Here’s the thing about CES: it is exactly what you want it to be. There are hundreds of companies and thousands of people here, all trying to stake a claim to parts of the future big and small. You can mix and remix these elements into any story you want, and most people choose the most cynical reading: the tech industry, endlessly spiralling down into a desperate acronym soup that has nothing to do with reality.

We see things a little differently at The Verge. What happens this week in Vegas is worth celebrating. There’s a lot of junk at CES, and a lot of good reasons to push back against an industry that seems addicted to hype over substance. But to do that without also recognizing the incredible amount of energy and invention and excitement that’s waiting for us just beyond the doors of the Las Vegas Convention Center is ridiculously short-sighted. We bring almost the full Verge team to CES every year; we go on adventures all week long.

Here’s the best stuff we saw on those adventures.

— Nilay Patel