Gear Diary’s Best of CES 2020 Awards

Another CES has come and gone, and as we have in the past, we’ve sorted through hundreds upon hundreds of products to bring you the ones we thought were the most exciting, useful, disruptive, or clever. Take a look at our Best of CES 2020 award picks, and see what you think!

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

Lenovo ThinkBook Plus

For most computers, the top lid is just kind of there. It’s a good spot to slap the company logo, and some users stick a few stickers on it to personalize the whole thing. Otherwise, no one gives it much thought. But on the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus, the lid is a 10.8? eInk display so you can handwrite notes, get calendar appointments, pull up documents, and even receive email and other notifications

Tineco Moda One S Hairdryer

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

Moda One S uses sensors to determine how dry your hair is getting. As a result, it can better adjust the airflow and the heat, so you don’t get that itchy, burning scalp feeling from overuse of the dryer. Tineco also includes an LED on the back so you can get a visual of how wet or dry your hair is as you go-it turns from blue (wet) to red (dry) so you can easily move around, stop blowing, etc., more easily. In theory, by regulating the heat and power of the dryer more efficiently, your hair gets dry without drying out or frizzing, so you get a smoother, sleeker, dryer experience. It also features magnetic nozzle attachments for both a smoother and concentrator, so no matter which you need to get your unruly mop under control, you’re covered.

iFrogz Airtime Sport

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

iFrogz has been known for making affordable, quality headphones, and their jump into truly wireless sports earbuds continues that tradition. The Airtime Sports offer IPX5 water resistance, so while you can’t swim with them they’ll survive sweaty ears or a run in the rain, and the sport wings will help keep them securely on your head. The charging case gives them up to 25 hours of battery life, they come in multiple colors, and they won’t break the bank at only $79.99.

MaxPro Fitness

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

A big trend at CES this year was turning fitness into something you could bring with you, not just have in a gym. MaxPro Fitness really blew us away because it’s a compact solution with significant versatility. It uses tension cables for strength training, has a companion app to help track your workouts, folds down for portability and storage, and comes with a variety of attachments for every kind of workout. It’s basically a whole gym, but in something that fits in a backpack!

TCL 10 5G

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

The 10 5G is TCL’s first 5G smartphone; it will be powered by Qualcomm’s recently announced Snapdragon 7-Series 5G SoC, and it has a 64MP quad-camera setup with TCL’s NXTVISION tech, which makes the display sharper as well as promises higher photo quality from the camera. Most importantly, it’s a 5G smartphone that will start at under $500

Ohsnap Phone Grip

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

A successful Kickstarter that actually shipped before the company showed up at CES to promote their product, the Ohsnap phone grip is easy to apply, easy to use, thin enough to not get snagged on your pockets, and it is wireless charging compatible. Best of all, it has neodymium magnets embedded in it, so you can use it to stick your phone to any steel surface (like your fridge or a filing cabinet), or you can use it with any magnetic car mount.

Celestron StarSense Explorer

There are lots of smartphone apps out there that let you point your phone to the sky and identify what’s above you at that moment. But Celestron’s StarSense Explorer takes that a significant step further by using a smartphone app to help you align a Celestron telescope with the sky. It’s like a GPS for your telescope, allowing you to zero in on what you want to see and align the telescope so you’re looking in the right place.

JBL Bar 9.1

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

We’re all used to using soundbars as a way to boost movie night to the next level, but JBL takes it further with the JBL Bar 9.1. Not only do you get Dolby Atmos built-in, Dolby Vision support, Chromecast, and Airplay built-in, and an included 10-in subwoofer, the bar has two detachable battery-operated speakers. Detach the speakers and place them behind you while using the bar, and you get 360-degree sound due to how the speakers aim the sound up to make it more truly surround sound. It also connects via Bluetooth so you can connect it to your phone for music as well as video enjoyment.

PAX Era Pro

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

If you’re unfamiliar with PAX, they are a company that solely focuses on vaping THC products. They have devices for both flower and pods, and the PAX Era Pro is their newest pod device. They have worked to make every aspect of the experience as customizable to the user as possible from temperature to time to dose control. Even better, their newest pods include integration with their Android app that lets you learn about what’s in the pod, as well as information on the origin of the pod’s THC.

