Cool gadgets and sightings at CES 2016
The International CES show never fails to showcase a dizzying array of gadgets and technology, and 2016 is no exception. Beyond our detailed reports, there's plenty of other sightings worth your time and we've compiled them here for your viewing pleasure.
3DRudder - Navigating with your feet
This disc-like object called the 3Drudder, is made for feet-based navigation input. It’s especially useful when you’re immersed in a VR world where you may have your hands busy with other forms of input devices and you can use your feet to help in navigational needs by tilting in the desired direction – sort of like what you would do on a Segway.
The bottom of the 3DRudder is shaped like a bowl to help you to easily tilt in the desired direction.
Here’s how it looks like when one is immersed in a VR world and using the 3DRudder for navigational assistance.
Airmega – A smart air purifier
Airmega combines great design and advanced monitoring and control options that make this air purifier an excellent choice in any home. It even has real-time air quality indicator through ringed color LEDs on its front face and a filter lifetime indicator that tells you when it’s time to wash or replace its filters.
Brydge – The only keyboard and cover your iPad needs
Popular local keyboard add-on maker for iPads, Brydge, was also at CES 2016 showing off what they do best – new keyboards for the latest iPads released recently. Shown here is one for the iPad Pro, which is the company’s most popular ever! That’s a surprising feat of accomplishment considering that the iPad Pro is for a niche user group, was just released a few months back and that Apple already has their own keyboard cover option. Kudos to them.
And keeping up with the momentum, they also have a Brydge keyboard for the latest iteration of the iPad Mini. Notice that the layout is a tad different with non-essential keys reduced in size and space between keys is wee bit tighter. Otherwise, the size of the main keys are identical across the Brydge keyboard series, along with the key travel.
D-Link – New routers incoming
As a prominent supplier of networking equipment, it is D-Link’s turn to put out their speediest router yet for the small, but growing group of AC5300 class of routers. Going with their red hat design identity, D-Link was the first in the networking world to jazz up the design of routers to make them standout and even be a conversational piece. The DIR 895L tri-band AC5300 router follows this as well and it sports a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, is MU-MIMO ready and expectedly supports 4x4 data streams for speedy Wi-Fi transfers.
This is D-Link’s newest design ID yet and you will see this on their upcoming DIR-879 AC1900 dual-band router. Some of its key features are its high power amplifiers (1000mW) for extra coverage reach, a 1GHz dual-core processor, and Intelligent QOS for optimizing network traffic.
Digipas eGeeTouch – The smartest luggage locks in town
Another brand who’s making waves at CES is eGeeTouch and their smart luggage locks. They’ve been at this for a couple of years in retail with different variants. This year at CES, they debuted the Smart Luggage Zipper Lock with NFC and Fingerprint technology - this means, you can choose to either lock the luggage with your fingerprint or use your smartphone to pre-register the lock to your smart device for NFC based locking/unlocking. The lock is both TSA and Travel Sentry approved, so it is definitely safe for use in your travels.
FLIR – Your personal thermal imager for adventure trips
FLIR is a leader in thermal imaging cameras and product. At CES 2016, they’ve got a new tough handheld imager that’s great for camping and other adventure trips. One use-case scenario in the woods is if you hear some noise in the distance and you’re not sure what to expect, you can point this imager in that direction (this model shown here is good for 100 meters) and you can get an idea of what you might be dealing with, e.g. people, animals, etc.
Here’s a close-up of its controls. You can snap thermal photos or hold the button to take thermal imaging videos and then transfer that out via the USB port. There’s also a control button to cycle through the color range used for the thermal imaging display.
Hairmax LaserBand – Reverse hair thinning
How about a device that stimulates hair growth by just using it for 90 seconds a day? If you recently observed hair thinning on your scalp, the Hairmax band uses 82 medical grade laser light source to reverse your current situation and help stimulate hair growth through a process called Photo Biostimulation. It is said that one can see observable changes in about three months of continuous use. It will be available next quarter for US$795.
Helix Cuff – The first fashion wearable with wireless headphones on your wrist
The Helix Cuff is a fashionable hand band that incorporates a Bluetooth earpiece – a world’s first. You'll have to remove it from the hand band though.
Here’s another view of the Helix Cuff, but it’s best to check out our video below that explains how it works.
Hexo+ - the self-flying camera for the adventurer
The more serious drones haven’t had a reputation for ease of usability, but that’s where Hexo+ comes in to solve all this once and for all. Primarily it’s designed for ultra-ease of use and to track you wherever you go. So everything from take-off, flight path, landing, tracking and framing, are all taken care of for you.
Just select the preferred camera movement...
And lastly, select the position. That’s all you need to do. The Hexo+ is GoPro compatible, flies up to 70km/h, works up to 16,000 feet altitude and has a flight time of up to 15 minutes. If you need a no-nonsense drone to capture your important moments, it can’t get simpler than Hexo+. It’s been launched a couple of months ago for US$1,349.
