Ubergizmo’s Best of CES 2018

With CES 2018 well behind us, we’ll gather our favorite CES products here. It’s impossible to see “everything,” but we focused on our core coverage by mixing real products and innovative technologies that may become tomorrow’s hits. Here’s the list, in no particular order:

Orcam MyEye 2.0

Orcam MyEye 2.0 is an eyewear that can help visually impaired people read things in everyday life. Orcam MyEye will use its camera to read things like menus, money bills, computer screens, phone screens, etc. The information will then be read out loud to the wearer.  It mounts on many types of glasses thanks to a magnetic connector.

LG OLED W8 OLED TV

While the LG rollable OLED display brought a lot of “ohhh” and “ahhs,” the high-end LG W8-Series of OLED television is the one that will deliver the visual goodness in the homes of those fortunate enough to purchase one. With a new powerful imaging processor called Alpha 9 (A9), LG’s image quality goes beyond the OLED panel itself and processes the image data to noticeably increase the quality. Check the LG TV line-up of 2018.

Toyota e-Palette

Thinking of tomorrow’s self-driving car can be a perilous exercise, but the Toyota e-Palette is an autonomous electric vehicle that will come riders after it’s been ordered. To maximizer the utilization of the e-Palette, the vehicle can be reconfigured within ~24 hours to serve different needs: shipping, e-commerce, passenger rides and more.

Lenovo Mirage Solo and Mirage Camera

VR is here to stay, and we have known for a long time that standalone VR headsets would play a significant role in removing friction from the VR user experience. The Lenovo Mirage Solo is the first standalone VR headset, and it does not require a smartphone because a screen and a powerful processor are already embedded. With its two front cameras, it can track the user moving in the room. No wires. Total freedom.

Razer Project Linda

Project Linda is Razer’s concept for addressing a well-known smartphone user desire: turning a powerful phone into a long-battery-life laptop.  Motorola did this with the Atrix 2 before, and both Samsung and Huawei have some desktop-like productivity options with their latest phones. Razer distinguishes itself by showing a functional, elegant, 13” laptop clamshell with a great display. The goal is to (hopefully) make this gaming-ready with a 120 Hz screen and price it to sell.

HP Z 3D camera

HP makes CAD and design even more accessible to all by building the HP Z 3D camera, a powerful visual 3D scanner that used to be integrated with HP’s Sprout line of computers. Whether you have a more modest computer or a monster rig, the power to scan can be in your hands and on your terms.

Qualcomm Always-Connected PC Platform

In the past month, Qualcomm has cracked open the doors of the PC market by introducing the Always-Connected PC platform powered by Snapdragon processors. With new designs introduced at CES, and more to come in 2018, this is a significant shake up in who’s playing in this space and how users will perceive their computers. We finally true always-connected and true instant-on, two features that were touted on PCs for years, but never entirely delivered. This is now done, with longer battery life as well.

Lenovo X1 Carbon 2018

The 14-inch business laptop category may have a new champion with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2018. This year, we get a new 500-NIT super-bright touch-screen display. The camera gets a physical privacy shutter and this 2.49 Lbs computer passes a series of MIL-STD 810G durability tests of the US military. Despite its small size, the connectivity is excellent: 4x USB including two Thunderbolt 3 ports make it possible to connect everything from multiple 4K displays to an external GPU box.

Samsung Flip

We love the idea of massive electronic whiteboards. Back in the days, we covered the Google Jam, but this time it is Samsung’s turn to wow us with the 55-inch Samsung Flip whiteboard. The Flip is less focused on remote collaboration, and more on making it easy to interact with your phone (preferably a Samsung one) to quickly pass data/images from and to mobiles.  The flip looks neat in any meeting room.

Dell XPS 13 (2018)

The Dell XPS 13 upgrade has become one of these things that laptop geek long for. This year’s model has had a vast design upgrade and looks extremely thin. The new white/gold color has been a hit at the show and should attract new customers to this traditionally “Business” laptop design. At 2.67 Lbs, it packs a punch with Intel’s latest Core i7 Gen 8 and can receive up to 1TB in SSD storage. The Thunderbolt 3 connectivity ensures that it can become the center of a static workstation as well.

Bang & Olufsen Shape Speakers

Bang & Olufsen Shape is a modular speaker system in which each hexagonal “Tile” is a sub-component such as an Amplifier, Smart Hub, Dampers or Speaker of course. The speakers use wireless connectivity (BT 4.1 and Beo-Link) to allow people to create a sound system which is also an art piece. This is how B&O has wowed the world for so many years.

RightEye EyeQ

EyeQ is a terminal for optometrist offices that is designed to diagnose many health issues, but also offer some measures to correct them. Using eye-tracking technology from Tobii, RightEye says it can detect concussions, autism and many more potential problems, including reading issues for children. The medical personnel can figure this out by asking the subject to look at a moving object or playing a simple video game that requires hand-eye coordination.

HP Spectre 15 X360

The HP Spectre 15 X360 is the 2018 update to one of the most powerful laptops for Creatives. This year, users will be getting higher discrete graphics performance with the Gen 8 Core i7, but also the AMD VEGA graphics embedded on the same CPU package. The performance should be similar to having a GeForce 1050. As always, the all-metal industrial design is excellent. The pen and display options will give designers everything they need to perform.

Euveka Mannequin : Apparel Industry Disruptor?

Buying clothes online can be challenging depending on one’s bodyshape. In a store, you have a good idea of what to expect and trying something on might seal the deal. That was always the weak point of online clothing shopping, but Euveka may change this. The mannequin can match a customer body scan into 2 minutes. From there, clothing companies can take action and adapt to either fit or customize something.

Mercedes MBUX User Experience

Cars are becoming more and more like power computers on wheels, but the user experience is still a work in progress industry-wide. Mercedes’ MBUX (MB User eXperience) system uses voice commands and an ultra-wide display with sharp graphics. Drivers and passengers can ask driving-related questions by voice, or use the touch screen with taps or even handwriting to select actions and information. It can read small bits of text out  loud, but there are still discussions about what is or is not “too distracting”. The computer is powered by NVIDIA and the interface is extremely responsive. Watch the CES presentation.

Dell XPS 15 2-in-1

Last but not least, the Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 (2018) is a powerful large-screen laptop for power-users. With a 4K screen option (100% Adobe RGB colors) and the digital pen, it should be a pleasure to work with for designers. The 32GB RAM option will work great for those who work on huge files, and up to 1TB of SSD storage should fit most needs. If not, the Thunderbolt 3 port can provide more superfast external storage.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Events
Tags: bestof, CES, CES 2018, Editorspick