PlayShifu Shifu Orboot World of Dinosaurs

Getting kids excited about learning can be tough. PlayShifu has a way to make learning exciting with interactive games and devices. They bridge screen use with practical toys to get kids excited and interacting with history, geography, and science in a new way. Quite frankly, after seeing it in action at CES, even the adults were excited to play with one!

Impossible Foods Impossible Pork

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

Impossible Foods has already wowed people with their vegetarian version of beef, so they moved on to reinventing pork next. We had the opportunity to try some Impossible Pork creations and were overall very impressed. They were juicy, tasty, and offered a surprisingly meat-like experience. The texture was similar to ground pork, and while there was certainly some light grumbling about how pork is sacred and should not be turned vegetarian, it seems likely Impossible will win over more admirers with their newest offering.

Alpine Electronics iLX-F411 Head Unit

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

The latest addition to Alpine’s Halo line is the iLX-F411 and it sports the famed “hovering” screen platform as its predecessor while expanding the size of the screen to a huge 11-inches. The iLX-F411 features a customizable user interface with three home screens and 22 available widgets, a capacitive touch screen, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility, built-in Bluetooth for hands-free calling and audio streaming, and will be SiriusXM-Ready.

Brydge Pro+

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

The Brydge Pro+ for the iPad Pro that comes complete with an integrated trackpad. Breaking the internet with that announcement makes the iPad Pro one step closer to being a full replacement for your MacBook, making this an ideal product for anyone with an iPad. With viewing angles from 0-180 degrees and adjustable backlit keys, this is the closest your iPad be to a full laptop replacement. Complete with Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity and a three-month battery life per charge, even if you forget to charge the keyboard, chances are you still will have more than enough to get you through the weekend.

4Moms Mamaroo Sleep Bassinet

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

The mamaRoo sleep bassinet features five unique motions (car ride, wave, kangaroo, tree swing, and rock-a-bye), vibration, and five-speed options. It also includes four, built-in white noises (rain, ocean, fan and a shush). Parents can easily control all of these functions via the 4moms app on a compatible smart device. The app also includes a timer feature, which can be used to help establish a bedtime routine.

Arlo Pro3 Floodlight

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

Following a pattern of releasing highly requested products by users like the Arlo Video Doorbell back at CES 2019, the Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight is the first-ever wire-free Floodlight camera that does exactly what you’d think it does and more. An extension of the Arlo smart cameras, the floodlight has powerful LED lights, an integrated HDR camera complete with a 160-degree field of view, two-way audio, custom lighting settings, and a built-in siren to boot. There are so many use cases for this, regardless if you decide to use it at home, or for your business, especially with Arlo’s AI optional monthly subscription-based service.

Lora DiCarlo Onda

Gear Diary's Best of CES 2020 Awards

After an inauspicious start with CES and the CTA last year, Lora DiCarlo has come back triumphant and strong with their latest — the Lora Di Carlo Onda. Onda is the first handheld robotic pleasure device of its kind; it stimulates the G-spot by mimicking the “come hither” motion of a human finger. Lora DiCarlo products are “intended to help women and those within the LGBTQ+ community explore their anatomy and pleasure, and discover the relationship between sexual health and overall wellness.” From what we’ve seen, they are well on their way to making that happen.

About the Author

Judie Lipsett Stanford
Judie is the co-owner and Editor-in-Chief of Gear Diary, which she founded in September 2006. She got her start in 1999 writing software reviews at the now-defunct smaller.com; from mid-2000 through 2006, she wrote hardware reviews for and co-edited at The Gadgeteer. A recipient of the Sigma Kappa Colby Award for Technology, Judie has written for or been profiled by nationally known sites and magazines, and she has served on multiple industry hardware and software award panels. She is best known for her device-agnostic approach, enjoyment of exploring tech, gadgets, and gear, and her deep-diving, jargon-free reviews.