The pnosker.com staff saw a lot of neat things at CES. This is the first of a few updates about the coolest things we saw at the 2013 International CES.
Pat-
Motörheadphones The band Motörhead has their own line of headphones, the Bomber, Ironfist and Motörizer along with the Overkill and Trigger earphones. I was very impressed with a quick listen to the Ironfist and Motörizer headphones and would love to check a set out. The best part is that the most expensive is only $129.99 and the clarity of the midrange and treble with just a short listen was very impressive. Hopefully I’ll have an update for you soon.
Westone I’ve tested all sorts of ultra-expensive in-ear monitors from Ultimate Ears’ Personal Reference Monitors to Sonomax’s Sculpted Eers to JH Audio’s JH-16 Pro but I have never tested any of Westone’s products. I got a chance to check out their ES5 universal monitors and was very impressed. Their UM3x sounded very good as well. I had the chance to get some impressions made as well as our writer Mark Pinkerton who may test some of their lower end customs (AC1 for example). We both are looking forward to writing more about Westone in the near future.
TLDRStuff.com This wasn’t at CES per se, but rather ShowStoppers. TLDRStuff is a company which says it can summarize an article into 350 words or less with the ability to create longer summaries. It generates them on-the-fly using their proprietary algorithm and seems to take key sentences and place them together unchanged. Their plans are to create a search engine that can compete with Google. My quick test of the website www.tldrstuff.com showed promise.
Mike-
i’m Watch by i’m Spa The i’m Watch generated a lot of buzz heading into CES, both for the uniqueness of the product and the fact that the company was giving all pre-registered press a review unit (valued at $390) at their keynote speech. The i’m Watch is a Bluetooth-enabled smart-watch that connects to your smartphone of choice. You can answer calls, check email, text, and even use social media apps like Facebook and Twitter all from the watch itself. I was able to quickly demo a unit at their booth in The Venetian and it was a bit laggy, but perhaps that was due to the overload of wireless devices in the vicinity. I’m looking forward to testing my review sample out over the next few weeks.
OLED 4K Ultra HDTV 4K HDTV is the “big thing” at the 2013 CES, and it absolutely meets the hype. The “4K” part of the name alludes to the fact that this latest television technology packs in four times the pixels per square inch. The picture quality is literally the best I have ever seen – when you look at a shot of a skyline, it looks like you are viewing it as you would looking out a window. 4K Ultra HDTV is noticeably better than even current HDTV – almost on par with how much HDTV is better than old television picture. As with any latest technology, the price points are still quite high (the lowest price ranges I’m hearing about are $12,000-$15,000), but as more and more devices hit the market, the price will drop down.
