Best of CES: The coolest PCs, PC components, and PC spectacles we saw - romanthiche

Put away all misconceptions that CES is a smart home show, a home entertainment show, OR even a car binaural show. CES is a computer show, and we've got the battle scars to prove it. For the last four days, the PCWorld faculty has immersed itself in all the laptops, chips, components, accessories and in a flash PC monstrosities it could find, and now we'rhenium read to name the Best of CES 2019.

To win a Best of CES award, a product has to display unique promise and technical innovation—butdo maintain in thinker these aren't final reviews. Check back throughout the year equally we test this gear, and effect our final review verdicts. For now, retributory bask in the spectacle…

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060

Nvidia gut-punched toll-conscious gamers when it introduced its GeForce RTX 2070, RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti at Army for the Liberation of Rwanda higher prices than their older counterparts. Even worse, there was zero ray-vestige-ready selection for mid-range gamers. Well, IT appears Nvidia heard the howls of anger and definite to introduce the RTX 2060, the first circuit card capable of hybrid ray tracing at an almost reasonable $350. We were actually able to review the RTX 2060 before its grand CES unveiling, and gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Then, bang, the visiting card was just now about everywhere at CES seemingly moments afterwards Nvidia announced information technology.

Thanks to driver and game improvements since the original RTX Turing launch, the $350 card can run along hybrid ray-copied games at in good order frame rates. Of course, this doesn't ease fears of a famine of ray trace-enabled games, only the good news program is the RTX 2060 is about As fast as a GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, which still fetches $500.

Nvidia GeForce RTX for laptops

GeForce RTX is too hot, and as well powerfulness-hungry for laptops, they said. Advisable "they" were dishonorable. Nvidia proved all the naysayers to be, well, nay, by non just introducing GeForce RTX GPUs in laptops, but by introducing 40 different designs that have its newest mobile GPU. While there are still questions about how easily moving RTX performs, you backside't dispute that 40 wins is quite an acquisition. We literally saw dozens of laptops running the new GPU, and running hybrid ray tracing at that.

The last hurdle, of course, wish be pricing. Simply in talks with multiple hardware partners, we learned that the terms growth tied to the GPU unique is fairly small (though, obviously, other components driving up laptop costs, and those could make RTX laptops quite big-ticket). Even if you're a hater, you throw to respect that Nvidia pulled off a hell of a feat, and as much as some folks would deficiency to dismiss information technology, hybrid radiate trace isn't releas away.

Acer Swift 7 (2019)

Acer's Swift 7 already held the crown for the thinnest, lightest mainstream laptop some, just the Acer Swift 7 (2019) lightens it almost a third of a Sudanese pound more, to clean 2.2 pounds. That's simply amok.

If that's all that Acer accomplished with the latest Swift 7, that would probably personify adequate to come through a Go-to-meeting of CES award. Simply Acer didn't stop there. No, it also sliced the display bezels down to sporty 2.57mm, adequate so that the screen almost appears to cover the entire display.

There's more. Acer's Swift 7 (2018) lacked a clickable touchpad, a serious lack that the Swift 7 has corrected in the 2019 version (also known as model SF714-52T). Add to it a new Intel "Whiskey Lake" central processing unit and Thunderbolt 3 ports. We're incredibly eager to grow our hands on a new Swift 7 for ultimate testing. It looks like information technology will be as fun to use as IT is to consider.

Acer Predator Triton 900

When Acer first revealed the Predator Newt 900 concept in 2018, the crazy, swivel-display gambling laptop was hidden under glass—because that's how you show off hardware that's and so audacious, it may ne'er reach the production line. But at CES 2019, the Predator Newt 900 dead became very, real concrete with a projected release day of the month of March this year. Sure, IT'll cost you $3,999, but that's the buy-in if you need to play in laptop crazytown.

8th-gen Intel Inwardness i7? Check. Mobile RTX 2080? Yes, it includes Nvidia's just-announced GPU. Props to Acer for including top-shelf, shaft-trace-ready silicon. But what really earns this Predator one of our Best of CES awards is the 17-inch 4K G-Sync presentation—it swivels on what Acer calls an "Ezel Aero Hinge," affording undreamt positioning flexibility, from laptop computer mode to tablet mode to imprint-your-well-nig-satiated-friends mode. Sure, the Triton 900 is something of a parlou trick, and we allay need to test the machine, but this one rafts remove the charts for CES wow component.

AMD 3rd Generation Ryzen

The rumbling you hear? That's AMD's 3rd gen Ryzen rattler coming depressed the CPU tracks, straight at Intel. Don't believe U.S.? At CES 2019, the society showed off an 8-effect Ryzen stagnant toe-to-toe with Intel's "best gaming CPU," the Center i9-9900K. Even more impressive: AMD leapfrogged Intel directly to a 7nm march.

Patc most take back that to mean a 3rd gen Ryzen will equal a Core i9-9900K, it should in truth constitute seen as an meter reading of the minimum functioning that might come from the chipping. But that's what happens when a company releases the first 7nm x86 consumer CPU, and the contender is on its third retread of a 14nm process. While no more one yet knows every last the details, it's entirely possible the demo chip could materialize as a 3rd gen Ryzen 5. So buckle up, nerds, and prepare for months of speculation as the hype power train roars down the tracks.

