CES 2014, one of the most anticipated annual trade shows, has come and gone.
ElephantDrive is a regular to visit the technology industry’s biggest event and the International CES has once again WOW’d us with some of the most cutting-edge innovations. Here are a brief recap of this year’s event and a couple personal favorites from us.
5 HUGE Categories at CES 2014:
#1: 3D Printing is all the rage
If you still think of printing as a 2-dimensional image inked on a piece of flat sheet, then the technological development of 3D printing is going to seem like a sci-fi movie to you. With these breakthrough devices, we will be able to use materials from plastic, metal, to even food ingredients (in the future) to print models of virtually every little thing. Even though this technology is still fairly new and under development, we believe it will be able to serve both businesses and end-consumers, as well as benefit a variety of industries from automobile to medical and beyond. Check out these photos we took at the show because to see is to believe: Yes, these are PRINTED. Wow.
#2: Driverless Cars… auto-pilot?!
We may more or less have encountered this scenario of not being able to keep the eyes open while sitting in the after-work traffic, and hoped for someone to take over the steering wheel for us. Technology makes our wish come true. While a driver still needs to be present in the car, a new technology is able to take control of the vehicle in an event of emergency when braking, accelerating, or steering is required. With that said, in the future, if you doze off while driving and are about to drive off the road, this advanced feature will be able to get your car back to the right track (literally) and prevent a potential accident from happening. We hope this will help reduce the accident rates significantly in the days to come.
#3: 4K Ultra HD TV
LCD? Plasma? LED? These displays are so last decade. What everyone’s talking about now is the UHDTV with a 4K resolution (3840 x 2160). We want to point out that the prevalent top-end regular HDTVs currently sold in the market are in the format of 1080p, which qualifies as 2K resolution (1980 x 1080), just to give you an idea how amazing image quality will be on a 4K UHDTV. However, don’t rush out to your nearest Best Buy to get a 4K TV just yet. As most of the cable companies are not yet supporting 4K resolution content on your TV and most movies are still shot in 1080HD, you will not be able to enjoy the lifelike image quality until these outlets are ready to deliver 4K resolution content to you. The 4K UHDTVs will need the 4K content to justify all the extra pixels, so hold your horse for now. Oh, did we mention that these awesome quality TVs are also bendable and curved to provide the best visuals and fit your home interior design?
p.s. Netflix, DirectTV, and Amazon may soon be able to stream 4K video to the 4K TVs, do keep an eye on them.
#4: Wearables
Wearable devices such as smartwatches, camera goggles, and fitness/activity tracking gadgets are on the rise especially after Pebble and Fitbit products hit the shelves. (You all heard of Google Glasses, right?) Whether wearing gadgets on the body is your thing or not, wearables are going to take on more stage and we expect to see big improvements in functionality and usability as companies invest further in wearable technology.
#5: Bluetooth Speakers
Music lovers, listen up! Even though portable speakers have been around, the design and portability have revolved and morphed into all kinds of shapes and sizes! With built-in Wi-Fi in speakers, users now can share and stream music across multiple devices and locations, and from a smartphone or any wireless device.
#6 Some Other Extras
These are some other booths that we thought were interesting while we strolled around in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Many of the international booths had pretty cool stuff even though they were rarely mentioned.
Overall, we enjoyed CES2014 and will be back in Vegas for more eye-opening technology in 2015!
