GAMBIT Magazine Best of CES 2018 Winners

If you’re old enough, you probably have some fond memories of the original Game Boy. It was the handheld that established Nintendo’s dominance of the market against all comers, even the more technologically advanced systems of the time.

Preempting the very possibility of a Game Boy Classic, Hyperkin is working on bringing a Game Boy model of their own to market. Colloquially dubbed the Ultra Game Boy, it offers a few modern conveniences that make getting your retro game on a bit more pleasant.

For one, the shell will be made out of durable aluminum. And, naturally, the LCD will, in addition to the original contrast dial, have a dial that adjusts the LCD’s back light through the RGB spectrum.

Hyperkin may have just outdone Nintendo with the Ultra game Boy!

Razer's Project Linda concept is an ultraportable laptop design powered by the Android-based Razer Phone. The docked phone serves as an intelligent touchpad, bridging the gap between handheld entertainment and laptop convenience.

The Razer Phone’s performance, display, and dual front-firing speakers combine seamlessly with Project Linda’s larger screen, keyboard, and battery to provide the ultimate mobile hybrid setup for gaming, creativity, and productivity.

The 13.3” Quad HD touchscreen extends the 120Hz experience available on the Razer Phone to a larger display, providing fluid motion and vibrant visuals. The 5.7” touchscreen of the Razer Phone can function as a touchpad, or as an interactive second touch display for custom interfaces or additional apps.

If this is the future, we are full onboard!

Anyone who streams knows the hassle of getting multiple screens to look good. The biggest problem being the space between the screens; it breaks up the visual effect of the workspace. And Asus has a surprisingly low-tech solution on the way to solve just that problem.

The ROG Bezel-Free kit lets you erase the bezels by refracting light. They sort of bridge the gap between screens, so to speak. The light transferred this way makes for a seamless effect.

Asus pretty much made the kit for their monitors (of which it’s currently compatible with two models), they do say it could be adapted to other displays. So we wouldn't exactly be surprised to see the concept spread.

Wireless charging has been the next big thing for a few years, now. It’s been around in concept for a very long time, but only recently has it started to become practical. And, Ossia’s Cota AA battery is probably the sort of thing you once wished you had if you owned a Game Gear.

While a full rollout of Ossia's tech is still probably some years away, it's not hard to see the potential value of conventional batteries you never actually need to pull out and replace.

Indeed, if you happen to own or collect old electronics, they may be a godsend, sparing wear and tear on the devices. Not to mention the boost they could give devices that still, traditionally, run on replaceable batteries.

VR did not have the greatest of years, especially in the game sphere as it continues to wait for that killer app that sells the world on the concept. But at CES 2018 the HTC Vive team overcame one of the biggest hurdles in VR; all those wires.

HTC announced their new Vive Wireless Adapter that will run on a 60Ghz WiFi band to keep any latency down to a minimum. Unfortunately, the company is keeping pretty quiet of most other details.

We know that HTC plans to bring the unit to market sometime this summer, probably lining up with E3, the big video game trade sumer in Los Angeles. That said, the idea of wireless VR makes is something everyone has been waiting for and would help give the Vive an edge over Oculus.

NVIDIA getting into the television market is a very big deal. Console gaming is fine on most television, we've been doing it since the early 80s, but PC gamers will tell you that hooking up an LCD TV to a PC is a nightmare for games.

The inherent quality and lag issues make screens specifically designed for computers a must-have. That's the main reason there are monitors in the computer section of shops and TV's in another. These new monitors are the world’s first big-screen PC gaming displays, specifically designed for enthusiast gamers seeking the ultimate 4K PC gaming experience.

These screens will run at 4K at 120Hz, have G-SYNC technology, HDR with 1000 nit peak brightness, and an integrated NVIDIA SHIELD, giving you instant access to Netflix, Amazon Video and YouTube at 4K, NVIDIA GameStream, Android games and apps, and much more.

It would not be CES without some company announcing some wild idea that it claims will change the future. This year is just happened to be Toyota with it e-Palette multi-purpose moving space. It's a very strange idea, and while i probably won't catch on, the technology will surely be applied all over the place.

The Toyota e-Palette is a series of autonomous vehicles that can be tailored for all sorts of uses thanks to its modular design. This open platform can be used for lots of different purposes, but the most logical would be buss-like transportation.

Toyota says the transports could also be used as pop-up retail spaces that come directly to the consumer, or to special events like, say, CES. They can also be set up as delivery hubs and as mobile offices. Toyota will actually start testing the e-Palette in 2020.

Channel Master has a very high-tech solution to one of the most low tech devices; the classic television antenna. With the world having gone digital, the local television market has exploded over the years.

But while there are all sorts of digital antennas on the market (as cord cutters we have a few) they are inconsistent at best. The SMARTenna+ looks to fix this by being a maximum-range indoor TV antenna that utilizes an internal processor to analyze and select optimum signal reception patterns as an automated feature.

SMARTenna+ houses seven different antenna reception patterns, performing as seven TV antennas in a single device and is effectively the equivalent of having the antenna in seven different locations in the room at the same time.