The best TechPowerUp for CES 2026
Introduction
The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), remains the big daddy of tech shows, held in the second week of each new year. It’s here that the consumer electronics and computing industry showcases their latest technology, setting the tone for the coming year. It is here that the priorities of the company’s road map are announced or displayed. We’ve been going to CES for 19 years now, and the show continues to grow, both in crowds and in the number of exhibitors with their latest products. As part of our story, our reporters on the ground visited more than 110 brands, photographing and describing thousands of products.
We are creating a dedicated page for our international CES 2026 coverage so you can read our product-specific news articles. Our reporters on the ground carefully examined every brand and product they found, and after much deliberation, they identified the standout products at the show. These are innovative brands, and they can be important in different areas of their products, possibly promoting other brands. These were then awarded the TechPowerUp Best of CES 2026 award.
TechPowerUp’s Best of CES 2026 Awards recognize products that push new boundaries in quality, design, and appeal—truly balanced hardware that could be your best choice. We don’t categorize awards by hardware type, instead honoring any outstanding items that meet our standards. This method has enabled the selection of a few entries for each category, especially those that have been very successful this year, rather than areas with only minor improvements in aesthetics and performance. Therefore, we will list the honorees alphabetically.
Drip System H1
Drip Computer brought a prototype of its ultra-compact, fully liquid cooling system to show at the Alphacool Suite. The Drip H1 is a game console-sized SFF PC complete with custom cooling designed in-house by Drip and built by Alphacool. In fact the component density is so high, that the structural components of the system are actually individual cooling barriers and water distribution systems. However, the Drip H1 uses off-the-shelf components. At its core, the Drop H1 uses a Mini-ITX motherboard and a desktop CPU, alongside a 50-series GPU. Drip also plans to include a comfortable carrying strap, allowing you to move the small, high-end system anywhere with ease. The Drip Computers team has worked with Alphacool as their watercooling supplier and the system should be available later this year. Two 80 x 240 mm radiators and six 80 mm fans handle ventilation and heat dissipation. To be able to deliver the 9800X3D + RTX 5090 kind of power in a compact and highly portable package is why the Drip H1 wins our Best of CES award.
Find our coverage of the Alphacool booth here.
The Drip Computers site can be found here.
ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo (2026)
The ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 2026 is the newest gaming notebook we’ve seen this year. The company has been making the Zephyrus series since 2023, but with its 2026 lineup, the dials are upping the ante on the hardware offerings. Its form-factor is easy to understand—think of both halves of a computer clamshell that are 3K OLED 120 Hz touchscreens, with a wireless output section that holds the keyboard and trackpad. You can use the notebook without this output feature, where one of the screens turns into a touchscreen, or you can set up a dual display setup. The notebook can be used as a convertible tablet.
Where ASUS has pushed the boundaries this year is with hardware, cooling, and compact display technology in a device that’s more than 1.9 cm thick, and weighs less than 2.8 kg. Each of the two displays is an ASUS ROG Nebula HDR unit with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, 1100 nits maximum brightness, 120 Hz refresh rate, using the latest Corning DXC glass. The displays are also fully NVIDIA G-SYNC certified. ASUS has also developed a new graphite-sheet thermal pad for its vapor-chamber-based cooling system. Under the hood is an Intel Core Ultra 9 386H “Panther Lake” processor, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, 64 GB of LPDDR5X memory, and a 2 TB Gen 5 SSD; and a 90 Wh battery with 250 W fast charging.
Find our ASUS and ASUS ROG coverage here.
ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial Build
ASUS has included a sample build of its ROG components with the Glacial logo, in white. Although not a product in itself, this building is a good example of the creation of an ecosystem by hardware manufacturers, of products that combine multiple layers that can form strong, aesthetically cohesive units. At the heart of the build the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial motherboard rocks an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor; ROG Astral RTX 5090 White Edition graphics card, ROG Thor Platinum III White Edition 1200 W PSU, ROG Strix SLC IV 360 ARGB LCD White Edition AIO CLC, and ROG Cronox White Edition case.
