The annual IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin covers about 160,000 square meters and almost 2,000 exhibitors. Whether it was on the floor, at a press conference, at the media-only Showstoppers event, or in private meetings, we scoured IFA to find the latest and greatest to make up Gear Diary’s Best of IFA 2018 list.
Casio Pro Trek Smart WSD-F30
Casio cleverly layers two screens into the watch, so you can use it multiple ways. If battery life isn’t an issue, you’ve got the full WearOS experience [called normal use]. If, like the couple in the video, you’re cramming your entire outdoor vacation into 3 days, you can call up a battery sipping screen but flip to a full-color map screen when needed [extended mode]. Or, if you’re going to spend a month in the woods and really just need a compass, barometer, and altimeter, you can shut off the WearOS portion entirely to preserve the battery for longer [multi-timepiece mode]. The Casio Pro Trek Smart WSD-F30 will be available in January 2019 for $549.
Acer Predator Thronos
Imagine stepping into an impressively massive steel gamer’s cockpit with a 140º reclining chair (including footrest), three 27″ monitors mounted at eye-level in an overhead brace, with room for your gaming PC and all the other necessary gadgets. Once in the Thronos, you’ll get serious vibration feedback from the chair synced with in-game impact, and a spot that is comfortable enough to stay in for hours — leaving only for absolutely necessary bio-breaks. There’s no release date (beyond “end of the year”) or price yet announced, but if you’re a serious gamer and you have the room for it (and the floor strength — it weighs almost 500 pounds!), you’ll want to check it out.
Eve Power Strip
The Eve Power Strip will enable HomeKit control of up to three devices powered by a single outlet. The Eve App will give you total consumption measurement so you can project the cost of using that particular device, and there’s Wi-Fi connectivity (2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n) so that you can enable individual or simultaneous device switching without latency. You’ll also be able to create and manage on-device schedules from the Eve App. The power strip is made of solid aluminum and it will offer superior surge protection. We don’t have pricing or the availability date for the Eve Power Strip yet, but this looks like a brilliant way to convert your favorite “dumb” lamps, fans, and other devices into smart ones.
Earin M-2
If you want a set of small and lightweight wireless in-ear headphones that are comfortable to wear, simple to operate, and that use a touch & trap interface to control your music, phone calls or summon your favorite digital assistant (Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant), you’ll want to take a look at the $249 Earin M-2. You can personalize the earphones through the Earin app, and you can adjust how much ambient sound you want to allow, which makes them safe for use when walking (or cycling) on busy streets. Over the air updates will ensure that you always have the latest software. The Earin M-2 uses Bluetooth 4.2, and they give you up to 4 hours continuous usage on their own, but with the storage and charging capsule you can add up to an additional 14 hours usage. They are available now.
Neato Robotics Botvac D4 Connected
If the idea of having your floor vacuumed for you each day without you having to do a thing appeals to you, you’re not alone. The Neato Robotics Botvac D4 Connected offers an incredibly smart and programmable robo-vac for a very reasonable price. The Botvac D4 Connected uses lasers to navigate; using straight lines rather than random patterns. You can tell it which areas are out of bounds, so you’ll never have to worry about it falling don a flight of stairs or getting stuck on sucked up yarn in your crafts room. The Botvac D4 has a huge single brush that’s great for carpet, hardwood, and tile. Battery life is 75 minutes, so it won’t die halfway through a cleaning job. You can control the Botvac D4 from your phone, Apple Watch, Amazon Echo, or Google Home. The Neato Robotics Botvac D4 Connected sells for $499.
Mitte Smart Water System
Tap water is often gross, off-tasting, and loaded with impurities. Bottled water tastes better, but the plastic bottles it comes in are bad for the environment. Mitte Smart Water System offers you a way to purify your home’s tap water through distillation (removing “all potential contaminants including bacteria and viruses, hormones, pharmaceuticals, and more”) and then add customized mineral enhancements so that you’ll have an almost endless supply of tasty and healthy drinking water at home. Best of all, you can use it to fill your reusable water container when you leave the house – so no more plastic bottles. Mitte completed a successful Kickstarter campaign in November 2017, and they are in the process of setting up production now.
