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KitchenAid's Smart Display is a tablet that fears no faucet
Home cooks won't have to worry about wrecking their kitchen tablets with sticky fingers or splashes from the sink anymore, now that KitchenAid unveiled its new Smart Display at CES 2019.
LG Display unveils an 88-inch 8K OLED screen with built-in sound
It wouldn't be CES without a few exotic screens from LG Display, and the company is keen to deliver this year. To start, it's offering a dramatic upgrade to the Crystal Sound screen technology it unveiled back in 2017. The new version is an 88-inch, 8K OLED display (not pictured yet) whose panel produces 3.2.2-channel Dolby Atmos audio -- you'd not only have a great picture, but good-enough sound that you might not rush to buy your own speakers. LG Display hasn't outlined plans for the screen, but there's little doubt this would be most relevant for a future TV set.
Follow along with our CES 2019 liveblogs!
It's early January, so you won't be surprised to learn that team Engadget has arrived in Las Vegas for CES 2019. While the show doesn't technically start until Tuesday morning, a flood of new product news will be arriving in the coming hours -- and we'll spend most of Monday attending the CES press conferences from the industry's biggest players. As usual, you can expect to see a bevy of bigger, better screens, more smart home tech, more Alexa and Google Assistant and quite a bit about the future of auto. But we're also hoping to see the oddball, offbeat but potentially ground-breaking tech that makes CES more than just a TV show. Sure, the big companies don't always surprise us like they used to, but we're betting there's still going to be plenty we didn't expect -- and it all starts with these events. Join us, won't you?
Samsung's 2019 smart TVs will support iTunes and AirPlay 2
Until now, using Apple's services on your TV has meant... well, buying an Apple TV. No more: Samsung has revealed that its 2019 smart TVs (plus updated 2018 sets) will offer both iTunes Movies and TV shows as well as AirPlay 2 casting. Yes, you can buy or rent videos from iTunes and watch them in 4K HDR glory without buying extra Apple hardware or otherwise bending over backward. The iTunes app will even play nicely with Samsung's ecosystem, too, supporting the Universal Guide, search features and the latest version of Bixby.
Matrix adds a solar cell to its battery-free smartwatch
In announcing the third in its range of battery-free smartwatches, Matrix Industries is going where few others have gone before. Whereas the first two PowerWatches relied upon thermocouples to generate power, the new model has two different ways to get energy. As well as drawing a charge from the heat on your wrist, the PowerWatch 2 will harvest solar radiation to keep itself going.
HP's Spectre x360 breaks new ground with a 15-inch AMOLED display
HP has announced that its latest Spectre x360 will be the first 15-inch laptop with an AMOLED display. It's actually been hard to find OLED of any kind on a PC, other than on a handful of models like HP's 13-inch Spectre x360 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga. AMOLED has been even rarer, appearing only on a couple of laptops including the Alienware OLED 13 and Samsung's own 12-inch Galaxy TabPro S. This lack of organic displays has been a shame, because the few models we've tested have impressed us a lot, offering much improved image quality.
Acer's new Swift 7 is even thinner and lighter than the original
Acer's thin, light and expensive Swift 7 laptop was first revealed a year ago at CES, but the company is already back with an updated model that includes Intel's latest processors while cutting size and weight even further. The 2019 Swift 7 includes Intel's 8th-generation Core-i7 processor, a step up over the older silicon in last year's model. It's the 8500Y variant, which means its a dual-core chip and can run without fans -- something that makes sense given the compact dimensions of the Swift 7.
HP made a massive gaming screen with G-SYNC Ultimate and a soundbar
How big is too big a canvas for your fragging sprees? If you love watching your enemies get destroyed on a giant TV, you might appreciate HP's latest gaming display. The Omen X Emperium 65 is a massive 4K screen born from NVIDIA's BFG Display initiative announced at last year's CES. That means it basically comes with a Shield TV built-in, along with the company's newly rebranded G-SYNC Ultimate to synchronize the display's refresh rate to your game. It maxes out at 144Hz, and also supports HDR.
HP's Omen 15 is the first gaming laptop with a 240Hz display
HP has just upped the refresh rate ante with its latest Omen 15. The company says it's the world's first gaming laptop with a 15.6-inch 1080p 240Hz IPS display, meaning it should stay ahead of even the quickest-shooting gamer. The laptop itself should also be able to keep up with the screen, as it's equipped with NVIDIA's all-new RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU, an 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8750H processor, 16GB of RAM and the latest 802.11ax wireless, aka "WiFi 6."
HP Chromebook 14 hands-on: AMD's first dance with Chrome OS
HP dropped a ton of news late last year -- like a laptop crafted from leather and a slew of updates to its premium Spectre line. So it's no surprise that the company doesn't have much to unveil at CES 2019. But that doesn't mean it has nothing intriguing to share. HP is launching the "world's first AMD Chromebook" with integrated Radeon graphics, and it costs just $269.
Acer's Chromebook 315 is its first with AMD processors
Acer has been making Chromebooks for years, and it says that its 15.6-inch models have been among the most popular it sells. So, no surprise that Acer is releasing a new one -- at least, no surprise until we discover the new Chromebook 315 has AMD silicon on the inside. Just like HP's new Chromebook 14, the Acer Chromebook 315 includes AMD's A4 or A6 dual-core processors with integrated Radeon graphics (R4 or R5, respectively). Basically every Chromebook worth buying has included some sort of Intel processor, so we're very curious to see how the AMD models compare.
