The Verge·Wednesday, January 7, 2026

The Verge - Wednesday, January 7, 2026

10 stories~15 min

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Stories Covered

L’Oréal’s latest flat iron uses infrared light to make hair styling much faster

The Light Straight maxes out at 320 degrees Fahrenheit. | Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge Hair gadgets have become increasingly popular over the last decade. Hair dryers, curlers, steamers - you name it, there's probably a TikTokker shilling for the latest hair gadget that will totally revolutionize a hair routine. Even so, I was excited to get a demo of L'Oréal's Light Straight at CES 2026. It's an extension of the tech that L'Oréal introduced at CES 2024 with the Airlight Pro hairdryer. I

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Samsung’s Ballie robot is probably never coming out

Samsung's spherical Ballie robot may be rolling off into the sunset, less than a year after its retail launch was announced. The smart home robot has made an appearance at CES almost every year since it was first announced in 2020, but was notably absent at CES 2026. Unfortunately, its disappearance may be because Ballie has been shelved. In a statement emailed to Bloomberg, Samsung said Ballie is an "active innovation platform," and "continues to inform how Samsung designs spatially aware, con

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OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health, encouraging users to connect their medical records

OpenAI has been dropping hints this week about AI's role as a "healthcare ally" - and today, the company is announcing a product to go along with that idea: ChatGPT Health. ChatGPT Health is a sandboxed tab within ChatGPT that's designed for users to ask their health-related questions in what it describes as a more secure and personalized environment, with a separate chat history and memory feature than the rest of ChatGPT. The company is encouraging users to connect their personal medical reco

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Amazon’s smart shopping cart for Whole Foods gets bigger, lighter, and adds tap-to-pay

Amazon says its new Dash Cart has a 40 percent larger capacity. Amazon is launching a revamped version of its smart shopping cart, which it plans to bring to dozens of Whole Foods locations by the end of this year, according to an announcement on Wednesday. The new Dash Cart features a "more responsive" item scanner that's now located next to the built-in display, along with a new NFC reader that lets you tap to pay with your credit card or phone. Amazon's previous Dash Cart design put scanner

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Fujifilm’s new instant camera captures video with vintage effects

You hold Fujifilm’s new instant camera sideways like a camcorder. | Image: Fujifilm Fujifilm is expanding its hybrid instant camera line with the new Instax Mini Evo Cinema that adds the ability to capture video clips up to 15 seconds long. The Mini Evo Cinema also features a unique design inspired by the vintage Fujica Single-8 8mm film camera that Fujifilm introduced in 1965. It will be released in Japan on January 30th, 2026, but pricing, and wider availability, haven't been announced yet.

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Some of our favorite 4K UHD Blu-rays are three for $33 at Amazon right now

The holidays — and the copious amounts of binge-watching that come with them — are very much behind us at this point, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be time to catch up on the movies from last year (and beyond) you might have missed. Thankfully, Amazon has brought back one of the better promos we’ve seen in recent years, allowing you to snag three 4K UHD Blu-ray discs for $33 through January 19th. It should go without saying that you’ll need a 4K Blu-ray player like Panasonic’s UB820-K or ste

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Dell admits consumers don’t care about AI PCs

Dell has revealed that consumers aren't buying PCs for AI features right now. In an interview with PC Gamer ahead of CES, Dell has made it clear its 2026 products aren't all about being AI-first, and it's moving beyond being "all about" AI PCs. "We're very focused on delivering upon the AI capabilities of a device-in fact everything that we're announcing has an NPU in it - but what we've learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is they're not buying based on

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CES 2026 tech you can already buy

Belkin’s Charging Case Pro makes some thoughtful tweaks to its previous battery-equipped model, and it’s launching in mid-January. | Image: Belkin News coming out of CES 2026 might be slowing down, but as of Wednesday we still have writers on the ground, zipping around from hotel suite to Las Vegas convention center to try everything that matters. We've published well over 100 articles, and there's plenty of more content to come, including reviews of stuff we got to see at the show. As expecte

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L’Oréal’s new LED face masks address all my issues with this category

I hate when friends and family ask me which LED face mask to buy. That's because LED face masks are another prime example of the wild wellness west. There's compelling science behind using red and infrared light therapy to address skin concerns, particularly wrinkles. However, wellness influencers have taken that concept and absolutely ran away with it. View this post on Instagram While it's a legitimate treatment you can get from a dermatologis

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Sony’s new ‘Hyperpop’ PS5 covers are bursting with RGB color

Sony's first PlayStation announcement of 2026 is all about color. The new Hyperpop Collection includes colorful neon console covers and controllers that really add a pop of color to a PS5. Sadly, if you own a PS5 Pro then you won't be able to enjoy the RGB in your living room fun. There are three colors available: techno red, remix green, and rhythm blue (RGB!). All three are very different to the console covers that Sony has shipped for the PS5 so far, and they certainly look like they'd fit in

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