The Eight Weirdest Things I Saw at CES 2025

CES is a week-long showcase of new products and service from across industries. Some products are true innovations, while others are definitely duds. Some, however, are just plain weird.

As I walked around CES this week, from convention center halls to media-only events, I had a blast checking out the weirdest tech I could find. After all, just because something is weird, doesn't make it boring or useless. On the contrary; some of these items were among the most interesting things to see. These eight products, however, stood out most to me:

Electric Salt Spoon

This was CNET Group's pick for weirdest and most unexpected product of CES, and it's not hard to see why. Kirin's Electric Salt Spoon makes food taste saltier, not with extra 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 on your taste buds. In doing so, the food on the spoon tastes saltier than it otherwise would. You choose one of four intensity levels (the company recommends the lowest setting for beginners), press the button, and you're good to go. The spoon is enormous, however, which makes it difficult to activate the electric current while eating at the same time.

It's weird, but also noble, since it could enable people who need to cut down on their sodium intake to still enjoy "salty" foods.

I only saw the spoon at the show, and didn't have a chance to taste test the product. However, Mashable's Matt Binder did: He wasn't sure at first whether it was working, until the spoon shut off halfway through a sip of broth, due to how awkward it was to hold. Losing the effect while eating with the spoon did show off how it was making the food saltier.

Bodyfriend

I didn't think one of the weirdest things I would see at CES would be a massage chair, but that's because I didn't think someone would make a Transformers-style massage chair—and one so clearly inspired by Bumblebee, at that.

To be clear, Hasbro has nothing to do with the chair. This is Bodyfriend, a massage chair with arms and legs that can move as if it were a robot. That, supposedly, helps people stretch muscles they wouldn't otherwise be able to move themselves. However, to me, it seems like a slow-moving robot that's fallen and can't get up.

The chair has 733 parts and can measure your heart rate, in addition to, of course, offering massages. You can see CNET's Bridget Carey give it a try at CES Unveiled:

Petal

Do you love your plants? Do you ever wonder how they're feeling? Do you wish they could text you? Of course you do. That's why there's Petal, from the makers of Bird Buddy.

Petal is a camera with a flexible stem you can add to your yard, to keep tabs on your plants and flowers. Of course, since it's 2025, Petal is also powered by AI and can identify potential hazards to your flora, such as insects and bees. There's even an interactive option that lets you "chat" with your flowers via Bird Buddy's chatbot, so you can learn how many things your flower "saw" today.

Nékojita FuFu

If you hate your drinks being too hot, you don't have to cool them down yourself; instead, you could use Nékojita FuFu. This small cat device sits on the rim of a mug or bowl, and, using a tiny internal fan, blows on 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 down from 190°F to 160°F in three minutes, and 151°F in five minutes. Compare that to 176°F after three minutes and 171°F after five minutes without the cat, and it does seem to do something.

I can't imagine these things gaining widespread popularity, but it's also fun. It reminds me of novelty tea infusers, like "Mr. Tea." If it makes you happy to have a cute cat on your mug cooling your coffee to a drinkable temperature, I'm all for it.

I also like the idea proposed by the top comment on our article about the Nékojita FuFu: "Put this on one of the rechargeable 'stay hot mugs' and let 'em fight it out."

AeroCatTower

The AeroCatTower is an air purifier. It's also a cat tower. You might have gathered that by the creepy cat sitting atop the device.

It's not clear how well the AeroCatTower cleans the air, but it does take your cat into consideration. When your pet jumps on top to rest, the machine slows down so as to not disturb them. Plus, there's a built-in seat heater to make sure they're extra comfy. Hey, maybe it'll keep your cat off your keyboard.

Realbotix

If you were walking around CES and weren't sure whether or not you saw Realbotix's booth, you missed it. Realbotix is out here trying to make anthropomorphic AI-powered robots, and the result is, well, weird. Just watch CNET's interview with Aria, one of Realbotix's robots, to see why. Aria's face is firmly in the uncanny valley, as is the fact her lips are totally out of sync with her speech. Her movements in general are far from natural. The whole thing kind of seems like chatting with a character from a PS1 game.

What's weirder, though, is when Realbotix swaps out the faces on the robots, leaving you with a flimsy, creepy face mask. I get what Realbotix is going for here, but its current robots are disconcerting, to say the least. (I walked past this booth and audibly said "Jesus Christ" to myself.)

ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable

We covered two major products from Lenovo at CES this year: One was the Lenovo Legion Go S, the first PC gaming handheld not from Valve to natively run SteamOS. Very cool. The other was the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable, a laptop that has a rollable display that extends an extra 2.7 inches vertically. Very weird, but also very cool.

Lifehacker associate tech editor Michelle Ehrhardt sat down with Lenovo to try out the funky laptop. As advertised, you can press a button or use a hand gesture to unfurl your laptop's display to a full 16.7 inches, which is neat. You get the benefit of a large display in the form factor of a 14-inch laptop—plus the novelty of revealing parts of your display you never knew were hidden in the laptop, of course. The rest of the machine is a basic Copilot+ PC, though, with an Intel Core Ultra 7 chip, up to 32GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage—so no overly fancy internals to compliment the novel display tech. At $3,500, Lenovo may have priced this into being more weird than cool, though.

Dell's big rebrand

You know what's weird? Throwing out an established brand like XPS in favor of language every other tech company uses. It's a confusing move from Dell, who made headlines during this week's CES when it announced the end of XPS, Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, and its other brands. Now, Dell computers will come in three lines: Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max. In each of those lines, there are three extra lines to consider: Base, Plus, and Premium.

Your friend might have a Dell Plus, while another might buy a Dell Pro Base, all the while you have a Dell Pro Max Premium. That's not so confusing, is it? If it is, check out Khamosh Pathak's explainer here.