CES 2017 madness is over and it’s gone from strength to strength. While I like to keep track of all the latest tech released from both big and small brands, it’s worth thinking about the bigger picture.
Last year, VR and smart things were big. We saw the release of HTC’s Vive VR, Oculus, TVs and some car tech – this year’s brands turned it up a notch.
So what are we going to see throughout 2017?
TV is about to get bigger, slimmer and visually pleasing than we’ve ever seen before. Sony has joined the race with their latest OLED TV, and not only does it offer deeper blacks, better contrast, increased brightness, it looks gorgeous.
As well as Sony, Panasonic, LG also carried on with the OLED trend, while Samsung released their latest QLED TV which is in theory similar to OLED but offers the best of what LED and OLED offers.
Where OLED allows each pixel to be individually lit, resulting in rich colour, contrast and brightness, QLED TV will be capable of 1,500 to 2,000 nits of luminance compared to OLED’s 1000 nits – in a nutshell, it’s brighter.
Then there’s HDR (High Dynamic Range), and from what we’ve seen and in theory QLED is will make HDR even better.
AI, Smart things and Concept cars galore!
AI (Artificial Intelligence) can vary from tech to tech and vendors or manufacturers will use it in various ways. What’s worth a mention is how we saw a lot of its integration with smart things.
Amazon wasn’t present this year, however, they were, through Alexa. Amazon Alexa is not new, in fact, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would have seen the Echo and Echo dot which allows you to control things using your voice.
This year, it almost felt like Alexa is now integrated with everything, from LG’s new touchscreen fridge or refrigerator for our US audience to security cams. It means you will be able to talk to your fridge, or in the case of Linksys new router, you can ask it what your WiFi password is.
It doesn’t end there; while a lot of the car manufacturers are concentrating on their self-driving offerings, Ford’s sync in-car system will be the first to have Alexa integration which is just uber-cool.
Huawei also introduced Amazon Alexa to the Mate 9, so you can connect it with your smart things for voice control right from your smartphone. Oh, the Wynn will also be one of the first hotels in Vegas to offer Amazon Alexa in their rooms, so you can do things like open your windows using just voice.
There will be more smart things! Smart things take the ordinary, puts some technology in them to make it interact with you. We saw the likes of a smart bed which helps you reduce snoring, smart pants for men to help radiation, even a smart shower head. Expect to see more of those this year!
So what does the future hold for tech?
If you’ve read this article this far down, then you will now grasp that what we will see this year will include:
- 4K and 8K visuals
- Bigger, thinner and better TV displays (OLED and QLED)
- Artificial Intelligence (whether automated driving or robotics)
- Alexa everywhere. I can see this appearing in the most random things you can think of, not just fridges and speakers.
Want to see everything announced at CES 2017? Head over to Curry’s PC World Tech Talk blog for more.
Shout out to Sony for lending me the A7Rii for my CES coverage. See my set up here.
