CES 2022 Day 2: Self Painting Cars and Desks with GPUs?
The Consumer Technology industry just wrapped up another jam-packed day of announcements at CES 2022, with big names like Google, BMW, and ASUS presenting their latest and greatest. Let’s jump right in.
The day started with a presentation from ASUS where they unveiled some new laptops refreshed with Intel’s new 12th Gen H-series unveiled yesterday at CES. First, the flagship laptop; ASUS calls this the ZenBook Space Edition 14X OLED. And I thought Apple was bad at names. Anyway, ASUS went for a space theme for this laptop. It’s space-themed, which means it has a titanium/grayish color that surrounds the metal. I think it looks nice, it reminds me of the moon. ASUS didn’t give us the reason why it’s space themed, but… it’s space-themed! ASUS says that the laptop has been tested for the micro-vibrations in space so that the laptop is authorized for space use. Geez, ASUS, what’s with the space stuff? Whatever. Looking at the specs, it’s a fairly respectable laptop on paper; it’s got a 3.5” display at the front that ASUS calls the “ZenVision” display, and you can put anything that you want on it. Text, status, notifications, or even cute little animations. It’s up to you. Now there is a main display, a 14” 1.8K OLED display at the front that’s HDR10 certified and “Pantone color accurate.” But, the real star of the show is the new Alder Lake H-series Intel Core i9 processor. The computer comes standard with an i7, but you can choose the i9 if you want. And this thing should be fast. Very fast. And I know all the Apple people are going to come at me saying “OH THE THERMALS AND IT LOOKS LIKE A BRICK AND BINTEL DEAD INSIDE HAHA” but hold your horses. ASUS has a trick up its sleeve with something called IceCool thermals. What is that supposed to mean? Well, it’s a thermal vapor chamber. It requires less energy to cool the chip and it’s more effective than traditional AC. Other than the high-resolution display and new Intel chips, this computer has a Harman Kardon sound system with Dolby Atmos certification, a 5 MP webcam, and a 63wh battery. That’s not a lot, but it should be more than enough for a productivity laptop to get 3/4 hours of use. But ASUS also brought out a more low-cost machine; the ZenBook 14 OLED. If you don’t mind the lack of exterior screen and space design, this laptop’s great for the everyday office worker or student. It has a 14” 2.8K 90hz OLED with a 10:10 aspect ratio — which is perfect for office work — it’s got a 180-degree hinge, comes in 2 colors — Aqua Celadon and Pounder Blue — and most importantly, is powered by the Intel Alder Lake P-series for low-power devices. These x86 chips barely sip power, yet are mighty powerful for an ultra-thin like this new laptop. It goes up to an i7 which is pretty good for the target demographic of this laptop, with up to 16 GB of RAM and Intel Xe graphics. The whole thing is powered by a pretty substantial 75wh battery and features 2 Thunderbolt 3 ports, a USB-3 port, HDMI 2.1, and a headphone jack for I/O. Yet again, another boring laptop at CES, but it’s nice to see that companies are already putting 12th Gen Intel processors into their machines. These 2 new laptops will be available by the end of the year, according to ASUS. But, ASUS also surprised us all with a flashy — actually exciting — announcement; the new ZenBook 17 Fold OLED, or as I like to call it, the FOLED. Jokes aside, this thing is pretty cool — and massive. ASUS didn’t give us very many details, but it’s a 17” giant tablet that folds into different modes. If you hold it in its portrait orientation, ASUS says it turns into a giant tablet that you can use to open apps and browse the web. It just looks… like a giant iPad with tons of vertical headroom. Cool. If you turn the tablet horizontally and fold the sides in a little, it turns into something called “Book mode,” and you can use it to read a book. A massive book. Look, we don’t know it all yet, but probably its most handy feature is something called “laptop mode.” ASUS sells a keyboard that magnetically attaches to the bottom of the tablet when folded vertically so that the whole thing turns into a full-blown Windows laptop. For specs, it has a 75wh battery, quad speakers with Harman Kardon certification, Dolby Vision and Atmos, Thunderbolt 4, comes with the keyboard, and is rated for 30,000 hinge cycles. I think it’s pretty cool how it’s not those traditional 2-in-one devices anymore, but rather large folding tablets that are the trend. How neat! Now if only I wasn’t a Mac user… ASUS says the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED will be available next year. And that’s what ASUS had to offer. Pretty exciting!
