It’s Friday, and I’m finally home after a week in Las Vegas wandering around the monstrous show floors of the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, looking at all the gadgets that were announced only days before. From smartphones to ultrabooks to massive TVs to the craziest accessories you could never dream up, it was a trip, that’s for absolute sure.
Together with RadioShack and Gizmodo, we put together over 15 videos from the show floor, highlighting some of the coolest demos and products. You can watch them on The Shack Blog. I do have some thoughts on various things that I saw at CES this year.
For starters, Nokia rocked it. Their booth, even though it was in the South Hall, upstairs, was pretty much always packed. They were demoing the Lumia 710, Lumia 800, and Lumia 900 (the latter of which was only just announced on Monday), as well as their suite of accessories and services/apps. The Lumia 900 won something like 5 or 6 different awards at CES – impressive for a company who was pretty much entirely written off by most of the tech blogs less than 18 months ago.
The TVs were also something you have to see to believe. I have a modest 46-inch Samsung TV at CasaGuru – it’s not ‘smart’ or anything, just a big enough screen to enjoy movies from, and it’s hooked up to my Xbox and an old eMachines PC running XBMC. We don’t have regular TV, just Netflix and Hulu. For 2 years before this, the only TV we had in the house was a 21-inch CRT I’ve had since high school.
Being in front of these hot new TVs, though…..just wow. LG’s 55-inch OLED TV was mind-numbingly awesome, as was its GINORMOUS 84-inch 3D TV. Samsung’s smart TVs are simply impressive, as well – the AllShare feature really does a great job tying in tablets, smartphones, and TVs for a totally connected livingroom. Brilliant.
Honestly, the TVs and phones were all that really knocked your socks off. There were tablets here and there, but all somewhat ‘meh’. I’m not a big camera guy, so the new stuff from Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm, and others were of little interest.
I also had an absolute blast seeing all the online-type-folk. It’s always good to shake the hand of someone you talk to online, and there was no shortage of opportunities.
I know most of the tech bloggers who’ve been every year always complain about CES and say how much they hate it, but whatever. A week in Las Vegas with so many gadgets? You’d have to be crazy to not want to be there.
Ricky Cadden 