Ubergizmo’s Best of CES 2019

Goodbye CES 2019, this was Ubergizmo’s 14th CES! It was difficult to navigate the avalanche of new products and technologies announced there. Including the pre-show work, it took out a huge chunk of December and all of the Holidays, but the chips have fallen, and here are the best products and technologies we’ve seen at CES 2019, in no particular order!

LG SIGNATURE Series TV R Rollable OLED TV

LG showed its rollable OLED technology last year but kept its promise to show us a slick product that people will be able to buy in 2019. Targeting an ultra high-end niche market, the LG Signature Series TV R (Rollable) is awesome, and it will become even more so as its size increases from 65” to even larger ones such as 75, 80 and more. Its premise is simple: your TV doesn’t have to occupy a huge space in your home, and there’s certainly a demand for that.

HP Omen X 65 Emperium Gaming Monitor

Large Gaming Monitors had humble beginnings, with size and refresh rate being their initial claim to fame. The HP Omen X 65 Emperium Monitor pushes the concept to the extreme, pushing the image quality and brightness higher while including a powerful sound system at the same time. Last but not least, HP has worked with NVIDIA to support the stutter-free G-Sync technology, but also the integration of a built-in NVIDIA Shield smart TV functionality. We called it a “Dream Gaming Monitor.”

Huawei Matebook 13

The Huawei Matebook 13 represents the expansion of Huawei’s footprint in the 13.3” thin & light laptop market. It is slightly less expensive than last year’s Matebook X 13 but brings many of its most iconic features to more potential customers. Some smart tradeoffs were done to keep the most value for the price, and the Matebook 13 even gets a 25-Watt TDP discrete graphics chip for higher performance gaming and video editing/compression.

NVIDIA RTX 2080 Max-Q Mobile GPU

Mobile gaming has been waiting for this, and NVIDIA has finally delivered the RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics processors for laptops. According to the company, it should be 20% faster than the GeForce 1080 Max-Q and has 40% better power efficiency, which means less power used for the same frame-rate, or higher absolute framerate. But the RTX series is better known for its ability to perform some ray-tracing operations in hardware, enabling next-level shadows and reflections.

Dell Alienware Area 51M

The Alienware Area 51M is a uniquely designed desktop replacement that takes into account a simple reality: high-end gaming is a powerful, power-intensive, application that requires desktop components. Users can think of this laptop as a very slick desktop computer with an integrated screen. All major components (CPU, GPU, RAM, Storage) are user-replaceable, a favorite Gamers feature.

Lenovo X1 Carbon 2019

The Lenovo X1 Carbon series is one of the most successful laptop franchise, and Lenovo has not held back much in this X1 Carbon 2019 release. The overall volume has been reduced by ~7% (our estimation) and the weight has done down to 2.46 Lbs. Despite its size, it can be configured with the fastest 15W TDP Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD storage and a 4K HDR display. It remains the only laptop in its category that passes a dozen MIL-STD-810G military tests.

ASUS RoG Mothership Gaming Laptop

You have to love it when ASUS goes completely off the rails and takes the Microsoft Surface concept and dials it to 11. The ASUS RoG Mothership Gaming Laptop is one of the most creative product we’ve seen at CES 2019. It is a “Beast” with a 17.3-inch display, Core i9 CPU and the RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics. The keyboard can even be completely separated from the main chassis – hence the mothership name. At 10.36 pounds, it’s more transportable than portable, but kudos to ASUS to building this.

Lenovo Yoga C730 with AMOLED 2-in-1 Laptop

2019 is the year where OLED is coming back to laptops. As you may remember, OLED had started appearing previously, and Lenovo was one of the first OEM (with Samsung) to build that excellent X1 YOGA OLED we reviewed in 2016. OLED then went away, but it seems like the display industry is now ready to an OLED takeoff, and Lenovo is again among the first to move forward. The Lenovo Yoga C730 with AMOLED is aimed at Creative users and includes a very good digital pen experience and enough muscles to run the usual apps such as Photoshop.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Gen3

Qualcomm’s 3-tiers Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit announcement will help the auto industry focusing on building functionality instead of trying to piece together the electronic foundation for their smart cars platforms. Qualcomm will provide the connectivity as well as the computing capabilities via its heterogeneous computing platform initially developed for mobile. Perhaps more importantly, it is the Snapdragon (software) Platform that will make it much easier and faster for automakers to integrate long talked about features such as advanced driver assistance and next-level voice/gestures user interaction that increase safety on the road.

Samsung Micro-LED 75″ TV

Samsung’s commitment to Micro-LED technology continues to impress and this year’s Samsung 75-inch Micro-LED TV demonstration shows that the technology is on the edge of crossing from the commercial display space into the hotly contested consumer space, with TV and perhaps mobiles being the end-game. The potential of Micro-LED should not be underestimated, and it could become the prevalent display technology some day.

BMW Vision iNEXT Virtual Experience

At CES 2018, we have experienced BMW’s vision of the future user interaction with your car. The demo starts in a virtual office, and the user continues working has he or she goes into the car. The in-car demonstration was all done in Virtual Reality with force-feedback seats and all. Finding ourselves into a VR car interior, we were able to experience BMW’s Vision iNEXT as closely as possible from how BMW sees it. Both the vision and the demonstration deserve high praise. Well done BMW, well done.

Honor View 20 Smartphone

Honor is entering 2019 in fanfare with an extremely promising Premium (~$400-$500) handset that delivers the world’s first commercial punch-hole screen, but also the world’s first large-sensor 48 Megapixel camera. We have published an early preview of the Honor View 20  following its first appearance in China and will update that article into a full review, so follow us on Facebook and Instagram to be the first to know how it performs in the real world.

Valeo Voyage XR: Immersion On The Move, With 5G

Valeo presented a bold VR communications concept at CES 2019. With Valeo Voyage XR and 5G connectivity, users would be able to “invite” someone to a road trip via Virtual Reality. Using the array of cameras and audio sensors in the car, Valeo Voyage XR can place the VR guest in the rear seat for complete audio and visual communications. The driver sees the guest as a 3D avatar in the rearview mirror, while the VR guest sees a 3D avatar of the driver. 3D audio can even make both parties hear the conversation from the proper location. We’ve never seen this kind of vision for in-car VR before, and this could technically work shortly.

Narwal Vacuum/Mop Robot With External Water Tank

It’s been 17 years since the first Roomba vacuum cleaner came out, and yet floor cleaning isn’t a solved problem today. Narwal’s robot can be both a vacuum and a mopping robot, by swapping a bottom accessory. Mopping is designed to be more forceful and efficient and doesn’t require the user to refill the water tank several times per mop. Instead, two external large-capacity tanks are used for clean and wastewater. When in need of a charge, the robot comes back to the tank, which also serves as a charging station

Archos Mate 7 Dual Orientation Display Assistant

Alexa Display Assistants all share the same functionality, so the implementation does make all the difference. The Archos Mate 7 (above center behind the rounded Mate 5, and left) is a well-designed 7-inch assistant that can work in both portrait and landscape position when others cannot (some operate in portrait mode only for video calls). It looks very sleek and is even equipped with a 3000 mAh battery so you can move it around in the house, which is a huge advantage over the competition which tethered to a power outlet. The same design exists with Google Assistant is called Hello 7 (below center) and was launched at IFA 2018 in early September. Archos customers have the choice to go either with Amazon or Google in a similar design, which is great.

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