Of all the laptops I saw at CES this year, this one was the one I wanted to take home with me most. It’s called the HP OmniBook Ultra 14, and it’s powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Elite chip. On its own, it’s just a super sharp-looking laptop, with tiny bezels, a 14-inch OLED panel, and an oversized trackpad. The display claims to be able to get up to 1,000 nits in peak HDR brightness and has a 120-Hz refresh rate. It also uses an absolutely tiny 65-watt GaN power adapter, which is a boon to this laptop’s overall portability.
But more than anything, this has to be HP’s prettiest laptop in many years. The fact that it uses a Snapdragon X2 Elite chip also means that it’ll hopefully have fantastic battery life and even better performance than the first time around. HP is also offering an Intel Panther Lake version, but it says a lot for HP to support Qualcomm on this premium of a machine.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 chips were announced a few months ago, but the OmniBook Ultra 14 is among the first laptops that will actually use them. These chips are the successor to the original Snapdragon X line, which broke the long-held duopoly of Intel and AMD. They were a big deal, and a lot hangs on its second generation. These new chips promise far better CPU performance, more powerful integrated graphics, and 80 TOPS of NPU performance. The competition between Qualcomm, and Intel, and AMD has never felt tighter, and I’m curious to see how laptops like the HP OmniBook Ultra perform—and how they are priced.
The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is expected to launch sometime in early 2026.
You Can Generate AI Art By Speaking to This Smart Art Frame
E Ink smart digital frames aren't new, but this one from Fraimic has a unique twist that might ruffle some feathers in the art world. Yes, like many digital frames, you can upload your own art to the display locally (no internet required), and there's also a simple mobile website you can use to add images—no app needed. Unlike many of its peers, you can also replace the frame with something else of your choosing in case you want to maintain a theme for your home. There's an accelerometer to detect if it's in portrait or landscape orientation.
But the key differentiator here is “voice-to-art creation.” Tap the bottom white space on the border, and it'll light up, indicating that the microphone is active. You can then describe what you want to see on the frame. Fraimic uses Wispr Flow's AI to convert the speech to text, then passes the work to OpenAI to create an image in an art style of your choosing. You can see the picture above—Fraimic founder Anthony Mattana says he told the frame to create a realistic image of the famous Las Vegas sign, but put a blanket over it and have the words “Welcome to Fraimic” over it, and voila.
There's been a wave of backlash against AI-generated art from artists and creators, but the Fraimic hails from a group of Chicago-based artists and designers. Mattana thinks artists will find Fraimic useful, whether to display their own art or generate fresh images.
The frame comes in two sizes: 14 x 18 ($300) and 24 x 36 ($999), and both use E Ink's Spectra 6 display for full color. The battery should last a few years, so you don't need an ugly cord, and there's a USB-C port to recharge it. Fraimic actually launched as a Kickstarter late in 2025, and those orders are expected to ship in May, and the company expects it to officially launch in June.
Bee, the Always-Listening Wearable, Can Now Take Your Notes
Always-listening wearables were a big trend at CES 2025, and that's once again true for CES 2026. Mobvoi, a company that primarily made Wear OS smartwatches, switched gears in the last year to AI listening wearables. At CES this year, it announced TicNote Pods—4G connected earbuds that can listen to your conversations and organize them into notes, and the company even teased an upcoming smartwatch (not running Wear OS) that will debut later this year with similar listening capabilities. But, arguably, one of the first companies to kickstart the trend was the Bee Pioneer.
I covered Bee at CES 2025, and the company was acquired by Amazon last September. Now, it has a team of eight continuing work out of San Francisco. Bee cofounder Maria de Lourdes Zollo says, “We are seeing clear use cases; we are seeing people using bee for memory, self-reflection, work, and a companion that is always there for them.” She says the possibilities and scale are different now with Amazon propping up the company, and that it still has the space to work fast with its own startup culture.
Bee announced three new features for its existing Pioneer wearable, which still costs $50 with no subscription, though a subscription will likely come at some point. (It's weirdly not sold on Amazon.com just yet). Self Note lets you talk directly to the wearable, Walkie-Talkie-style, to record your own thoughts. This follows a growing trend of wearables designed for memory and recall, like the Sandbar Stream AI ring and Pebble's Index 01.
Also new are templates for when you record meetings, so you can have the AI structure meeting notes in specific ways. And then there's To-Do Actions, where you can ask Bee to perform certain tasks, like creating a calendar invite and inviting a specific contact (it works with Gmail and Google Calendar). The company also managed to double the battery life from seven to 14 days through software improvements and a firmware update.
I asked Zollo about whether Bee will integrate with Alexa in the future, and she teased that there's “something in the works” but couldn't share more. Bee will remain as its own brand within Amazon's ecosystem, and Zollo couldn't share more on whether the company is exploring new hardware designs, though she says, “the sky is the limit.”
https://www.wired.com/live/ces-2026-live-blog/
