Bear-proof glass, glow-in-the-dark toilet seats, and more weird stuff at IBS 2016

By Nick Mokey Published January 22, 2016

From contractors to architects, designers, and even the guy who plans where gas lines should go, putting a literal roof over your head takes a lot of people. Once a year, representatives of all these groups convene in Las Vegas for the International Builder’s Show, where you can find everything from state-of-the-art appliances and solar arrays to faucets and all the latest styles of bathroom flooring.

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That’s the stuff you expect, anyway. But along the way, we bumped into more than a few oddities that made us stop in our tracks and wonder what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. These are those.

Nick Mokey

Former Editor in Chief

As Digital Trends’ Editor in Chief, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team covering every gadget under the sun, along with…

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Smart Home

The best smart home gym equipment

Find the connected fitness equipment that's worth your money.

The average workout doesn't begin with your first rep anymore. It begins with the data you've already collected. Smartwatches track your sleep and heart rate, smart rings measure recovery, and some fitness enthusiasts even use continuous glucose monitors to better understand how their bodies respond to training and nutrition. Smart home gym equipment builds on that foundation, combining connected hardware with AI-powered coaching, adaptive resistance, and long-term progress tracking to turn health insights into smarter workouts.

Smart fitness has also grown well beyond streaming workout classes. The latest machines can automatically adjust resistance as you get stronger, analyze your performance over time, and sync with the health devices you already use. Some even use AI to recommend workouts based on your goals and training history, making every session feel more personalized. If you're still deciding whether investing in connected fitness makes sense for your lifestyle, check out our guide on whether a smart home gym is worth it.

Smart Home

Tineco Pure ONE Station 5 Pro review: A reliable kit that’s low on maintenace, high on conveniences

An easy recommendation for anyone who wants a cordless vacuum that is genuinely easy to live with.

Tineco Pure One Station 5 Pro vacuum cleaner

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With two young children and two dogs, my floors put vacuums through a real-world stress test every day. Between constant crumbs, pet hair, tracked-in dirt, and everything in between, there’s always something waiting to be cleaned. The Tineco Pure ONE Station 5 Pro solved those those pain points for me pretty well. It can run for over an hour and a half on a single charge, while its base station dustbin capacity outpaces many standard upright vacuums that I've tested over the years.

Smart Home

My smart home experiment has reached its natural limit

Smart-home technology keeps improving, but being easier to automate doesn’t make everything worth automating

Computer, Electronics, Laptop, Smart Home

The first device I added to my smart home was a light bulb. It seemed like the safest possible place to start. I could turn it on from anywhere, put it on a schedule, and eventually work it into routines with everything else.

Then I tapped the button in the app and waited. The delay was only about half a second, but half a second is surprisingly noticeable when the alternative is a wall switch that responds immediately and has never once asked for a firmware update. Using my phone was worse. I had to unlock it, find the app, open the right room, and tap the light I could have switched on several steps earlier.