10 more great gadgets from CES 2016 by USA TODAY

Jan 11, 2016

Another CES is now put to bed, but the top tech is just getting started. Here are some of my favorite gadgets this year’s show.

1. L’Oreal My UV Patch and MC10 BioStamp

These two stick-on sensors from MC10 are tiny wearables designed to monitor your health. My UV Patch, developed in partnership with L’Oreal, is a heart-shaped sticker that’s as thin as a single strand of hair and monitors your sun exposure — too much can be terrible for your skin. The sticker changes color when you’re in the sun and pairs with a smartphone app to tell when you’ve had enough. You’ll still need to pull your phone out to see your exposure, either by taking a picture of the patch (which the app will judge by the color of the patch) or by reading an NFC chip in the patch. It’s waterproof and lasts for five days, making it the perfect way to keep your skin safe and healthy while you spending a weekend at the beach or on the slopes.

MC10 is also working on the BioStamp, a medical monitor that tracks vital signs — like electrocardiogram data and muscle activity — for doctors and researchers. Like the UV Patch, it’s a slim stick-on device about the size of a band-aid. That leaves patients free of bulky monitors and annoying wires. BioStamp is currently in testing, but should be available for medical researchers soon.

Available: 2016

Cost: Unknown, though L’Oreal plans to make the UV Patch free, possibly bundled with other products.

2. Misfit Ray Fitness and Sleep Monitor

Misfit has always made sleek, high-style fitness monitors, and this year they’ve added another to their lineup with the Ray. Though the tech here isn’t much different from their Shine or Swarovski Activity Crystal — the Ray tracks your steps and sleep with a new cylindrical style.  This minimalist, tube-shaped gadget comes in carbon black or rose gold, can be worn as a bracelet or necklace — or even attached to your shoelaces. For watch-wearers, though, the appealing part of the Ray is that, unlike the circular Shine, it doesn’t look odd when you wear it on your wrist next to a more traditional watch or even newer, bulkier smartwatch.

The Ray has an impressive battery life of six months, making it an activity tracker you almost never have to take off. That means it’s always tracking your activity instead of sitting on your desk to charge. The interface is as minimalist as the design, communicating with a multicolor LED light and vibration, while you can check your smartphone for detailed stats.

Available: March 2016

Price: $100 (with sports band), $120 (with leather band) 

3. Lenovo Yoga Mouse and Remote Control

This slim mouse/remote hybrid will make a great travel companion — just like Lenovo’s Yoga laptops. The Yoga starts out completely flat, where you can use it as a remote to control presentations, movies, or music playing on your laptop. But give it a twist and it shifts into a downward dog shape, with the perfect ergonomic angle to rest your hand on for use as a mouse. A rechargeable battery gives it about a month of battery life, which makes it easy to toss into your laptop bag without having to worry about whether you’ve plugged it in (or whether you’re carrying spare batteries).

Available: April 2016

Price: $70

4. ONAGOfly Palm-Sized Selfie Drone

The ONAGOfly drone is just under 5” square and 2” tall, making it almost a pocket-sized drone. The best thing about this pint-sized gadget is how simple it is to fly and take photos with. It takes off and lands automatically — you just have to toss it in the air to get it flying and it will come in for a landing on your outstretched palm. Once it’s airborne, you can tell it to follow you via GPS or control it manually using your smartphone.

The main goal of this drone is take perfect selfies with it’s 15-megapixel camera that can capture 1080p HD video at 30 frames per second. Tell it to follow you to record video of your latest mountain biking adventure or launch it in the air to capture photos from any angle. It’s great for capturing family photos and even has smile detection to snap photos right when everyone’s posed. You can live stream video or save it directly to your mobile devices.

The only downside of a drone this small is flight time: the ONAGOfly can only fly for about 15 minutes (12 while recording video), meaning you’ll need to keep your adventures pretty short if you want to record them in full. Once the battery dies, it takes about a half hour to recharge.

Available: Shipping in January 2016

Price: $200

5. Hyundai Virtual Car Owner’s Manual

Have you ever found yourself flipping through hundreds of pages of small print in your car’s owner manual to try to figure out what a specific indicator light means? (If you haven’t, count yourself lucky!) Automaker Hyundai is about to make it so you never have to again with a super cool augmented reality owner’s manual built in to its Car Care app.

So just what does that mean? You’ll just download the app to your smartphone and then point it to the part of your car you want to know about. Labels pop up on your phone’s screen — overlaying the live image of your car — to show what you’re looking at. Then, just tap on anything to get a how-to video or description, or even tutorials for basic maintenance, like checking the oil or changing the air filter.

Though you shouldn’t throw away your owner’s manual just yet, Hyundai will be adding these new AR features to Car Care early this year, starting with Sonata 2015 and 2016 models and expanding from there.