Inail – An intelligent printer for nails
The Inail intelligent printer is able to print really intricate designs in 5 minutes per fingernail.
Here are some of its sample printouts. Pretty cool, yes? Once these machines get more affordable, expect another industry where humans will slowly be replaced by machines such as this.
Lenovo - Notching up business machines
A showcase of Lenovo's latest and greatest at CES 2016.
The grand-daddy of all ThinkPads. The ThinkPad 700C was one of the first ThinkPads to be announced in October 1992.
A trend that we foresee is OLED displays on notebooks. This is the OLED display of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga. Look at the colors!
Demonstrating the Presenter Module of the ThinkPad X1 Tablet. The module lets the tablet project a 60-inch image from just 2 meters.
Linksys – Sprucing up your home network with ever better equipment
Like D-Link, Linksys took CES 2016 as the Launchpad to showcase their upcoming Max-Stream AC5400 MU-MIMO router.
To prove its power and capability, Linksys was showing off how smoothly the router is able to stream more than 20 unique 4k video streams on to a massive wall of TVs!
They’ve also got a brand new AC1900 class Wi-Fi extender.
Note the Wi-Fi Finder Technology that helps you identify the best spot to place the extender.
Qarnot Q.rad – The world’s first computing heater
The Qarnot Q.rad is a heater unlike any you would have heard of – it creates heat from three computing units that are behind the massive radiators. But there’s more – these computers are connected to a cloud computing grid and its compute power is then harnessed for distributed computational workloads. It all happens in the background and all you need to do is set the desired temperature on Q.rad or though the smartphone app.
Seen here is the app to control Q.rad.
The Q.rad is actually a smart radiator designed to be integrated within smart building systems as it has several sensors integrated such as temperature, carbon dioxide, humidity, noise level, presence IR, motion detection, luminosity, pressure, and many more. On the Q.rad, you’ll also find a touch screen, Qi wireless charging , LED lighting, stereo speakers, USB charging, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Gigabit Ethernet, etc. The cost? US$3,500. It has already been deployed in France and it will now be available globally.
Somabar – A smart bartender
How about your very own smart bartender? Now you can with the Somabar. More details below.
Sony – Expanding the Life Space UX concept
Besides the usual array of immersive TVs, speakers and other products that you’re familiar with the Sony brand name, the Japanese giant is also actively experimenting on a new concepts. We caught a few that will be coming out Summer time this year.
This is this LED bulb speaker. Screw it in to any standard light bulb socket and turn any lighting point into both a source of light and music. You can select the tunes you want wirelessly through your phone and even daisy chain multiple LED bulbs.
Here’s a compact and portable ultra short throw projector that can throw an image up to 80 inches in size on to any adjacent surface – be it a wall or a table. It’s also equipped with internal speakers and a battery for true portability.
This isn’t just an LED light source in a glass tube; it’s actually a glass sound speaker. Using organic glass , the speaker vibrates the glass to create sound. The speaker also has a small woofer in its base to cater to the lower frequency notes. It’s portable and wireless, so you can play tunes on it anywhere using your phone via Bluetooth.
8K TV solutions
HiSense and its 65-inch ULED based 8K TV showcase.
LG’s 98-inch 8K ColorPrime Plus TV has been enhanced from last year and it looks like there may be a possibility of it going into retail late this year.
Here’s a close-up shot of the display on LG’s 8K TV and note the fine details rendered.
Panasonic went a step ahead to show off an ecosystem of 8K solutions. This 8K interactive table is one of them.
Apparently, it is the world’s first 8K interactive table solution and it’s 55 inches across with a 178-degree wide viewing angle.
Panasonic also developed a single-cable solution for 8K video transmission.
Not to forget, we’ve Samsung’s 8K solution covered in this news piece.
Other Sightings
Over at Sphero’s booth, they had a BB-8 droid mock that’s equivalent to the one used in the latest Star Wars installment. We hope they’ll have an actual droid of that size for sale one day!
How would you like to video conference live with someone across the globe as they keep up with you through a Segway-like device, except there’s a big video monitor and a camera so that the person on the other side can see what’s happening and you can have a lively conversation? This is the BeamPro and it’s making its presence felt in a big way at the show.
Well, the label says is it all, CEC has the world’s first IGZO based 4K LED TV and it’s a sizeable 55 inches across.
Qualcomm’s booth.
Intel’s booth.
Schooling fish via ‘crowdsourcing’. The more the participants wave their hands with the band on their hand, the more they attract the fishes to travel towards their way.
Intel also had a drone showcase to show the computing power they’ve managed to pack in these connected devices.
This was quite the crowd puller at Skyworth – a huge video game wall!