CES 2026 Roundup: The Gaming Hardware That Actually Matters
While CES 2026 hasn’t been the most exciting spectacle for gamers in recent memory, it did offer a clearer picture of where gaming hardware is actually headed, even if it wasn’t packed with jaw-dropping reveals. Still, there’s enough here to give gamers something to look forward to over the next year or two. Whether they’re really going to be game-changers in the long run remains to be seen, but that’s not stopping us from checking out the latest & greatest reveals from CES 2026. Today, we’re rounding up the latest gaming hardware news from the event to showcase the best announcements for gamers.
ASUS ROG’s Stacked Lineup
If any brand tried to carry CES 2026 on its back for gamers, it was ASUS ROG. The biggest hitters for the year brought a slew of new hardware to the table.
They’ve covered the bases pretty nicely, with a lineup of gaming desktops, peripherals, and new concepts that may change the “game” of PC gaming entirely.
Well, not really, but they’ve tried at least.
The Sleek G1000 Gaming Desktop; Holograms Brought to Life!
Personally, one of the most exciting highlights from the event was ASUS ROG’s G1000 gaming desktop; while it doesn’t do anything special in the specs department, decked out with up to an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X 3D CPU paired with a powerful AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT or a top-of-the-line NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU.
Nothing we haven’t seen before, frankly, but it does impress with its near-extreme attention to airflow and thermals, including separate chambers for the PSU and graphics card for better sustained performance, paired with the ROG AIO liquid cooler & segregated fan/radiator ROG Thermal Atrium.
But where it stands most out, though, is their brand new AniME Holo; a holographic lighting system directly integrated into the casing’s glass panels. This has three different zones on the casing: two on the front & one on the side.
They’ve gone beyond the standard RGB fare, and the case can project literal full-color holographic animations that move, dance, or do whatever you can imagine, since it can be fully customized to taste; the perfect way to adorn your cyberpunk-esque desktop.
It’s flashy, borderline unnecessary, and exactly the kind of aesthetic risk we don’t see enough of in modern gaming PCs.
ROG’s XREAL R1 Gaming Glasses; Fancy New Shades
Taking their first steps into the “screenless” on-the-eye display tech, ROG debuted their XREAL R1 gaming glasses, bringing unreal full-screen gaming wherever your face goes.
With the XREAL R1 gaming glasses, you get a nifty 57° FOV and basically a massive 171-inch display, like an XL gaming monitor, but for your eyes only! Plus, it’s got an impressive 240Hz refresh rate & a booming sound system with built-in sound tuned by Bose.
They’ve got some sweet connectivity options too, and with the included dock, can pair up to three devices via 2x HDMI ports and a DisplayPort I/O connection.
And honestly? They look a lot better than you’d expect.
ROG Kithara Gaming Headset; Planar Magnetic Audio, Whatever that Means
To top it all off, ROG’s new Kithara Gaming Headset brings a whole new level of audio fidelity, doing away with the dynamic drivers of ol’ in favor of top-notch 100mm planar magnetic drivers with an open-back design.
What this means practically is extremely expansive soundstages and precise locational awareness, perfect for FPS shooters to pinpoint footsteps & distant gunshots, or for single-player RPGs for an immersive, more realistic experience.
Plus, with versatile connectivity options including 4.4mm, 6.3mm, and 3.5mm single-ended plugs, it’s covered no matter what device you use it on.
ROG x Kojima Gaming Tablet; the ROG Flow Z13-KJP
One of our favorites from CES 2026, though, has to be the ROG x Kojima Productions collab, the ROG Flow Z13-KJP, a 2-in-1 gaming tablet to bring impressive design aesthetics in that patented Kojima sci-fi style from Yoji Shinkawa, one of the most iconic artists from the studio.
Aside from the design, another standout is the performance; the gaming tablet packs in the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor with the Radeon 8060S Graphics, so it’s beefy enough even for AAA gaming (at lower settings, of course).
Plus, it comes with the ROG Delta II-KJP gaming headset, ROG Keris II Origin-KJP Edition gaming mouse, and ROG Scabbard II XXL-KJP mouse mat, to complete the collection!
Double the Screen Real Estate!
Two of the more “out there” innovations showcased at CES 2026 have to be ASUS’s and Lenovo’s gaming laptops, with one clear goal: to give you as much possible screen real estate as they can.
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo
ASUS is no stranger to the 2-in-1 laptop game, but the ROG Zephyrus Duo takes things to a whole new level. Instead of being a ‘productivity’ focused device, the Zephryus Duo is a “world’s first”; a full-size 16-inch gaming laptop with two 3K touchscreen displays.
To make the form factor happen, the “laptop” has a few different configurations; you can use it as a standalone clamshell with the keyboard attached, detach the keyboard for a “tent” mode, or set it on its sides for an extra-long display.
To match the insanity that is this form factor, you’ve got the latest flagship gaming PC specs you’d expect, including the Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor 386H, and up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU!
All jokes aside, while this may feel like overkill, it’s an extremely flexible (pun intended) gaming laptop that gives you a whole lot more screen estate, in a considerably compact form factor!
The Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable
Taking things a bigger step further than the ROG Zephyrus Duo’s dual-screen setup is the Lenovo Legion Pro Rollable. Right now, it’s just a ‘concept’ and isn’t in active production like the Zephyrus Duo, but it’s still a marvel to look at.
