CES Round Up: Our Favourite Trends of 2018
By Mike Agerbo
January 16, 2018
Product Discovery
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CES 2018 has come to a close and it was another great year on the show floor. I definitely had a chance to see some new innovations on last year’s trends and saw a few different ones I’ll be keeping my eye on next year. Here are a few of my favourites:
There are always a number of innovations in the area of transportation at CES, including self-driving cars. Of course, we saw some of those again this year but a few others caught my eye. Yamaha showed off a motorcycle robot that can drive a stock motorcycle autonomously—it was pretty cool to see in action! The Electron wheel was another impressive innovation. This wheel replaces your traditional bike’s front tire to turn your bike into an electric one. The wheel can easily be pulled of when you lock up your bike in public and it goes up to 80 kilometres on a single charge.
Wearables have been big for a while but they’re always evolving and this year I saw some devices that really impressed me. I think the standout was definitely the Sgnl watchstrap. This device connects to your smartphone over Bluetooth and, using bone conduction technology, enables you to talk on the phone by simply placing your fintertip to your ear. The strap basically conducts sound waves from your wrist to your fingertip so you can hear them by pressing your finger to your ear. It also has a microphone built right in so you can speak into the strap. It pretty much makes you look like a secret service agent and who doesn’t love that?
I was also impressed with various efforts to make wearables more aesthetically pleasing. For example, we saw a smart ring called Motiv. It looks like a classic band but it tracks activity, sleep, and heart rate. The Fossil Group has also released over 300 Android wear watch styles under 14 brands, including Kate Spade and Michael Kors.
I tend to be a little scattered so I love smart trackers because they make it easy to find lost or misplaced items using my smartphone. While there are a number of them on the market, Tile trackers tend to be the most popular and with good reason! Tile is constantly innovating to add new models, like ones that are waterproof. This year, Tile has baked its tracking technology into items such as key rings and Nomad power banks. I look forward to seeing more devices with this tracking technology in the future.
Robots definitely have a cool factor, especially for those of us who have always been nerds at heart. They captured our imaginations when we were kids and now they’re slowly becoming a reality. Needless to say, I love to see the various robots being exhibited at CES and this year’s show didn’t disappoint with robots that revolutionize high-speed video from Nikon and a variety of robots from LG ranging from tiny home assistants to lawn mowers to shopping card companions.
If you want to learn more about all the fantastic things we saw last week, check out all our videos on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Transportation
There are always a number of innovations in the area of transportation at CES, including self-driving cars. Of course, we saw some of those again this year but a few others caught my eye. Yamaha showed off a motorcycle robot that can drive a stock motorcycle autonomously—it was pretty cool to see in action! The Electron wheel was another impressive innovation. This wheel replaces your traditional bike’s front tire to turn your bike into an electric one. The wheel can easily be pulled of when you lock up your bike in public and it goes up to 80 kilometres on a single charge.
Wearables
Wearables have been big for a while but they’re always evolving and this year I saw some devices that really impressed me. I think the standout was definitely the Sgnl watchstrap. This device connects to your smartphone over Bluetooth and, using bone conduction technology, enables you to talk on the phone by simply placing your fintertip to your ear. The strap basically conducts sound waves from your wrist to your fingertip so you can hear them by pressing your finger to your ear. It also has a microphone built right in so you can speak into the strap. It pretty much makes you look like a secret service agent and who doesn’t love that?
I was also impressed with various efforts to make wearables more aesthetically pleasing. For example, we saw a smart ring called Motiv. It looks like a classic band but it tracks activity, sleep, and heart rate. The Fossil Group has also released over 300 Android wear watch styles under 14 brands, including Kate Spade and Michael Kors.
Smart Trackers
I tend to be a little scattered so I love smart trackers because they make it easy to find lost or misplaced items using my smartphone. While there are a number of them on the market, Tile trackers tend to be the most popular and with good reason! Tile is constantly innovating to add new models, like ones that are waterproof. This year, Tile has baked its tracking technology into items such as key rings and Nomad power banks. I look forward to seeing more devices with this tracking technology in the future.
Robots
Robots definitely have a cool factor, especially for those of us who have always been nerds at heart. They captured our imaginations when we were kids and now they’re slowly becoming a reality. Needless to say, I love to see the various robots being exhibited at CES and this year’s show didn’t disappoint with robots that revolutionize high-speed video from Nikon and a variety of robots from LG ranging from tiny home assistants to lawn mowers to shopping card companions.
If you want to learn more about all the fantastic things we saw last week, check out all our videos on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.