CES 2010: Gadgets I Really Want

Thanks to a certain Korean sponsor, I managed to land a trip to Las Vegas this year to cover CES 2010, mecca of gadgets and geeks alike. While last year’s CES was mostly a Palm Pre love-fest, this year’s show had a little more variety for us gadget geeks to slobber over. 3D HDTVs, newfangled e-book readers, fancy laptops that also doubled up as tablets (but minus the bulk), a dubious gadget charger that claimed to suck power from WiFi signals around you; the list goes on and on. So much that it makes me want to whip out the credit card and start swiping away.

Anyhow, while I restrain myself, here’s a quick list of the top 5 gadgets and tech gear seen at CES that I would really, really love to own.

Samsung LED 9000 HDTV

Their lineup-topping, flagship HDTV for 2010 is the LED 9000; as thin as a pencil, and comes with a 3D processor that not only pairs up with a 3D-capable Blu-ray player to bring 3D movies to hour home theater setup, but also powerful enough to convert 2D video to 3D on-the-fly. Also features what Samsung calls Samsung Apps, which works through their Internet@TV service built into the LED 9000.

The cool part about this swanky new HDTV is the sweet touch-screen remote control, which lets you watch TV on the remote itself (or preview other TV channels), while something else – a movie, another TV channel – is running on the TV at the same time. Even more awesome: the remote actually connects to the TV via WiFi, so you could theoretically continue watching whatever you want on the remote, so long as you can get a wireless signal wherever you are. And yes, that includes the toilet.

Plastic Logic QUE proReader

Designed and built for the tech-savvy businessperson, Plastic Logic’s QUE isn’t something that will come cheap, priced at a top-end of US$799 for 8GB of internal storage, WiFi and 3G built-in. With an 8.5×11″ screen, a thickness of less than 0.3″, and a sleek facade that makes it look more like an oversized digital photo frame, the QUE also syncs with your Outlook account, along with attachments that you can also view on the reader itself i.e. documents, PDF files and spreadsheets. Oh, and you can also read digital books, newspapers and magazines on it. If there’s one gadget that screams geek cutting-edge, this is it.

Parrot AR.Drone

Remote-controlled vehicles and gadgets; combine both together and you’ll make a lot of geeks very happy indeed. Which is obviously what Parrot is trying to do with their AR.Drone. The AR.Drone is basically a light quadricopter (that is, a helicopter with, er, four rotors), that’s controlled by your iPod touch. Two cameras mounted on the nose of the drone send a continuous video feed back to your iPod touch, literally letting you see what the drone sees. Throw in some augmented-reality monsters and enemy fighter planes to ‘fight’ with, and you have what is likely one of the more awesome big-boy-toys ever made.

Iomega iConnect Wireless Data Station

Network-enabled devices usually tend to come with a price premium over similar products with no networking capability. Printers, for example, you can have a variant that comes networkable, while another comes without. Iomega’s iConnect lets you put on the network just about any USB device: printer, flash drive, or USB hard disk enclosure. Even better, it also supports the latest wireless-N networks, while those who prefer something more physical can hook up via the iConnect’s wired gigabit Ethernet port.

Sonos ZonePlayer S5

Unlike most of the vendors present at CES, the guys representing Sonos didn’t have a proper booth at CES. Instead, they set up camp in a suite at the nearby Renaissance Hotel, where visitors got to experience the new Sonos ZonePlayer S5. The S5 isn’t exactly cutting-edge new, having been announced some time prior to CES, but this is definitely something i’d love to have as part of my home audio setup.

Everything the original ZonePlayers had, the S5 has: excellent networkability, internet radio and superbly easy to use; with the exception that the S5 now sports a pair of built-in speakers. Not only does that save me the trouble of picking up a pair of bookshelves, the S5 also looks damn good. Also, since Sonos provides a free Sonos controller app on the Apple App Store, that also saves me the cost of buying the matching Sonos Controller CR200. Earlier, I was considering picking up something along the lines of the Bose SoundDock for my living room, but the Sonos S5 now officially takes the SoundDock’s spot on my want (and buy) list, pending spousal acceptance, of course.

So, what’s your top 5?