What at first looks like an unassuming 16-inch gaming laptop can in fact “roll” into two more sizes: a 21.5-inch “Tactical Mode” and an extreme 24-inch “Arena Mode”, meant to mimic a real-world FreeSync gaming monitor, for example, but in that standard laptop frame.
Aside from that, you can expect the latest & greatest internals like Intel Core Ultra processors and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs. It’s safe to say this thing is a beast once it becomes available to the public.
Why it Matters
While the two are certainly innovative, showing us a glimpse of what the future of “gaming” laptops could be, right now, they’re just far too expensive (we expect) for any real-world gamers to purchase.
For the price, you’d probably be able to build a pretty solid rig with an impressive, bigger monitor to boot, without the downsides of lower-powered laptop GPUs.
Right now, these feel more like proof-of-concept flexes than realistic upgrades; but they do hint at where gaming laptops could be heading next.
Razer’s Freaky Holographic AI Companion
In more ‘absurd’ CES news, Razer unveils quite a few things (par their patented Razer Blade laptops), and chief among them has to be Razer’s Project AVA; an AI “digital assistant” accompanied with a holographic avatar to sit right beside your desk.
Project AVA is a bit of a puzzling thing to understand, but what it boils down to is a fully-fledged AI companion in a tubular casing, with a cyberpunk-esque avatar (like a cute anime girl), bringing to life Halo’s Cortana in full form.
They achieve this with the 5.5-inch display, which can show you a 3D hologram of the avatar of your choice. Basically, all you do with it is talk to it, ask it questions, and interact as you would any normal AI chatbot, but it can also give you personalized strategies for your games, help streamline your workflows, or just celebrate your Victory Royale in Fortnite.
According to Razer, the AI will learn and “evolve” through your interactions, molding its own personality, and also utilizes “human-like vision” and “audio sensing” through its face-tracking camera and built-in mics for contextual awareness.
It’s a step towards “actual” AI, as rudimentary a form as you’d expect, and while cool, it does make us feel like we’re living in a Black Mirror episode.
Intel’s Powerful New Mobile CPUs
Intel is stepping up its game in the CPU space with its upcoming Panther Lake CPU platform and Intel Core Ultra Series 3 CPUs. What makes them unique is that they’re now specifically targeting the handheld gaming PC market while simultaneously upgrading their on-chip integrated GPUs across the board.
According to Intel, their new CPU platform boasts a 77% increase in gaming performance compared to their Core Ultra 9 285H processor, a massive increase from previous-gen integrated GPU cards.
In retrospect, this closely matches up to the performance of an entry-level discrete laptop GPU, like NVIDIA’s RTX 4050 cards. What this means for gamers is, we can expect Intel’s latest innovations in the CPU space to be featured on an array of gaming laptops, everyday productivity laptops, as well as PC gaming handhelds.
This makes gaming, even on a laptop not meant for gaming, possible and look good doing it too, especially if you hook it up to a 120Hz gaming monitor!
More power, more efficiency = better frames & higher graphical fidelity.
Whether Intel can live up to its lofty ambitions remains to be seen, but if it can, we’re excited to see how much of a bump handhelds like Lenovo Legion Go, the Steam Deck, and ROG Ally get once you integrate the new CPUs into the mix.
If Intel delivers, 2026 could finally be the year handheld gaming PCs stop feeling like compromised versions of desktop rigs.
The Lenovo Legion Go 2, Now on SteamOS!
Another fantastic piece of news to come out of CES 2026 is the Lenovo Legion Go 2, now coming with a SteamOS version! That’s right, no more clicking around the shoddy Windows UI (for gaming on a handheld, at least) just to open up your games’ library.
The handheld Legion Go 2 itself isn’t new; it’s been out since October 2025, but with SteamOS as its operating system, the device should feel a lot more user-friendly for a gaming-centric handheld, akin to a gaming-first device, rather than a handheld PC.
Overall, it’s a surprising but well-received update to take a step forward into third-party handhelds featuring the widely beloved SteamOS. But simultaneously, while welcome, it doesn’t really justify the still ridiculous pricing of the Legion Go 2 (at $1,199), whether SteamOS or not.
Wrapping Up CES 2026
CES 2026 might not go down in history as an all-time GOAT year for gaming reveals, but it did give us a pretty clear look at where the industry is headed. Right now, the focus isn’t on reinventing gaming overnight; it’s about refining how, where, and what we play on.
Mobile and hybrid gaming hardware is clearly the priority, whether that’s through incredibly powerful laptops, more capable handheld PCs, smart glasses, or CPUs designed specifically to blur the lines between the two. At the same time, manufacturers are getting bolder with form factors and features, something we’ve been sorely missing in the last few years.
AI is also creeping into everything, sometimes in genuinely useful ways, sometimes in ways that feel more like gimmicky tech demos rather than must-have features. Still, it’s clear that smarter hardware and more efficient performance utilizing AI will play a bigger role in how games run over the next few years.
CES 2026 wasn’t about instant game-changers; it was about laying the groundwork.
And while not every reveal will matter in the long run, there’s no denying that the future of gaming hardware is getting more portable, more experimental, and a whole lot more interesting.
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