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Skully plans to ship its Fenix AR motorcycle helmet by summer
It's been a rollercoaster year for Skully. After failing to deliver on its IndieGoGo crowdfunding promises, the company appeared all but dead in August 2016 when LeEco passed on acquiring the firm. However, Skully has since found new owners, resumed development of its AI-guided, AR-enabled Fenix motorcycle helmet and announced plans to begin shipping by this summer.
Google Assistant will unlock Schlage Sense deadbolts
Schlage's Sense smart deadbolt now works with (almost) any virtual assistant under the Sun. The lock maker has revealed that Sense will support Google Assistant early in the first quarter, letting you check on your door (and, of course, lock it) from your Google Home or mobile apps that use the AI helper. You'll need the Sense WiFi adapter to make this work, but it'll give you the choice of Assistant, Alexa or Siri (via HomeKit) -- not bad when some rivals only offer one or two options.
L’Oreal and John Rogers built a thumbnail-sized UV sensor
L'Oreal is not a name that you'd normally associate with CES, but the cosmetics giant is now a regular exhibitor at the show. This year, the company is demonstrating a thumbnail-worn smart device that's less than two millimeters thick. UV Sense is a battery-free electronic sensor that's designed to monitor your sun exposure and, when coupled with an NFC-enabled smartphone, help limit your skin cancer risk.
Live from CES 2018!
We're on the ground in warm and sunny Las Vegas for CES 2018 and ready to get this party started. We'll be stuffing your eyes and ears this week with all the latest news from the world's biggest tech conference. Google is already the talk of the show, but it won't be hosting a press event of its own. Still, there are plenty of big-name companies taking the stage to tell you about their latest gadgets. We'll definitely see tons of laptops and TVs, for sure. But don't be surprised if there's a few oddball smart home products and more than few car unveilings. We'll of course be covering the big press conferences live, so make to come back for all our liveblogs starting bright and early Monday morning. Check out the full liveblog schedule below.
Byton unveils its first EV with a focus on in-car ‘experience’
As we get closer to a world where the car is doing most of the driving, traditional automakers are trying to figure out what passengers will be doing when they're not driving. Car startup Byton thinks it already knows what people want -- and and unlike most automakers isn't burdened by tradition while it builds its electric SUV of the future.
Sensorwake will crowdfund a nighttime scent diffuser in April
Sensorwake burst onto the scene with a smell-based alarm clock that was built on the premise that scents are better than sounds. Now, the company is attempting to make a further in-road into our bedrooms with its next product, the Oria night-time diffuser. The idea is that folks will sleep easier if all they can smell is the sweet perfume that's being pushed out while you catch some shut-eye.
LG's Alexa-powered fridge sends recipes to your oven
Now that LG's Alexa-equipped refrigerator is no longer a novelty, the company is moving on to the next step: appliances that work in harmony. This week at CES, it's introducing a range of smart appliances that thrive on sharing information to help you get things done. The centerpiece is LG's next Alexa-capable fridge, the InstaView ThinQ. While its 29-inch transparent touchscreen, webOS platform and voice control aren't all that new, its integration with your oven is. When you choose a recipe (including those suggested by the fridge, which detects what you have on hand), you can send it to an oven with Alexa support to get spoken cooking instructions. This is ultimately a luxury -- your fridge likely isn't that far from your oven -- but it's good to have your recipes right where you'll use them.
DJI's second smartphone gimbal gets improved controls and a lower price
DJI's Osmo Mobile set the standard for shooting stabilized smartphone videos, and now the time is right for a follow-up. At CES the company revealed the new DJI Osmo Mobile 2, a redesigned sequel meant to make mobile videography more accessible to the masses. The best part: It costs a reasonable $129.
DJI built a one-handed stabilizer for your SLR or mirrorless camera
DJI hasn't just been working on smartphone stabilizers ahead of CES -- it also built its first single-handed stabilizer for SLRs and mirrorless cameras. As with the refined Osmo Mobile, the newly unveiled DJI Ronin-S is all about keeping things simple in the field.
After Math: CESpocalypse Now
Get hyped everybody, it's CES week! This is the high holy holiday of tech geekdom, a pilgrimage through the hallowed halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Everybody's going to be there. LG will be showing off an 88-inch 8K TV, Neutrogena is debuting its skin-grading iPhone accessory, and Honda has all of the adorable mobility bots. Numbers, because how else will we count down to the show's opening?
