The gadgets you'll use tomorrow, today

If you live in a light, minimalist house—the kind of joint where everything’s white or glass and you display three carefully chosen arty books on your barely perceptible coffee table—then you’ve probably been wall-mounting your telly since “flat screens” emerged in the 1990s.

But I bet your screen isn’t as flat as this latest effort from LG: a shockingly thin 0.2 inches. The 77-inch, 4K, HDR-ready panel appears almost flush with the wall, while just one cable connects it to a Dolby soundbar beneath, which also discreetly houses the power cables and connectors—though this will frustrate those home-cinema buffs who prefer to use their existing surround-sound set-up.

This modular computer from Intel could transform the way we iterate technology. The size of a credit card, it contains the memory and processing power needed to run almost any machine, and can be undocked and replaced with a newer card, without any need to replace the host device.

It’s bound to become standard in commercial devices, but I doubt the PC industry will allow consumers to upgrade so cheaply.

As Nintendo’s original Wii proved, if you can convince your kids that they’re just playing a video game, they’re quite happy to expend physical energy at the same time! It may not be preferable to them spending time outside, but Fisher-Price’s new plastic exercise bike for toddlers looks like genuine fun.

You hook up your tablet computer to the front of it, then download compatible apps featuring popular Nickelodeon characters and a lightly educational message—but the games are only playable whilst your child continues to pedal. Very cunning.

It’s no longer reasonable for holiday videos to comprise shaky footage of Dad doing “Copacabana” on karaoke night. Rather, as a vista of selfie sticks dominate every tourist destination in the world, the discerning holidaymaker seeks a smooth, wide-angled self-portrait.

So why not film yourself, constantly, with a drone? This one folds in half, so you can take it with you in your hand luggage, and it doesn’t require a smartphone. You can teach it to recognise your face in a crowd, and it’ll follow you around, filming aerial views of your every waking moment.

If that’s your thing.

This crowdfunded prototype is a joyous throwback to the kind of domestic robot promised in The Jetsons. Clip in 30 shirts, trousers and towels straight from your dryer, and Foldimate folds, steams and perfumes them perfectly—generating a pile of creaseless garments ready to store away.

At least that’s the idea: I imagine material getting mangled by the mechanism will be more common than its makers claim, just as paper all-too-frequently becomes caught in your printer.

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