CES - Must-see products

Acer's Iconia dual touch-screen laptop makes another appearance

LAS VEGAS--Not exactly new to CES, Acer's inventive Iconia laptop is making another appearance here. Back in November 2010, the dual touch-screen system was shown off in New York, along with a few Acer tablets, but little has been heard of it since.

Walking the line between tablet and laptop, the Iconia has two 14-inch screens, both of which are multitouch-enabled. The bottom screen can display content, a traditional QWERTY keyboard, or a variety of other control surfaces.

When we first saw it (and snagged a demo unit for a hands-on video tour), we said, "Iconia is, at its heart, a Core i5 laptop with familiar specs: up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, integrated Intel graphics, a hard drive up to 750GB, and Windows 7 Home Premium. Ports are also typical for a high-end laptop: two USB 2.0, one USB 3.0, HDMI, and VGA."

In hands-on use, it seemed fast and responsive, and the onscreen typing function was usable, though awkward at first. It's similar to the Toshiba Libretto W100, which also had a dual touch-screen design, but crammed into two 7-inch screens. On the larger 14-inch screens, it feels much more natural, but as with iPad typing, there's sure to be a learning curve. We haven't spent enough hands-on time with the Iconia to tell if it'll be more than a gimmick, or if it will ever be as easy to use as a traditional keyboard. … Read more

LG unveils the Optimus Black

LAS VEGAS--Hot on the heels of the LG Optimus 2X, LG has just introduced another Android smartphone here at CES 2011 called the LG Optimus Black. The Optimus Black promises a super bright 4-inch "NOVA display" in a very thin 9.2mm design. In fact, LG claims that it tapers down to 6.0mm to make it the world's thinnest smartphone.

The NOVA display claims to be the brightest and most readable mobile screen with "700 nits of brightness" for optimal visibility. The new display technology also promises improved battery life. The Optimus Black will … Read more

Canon introduces entry-level pro camcorder

LAS VEGAS--Along with the announcement of a new "prosumer" camcorder, the Vixia HF G10, Canon announced a version of the product targeted at professionals. The XA10 seems to be identical to the G10, but comes with a detachable handle that includes dual XLR inputs, audio switches, an infrared light, tally lamp, removable microphone holder, zoom and record switches, and an accessory shoe (though the G10 has a shoe, it looks like the handle attaches to it, so the handle gives you another shoe).

It's not clear whether at some point you'll be able to upgrade the … Read more

LG's high-end passive 3D LED TVs get 240Hz

Update August 16, 2011 We won't be reviewing this TV, but we did review the LG LW5600 series. The two are extremely similar except that the LW6500 has a 240Hz refresh rate--a difference we don't expect to have much impact on picture quality. For more, check out the full review of the LD LW5600 series.

After Vizio, LG is the second TV maker at CES to announce a lineup of TVs equipped with so-called passive 3D compatibility. Passive 3D differs from the active variety found on nearly all current 3D TVs in a number of ways, including the … Read more

LG details Nano LEDs with better backlights

Update March 29, 2011 LG has announced that this series of TVs, along with the LW9500 series, will not be released. Instead the company tells us that it will release another series (or maybe more than one)--featuring the full-array local dimming Nano backlight detailed below and using passive 3D technology and not active--in mid-September 2011. We expect to hear more details closer to the products' launch. In the meantime we're keeping the information below for reference since we expect the new models, whatever their model names end up being, to closely resemble the ones here.

LAS VEGAS--LG … Read more

Samsung improves flagship D8000 plasma

Samsung's flagship plasma TV from last year, the PNC8000 series, was our second-favorite TV of 2010, so it's no surprise we expect good things from its successor, the PND8000 series.

The specification list of the PND8000 has a couple of advantages over that of the step-down PND6500, namely a "Real Black Filter picture enhancement" and a "LCE (Local Contrast Enhancer)." The former performed well on the PNC8000 we tested last year to preserve black level performance in brighter rooms. The latter is a new one to us, but when we hear an explanation from … Read more

Vizio details its Google TVs' sizes, LEDs

Editors' Note Jan 8, 2011: The Vizio XVT3D6SP series was selected as the winner of CNET's Best of CES award in the TVs category.

Yesterday, Vizio announced that it would ship TVs equipped with the Google TV platform and today it followed up with more specifics on the models, which will form the XVT3D6SP series.

That series, designated by the VIA (Vizio Internet Apps) Plus moniker, will come in two screen sizes: 47-inch and 55-inch. Both are larger than any of Sony's NSX-GT1 models, which are the only other Google TVs officially announced so far.

VIA Plus adds … Read more

One year later, the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 rises as a Windows 7 laptop/Android hybrid

A year ago, Lenovo's bold concept device, the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid, astonished us not only for its neat transforming design and its detachable tablet, but for anticipating the year in tablets to come. Indeed, we're still wondering how laptops and tablets can play well together.

Back then, the U1 had a tablet running a Linux-based Skylight OS developed by Lenovo, while the base laptop it attached to had undefined specs. Now, the U1's specs are clear: Windows 7 Home Premium and a 1.2 GHz Intel CULV Core i5-540UM CPU, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 320GB … Read more

Marvell hybrid controller meshes HDD, SSD

LAS VEGAS--You should by now have heard of Seagate's Momentus XT (if not, check out our review). It is the first mass-produced hybrid hard drive that offers some benefits of a solid-state drive (SSD) at a much lower cost and without the sacrifice of storage space.

The Momentus XT is called "hybrid" because it consists of a traditional platter-based hard drive and 4GB of flash memory, within one physical chassis. Now what if you want to create a hybrid package by combining an SSD and a traditional hard-disk drive (HDD)?

The answer is what Marvell announced today, … Read more

Samsung SH100 camera wants to be BFF with your smartphone

LAS VEGAS--Samsung seems to be the only camera manufacturer really pushing forward with Wi-Fi in its cameras. It's launched a handful of wireless-enabled models over the past couple years, but they've been mysteriously hard to come by, so I haven't been able to review one. Hopefully that will change with the SH100.

The camera has built-in 802.11n wireless that can be used for connecting to your Wi-Fi network for automatic backups or viewing on DLNA-equipped devices; connect to other Samsung Wi-Fi cameras for sharing; connect to hot spots including those provided by Boingo (an account comes … Read more