Honor Play
The Honor Play sports a 6.3″ screen, a speedy Kirin 970 AI Chipset, and it’s got a big 3,750mAh battery. While gaming, you’ll enjoy the situationally aware SmartShock, Honor’s 4D Gaming Experience that allows you to feel the action. The GPU Turbo improves the Kirin 970 AI Chipset’s performance by ~60%, and it gives a 30% power consumption decrease with “almost full FPS and FPS stability in large games.” There’s also 3D surround sound when you plug in a headset via the 3.5mm jack or the USB Type-C port. 16-megapixel and 2-megapixel dual rear cameras are assisted by the AI NPU, so they will identify items from 22 different categories; the camera will also recognize and retouch “the different parts of what you are shooting at the same time.” If you’re going to get the Honor Play, it only makes sense to get the Player Edition … it’s gorgeous. No clue if this phone will be available in the US or not, but at around $380, one can only hope.
Yoga Book C930
My preciousssss …
It doesn’t happen very often, but this is one of the few items that when something was shown to me, I wanted to stuff it into my bag and run out the door. 😉 Obviously, I didn’t, but here’s what’s got me so interested … The Yoga Book C930 is so light that you won’t mind carrying it with you everywhere, every day. This is great when you are a commuter or a frequent traveler, and you need the absolute thinnest and Windows device possible. Don’t think of it as a laptop, necessarily, rather — see it as a high-powered tablet that can be used to do virtually everything without giving up functionality because you’re not running a desktop OS. One side has the 10.8″ QHD IPS display, but the other side has a 10.8″FHD E Ink display that functions as a keyboard, a note-taking surface, and as an eBook reader. You can get it with up to 7th gen Intel Core i5 processor, and Lenovo says you can expect to get up to 9 hours of battery life. I’ve played with the keyboard — it’s a great size, and the haptic and visual feedback the eInk keys give you makes it quite comfortable to use. The Lenovo Yoga Book C930 will be available in October or so, and it will start at $999.
Bang & Olufsen Beosound Edge
The Bang & Olufsen Beosound Edge has a striking design; there is nothing else out there that’s quite like it. You can mount it on the wall or keep it on the floor; rocking it forward and backward will change the volume. It’s the perfect marriage of form and function because it is gorgeous and it sounds amazing. The Beosound Edge is an attention-grabbing aluminum circle; inside there are two tweeters, two mid-range speakers, six amplifiers as well as a huge 10″ subwoofer. There’s a cool, patent-pending dynamic port that is closed at low volumes but opens up for huge bass response at higher volumes; one Beosound Edge should be loud enough to rock your home, but two would really be something to see and hear. The Bang & Olufsen Beosound Edge will be available in November 2018, and you can expect to pay around $3500 for it. Ouch, but …
JBL Everest 710GA
We’ve reviewed past versions of the JBL Everest headphones, and they have one thing in common — they are all superb. The new JBL Everest 710GA brings the same excellent JBL tuning, comfort, and quality we have come to expect and adds built-in Google assistant, ShareMe 2.0 technology (so you can connect with other Bluetooth headphones and wirelessly share the music you are listening to), and 25-hour battery life. If you need an excellent pair of on-ear wireless headphones, look no further. The JBL Everest 710GA retail for $199.95, and they are available now.
Huawei AI Cube
It’s a home router, it’s a speaker, it’s a 4G modem, it’s an Amazon Alexa device … it’s the Huawei AI Cube, which is obviously not a cube. Huawei has effectively created their first smart speaker, and this one includes an LTE Cat.6 modem (for speeds up to 300Mbps) with a SIM slot. Once on a cellular network, it can be used as a hotspot. Inside, there is also a four-microphone array with a 15W speaker. If you’ve ever looked at your Amazon Echo and thought, “you’re cool and all, but why can’t you do MOAR?”, you may be intrigued by the Huawei AI Cube that’s not a cube. No word on pricing or availability yet (or even if this is the final design); we don’t even know for sure that this will ever make it to the United States (Europe should get it by Christmas time), but … we see you Huawei. This looks interesting!
Samsung 85″ Q900FN 8K QLED TV
At 85″, the Samsung Q900FN 8K QLED TV isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a monster-sized smart television that boasts 4,000 nit peak brightness and four times more pixels than a 4K UHD TV with 16 times more pixels than a full HD TV. Most importantly, the TV will have AI 8K upscaling, so even though 8K content isn’t readily available, everything will still look amazing on your set. Watching a movie on this beast will be the visual experience the creators intended; I hope your home theater’s sound system is ready! It doesn’t even matter that I don’t have a wall that could properly accommodate the 85″ Samsung Q900FN 8K QLED TV; I want it — and they will be available to buy in the US starting in October — I just need to figure out where to sell a kidney. 😉 No word on prices yet, but it will likely be in the neighborhood of $20K.