a tour of the year’s worst new tech
kill switch
Kaleidoscope
4.7 • 635 Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tech companies are constantly putting out new products to chase the hype – but they’re not all winners. Each year, nonprofit consumer advocates put on an award ceremony recognizing the lousiest of the bunch, called the Worst in Show. Dexter talks with Liz Chamberlain, who runs Worst in Show, about this year’s awards, the products that earned them (spoiler: a product featured during the Super Bowl is on the list), and what we risk when we chase the hype (read: add AI to everything).
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read + Watch:
- This year’s Worst In Show: https://www.ifixit.com/News/115344/worst-in-show-returns-at-ces-2026-calling-out-gadgets-that-make-things-worse
- Worst In Show website: https://www.worstinshowces.com/
- kill switch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@killswitch_pod
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:12.0 | So the overall winner of Worceton show this year was the Samsung bespoke AI refrigerator. |
| 0:20.6 | Liz Chamberlain is Director of Sustainability at I Fix It, which is an organization the Samsung bespoke AI refrigerator. |
| 0:28.5 | Liz Chamberlain is Director of Sustainability at I Fix It, which is an organization that publishes free online repair guides for consumer electronics. |
| 0:35.7 | I'm sorry, I'm sorry, just, I don't think I'd heard anybody say the word bespoke AI refrigerator before. |
| 0:39.3 | There's something about reading it and then hearing it is somehow hits different. |
| 0:40.7 | I know what you mean. |
| 0:41.7 | It's a lot of words together that don't feel like they should go together. |
| 0:45.9 | Liz also runs something called Worst in Show, |
| 0:49.2 | which is a very particular kind of award show. |
| 0:52.2 | The Worst in Show is a set of anti-awards that we give it the Consumer Electronics Show, CES. |
| 0:58.9 | And we point out the least secure, the least private, the least repairable, the most inshittified products that we see on the show floor. |
| 1:07.6 | There are awards that nobody should want to get. |
| 1:12.5 | So you know how you can look at the Oscars for any year and you can kind of see trends? For example, you could look back at |
| 1:16.6 | 1978 and see, oh, okay, this is what society was into back then. Well, I think you can also |
| 1:21.8 | do that with tech awards, especially with the worst than show. But there's also a bigger picture. |
| 1:28.7 | The goal is to shame the big tech companies for the things that everybody is annoyed by, |
| 1:35.3 | but too many people are just talking about how cool and new all this stuff is |
| 1:39.8 | and not shaming them for stuff that really does make the world worse. |
| 1:46.1 | So today we're going to do a recap of the winners of the worst in show, 2026, with Liz Chamberlain. |
| 1:56.3 | From kaleidoscope and IHeart podcasts. |
... |
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