ASUS turns to AMD for its latest TUF gaming laptops
ASUS' latest TUF gaming laptops may look about the same as before, but under the hood, it's a new ball game. Rather than packing Intel and NVIDIA parts, the 15.6-inch FX505DY (above) and 17-inch FX705DY (below) are all AMD, with a 12-nanometer, four-core Ryzen 2 3550H APU and Radeon RX 560X discrete graphics. Both models also have 1080p FreeSync displays, with the 17-inch model hitting up to 60Hz, and the 15-incher maxing out at a decent 120Hz.
Engadget's live CES stage show kicks off Tuesday at 1pm ET
It's that time of the year: We rang in 2019, packed our bags and boarded flight to Vegas, where we're now gearing up to cover the world's largest consumer electronics show. For us here at Engadget, it wouldn't quite be CES without our live stage in Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Now in our seventh consecutive year of stage programming, we'll be live-streaming interviews and panels for the first three days that the show floor is open. Oh, and the official Best of CES Awards, which Engadget is judging for the sixth year in a row (how time flies). Follow our livestream on our homepage starting Tuesday, January 8th, at 10am PT / 1pm ET, with programming running all the way through 5pm PT. Then, on January 10th, tune in at 5pm PT to watch our Best of CES Award ceremony, with myself and managing editor Terrence O'Brien presenting the winners. Keep reading below for a sneak peek of our three days of programming, and don't worry: If you can't catch our broadcast live, we'll have replays of all the highlights up on our site later on. As always, our schedule is subject to last-minute changes. Thanks to Starkey for sponsoring our CES show!
Shutdown means government won't engage with the tech industry at CES
It's not just FCC Chairman Ajit Pai who'll back out of CES as a result of the US government shutdown. The Consumer Technology Association has confirmed that at least ten government officials have cancelled their speaking engagements at the technology trade show "so far." It's not just FCC representatives like Pai or his compatriot Brendan Carr, either. The FTC's Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Slaughter (shown above) have backed out, as have officials from the EPA (Brandon Bray and Barnes Johnson), FDA (Bakul Patel), FEMA (Daniel Kaniewski) and Homeland Security (Andre Hentz).
Apple took out a CES ad to troll its competitors over privacy
Historically, Apple hasn't had an official presence at CES. It's not surprising given the company's success at hosting and hyping its own product launch events -- long before the iPod and iPhone brought Apple to the top of the technology mountain, Steve Jobs keynotes were can't miss events. The company is also very deliberate about its marketing campaigns; when I see Apple billboard ads, they focus on new product close-ups with minimal messaging. This is why the giant ad banner I saw when I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for CES 2019 caught my eye. Positioned not far from the convention center where CES takes place, the sign is a cheeky riff on the old "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" slogan -- and with just a few words, it casts an Apple-shaped shadow over the convention. Apple never shows up at CES, so I can't say I saw this coming. pic.twitter.com/8jjiBSEu7z — Chris Velazco (@chrisvelazco) January 4, 2019
Kia AI tailors vehicle interiors to passengers’ emotions
Kia is preparing for a future with autonomous cars and at CES it will be showing off its Real-time Emotion Adaptive Driving System, or R.E.A.D. The company says its AI-based system can adapt vehicle interiors to a passenger's emotional state by using sensors to monitor their facial expressions, heart rate and electrodermal activity. Based on its readings, the R.E.A.D. System personalizes the cabin interior, taking into account all five senses. Part of the system also includes music-response vibration seats, which match seat vibrations to the frequencies of whatever music is being played in the cabin. The seats can also provide massages and haptic alerts connected to the vehicle's driver-assist system.
Dell's Latitude 7400 2-in-1 delivers some slick XPS style
While Dell's XPS and Alienware lineups tend to hog most of the attention, this year the company is making a splash with the more professionally-oriented Latitude notebooks. The new Latitude 7400 2-in-1 is a sleek machine that resembles a MacBook more than a corporate device. It has a polished aluminum case with diamond cut edges, and it manages to cram in a 14" 1080p touchscreen while weighing three pounds.
While we were looking at 3D TVs, CES morphed into an auto show
CES has been held in Las Vegas since the beginning of time (actually since 1978 and it started in Chicago way back in 1967) and over those years, many a tech trend has come and gone. Remember the year of IOT (that's every year since 2013, apparently)? TVs, audio players, robots and blinking lights are always a mainstay, but in the past few years, something else has been creeping into the hallowed halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center: cars.
Kohler's new bathroom suite has automated, voice-controlled lights
Kohler is mostly known as a maker of bathroom fixtures, but in recent years, it has branched out into more high-tech equipment too. Last year, for example, it debuted Kohler Konnect, a line of kitchen and bathroom products that use hands-free motion controls, personalized presets and voice commands -- think Alexa for your toilet. This year, however, the company is taking that concept even further with its first-ever connected bathroom suite called the Veil Lighted Bathroom Collection.
Infiniti unveils its electric QX Inspiration concept
Infiniti is surprisingly late to the EV game, considering what its rivals are doing and the fact that parent Nissan has been making the Leaf since 2010. It just unveiled the QX Inspiration, a concept rather than a production car, that it will show off in detail at the 2019 North American International Auto Show later in January. The vehicle design, teased last month, represents the future (and platform) for Infiniti's electrified program.
