CES 2025 Worst in Show: Betas for a Dystopian Future
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) calls itself “The Most Powerful Tech Event in the World” — a kind of cheat sheet for the future, “where brands get business done” and “where the industry’s sharpest minds take the stage” with their “boldest breakthroughs”.
But “not all innovation is good innovation,” warns Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit’s Director of Sustainability (heading their Right to Repair advocacy team). So this year the group held its fourth annual “anti-awards ceremony” to call out CES’s “least repairable, least private, and least sustainable products.”
The judges have five criteria? to choose the “category winners.”
- How bad is this product
- Are the problems with this gadget innovatively bad?
- What is the global impact if the technology is widely adopted?
- How much worse is this than previous iterations of similar technology?
- How much do the negatives outweigh the positives?
The resulting video is a fun and rollicking romp that tries to forestall a future clogged with power-hungry AI and data-collecting sensors. There’s also a category for the worst in security — plus a special award titled “Who asked for this?” — and then a final inglorious prize declaring “the Overall Worst in Show.”
YouTube personality Simone Giertz hosted the festivities, joking that it was “an awards show where the winners definitely don’t want to give an acceptance speech….
“So let’s dive in and give these gadgets the dubious honors that they’ve definitely earned.”
‘Worst in Privacy’
“We’re seeing more and more of these things that have basically surveillance technology built into them,” iFixit‘s Chamberlain told The Associated Press. “It enables some cool things. But it also means that now we’ve got microphones and cameras in our washing machines, refrigerators and that really is an industry-wide problem.”
Proving this point was Electronic Frontier Foundation executive director Cindy Cohn, who gave a truly impassioned takedown for the “worst in privacy” award. “One of the things we hate most at EFF is products that play on people’s fears and vulnerabilities in order to suck in their data and their money.” And Cohn’s EFF co-workers specifically wanted to recognize “the increasing trend of ‘smart’ infant products which promise exhausted, scared new parents peace of mind — but which, if you read the comments, often end up traumatizing those new parents with false reports that their baby has stopped breathing.”
Cohn complained that all of these products “collect a ton of information about you and your baby on an ongoing basis,” but EFF finally awarded “worst in privacy” honors to the Revol — a $1,200 baby bassinet equipped with a camera, a microphone, and a radar sensor. That’s $1,200 “for something that most parents will only use for a few months…”
“As one of my colleagues said, there’s a special place in hell for companies who prey on new parents’ anxieties.”
‘Overflowing with AI’
iFixit’s Chamberlain pointed out that the show is also “overflowing with AI and ‘smart’ features, often in places no one asked for.” And this lead to the “worst environmental impact” prize, awarded by Stacey Higginbotham, a policy fellow at Consumer Reports, calling out SoundHound AI’s in-car commerce ecosystem.
“This was a really tough selection process, because AI is everywhere at CES,” Higginbotham noted. And whenever you consider environmental impacts, “the computing power required to deliver some of these AI features is astronomical compared to the value they offer.”
Yet SoundHound’s product still loomed above the others, partly because “training their automative AI required more power than traditional in-car systems.” And there was an additional factor. “This product focuses heavily on advertising take-out meals to commuters.” (“We’re building a new voice-commerce ecosystem that will generate new leads for restaurants…” SoundHound brags in a promotional video.)
Or, as Higginbotham sees it, they’re “turning a power-hungry voice interaction into a source of additional waste in the form of take-out containers!”
But AI turned up in some even crazier places. “Have you ever wondered why your washing machine couldn’t make phone calls?
“No? Well Samsung has…”
Nathan Proctor, national campaign director for the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), presented the group’s choice for its “Who asked for this?” award. Proctor excoriated Samsung’s new line of “AI Home” appliances that will let you answer phone calls with your washing machine, oven, or refrigerator. Samsung says it’s a “bold step” in their “Screens Everywhere” vision. Proctor calls them “thoughtless smart features” being “force-fed” to an uninterested public.
