The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) CES 2022 logo is displayed outside of the Las Vegas … [+]
The PC is hip again! That is possibly an exaggeration, but the PC became an essential tool that got many people through the COVID-19 pandemic. And while iPad sales were also up in 2021, they we still below the peak sales number of 2013 and 2014. Meanwhile PCs unit shipments during 2021 reached 348.8 million units, up 14.8% from 2020, and exceeded 2012 shipments, according to IDC.
Gaming drove a big part of the PC revival. An indication how important gaming has become is the latest technology mega-deal. On January 18th, Microsoft said it would pay $69B in cash for video-game developer Activision Blizzard. It is both the biggest acquisition ever made in the video-game industry and the biggest ever made by Microsoft, more than twice the size of the firm’s $26B purchase of LinkedIn in 2016. With gamers number of 3.2 billion in 2021 (Statista), gaming is a huge world-wide market and Microsoft wants more of it.
This year’s CES saw over 100 new PCs announced and other PC gaming related announcements including new PC processors and new GPUs from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.
Here’s some of the gaming and non-gaming PCs I found the most interesting at CES 2022.
The Most Interesting Laptops from CES 2022
One of the perennial favorites for powerful, yet portable laptops is the Dell XPS 13. This year’s version, called the XPS 13 Plus, did not disappoint with a more radical, sleek design that looked like it came from Apple. It has an edge-to-edge keyboard and a hidden touch surface below the keyboard for a track pad. In a classic Apple design move, Dell even eliminated the headphone jack to keep the body slimmer.
Dell XPS 13 Plus with OLED Display
Every major laptop manufacturer has embraced gaming laptops, often with discrete graphics options. In addition to the Envy brand, HP also added a compact gaming PC called Victus 15L Desktop for the entry-level market. Last year HP, Inc. bought the gaming peripheral maker HyperX to further expand its gaming offerings. My personal gaming keyboard is a HyperX (even before HP bought the brand).
HP-HyperX CES 2022 peripherals
This year LG entered the gaming PC fray with a thin design featuring a 17-inch display. The LG UltraGear 17G90Q (a name only an appliance vendor would love) offers a 17.3-inch screen with a 1-millisecond response time, and an impressive 300Hz refresh rate and a two-way speaker system with directionality and sound location for more immersive gaming without headphones.
LG UltraGear 17 inch laptop
Lenovo’s ThinkBook Plus line has offered secondary displays in the past, but the ThinkBook Plus Gen 3 takes a different and probably more useful approach: an 8-inch touchscreen display next to the keyboard.
Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 3
Lenovo imagines the second display coming in handy for a variety of use cases from being a simple app launcher to a handy calculator. It’s also useful for notetaking using Lenovo’s included stylus. The ThinkBook Plus has a large 17-inch, 16:10 display that works with the wider base.
This year we saw PCs with folding displays, following from Microsoft’s concepts, and folding phones from Samsung, Oppo, and Huawei.
Asus is known for its line of Duo laptops with a variety of dual-screen setups, and now with the latest ZenBook 17 Fold OLED, the company is building a laptop that is just one big display! The ZenBook Fold has a Dolby Vision compatible 4:3 17.3-inch OLED display that when folded offers a more conventional 3:2 12.5-inch (1,920 x 1,280) display. It supports touch inputs, but Asus also will include a full-size keyboard and trackpad attachment. This ErgoSense Bluetooth keyboard can sit on the bottom part of the screen or be used separately as a wireless keyboard. The Zenbook 17 Fold will come with 12th Gen Intel Core i7 U-Series processors and Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics.
ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED
Extreme Concepts Come To CES
There are two main trade shows for PCs – CES and Computex. Computex takes place during the hot, humid summer in Taipei, Taiwan, closer to most of the PC hardware ecosystem, including OEMs, ODMs, and suppliers. Computex is a more practical trade show where you can see what can be built. At CES, often vendors show off what might be built. And so, you often see interesting concept PCs at this show. In 2020 Dell showed a concept of a PC that can become a portable gaming console. Dell never built the project, but others have drawn inspiration from such ideas, such as the Valve Steam Deck.
One of the more interesting concepts this year was from Razer called Project Sophia – a modular glass-topped desk with a built-in gaming PC and ultra-huge display that mated to the desk. No self-respecting gamer would use a glass keyboard due to a lack of tactile feedback. Powering it all was a customized system board with the latest Intel processor and Nvidia GPU to support the performance-intensive tasks. To maximize desk space, all the PC components are housed in a slim chassis that magnetically snaps in underneath the glass tabletop. It can be easily detached to install new upgrades.
I have seen glass-topped desks at Computex that had built in water-cooled gaming PCs. But the Razer concept takes the idea a step further with the modular construction, displays under the glass, and a matching full-length monitor.
Razer Project Sophia Desk Computer
Most of the products announced at CES will ship sometime in Q1 or Q2 of 2022. PC gaming has never been in better shape from a hardware technology perspective. There are still on-going product shortages, especially in graphics cards, that have led to some price gouging. Hopefully new products in newer process nodes with help alleviate the shortage.
Tirias Research tracks and consults for companies throughout the electronics ecosystem from semiconductors to systems and sensors to the cloud. Members of the Tirias Research team have consulted for AMD, Dell, HP, Intel, Nvidia, and other companies throughout the PC ecosystems.
