CES 2019 In Photos
LAS VEGAS — It takes a lot more than a few photos to convey the mad whirlwind that is CES. With over 180,000 attendees (plus exhibitors), it is like being on a crowded, noisy, and delayed subway train for the better part of a week.
That said, there are always plenty of interesting scenes here worth capturing. One big improvement in my quality of life this year is that I captured all of my show images on a smartphone, instead of having to lug my Nikon D850 around the show floor. I used a Google Pixel 3 — my favorite for simple single shots, as it fits nicely in my shirt pocket and has good defaults — and a Huawei Mate 20 Pro, which has telephoto and wide-angle lenses, and also does a great job letting me tweak its settings for difficult scenes.
Acres of semis and shipping containers are strewn behind the show venues, as evidence of the massive amount of work that goes into setting up and tearing down essentially an entire city for the week.
Apple famously skips CES, but this year decided to take a dig at Google, Facebook, and others who live off user data with this giant billboard outside the Convention Center.
For anyone needing proof of how Las Vegas is able to change with the times, the endless signs advertising single-deck blackjack and user-friendly craps have been joined by this one for 24-hour beer pong.
It is really hard to get your head around the scale of some of the hotel-casino complexes. Mandalay Bay (which hosts may of the press events at CES) touts that it uses 28 acres of solar panels on its roof as part of its power supply. At least in the winter, they aren't cooling off the 100-degree temps to 60-something like in the summer.
No CES slideshow is complete without a photo of a really strange gadget. This was one of the cat toilets on display.
Looking at some of the huge mini-city-size booths like Samsungs, it's tempting to think they should leave them up for a few more days and use them as a set for an episode of Black Mirror.
CES has its own awards, but since they are given out months before the show to products that won't even be ready to demo until the show, it's never been clear to me how they are judged. Nonetheless, the Award Exhibit is always very popular.
VR hockey in your living room. What could go wrong? (In fairness, this is aimed at sports teams, but I couldn't resist thinking about some high school kid crashing through a sliding door)
HyperX spent a lot on laying out a major presence for eSports at the show, across multiple venues. I think half the folks at this particular exhibit just loved the bean bag chairs.
Disk drives aren't always the most exciting, but Seagate showed us two cool emerging technologies: HAMR (laser-heated recording) and multi-actuator. Together they'll mean seriously huge (>20TB) and fast HDDs within the next few years.
If you needed any proof that USB-C is a long way from trivializing cable design, here are a few of the current and planned cables from lifestyle company Moshi to cover various use cases.
The lounge chair booth is always very popular. I don't know how many they sell, but they make a lot of friends. This year some were claiming health and posture benefits as well. Sweet!
8K TVs (and monitors) were visible in many booths. Of course, most of us are still just starting to get real 4K content, and unless you have a very large screen, you probably can't see the difference between 4K and 8K. But the industry is determined to keep pushing the resolution envelope to grow sales.
It's a shame that many visitors to Las Vegas only see the convention sites. I'm lucky enough to be able to drive from California across the Mojave desert to the show and view scenes like this just a few miles from the neon (well, now mostly LEDs) of the Strip.
Note that images were resized before uploading, so they don’t completely reflect the quality of the original captures.
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