The best of CES 2013

We came, we saw, we got lost in a virtual world. And now we’re back. The show that was supposed to be the last of the biggest — the end of the best — actually turned out a little differently than the critics predicted. A show that could have limped instead leapt in places. A show that could have declined seemed to rise instead. But it rose in all kinds of interesting directions. Towards hardware startups funded by the crowd, towards connected devices that actually seem to make sense, to televisions that offered a logical next step instead of a gimmick. This year’s show offered a glimpse of what may not just be the New Thing at this CES, but the heart of CES for years to come — the indie hardware maker, a new kind of force in the industry that is quickly changing our perceptions of what can be done and how it has to be done. It's exciting on many levels.

So there was good stuff. No, great stuff. And we think that stuff deserves to be rewarded (or at least called out) for being what it is: the best of the best. We present that list to you, unedited and uncut, for your reading pleasure, without interruption. Also, vote for the best thing you saw too!

Westinghouse showed up at CES this year with a bit of a surprise: a 110-inch Ultra High-Definition television. We met up with the company here at the Las Vegas Hotel (don't ask us how they managed to roll the set into a suite) to get a look at this monster of a television for ourselves. After stepping into the room, the TV completely overwhelmed us. However, unlike nearly every other massive TV we've seen out there, the QX110 was not disappointing to look at. While 1080p doesn't suit a gigantic TV very well, 4K does fill out the display with enough pixels to make a pleasurable viewing experience. However, the model we saw had some other issues to speak of. A large, dark band went down the center the screen, and colors did appear to be slightly washed out. We were assured that these issues were only present on this prototype unit, and the company claims the TV uses the same display from ChinaStar as Samsung's 84-inch 4K TV. The TV's body showed its early stage: the back isn't covered in any way, and light leaked out of the rear. Still, Westinghouse expects to sell the TV for $299,999.99 as a made-to-order product by the end of Q1.

Trent Wolbe will be publishing daily photo essays from CES. This is the latest in the series.

For two years in high school I was a cashier at Whole Foods. We were at a busy intersection right in the middle of three fancy prep schools, so we maintained a pretty steady flow of soccer moms doing wheatgrass shots or going really hard at the salad bar with each other all day long. My supervisor, the Front End Team Leader Eric, was one of those smart middle-aged Whole Foods dudes who seemed like he could be doing much more but had gotten fucked over in life somehow and was now a powerful combination of grateful that he had any job at all and murderously spiteful that he had to wear an apron to work every day. He taught me a lot of lessons, from the practical (where to find the just-expired burritos before they went to the landfill) to the subtly profound. During the lulls in traffic when his team was prone to long bathroom breaks and back-alley bonghits, he’d saunter, clipboard in hand, down the row of cashiers. He’d stop right at the end of your station, lean in, and look you in the eyes. “If you’re not busy,” he’d say in a low rumble, a half-evil grin twisting up into his face, “look busy.” Then he’d slowly moonwalk towards the door, keeping his eyes locked, clicking his pen like a mental patient, until he got outside, where he’d do a spin and casually collect all the misplaced shopping carts in the parking lot. Fuckin’ Eric, man. I wonder if he’s on facebook.

They said the wristwatch was dead, but they were wrong. Forward-thinking watches are making a big splash at this year’s CES, the largest technology trade show in the country, and two watches stand out: the ultrathin, ultrasimple CST-1, which looks like a metal slap bracelet with giant numbers, and the Pebble smartwatch, which interfaces with the owner’s smartphone and can also run apps of its own.

Those two watches have something else in common: the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Pebble raised $10.2 million from 68,929 people, making it by far the largest Kickstarter campaign to date. Pebble held a press conference at CES this week to announce that the product would begin shipping on January 23. Then on Tuesday, the two engineers behind the CST-1 launched a Kickstarter campaign of their own, which hit its $200,000 goal in under 48 hours.

