Dave’s 2024 CES Recap
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke
I’m now at 31 years of attending CES shows. It’s like my Burning Man or going to Mecca. I get to see how technology is changing, the markets it penetrates, how quickly the rest of the world outside the U.S. adopts it, and, If I’m lucky, help others to improve and enjoy their living with it.
I’ve put hyperlinks to much of what I saw below.
The Show Layout:
The new West Hall is open, and if you don’t think self-driving vehicles are ready, think again. The parts and systems to make this happen are all there and on display, including Peterbilt. (note where the steering wheel is) and a flying car! Finally! The North Hall was Robotics FinTech (financial) and Health Technology. The Main Hall was still A.V. and the big brands. but not the brands you grew up with. Hisense, Haier, LG, TCL, and Samsung are the global giants in C.E. But the Venetian Expo Center was full of Home, Sports, Lifestyle, 3D Printing, Food Tech, and specific country delegation displays. Nobody used the new Sphere, but at an advertising price of one half-million a day, one can see why.
Televisions and AV
First, Samsung dazzled attendees with its transparent MicroLED TV, showcasing vibrant images dancing across a slab of thin, glowing glass. Samsung has been teasing MicroLED tech for years now, which promises the same contrast and perfect black levels as OLED thanks to pixel-level image control. With LG’s transparent marvel, a 77-inch rollable OLED TV dubbed the OLED T. Not only did LG claim its see-through screen will be available for purchase, but the brand also accounted for potential drawbacks of the tech with a separate, rollable contrast screen that can stand as a backdrop when you want to watch a movie or TV show. LG said the idea behind its creation is to allow you to place it virtually anywhere, including in front of a window, without creating an eyesore.
TCL and Hisense: These two companies have taken the place of names like Panasonic, Sharp, and Vizio. Sony was at the back of the hall (the cool kids), but there weren’t any new TVs in the booth; mostly technology for Television and Movie production, PlayStation, and their partnership with Honda in the electric car space.
The evolution of increasingly brighter TVs has been growing of late, Chinese electronics makers Hisense and TCL blew the doors off the brightening, with two searingly powerful TVs that promise to change the game significantly.
TCL’s flagship QM8 display led the way, claiming an astonishing 5,000 nits of peak brightness. That number more than doubles most of the brightest TVs from last year. Not to be outdone, Hisense showed off its previously teased 110UX TV, a 110-inch behemoth packing a claimed 10,000 nits peak brightness. What this means for us is the ability to watch television in a brighter room and outside in full sun.
Finally, I may have to get a bigger truck as the newest sizes of TVs on display reached 163” or about 13’ wide, and now the Chinese manufacturers are telling everyone that you can sit just 10 feet away from a 98″ (8′ wide) screen. The old standard was a 3:1 ratio between TV size and distance from the screen, but hey, we are all going to be nearsighted someday anyway, right?
Transportation:
Supernal’s eVTOL, the S-A2, is clearly much more than a pipe dream for the company, a division of the Hyundai Motor Group. If Supernal is true to its word, you’ll see this all-electric pilot-plus-four-passenger vehicle in the skies in just four years time, whisking people over distances of 25 to 40 miles at max speeds of 120 mph at up to 1,500 feet above the ground. Not only is the design striking, it’s apparently going to be quiet. In the vertical takeoff and landing phases, it clocks at 65 dB, which is less noisy than your dishwasher. EXPENG’s Flying Car was quite a hit, It’s everyone’s fantasy to switch to helicopter mode when in traffic, but it looked damn heavy to me. Honda showed a couple of concepts and the one pictured below called the Saloon is actually slated for production in 2025
Sustainability:
Food waste handling is still coming. I saw multiple iterations of kitchen compost units, but I did get completely different stories on this from last year. California is starting to use composting buckets as part of trash pickup in our county and talking to some South Koreans, this has been the case for a few years. The home compost unit I looked at turns about 2-3 pounds of food waste into gardening mulch in 24 hours. It uses heat and slow mixing to produce a biologic and aerobic compost. This is different from early models I saw that simply dried the waste but made it unusable for gardens, lawns, etc. This unit is simply a countertop appliance, but I expect we will see units that take the place of garbage compactors.
Another area was using AI to determine what food had been served and what off the plate had been thrown away by an individual in hospitals, institutions or schools to determine caloric intake with regards to health. (New meaning to “eat your vegetables”)
DEFUNCT TECH ALERT: Last year, I saw a small kitchen appliance that would store your fruits and vegetables up to 5x longer by pumping in carbon dioxide. Well, nobody remembered or mentioned that it is a greenhouse gas, and so that project was quietly scrapped along with my $100. kickstarter investment. This is Vegas after all.
Smarter Homes:
Do you want to get a cool smart home for a minimal amount of money? Try a Flic! This is a small button that you can tie to a myriad of actions and activities. I have one hidden under my outdoor fireplace. It handles my Sonos music on/off and volume control when I’m sitting outside. We make them do all kinds of things. Turn Lighting scenes on/off, Raise blinds, send a message, and even drop ping pong balls.
Mobile:
Blackberry is back!
Clicks is a case that adds a physical QWERTY keyboard to the iPhone. It makes for a long phone, but it’s cute and it has backlit keys! The beauty of Clicks is how the iPhone’s virtual keyboard never pops up unless you force it to, giving valuable screen real estate back to you as you type. Mac and iPad keyboard shortcuts are supported too.
