Ken's Best of CES 2014

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     If you weren't in the know, the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show just went down in Las Vegas over the last week. There were a lot of products/concepts unveiled throughout the show and here I am highlighting the things I'm most excited for.

Samsung Galaxy Pro Line Tablets
     Now before you Android people all start yelling "#HOLOYOLO" at me, let me at least express myself. I have always deemed that the 7"inch and 8"inch tablet form factor is too small for me, when people hear that, they would just ask me to go get a 10"inch form factor tablet. Let's just say that there are times where I complain that even my iPad 2 is too small for me to get any meaningful work done.

     So you might be wondering, what am I going on about? 10.1"inch is the largest form factor, there is nothing bigger! Well that's about to be changed with the entry of Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 and Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2. The form factor is of course 12.2"inch as you would acknowledge from the name. The reason I'm excited for this other than the perfect screen size for me, is that the user interface dubbed Magazine UX looks very intuitive and seems fit for a tablet compared to the stock Android skin. While Samsung is trying to market this as a laptop replacement with a full fledged QWERTY software keyboard and partnering up with manufacturers to produce keyboard docks for the Pro tablets, I do not think this will have what it takes for me to ditch lodging my notebook around. The Verge hands-on video can pretty much show you everything you need to know about this tablet to share my excitement! There's a big chance I would be grabbing the Note Pro 12.2 to replace my HTC One X, hehe.

Razer Project Christine
     "OMFG, first you mention Samsung, now Razer??!" No matter how much you hate Razer, you must admit that they are pretty much the pioneers of a lot of things. No need to dig in too far back, the Razer Blade was the first gaming notebook that broke the "bulky and heavy" stereotype of gaming notebooks which then started a slew of thin form factor gaming notebooks like the MSI GS70, the new Aorous X7 and much more. So, what is Project Christine? I don't even know where to start so watch this video down below.

     Wonderful, now that you watched the video, you should be as speechless as I am. Even though upgrading/building a PC is easy as ABC if you put the effort into it, some people might not want to go through the hassle of sorting out the cable management and what not. Project Christine makes that a non-factor with it's plug-and-play-esque design. I'm excited about this because if this is the direction of where PC building is going towards, I won't complain seeing how awesome it looks and how simple it will be. While I'm definitely sure that the Razer Project Christine will be sold at a high premium, I hope this will kickstart a new trend like how Razer did with the Blade and Project Fiona (Edge)

Sony PlayStation Now
     If you don't really know me that well, let me just tell you now that I'm a PC guy and home consoles are not really my groove. Why the PlayStation Now intrigues me is because I'm really interested in playing the exclusives like The Last of Us, Uncharted, Infamous and etc, but I'm not intrigued to the point that I am going to go out of my way to buy a box that does nothing but gaming. The PlayStation Now fills the missing pieces in between, without having to buy a PlayStation console, I am able to game via the 'cloud' and stream to my existing devices. While I have a feeling that Sony will lock this cloud gaming feature to their own devices and that Malaysia will never see the light of such service, the concept of such service is what I really like and hope to see much more widespread in the future.

Dell P2815Q
     So you might be asking what's so special about this monitor from Dell, and I would answer "Pixels". Yes it's a 3840x2160 28"inch display and that's not all. This monitor starts from *drumrolls* $699! Well that might sound a lot but in contrast with other currently available 4K solutions, this monitor is almost half of the price of existing solutions. Will we finally see 4K monitors that will be much more affordable with the launch of this monitor? Hopefully so and time will tell.

Corsair RGB Backlit Mechanical Keyboard
     Corsair teased about this a while back, and this CES, they truly delivered it. It's hard to describe what the difference between this and a normal backlit mechanical keyboard in text, so I will leave it to Linus to show you the amazing-ness of this keyboard.
     This keyboard shines really amazingly and I would definitely love to get my hands on one... (if I could afford it that is.)

Honourable Mentions:
1. All the smart cars on CES (especially the BMW i3)
2. MSI's secret thin gaming notebook (probably just a GS70 refresh)
3. Mad Genius Controllers (awesome motion controller concept)

     I guess that's my "Best of CES". What's yours? My next post will probably be a review. A review of what I have yet to finalize, but it will be coming up soon enough! Stay tuned!

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