Next up was General Motors’ Keynote where they talked about their commitments to self-driving and electric vehicles. And, unveiled a cool new Electric Pickup. But let’s not jump ahead. They started the keynote by talking about their commitment to electrification. Previously, GM promised that all of their lightweight more budget-oriented vehicles would be all-electric by the year 2035. Today, they announced that all heavy-duty vehicles would also be part of this promise, which is nice. They haven’t given us a date as to when all of their vehicles would be electric, but it’s safe to assume they’re working on it. GM also says they’re working on sustainability, and they promised today that ALL GM facilities WORLDWIDE would be powered by renewable energy by the year 2035 as well, with US facilities being all-electric by the end of the decade. We’re starting to see this trend of more and more tech companies being more eco-focused, and I’m glad to see it. Tech shouldn’t make our planet and society worse, but should instead be a boon to humanity, and being eco-conscious is one step closer to that reality. After their talk on sustainability, GM moved on to talking about autonomy. GM said on stage that they envision that fully-autonomous vehicles will be sold by the middle of THIS decade and that they’re working towards that with their subsidiary Cruise. That’s a bold claim that Musk and many others have put out there, and I express skepticism with that — autonomous cars are simply not there yet. They’re close, with companies like Tesla already at their “full self-driving phase,” but there’s one caveat to that — the cars still require driver intervention and DO NOT drive themselves. To think that GM will be able to build fully-autonomous cars when SuperCruise barely works 50% of the time is a huge task, so we’ll have to see how that turns out. Speaking of SuperCruise, GM also said that SuperCruise will ship standard on 22 new GM models throughout 2022. For the uninitiated, SuperCruise is GM’s “AutoPilot” that ships across select Cadillac models. Shipping it to more cars could improve the system, but as I said earlier, I do express skepticism with things like this and hope that the tech does improve. Until then, I won’t be buying marketing talk from billionaires. But GM wasn’t done talking about Autonomy yet, because they rolled out a new joint venture with their subsidiary Cruise that they hope will be the future of Self Driving — and they call it “UltraCruise.” UltraCruise is what GM thinks will be how they get cars driving by themselves on the road. GM says that UltraCruise “delivers hands-free driving in 99.9% of scenarios.” We’ll see about that, but the reason this seems somewhat plausible is because the company says that they’re surveying select roads and that they’re going to use that data to make the car drive itself, compared to what many other companies do and just set up an algorithm that tells the car what to do in a specific scenario or not even that. The car just has to make an educated guess as to what to do most of the time. But UltraCruise won’t be like that. Because the car has sensors + map data AND a car went through the road before, the car can detect almost every scenario and handle it much smoother, like how a human driver would. We’ll still have to see how this performs in the real world because GM says the first car with UltraCruise will be the Cadillac Selestiq, which is a hyper-luxurious halo car revealed earlier last year. We still don’t know when UltraCruise and the Selestiq will be available, but the earliest is tomorrow and the latest is 2025. After talking about autonomy and sustainability, GM went on to announce 3 highly-anticipated Electric Cars, the Chevy Silverado EV, the Equinox EV, and the Blazer EV. Let’s start with the cooler one, the Silverado. I’m not much of a pickup truck guy, but this thing looks sharp on paper; GM says it does 0–60 in less than 4.5 seconds and has 400 miles of EPA-rated range. Let’s stop right there for a second; regardless of everything else, that’s pretty fast for an electric pickup, and it’s super competitive with the Cybertruck and F-150 Lightning right off the bat. But, there’s more to the story. The Silverado EV has a 5 feet-11 inch bed — which is not supermassive but it’s all right — and a frunk as well for storage, which is kind of important in a pickup. Inside, it’s got a 17” touch screen that’s horizontally mounted to the dashboard, as well as another touchscreen in front of the driver — all to be expected for a high-tech pickup. But the most important part of the truck is the tech inside — it has all the modern-day safety features that you’d expect, plus SuperCruise. So yes, the truck (to an extent) will drive itself. Even cooler is that this truck supports EV to EV charging, which means it has a CCS plug at the back of the truck that you can plug a cable into and charge another EV, which is nice. The truck has room for 4 plus cargo, and GM says it’s built at Factory 0, in Michigan. Finally, it’s supposed to come out in late 2023, with more information coming soon. I think this is an important player in the EV truck industry, and it flat out kills some competition. That being said, it’s not very pretty at all with its fat nose-cone, and wails in competition to the Rivian R1T, which has an entire kitchen in the back. But GM had two more EVs up its sleeve to announce — the new Equinox EV and Blazer EV. We don’t know much about the new Equinox and Blazer, but we do know about their release date and price. GM says that they should be out by 2023, and the Equinox should cost $30,000 starting. We don’t have any pricing information for the Blazer, though. And that was GM. Phew. A lot of announcements.
