TechTheDay

For the first time, the biggest tech event of the year, the Consumer Electronics Show or CES, will be fully digital. Since it first started in 1967, CES has always been an in-person event, attended by thousands of people. From 1967 to 1997, CES had a summer and winter event. But from 1998, it was held as a once-a-year event, still retaining the theme of being the host for the presentations of new technologies and products from different industries dealing with consumer electronics. Moreover, the organizers chose Las Vegas as a permanent location, after having the show travel to a different location annually.

CES 2021 started on January 11 until January 14, but registered attendees can still access the digital venue until February 15 so that they can connect with other attendees, replay programming on-demand, and continue to engage with event exhibitors. The U.S. Consumer Electronics Association (CTA), the event’s organizers already announced that CES 2022 would be from January 5 to 8 in Las Vegas.

Digital event – beneficial to all participants

As usual attendees and interested parties can expect plenty of announcements, along with product launches. As usual, CES will connect media, global thought leaders, exhibitors, and customers. But since it is a digital event, CTA said this year, all participants will have the opportunity to hear from technology innovators, view the latest product launches, and see cutting-edge technologies. Moreover, they can engage with worldwide startups and global brands.

Plenty of announcements

CES is one of the best sources of announcements that consumers anticipate, and this year is not different from the previous years. Here is a list of announcements that matter the most.

Acer launched its Chromebook Spin 514 and its AMD Ryzen hardware. The laptop retained its 360-degree hinge that gives the laptop versatility. The company also has three new gaming monitors, as well as gaming laptops, including Predator Triton 300 SE offering a 14-inch display with 144Hz refresh rate. The unit looks more like a business laptop with Intel Core i7 processor and Nvidia for its graphics driver. Acer Nitro 5 has an upgrade, with Intel or AMD Ryzen 5000 processor and Nvidia GPU.

AMD showed off its Ryzen 5000 processor, which is purported to be the fastest mobile processor that can overtake the current industry leader, Intel. There’s related news about a future Samsung device that will have an AMD GPU.

Asus will have several gaming laptops scheduled for release, installed with new core hardware. The ROG Zephyrus G14 has an update to 1440p at 144Hz for 2021. The gaming power of this laptop will be supplied by Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU and Ryzen 5000. Asus’  other gaming notebooks also received updates, again using Nvidia and Ryzer. Asus likewise announced the availability of an optical mechanical keyboard, and other features to complement the aggressive designs of the new gaming laptops.

The new ROG Flow X13 will appeal to gamers who want a more compact and smaller gaming notebook with plenty of power. The 13-inch convertible is powered by GeForce GTX 1650 graphics and AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS chip.

HP launched the Elite Folio, running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8CX platform. The unit promises to have 24 hours of battery life and 5G connectivity.

The company also showcased its updated Dragonfly G2 with built-in tile tracking and 5G and 11th-generation Intel chips with up to 32GB of RAM. On the other hand, the HP Elite Dragonfly Max has an 11th Gen Intel Tiger Lake (Core i5 and i7) processor, 16 or 32GB LPDDR4 RAM, up to 2TB SSD, proximity sensing, and a 5MP webcam. Incidentally, MacBook Air with M1 only has a 720p webcam. With four wide-range microphones, the Dragonfly Max is perfect for online collaboration, a feature that is going to be sought-after due to the pandemic.

As usual, Intel has several announcements, including teasing the consumers about the release of its 12th-gen Core chips, called Alder Lake, late this year, and the 11th Gen Intel Core S-series (Rocket Lake-S) for desktops. Aside from that, Intel introduced on Monday about 50 new processors such as the 11th Gen Intel Core vPro platform, and Intel Evo vPro platform. The N-series 10-nanometer Intel Pentium Silver and Intel Celeron are for education collaboration, while the 11th Gen Intel Core H-series is for gaming platforms. It is going to be another exciting year for the tech giants and for the consumers, with the expected updates on mobile phones, desktops, laptops, refrigerators, LED TVs, audio speakers, peripherals, processors and graphics drivers, and AI-powered devices. CES 2021 is not yet over, and some of the highlights include the LG Rollable smartphone, the RTX 3000 graphics cards of Nvidia, AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series of mobile processors, OLED TVs from LG, Samsung’s AI-powered washers and dryers, and MicroLED TVs.