CES 2026: I tried Neurable’s brain-sensing headphones

Neurable’s pitch at CES 2026 is bold: what if performance tracking didn’t just include your mouse, keyboard, or heart rate, but also included your thoughts?

That idea is now packed into a pair of chunky-but-surprisingly-comfortable gaming headphones, built in partnership with HP's HyperX brand. Inside the headset are EEG sensors designed to read brain signals in real-time, allowing Neurable’s software to track focus, cognitive load, and reaction speed while you play.

I tried Neurable’s neurotech headphones during a private demo with the team inside the Palazzo, away from the chaos of the show floor. The headset features thick earcups and fabric padding that are designed to conceal EEG sensors without resembling lab equipment.

It should be noted that Neurable didn’t start in gaming. Much of the company’s underlying tech was developed in academic settings and tested with the Department of Defense, including applications for monitoring brain health after blast exposure.

The headset supports live metrics for streamers and coaches, including focus, cognitive speed, and “brain battery,” a measure meant to indicate when you’re mentally fatigued and should probably take a break.

Before any "performance boost" happens, the system establishes a baseline. Sitting at a demo station, I watched a live graph respond to nothing more than my thoughts: focusing pushed the line upward, distraction pulled it back down. No calibration session, no gel caps, no wires running across my scalp — something CEO Ramses Alcaide emphasized as a major hurdle Neurable claims to have solved using AI-driven signal processing.

From there, the demo moved into Aimlabs, a familiar FPS training tool used by esports players to measure accuracy and reaction time. The goal is to hit as many targets as possible in a fixed time window. My first run went well, though not spectacularly, and was also hindered by the fact that my contact lenses kept sliding every time I focused too hard.

That baseline run mattered because it set the stage for PRIME.

PRIME is Neurable’s neurofeedback system, and it’s best described as a personalized meditation warm-up for your brain. Instead of asking you to "clear your mind" in the abstract, PRIME visualizes your focus and cognitive load in real time. As you relax and concentrate, dots on the screen slowly collapse into a single point — feedback that your brain is entering an optimal state.

Alicia Howell-Munson, the research scientist who developed PRIME, described it less as a relaxation exercise and more as cognitive tuning. The session lasted just over a minute for me. Others, I was told, can take anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes, depending on fatigue, stress, or how far off their baseline they are that day.

When it ended, I felt oddly alert. Not wired, but ready. The best comparison I can make is the feeling right after a good meditation session, except with a clearer sense of purpose. Unfortunately, my contacts were still drifting.

After PRIME, I retook the same Aimlabs test. Despite my eyes fighting me, the numbers improved. I hit more targets, and my reaction time dropped noticeably, from roughly 500 milliseconds down into the mid-450s.

That aligns with what Neurable claims to have observed in early testing. According to the company, everyday gamers and esports athletes using PRIME showed average reaction time improvements of around 40 milliseconds, along with gains in accuracy and target hits. In competitive contexts, those margins matter.

The feeling afterward was quite pleasant, all things considered. Everything on screen felt slightly slower, but I was reacting more quickly. Alcaide described it as "bullet time for your brain," which sounds corny until you experience it.

While still a proof of concept, the team has high expectations to have this headset on the market in the very near future.

Head to the Mashable CES 2026 hub for the latest news and live updates from the biggest show in tech, where Mashable journalists are reporting live.