Technically CES starts on Tuesday the 8th at 8am. However the 7th is the official press day full of press conferences, and some of those <cough> nvidia <cough> spilled even on to sunday. So what interesting news and products have we seen so far to spoil our appetites for the rest of the show:
Let’s start with the big guns:
– Nvidia had a big press conference and didn’t show us anything new. Ok that’s a big fat lie. They didn’t show us anything of interest for the high end. They did introduce the Tegra K1 – a new processor for mobile applications that contains one Kepler SMX unit. It’s supposed to have as much GPU capability as a PS3 or Xbox. So for those of you who game on your phones this might be exciting. For those who would rather keep their gaming on a big screen with more resolution then keep moving. Oh and they are still trying to persuade you really hard that Shield is cool.
– Intel announced a 3D camera that isn’t ready for prime time. It’s kinda cool because it’s so small and is designed to replace webcams while enabling them to have kinect like functionality but with finer resolution. The interactive ability seemed to work really well, however the software to combine both webcam and 3D functionality for “auto green screen” type work seemed kinda cheesey and in need of work.
– AMD talked about their new APU Kaveri. Honestly Anand has a great write up on it so I’m not even going to bother talking about it except that it’s very promising.
– AMD also somewhat mocked Nvidia’s GSync with their alternative called “free-sync”. Essentially there is already a protocol developed for power saving in laptops with some software tweaks to an existing driver they were able to show the same functionality on some laptops that did have this protocol already supported by their display. No pricey module required. While Nvidia might have developed these ideas we like that AMD are going after Nvidia aggressively.
– Samsung announced curvy 4K TV’s which they are calling UHDTVs. I prefer the 4K branding just because what do you do have go to after ultra high def? Mega super ultra high def (MSUHDTV – I should really trademark that one!). The curvy screens come in everything from 50 to 110″ and at least some (possibly all) will transform from flat to curved with the push of a button. No word on price, but they won’t be cheap with all that unnecessaryness going on. They also announced fridges and ovens and stuff and are intent on networking all your home products so that NSA know exactly what nutritional value your kids are getting…
– Asus announced lots of boring phones and tablets and cheapo laptops that we don’t care about. What was interesting was that again they are pushing the high end gaming displays and are finally catching up to Overlord Computer by having a 2560×1440 WQHD display that will run at “120+Hz”. No one seems to know yet whether this is TN or not like the excellent (for gaming only) VG248QE. We applaud that someone is trying to give us refresh rate AND pixels. Hopefully we’ll get 4K 120Hz with lightboost/gsync support soon too. The price of course isn’t low but not awful either at $800 and at least it has super slim bezels. Asus are finally listening – now all they need to do is not make aluminum waterblocks. Oh and a black edition impact.
– Speaking of the impact Gigabyte hinted at an incoming mITX board to compete with the ROG Impact board. No details were confirmed but we expect it to match the G1 Killer series. There will most likely not be a VRM daughterboard so don’t expect to really push the CPU clocks hard, but if past G1 motherboard trends are to be followed then we’d expect decent onboard sound and a killer NIC.
– Gigabyte also had some cool little NUC+ devices. They had tons of NUCs including a Steambox version, but the really interesting ones were the ones that added extra features such as the NAS + NUC hybrid – it’s not much bigger than a regular NUC but can support 4×2.5″ hard drives meaning that for now you’re limited to 4TB of space maximum. It also runs Andriod even though we think it’s haswell based processor would cope with reformatting to other OS’s just fine 😉 The other cool NUC+ added on a pico projector. The projector is obviously compromised running at 16:9 480p resolution and you’ll be wanting to dim those lights in order to really see much, but it’s a really cool sales tool for those road warriors who like to pack light. It also accepts external inputs for the projector too!
-Gigabyte also had some keyboards and mice on display. One keyboard was full size but minimal travel, it looks cool but real enthusiasts use mechanical keyboards. They had a cherry mx brown and red version on display with full key rollover and extra bonus macro keys, integrated USB 3 port, LED backlighting and headphone sockets with volume control. Overall not bad.
– Makerbot launched three new 3D printers – a mini, a prosumer and industrial sized. The smaller ones are available now but the huge one is waiting til Q1/Q2. They also launched more infrasstructure including apps, design tools and a store where a new team of designers sells approved “collections” of plans of figures for you to print. In the style of itunes you can get a single figure for 99 cent or the whole collection of ~13ish for 9.99.
– Enermax will be introducing AIO coolers to the US once they get around the Asetek patent issues. Also some headsets, keyboards and mice.
– And we spotted our first Corsair 250D in the wild! Yay for mITX. A rig had been built in it but it was so fresh the plastic was still on the panels.