Get our ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial coverage here.
Corsair GALLEON 100 SD Keyboard
The Corsair GALLEON 100 SD is a fantastic full-size gaming keyboard that is 100% the size of a regular format keyboard, with very noticeable differences. Numpad paves the way for the full-featured Stream Deck from Elgato. There are two programmable rotary knobs, a 3-inch true-color touchscreen, and 12 OLED keys like the ones you find on the Elgato Stream Deck. This eliminates the need for a separate Broadcast Deck.
The actual keyboard is in TKL format, although you can change the Stream Deck to Numpad whenever you want. Corsair offers a comprehensive software suite developed by its Elgato division that allows you to program the Stream Deck and how it should behave during a game or streaming session.
We went with the Corsair GALLEON 100 SD in this article.
The Best Way Thunderbolt 5 Graphics Dock
Your eGPU doesn’t have to be an enclosure, it can be a dock. Your graphics card should not be disabled, but breathe easy. That’s the design philosophy behind the Good Way Thunderbolt graphics dock. This dock takes advantage of Thunderbolt 5, and packs a 700 W ATX 3.1 power supply that can power your graphics card via a modern 12V-2×6 connector. Not only that, it can expand your notebook’s connectivity with a downstream Thunderbolt 5 link to connect your DAS, additional USB-C ports, and an SD Express card reader. The best case for graphics cards is absolutely innocent, and Good Way has got this, winning our Best of CES 2026 award.
Read more about the Good Way Thunderbolt 5 eGPU dock in this article.
Hisense XR10 Tri-Laser Projector
Hisense is blurring the lines between home cinema and theaters, with its new tri-laser projector, the XR10. This instrument uses an LPU 3.0 Digital Laser Engine with a triple pure RGB laser light source to output 6,000 ANSI lumens. It uses a 16-element glass lens system and an IRIS system that automatically adjusts the aperture to achieve 6,000:1 contrast. The projector also comes with a 2x optical zoom lens that allows you to use screen sizes between 65-inch and 300-inch. The projector has four native cameras that give it the ability to adjust automatic keystones. For this and more, the Hisense XR10 earns our Best of CES award for being truly smart.
This article covers the Hisense home cinema projectors at CES 2026.
LG Gram Pro 16Z90U Dual AI Ultra Portable
The LG Gram Pro 16Z90U is an incredibly light notebook that can give the latest MacBook Air a run for its money with the kind of computing power it brings to the table for its weight. The notebook has the latest LG 16:10 aspect ratio 2880 x 1880, and a host of hardware options including Intel Core Ultra 300U “Panther Lake” and AMD Ryzen AI 400 “Gorgon Point” processors, LPDDR5X-8533 memory, integrated graphics, and a 7 W battery. But these are not its best features—the thing weighs just 1.2 kg only, and features the company’s new Aerominium design, a new aluminum alloy unibody chassis design pioneered by LG, which earned us our Best of CES award.
Read more about Aerominium and the LG Gram AI 2026 program here.
MSI GeForce RTX 5090 LIGHTNING Z
This CES saw a new crop of premium GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards, and the pack was led by this, the MSI RTX 5090 LIGHTNING Z, a card every PC enthusiast and leader board climber was eager to get their hands on! Placed on top of the MSI RTX 5090 SUPRIM Liquid SOC, it features a superior PCB design based on the lessons learned by MSI on the electrical and thermal behavior of the RTX 5090 over the past year. This card is designed to seek and break world overclocking and benchmarking records. Professional overclockers will take it apart and use a bare PCB with their own extreme cooling solutions, but for the rest of its customer base, MSI offers a high-end liquid cooling solution, complete with a 360 mm x 120 mm radiator, and a trio of premium fans.
Check out the MSI RTX 5090 LIGHTNING Z and other new RTX 5090 graphics cards in this article.
