CES 2018 was a stunning year of innovation, changes to the smart home and some great ideas that will be the start of more to come. With a crew of seven, we put 14 eyes around the show to come back and debate until an outcome was decided.

Here are the winners…

  • Best Accessory – DJI Osmo Mobile 2 – Shoot stunningly smooth content from your smartphone on this handy accessory.

  • Best Home Entertainment – LG Soundbar SK10Y (Meridian) – One of the best performing soundbars that we saw at CES with the latest technology from LG.

  • Best Gadget – Aveine wine aerator – An amazing gadget to help you assess your wine, understand how long it needs to be aerated for and you then simply pour to taste the difference.

  • Best Innovation – Harman Audio – This entertainment system for the car was not just a centre console, it was the entire dashboard from door to door with touch and curved screens which elevated from within the dash.

  • Best Appliance – Whirlpool Microwave – An appliance that has been seriously upgraded. It is connected to Google Home and Amazon Alexa for commands and status updates but a handy smartphone app allows you to scan products and have the cooking details set automatically on the microwave.

  • Best Audio – AKG N5005 – Audio really is one of those products that need to be heard to be believed. The earphones don’t look entirely different to others on the market but we were blown away by the sound and cannot wait to see this land in Australia in 2018.

  • Best IoT – Kohler Konnect – CES was dominated by the smarthome but the smart bathroom was a real highlight. We experienced how the mirror will interact with Google Home and Amazon Alexa but also how it was all interact with the shower, bath, toilet and taps.

  • Best Automotive – Nissan Brain – The Nissan Brain to vehicle will harness the power of the human brain to make autonomous driving more involving into the future by adding a human element to the artificial intelligence and computer decision making.

  • Best Wearable – Prevent Biometrics Mouth Guard – A connected mouthguard which will allow players to look at the data of the hits incurred during a game for use in medical purposes as well as potentially in the entertainment space as we look to see more data about knocks players sustain.

  • Best Exhibit – Intel – This booth was a wonderful experience of all things IoT, 5G and smart technology. The thing which made this a winner though was that anyone around the world was able to experience the booth online in a virtual environment in VR or through their browser.

  • Best of the Best: Dell XPS 13 – We’ve never been more tempted to pack our MacBooks away until we saw this. With the carbon weave and the goretex technology on the inside this laptop has some stunning innovations in the construction process to improve performance and achieve a 19 hour battery life. More detail in the story but a huge standout when we looked at how much innovation occurred here, in a space that has been a little quiet lately.

  • Bloody Ripper Idea – Gobe2 – This wrist worn gadget was designed to help you track what you eat by automatically detecting your intake and logging it in an app. Beyond just a step counter this was a bloody ripper idea.

  • Bloody Ripper Idea – Sgnl – Holding the phone to your ear can be a royal pain in the rear. This wrist worn product was able to connect to your phone and make your hand the phone when talking on the phone. This meant sticking your finger in your ear to hear. Real Dick Tracey stuff.

  • Bloody Ripper Idea – Genovation GXE Corvette – This Corvette is the worlds fastest street legal EV car from a private company which removes the traditional engine and replaces it with five batteries from the front to the rear of the car. It could do 0-100 in under 3 seconds and had over 800 horsepower. All yours for $750,000 USD and they’re sold out.

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