One of this column’s best friends in Silicon Valley is Creative Strategies’ founder, Tim Bajarin, who is one of the nation’s leading tech industry gurus. Bajarin, who has roots on Oahu, has attended the consumer electronics show, officially known as CES, since 1976. Held in Las Vegas this year from Jan. 5-8, CES annually attracts 170,000 attendees and has more than 1 million square feet of floor space. It is the world’s largest and most influential industry trade show.
My colleague Rob Kay has known Tim for more than 30 years and had an opportunity to speak to him after the show and talk about upcoming trends in the consumer tech world.
Smart cars
In the recent past, in-car entertainment systems and navigational products held sway, but this year CES highlighted automakers’ autonomous and smart cars. Of note, Corning Glass showcased a fully integrated, superlight “Gorilla Glass” dashboard that keeps drivers and passengers informed and entertained, and a windshield that will provide real-time traffic updates. Also prominent were new autonomous car models from Nissan, Tesla and the much-talked-about Faraday Future.
Television
TV products such as thin-technology TVs as well as 4K or ultrahigh-definition TVs were a big development this year. (They are also becoming much more affordable.) The nearly paper-thin TV monitors stood out because despite their profile, Bajarin detected no degradation in color or resolution. Consumers should be aware that 4K programming will be more common in 2017, and he likened buying a 4K TV to “future-proofing your TV.” He reckons that the next big thing after 4K TV will be 8K TV, and that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics might be broadcast in this format.
Smart Amazon
The third trend is the rapid pace that Echo, a wireless speaker and voice-command device from Amazon, has taken off. Bajarin reckons Echo is the next phase of the “Internet of Things,” which is now supported by over 100 products that perform tasks such as music playback, security systems control, controlling lights and the like.
Cool gadgets
CES featured a number of personal medical devices that are more portable, mobile and connected than ever before. Chief among them was Project Zero 2.0, manufactured by Omron. An ultracompact, wearable wrist device, Project Zero 2.0 measures blood pressure with clinical accuracy and tracks other heart health data such as sleep patterns remotely so it can communicate with your physician.
For hard-core gamers, Bajarin was smitten with Shield TV from Nvidia, a streaming service on steroids that provides three times the performance of any other streamer on the market. It can stream multiplayer games from the cloud, and it offers high-end 4K HDR casting.
He also was impressed with the Lenovo Yoga Book, a next-gen, ultraslim two-in-one device. Running on a custom version of Android, it lets you take notes and draw with a real-ink stylus. It also boasts the innovative “Halo” keyboard, which appears when you need it and vanishes when you don’t.
There also was something more prosaic that only a geek would love: the Norton Core Router. It is a supersecure, fully encrypted Wi-Fi system that will protect all your connected devices, including the IoT, or “Internet of Things,” products in your home such as smart thermostats, alarm systems, etc.
Finally, if you have no patience to wait for your cellphone to charge, the Anker Quick Charge will do it twice as fast as a conventional charger.
Mike Meyer, formerly internet general manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is now chief information officer at Honolulu Community College. Reach him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu.
