The forty-eighth Consumer Electronics Show is almost upon us, and with it comes the next year of technology. Even though the show has died down a bit since its humble beginnings, hundreds of companies show off their latest and greatest in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. There are many gizmos, gadgets, and vehicles shown off at CES, but here are the best.
Acer Chromebook 15
Acer was making news even before CES started by unveiling the largest Chromebook in the world. The Chromebook 15, unsurprisingly, has a fifteen inch display to show off the latest build of Chrome OS. It comes with 1,366 x 758 or 1080p display, and comes with an un-specified fifth generation Intel Broadwell processor. This is the first Broadwell Chromebook to be announced, and we can't tell if there is a notable performance leap compared to last year's Haswell Chromebooks. Nothing else about the Chromebook 15 is worth writing home about, though. The keyboard is decent to type on, the trackpad is somewhat pleasant to use, and the display has a nice range of viewing angles. At $249 the Chromebook 15 is priced similarly to other Chromebooks, but they all do not have as large of a display. Storage and RAM options for the 15 will probably be similar to other Chromebooks and the 1080p display might add extra to the price, so don't hold your breath for a $249 1080p Chromebook. Even though the Acer Chromebook 15 is averagely specced, this is the Chromebook that we have been waiting for. Most people coming from traditional Windows laptops and desktops are used to larger displays, and do not enjoy the cramped 11 and 13 inch screens on Chromebooks. A larger screen makes the Chromebook 15 a great choice for anyone looking for an inexpensive, but quality laptop. Low-cost Windows laptops are usually garbage, but Acer might have some stiff competition later this year. HP's Stream 11 and 13 are basically Windows versions of Chromebooks, and they have received good reviews from most technology websites. The Stream 11 and 13 still have their problems and aren't perfect, but so were/are Chromebooks. We'll have to wait and see how the Chromebook 15 stands-up against Stream laptops.
GM's "Smartcars"*
Your car might not be very smart now, but I'll put good money on your next car being a "Smartcar". GM, OnStar, and Chevrolet are teaming to start what will hopefully be the future of automobiles. OnStar's "driver assessment" program is one that you will be able to use on most 2015 models, and a selection of 2013 and 2014 models starting this summer. The driver assessment program keeps track of how well you drive, and can give you detailed feedback of 90 days' worth of data. Think you're breaking too hard? This data can tell you that and more, so you can hopefully become a better driver. If you have Progressive, the driver assessment data can be forwarded as a part of their Snapshot program. Your driving data will be anonymized and compared to national driving averages, which answers some privacy concerns about this large amount of location data. However it is still somewhat easy to de-anonymize location data, and the litany of recent security breaches has not made anybody feel better.
Chevrolet is also rolling out a new feature that lets your car alert you before a part goes out. Certain 2016 Chevrolet Suburban, Tahoe, Equinox, Silverado, and Corvette models will use the company's "proprietary algorithms" to predict which parts are failure prone, and alert you by email, text message, a dashboard message, or OnStar's own Remotelink app. This feature currently only works for the battery, fuel pump, and starter motor, but more parts are expected to be added later on. Built-in LTE connections that GM has been installing in their vehicles since last year help this feature happen, and the program will hopefully let you drive to a shop or dealership before something bad happens.
In addition to these helpful features, GM and OnStar are also introducing their AtYourService feature. OnStar claims it will allow "information convenience and money-saving values" to be delivered to your car, but that is just a fancy way to say that you'll get ads and coupons whenever you are driving. AtYourService works like targeted advertising by relying on destinations you have entered before. Dunkin Donuts and Priceline.com are some of the first partners, and there are surely more to come. If you park in a hotel, AtYourService might use Priceline.com to show different rates on the hotel. Coupons and deals are great and this sounds like a good feature, but we can see this become annoying very fast. What if you drive through a shopping mall parking lot? Would 50 different coupons pop up all at once? More details will likely come as this service develops, but there's not much more to get excited about. Now you can get Special Offers on your Kindle and in your car.
Nvidia
Nvidia's CES 2015 conference was very underwhelming, but they did unveil their new Tegra X1 processor. It's "256" processor cores and eight CPU cores are two reasons why Nvidia is branding it as the first mobile "superchip." This is definitely a large amount of processing power for a mobile processor, but we are not sure if this is a good chip or not. Last year's Nvidia K1 processor was touted with less power, but it had the same message of being an incredibly powerful mobile processor. The Tegra X1 can handle 4k video at 60HZ and it is the first mobile processor to exceed one teraflop of output. 1 teraflop of output means it can handle a lot of operations at once, and is super fast. Considering the first computer processor to exceed one teraflop of output needed 1 million watts of power to do so only fifteen years ago, this is quite a feat. The X1 was announced to work with Nvidia's infotainment system, and it looks very interesting. It is controlled by a touchscreen display, and the software can split the screen in two to show navigation and music controls at the same time. Think of it as Nvidia's take on Android Auto or Apple Carplay. It might not seem like much at first, but this will probably be powering your cars next center console. The future of in-car entertainment and is now.
That was the best of CES 2015 Day -2. Stay tuned for our week long coverage of the best tech from Las Vegas Convention Center.
*Smartcar does not refer to the tiny clown car that you can currently buy. Smartcar refers to cars connected to the internet to help relay information about your car.
Check out The Verge or Engadget's CES coverage for all day coverage on everything coming out of CES.
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