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Top Tech from CES 2018

CES 2018 TOP 5 – Top Tech from CES 2018

Top Tech from CES 2018

GadgetsBoy joins us this week to check out his Top Tech from CES 2018!

CES Top 5 Tech Bits!

It's CES 2018 and there's lots of great tech that's being shown off! See below our Top 5 pieces of tech from #CES2018, click the link below to hear our thoughts on them from this weeks show with GadgetsBoy here:howtokillanhour.com/shows/ep265Marcus Bronzy Nick Bright Funk Butcher DJ AceVideo Credits:RazerSamsung TVTheverge.comDJILaCieMobilegeeks Deutschland

Posted by How To Kill an Hour on Wednesday, 17 January 2018

Lacie DJI CoPilot

Top Tech from CES 2018 Lacie DJI

Top Tech from CES 2018 Lacie DJI

Lacie’s DJI CoPilot is basically a rugged external hard drive. But for the videographer’s out there. It’s a lot more than that. Who doesn’t want 2TB’s, a back up battery and a SD card reader in one?

Not got USB C? The CoPilot has got you! Use the regular USB or MicroUSB ports. Plug in any piece of media and the CoPilot does the rest, it’s automatically backed up. There’s also a small screen on the front to tell you how much storage is left. Making it great for videographers who don’t want to carry around their laptop ‘just in case’ they run out of space on all their SD cards.  The CoPilot will also charge devices and daisy chain other drives off of it. Simply plug another external HDD into it and your lappy will be able to read and write to it!

 

Samsung’s ‘The Wall’

Top Tech from CES 2018 The Wall

Top Tech from CES 2018 The Wall

Samsung announced at CES a breakthrough in home television technology. A world first. A modular, yes you read that right, a modular. 146-inch TV, that utilizes MicroLED technology. What’s beneficial of MicroLED’s over normal LED’s is that they are much much smaller than them and can serve as their own source of light. Thus vastly reducing the chance of backlight bleeding (as there isn’t a backlight) and burn-in. As well as creating darker blacks and much brighter colours on screen. Plus they draw a lot less power and can save you a lot of money in the long run! Bigger Tv Cheaper to run. Win Win in our books!

 

What’s even more intriguing is the fact that it has a modular design. This allows for a screen that is completely bezel-less and fully customisable to suit a consumers needs. Make the TV as big or as small as you like. You really are only stopped by how big your wall is!

Razer’s Project Linda

Top Tech from CES 2018 Project Linda

Top Tech from CES 2018 Project Linda

Razer’s Project Linda is a Lapdock. Don’t know what a Lapdock is? Basically it’s a laptop that has no internals and basically runs off of your mobile phone. What we’re about to tell you is really cool, but it’s just a prototype at the moment and it may or may not see the light of day. But one can hope!

Project Linda will run off the latest Razer Phone and it looks incredible and fits in well alongside other traditional gaming laptops. The phone sits where a trackpad would be and then you use the laptop traditionally but with a mouse.

Whilst being connected to Project Linda, games will take advantage of having an extra display and display vital stats and other information on the phone’s screen whilst the main action on the laptop screen.

When docked the phone will be charged by Project Linda and whilst the laptop doesn’t have internals per say there is 200gb of internal storage on the device. To store apps, games, media and phone backups. The aim of the device is to bridge the gap between handheld entertainment experience and laptop convenience.

Stats:

  • 13.3” Quad HD 120Hz touchscreen
  • 5.7″ Razer Phone screen can act as a touchpad, second display for stats or touch display for fine editing
  • Keyboard powered by Razer Chroma (Fully customizable laptop keys)
  • 200gb internal storage
  • o.59 inches thin
  • 3.5mm headphone jack

 

LG Rollable TV

Top Tech from CES 2018 LG Rollable Tv

Top Tech from CES 2018 LG Rollable Tv

 

Not to be outdone by Samsungs ‘The Wall” LG showed off a rollable 65″ TV prototype, which has a resolution of 3840 x 2160. (UHD) Much like their Wallpaper series, LG are highlighting to the world what OLED technology can actually do. When we saw the Wallpaper series we were impressed, it’s incredibly thin, yet produces some gorgeous imagery. The fact that it can now be rolled up, one saves space and two, makes it less easy to break. One small caveat of the Wallpaper series is although it was pencil thin, it looked really fragile!

 

Vivo’s In-Screen Fingerprint Reader

Top Tech from 2018 CES Vivo Fingerprint

Top Tech from 2018 CES Vivo Fingerprint (The Verge)

Whilst many of us have iPhone X’s and have got used to FaceID, (so long TouchID, we hardly knew thee) there’s just as many who LOVED touch ID. We know have the notch. The notch we don’t want. There was a lot of will they won’t they prior to the launch of iPhone X in regards to the fingerprint sensor under the screen. While many experts believe that Apple will introduce it on this years iPhone. A Chinese tech firm have beat them to the punch!

Vivo, have announced at CES 2018 a phone that does just that, a phone that’s bezelless and with a fingerprint sensor embedded into the screen. The reader is completely invisible and makes for a super sleek design. The guys over at The Verge have been testing it out for themselves. Whilst they state that the phone and the tech is slow, it works. That’s all that matters. Whether that’s just because we’re used to super quick fingerprint sensors on Apple and Samsung devices is another matter entirely.

