Gadgetory

hey I'm Danny Eckerman here at CES 2014 with Scott Stein and one of the traditions we always do here every year Scott is a roundup of the best laptops and other pcs from the show obviously computers always a really big category of CES tradition and now you know this year it sort of feels like a lowly they don't have the surprise of the tablets and convertibles in the same way but there's still some new things coming out last year we chose eight for the first time we have a lot of people doing the high bridge things that change shape and form before that you had ultrabooks even before that netbook so this year I don't think there's a big kind of computer theme I think we're seeing refinement a lot of things that we saw before yeah it was like you know it's like price of Fort you know portability maybe taking some of those ideas and like I said refining the cock assigns a little more a little more Bible speaking of refining actually we have a refinement of one of our favorite laptops / hybrids from last year this is the live yoga to the yoga obviously was one of our big hits last year the yoga 2 pro came out in the fall of 2013 that was a very expensive very premium system this is the yoga 2 minus the pro so it's a little bit more affordable and what they do to make it more affordable is they take out that super high-res 3200 x 1800 screen just goes back to regular 1080p so that's a little bit thicker but you still get that awesome hymns look at that that bends all the way back and this is the 13 inch version I think it's a bit under a thousand dollars it's still kind of premium what I really like a lot is that they have an 11 inch version of the yoga that has an intel pentium chip so you trade down a little bit there but that starts at 549 and to get this really great mechanically in John that fantastic well you know it actually feels more like the idea pad line before the yoga you know if you look if you ever shop for an idea pad and looked at those like mid-range models kind of has that feel but then they're incorporating that hinge you can imagine like you'll start seeing this in more laptops tell you saw touch across more laptops maybe all laptops will start becoming convertible like that's kind of the big secret I've actually seen a couple of other things this week that have this style of hinge on it yeah some of them have been out some of them haven't but I think people are figuring out in that hybrid space this is one of the designs that actually works because it doesn't mess with that laptop form factor we don't lose anything so like why not throw that in it's like you know if you can do that and it's not a really crazy experimental design it's just there for you and the price is reasonable you're not paying up for it let me show you real fast before the four ways they want you to use it are in a regular laptop they have kind of the the table tent like this that's the one I'm lesia a way to use i would probably i'll use 10 less you're just playing like restaurant specials there's a high things underneath then we have the kiosk which i think is actually kind of cool because you love that like this like playing a movie you're doing a presentation keyboards out of way but you can still manipulate the the touchscreen and then of course there's a tablet mode and you still have the keyboard of the back here some people find that really weird but it's deactivated it's not a deal killer for me but I'd love for someone to come up with one that like kind of like you know makes the keyboard disapproves it or you need like a keyboard cozy underneath don't keep any liquid own liquids on your desk anyhow there's like something you don't want any schmutz on your desk but i love the yoga line and i love that they have the more expensive yoga 2 pro and now the slightly more reasonable yoga what's great how affordable those are becoming it's nice that's a great segue co speaking of affordable here we go everybody likes Chromebooks that's like one of the hot topics right now I thought this was a macbook looking at it from behind and the keyboard I just got this like macbook industry especially the keepall silver and my keyboard at that angle then you crest over and okay this is different what is this and yet it is only two hundred and seventy nine dollars because this is the toshiba chromebook that that's the only name just toshiba Chromebook so it's a 13 inch chrome book and we haven't seen a 13-inch chromebook before which is crazy to me we've seen some 11 inch models yeah that's really been most of them a couple of four teens but nothing right here in the middle and the sweet spot well it feels exactly like you know kind of like an ultrabook but a plastic type feel but it reminds me of the chromebook pixel reminds me of like an affordable version of like that type of level of laptop but in a super budget area if you want to explore okay you know the idea of like a full chromebook experience if you can you want to buy that for like simple browsing it's not bad and a 279 you know you know it's going to be kind of plasticky but it still actually looks and feels better than a lot of the other Chromebooks I've seen and I like the screen that's not too big not too small we always say that a 13-inch laptop is really the ideal size because it's big enough you can work on it all day but it's small enough that you can actually put in your bag and carry with you you know at least three or four days a week so that 13 inch size in the middle it's got an hdmi output yeah it's got a lot of outputs I mean your electricity no 2 USB 3 and HDMI SD card slot so he got all that stuff I remember I tried using a Chromebook to like a week or two and it was a little bit of a struggle it didn't do every single thing I wanted it to do but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be if you're blogging you're living only in a web