Generally speaking, CES is just a big, high-tech show-and-tell. A lot of the stuff on display is slated to hit the market in the coming year, and most of it won’t make it past the demonstration stage. That said, there are a select few products on display each year that are ready for purchase, and available to consumers soon after being unveiled at CES. There aren’t many, but lucky for you, we tracked down a few of the best ones and rounded them up for your perusal. Here is the best CES 2019 tech you can buy right now.
For stuff that you can’t buy now, but is nonetheless awesome, we highly recommend checking out our official Top Tech of CES 2019 award winners!
The new Scallop 2 from Kate Spade takes the latest smartwatch technology and merges it with Kate Spade’s most recent designs. We spent time with the Scallop 2 smartwatch at CES and walked away impressed by both the design and the performance. As a fitness watch, the Spade is no slouch. The smartwatch runs the latest version of Google’s Wear OS, has GPS, supports contactless payments through Google Pay, and is water resistant enough for swimming. Best of all, it’s available now on Kate Spade’s website for $295.
TCL continues to be a name to watch in the television market. After a successful 2018, the company is back at CES 2019 with another model in its popular 6-Series: a Roku TV with a whopping 75-inch display. The new 75-inch 4K TV offers TCL’s PiQ color performance, Dolby Vision HDR for greater brightness and contrast, and up to 160 Contrast Control Zones for complete control over the display’s picture quality. The 75-inch 6-series TV is available now at Best Buy for $1800 and will be rolled out to additional retailers in the coming weeks.
Timed perfectly with CES 2019, Google rolled out several upgrades to the smartphone-based Google Assistant, the company’s artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant. While most of the features will be added in the coming weeks, one major feature available now is support for Google Maps. That’s right; you now can use “Hey, Google” or “OK, Google to open the virtual assistant in Google maps. You’ll be able to share your arrival time with friends or family, as well as send messages either through SMS or various third-party apps.
This year at CES, Harman Kardon’s introduced the Citation Series: a new smart speaker line that’s arguably one the company’s most versatile systems to date. The Citation includes Google Assitant integration, high-resolution Google Chromecast streaming, and multi-room audio support. It also has WiSA, a new wireless audio standard that allows you to cut the cord on your speaker system and deliver high-fidelity surround sound audio directly from the speakers. Harman Kardon’s new Citation speakers are available in eight sizes with prices ranging from $200 for the small Citation One, to $2,500 for the floor-standing model.
Engineered by JBL and branded by Under Armor, these wireless earbuds allow you to ditch the cord so you can exercise without worrying about snagging a cable or having an earbud ripped from your ear. They are powered by a small lithium-ion battery that delivers five hours of playback time. When you completely drain the battery, you can drop them into a charging case and wait two hours for them to fully recharge. Other features include UA’s Sports Flex Fit eartips, ambient sound passthrough tech (so you can hear what’s happening in your surroundings), and UA Storm Proof technology, which is a fancy name for IPX7 waterproofing and sweat-proofing. The UA True Wireless Flash in-ear headphones are available now for $170 from both JBL and Under Armour.
Tired of running out of space on your SD card? Then check out Lexar’s newest memory card, which was unveiled at CES 2019 and offers the same capacity as most external hard drives. The new 1TB card is designed for mid-range DSLRs, HD camcorders, and 3D cameras. The UHS-I Class 10 card offers read speeds up to 95 megabytes per second (MBps), write speeds up to 70MBps, and sustained write speed of just 30MB per second which is sufficient for everything except the higher end shooters. The 1TB card is part of Lexar’s established 633x line of SD cards which is available in capacities of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and now 1TB. The 1TB card can be ordered now at Adorama or B&H Photo & Video for $399.99.
The RTX 2060 is part of Nvidia’s RTX series of graphics cards which are among the most powerful consumer GPUs available. The RTX 2060 is targeted towards the mid-range consumer who wants the best of the RTX line (real-time ray tracing, DLSS capabilities, and more) without breaking the band. The RTX 2060 goes on sale January 15th for $350 and will be included as an option in a wide range of OEM desktops.
After some hands-on time, it was clear that Alienware’s Area-51M laptop lead the way in the laptop category at CES. The laptop ships with an overclockable desktop-grade processor and graphics combo that makes the Area-51M as close to a gaming desktop replacement as we have seen. It even allows you to easily swap the hard drive and the proprietary graphics cards whenever you want. With its sloped design and customizable LED lighting, the Area-51M stands out from the crowd, and will be available in late January with prices starting at $2,550. Lower-priced configurations will be coming soon.
The Matebook 13 is a solid contender in the thin-and-light laptop category that was pioneered by Apple’s MacBook Air. Introduced at CES 2019, the Matebook 13 falls in the middle of Huawei’s lineup. It’s a step up from the budget Matebook D and is comparable to super slim Matebook X. Matebook’s newest model has a MacBook Air appearance with a striking aluminum alloy casing and metal unibody finish. The narrow-bezel 13-inch display has a 3:2 aspect ration and 2,160 x 1,440 2K resolution for optimal screen real estate. With Intel Whiskey Lake processors on board, the Matebook 13 delivered solid performance during our hands-on testing.
The Huawei Matebook 13 is available in two variants. A model with an Intel Core i5-8265U processor, 256GB SSD, and 8GB RAM will be available on January 29 at Amazon and Newegg with prices starting at an affordable $1,000. Another variant offers the Intel Core i7-8565U processor, Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics, and a 512GB SSD for $1,300.
Razer took everyone by surprise at CES 2019 by announcing that its recently unveiled Razer Turret wireless keyboard and mouse combo for the Xbox One is available now. Initially revealed in December 2018, the Razer Turret was not expected to go on sale until March. Designed for gaming on the couch, the Razer Turret uses a 2.4GHz wireless connection to connect to your Xbox One and lasts up to 40-plus hours on a full charge. Though it is designed for the Xbox One, the Razer Turret can also be used with a PC. Only a few games (Fortnite, Minecraft, and Warframe) offer support for an external keyboard and mouse — but this list is expected to increase in the future. You can snag a Razer Turret right now for $250 at a Microsoft retail store, or pre-order one online at Razer’s website or Microsoft’s online store.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.