New Year, New Tech

So, now that we’re here in 2019, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is back for another round of exciting and revolutionary new gadgets to impress audiences of technophiles and tech reviewers.  This year has not disappointed in filling that role. All the big companies came out swinging this year and there’s some cool stuff to run through. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights coming out of Las Vegas this year.

In the field of laptops and computing, the big news is mobile RTX.  After Nvidia’s launch of their new desktop GPUs went rather poorly due to elevated prices and lackluster performance in most modern games (since they lack the ability to take advantage of RTX’s namesake capabilities).  Now that manufacturers are refreshing their laptops, we’ll see if mobile RTX is able to redeem Nvidia to any extent. The launch has already seemed to give a nice boost to their stock price, in fact. Other cool laptop news includes Dell finally listening to literally every customer or reviewer and moving the webcam above the display on their refreshed XPS 13.  The lower angle on the previous models has been a constant complaint. Unfortunately, no refresh to the XPS 15. For other laptop news from CES check out this video from Dave 2D over on YouTube.  

Another big part of CES is always cars.  This year everything is about driverless concepts.  From established manufacturers to brand new startups, many companies want to show off their ideas for the future of self-driving vehicles.  The theme this year appears to be full transition to driverlessness, front seats that turn to face the center, and glass on all sides to give riders panoramic views of their surroundings as they cruise, newly liberated from the task of actually watching the road ahead.  Unfortunately, as with many things at CES, many of these concepts will never actually hit the road. Self-driving cars are unlikely to be roaming the streets freely even within this decade, so for now these serve as Jetson-esqe teasers of what could be. Marques Brownlee a.k.a. MKBHD discusses this point and one showcase which could be at least capable of road deployment soon.  

LG brought back it’s rollable, 65”, OLED TV again this year, promising this time that it would have them in consumers hands by the end of the year.  MKBHD did a video about this as well. Now that 5G is making its appearance on the grand stage, of course it was a topic of CES as well.  However, still no official launches of 5G capable devices. Google showed up bigtime for CES this year, mainly to showcase new improvements to their wonderchild, Google Assistant.  Now among many other things, Google smart devices can serve as an interpreter between 27 different languages. Another minor showcase was an improvement to HTC’s virtual reality headset, Vive, which now will support eye-tracking in order to increase realism and controllability while consuming VR content.  

I obviously couldn’t come close to covering the extent of what is being showcased at CES, so if you need more, check out this article from CNET or head over to JayzTwoCents YouTube channel to find videos about PC parts and other tech showcased.