Due to personal / business obligations, today was my last day at CES. I didn’t feel too bad about leaving early especially since Day 4 is a shortened day and from my experience, most exhibitors are busy packing things up and want to get home ASAP.
Today, I visited the Westgate hotel which hosted all of the new Smart Cities exhibits and automation technology related to it and how it can benefit any community now and in the future. Being that this was a first for CES, it was a good start but I feel that most of us viewing the exhibits couldn’t fully grasp or visualize exactly what that means for a community that opts in to this movement. I’m sure that this will become easier to understand in the years to come.
After the Smart Cities exhibits, I returned to the Central Hall and took a second look at some of the larger exhibits being hosted by the bigger companies namely from Samsung, LG, and Sony. I’m reminded every year at how many different product lines these companies have to offer but their main offerings seem to always be centered on high end TV; they become more and more impressive every year. Too bad that the actual programming available (still only HD and some 4K) doesn’t quite matchup with the actual products themselves as there were so many 8K TV it would make your head spin (in a good way of course!)
I then made my way back to the South Hall to review some items I may have missed namely relating to what I like to call “personalized” technology and contained lots of wearables and accessories for the devices that we keep in close proximity to us on a regular basis. One item that I came across was an external flash drive that can be hooked up to my iPhone and my computer for the purpose of storing, backing up, and saving all of my videos and pictures. Boy, I wish I would have come across them on Day 1 as I was always dealing with freeing up space on my iPhone and iPad as I was shooting video and taking pictures of all the scenes at CES. Nevertheless, after an impressive demo that showed how I could do all of my intended tasks and never have to touch the storage on my iPhone, I decided to purchase this device containing the highest possible capacity (256GB!) for only $130 (sale price at CES, normally $150).
After my purchase, I thought what better place to put my expanded storage to the test than to head back to the Sands Expo and walk through Eureka Park. I was able to do a 30 minute walk through and was very impressed with the results. Perhaps, I’ll post the video and have everyone take a look for themselves. Overall, it was an awesome three days at CES! It will be interesting to see how the rest of the year will play out from a technology perspective and see how the trends and products will evolve…See you next year!
