This is the first CES that I (or anyone from Reckoner) has ever attended. The show, as I’m sure you know, is ridiculously large and instead of even beginning to remotely try and cover it all I’ve decided to write a series of shorter pieces based around what it’s like attending the show for the first time. I’m calling the series ”Stories from a CES Virgin” and you can find all of them here.
CES is huge. I don’t think there’s any other way for me to put into words just how fucking amazingly overwhelming it is to roam around the Las Vegas Convention Centre (LVCC) for eight hours and come out only seeing two of the three halls that exhibited and that the LVCC is only one of the three “official” areas of CES, called “Tech East”. It’s ridiculous.
I’ll give you a quick run down as best I can for what was on show in the areas of Tech East and then let you just flick through the bounty of imagery and my unabashed commentary for what I saw.
Tech East, which is the entire Las Vegas Convention Centre (I’m spelling it the correct way, soz ‘Merica) is comprised of three “Halls”. I put hall in quotes because each of them, North, Central & South, is roughly the size of the Melbourne Convention Centre each and some, like the South Hall are multiple levels.
The Central Hall, which is where I started my day, is home to the major electronics manufactures with stands the size of a basketball court and then some. Here you’ll find LG, Sony, Samsung, Canon, Nikon, Huawei and a litany of smaller folk around the fringes of the Goliaths.
The South Hall which runs over two levels is somewhat organised into zones or “marketplaces” as they call them. HALF of the entire ground floor is dedicated to drones alone! Manufacturers for consumers, professionals and in between there’s a drone company for everyone it would seem and most you’ve likely never heard of before as well as the big kids like DJI.
In addition to drones the upper floor of the South Hall contained Xioami in all their full weird glory, Razer, ZTE and smaller TV manufacturers like Skyworth. There was also a lot of accessory brands like Satechi and Australia’s own Gecko.
Lastly the North Hall is home to the automotive giants. Cars and concepts as far as the eye can see. Most, if you’re anything like me, you’ll never be able to afford and many will never see a production line at all.
To be honest it seems to be the most boring area of them all. Car buffs will get a kick but it’s like looking at a bunch of weird plastic models that you can’t really touch or use.
Across the road from the LVCC is a large car park area set up for autonomous car demonstrations. That’s a little more interesting and hopefully, time permitting I get to venture across
