It takes a fair amount of elbow grease to weed through the deluge of new products at CES 2013, in order to find the few things that are actually useful. Here’s my brief list of standout hardware from the bizarre circus in Las Vegas.
As I’ve posted in the past, I’m a big fan of action cameras. Even though I don’t plan on jumping off of a cliff in a wingsuit, I would still love to mess around with a good action cam to see what I could come up with.
Another piece of gear that I’ve always wanted is a little video camera that I could hide on the strap of my backpack, so I could shoot candid point-of-view street sequences. I guess regularly walking though Manhattan’s crowded sidewalks makes you long for these kinds of things. The unusual modular design of the new Panasonic HX-A100 that was just announced at CES 2013 fills both of these “needs” of mine.
The HX-A100 has built-in Wi-Fi for smartphone control and live streaming, a decently fast f/2.5 lens, image stabilization, shoots 1920 x 1080 at 60 fps, and higher frame rates at lower resolutions. It’s waterproof, and I believe it comes with a few different mounts, one of which securely hooks to the back of your ear. It’s nice to see a company do something that’s both unique and useful. I also like that this camera has a lower profile than the GoPro and other action cams.
At CES 2013, Livestream announced a new version of the Broadcaster that has a Verizon 4G radio built-in. Of course, like the USB mobile modems, the radio in the new Broadcaster requires a mobile data plan. But still, it was nice to see an innovative piece of gear get fully realized.
What? No mention of the new 700 inch tablets? ;)