It’s the third year running for this popular exhibition and I’ve not yet been, so with a free invite to the preview trade day last Tuesday, I eagerly handed over my money for the not-so-free train ticket up to the Birmingham NEC.
It’s fairly large event, with many of the big names in electronics attending. I was expecting to see plenty of enthusiastic examples of 3D, and Tablet PCs galore and my expectations were indeed realised.
I’ve yet to be converted to 3D for televisions. And I won’t be until perhaps glassless 3DTV that doesn’t make you dizzy is a reality, and I think that’s a way off. But although I’m not a gamer, I can see the attraction of 3D for gaming. Playing the latest games, you’re already immersed into a virtual world, with engrossing visual effects and sounds. Donning a pair of £100 3D glasses to enhance your virtual world is a natural next step.
However for our family of six, we’d have to spend £600 on 3D glasses that will possibly last 6 months with careful investigations by a 1 year-old. Not to mention we’d have to sit there looking quite ridiculous!
Sony and Acer were showing off their latest 3D gaming laptops which come with a “free” pair of specs. Sony’s latest F series F21Z1E retails at a hard-to-swallow £1800, especially considering expensive gaming laptops like this will only play the latest games for around a year! Still it did look fantastic and if I could have smuggled one home with me, it would have made the train journey back less arduous.
Sony also had on display their new camcorders with built in projectors. Playing back HD content is not particularly easy, so I welcome any innovation that makes this simpler. You’ll need a darkened room to play back your footage - these pico-projectors produce a very limited light output unsurprisingly given their size and battery operation. But I’m sure it won’t take long for significant advances in that area. And for the time being, it’s quite exciting having to draw the curtains and dim the lights to watch your movies, just like in the olden days! The prices aren’t too bad either considering the features, starting at £580 for the Sony PJ10E with full HD, 16GB of memory and 30x optical zoom.
Although not a new release I got to have a good demonstration of the Sonos sound system. It’s a very impressive piece of kit that allows you to stream music wirelessly from the Internet or your own music library to either a single set of speakers or up to 32 rooms simultaneously! What’s novel is how the multiple Sonos devices connect together. Rather than relying on your home WiFi setup, they form their own network, connecting to each other, rather than a central point. This makes the range almost limitless and improves reliability. And it enables the devices to all play in sync with each other which is vital. The whole system can either be controlled by a Sonos remote, which is expensive, or a free app on an iPhone, iPad or any Android device. We hope to be selling the Sonos range soon.
There was an awful lot to see and in one day I probably only got to visit around half the show. Some of the smaller stands had some interesting products too. One such product that caught my eye was Sugru – a silicon based product that you mould like plasticine and then let it set. It will stick to most substances so is a great fun DIY aid. It looked fun for children too, but unfortunately it’s not suitable in its unset form and apart from that, it’s a little pricey to be squeezed into a ball and chucked behind the sofa!
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