This year’s CES saw the birth of many impressive products with new smartphones, TVs, digital cameras and even the odd surprise games console thrown into the mix. With so much to choose from it’s hard to come up with a top five, but after some careful consideration we’ve compiled what we feel to be the five hottest gadgets from the show.
5. Samsung S9 UHD TV
This year’s big trend at CES was Ultra HD, or 4K as it’s also known. Full HD has been around for a while now and so TV manufacturers are looking to push the next generation, which is an even sharper and more lifelike picture than ever before. Samsung’s huge 85-inch S9 Ultra HD TV impressed us with a truly stunning picture.
Samsung has also upped the stakes in terms of audio quality, packing in a 2.2 speaker system that pumps out 120 watts to match such a cracking picture. It’s also got a powerful quad-core processor inside for apps, games and all sorts of the latest Smart TV features. You’ll probably need to re-mortgage your house to get one though, with prices starting at around £23,000.
4. Tactus Morphing Tactile Display
Seeing this tech in action was an open-mouth moment for us. Tactus’ clever technology allows you to have a physical keyboard layout that pops up out of the screen when you need to type and hides away to leave a flat screen for regular touchscreen use.
The first tablet with inbuilt Tactus technology was shown off at CES, and in the future the company hopes to have smartphones, tablets and other touchscreen devices making the most of its clever system. Check it out in the video above for a full demo.
3. Razer Edge
The tablet craze was well and truly apparent at CES 2012, but this year we saw far, far less of the little portable PCs. The pick of the bunch was easily Razer’s new Windows 8-based Edge gaming tablet, which blew us away with specifications that include Intel Core processors, SSD drives, 4 and 8GB of RAM and Nvidia GeForce graphics.
You can kit the Edge out with a unique control system that adds handles to either side of the 10.1-inch display as well as dual analogue sticks, shoulder buttons, a D pad and various other controls. It’s hitting North America in the next few months and hopefully a European launch will follow closely.
2. Sony Xperia Z
With Mobile World Congress set to take place next month; many manufacturers steered clear of revealing new phones at CES. Nevertheless, Sony, Huawei and ZTE went head to head with new Full HD smartphones, and for us the Xperia Z came out on top.
With its gorgeous 5-inch 1080p display and striking yet durable design, the Xperia Z looks set to be an absolute cracker. With Android Jelly Bean, a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and a staggering 13-megapixel camera it’s set to become a force to be reckoned with in the flagship smartphone stakes, launching at the end of next month.
1. Nvidia Project SHIELD
These days it’s very hard for a tech company to keep a new product secret, but Nvidia’s new handheld console came as a shock to the large majority. Combining an Xbox-style gamepad with a flip-up 5-inch OLED touchscreen, Project SHIELD is a slick new console that will be powered by Nvidia’s latest quad-core processor, the Tegra 4.
SHIELD runs on Android and will be able to play the hottest games from the Play Store with incredible graphics quality, but it will also be able to play your PC games too. An update coming later in the year will add the ability to wirelessly stream PC titles to a SHIELD console over your home network, provided you have a capable Nvidia graphics card in your PC, of course.
What was your favourite gadget from this year’s CES?