At CES 2026, GL.iNet quietly dropped a pair of devices that feel less like polished consumer electronics and more like tools built by people who actually run systems. The Comet Pro and the cellular-powered Comet 5G aren’t chasing mass-market appeal—they’re speaking directly to homelab builders, sysadmins, tinkerers, and anyone who has ever been locked out of a machine at the worst possible moment.
These are KVMs, but not the dusty, rack-bound kind most people associate with the term. They’re compact, desk-friendly, and designed for a world where your “server room” might be a closet, a remote office, or a box sitting 2,000 miles away.
Hardware-Level Control Without the Old-School Pain
The Comet Pro is the kind of device that immediately makes sense if you’ve ever needed BIOS access when an OS refuses to boot. It sits inline between a computer and its display, offering full 4K@30FPS HDMI passthrough so the local monitor keeps working, while simultaneously streaming a low-latency H.264 feed to a remote browser session.
What makes it feel modern is everything around that core function. Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 means you’re not forced to run Ethernet just to get remote access working. The built-in touchscreen lets you handle network setup, access modes, and system status without plugging in a keyboard or opening a laptop. And because access happens in the browser, it doesn’t matter whether you’re on Linux, macOS, or Windows—no proprietary client, no weird dependencies.
For anyone running a home lab or supporting machines for friends and family, this kind of frictionless setup is a big deal. It’s the difference between a tool you use once in a crisis and one you leave connected all the time.
Comet 5G Feels Like Cheating (In a Good Way)
Then there’s the Comet 5G, which feels like GL.iNet asking, “What if the network itself is the problem?” By adding a built-in 5G RedCap module with global 4G LTE fallback, this KVM doesn’t care whether the local Ethernet is misconfigured, firewalled, or completely down. It can bring its own connection.
That alone opens up a ton of interesting use cases: remote recovery of edge servers, off-site lab machines, unattended systems, or anything in a location where you don’t fully trust the network. Multi-network failover keeps the control channel alive by automatically switching between Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and cellular, while 64GB of onboard storage lets you keep ISOs and recovery tools right on the device.
For the Nerd Bot crowd, this is the kind of hardware that sparks ideas immediately. It’s not just about remote access—it’s about building systems that fail gracefully, stay reachable, and don’t depend on a single point of connectivity.
GL.iNet’s Comet devices won’t be for everyone, and that’s exactly the point. They’re for the people who want real control, real resilience, and hardware that respects how they actually work. At CES 2026, that makes them some of the most quietly exciting tools on the floor.