LG Display unveils a 65-inch rollable OLED
Four years ago LG Display showed us an 18-inch OLED screen capable of rolling up like a newspaper and promised larger versions in the future. Now it's delivering, with a 65-inch OLED that's flexible enough to roll up and store when not in use. Besides this TV and its 88-inch 8K OLED, it's also back with an upgraded version of its Crystal Sound tech (seen in Sony's OLED TVs) that embeds speakers directly into the screen. Not only is it ready to embed speakers in LCDs used for desktop monitors and laptops, it's also going to show off an OLED TV that upgrades over the original's 2.1 channel audio to 3.1, no extra speakers necessary.
Why is Google taking over Vegas for CES 2018?
Google doesn't usually have a big presence at CES, but that's changed in a big way this year. You can't help but notice that the monorail circling the Las Vegas Convention Center bears huge letters saying "Hey Google!" Just below, Google has set up a huge, multistory monument to the Google Assistant booth in the convention-center parking lot. It's still under construction so it's hard to say exactly what's going on in there. (Also, there's a superfluous spiraling slide on the side of the booth and a weird Google Assistant ball-pit game near the convention center's main entrance.)
HP updates its Chromebook lineup with 11- and 14-inch models
HP is adding two Chromebooks to its lineup, which are essentially refreshed versions of its Chromebook 11 G5 that debuted in June 2016. While both new models feature the same processor, storage and memory options, they differ in size: The Chromebook 14 G5 has a 14-inch screen, while the Chromebook 11 G6 Education Edition caters to the school crowd with an optional HD touchscreen on a 180-degree hinge that lets users fold the screen flat. Both will go on sale next month.
Acer’s latest Chromebook offers 10 hours of battery for $250
With its Chromebook lineup, Acer has been trying toe the line between speed and affordability. The new Chromebook 11 is a good example of that. The laptop, unveiled today at CES, is a fanless, small-form machine with touch and non-touch screen options and up to 10 hours of battery life.
Acer adds three thin, powerful laptops to its lineup
At CES this year, Acer is showing off the latest additions to its notebook lineup with the Acer Swift 7, Switch 7 Black Edition and Acer Spin 3 laptops. Across the board, you'll find thinner and lighter designs with an upgrade under the hood to newer Intel chips.
Acer's new gaming PCs include an 18-core liquid-cooled desktop
It wouldn't be an Acer CES event without some gaming PCs, and this year the focus is on the desktop crowd. The PC maker is unveiling two systems headlined by the US release of the Predator Orion 9000, a spare-no-expense tower for dedicated gamers. If you can get past the over-the-top "look ma, I'm a gamer" styling, you'll find a lot of power under the hood. The system uses a combination of liquid cooling and a partitioned airflow system to drive some seriously high-end components with little noise and some room for overclocking, including up to an 18-core Intel Core i9, twin GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards and as much as 128GB of RAM.
Vuzix is launching the first Alexa-enabled AR glasses at CES
Vuzix has been making smartglasses for years, but one upcoming model will apparently be extra special. According to Bloomberg, the New York-based company is debuting the first Alexa-enabled augmented reality glasses at CES 2018. You'll be able to ask Alexa questions the way you usually do, and the glasses will show the results on the display à la Google Glass. If you ask Alexa for directions, for instance, the glasses can show a map on the AR screen, as long as you have an Amazon account. The company told the publication that it's excited about the device's "ability to bring Alexa to customers in a new way."
Samsung adds another ally in its battle over HDR standards
This isn't exactly taking it back to the days of HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, but Samsung's fight to push HDR10+ as an alternative to Dolby Vision is heating up. We have more details on how the two standards compare right here, but one main feature is that both improve on regular HDR10 by allowing content makers to dynamically adjust settings from one scene to another, or even from one frame to another.
Revisiting the defining moments of CES history
Iconic CES devices like the Apple Newton, CD player, VHS VCR, Sony PlayStation and Oculus Rift "Crystal Cove" didn't necessarily seem groundbreaking at the time. Experts and the public often gave prizes to gadgets like the Creative Zen Vision:M and Hitachi's G1000 Pocket PC that we've since deleted from our collective memory banks. With that in mind, here are 10 of the most memorable CES shows that yielded products that were instant hits as well as some that weren't appreciated until later.
Neutrogena's scanner shows your skin in excruciating detail
Neutrogena has unveiled a device that attaches to your iPhone and can tell you more about your skin issues and convince you to (wait for it) buy more Neutrogena products. The SkinScanner from the Johnson & Johnson-owned company attaches to the top of an iPhone, and takes a magnified image of your skin and measures the moisture content. An AI-enabled app called Skin 360 then analyzes the data and gives your skin a 0 to 100 rating and shows how it's improving over time.
