I wore a one-horsepower exoskeleton to the world’s biggest tech show

It was a cold Thursday afternoon in Las Vegas, and I was running late for my last appointment of the show. There was no telling how long an Uber might take, now that thousands upon thousands of CES 2025 attendees were leaving town and competing for space on the roads.

“No problem,” I told myself. “I’m wearing my exoskeleton.”

I reached down to its single button, switched it to hyper mode, and began taking the longest strides possible. I power walked a mile without breaking a sweat — and made it with time to spare.

Exoskeletons — robotic external attachments for your body that help it do work — have been a fixture of CES for well over a decade, usually in the context of prepping the world for an aging, less physically capable population. They’ve made it possible for paralyzed individuals to walk again, shown younger people what it’s like to grow old, and helped medical orderlies lift patients who can’t lift themselves.

But we’ve never worn one on the CES show floor for more than a handful of minutes. This year, I saw my chance.

A new category of lightweight leisure exoskeletons has emerged, with hikers as their first target audience. They promise to put “more spring in your step” and extend your “outdoor adventures.” I don’t have a lot of those — but CES is perhaps the next best thing. The weeklong conference is spread across expansive casinos and multiple conference halls; the show involves so much walking, I always feel worn out by the end.

When the Hypershell Pro X arrived at my house, two weeks before the show, I was immediately impressed by its form-fitting frame. While I couldn’t quite wear it under clothes due to its hip-hugging motors, its curved metal braces gently wrapped around my legs, and it attached with comfy fabric cuffs underneath. It looked far more refined than a similar one I’d tried the year before; with my jacket draped over it, several people told me they didn’t even notice I was wearing an exoskeleton until I pointed it out. Perhaps best of all: I didn’t need any company reps to strap me in. An app showed me how to adjust the frame’s width and its straps in just a few minutes, and I was off to the races.

These exoskeletons don’t make you go faster, though — that’s the first misconception I had to dispel. Pounding the pavement and gilded carpets of the Las Vegas Strip, they didn’t let me do anything I couldn’t already do. Climbing stairs, walking miles — I still had to go through the full motion of lifting my legs, and my feet wound up just as sore. After all, those feet had to carry all the same weight, plus the 5.3-pound exoskeleton.

But my muscles didn’t have to work as hard. I wasn’t as tired. It was like I’d obtained an extra energy tank in a Metroid game.

The best way to demonstrate the power of an exoskeleton, I quickly found, is to turn it off. Your muscles lurch back to life as soon as the device stops shooting 800 watts of electricity into its two hip-mounted motors, each of which lift your legs with up to 32 Newton-meters of torque. Suddenly, I felt the true exertion required to walk. Hypershell says its device reduces that exertion by 30 percent, and I believed that after my second time wearing it on the show floor.

There are downsides to having a 72 watt-hour battery strapped to the small of your back, though. I couldn’t sit in most chairs or the many taxis that helped me hop from casino to casino, without it pressing into my spine. My tall backpack kept bumping into the battery until I cinched its shoulder straps down tight. When a tasty-looking restaurant was too full to offer me a table, I was very happy to sit on a backless barstool during dinner that night.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the Hypershell moves smoothly as I walk, though, even when it’s not turned on. I walked chunks of the floor with it powered off, and my legs moved almost as effortlessly as if I hadn’t attached it at all.

That’s not true of every exoskeletal tool. I also spent maybe an hour trying Arc’teryx and Skip Robotics’ $5,000 MO/GO pants at CES this year, which go about the same idea quite differently.

You snap robotic knees onto the outside of a pair of pants, which house hidden carbon fiber cuffs (think ratcheting ski-boot clasps) that cinch down on your upper and lower legs, turning them into a full robot-assisted joint. They’re a bit less conspicuous than the Hypershell, will come in multiple styles, and feel more powerful and protective. The design actually supports your knees, offers up to 42 Newton-meters of torque, and can slowly regenerate its own battery as you descend hills, chief designers Kathryn Zealand and Anna Roumiantseva tell me.

After repeatedly walking up a staircase with the MO/GO’s added power, I’m almost certain I’d prefer it to the Hypershell for any actual climbing, despite the many details still being worked out (like lighter cuffs and a way to mount Skip’s robotic braces without leaving openings in the pants).

But walking down the same staircase or around a room, I absolutely preferred the Hypershell. The early MO/GO pants didn’t move as smoothly and their motorized joints oscillated less predictably, sometimes restricting my movements in subtle but weird ways. Both Skip and Hypershell claim that the more you use their products, the better they’ll anticipate your movements and support your strides. But the Hypershell, admittedly a finished product rather than a demo, felt like it understood me right out of the box.

(Both manufacturers also plan to ditch their fanny pack-style batteries someday, putting them inside the leg components instead. Skip plans to do so before its full MO/GO launch.)

When I got home from CES, I even took the Hypershell cycling, riding my road bike down a trail for the first time in years, and it required much less effort than past attempts at resuming the hobby. Pushing hard in my bike’s higher gears tends to tire me out pretty quickly when I’m out of practice, but it was much easier with the exoskeleton on. The gait detection was good enough I soon trusted it to pedal no-handed, without fear of any random jerky, robotic movements throwing me to the ground.

Cycling aside, I haven’t been all that tempted to don the Hypershell since. I’m trying to lose weight at the moment, so I don’t actually want to burn fewer calories. And while I have sparingly tried its fitness mode that reverses the motors to add resistance, I imagine I’d get some funny looks from fellow parents when dropping off my daughter at school. (For what it’s worth, the TSA didn’t bat an eye when I carried it onto a plane and neither did the Las Vegas Convention Center security staff.)

I also wish I could mount it to my body a bit more naturally, like what Arc’teryx is trying to do with the MO/GO pants. The Hypershell makes very little concession for men’s pants pockets or belts, assuming you’ll happily let its waist strap ride atop your hips like a frame backpack. And after the first few days of use, I started to hear a little bit of creaking from its plastic parts, which makes me wonder about its longevity if used for weeks on end.

I am curious whether older members of my family could use one when we visit Japan this spring, though. Some of those temples have a lot of stairs, and I could see spending an extra $1,000 on a once-in-a-lifetime trip. But when they want to sit down, I worry the battery pack might get in the way.

We also might have to carry more of its swappable batteries, as they drain faster with higher levels of assist. A 90 percent charge ranges from less than two miles of full-stride power walking to around 13.5 miles of gentle assistance, according to estimates in the app. While I’m perfectly comfortable walking around with the device turned off, it’s a bulky contraption to carry.

When I reached my final appointment on the last day of CES, I may not have felt tired — but those last hours had drained my exoskeletal energy tank to just 14 percent.