Available: First quarter of 2016 (for select models)

Price: Free

6. Recon Snow2 Ski Goggles

More smart everything: Never you fear, there's no end in sight to the trend we've seen over the past several years of putting "smart" technology into everyday objects – and this year chipmaker Intel upped the game with dozens of new integrations in everything from bras and dresses to Recon Snow2 goggles.

Now, just why do you need smart ski goggles? Using the goggles as a display screen, the Snow2 will show you data about speed, descent, distance, and even airtime with a whole suite of integrated sensors. A GPS lets you navigate your way around the slopes and can even help you keep tabs on your friends when they’re out of sight. And just like any smart gadget, it connects wirelessly with your phone to let you receive calls and texts — or just access your music player.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg: Recon sells similar gadgets for biking, running and paintball.

Available: Now

Price: $400 (standalone), $550 (with UVEX G.GL9 Recon Ready goggles)

7. Ili Wearable Translator

Remember how amazed everyone was when they first saw Skype demo real-time translation in its chat app? Ili is a device that can almost pull off the same feat during actual face-to-face conversations. Wear Ili like a necklace and when you have something to say, just talk to it and press a button — it automatically translates your message aloud in the language of your choice. (Currently, it works in English, Japanese and Chinese, with plans to expand to French, Thai, Korean, Spanish, Italian and Arabic.)

While there are plenty of translation apps for your smartphone — or even low tech options like paperback phrase guides — Ili is rather unique in that it doesn’t require an Internet connection, instead having a built-in dictionary of 50,000 words. The speaker is loud enough that everyone can hear it, though the CES show floor was a bit too noisy for it to hear me. Still, it’s an impressive piece of tech that could make international travel a lot easier.

Available: Pre-orders starting this spring

Price: Around $200

8. Sony Bravia 4K HDR Ultra HD TVs

It wouldn’t be CES without tons and tons of TVs — really big TVs, really thin TVs, and lots of 4K this and UHD that. We’ve been talking about ultra-high-definition 4K TVs for a few years now, and this could be the year people can finally buy one because prices are finally coming down and content is finally catching up.

Sony's latest models include the Bravia XBR-X850D (55", 65", 75" and 85”), the XBR-X930D (55" and 65”), and the XBR-X940D (75”), and all of them have 4K displays offering four times the number pixels than a standard 1080p HD screen — translating to sharper, clearer pictures. On top of that, Sony’s new 4K Bravia series integrates HDR, which provides brighter colors and better contrast (just like it does when you use the HDR setting to take photos on your smartphone). The X930D also uses a smart backlight that dims and brightens based on the colors on the screen, so you’ll get darker blacks and brighter colors. The picture on Sony’s new Bravias definitely impressed, even on a CES floor packed with new televisions.

While prices on 4K TVs have been dropping, what we don’t know about these 4K TVs is the price tag quite yet —  but if you’re a cinephile and can afford them, any of these screens would make a great addition to a home theater — making current HD content look all that much better and future proof enough to be top of the line even when the next new thing comes out.

Available: Spring 2016

Price: Unknown

9. Kodak Super 8 Camera

What’s old is officially new again with great retro, old school favorites turned into high-tech, cutting edge must-have’s. The latest on the list is Kodak’s new take on the Super 8 camera, which it calls “a next-generation film camera.” That’s right, it shoots on actual 8mm film. The camera’s film cartridges will cost — ouch — from $50 to $75 each, but that price includes the cost of film processing and digital transfer, so in the end you’ll have both a film and a digital copy.

While the new Super 8 looks an awful lot like a 70’s era Super 8 camera, it has has appropriately high-tech features, including an integrated microphone, 3.5” display, as well as connectivity via USB, HDMI, or SD card. When it comes out later this year, we’ll see if it’s really time for 8mm to make a comeback.

Available: Fall 2016

Price: Between $400 and $700

10. SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick

Beyond upgrades to retro tech, CES also showcased upgrades to some of my favorite life-saving/problem-solving tech: like this SanDisk Connect Wireless Stick, a gadget I could not live without during CES. This tiny gadget (it’s only 3” long) looks just like a USB flash drive, a type of tech that’s nearly old enough to be called retro itself. And though you can plug it into a USB slot to drag and drop files, the best thing is that you don’t have to: You can just connect via Wi-Fi to access or save data right to the drive. This makes it the perfect companion for ultraportable laptops without USB ports as well smartphones and tablets — you can even use it to stream videos and music without clogging up your device with it on board.

SanDisk has been selling the Connect Wireless Stick for a while, but they’ve just added a new model to the lineup which packs a massive 200GB of storage into the same tiny package. How perfect is that?

Available: Now

Price: $120 (but if you don’t need that much storage, 64GB costs a much more moderate $45)

These are my final favorites from CES 2016. Be sure to check back throughout the year to see how some of this new tech shakes out — and, of course, we’ll be back in Vegas next year for CES 2017!

 

Source: USA TODAY