Beginner’s Guide to the Consumer Electronics Show

 

Welcome to 2019.

Here in Las Vegas, the new year heralds the arrival of the annual Consumer Electronics Show, the city’s largest convention. Beginning January 8, more than 150,000 attendees will gather here to get a look at – and salivate over – the latest gadgets, gizmos and technologies their makers hope will change the world.

If you’ve never attended this four-day techno fantasia, a showcase for nearly 4,000 companies displaying breakthrough technologies on more than 2.5 million square feet of exhibit space across 11 venues, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of it all, to be swept away on a tsunami of sensory overload.

To ensure that doesn’t happen, we scoured the internet for a best practices list for CES neophytes to follow. To be sure, we found page after page of seasoned pros proffering helpful tips to impressionable newbies, but it was an article from a 2018 newbie himself, Truong Nguyen, that proved to have just the right amount of practical suggestions and deft insight.

We present it here at the Tahiti Village blog for your enlightenment and edification.

Here are some tips I learned from my first trip to CES 2018. I hope it helps the planning process for first-time attendees.

  1. Arrive the day before the show starts and leave the day before it ends. This helps in avoiding crowds at the airport. Scope out the layout of the show floor and how to get places. The majority of the time you’ll be walking through casinos. Even for those with a great sense of direction, it’s challenging to navigate inside with rows after rows of slot machines. During rush hour, which really is 8 a.m. all the way to 5 p.m., you’re likely to move with the flow of the crowd. It’s easy to end up at the wrong place.
  2. Learn about the Monorail routes and book a hotel that has a stop. I found it to be the most convenient and affordable way to get around. Being located at either end of the Monorail can be an advantage. The majority of people get on and off at the Las Vegas Convention Center and the other stops in the middle of the Strip. The endpoints have less traffic.
  3. Wear comfortable shoes and travel light. There will be a lot of walking (several miles a day!) no matter how close your hotel is to the Convention Center. Events take place all over the Strip.
  4. Have a clear idea of what categories of products or list of companies you’d like to visit. Roaming the show floor to find cool/new products is a bad idea. I planned to visit only a handful of companies that had external graphics enclosures on display. AKiTiO was at a suite inside Bellagio. AORUS had a ballroom at Caesars Palace. ASUS hosted its products at the WYNN Hotel. Razer and Mantiz were the only two at the Las Vegas Convention Center. These five main stops essentially covered the entire length of the Strip.
  5. Last but not least, drink plenty of water. Also carry hand sanitizer and use it often.

Have a great time!

Tahiti Village welcomes our CES visitors

LAS VEGAS – New gadgets, from the helpful (robot assistants) to the hopeful (autonomous vehicles) to the hair-raising (a follicle-stimulating helmet), are drawing visitors by the hundreds of thousands to the annual Consumer Electronics Show, which opened here today.

To all you attendees staying with us at Tahiti Village, we welcome you to our South Pacific-themed resort and hope you have a wonderful time during the convention. We are delighted you chose us as your CES headquarters.

If it wouldn’t be too big an imposition, could you please pick us up a few things from this year’s show? We’ve provided brief descriptions and photos so you’ll know what to look for. Thanks!

Vibrating shorts

 These short shorts, sure to change the legless pants industry as we know it, contain two vibrating sensors on the belt, which connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth and help you navigate tricky urban environments by buzzing when you need to turn left or right. For those of us who do not know our left from our right, this is helpful technology indeed.

You may not know it to look at them, but these pants vibrate.
You may not know it to look at them, but these pants vibrate.

Levitating speakers

Seeing is believing. This speaker levitates!
Seeing is believing. This speaker levitates!

Ever since we saw The Exorcist we’ve been simultaneously fascinated and horrified by the sight of things normally grounded by gravity floating weightlessly in the air. So when we heard about levitating speakers, we knew we just had to have a look.

Here’s how it works: Powerful electromagnets housed inside an accompanying levitation station keep the speaker suspended in the air until the battery begins to run low, at which point the speaker descends to the levitation station and begins to charge wirelessly all by itself and with no interruption in the music.

What will they think of next? Answer …

Meet your flying photographer
Meet your flying photographer

Selfie drones!

These things are surprisingly affordable, making it even easier to indulge in our narcissism.

Watch your step!
Watch your step!

Virtual reality shoes

“Haptic feedback” and vibrations give you the sense of walking on the virtual surfaces you see in front of you when you don this special footwear. Now we can finally walk across a bed of flaming hot embers, building vital team camaraderie without suffering any of the agony.

"Put the butter down!"
“Put the butter down!”

Talking refrigerator

We need help sticking to our New Year’s resolution to eat healthier. What better than a talking refrigerator to guilt you into grabbing an apple? This gabby food box can also read out recipes, tell you when you’re running low on certain items, and dish out recipe suggestions based on its contents. Mmm, ice cream!

Thank you once again for staying at Tahiti Village. Have a great week!