CES 2018 is winding down, and we finally have a chance to pause and
reflect on what we saw that was actually great. Products that advanced
their category, or broke new ground. Things that leaped ahead of the
competition, Or maybe they just looked cool.
It’s easy to hit saturation at CES, but these are the products
we’re still talking about when everything else has blurred together. We
start with the product that was so innovative, two of us raved about
it.
Creative Super X-Fi headphone holography
Hands down, this was the best demo of CES—and it’s the product I’m
most looking forward to reviewing this year. Creative’s DSP chip and
software analyzes how your ears perceive sound, based on photos of each
of your ears and your face. It then synthesizes this data with
information about the headphones you indicate you’re using and the
acoustics of the room you wish to emulate, and builds a custom audio
model for processing the sound passing through the chip.
The results simply must be heard to be believed. In my demo, I could
barely tell the difference between Dolby Atmos demo tracks and movie
soundtracks played through a conventional high-end home theater system
and a pair of headphones, even though the headphones had just two
drivers. The device also made straightforward stereo music tracks sound
magical, as if you were in the room with the musicians playing live.
Creative told me Super X-Fi will be available later this year in several
form factors, including a $150 USB dongle that you’ll use with your own
headphones. —Michael Brown
As an audio engineer I readily claim that most ‘virtual’ surround sound applications are junk—until now. Creative Labs’ Super X-Fi
blew me away. The company’s technology makes a stereo headset sound
like a surround sound speaker set up in the room with you. This is an
important technology used by professional applications, made into an
easy-to-use consumer product. This demo stole the show for me, and had
my colleagues floored as well! —Adam Patrick Murray
Intel Kaby Lake G
Though its launch was overshadowed by Spectre/Meltdown security questions, Intel’s Kaby Lake G
was no less exciting. The new CPU that combines an AMD Vega M GPU and
an 8th-gen quad-core Core i5 or Core i7 promises to deliver more
performance in slimmer laptops.
Intel
Thus far, we’ve only seen two: HP’s Spectre x360 15t and Dell’s new
XPS 15 2-in-1. Both laptops basically promise to give you the graphics
performance of a laptop that would likely have been likely twice as
thick before. —Gordon Mah Ung
Digital Storm Project Spark
We’re suckers for squeezing performance into tiny boxes, but Digital Storm’s Project Spark
is truly something to see. Not only does it get a 6-core Core i7 and
GeForce GTX 1080 into a machine smaller than a tissue box, but it does
it with custom liquid cooling too.
Digital Storm does it all by building a custom chassis using a
MicroSTX motherboard and an MXM module. It all adds up to a lot of
performance in a stunningly tiny PC. —Gordon Mah Ung
Acer Predator Orion 9000
Wheels seem like such a little thing, but in this case it shows the attention to detail on Acer’s Predator Orion 9000
gaming desktop. They nestle discreetly in the lower rear corner, so
your rig won’t look like a kiddie wagon when you lift up a bit on one of
the dual handles atop the PC and roll the entire rig into your next LAN
party.
Acer
With the Predator Orion 9000, Acer is hoping to solidify its place in
the burgeoning gaming PC sector. It’s hard to follow an act like CES
2017’s over-the-top Predator 21 X laptop, but this desktop offers a similar level of care.
It includes five fans: two on the top, two in front, and one more to
help cool the available dual GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards in SLI. The power
supply has a slick Predator-branded cover and its own ventilation.
There’s a neat hanger for your headset that pops out of the front panel.
Clearly the company knows how to make a nice, thoughtfully designed
rig. —Melissa Riofrio
Nvidia BFGD
Nvidia
The concept for Nvidia’s BFGD must have been stupidly easy: Just make one big giant monitor. The result is the Big Format Gaming Display (BFGD).