Alarm clock. Snooze. Alarm clock. Snooze. Alarm clock. Snooze. Alarm clock. Snooze. Alarm clock. Snooze. Alarm clock. Snooze. Alarm clock. Snooze. Alarm clock. Snooze. Alarm clock. Snooze.

The week is almsot over, and CES is on the v-... erm, on the cusp of dying down. It's about time to look to the future — not just of CES 2013 but of the industry as a whole. Months, years, decades, centuries into the future. We'll get to that eventually. Join hosts Joshua Topolsky and Ross Miller as they break down the top stories of the day in the most relevant and irreverent way possible - and set the tone for the day(s) to come. Wake up, tune in, and have fun. This is First!

Trent Wolbe will be publishing daily photo essays from CES. This is the next in the series.

As LL Cool J took the stage at Sony’s massive exhibition space I was ready to pronounce this year’s CES dead on arrival. He was there to hype his regrettably-named music collaboration software Boomdizzle, throwing around generic technology terms with all the panache of a door-to-door vacuum salesman, the performance nowhere near as nuanced as his Special Agent Hanna in NCIS:LA’s. There was precious little actual information about how his international jam sesh enabler would perform differently from the myriad of programs already available that do the same thing. I could feel that his cool, cool heart wasn’t in it for anything more than a couple extra thou chilling in his bank account.

Almost exactly a year ago, upon these parched steppes of Nevada we know as Las Vegas, Vizio told us it was keen to get into the 4K TV market, but the timing wasn't quite right yet. Vizio asked for a year's worth of patience and, atypically for an electronics company, it's back at CES with the delivery of its 4K promise.

The show floor has now been open for a day and a half, and mercifully no one on The Verge's staff has caught the dreaded CES Plague yet. But we have seen gadgets, gizmos, whozits, whatsits, and everything in between. On today's show, David and Dieter Bohn break down everything we've seen from Microsoft, Pebble, watches, other watches, and everything else cool going on at CES. We'll be live at 3PM PT / 6PM PT, so tune in!

Samsung gave us a brief glimpse during its keynote today of its first phone using a flexible display, and now we've just had the opportunity to handle the device for ourselves. The phone, which is a nameless prototype, has a screen that falls off towards the rear edge of the device on the right side. Samsung hasn't quite figured out yet what to do with this extra screen real estate, but for now the phone displays landscape-oriented notifications along the edge. The idea is that you'll be able to read text messages, stock tickers, and other notifications from the side of the device even if you have a case covering the screen.

As you would expect, representatives were very reluctant to give us any specifications on the prototype. But they did reveal that the screen is about five inches across, with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution "about" 720p. We were also informed that the prototype isn't truly a phone — it lacks a radio, operating system, camera, and most any other feature you'd find in a phone. Instead, in its current form, the prototype is more like a touch-capable digital picture frame that uses a low-power processor to cycle through images of a mocked-up UI. The phone certainly feels like a prototype: it's poorly made of plastic, and it felt completely hollow within. We're skeptical of the utility of a flexible display on a phone, but it certainly makes for a cool tech demo.

Now that Pebble has announced it's shipping to Kickstarter backers on January 23rd, the company is finally ready to show off the final hardware and software on its smartwatch. We spent some time putting the watch through its paces and talking with CEO Eric Migicovsky, and we've come away more impressed than we expected with the Kickstarter phenomenon.

Smartwatches are a big theme theme here at CES, but few have garnered the kind of interest that the Pebble has. One reason is that it is simple and straightforward: watchfaces, notifications, and music control are the headline features with only a few other odds and ends thrown in on the side. The other reason is that it simply looks great — nobody wants a monstrosity strapped to their wrist, no matter how functional.

It's hump day. The halfway point. The checkered flag is in sight. Time is absolutely a relative construct, because CES is less than three days old (at the most extreme estimate — technically the show floor only opened yesterday) and yet it feels like a lifetime has passed. It was a crazy first day on the floor, culminating with our sit-down with Valve's Gabe Newell over all things Steam Box — Chris Grant from Polygon will be on hand helping us pour over the Gospel according to Gaben. Join hosts Joshua Topolsky and Ross Miller as they break down the top stories of the day in the most relevant and irreverent way possible – and set the tone for the day(s) to come. Wake up, tune in, and have fun. This is First!

