

LAS VEGAS—The annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas tries to get consumers (and the media) excited for the new year with a treasure trove of new devices. Most of the big names in computing, gaming, fitness tech, smart home, and more show off some of their newest products that will come out later in the year. And until they hit shelves (if they hit the shelves), CES is the only way to get a glimpse of them.

While the show's vastness results in a lot of seemingly useless hardware and even some vaporware—Ars UK has intel on the smart hairbrush, LG wants to make sure no one ever has to open a fridge manually again—there are always a few products that stick out and manage to get us genuinely excited for the year ahead.

You can find all our coverage from the ground here if you want to wade through both the crazy and cool, but these are our picks for the best technology coming out of CES 2017.

Best laptop or convertible: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga

Traditionally when buying a laptop, one has to compromise. You’ll find a system that has almost everything you want, but there’s always something missing. We wrote about some of the basic features that we're going to insist on for laptops in 2017, and one machine shown at CES stood out as doing all the things we want. With Thunderbolt 3, NVMe storage, Precision Touchpads, biometric authentication, touch screens, and so much more, we're ready to lay hands on the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga.

The Yoga nails the basics. It also includes the 360-degree hinge that's invaluable on a plane or in a kitchen, a stylus that docks within the unit for safekeeping, built-in LTE connectivity, 802.11ad/WiGig, and (unusual these days) wired gigabit Ethernet. That's a compelling start, but it's the range of options that takes the Yoga to the next level: you can add an OLED screen, Iris Plus graphics, both a fingerprint reader and an IR camera supporting facial recognition, and NFC. The result is a machine that sets a new standard for connectivity and capabilities, showcasing some of the latest technology—and doing so without compromises.

Best desktop or all-in-one: Intel Kaby Lake NUCs

We've seen some interesting-looking all-in-one desktops at the show this year, including Dell's XPS 27 and HP's Pavilion Edge All-in-One with Micro-Edge Display. But in terms of sheer versatility and appeal, we've got to give the moniker of best to Intel's new NUC mini desktops.

We've been fans of these PCs for years. Like the older NUCs, the new ones put decent Ultrabook-level performance suitable for productivity tasks and light gaming into a little box that will fit just about anywhere. The new models get an attractive makeover, the latest Kaby Lake CPUs and GPUs, HDMI 2.0 and HDMI-CEC support that will be sure to interest home theater enthusiasts, and a Thunderbolt 3 port that will allow for fast external storage, external GPUs, and all kinds of other possibilities.

Best PC peripheral: Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ 27-inch gaming monitor

Simply being first to something in the tech world isn’t necessarily a guarantee for quality or excellence. But when someone can lay claim to launching the consumer market's first monitor to combine 4K resolution, 144Hz refresh, HDR-10 compatibility, and Nvidia G-Sync support, they're bound to get our attention.

Just finding three of those four in a PC monitor is tough these days. (The best we've seen, up until now, is Dell's UP3017Q, which maxes its 4K resolution at a 120Hz refresh without G-Sync.) Adding the wider color gamut and luminance differential of HDR to that package is a nice, brightly rendered cherry on top. You'll need quite the powerful computer to render such crisp, colorful, and smooth content, of course, but if you're already spending so much on a gaming powerhouse, what's another pricey monitor to you?

Best gaming hardware: HTC Vive's TPCast

While the HTC Vive's room-scale VR experience is unquestionably amazing, it's also unquestionably annoying to deal with a thick, three-piece wire that tethers you to a nearby PC tower, tugging on the back of the headset and creating a tripping hazard while you walk around. That's why we're excited about the TPCast, which promises to make the Vive a truly wireless experience by streaming video and audio to the headset from a PC over the air (though there is still a wire running to a pocketable battery pack).

There have been other untethered VR experiences, of course, but so far they tend to rely on underpowered mobile technology and have trouble with full head-tracking through space. TPCast promises the best of both worlds—high-end VR graphics and tracking without the annoying tether. If you can afford the $250 cost and can tolerate the reported two-hour battery life, this could greatly increase the quality of your virtual life.

Listing image by Valentina Palladino