Each year, I look at what is new in consumer technology to guide you through what you might expect to buy, and what will most likely be a fad.
Technology takes a long time to mature before most of us actually want to buy it, so many of the same trends appear again and again. That applies to this year as well. Tech companies are pushing some trends that you will have heard of before.
Virtual reality involves wearing goofy looking headgear and swinging around controllers to play 3-D games. The metaverse is the new marketing term for that and is expected to be front and center again this year.
The so-called smart home is the technology to control home appliances by shouting voice commands at a speaker or tapping a button on a phone. The tech industry has been trying to push this kind of technology into our homes for a decade. These products may start to feel practical to own this year.
Digital health gear that tracks our fitness and helps us diagnose possible ailments is a recurring technology on this list. The auto industry is starting to accelerate their plans to phase out production of gas-powered cars by the year 2030.
There are four tech trends that will be in our lives this year.
For more than a decade, technologists have dreamed of an era where our virtual lives play as important a role as our physical realities. In theory, we would spend a lot of time interacting with our friends and colleagues in virtual space, and as a result, we would spend a lot of money on outfits and objects for our digital avatars.
Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who has written extensively about the metaverse, said that we are in a world where people send out an image reflecting themselves. The next phase takes that representation and makes it more representational. You go into an environment and use anavatar to express yourself.
That sounds like a movie. Mr. Ball said that a critical mass of factors came together to make the metaverse more realistic.
The technology got better. Last year, Facebook announced that it had renamed itself Meta after shipping 10 million units of its virtual-reality headset, the Quest 2.
Many of us were willing to spend a lot on our digital selves. Hordes of investors bought NFTs, which are one-of-a-kind digital objects. For hundreds of thousands of dollars, celebrities invested in virtual yachts.
There is more to come this year. Apple plans to release a virtual reality headset that will look like a pair of ski goggles and use a separate computing device that is worn elsewhere on the body. Apple didn't comment.
Microsoft has offered a virtual reality headset for businesses and government agencies.
The metaverse could turn out to be a fad depending on what products emerge and who buys them. Carolina Milanesi, a consumer technology analyst for the consulting firm Creative Strategies, worried that it could become a reflection of the privileged few who can afford to treat their digital selves.
White upper-class middle-aged men dominate the boating market. Will we transfer all of that into the metaverse?
Smart home products like internet-connected thermostats, door locks and robotic vacuum cleaners have made a lot of progress over the last few years. The devices were affordable and worked reliably with digital assistants.
The smart home has remained chaotic. Many smart home products were not compatible with other technology. Some door locks were only compatible with Apple phones, while some thermostats were only controlled with the help of a phone app.
There are long-term issues because of the lack of compatibility. A lock compatible with Apple isn't useful for a family member or a future tenant. It would be more convenient if our home devices could communicate with each other, like a washing machine telling a dryer that a load is ready to be dried.
The smart home is getting more practical thanks to the tech industry's biggest rivals. They plan to release and update home technology to work with Matter, a new standard that enables smart home devices to talk to each other, regardless of the virtual assistant or phone brand. More than 100 smart home products are expected to meet the standard.
A vice president of marketing for a home automation company said that they are all speaking the same language.
This means that when you buy an automated door lock, you should look for a label that says it is compatible with Matter. In the future, your alarm clock may be able to tell your lights to turn on when you wake up.
The Apple Watch and other fitness gadgets help us track our movements and heart rate. Tech companies are experimenting with smaller devices that gather more intimate data about our health.
Oura, a health tech company, recently introduced a new model of its Oura Ring, which is embedded with sensors that track metrics including body temperature to accurately predict menstruation cycles. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a health tech start-up called Movano unveiled a ring that stitches together data about your heart rate, temperature and other measures to inform a wearer about potential chronic illnesses.
Medical experts have warned about the dangers of health tech. The data could be used to misdiagnose illnesses and turn people into hypochondriacs. If the Covid rapid test kits are any indication, more of us are ready to be proactive in monitoring our health.
Half of all vehicles sold in the United States will be electric by the year 2030.
Major automakers are hyping their electric cars at this week's Consumer Electronics Show. Ford plans to increase production of its F-150 pickup truck. The battery-powered version of the Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck is expected to be unveiled later this week. Mercedes-Benz shared plans for electric cars to be released in the future.
Ms. Milanesi said that people looking for battery-powered vehicles this year will probably still gravitate toward the company. We haven't seen widespread deployment of solar power and charging stations for electric cars in more rural areas. She said that the company has been rolling out charging stations for years.
She said that there is so much that needs to happen. I don't know how much of a reality there is.
