Geek World: CES: Tablets and Robots and 3D TVs, Oh My!
One of the nice things about living in Las Vegas is that I didn’t have to travel far to get to CES. I also got to spend a day at CES instead of at work, which is also a plus. CES was huge this year, with the theme being so called “iPad-killer” tablets and 3D TVs. I thought, for the sake of something different, I’d talk about a few of the other things — good and bad — that stood out to me while I was exploring CES.
Hom-Bot looks suspiciously like a Roomba.
Do you guys remember the Roomba by iRobot? Well, apparently a lot of people at CES didn’t, because I passed at least five or six booths that featured floor-cleaning Roomba-esque robots. The first one I came across was the Hom-Bot by LG Electronics. The Smart Hom-Bot also has smart-home connectivity. Oh, and the guy from LG that I talked to said that it would probably retail for around $800 in the U.S.; if that’s the case, I’m afraid to know how much the Smart Refridgerator that tells you when you’re low on milk is going to cost. Probably your first-born child. Neato Robots also had a vacuum robot whose claim to fame is that it has a more powerful vacuum than the Roomba. As well, it’s shaped like a late 1990s/early 2000s Discman CD player with one rounded side and one square side, so that makes it stand out a little bit from the other round cleaning robots.
Of course, iRobot was at CES as well with their Roombas (which top out at $600 but can be purchased for as little as $300), but their star was the Scooba 230 floor scrubber, a tiny cleaning robot only 6.5 inches in diameter that makes it convenient for cleaning bathroom floors since it can squeeze into those hard-to-reach places around the toilet. The iRobot Scooba 230 will take a lovely chunk of $300 out of the buyer’s pocket, but I suppose this is the price we pay to be lazy and not just mop the floor ourselves. I hope you all realize that when the day of reckoning comes and Skynet finally gains sentience, the cleaning robots will be the first to turn on us.
I’m sure you’ll see a lot of talk about 3D TVs, but let’s set that aside for a moment and talk about Sharp’s i3 Wall. The i3 Wall at CES this year was comprised of approximately 64 large LCD flat screens that covered the ceiling, floor, and three walls. It’s a very different and unique 3D concept; standing at the railing in front of this room of screens made you feel like you were floating through the air, watching as the different buildings and landscape inside of the demo video went by. Here’s a short video I shot of the i3 Wall to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about:
Although it’s a very cool concept, the Sharp booth rep that I talked to said that they have no immediate plans for the future to implement this technology commercially. This could easily be used for something like an amusement park ride — in fact, it almost reminded me of the Soaring Over California ride at Disney’s California Adventure theme park.
Look, but don't touch!
The last thing that really stood out to me during CES was the “look but don’t touch” feel that many vendors seemed to have, especially regarding their “iPad killer” tablets. Many of these companies, such as Toshiba, had their tablets behind glass and in display cases, where you couldn’t touch the tablets or interact with them. I found this to be kind of disappointing; however, every tablet I was able to interact with was also a let-down. None of them had the same kind of easy-to-use touch-screen sensitivity of the iPad. A few of them ran sluggishly and had lag problems. One tablet, which was about as big as the iPad and three times as heavy, seemed to run with comparable speed, but when I picked it up, I nearly burned myself — the back of the tablet was so hot that it could barely be held longer than a few seconds! Overall, I feel that many, if not all, of these companies failed to deliver anything that stands out as heavy competition for the iPad.
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