CES 2014: Reviewed.com's highlights from the week
LAS VEGAS -- This week the entire Reviewed.com editorial staff was in Las Vegas to cover the 2014 International CES. As the official Editors' Choice Media Partner for CES 2014, our Editor's Choice selections highlighted the best products of the show. The biggest trends in technology we saw included smart homes, wearable tech, 4K and OLED TV technology, 3D printers, and high-tech cars. Here are some of the most interesting things we saw in Vegas.
Editor's Choice Awards
In September, Reviewed.com and CES announced that Reviewed.com would the official Editors' Choice Media Partner at CES 2014. After sorting through countless products, we settled on the 46 best products at CES 2014.
Wearable technologies invade CES in many forms
For such a young product category, the wearable tech market is remarkably diverse. These devices cover a huge range of form factors, applications and prices, but they all have a few things in common: They're connected, they're small, and they're worn on the human body.
The bounty of wearables on display at this year's International CES seems to suggest a breakout year for the category. But Shawn DuBravac, chief economist and director of research for the Consumer Electronics Association, says we're still very much in the "exploratory phase," with manufacturers simply throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
What's so great about Vizio's Reference Series televisions?
The television industry's shift from 1080p to UHD is fully underway, and it's a perfect opportunity for manufacturers to redefine their image.
What better time for Vizio to transform itself from a manufacturer of affordable budget TVs to a manufacturer of affordable premium TVs? While we can only speculate prior to real lab testing, what Vizio claims about the Reference Series should have every TV enthusiast biting their nails in anticipation.
The as-yet unpriced Reference Series will be available in 65- and 120-inch varieties, the latter being the largest consumer television in the world. One major spec that sets the Reference Series TVs apart from Vizio's P Series (also new UHDs for this year) is that they've been engineered to comply with Dolby Vision, a High Dynamic Range (HDR) initiative.
Where UHD (4K) pushes resolution to new heights, Dolby Vision seeks to provide correspondingly high contrast and color depth, far outstripping the current generation of displays. Ideally, TVs compatible with Dolby Vision will output a very bright picture, and be capable of covering or coming close to the Rec. 2020 color space.
'Smart home' sector finally wises up
Manufacturers at the 2014 International CES are making a more compelling case for the connected home by focusing on practical technological applications. That's a major step forward in the market's development, and a major change in the messaging from previous years.
The technology to control appliances, lights and locks with a mobile device while also getting real-time sensor data is not new. To consumers, though, it's been a tough sell.
Overzealous use of the word "smart" might have contributed to the less-than-enthusiastic consumer response the smart-home market has seen thus far, as well as general inconsistency among manufacturers and journalists as to what exactly "smart" means. At CES 2014, though, it appears manufacturers have learned from past mistakes.
Samsung revolutionizes the dishwasher
You may not expect to find groundbreaking innovation in your dishwasher, but that's just what Samsung brought to CES this year. The DW80H9970, which debuted today, features new WaterWall technology. Instead of a rotary sprayer that spins water around your dishwasher, WaterWall uses a sprayer that moves from back to front across the entire width of the tub.
If WaterWall works as well in practice as it does on paper, we can expect other brands to follow suit with their own versions of this technology. But Samsung gets bragging rights for being first.
The Bogus Brief: Technologies that made us shake our heads
CES sees a throng of new technologies every year. Some are innovative, some are repetitive, and some are just plain perplexing. Tech companies showed us television sets that may be a little too big, all kinds of wearable tech you may not want or need, and endless brightly colored plastic junk destined for the landfills. But a handful of items stood out as the most ridiculous.
Get more coverage of the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show from Reviewed.com and follow @ReviewedDotCom on Twitter.