internal fan to inflate your hot drink or food for you.

It sounds silly, and it definitely is, but the company claims it works: The FuFu can cool hot water from 190°F to 160°F in three minutes and from 151°F in five minutes. Compare that to 176°F after three minutes and 171°F after five minutes without a cat, and it actually seems to do something.

I can’t imagine these things being very popular, but it’s fun too. It reminds me of novelty tea infusers, like “Mr. Tea.” If it makes you happy to have a cute cat on your cup cooling your coffee to drinking temperature, I’m all for it.

I also like the idea suggested by the top comment on our article about the Nékojita FuFu: “Put this on one of the rechargeable ‘stay hot cups’ and let them compete.”

AeroCatTower

The AeroCatTower is an air purifier. It is also a cat tower. You may have recognized this from the scary cat sitting on the device.

It’s not clear how well the AeroCatTower cleans the air, but it does does Be considerate of your cat. When your pet jumps on the top to rest, the machine slows down so as not to disturb it. There is also built-in heated seats for added comfort. Hey, maybe it’ll keep your cat away from your keyboard.

Realbotix

If you were walking around CES and weren’t sure if you saw the Realbotix booth, you missed it. Realbotix is out here trying to develop AI-powered anthropomorphic robots, and the result is, well, strange. Just watch CNET’s interview with Aria, one of Realbotix’s robots, to see why. Aria’s face is firmly planted in the uncanny valley, as is the fact that her lips are completely out of sync with her speech. Their movements are generally anything but natural. The whole thing feels like you’re chatting with a character from a PS1 game.

What’s even stranger is that Realbotix swaps out the robots’ faces, leaving you with just a thin, scary face mask. I understand what Realbotix is trying to do here, but the current robots are disturbing to say the least. (I walked past this booth and audibly said “Jesus Christ” to myself.)

ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollable

We introduced two major products from Lenovo at CES this year: One was this Lenovo Legion Go Sthe first PC gaming handheld not from Valve to run SteamOS natively. Very cool. The other thing was that ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 rollablea laptop with a rollable display that expands vertically by an additional 2.7 inches. Very strange, but also very cool.

Michelle Ehrhardt, Associate Tech Editor at Lifehacker, sat down with Lenovo to try out the fancy laptop. As advertised, you can expand your laptop’s display to a full 16.7 inches at the touch of a button or with a wave of your hand, which is neat. You’ll benefit from a large display in a 14-inch laptop form factor – and, of course, the novelty of revealing parts of your display you never knew were hidden inside the laptop. The rest of the machine, however, is a basic Copilot+ PC with an Intel Core Ultra 7 chip, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage – so no overly fancy internals to complement the novel display technology. However, with a price tag of $3,500, Lenovo may have judged this more strange than cool.

Dell’s major rebranding

Do you know what’s strange? Discard an established brand like XPS and instead use language that every other tech company uses. It’s a confusing move from Dell, which made headlines at CES this week when it announced the end of XPS, Inspiron, Latitude, Precision and its other brands. Now Dell computers will be available in three product lines: Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Pro Max. In each of this Lines, there are three additional lines to consider: Base, Plus and Premium.

Your friend may have a Dell Plus while another may buy a Dell Pro Base while you have a Dell Pro Max Premium. It’s not that confusing, is it? If yes, Check out Khamosh Pathak’s explainer here.