Everything creatives need to know from the world’s biggest tech show.
CES 2019 has opened its doors – and Creative Bloq is here in Vegas to bring you all the latest news, highlights and hands-on reviews from one of the world’s largest consumer tech shows.
We’ll be focusing on the most exciting new innovations for designers, artists and creatives – from laptops to foldable phones and rumoured 8K cameras – so stay tuned throughout the week. You’ll find all the latest news right here.
The Consumer Electronics Show is an exhilarating glimpse into the future of tech, with the latest and greatest names in the business (apart from Apple) showcasing their new innovations. The annual trade show covers everything from drones and driverless cars to cryptocurrency, smart homes and beyond – and it’s massive.
This year, more than 4,500 exhibiting companies are spread out over 11 venues with over 180,000 attendees from 150 countries expected, plus 6,500 members of the press. It isn’t open to the public, though; only those in the industry and journalists.
When is CES 2019?
The Consumer Electronics Show 2019 officially starts on Tuesday 8 Jan and will run until 11 January. However, Monday was packed with press events – and we've seen some new tech already. Press conferences have included Intel, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony, with LG presenting the first presentation on Monday.
CES 2019: news and highlights for creatives so far
We’ve already seen some exciting new tech at CES 2019, with a number of exciting announcements from a range of companies – both this week, and in the recent run up to the show. Here are our CES 2019 highlights so far...
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The Dell XPS 13 has been updated for 2019 with some key changes that make one of the best laptops even better. It's faster, more powerful and, crucially, Dell has addressed last year’s biggest complaint and ditched the ‘nose cam’. But is it still the best 13-inch laptop on the market? Find out here.
"We’re on the cusp of a major shift in consumer behaviour." That's according to Steve Koenig from the Consumer Technology Association. He highlighted the biggest tech trends on show at CES 2019 – and we've pulled out the most important ones for designers here. Read more.
Huawei has debuted its new MateBook 13 laptop. Widely touted as a potential Apple MacBook Air killer, the MateBook 13 features an incredibly narrow-bezel display and an 88 per cent screen-to-body ratio, which is more generous than the MacBook Air's 82 per cent. Does it have the power to beat Apple? Read more.
Wacom has announced the new Wacom Cintiq 16 – it's an entry-level model aimed at young designers, students and hobbyists, for a price that's much more manageable than anything in the Pro range. Read more.
Royole has shown the world's first foldable phone, the FlexPai, at CES 2019. While the benefits of having a phone that folds remain hazy, electronics companies have been tripping over themselves to get one out for some time now. In a surprise move, relatively unknown startup Royole has overtaken the likes of Samsung to be the first to get an actual flexible phone onto the market. Read more.
Taiwanese gaming pioneer MSI has announced a powerful new ultra-portable laptop for creatives. Aimed at professional artists, video editors, photo editors, graphic designers and animators, the 15.6-inch P63 Modern comes with up to the latest eight-generation Core i7 processor, and optional discrete Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q graphics with 4GB of GDDR5 VRAM. Read more.
Samsung has previewed a 75-inch version of its modular MicroLED TV. The company has manage to shrink its pioneering TV tech to small enough for your living room – but the most exciting part is that because it's modular, sometime in the near future we'll be able to order custom MicroLED TVs at any size or aspect ratio to suit our spaces. Is this the shape of TVs to come? Read more.
Asus has announced an exciting new 15-inch workstation-class laptop for content-creation professionals. Made for on the move, it packs an Intel Xeon processor and NVIDIA Quadro P3200 graphics into an incredibly thin chassis with an even larger display. Read more.
Samsung has unveiled a new laptop with a graphics card so powerful it will take your breath away. The new Notebook Odyssey comes packed with a GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, meaning that creatives – especially video editors and animators – can work on the go without compromising their workflow. Read more.
LG to reveal two ‘ultra’ monitors at CES 2019 Back in December, LG announced that it will be showcasing two new 'ultra' monitors. One, a whopping 49-inch ultrawide monitor, will be aimed at business professionals; while the other – a 38-inch gaming monitor – will have a curved 4K display, and be of most interest to creatives. Read more.
CES 2019: trends we expect to see
01. Foldable phones
Multiple device-makers are expected to tease foldable smartphones at CES 2019. Samsung, LG and Huawei all have an iron in the fire – will we see Samsung’s folding Galaxy smartphone make its debut this week? All being well, CES will provide a preview for this year's big phone launches ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.
02. 8K closer to your home
8K is almost set to go mainstream, with the likes of Samsung, Sony, LG, Toshiba and Sharp widely expected to show off 8K TV displays at CES 2019. That said, these TVs will be ridiculously expensive, so don't worry if you've only just stepped up to 4K – you'll have a bit of breathing space yet.
Meanwhile, LG has already announced what it claims to be the world’s first OLED 8K display. And there's a rumour that Sony will be launching an 8K camera, as well as an 8K TV, projector and its own processing platform this week, as our sister site Digital Camera World reports.
03. The year of 5G
Will 5G become reality this year? We’re expecting the giants to show us what 5G’s really capable of this week – not just faster smartphones and download speeds, but immersive virtual reality worlds without lag, robotic surgery, secure smart-home devices, reliable self-driving tech and more.
On a smartphone front though, just remember that although 5G-ready handsets and devices will start shipping this year, 5G wireless networks won’t be available nationwide until 2020 – and the first ones won’t give you those tempting 10-gigabytes-per-second data speeds.
Julia is editor-in-chief, retail at Future Ltd, where she works in e-commerce across a number of consumer lifestyle brands. A former editor of design website Creative Bloq, she’s also worked on a variety of print titles, and was part of the team that launched consumer tech website TechRadar. She's been writing about art, design and technology for over 15 years.