environment like even the stuff that we file year at seeing it you can totally do it as long as you're not too dependent on advanced photo work you know you could do that too but yeah for for your basic stuff it's very functional as long as I have that you have an internet connection yes there is otherwise there's offline elements but it's I feel very worried you can cash google docs it feels like a leap of faith even though I've never lost anything it's a sense that you're still in a browser environment looking a little better with offline apps a little better with that but it is a largely you have to be connected and if there's any kind of stress test for whether you can stay online reliably it's definitely here at CES where there's so many signals and some ice your finger does carry three hotspots with you just to get one signal yeah actually the built-in ATT Wi-Fi alternately is fantastic for me or not sometimes it's my Savior and on the very high end of the scale opposite the low end is it is a new addition to one of your favorite laptop line Scott and that's the advance on eight of book nine this is just called the aid of book 9 2014 edition it's a 15 inch version and I'm calls daylight or any I don't think the plus or light and that and you review the 13 inch version the best nine plus and you loved it why did you love it well I loved it because it was it was thin it had a tremendously high resolution screen the price wasn't too off of what you're paying for equivalent products like that and just the design and performance we're great and the battery life was great and that line of book 9 or before was series 9 those have been a great line of products and there's been experimentation remember the 15 inch series 9 it came out a little while ago I mean it's bigger I love the compactness but still you got the design here is you know largely the same and let's say the port design is the same too yeah I like having a super big touchscreen on a super slim laptop you don't really see that too often even now this doesn't have the super high resolution screen that the 13 inch version has it it's just a 1080p screen but it's also only going to be about 1,200 bucks so if you're going to compete kind of with Apple in that over a thousand dollar you know price area you're really have to be super premium and I think this a book 9 series is one of the few guys that actually does that they have some new audio decoding hardware in here that's kind of interest to audio files that works very nicely with uncompressed audio files kind of like lossless at track files and if you bought something like I don't like like that Beatles mp3 Apple that came out a few years ago you get the regular mp3 files and you get the a tract files okay which are like a 24 24 bit files and not a lot of computer could Ben plays nice to those I think that's kind of cool can I wish to set a higher resolution screen although you're looking at it I don't notice that the difference is there I mean it looks you know from this distance it looks good it looks very sharp well maybe that'll be the plus edition that will come out later probably and by my one of my favorite things this year is a sequel to one of my favorite things from last year and that does this big guy right here this is the lenovo horizon 2 sequel to the horizon 27 it is a 27-inch what I call a table top PC it's basically a gigantic tablet because it's got a battery in it and then you can put this kick stand up and add a keyboard and mouse and it's like an all-in-one PC okay lenovo actually has a table stand right now we've got it sitting down there that you can actually roll it around on its like a kitchen cart yeah you can put it flat and rolled around all over the place we took it off so we can play with it here so what the what the thing allows you to do is stand up like this regular all-in-one PC then you push down and the hinge goes down there we go and then it kicks in to this special mode called aura it's like a software overlay that Lenovo came up with that's good for this sort of this tabletop thing and in the office whenever we have a table top PC we put them on the couch and put them on Ottomans tables people just want to come over it's very sci-fi like they want to like manipulate photos and move stuff around yeah this is like where you have your like Situation Room we're like all gonna stand around and kind of like manipulate i don't know i'm going to manipulate on this but i want to manipulate things but something and it's kind of like the original product called surface that microsoft had right that was a big tabletop pc and then they use the name for something else so here we're into it now i can take a photo right here and i can move around and I could spin it I can go into games and do that around and Avan let's do a little uh yeah air hockey right and it comes with these little paddles a couple of the gaming accessories let's see if we can launch the air hockey game and that'll give us a fun little it's thinner that's still have you I mean you don't want to carry this around houses last year's was 18 pounds yeah it's don't want a camera around you can go from a room at least and it is definitely fitter than last year's all right so i'm going to count you very quickly to a 1 a one-point game of air hockey let's do it you're gonna go for this is unfair this is unfair that's right I'm gonna win the first one then we're gonna make it interesting yeah you're right put your panel a little circle okay ready here we go okay don't scorn yourself Scott I just did it you're right so let me win that Josie were the better air hockey player than me thank you Scott I appreciate that and that is a pretty much our collection of a lot of the favorite pieces that we've seen here at CES 2014 so far so thank you Scott sign i'm dan ackerman that's better these are our best species of CES 2014