Consumer columnist and West Hartford resident Harlan Levy has more than 20 years of experience writing stories about everyday experiences that anyone could encounter.
Harlan Levy. Courtesy photo
By Harlan Levy
The annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Jan. 9-12 debuted a whole list of inventive, creative, fascinating new products, and I selected a few I hope you’ll find intriguing:
- Pawport: $349. Pawport.com. A motorized door that fits on existing pet door frames and only activates when your pet walks by while wearing a small, lightweight tag. Use Pawport’s app to customize your pet’s schedule – locking the doors at night or while you’re at work – and track your pet’s whereabouts.
- Ecovacs’s Goat GX-600: Not priced yet, but I saw one estimate of $9,900, which seems excessive. I called and was placed on Ecovacs’ media contact list for the future price. See Ecovacs.com. Battery-powered; pairs with your phone; can identify the boundary of your lawn; starts mowing with one click; automatically schedules a mowing plan and sets a grass cutting height; 40 percent slope climbing ability; obstacle avoidance technology..
- Neoplant’s Neo P1: $179. Neoplant.com. Bioengineered Pothos plant captures and recycles harmful pollutants from indoor air. Regular Pothos plants sometimes capture VOCs (volatile organic compounds), but aren’t able to recycle them into useful elements. The Neo P1 “is able to turn VOCs into water, sugars, amino acids, and oxygen.”
- FrazyBot: $399 at frazybot.com: A customized robotic beverage machine that can make an iced frappe, spicy margarita, a boba tea, whatever you want. You must first order the single-use box containing all the ingredients needed to make your drink, then pop the box into the FrazyBot along with water or alcohol and press a button. Special functions include grinding the beans, salting the rim, frothing your milk, etc. While you drink, the machine will self-clean and expel any trash back into the single-use box.
- Neakasa’s Open-Top Cat Litter Box: $275. Neakasa.com. For cats of all sizes, the box features litter-sifting technology, real-time monitoring of waste, and tracks litter levels, which you can see through the Neakasa app. It has advanced odor control plus a leak-proof litter tray pre-filled with a gel filter and a waste bag that locks away solid waste and smells. Also it can clump and separate waste from clean litter during each cycle and comes with a mat to capture any loose litter.
- Horow smart toilet: $1,099 at Wayfair. Lid opens, closes automatically; ultraviolet lights for clean nozzle; air purification system for clean nozzle; air purification systems prevent odors; electric water pump with powerful flushes; low seat; utilizes microwave induction making it aware of your presence, automatically opening the lid as soon as you get close enough to sit, the seat also starts warming up the moment it knows you’re in the room.
I added the following weird item, which I’d never heard of before, even though it’s from last year’s CES and updated this year:
This Y-shaped toothbrush claims to brush all your teeth in just 20 seconds. Put the entire thing in your mouth, bite down, press the button, and use it for 10 seconds per top and bottom teeth.
My take: 20 seconds is NOT ENOUGH!
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