9 Top Trends at CES 2016

In the tech world, nothing is more prized than being on the cutting edge. If you're not looking to the future and figuring out what the next hot new thing will be, you might be in the wrong industry. And the place to go to find the hottest of the hot new things, from virtual reality headsets to smart refrigerators, is the Consumer Electronics Show.

CES is where companies go to offer up their latest wares to masses of tech journalists. By paying attention to trends, it's also where you can figure out what directions tech will move in during the new year. We've already written loads of articles about individual things that excited us at CES 2016 and we've awarded our Best of Show winners, but now it's time to step back and look at the bigger picture. Here are some of the top trends we saw at the show.

Fitbit Blaze

Wearables Shift Focus Further Toward Fitness
There were some general smartwatches at CES, but when it comes to wearables, it's becoming increasingly obvious that dedicated fitness trackers dominate the space. The Fitbit Blaze may look just like an Apple Watch and lack GPS, but this high-end tracker still impresses with loads of useful features including automatic activity and sleep tracking, five-day battery life, and an unbeatable companion app. Other activity trackers tried to find new ways to differentiate themselves too. The Misfit Ray is stylish and small. The Withings Go's e-ink display can last for eight months. The ReliefBand interacts with your body's neural pathways to reduce nausea, and the durable Casio Smart Outdoor Watch is built for adventurers.

Connected Home Tech Keeps Getting Smarter
We all might not be able to build AI butlers for our homes like Mark Zuckerberg, but home appliances for the masses are becoming smarter. Flic smart buttons connect home devices like smart lights and speakers and makes controlling them as easy as pressing a button. When the Netatmo Presence security camera detects an intruder, it can distinguish between a harmless animal and a real potential threat. Finally, the Samsung Family Hub Fridge could be the first truly smart appliance. This intelligent refrigerator has a 21.5-inch, 1080p touch screen that's surprisingly useful. You can write notes, watch videos, access the fridge's internal cameras, and order new food if the old food starts to go bad.

Drones Still Dominate
It's only a matter of time before drones command our airspace, fighting our wars and delivering our Amazon orders. But if the legion of quadcopters we saw at CES is any indication, at least our new sky overlords will look cool and pack cutting-edge flight and image technology. Yuneec's affordable Typhoon H can record incredibly stable video with a camera that spins all the way around to up your action photography game. The funky-named Parrot Disco sports a modular fixed-wing design, a single rear 8-inch propeller, and top stable speeds of up to 50mph. And DJI's Phantom 3 offers 4K video recording for under a thousand dollars. At CES, we also got to check out The Drone Rodeo, a cowboy-themed drone expo that's exactly what it sounds like.

Oculus Rift

Virtual Reality Keeps Up Its Game
I don't know about you, but I cannot wait to completely leave this physical world behind. Fortunately, virtual reality is finally ready to reach the mainstream. The Oculus Rift is now available for pre-order, and we got to test out the final-version headset along with its touch controllers. But while that may be the first VR headset consumers can try, outside of Samsung's Gear VR, it won't be the last. We also got to use HTC's updated Vive Pre headset, made in partnership with PC gaming juggernaut Valve. And if you need content to watch on your pricey VR headset, you can create your own with the two spherical camera sensors of the Yezz Sfera smartphone.

Laptops and Tablets Continue to Merge
Microsoft's decision to merge laptop and tablet with the Surface Pro becomes more validated by the minute. The iPad Pro's larger screen and hardware keyboard certainly seemed inspired by Redmond's tablet, and at CES the most exciting laptops we saw were the ones meeting tablets in the middle. The Samsung Galaxy TabPro S has the thin and light design you'd expect from Samsung's popular Android tablets, but this device runs Windows 10 on a Core M processor. The Lenovo Yoga 900S hybrid laptop is similarly thin, light, and convertible while still packing an Intel Core i7 CPU. Dell's Latitude 2-in-1 tablets are sleek, professional, and available soon, as is the HP Spectre x360. The message is clear: laptops should be more like tablets, and vice versa.

USB-C Gains Ground
Last year, we weren't huge fans of how the new Apple MacBook only featured a single port, and a new one that no one else was using: USB-C. Almost a year later at CES 2016, and most of the laptops we saw at the show are using the faster, more versatile USB-C connector. LaCie also announced a slate of upcoming storage devices compatible with USB-C. Beyond increasing adoption, some companies are even trying to improve the physical connection itself. Griffin's magnetic USB-C adapter brings one of the coolest MacBook innovations, the MagSafe connector, to USB-C devices.

New Display Tech Is Reaching Its Apex
Just as 1080p HD was fully settling in as the new standard for visual quality, 4K came along to show us a future filled with even more beautiful images. We saw the slow but steady adoption of 4K during CES last year, and this year more companies are stepping up to make enjoying 4K content actually feasible. We saw 4K DVRs and 4K Blu-ray players, as well as affordable 4K televisions from TCL, Hisense, Sharp, and Vizio. But if you're itching to know what your next display upgrade should be, keep your eye on 4K OLED TVs like the one LG showed off. HDR is also waiting to break big.

Connected and Autonomous Cars Rule the Road
Can cars drive themselves better than people can? That's what automakers seem to think, since CES 2016 was filled with autonomous vehicles and cars with other smart functionality. Kia wants fully autonomous cars by the end of the next decade. Ford showed off cars with built-in Amazon integration. Volkswagen tried to distract us from its emissions scandal with its BUDD-e concept van. And while it's not autonomous, the 2017 Chevy Bolt can travel 200 miles on a single electric charge. We even saw a car that looked like the Batmobile!

Less Radical, More Real
As exciting as these concepts may seem, the majority of them are trends we observed at CES 2015. Instead of introducing radical new ideas, this year's show was about getting closer to turning radical old ideas into a reality. That's not surprising, and it's probably the right call, but it can be a little boring in a business that doesn't like to look back.