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Welcome to Computex 2016!
Every June, we find ourselves in humid Taiwan, at a show mostly focused on computers. Computex always has some other stuff of course, but really, it's all about PCs. ASUS started the show a little early, but we're also hearing from Intel, Microsoft and others about what to expect over the next year or two. Mobile computing is The Thing now, so the likes of Qualcomm will have something to say as well. Virtual reality has ushered in a renaissance in PC gaming, and we're sure that'll also inform what we see this year. Find all the news from the show right here, and keep checking back -- we'll be reporting all week.
Intel's 7th generation of Core CPUs are coming later this year
Besides its $1,723 10-core Core i7 Extreme Edition processor, Intel just teased some other chip news during its keynote presentation at Computex. There aren't many details available, but the company confirmed the the seventh generation of its Core CPU technology will go on sale later this year. They will be joined by its Apollo Lake chips, which are a cheaper version of the current sixth-gen Skylake family. Apollo Lake should bring 4K video capability and USB-C to cheaper, 2-in-1 laptop/tablet style devices with smaller batteries. As far as the seventh generation of Core CPUs, buyers can expect support for Thunderbolt 3, and IR cameras used for features like Windows Hello's facial recognition.
Catch up with Computex 2016: Day one
Computex is typically ASUS' show. Every year, the Taiwanese company takes to Taipei to unload a host of its wares and, in the process, steal the lion's share of the show's headlines. Well, 2016 is no different as ASUS has taken the wraps off a slew of devices including an ultraportable that's thinner than Apple's own MacBook, Surface-like 2-in-1 PCs, three new ZenFones, a charming robot assistant for the home and a me-too mobile VR headset. Don't fret if you whiled away the holiday weekend and need to get up to speed on day one of the show -- we've got you covered in the video above and the gallery below.
ASUS ROG unveils Avalon, a hassle-free approach to a DIY PC
If you're a serious enough gamer, you've likely looked into building your own PC for the ultimate gaming experience. But the process can be a little tedious, especially if you're new to figuring out where all the different components fit. ASUS's ROG (short for Republic of Gamers) division has unveiled a new product called the Avalon that's designed to alleviate exactly that concern. Think of it as a semi-homemade approach to DIY PC building.
ASUS upgrades its crazy ROG liquid-cooled gaming laptop
ROG, ASUS' well-respected gaming PC arm, likes to unveil a barrage of weird systems at Taipei's Computex -- and this year is no different. To start with, its insane liquid-cooled GX700 gaming laptop is coming back for another round. The GX800 still has the giant attachment at the rear, but will now be powered by an NVIDIA SLI GPU, along with Intel's K-series CPU. There are two 330W power supplies to ensure all that liquid-cooled overclocking you'll be doing. Indeed, if you're not planning to overclock, you're probably looking at the wrong gaming machine.
ASUS' Zenbo robot walks, talks and controls your home
ASUS chairman Jonney Shih took to the stage at Computex today to announce something a little different, if completely on trend: a home robot. "Our ambition is to enable robotic computing for every household," he said before revealing Zenbo the home robot. With the goals of "assistance, entertainment and companionship," it's aimed at older people in particular. However, the most interesting feature here is the promise that the robot will connect with traditional and smart home devices. You'll be able to check who's at the door from a connected camera, and then remote-unlock the door from the robot's, er, face. Zenbo will also be able to connect to lights, TVs and air conditioners -- if it speaks your langauge, that is.
ASUS' GeForce GTX 1080 is faster and more colorful
NVIDIA's official GeForce GTX 1080 is fast, but let's face it: you're really waiting for the third-party cards that push the limits of what the high-end graphics chipset can really do. And it looks like your patience just paid off. ASUS has revealed the ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080, and it pushes well past what NVIDIA's board can do. The regular Strix runs at a 1.76GHz base clock speed (with a boost to 1.9GHz) versus the reference model's 1.6GHz, and an overclocked version bumps that to 1.78GHz (boosting to 1.94GHz). You're only looking at a few more frames per second in your games, but that can make the difference between a glass-smooth 60 frames per second and the occasional hitch.
