What We Liked at CES 2012
Tech that shined at CES 2012 ranged from Ultrabooks, tablets, faster wireless technologies, and innovative gadgets that would make James Bond envious.
That’s the verdict from PCWorld editors who spent a week wandering the 1.86 million square feet of the CES trade-show floor and attending offsite press events. What you won’t find in our Best of CES 2012 roundup is overhyped digital gear that fell flat. Nor were we snookered by the likes of Snooki of MTV’s Jersey Shore fame (who was in Vegas to promote iHip’s Bedazzled headphones). What we did find were genuine tech gems from companies as big as Microsoft to tiny firms you’ve never heard of. Here is a collection of the the best of CES: The products, the themes, and some quirky meditations. Also check out our Worst of CES 2012 for an overview of what stunk this year.
Wilocity Gigabit Wireless
My fingers are crossed that the WiGig Alliance’s Wireless Gigabit standard takes off. Why? Wireless Gigabit will allow devices–anything from PCs to tablets to TVs–to communicate with each other on the 60GHz spectrum band at theoretical maximum speeds of 7 gigabits per second. What that translates into is a wire-free link from, for example, your laptop to your HDTV for displaying movies or pictures, or for video conferencing. Although we weren’t able to test how well transmitting on the band worked when, say, you’re walking around with your laptop and trying to transmit video to a TV, devices that weren’t moving transmitted data between each other at crazy fast rates. –Megan Guess
LG’s 3D Wall
I don’t care whether 3D on the HDTVs we buy is dead or not: LG’s huge 3D display at the Las Vegas Convention Center (consisting of literally dozens of smaller screens wired together across a huge swath of wall) was nothing short of breathtaking–one of the best AV shows I’ve seen at CES in recent years. It made the 3D on my local Imax look and sound almost puny–and for the record, I think it made the 55-inch OLED 3D look like an afterthought. –Yardena Arar