We covered a lot of miles at CES 2016 this year, our fitness trackers
often chirping "success" rather early in the day, but we saw a lot of
people and a lot of tech gear in our travels. Some of it was hot - damn
hot - some of it, not so much. There were some recurring themes this
year, as with every year at CES it seems. The hot topics and trends this
year were autonomous cars, virtual reality, more thin and light
computing and of course more powerful gaming gear.
Every Tech
Web publication has its own short list of the best products showcased
at
CES 2016. We're going to run down our top 10 products we saw on display at
the show, in no order of importance or preference. However, we will group them together in
terms of product type, just so your head isn't spinning like ours was,
after the better part of a week in the sensorial overload that is the
city of Las Vegas, Nevada.
HTC Vive Second Edition VR Kit
Since autonomous vehicles aren't quite ready for prime time, we decided that we'd lead off with what was likely the
other big buzz of CES 2016, Virtual Reality technology. Facebook's
Oculus Rift was formally announced but stumbled out of the block with a bit of sticker shock and pricing set at $600. Fear not because waiting in the wings is HTC, a company in, dare we say, desperate need of a smash hit. And the
HTC Vive 2nd Editon VR kit could be just what the doctor ordered. Marco and I both tried this kit on for size at NVIDIA's suite, as the GPU company showcased systems that
were deemed "VR Ready." We both agreed that it seemed like HTC's kit was just a touch better than the current gen Rift and the demos NVIDIA was running had us both mesmerized and immersed, as well as our hearts racing in a few spots. Though both VR kits could use full 4K rendering to remove the hint of pixel detection we've seen, the Vive just seemed a bit more fluid with our movements and overall just a slightly cleaner experience. Applications for VR may be still in development but, unlike autonomous vehicles (which admittedly is a taller order), the hardware is near production ready and it's HTC's move next to set a price point that will keep Oculus on its toes. The Vive 2nd Gen VR kit is definitely a CES 2016 Best.
CyberPower ProStream Gaming PC
Game streaming is a huge business right now. Not only do sites like
Twitch do massive traffic, but prolific game streamers can actually make a nice living playing games and engaging with their audience.
Most “pro” game streamers actually use multiple systems to stream their games to ensure the best quality and most stable stream, and to ensure their games aren’t competing for resources. To that end,
CyberPowerPC put together a new Pro Game Steaming rig that actually packs two systems into a single full-tower chassis. The main ATX-based system sits at the bottom of the chassis and can be packed with whatever gaming gear your heart desires. At the top of the chassis there’s a second mini-ITX setup, complete with an AverMedia capture card. The graphics and audio from the main rig are pumped into the secondary system, which handles the actual stream. A setup like this allows the gaming system to dedicate all of its resources to actually running the game, while the secondary system is tasked with mixing, encoding, and streaming.
