Laptops
Out of all the devices announced by Samsung, Lenovo, and Dell, Sony took the cake with their new Duo 11. The Sony Vaio Duo 11 was one of about a bazillion Windows 8 convertibles to debut this summer, and it stood out from a group of twisting and dockable devices with its slider form factor. It’s equipped to compete with other laptops of the two-in-one concept, with a choice of Core i5 or Core i7 processors, a 1080p touchscreen coated in Gorilla Glass, a strong design and a generous selection of ports. Sony also bundles a stylus for tapping your way through Windows 8 and doing some light photo editing, rounding out a nice list of features that could justify the $1,200-and-up price.
Phones
The biggest announcement this year for phones would have to be the new ZTE devices with the new Firefox mobile operating system called “Boot to Gecko”. ZTE’s US chief Cheng Lixin told Bloomberg that his company is working with an unspecified European carrier to ship a Mozilla-friendly phone sometime in 2013. It’s a start, but Cheng notes that the OS could cross the Atlantic and reach the US this year if ZTE decides the platform is viable enough for the trip.
Tablets
Tablets have been getting both bigger and smaller, but this year at CES the new Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 beats the competition. Pricing was released in October with promises that it would arrive the same month, but it was held back at the last moment with few progress updates since. The Windows 8 tablet has returned, ready for sale. The promised $649 starting price offers a 64GB WiFi version; spending $30 more adds a pen input and digitizer screen for frequent note-takers, while a $729 version loads Windows 8 Pro for the corporate crowd.
Portable Gaming
Project Shield took CES by storm. With its quad-core Tegra 4 processor, Custom 72-core NVIDIA GeForce GPU, and 1,280 x 720 screen, it deserves it popularity. Although its hardware is extremely impressive, its software is nothing to forget. The shield will be running android 4.1 Jellybean, although it is rumored the software will be updated before its release. There is no price yet, but the shield will be out in quarter two of this year.
