Best tech at IFA 2026, from a smart skylight to the hearing aids that stole the show

I was obsessed with anything like those Tex Avery “…of tomorrow” cartoons when I was a kid.“The House of Tomorrow,” “The TV of Tomorrow,” you know the ones.

They were satirical and silly, and on rewatch, a bit unsuitable for developing minds, but I was always so fascinated by what could be.Every year at the show billed as the CES of Europe, there are brands that never make it to American shelves.But this year’s Internationale Funkausstellung, commonly known as IFA, hit a bit different.Its tagline is “the future is now,” and in this moment, that couldn’t have felt more true.

As of September 1, we are officially in the late 2020s, but it doesn’t fill me with quite the same dread that turning the corner from “mid-” to “early 20s” did.Instead, with the rise of autonomous AI agents, practical robotics and a rapid transition toward green energy infrastructure, largely due to the adoption of AI, one could argue it’s an exciting time to be alive.What made this year feel different than years past was all-American.On July 28, the FCC added foreign-produced “advanced robotic devices” to its Covered List, a rule written broadly enough to reach most of the robots on the floor.

More on that when we get to the Roomba.The show was a tangled net of tech nerds, especially when it opened to the public over the weekend.(I’m not really a crowd kind of person.) But here’s what actually stopped me, and what you’ll actually be able to buy, just in time for Christmas!This device won the Best in Home and Entertainment at the IFA Innovation Awards.

It throws a 120-inch picture from roughly 8 inches off the wall at 5,700 ISO lumens, with 80 watts of Harman Kardon audio and Google TV built in.For anyone whose living room doesn’t have 12 feet of throw distance (i.e., us city-dwellers), that’s a big deal.I saw more projection TVs than ever at IFA this year.

I’m calling this now as the tech to watch as we return to cozy TV season.One caveat: t...