Next up was Razer’s press announcements, and oh boy they brought a lot of stuff. Razer always manages to gather a fanfare every year at CES, and this year is no exception. Let’s start with the boring stuff though, with the new Razer x Fossil Gen 6 Smartwatch. What makes this smartwatch special is the new watch faces and straps, custom-designed by Razer. The 3 new watch faces are analog, text, and chrome and they’re all coated in a Razer-like design, with RGB all over the place, and a black and green “gamer aesthetic.” Other than that, the actual watch has a 44mm black case, fast charging — getting you 80% from 0 in 30 minutes), sleep tracking functions, 8 GB of storage for music and apps, and it’s pre-installed with WearOS. The watch is also water-resistant. But the specs and the watch faces aren’t really what makes this watch special. The catch is that there are only 1,337 units that are going to be for sale ever, and they each retail at $329. So if you’re a Razer fan, this might be a watch for you. Maybe. It still looks like a children’s toy to me. Razer also announced a new app that they simply call the “Razer Smart Home Application.” What it does is integrates Razer’s Chroma RGB — which is the customization suite used to customize the lighting and subsequent lighting effects for Razer peripherals and desktop products — into an application that can connect to smart home lighting products (like Philips Hue or LIFX) so that you can have that same level of customization with smart bulbs and other mood lighting. Razer says the application will be available in the second half of this year. Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, we get to talk about the much less promising, yet much more interesting products Razer put out today; it’s what they call Razer Project Sophia. Project Sophia in essence is a modular desk with a couple of pretty cool tricks up its sleeve. Razer showed how you can attack modular displays of different sizes to the desk, and how they all can work together, or work separately. The idea is that you can have different things laid out on your desk, like a task list, pictures, notes, and more. All of them are powered by the desk — and the desk runs its own software. It’s basically like a hot-swappable keyboard — you can switch out the “keys” for different ones at any time. The displays are supposed to just snap in, though Razer didn’t show us a specific mounting mechanism for the displays. But wait, it gets cooler than that — the whole desk can house an entire PC. You can hot-swap PC components into the desk, making a Desk PC. Razer is also supposed to sell a giant display that hangs off the front of the desk to use as the monitor for the desk PC, with no cables required. You just snap the GPU in, throw the CPU into a socket, snap the RAM in, screw the storage in, etc and it’s all just supposed to boot up and work — peripherals too. If you ask me, this sounds way far-fetched. How are different things supposed to mount? Where are the mounting clamps? How do you install I/O? There are so many questions and not enough answers, so we’ll have to wait for Razer to announce this thing. But for now, that’s all we’ve got. Oh, last thing — Razer announced a new chair. They call it the Enki Pro, and it’s a gaming chair on steroids. It’s got a giant vibration motor built into the base, and it’s supposed to pair to your PC and when you’re playing a game (say a shooting game), it’s supposed to vibrate whenever you shoot or walk. It sounds really cool, but it’s going to depend entirely on the haptics engine they use. Razer says it’s been optimized for over 2,200 games, with more coming soon. It’s also got RGB, of course. But, like in true Razer fashion, we have no price or launch date. Sad, but I’m also excited to see where this venture of Razer furniture goes. And that’s all for the crap-ton of announcements Razer put out this morning.
