Tom and I spent the day at the main show in Central Hall and were both shocked how – well – ordinary it felt. There were plenty of amazing TVs – 4k, 8k, straight, curved, and super thin, thinner than the slimmest smartphone, even! And I loved the door-in-door fridges from LG and the LG dual clothes washer. But pretty much everything that we saw we’d seen before.
The day was about incremental improvements, not revolutionary jumps.
Samsung made a big deal of the Smart Things acquisition, but I’m not sure they understand what to do with it yet.
Over at South Hall we checked out Oculus Rift. We sampled Gear VR with the Samsung Galaxy, but honestly, I didn’t think this was much better than the Google cardboard we played with over the holidays. Obviously, Crystal Cove is a killer “app,” but I’m not sure how big the market is for this amazing tech.
The drones are evolving – nano! From $100 to $300 you can buy a drone to serve as your personal videographer at sporting and outdoor events or even use it as an improvement on the selfie stick. They are wifi enabled and controlled through a smartphone app. This tech is moving in scary directions, I think.
Tomorrow we hit Eureka Park – all the IoT is over there so I’m hopeful tomorrow is going to knock my socks off. We walked over 6 miles today and I’m exhausted so lights out until tomorrow!
Center for the Connected Consumer 