If there’s a single through line at CES 2026, it’s AI living. Every major brand wants you fully embedded in its vision of the smart home — a place where your appliances talk to each other, anticipate your needs, and quietly judge your lifestyle choices. LG even showcased an AI robot butler that resembled R.O.B. from Super Smash Bros., except this one performs laundry and engages in conversation with your air conditioner.
Samsung, however, wants to go bigger.
Tucked inside the Wynn casino in Las Vegas, Samsung’s AI Living Exhibit is a sprawling showcase of what the company calls its « Companion to AI Living » vision — a fully integrated ecosystem where the term ‘AI’ is omnipresent. The setup walks press and attendees through a large museum with Samsung products that all promise to think, respond, and collaborate on your behalf.
And when I say everything has AI slapped onto it, I mean everything. The company debuted a first-of-its-kind 130-inch Micro RGB TV that uses AI to dynamically tweak picture quality, strip out commentary from soccer broadcasts, or boost crowd noise to stadium levels. There are also AI-enabled appliances that gamify the process of finding a recipe based on what’s in your fridge, then send instructions directly to your oven. There’s even an OLED « record player » that doesn’t play records at all — it just looks like one, presumably for vibes.
Samsung’s Vision AI Companion sits at the center of this whole operation, acting as the connective tissue between TVs, phones, appliances, and wearables.
Samsung wants its AI to be the omniscient power driving your home. Since at least 2017, tech journalists have been loudly declaring that there’s no escaping the smart home (and yes, I’m guilty, too), but with each passing year, we inch closer to that headline becoming less prediction and more lived reality. Your TV suggests dinner, your fridge confirms the ingredients, your washer times its cycle around your schedule, and your robot vacuum keeps an eye on the dog while you’re out.
Does all of this actually require artificial intelligence? That’s debatable. But CES has never been about restraint. Is it excessive? Absolutely. Is it impressive? Also yes, even if « AI living » sometimes feels like marketing.
The Tri-fold is here too, by the way
I’ll mention this last — fittingly, since Samsung is treating it the same way — but tucked inside the AI Living Exhibit is something people actually want to touch: the Galaxy Z Tri-Fold.
Because this is CES and not an Unpacked event, Samsung is being low-key about it. There’s no stage demo, no dramatic reveal, no « one more thing. » That’s likely because the Tri-Fold is already on the market in South Korea, and Samsung clearly doesn’t want to step on its own marketing calendar.
If history is any indication, the phone will surface during a proper Unpacked event. That could mean January, sometime in the late spring or summer, or the fall window around September or October. Converted to U.S. pricing, the Galaxy Z Tri-Fold rings in at roughly $2,400 (or 3,590,400 Korean won), which helps explain why early reviews have been… divided. One particularly blunt headline labeled the device « expensive and half-baked, » which feels both harsh and, depending on your tolerance for folding screens, not entirely unfair.
Head to the Mashable CES 2026 hub for the latest news and live updates from the biggest show in tech, where Mashable journalists are reporting live.
