What's the Best Gadget at CES 2012?
The Consumer Electronics Show ended last week and left over 150,000 techies reeling from a sensory overload of tablets, smartphones, laptops and gadgets. This year ultrabooks and smart TVs shone as a bevy of other gadgets from 3D printers to a robotic cameraman made CES 2012 live up to its name as the biggest electronics show around. What were the gadgets that managed to stand out from the crowd? Here are five gadgets that shined at this year's CES.
OLED TVs- LG and Samsung unveiled 55-inch organic light emitting diodes or OLED television sets that could be the future of televisions. OLED screens are being used in smartphones today but it has been difficult to manufacture in large sizes such as television screens. OLED screens provide a high-contrast picture with better color contrast than standard LED screens. OLED displays don't need backlighting and picture quality is better with OLED. LG's 55-inch EM 9800 is just 0.16 inches thick and was named the "Best of Show" by CNET editors. LG's OLED screen will start shipping in the third quarter of the year. No word when Samsung's OLED screen will hit the market.
Nokia Lumia 900- Nokia and Microsoft Corp. made the most of Microsoft's last year at CES with the Nokia Lumia 900. The Lumia 900, which runs Microsoft's Windows Phone software is the two companies best chance to break into the smartphone market and both Microsoft and Nokia CEOs showed up for the phones announcement. The phone will be the first to use AT&T's LTE network. Nokia didn't say when the Lumia will be available or its price but the phone is expected in the first quarter of the year.
Fujifilm X-Pro 1- Named the "best camera" at this year's CES, Fujifilm's X-Pro 1 has a new 16 million sensor that is capable of delivering the same quality of a full-frame sensor. The X-Pro 1 also has a new processor, the EXR Processor Pro that enables the camera to deliver high speed and high precision image processing.
HP Envy Spectre 14- Ultrabooks were big in CES with major manufacturers presenting their own version of Intel's ultra-thin class of notebooks. Hewlett Packard's Envy Spectre 14 stood out from the Ultrabook crowd by using a lot of glass. The Envy Spectre is covered in Gorilla Glass from its display, lid, palm rest and touchpad making it one stylish ultrabook. The $1,399 entry-level HP Envy will have an Intel Core i5 processor, 4 Gb of RAM, 128Gb SSD drive, Ethernet, USB 3.0 and HDMI ports. Bluetooth, WiDi, NFC and Wireless Audio are all supported. HP will start shipping the Envy Spectre on February 8.
Sharp's First 8K television- Sharp unveiled the world's first 8k television made up of over 33 million pixels that is about 16 times the resolution of today's 1080p displays. This prototype defies any adjective that you can use to describe it. The 85 inch, 7680x4320 resolution display is so sharp and clear it's almost like magic. Some people even described it as being better than 3D, that's how good it looked. Unfortunately Sharp says this real-life looking TV is still five years away from the market.