Acer reveals Intel Skylake laptops with fingerprint readers
Acer will be launching quite a few devices at Computex this year, including a range of Windows 10 laptops that come with fingerprint readers. Two of those laptops, a 14-inch and a 15.6-inch TravelMate, are powered by Intel's 6th-gen core (aka Skylake) processors that became available late last year. They're also equipped with NVIDIA GeForce 940M graphics cards, can support up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM and will ship with Windows 10 Pro. These models are geared more towards small businesses, so they come bundled with some enterprise-level software. But if you're shopping for Skylake-based laptops and think either model could be a contender, you can check them out yourself when Acer releases them in North America sometime in the fourth quarter. One will cost you at least $599.
The one-cable future of gadgets: simpler, but still confusing
For such a quiet tech show, this week's Computex in Taiwan may have been a watershed moment that will affect nearly every PC, phone and tablet you'll see in the next few years, if not decade. The new USB Type-C port may have debuted on flagship devices like Apple's single-port new Macbook and Google's Chromebook Pixel, but the new, smaller, reversible kind of USB is shaping up to be the connector of the future. This week ASUS joined the USB-C party, and in a reassuring vote of confidence, Intel announced that its newest iteration of Thunderbolt will take the same shape. Thunderbolt 3.0 will, at a minimum, double the data speed found on USB-C cables. It might not work wirelessly just yet, but the single-cable future is coming. However, change isn't always easy.
These smart headphones come with a Google Glass lookalike on the side
The unholy union between a pair of over-ear headphones and wearable display that bares a more than passing resemblance to Google Glass. That's how we're going to summarize the SiMe smart headphones. It's a self-contained media player and, by virtue of being attached to large, cushioned headphones, it's one of the more comfortable head-mounted displays this editor has awkwardly modeled in recent years. ChipSiP's "SiME Smart Headphones" are the evolution of its existing (and more familiar-looking) smart glasses. Those are already on sale to developers for around $550 -- and there's a lot of overlap of the tech inside. A spokeswoman told us that ChipSiP hopes to launch in the next three months, although what we wore at Computex in Taipei this week remained prototype hardware.
This tiny robot head replaces your mouse with a laser-projected one
If you don't want to be reliant on (or still don't really like using) a trackpad, and tire of dragging a full-sized mouse around, then the Odin, a laser-projected mouse, might be worth a look. You've seen (even very recently) laser projected interfaces that cover keyboards, but the team that made Odin says it's the world's first laser-projected mouse interface. Which sounds pretty cool... as long as you're willing to carry around the disembodied head of a tiny Transformer when meddling with spreadsheets. We just gave it a cursory web browsing test, and while it lacks, obviously, the physical feedback of either mice or clickable trackpads, it behaves a whole lot the former. We just wished it looked a little, well, subtle.
We played 'Assassin's Creed' with our eyes... partially
Taiwan's big tech trade show isn't just about CEOs shouting about their newest laptops and tablets. It's also the place for execs to shake hands, make deals and do ole' fashioned business. One deal is putting Tobii's eye-tracking tech inside high-end MSI gaming hardware. Yep, it's a concept, but it's underscored by a deal to work together on developing eye tracking in gaming hardware in the future. But we're not really about doing deals and shaking hands; we're about stabbing enemy soldiers and hiding in haystacks, which is where the Assassins' Creed demo came in. The trio of short-range infrared sensors monitors your eye movement, which (at least how they're utilized in this particular game) allow you to adjust your field of vision to where you want to in the game. Instead of rotating the camera with a mouse or buttons, you simply look to where you want to, and the detection software kicks in and sweeps the camera to where you (more often than not) want it to.
Only thunder gods are worthy of handling this PC
Thermaltake's PC modding community often likes to do things to excess: Taiwan's biggest tech show is a huge opportunity for such excesses. The PC you see above, unashamedly modeled on a certain Nordic deity's blunt implement of choice, is a good example. Did we want to try to grab it and see if we were worthy? Sure. Were we allowed to? No.