Next on the schedule was Google’s presence at CES. While they didn’t have a dedicated press conference, they did share some pretty cool stuff with the media for us to share with you. Most of these announcements will sound boring to us macOS and iOS users, but for Android, these are some pretty significant upgrades. First off, you can now use Fast Pair with more devices. What’s Fast Pair? Well, it’s basically that prompt that shows up when you pair a set of compatible Bluetooth headphones. Except now, that’ll work on even more devices, like wearables, cars, speakers, and TVs. Chromebook also supports Fast Pair now, so if you open up a pair of Bluetooth headphones, you don’t have to go digging in the messy Bluetooth settings. Next up was Fast Unlock. Now, you can unlock your Chromebook just by unlocking your phone, and eventually, you’ll be able to do the same with your watch. Then, Google talked about how their phones will be able to use UWB and unlock select BMW models. Cool stuff, nothing new here. Then, Google talked about how with select Bluetooth headphones, you’d be able to switch audio between Google devices without having to connect to multiple devices. Then, they talked about Spatial Audio coming to select Bluetooth headphones. Look, none of this is interesting to iOS users, but it is nice to see these enhancements come to Android devices. A more exciting announcement is that Chromecast will be built into even more devices to cast audio and video from your phone and other devices. That way you won’t have to connect via Bluetooth and then fiddle with them through another app, then reconnect, and figure out how to get it to work, etc. It’s all just built right on your phone. Super handy. Now, more boring stuff. You’ll now be able to install chat apps from your phone with Phone Hub on Chromebooks, and you can access your Pixel’s camera roll with your Chromebook as well. Finally, Google is catching up to the 21st century! Just kidding, but you can use Nearby Share with Windows devices for easy file transfer. Google is working with Acer, HP, and Intel to make this possible on newer laptops shipping with Windows 11. And that’s all for Google’s announcements. I said earlier, if you’re an Apple user, you might already be used to all the stuff. But for Android users, this is a big boon. And I’m glad to see it coming to more ecosystems.
After Google, BMW took the stage to talk about electric cars. They announced the iXM60 concept car, which is fully electric and has some pretty cool tech in it. We’re not going to cover it all, but we are going to cover the coolest stuff they announced. They spent a lot of time in the keynote talking about customizability and how this car enabled “new ways to express yourself.” By far the coolest way they’re doing this is with something BMW calls “E-ink paint” which changes colors from black to white with a click of a button. How does it work? It’s pretty cool; the car stimulates an electrical field which causes the white and black pigments to collect at the surface of the car. If the electrical field is charged negatively, the white pigments show. If the electrical field is stimulated with a positive charge, the black pigments show. Science aside, the effect this creates is SO COOL. The demo they showed off at the BMW booth outside the west hall of the LVCC put on a light show for the audience, changing the colors from light grey, to dark grey, to black, and white. It’s super, super cool that it almost feels fake. I don’t know who dreamt this up, but it’s amazing. Just don’t expect to be able to order this soon because it takes hours to coat the metal in this special paint and to make it work — but it looks cool as a demo. But looking cool aside, BMW says this special type of paint could have massive implications on the efficiency of its electric cars. They say that paint like this can change the thermal properties of the car because black absorbs heat and white reflects it. This could help warm up the battery on a cold day and help keep the battery cool, the company says. Additionally, the cabin’s HVAC system doesn’t have to work as hard at certain times of the day, just because of the paint color. It’s really, really awesome. I don’t think we’ve ever seen color-changing paint before — it’s truly one of the greatest parts of this CES. Other than the paint, BMW is working to make the car reflect human nature more by adding sounds to the car. Because electric cars don’t make any noise, sound engineers from BMW are working to create sounds that can affect a person’s mood. These sounds are exclusive to BMW, and the company says they’ll be hitting the streets and cabins of BMW cars later this year. But BMW didn’t stop with the customization there — if changing your paint color on the fly and choosing sounds to play through your cabin didn’t sound personal enough, how about artwork in the car? BMW is working with artists around the world to display art that reflects the driver’s personality throughout the car when idling. Color themes can also be intelligently created and displayed through ambient lighting — the possibilities are endless. BMW is also finally debuting a “My Modes” feature where you can set custom color profiles, artwork, sounds, and more to display throughout the cabin and massive touchscreen on the iXM60 depending on your mood. You can customize every aspect of the car, name it, and it’ll always be there ready to activate on the touchscreen. BMW is taking car customization and transportation to the next level, and I love it. BMW made one of the most entertaining presentations of CES yet.