There are self-driving cars, then there are self-driving cars. Today at CES, Audi showed me the former.

The A7 parked in the cul-de-sac of Las Vegas' luxurious Mandarin Oriental hotel looked no different than any other that you might see on the street, but this was a special demonstrator of Audi's "piloted driving" system for automated parking. It works like this: you walk out of the mall, you want your car. You open an app on your smartphone, press a button, and the car drives out to you. Pretty awesome — and it works the opposite way, too.

Lego Mindstorms build-your-own-robot kits have been with us since 1998, back when programming them required a computer with a serial port. The new Linux-based Lego Mindstorms EV3, however, doesn't even need a computer: you can set up basic routines right on the programmable Lego brick itself, and / or remote control a robot from an Android or iOS smartphone. For many buyers willing to spend $349.99, though, the best part will probably be this: the EV3 is an absolute blast to play with, right out of the box. We just got to try the EV3 at CES 2013 today, and each and every one of the included designs is a wonderful, thought-provoking toy even on its own.

Gather 'round, gather 'round. 90 seconds of news and your goal is found. Not once, not twice, but four — no, five! That the way we stay alive. In one final showing, your news day is done — but starts again tomorrow, one by one.

This is 90 Seconds on The Verge.

There's something about 2013's Consumer Electronics Show that's different from every other iteration this decade. You might not realize it immediately, for it's marked by the absence rather than the arrival of a new technology, but it's there and we're all sensing it on a deep, subconscious level. And it feels good.

3D is gone.

By T.C. Sottek and Tom Warren

We just sat down for a rare and wide-ranging interview with Valve CEO Gabe Newell, who opened up to The Verge with details about the company's upcoming "Steam Box" gaming hardware, the future of the Steam digital distribution platform, and even gaming itself. For starters, Valve isn't just attacking the living room; the Steam Box will be designed to work across multiple screens in the home using networking standards like Miracast, ideally allowing users to effortlessly transition between rooms and monitors to enjoy gaming and other content. But Valve's goal isn't just to put a box into everyone's living room, it's to help build an ecosystem of content developers — including the gamers themselves.

The world you see isn't necessarily the world as others perceive it. That goes double true when you're wearing a virtual reality headset. It's confusing, it's mysterious, it's humbling... and it's exactly what will come of David Pierce and Nilay Patel as they check out the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Is it a headset... or is it an experience? In either case, it's exactly is what this show is for. Top Shelf is a deeper dive into the products and experience, led by David Pierce and guest-hosted today by Nilay Patel.

I just had a chance to sit down with Sony president and CEO Kaz Hirai for an enlightening chat about the electronics-maker's past, present, and future. Topics up for discussion include the company's new line of 4K televisions (including that new prototype OLED model), the Xperia line of Android phones and potential expansion to other platforms, and what the road ahead looks like for Sony. Kaz offers a glimpse into the mind of the Japanese monolith, with a surprisingly candid take on the rough times its experienced over the past few years. Check out the video below for the full chat, and stay tuned for more from Sony at CES 2013.

At the back of Samsung's booth, the company has partnered with Neflix to show off 4K streaming on one of its UHD televisons. The video it's playing is on a loop, helpfully displaying difficult-to-stream types of video like fast-motion boxing and water fountains. Samsung tells us that this is a "beta" test, but is being quite coy about other details, including whether it's over the internet or a direct pipe to Netflix's servers. In fact, Samsung isn't even saying what kind of television this is, beyond a 65-inch UHD TV. The TV itself is mounted on an easel much like Samsung's 85-inch monster that has gathered so much attention. In other words, we could be looking at a new design language for Samsung, or at least for its UHD line.

