CES 2023: Day 2 recap

CES 2023: Day 2 recap

Video transcript

TERRENCE O'BRIEN: Well, CES is officially underway. The floor is open, and hordes of PR reps, journalists, and eager entrepreneurs are coursing through the arteries of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

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Of course, even before the LVCC opened its doors today, there were still plenty of news coming out of CES 2023. In fact, last night, Sony held its big press conference covering everything from high-end cinema cameras to nanosatellites to video game movies and accessible controllers.

The company's Project Leonardo controller will offer a variety of customizable buttons and hardware for those with limited motor abilities. Like Microsoft's Xbox adaptive controller, Project Leonardo reflects a growing trend in the tech industry and, specifically, in the gaming industry towards better serving those living with disabilities.

The Sony announcement that might have made the biggest splash, though, is that the endlessly delayed "Gran Turismo" movie is finally coming out in 2023. Now personally, I'm not a big fan of the "Gran Turismo" series or of racing games in general, but even I couldn't help but get a little bit excited watching the trailer. The camera work in the Neill Blomkamp film is shaping up to be pretty intense.

And in a weird bit of synergy, Sony unveiled a car of its own, the newly christened Afeela concept which was born out of a partnership with Honda. Unfortunately, the first Sony-Honda mobility vehicle won't actually be available until 2026 at least, so don't go rushing through your wallets just yet.

AMD also made a splash last night announcing two CPUs and a GPU. The beefiest of the bunch is definitely the new Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU which packs an insane 144 megabytes of cache using the company's 3D v-cache technology and reaches boost speeds of 5.7 gigahertz.

The other two AMD announcements focused on the mobile side including the first RDNA 3 GPUs for laptops and a lineup of performance-focused Ryzen HX CPUs. Another company focusing on raw power this CES was Razer which announced two new laptop models, the Blade 16 and Blade 18. They're loaded to the brim with high-end components like Intel Core i9 HX chips and NVIDIA's top of the line RTX 4090 graphics cards.

But personally, I think the most interesting feature is the Blade 16's dual mode screen that can run in either 4K at 120 hertz and a peak brightness of 1,000 nits or full HD plus at 240 hertz and 600 nits depending on whether speed or resolution are more important at that particular moment.

Razer also finally gave us a release date for its Edge cloud gaming handheld which will land on January 26th. The biggest news dump of CES so far though probably belongs to Lenovo. It announced two laptops, a giant tablet, an E-ink notepad, and even a Think-branded phone.

The ThinkPhone finally brings some of Lenovo's enterprise expertise to bear on Motorola's mobile devices, while the Smart Paper tablet syncs handwritten notes with audio recording, so you can scrub through a lecture and immediately see the notes associated with that moment in time.

The most unique device though is the dual-screen Yoga Book 9i. Now sure, we've seen plenty of concept dual-screen machines before, but the 9i isn't a pipe dream, it's an actual product that will go on sale later this year. Lenovo will even bundle all the accessories you need to make the most of its form factor including a foldable stand, a stylus, and a Bluetooth keyboard.

You can simply use the foldable as is and pull up a virtual keyboard on the bottom screen, or you can attach the physical one to the screen and use the exposed bit of the display either as a touchpad or to show widgets. But you could also set it up as basically a portable dual-screen workstation with displays either side by side or stacked one over the other.

Switching to the world of automobiles, Google was finally ready to put its overhauled version of Android Auto on display and has started rolling it out to users. And speaking of maps, Google debuted a new HD version that will be coming to the Polestar 3. These higher resolution maps will be useful for pilot assist but might prove essential for future self-driving features. Unfortunately, there's no word on when or if the HD maps will be coming to other vehicles.

Last but not least, Stellantis revealed its RAM 1500 Revolution BEV Concept truck. In the grand tradition of truly outlandish concept vehicles showing up at CES, the Revolution BEV has an augmented reality heads up display, a collapsible steering wheel, some sort of 3D-animated avatar that the driver can interact with, and it will even follow you around like some sort of sad puppy dog if you want.

On the more practical side, it also has four-wheel steering and an 800-volt architecture that could allow it to get up to 100 miles of charge in just 10 minutes. Of course, you'll never be able to actually buy the RAM 1500 Revolution BEV. It's only a concept. But supposedly, there will be a RAM 1500 BEV coming in 2024 that will be loosely based on this.

And don't worry, there's still plenty more to come from CES. We've only just started scouring the floor for hidden gems. So for all the details on anything you might have missed, check out our comprehensive coverage on Engadget.com or our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more from CES 2023.

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