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After 97,000 steps (about 45 miles of walking), a couple dozen press events, countless booth visits, and six nights in an overpriced hotel room, my week at CES is over for another year. Like last year, cars and car tech were a major theme of the show. Fortunately, we had yeoman Bill Howard on site for ExtremeTech to sort it all out. Ben Algaze focused a lot of his attention on the AV space, so expect to read his thoughts on the smart TVs and some of the audio technology that was introduced.
As usual, I have a short attention span, so I dove into a little of everything, including a drone that lets you make Hollywood-style movies, an immersive 3D desktop, a roundup of the slew of 3D printers that were released, and a cool new Android tablet that hopes to dethrone Microsoft’s Surface in the hybrid space. Stay-tuned for a couple more articles on the brand-new indoor navigation system used at the show, and a company that promises to do away with passwords (yes, I know, they’re not the first to make the claim).
In the meantime, there was plenty at the show that we didn’t have time to cover in individual articles. So, as always, we bring them to you in the form of a slideshow. Hopefully it is a little like being here, except with less walking (and probably better coffee):
CES always starts off two days before the floor opens, with a major press scrum called CES Unveiled. Here, well over a hundred companies pay to have first crack at the thousands of media members covering the show. It is a good opportunity for small vendors, and companies new to the US, to make a splash. This ten-year-old European alarm company MyFox, for example, might otherwise have been completely lost on the show floor among the dozens of home security offerings. Instead, I had a chance to chat with them and learn about a unique design feature.
MyFox systems can communicate with each other over long distances in a sort of mess if one of them needs to spread an alarm, but has been cut off from the internet. If there are enough of them in a neighborhood, this addresses the Achilles Heel of typical DIY alarm systems — how they alert you if the burglars cut your cable.
Next was a full day of press events, especially from the big players. There can be a two-hour wait to get into “hot” press conferences like Samsung’s. Even with my early access pass, it was a solid hour. Someone should probably figure out why any of us bother anymore, since the events are streamed. In any case, most of the conferences are self-congratulatory and scripted, but there are always a few surprises.
Here, Samsung introduced a thumb-sized 1TB SSD. I got to hold one, and it is not only tiny, but nearly weightless. It will come in sizes from 250GB to 1TB, but isn’t cheap. The 1TB model is priced at $600 for pre-order on Amazon. That makes some sense, as a 1TB mSATA SSD is around $500, plus there is the case, and of course the markup.
Somehow Samsung cannot get over Apple-and-Sony envy. I’m not sure it has actually ever had a successful streaming service, but it is hard to prove it can with Milk. At CES Samsung extended Milk with Milk VR, a source for Gear VR content that it says it will add to every day. Clearly, there will be a need for good Gear VR content as they get into the market, but I’ll be curious whether Milk VR is a major source when we check back in at CES 2016.
Next page: Speakers, mirrorless cameras, 3D printers, and oversized TVs
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CES 2015: The week in photos, without leaving your desk
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