CES 2015 Recap

CES+2015+Recap

Tim Endersby, Reporter

CES, or the Consumer Electronics Show closed its doors after a week of showing of new and exciting technology. For the past 11 plus years, CES has been held the first week of January in Las Vegas. This show originally started in 1967 in New York City. About 170,000 people attended this year with 3,600 exhibits covering 2.2 million square feet of floor space. This show is not open to the public, but may tech press companies like CNET, and GeekBeat are invited to share what they see. From vacuum cleaners without a filter, to a ring that allows you to turn lights on and off, CES is full of unique and exciting things.

CNET has tons of reporters on the floor sending back tons of information with live streams, articles, and short videos all online for free at cnet.com. This is a recap of what their reporters saw over the week.

TVs are probably the most shown product, with a variety of OLED, curved, flexible, 4k, 6k, and super thin TVs being shown off by Sony, Panasonic, LG, and Sharp. Many of these TVs are not yet for sale, but prototypes to show what will come soon in the next year.

Drones were also popular this year. There were many different shapes and sizes of drones, mostly quad copters, with different cameras and controllers. One of the most interesting drones was the AirDog drone, which automatically follows a wrist band at a set distance while keeping the camera pointed at it. This drone carries a GoPro and is designed for recording fast action sports without needing a crew to control the drone for you.

Cars were also big this year. First there’s the car dashboard tech with lots of different internet connected touch screen dashboard in cars for control over many different things, along with having voice control and other features to make all of this hands free. Then you see the self-driving cars. Almost every car company there has either driving assistance, where the car prevents itself from crashing, parks itself, keeps you in your lane going the same seed as everyone else, while you still remain in control, or the full on self-driving car, like the Audi A7 prototype, which drove itself 550 miles to CES with no help from a human. Finally, there’s the more unique cars, like the Elio, a small 3 wheeled, two passenger car that still gets a 5 star crash test safety rating and gets an amazing 84 mpg with its small gas engine, and it will be sold for $6,800 starting in mid-2015.

There were several pieces of interesting tech that I like. LG came out with a washer and dryer set, that along with being extremely efficient, it can wash two loads at once, with a smaller drawer washer for small, delicate loads. Motorola came out with the Scout 5000, which is a dog collar with build in GPS and camera, along with the ability to give voice commands. The Pacif-i was an interesting smart pacifier. It connected to your phone through Bluetooth, and records the baby’s body temperature, and alerts you when the baby wanders off. There was also a multitude of virtual reality headsets being shown off, like the Razor OSVR.

If I were to explain all of the new and exciting things shown off at CES, this article would go on forever. If you’re interested in seeing more, go to www.cnet.com/ces for more information on what was shown.

Picture credit – Cnet.com, edited together by Tim Endersby