There were 4,000 new gadgets launched at CES this week, promising to change your life. 3,995 of them just want to steal your attention to show you ads. Here are the other 5.
I waded through the sewer of dopamine-tech so you don’t have to.
CES is where tech goes to scream at you. But buried in the noise, there were a handful of products that get it. Here’s what I found.
1. Boox Palma 2 Pro: The Anti-Smartphone
Read the full coverage at Engadget
The Safe Mode Take:
This is what happens when someone builds a phone-shaped device and deliberately removes everything that makes phones terrible. The Palma 2 Pro is a 6.3-inch e-ink device that looks like a smartphone but acts like a pocket-sized refuge from the attention economy.
Yes, it has 5G connectivity (the Pro version adds this), but here’s the thing: the e-ink screen makes doomscrolling physically painful. Try rage-refreshing Twitter on a screen that takes a full second to update and see how long your dopamine receptors stay interested. The display is intentionally bad at the things that make modern phones addictive—video, infinite scroll, that little red notification badge that lives rent-free in your peripheral vision.
2. Luna Band: Screenless Fitness Tracking Without the Subscription Hostage Situation
Read the full coverage at Android Central
The Safe Mode Take:
Finally, someone understands that a fitness tracker doesn’t need a glowing rectangle on your wrist reminding you that you haven’t stood up in three hours. The Luna Band is Whoop‘s worst nightmare: all the health tracking, zero screen, and—here’s the kicker—no subscription fee.
This is pure single-purpose design. It monitors your sleep, heart rate, recovery, and stress levels, then feeds that data to your phone when you’re ready to check in. Not when it decides you need a notification. Not when some algorithm determines you’re “behind on your activity goals.” When you deliberately open the app and ask for the information.
The voice-command integration is interesting too—you can log meals and stress by speaking to the band instead of fumbling with an app. It’s a small thing, but it’s the difference between a tool and an attention vampire. No price announced yet, but the lack of monthly fees already makes it more honest than most wearables on the market.
Note: Luna (the band) were a pretty dope act from the mid 90s that sound great on an old school Sansa MP3 player.
3. reMarkable Paper Pro Move: The 7.3-Inch Distraction Detox
Read the full coverage at Good e-Reader
The Safe Mode Take:
reMarkable has been making “digital paper” devices for years, but the Paper Pro Move is the first one that’s actually portable enough to replace the phone-sized moleskin in your pocket. A 7.3-inch e-ink display with color support, designed exclusively for handwriting, sketching, and reading. No web browser. No app store. No notifications. No escape hatches back into the attention casino.
This is weaponized minimalism. The entire user interface is built around a single question: “What are you trying to write or read right now?” Everything else has been surgically removed. At $499, it’s asking you to pay a premium for what it doesn’t do, which is exactly the kind of product design philosophy we need more of.
It’s a single-purpose tool for thinking, not a multipurpose tool for distraction.
4. TCL 60 XE NXTPAPER 5G: The Smartphone That Admits Smartphones Are the Problem
Read the full coverage at Android Police
The Safe Mode Take:
Here’s a radical idea: what if your smartphone had a physical button that turned it into an e-reader for a week at a time? TCL’s NXTPAPER phone has a dedicated “Max Ink Mode” key that switches the display into a paper-like reading mode, mutes all notifications, and claims to deliver a week of battery life.
This isn’t true e-ink—it’s a matte LCD screen with some clever color filtering—but the philosophy is sound. It’s a phone that acknowledges its own toxicity and gives you a panic button to escape it. Press the NXTPAPER Key and suddenly you’re holding a device optimized for reading instead of endless engagement metrics.
The specs are mid-range (50MP camera, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage), but that’s not the point. The point is that TCL looked at the modern smartphone and said “what if we built in an off-switch for the parts that are ruining your brain?” It’s not perfect, but it’s asking the right question.
5. Aqara Panel Hub S1 Plus: Physical Buttons for Your Smart Home (Remember Those?)
Read the full coverage at Parks Associates
The Safe Mode Take:
Smart home controls have spent the last decade trying to convince you that the future is yelling at a cylinder or opening an app every time you want to turn on a light. The Aqara Panel Hub is a wall-mounted touchscreen that puts physical, tactile controls back in your home.
This is the anti-app. Instead of unlocking your phone, opening the Hue app, waiting for it to connect, navigating to the right room, and then adjusting your lights, you walk over to the wall and touch a button. Revolutionary, I know.
The S1 Plus also works as a Matter hub, so it can control devices from multiple ecosystems without forcing you to juggle five different apps. It’s the opposite of the trend toward consolidating control in voice assistants that are always listening. This is discrete, intentional, and—here’s a concept—doesn’t require an internet connection to work when your router inevitably has a stroke.
Physical interfaces for digital systems. It’s almost like we learned something from the last century of industrial design before we decided that everything should be controlled by shouting or swiping.
The Pattern
Notice what these products have in common? They’re not trying to be everything. They’re not festooned with AI features that “learn your preferences” (read: build an engagement profile). They don’t light up and chirp and beg for your attention every seventeen seconds.
They’re tools. Single-purpose, distraction-resistant tools that do one thing well and then get out of your way.
CES 2025 was overwhelmingly about AI—AI in your fridge, AI in your car, AI in your toothbrush. But these five products suggest a different path forward. A quieter one.
That’s the real innovation happening in Vegas this year. It’s just happening in the corners where nobody’s shouting about it.