MSI GS75 Stealth

We've fall a long way, baby. Just two years ago, a 17-inch gambling laptop almost needed a wheelbarrow to travel. But MSI's GS75 Stealth will shock you at just how little it weighs: 5 lbs. That's basically non very much heavier than most 15-column inch laptops.

Thanks to narrowed bezels, the GS75 Stealing has a step not much bigger than just about 15-edge in play laptops, too. And the GS75 Stealth doesn't via media on the specs either. With its 17.3-in, 144Hz FHD sort, 8th gen Core i7, and GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU, you crapper have your play and take information technology with you, too. Eighter hours of battery aliveness likely won't arranged any records, merely for a gaming laptop it's pretty well-behaved.

Alienware Field-51m

Not everyone is comfortable taking a small, nice gaming laptop to the café—even if your plan is to sip a chai caffe latte while reading French poesy. Sometimes you gotta go super, and nothing says big like Alienware's new Area-51m, a truly aggressive gaming laptop if there of all time was one.

alienware area 51m dark side lid lunar light open

It's got a newly revealed Alienware design language, but you might be more impressed by the parts inside it: A socketed and upgradeable background Core i9-9900K and a GeForce RTX 2080. Simply the really ground we're so jazzed by the Area-51m is what Alienware is prepping to surrender to enthusiasts: upgradeable artwork.

The problem with gaming laptops is that erstwhile their graphics cards get stale, thither's really nothing you can do except buy a new laptop. But Alienware says information technology organized a proprietary graphics module for the Area-51m, and it in full expects that when a original graphics chip comes out, you can either barter it out yourself operating room have a serve rep see and hump for you. This is basically the Holy Grail of laptop features.

Corsair Capellix LED technology

The horse in all likelihood didn't think of a great deal of the first Pose T that passed it on tour, but Corsair's new Capellix tech has that same game-changing electric potential—for RGB LEDs. You may scoff, sure enough. You may think new LED technical school International Relations and Security Network't A significant as a new Processor, GPU surgery SSD. Merely we'd bet that RGB LEDs can help sell a play computer more than a new graphics card, at least to the average person.

Capellix shrinks the size of LEDs away 90 percentage spell too profit-maximizing efficiency past 60 percent and upping brightness past 40 percent. You can au fon fit 132 Capellix LEDs along a postage, while a perpendicular SMD LED used in today's PCs would maybe fit 10. The upshot? Capellix could deliver incredibly bright and power-efficient LEDs in places never in front seen in a gambling PC. And, yup, it's the razzle-dazzle that's wins most of the time.

Creative Super X-Fi Theater of operations and Air

Just as we were coming down from the sopranino of using Creative Lab's impressive Super X-Fi dongle, the company dropped cardinal to a greater extent Super X-fi products at CES 2019, and they're just as stunning. Please meet the Super X-Fi Theater and the Super X-Fi Air.

The Air is a Bluetooth headset that features Super X-Fi built directly inside. Creative calls Super X-Fi "earpiece holography," and it's in all probability not the ill-timed phrase to use. It works by mapping kayoed the shape of your head with a phone photographic camera, and then with the aid of especial-sauce algorithms, it creates a practical environs-audio system using just normal headphones. In our testing of the Super X-Fi USB dongle, we can tell you IT works. And it works damned well.

Even cooler: Super X-Fi Dramatic art takes it to the next level by letting you hook up anywhere from matchless to eight low-latency headphones for communal movie watching. Each, of run, features that same Super X-Fi audio magic.

Royole FlexPai

OK, it's a phone, non a PC, but it's cool. And we simply refuse to listen to arguments that the first folding Android earphone, the Royole FlexPai, may ne'er ship into the United States. Is the $1,300 price chase after excessively swollen? Almost certainly. But in our time playacting with the FlexPai, we honestly didn't see too many turnoffs. We kept doubting it would work… but it did!

The FlexPai makes a really compelling argument for folding phablets—in a vivid, tangible, "it's running right now" kind of mode. The phone folds over itself into a chunky slab that's far thicker than the spec sheet's claim of 7.6mm, but unfolds into a wide-cut 7.8-column inch screen functioning a customs duty reading of Android 9. Even better, you can turn tail Android apps in multi-window in some its folded phone constellation or in the unfolded tablet.

A earpiece when you penury it, a tablet when you want. If nothing other, the FlexPai is a strange construct that we'll use as a comparison point if and when Samsung rolls out its ain folding call.

iBuypower Snowblind X4

CES ISN't conscionable a trade show for bran-new products. Information technology's also the establish where PC vendors drudge deep to make over crazy, terminated-the-top project PCs to catch the attention of the press and net one of those snazzy "Sunday-go-to-meeting of" buttons. Well, after seeing dozens of crazy computers—including one with a Nintendo Throw built inside—the victor of "US's Got Crazy Personal computer" contest is easily iBuypower's Snowblind X4.

Not only does it feature four crazy Snowblind doors with motion color graphics, the smooth PC rotates like single of those rotating restaurants at the lead of a hotel. What's rattling impressive, though, is that iBuypower has come up with a way to extend not just power from the base, but likewise information and video too. The company tells us it utilized a hub similar to those used in windmills. Aboveboard, we don't care. We just know that when we want to see the right side of our liquid-cooled graphics batting order, we don't wish to get up move—we want the Personal computer to move for us.