“Even in CES’s dizzying array of these fairly useless AI or smart additions, adding a screen and a microphone to an appliance like a refrigerator or washing machine is notably useless.”
“And here’s the other thing. Every single one of these features is another thing that can break. It makes the device more expensive, more fragile — all just to be able to take a phone call from the washing machine?!”
Very Worst in Show
Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org appears in the video’s finale to present the very worst prize of all — the overall worst in show award — saying that why she speaks to legislators, the most relatable issue seems to be repairing refrigerators. (which always seems like an emergency and requires waiting for an in-person repair visit for an already-expensive appliance). “So the simplest product is really the best…”
But instead LG came up with a “smart” refrigerator.
LG cheers that consumers can now “upload photos between your smartphone and fridge.” Or, as Gordon-Byrne says with disbelief, “It’s got a TV as a door.” Enabled with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant (as well as Google Assistant), this smart refrigerator can now give you weather forecasts or play music you can dance to — as well as maintaining your to-do list, and even shopping for groceries.
But it does all that instead of just… being a refrigerator, “It has audio. It has sensors. It offers you recipes through the internet,” Gordon-Byrne says with exasperation.
“Not sure if you’re running low on milk?” LG’s announcement says. “Now you can see inside your refrigerator, including what’s in the door, even when you’re on the go…”
Gordon-Byrne’s verdict? “I can’t think of a less durable product. When you add all of these unnecessary functions to something that’s very basic, that has to run 24/7, it’s really a waste. So my advice to you, if you’re buying a new refrigerator, is buy the least smart product you can find.”
Worst in Security
One of the scariest presentations came from Paul Roberts, founder of SecuRepairs, a group advocating both cybersecurity and the right to repair. Roberts notes that about 65% of the routers sold in the U.S. are from a Chinese company named TP-Link — both wifi routers and the wifi/ethernet routers sold for homes and small offices.
Roberts reminded viewers that in October, Microsoft reported “thousands” of compromised routers — most of them manufactured by TP-Link — were found working together in a malicious network trying to crack passwords and penetrate “think tanks, government organizations, non-governmental organizations, law firms, defense industrial base, and others” in North America and in Europe. The U.S. Justice Department soon launched an investigation (as did the U.S. Commerce Department) into TP-Link’s ties to China’s government and military, according to a SecuRepairs blog post.
The reason? “As a China-based company, TP-Link is required by law to disclose flaws it discovers in its software to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology before making them public.” Inevitably, this creates a window “to exploit the publicly undisclosed flaw… That fact, and the coincidence of TP-Link devices playing a role in state-sponsored hacking campaigns, raises the prospects of the U.S. government declaring a ban on the sale of TP-Link technology at some point in the next year.”
TP-Link won the award for the worst in security.
Worsened by YouTube?
The ceremony raises a critical question for tech companies, according to iFixit’s blog: “are your products really making lives better — or just adding waste, cost, and surveillance?”
Speaking of waste, iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens mocked a $2,200 “smart ring” with a battery that only lasts for 500 charges. “Wanna open it up and change the battery? Well you can’t! Trying to open it will completely destroy this device…”
Thursday, the ceremony’s “panel of dystopia experts” together delivered their critiques in a livestream to iFixit’s feed of over 1 million subscribers on YouTube, with the video’s description warning about manufacturers “hoping to convince us that they have invented the future. But will their vision make our lives better, or lead humanity down a dark and twisted path?”
Yet while the ceremony criticized these products, YouTube was displaying ads for them.
“It’s hilarious that this video provides affiliate links to some of the items they’re telling us NOT to buy,” one comment complained below the video.
But other commenters gave the “Worst in CES” ceremony rave reviews. “Now this is the CES coverage I want,” one viewer wrote enthusiastically. “AI everything is the dumbest crap and the perfect Trojan horse for the complete surveillance state.”
And another commenter put it even more succinctly.
“This made me realize how much I despise the modern tech industry.”