The Vivo is using a Synaptics optical sensor. The tech works by looking at the gaps between the pixels on an OLED display and scanning your prints that way. (LCD’s won’t work due to the tech needing a backlight.) The guys over at The Verge did state that whilst this is a breakthrough in tech, no phone has been announced. BUT. An announcement is due imminently.

 

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Listen to the guys chatting about this by clicking here!

Arcade Hotel

Love Gaming? You’ll Love This! – Arcade Hotel

Arcade Hotel Amsterdam

We went to an amazing hotel in Amsterdam. The Arcade Hotel! Check out the video below to see how we got on!

Love Gaming? You Will Love This Hotel!

We went to Amsterdam recently to check out the famous The Arcade Hotel If you love gaming, you will love this…Marcus Bronzy Funk Butcher Nick Bright DJ Ace

Posted by How To Kill an Hour on Thursday, 18 January 2018

Rooms

As the Arcade first and foremost is a hotel and comes with a wide range of rooms to suit your needs. The Arcade Hotel caters for singles, couples and groups and they all have their own unique gaming related nickname. For example a single person room is titled 1 Player. The rooms that are available if you’re a 1 Player sort of person are: “Love Shack” and “Highlander”. Whilst if you’ve got a tag team partner and you’ll be able to pick up a 2 Player room: “Luke and Leia” For the 4 Player teams out there you can pick up a room called “The Fantastic Four” or “Double Impact” Each coming with their own unique twist.

Tech Wall!

Arcade Hotel Tech Wall

Arcade Hotel Tech Wall

Each of the rooms come fitted with a “Tech Wall” which have big televisions on complete with an Nvidia Shield as standard alongside a modern and retro console. Plus you get your own gaming couch to play in complete comfort!

Arcade Hotel Gaming Couch

Arcade Hotel Gaming Couch

Retro consoles

So, you get a retro console in your room. But which retro console do you get? Well, that is, is a secret. The Arcade Hotel won’t tell you which console you get as their sworn to secrecy! Guess you’ll have to find out on arrival!

Arcade Hotel Retro

Arcade Hotel Retro

However, there are a wide range of consoles available to you in other areas of the hotel. The gaming isn’t just limited to your room. There’s other areas where you can get your game on and show other visitors of the gaming hotel who’s boss!

Gaming Lounge & Library

Arcade Hotel Gaming Wall

Arcade Hotel Gaming Wall

There are other gaming spaces available to visitors located next to the cafe and bar. While our rooms are very cool and we could have spent hours playing all of our favourite games in there. Arguably this was one of the coolest areas of the hotel.

Arcade Hotel Gaming Lounge

In this area there is literally every retro console that you can think of available to you. Not only that there is a HUGE gaming library. (The whole wall) That you can access with some high quality gaming classics to play. We could have spent months in that room alone!

 

Gaming suite

Arcade Hotel Gaming Suite

Arcade Hotel Gaming Suite

If you want to get a bit more high tech and away from all the old school gaming, you can check out the gaming suite known as the Game Room!

In here there are:

  • VR Consoles (HTC Vive)
  • 6 TOP OF THE LINE gaming PC’s (Which are also networked up for multiplayer)
  • All of the modern consoles (PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One) with a HUGE gaming library, displayed on two big screen LCD’s
Arcade Hotel Gaming Suite

Arcade Hotel Gaming Suite

 

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Location

Amsterdam obviously!

Here’s the location though:

Book a visit to the Arcade Hotel by clicking here! (map below).

Google Bikes

Google’s Sheriffs Google Bikes saviour!

Something’s afoot at Google HQ. At Google’s headquarters there are 1,100 Google Bikes also known as “Gbikes”. An estimated 250 of which are being stolen each week.  The Google Bikes are intended to help employees get around on campus quickly and elegantly.

Launched in ’07, Google created a $5M grant to help more cities become more bike-conscious and help the environment. Most notably Google’s home city of Mountain View and make it commuter friendly!

Yet people are stealing the Gbikes, not only that, they’re not even employees of Google! Furthermore the Gbikes aren’t cheap coming in at $300 each.

The bikes are simple, with a Google branding colour scheme, a basket and 1 gear. So they’re not top of the range, but as they cannot be purchased by the public and are exclusively for Google employees they’re highly sought after. Hence why they are being stolen so often, they’ll fetch a pretty penny online!

Google Bikes Saviours!

As a result of the constant theft, Google wish to crack down on the theft. Therefore to combat people stealing the Gbikes, the search engine giant have employed a team of 30 freelancers to get the bikes back. Helping crackdown on theft, Google are too testing GPS trackers and locks to help employees access bikes through their phones. Therefore, those who have Google’s bikes better think twice!

Which does make you think why, Google, one of the worlds most advanced tech companies. A company who produce amazing hardware such as the Google Pixel, Google Home and of course Google search. Didn’t put tracking software into the bikes as standard? $300 is a drop in the ocean for such a huge company, so why didn’t they put security measures in? No one likes to lose money at the end of the day. Money is money. Regardless if you have millions, trillions or hundreds. Plus the bikes are perks for their employees! Come on guys, stop stealing Gbikes!

Would you like to ride a Gbike? (Remember to give it back though!) Let us know by reaching out to us via our social channels! We are all over the social media space, so can contact us at either our Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages! Our social handle is @howtokillanhour across all platforms.

Listen to the guys chatting about this please click here!

Gadgets Boy

Episode 265 Top Tech from CES 2018 w/Gadgets Boy