CES: The complete round-up
Last week, all eyes were on Las Vegas, Nevada, as over 150,000 gadget manufacturers, journalists, bloggers and tech enthusiasts converged on the famous Strip and convention centre for one of the biggest and most important trade shows of the year.
Everyone who is anyone (except Apple) in the world of high tech wonders makes their way to City of Sin in January for the Consumer Electronics Show, otherwise known as CES.
Now the show’s over, and Vegas can return to normality. Or at least as normal as a town where the second highest free standing building in the Western world can be topped off with a rollercoaster on the roof. Before CES is a dim and distant memory, however, here are our top ten gadgets of the show.
ASUS MeMo
A controversial choice for the winner, but ASUS demonstrated a new 7-inch tablet running Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. Nothing special there, however, but it also has a top of the range quad core processor, a stunning screen and will cost less than $250. The bad news? There are no plans (yet) to bring it to the UK.
Fujifilm X-Pro1
It’s only January, and this may be the camera of the year already. The fact that Fujifilm has launched a mirrorless SLR should be that interesting, especially when there are already half a dozen or more others compact system cameras to choose from. But the X-Pro1 has a larger sensor than most and proper old fashioned rangefinder optics.
LG 55-inch OLED TV
Display manufacturers have long been trying to crack the secret of making big screen TVs with the OLED tech that’s used in many camera and phone displays. They’re super low-power and very bright, with amazing viewing angles – and incredibly thin too. Which is why LG’s 55-inch OLED TV looks amazing.
Lenovo’s Ice Cream Sandwich TV
Google TV is one of those big things that could go either way this year. It might change the way we use our sets, it might come to nothing. What is good is that televisions with Google’s technology in them should be able to access the Android Marketplace for apps. This one certainly will – it’s running a full version of Android 4.0 on its powerful internal processors.
Razer Project Fiona
Gaming peripheral’s manufacturer Razer has been bashing round prototypes for new ways of playing PC games for a while now, but it excelled itself at CES. Project Fiona is an Intel-powered tablet with a customised gaming interface on top of Windows, and a built-in games controller in the handles. It’s unusual, and potentially awesome as it will be able to run proper PC games.
HP Envy Spectre
Many commentators claim that CES 2012 was the year of the Ultrabook, as every manufacturer queued up to show off its sexy thin and light laptops. HP was star of the show, though, with its stunning glass framed Spectre. Odd how a couple of months ago it was thinking of ditching PCs altogether.
Dell XPS 13
We did say every manufacturer. Dell showed up with its extraordinarily thin and light Ultrabook, the XPS 13. It’s beautiful and has real staying power too, with a battery life of around eight and a half hours.
Do you wish your TV was a Smart TV? If you’ve got a USB port on the side of your set, it can be. That’s thanks to Roku’s unusual ‘Streaming Stick’, which looks like a normal memory stick, but can stream video over WiFi from anywhere on you LAN.
It’s not all about high price high tech. The One Laptop Per Child project was also at CES, showing off the latest version of its $100 laptop which it sells to schools in the developing world. The catch is it’s not a laptop anymore: X03 is a ruggedised tablet, complete with touchscreen and solar charger.
Makerbot Replicator
Remember those episodes of Star Trek where the captain pulled a Sunday roast out of the on-board replicator that could make anything out of base matter? Makerbot is like that, only it can only work with plastic filament for the time being. It’s the starting point of the 3D printing revolution, though, so take note of what it does next.