We've just begun trawling for our favorite cutting-edge technology. But we've already found some some neat stuff.

As 2025 comes to an end, we take a look at ten gadgets (and one more) that came with a cool factor in what was generally a rather lukewarm year in terms of innovation.

CRN rounds up 10 cool tech products that were revealed ahead of their debut at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, ranging from a solar-powered smart birdbath to a “powerful, non-invasive neural interface” for hands-free and voice-free device interactions.

At CES 2026, New Jersey-based YPlasma is set to launch the world’s first laptop using plasma-based cooling. The company will debut a laptop cooled using dielectric barrier discharge

Without cooling, data centres fall over. In November, a cooling system failure at a data centre in the US sent financial trading tech offline at CME Group, the world's largest exchange operator. The company has since put in place additional cooling capacity to help protect against a repeat of this incident.

DBD technology has been around for years, but YPlasma says it’s shrunk its actuators so that they’re as little as 200 microns thick, allowing them to be “integrated directly onto heat sinks, chassis walls, or internal components.”

Maxwell Labs believes this tech could cool chips more efficiently than the aforementioned water-based systems. Once the method is perfected, it could either replace or complement those cooling systems. This gallium-arsenide-based semiconductor that's less than a micrometer thick will form most of the photonic cooling plate

The active-cooling fan on a chip could reduce frame heat and therefore user discomfort. Image: xMEMS Labs Here’s some encouraging news for Apple users eagerly awaiting the next generation of smart wearable — new technology could cool down overheating ...

A team led by researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology may have found a more eco-friendly alternative to traditional cooling systems, allowing people to stay cool without heating up the planet. Air conditioning is great for keeping ...