Note that the BFGD is not, repeat, not a TV, as it has no
tuner. Instead, it’s the display we might all want if we were designing
our next nerd-cave. If you’re saying a $499 Costco special large display
would be “just as good,” that’s probably not true. Although no specs
were released, the BFGD promises to be optimized for lower latency than
you can get on a TV, as well as 120Hz G-Sync. Oh, and they’re HDR too.
The big questions are how much, and when. We don’t know, but Nvidia said Asus, Acer and HP have plans to offer the BFGD. —Gordon Mah Ung
Razer Project Linda
Razer loves to show off something wacky at every CES. While this year
the surprise was a bit more subdued, I thought it was still an awesome
prototype. I’m talking about Project Linda, which is essentially a laptop dock for the Razer Phone.
At first glance Project Linda looks like a Razer Blade Stealth sans
trackpad and any sort of processing but that’s where the Phone comes
into play. While using a phone as the brains of a laptop/desktop isn’t a
new idea, I haven’t seen a more elegant solution than Project Linda’s,
where the phone becomes the trackpad, tucking neatly into the laptop’s profile rather than sitting in some dock.
Even though most Razer prototypes never make it into peoples hands,
Project Linda felt pretty far along. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a
final version before summer. —Adam Patrick Murray
Asus Bezel-Free Kit
It’s the little things in life that mean the most sometimes, and nothing proves that more than the Asus Bezel-Free Kit,
an entirely low-tech solution to a high-tech problem. Problem: Bezels
when running a triple-monitor setup. Solution: plastic lenses and bezels
to bend light around those bothersome borders.
Is it perfect? No, and it won’t magically turn three cheap panels
into a pricey super-wide monitor, either. But it does work surprisingly
well. Asus didn’t announce a price, but it’s expected to be well under
$100 when released. —Gordon Mah Ung
Hogar Controls’ Milo and Pebble
Hogar
Milo
is a $150 Google Assistant smart speaker with a built-in smart-home hub
and all the wireless tech one could hope for, including Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, ZigBee, and Z-Wave Plus. It can do everything a
Google Home can do, plus it can control all your smart home devices,
eliminating the need to buy something like a separate SmartThings or
Wink hub
Milo has a glass touch-screen that you can tap and slide your fingers
across to play music and control the on-board amplifier’s volume. You
can also use this surface to summon lighting scenes and perform other
commands if you won’t wish to use voice.
Hogar
Hogar will offer a second device called Pebble that offers the same
touch controls as Milo, but it doesn’t have mics or a speaker. It
operates on battery power, so you can easily move it from room to room.
Pebble will cost $50. Both it and Milo are expected to be available
before the end of the second quarter. —Michael Brown
Google Assistant
Amazon humiliated Google at last year’s CES. Its Echo smart speakers
and Alexa digital assistant were everywhere on the show floor and on
everyone’s lips. It was almost as if the world had already forgotten
about Google Assistant and Google Home.
Google
I wouldn’t say Google turned the tables this year, but the company
has clearly become much more serious about the smart home. Smart devices
powered by Google Assistant, including a whole new class of smart speakers with touchscreen displays, were everywhere.
Google representatives, meanwhile, uniformly dressed in white
coveralls and wearing knit ski caps, were stationed in dozens of
companies’ booths ready to explain how Google Assistant was being used
in various products. This battle is far from won. —Michael Brown
D-Link AC2600 WiFi router
In a world of malware, hacking and botnets, most smart home devices
represent a huge vulnerability on your network, so it’s great to see
D-Link’s AC2600 WiFi router.
It includes a firewall from McAfee that can stop unauthorized access
to devices on your network, alert you to hacking attempts or peculiar
Internet traffic from gadgets. It will also scan your network to notify
you of insecurities and for parents, there’s also a filtering system
that can block websites and restrict web time.
And best of all, you’re not locked into an expensive
subscription. Included in the router’s $250 price is 5 years of updates
for the router’s security software plus two years of McAfee protection
for an unlimited number of PCs, phones and tablets. —Martyn Williams
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