After all the press conferences, I and other members of the media and the tech industry got a peek at the show floor today, and I got to check out some pretty cool booths from some cool companies that are showing off their latest tech on the floor. Here are my favorites:
- The USPS: When you think of the USPS, I don’t think tech comes into your mind first. The USPS is looking to change that with their next generation of mail delivery vehicles. The all-electric 2023 USPS delivery vehicles feature silent operation, shelving in the front and back for packages (it’s not just a dump in the back anymore), cooling, and more. The USPS says that its priority is keeping the men and women who deliver packages all day safe and comfortable. The actual truck looks pretty cool too — it has this duck-looking front where the battery lives and so that the front has more room for shelving. It’s weird looking, but function over form.
- Sony: Sony unveiled a couple of new cars last night and showed them off at CES 2022. These cars look crazy cool. We got a look at the Vision S EV and the Vision S SUV in white and matte grey, and that grey has my heart. It looks so clean and shiny. Looking at the tech behind these cars, Sony says each of them has 40 sensors and cameras around it to monitor its surroundings and drive itself which is an insane amount of cameras. These cars should be great at their job. Inside, the cars have 360-degree reality audio with speakers at the back of the seats for an immersive experience. And what better way to enjoy the speaker system than with Netflix, Hulu, and more with the BRAVIA streaming service app built right into the infotainment system. These cars are packed with cool tech, big batteries, and powerful motors, and they look so so good.
- TCL: TCL this year has a special booth — they’re the first company to bring miniLED TVs to consumers in the US. They’ve got this cool art-installation thing with a bunch of their new flagship TVs that look crisp and great. 8K miniLED just looks fantastic. But the coolest thing I looked at at the TCL booth was this 3D display that you can interact with. Remember when you used to need special glasses to view 3D content? Not anymore with this cool tech. Better yet, you can put your hand in front of the screen, and move objects around the space. It uses LiDAR and cameras to sense where your hand is, and then moves objects accordingly. It’s like AR, but cooler. This stuff isn’t available to consumers yet, but when it does become available, I can’t wait to try it out in my home. Just imagine the future of gaming.
- Zindure: I also got to look at Zindure’s Super 2000 battery, which is aimed at campers or adventurers. It’s got 14 total outlets throughout the battery, including USB-A ports, USB-C PD ports, and wall outlets — perfect for charging anything on the go. Zindure didn’t give us any specifics as to its capacity, but judging by the size of this thing, it must be at least 300wh. But it doesn’t stop there — Zindure says that this monster of a battery can charge a full-blown Tesla Model S to 10 full miles of range for emergencies. You know those gas tanks that you can fill up with gas and then use for emergencies? Well, it turns out that Tesla fanatics have been wishing for a replacement for Teslas — and now they have it according to Zindure. This battery looks super helpful for anyone who never wants to run out of juice, and it’s companies like Zindure that push battery tech further.
- Magnima: Our 5th booth is from Magnima, and they’re showing off what they call the AirPoint Mouse. The AirPoint Mouse sounds like a super cool idea to me — you can use it to point at things in the air via Bluetooth and the accelerometer and gyroscope built into the AirPoint Mouse, but it can also be used on a surface for regular mousing on the desktop. It’s a really innovative idea. Usually, you’d have to buy 2 devices that you’d have to have on your desk and then plug a receiver into your computer, but now, it’s just one that you can slip on your finger. And, it’s already out now. Magnima is selling the AirPoint Mouse on Amazon right now, and I think it’s pretty cool for in-person presentations, or virtual ones. It’s really neat.
- Bird: Bird’s been hard at work trying to remove cars from roads and clean up the environment with their Bird Bikes. They started renting bikes in major cities a couple of years ago, but now, you can buy a Bird Bike and ride it anywhere. And the more bikes, the better since it helps build the Bird ecosystem. These bikes are like no other — they’re completely electric, and require no maintenance at all (huge deal!). Bird also says they operate completely silently, which is nice if you’re just taking a stroll in the neighborhood and don’t want to look or sound suspicious. And it’s not like these are kids’ toys. Bird says they run on 500 watts of power, which makes them go super fast — faster than most electric bikes on the market now. I like what Bird’s doing with their booth, and can’t wait to see where they’re headed.
And that concludes my Day 2 CES 2022 coverage! I only covered a couple of booths today — so stay tuned for tomorrow’s coverage where I explore even more booths virtually and cover the latest in Consumer Tech. Remember that CES 2022 has over 2200 exhibitors participating, so I can’t wait to see what I’ll find next. What’s your favorite gadget of CES 2022 so far? Let me know. And as always stay safe and mask up when around others. See ya’ tomorrow.
