CES 2013 is now history! We added hundreds of new products to gdgt this week, including many that may never become available, and some that will be ridiculously expensive when they do come out. Some of our favorites include Sony's prototype OLED UHDTV, Razer's Edge gaming tablet, and Lenovo's IdeaCentre Horizon table PC. (You can find the full list here: gdgt.com/showcase/ces-2013-the-best-and-most-inter...) What were your top picks -- and biggest disappointments -- from this year's Consumer Electronics Show?
This isn't really an actual gadget that you could buy, but I thought one of the most interesting things coming out of CES was the Tactus morphing keyboard:
The screen looks like any normal screen you'd see on a tablet, but when you enable a keyboard, little tactile nubs pop out of the screen. I've gotten pretty accustomed to using just a normal touchscreen for typing, but I think this would make typing even better and even make gaming controls on touchscreen devices tolerable.
This exact technology is actually something I wish was possible a few years back, thinking that it could only be pulled off with some voodoo magic, so I'm blown away that a company actually figured how to make this happen.
This looks like a very fragile technology though, since it's a layer of liquid under a stretchy material that's all on top of the glass of the display. One scratch and I'd imagine all that liquid would just ooze out, making it a very big mess.
I'm not sure too many "favorite gadgets" came out of CES this year, but here's what I added to my want list in the past week -
Xperia Z (nice specs, nice industrial design)
Nvidia Project Shield (we'll see when they announce more details/reviews are published, but it looks interesting enough)
PlayStation Vita (it's not new, but adding Project Shield to my list made me realize how neat it'd be to have a Vita, since the specially developed games are probably 10x higher quality than the phone oriented Android games)
Razer Edge (some say it's the best W8 tablet period, it would be interesting to give it a try although I don't think it'd be a very good tablet or full PC)
Sennheiser Orpheus HE90 (apparently these have been out for a while, but I didn't notice them until Engadget did a hands on post)
Sony OLED UHDTV (OLED and 4K in one TV sounds good)
Samsung S9 UHDTV 110 inch (large 4K TV on a funky easel also sounds good)
The Lenovo Thinkpad Helix brings a lot of interesting things to the table including form-factor innovation and some serious horsepower, lacking from most of the other convertible/hybrid options. I use both the Surface RT and the Samsung Series 7 (running Windows 8) and the difference in performance with the Series 7 really blowing the Surface RT out of the water plus having the ability to run all legacy apps, etc.
Consequently, of course, the Series 7 battery life stinks, it is rather heavy, runs hot and isn't as flexible as the Surface RT and other hybrids/ (i.e. no docakable/detachable keyboard, no kickstand).
With the Surface Pro looking like it will deliver pedestrian battery life the Helix has, based on specs alone, gone to the top of the list for portable Windows 8 PCs.
I was kind of surprised there wasn't more phones announced, the only one I really heard about was the Sony Xperia Z (gdgt.com/sony/xperia/z/) .
I like the design, but I think I liked the design of the Xperia S better (gdgt.com/sony/xperia/s/). The only real difference I read between the Z and the ZL is that the Z will be dust and water resistant (if so, why bother putting out 2 models?). Anyway, I'm interested if Sony finally has a phone to get a gdgt score in the 80's so I clicked 'request score' on its page above to be notified when it's scored.
I added a few things to my list, but the only one I saw that I am planning to buy the day it is released is the Archos TV Connect. The nerd factor on this one is super high, and I can't wait to replace my Logitech Revue with this. Nothing else I saw got me excited, even the ones that were good enough to get me to click "Want".
I can't really say much about disappointments since I had pretty low expectations for this year's event.
SourceFed posted a video on 2 really neat products; the TransluSense Cleartouch translucent keyboard and the Tobii Gazewww.youtube.com/watch?v=UTYTD27x-m0