ASUS has a ridiculous tablet cover that adds 5.1 surround sound
What your tablet lacks isn't NFC or a fingerprint reader. It's a pop-up case that houses six speakers (with subwoofer), and support for 5.1 channel surround sound. Maybe? ASUS says it will output six times the volume of the base tablet, and packs enough power to annoy neighbors for up to six hours. It will go on sale alongside ASUS' new flagship ZenPad 8.0 tablet, but well, does it sound any good? Hopefully following ASUS' press spectacle at Computex 2015, we'll hear for ourselves.
Engadget Daily: life with self-driving cars, the world's largest video game collection and more!
Today, we investigate the pros and cons of self-driving cars, uncover some of the most intriguing devices from Computex 2014, celebrate Tetris' 30th birthday and learn about the world's largest video game collection. Read on for Engadget's news highlights from the last 24 hours.
An up close look at the giant gaming PC that's also a desk
Lian Li usually deals in computer towers, but it occasionally dabbles in incredible (or mad) desks built specifically to house desktop PCs. We even got to see one of these monstrosities in person, the top-end model above, spotted right in the epicenter of Computex, Asia's biggest tech show. Given the trend toward tablets, phones and wearables this year, it could well be the most... Computex thing here. We just wish there was some kind of award for that.
Watch strap batteries could double the life of your wearable
Smartwatches are starting to look a whole lot better, but they're still liable to run out of juice in mere days. A flexible-battery manufacturer here at Computex reckons its thin, flexible lithium-ceramic cells, shaped into wristbands, could offer as much as 500mAh of extra power, with existing models already offering an extra 300mAh. According to ProLogium, that would effectively double the battery of Pebble's smartwatch and, well, on-paper specifications suggest that it could more than double the capacity.
Acer shows off the first 4K monitor with NVIDIA's stutter-reducing G-Sync tech
It's been nearly eight months since NVIDIA unveiled G-Sync, a new technology for game monitors that reduces lag, stuttering and screen tearing. In that time, none of these displays has been widely available, though we have been treated to an in-person demo or two. Finally, though, Acer is on the verge of releasing a G-Sync monitor, and it appears to be the first with 4K resolution, to boot. The XB280HK (pictured above) is a 28-inch display with a 3,840 x 2,160 TN panel -- a big improvement over the Philips 1080p model we saw back at CES. Separately, ASUS just announced the ROG Swift PG278Q, here at Computex; that's a 27-inch G-Sync monitor with 2,560 x 1,440 resolution. See? They don't all have to be capped at 1,920 x 1,080.
Intel launches Core M processors for even thinner 2-in-1 PCs
At Intel's keynote presentation here at Computex, President Renee James is set to show off Intel's mobile future: a 2-in-1 reference PC powered by the company's new 14nm Intel Core M processor. (Note: it's actually a fifth-generation Core processor, even though the slide shown below says "fourth.") Intel's 14nm processors mean less energy use and, when the buck stops, longer battery life -- something we can never get enough of. We're still waiting to see what that design will look like exactly, but we do know it'll be a hybrid tablet-laptop, measuring in at 7.2mm thick (keyboard detached), while a companion media dock will apparently offer extra cooling (and a performance burst). Update: As teased, in the flesh it's a very thin tablet, with no fans to see. Intel's president also teased the companion docks, although we only saw a glance of the keyboard add-on. Thankfully, it looked at least thick enough to handle a bit of typing.
ASUS has two Steam Machines and one is incredibly compact
Computex has a heavy PC gaming flavor to it in places. Between the likes of NVIDIA and ASUS' ROG brand, it acts as a gentle primer to PC-based gaming hardware ahead of E3 -- which is next week, if you forgot. Alongside a frankly ridiculous 4K gaming laptop, ROG's announced two new Steam Machines with varying footprints and specifications. The GR8 takes up just 2.5 liters of space, and ASUS ROG is talking up the size/power ratio as the best it's ever made, with a Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti inside. Meanwhile, 4K output and Miracast support could well make this a plausible, portable "console" PC -- you'll just need to provide the screen.