We've gone up as close as we can to the TV and to be frank, it's difficult to tell if what little artifacting we can see is a result of the streaming or part of the video itself. It's especially impressive when it's showing the children playing in a storm of water droplets coming from the fountain — though when it was pushed that hard it started to become clear that this was streaming video, not a direct connection. Hopefully Samsung or Netflix will be more forthcoming with details soon so we can know more about the "early results of their work on 4K video.

Trent Wolbe will be publishing daily photo essays from CES. This is the next in the series.

Here’s the deal y’all: I love Las Vegas. It’s got a history as checkered and weird as America itself, there are sick-ass laser lights beaming at you from every facade and orifice, and most importantly, it doesn’t give a fuuuuuuuuck what you think about it! Pretense of artfulness or a higher sense of purpose are difficult to come by here: everything is distilled down to the godless instant-gratification triumvirate of gambling, sex, and buffet dining. What’s not to love, hater?

We just stopped by Valve's small booth at CES, and the company has confirmed to The Verge that it is meeting with a number of hardware and software partners to push forward with its plans to release its own console-like PC for the living room. The company isn't showing off much to the press this year, but we managed to take a look at some prototype hardware Valve has sitting out, and it's not all too surprising; right now the Steam Box looks like a small-chassis PC. Valve representative Tom Giardino says that the company came to CES to meet specifically with hardware partners, and it has roughly 15 to 20 lined up — while he couldn't name specifics, he says we "wouldn't be surprised" with anybody on the list.

Valve confirmed plans to create its own console-like PC for the living room last month, but the company also wants to get other manufacturers on board to make their own hardware capable of running Steam. It's rumored that Valve will tap Linux for its own version of the Steam Box. The company says that any of its partners are welcome to introduce their own hardware and call it whatever they like — including the term "Steam Box" — but it's meeting with select partners to optimize the hardware.

Panasonic just unveiled a 4K Windows 8 tablet at CES 2013 and we've managed to get an early hands-on. The huge 20-inch tablet includes an optical stylus that allows you to navigate the Windows 8 tiled UI and touch up photos on the device. Panasonic isn't revealing exact specifications just yet, but running at at 4K resolution at its booth today it was stunning to see images on such a display.

Normally reserved for TVs, this tablet is targeted at photographers, designers, and architects according to Panasonic. A built-in Windows 8-style application imports images from a digital camera and Panasonic supplied a number of 4K images to sample the delights of the display at its booth. This is a huge tablet though, if you can call it that, so it's not exactly portable. During my early look at the device I noticed that the back of the device heats up a lot, so if this device ever makes it to the market there's still some work to be done to make this fully usable. Either way, it's a crazy 4K Windows 8 tablet, and we'll probably see a lot more of them at CES this week.

Samsung's just announced what it's calling "the world's first curved OLED TV." A curved screen on your TV may sound like a bit of an oddity, but Samsung boasts that it creates a more panoramic, more immersive viewing experience, and actually improves viewing angles from the side. The 55-inch TV on display at Samsung's booth is due to come out the second half of this year, and has what Samsung reps have called "an IMAX feel." The TV is incredibly sharp and crisp, with fantastic colors. Unfortunately, though, details are still otherwise scarce — we're not sure of the resolution, details of the curvature, or the like – but we're already thinking about putting our piggy bank savings toward a curved OLED and not an easel-mounted TV.

4K's unquestionably the buzzword of CES 2013, but it's typically used in conjunction with "TV." Panasonic's taking it a different direction, though, using its keynote at the show to introduce a 20-inch Windows 8 tablet with 4K resolution. There aren't many details about the tablet just yet, save for stylus input support and a sort of real-time cloud-based collaboration tool. We've seen these display specs from Panasonic before, of course, but this is the first time we've seen it on a real product. With such a pixel-dense display, you'd get incredibly detailed control using a stylus, and most of the company's on-stage demos showed how much you can do with so many pixels. It's very much a business-focused tool, and very much not yet a consumer-ready product, but we're intrigued — finally, a display that outstrips the Retinas and 1080ps of the world.