Six products that stood out at the Consumer Electronics Show


The HP Envy 14 is a more conventional luxury model and goes on sale Feb. 8, but it has two details that set it apart: a sensor for Near-Field Communications Chips (which means you can transfer information from a similarly equipped phone by tapping it to the PC) and an audio chip that can communicate with some headphones to provide much better audio quality than Bluetooth.

The Envy 14 will cost $1,400.

Bob O’Donnell, an analyst with research firm IDC, believes ultrabooks are “not a fad.” ”We absolutely see ultrabooks as being the future of notebooks,” he said. However, O’Donnell thinks ultrabooks will really take off once they are priced around $800, closer to the price of regular laptops.

Canon G1 X: The Japanese camera maker revealed a compact camera that pushes into professional camera territory. Its G line of relatively large compact cameras has been popular among enthusiasts, and the G1 X extends the range by including an image sensor that’s more than six times larger than other models in the range.

Sensor size is the most important factor for a camera’s image quality, far more than the number of megapixels—14, for the G1 X. It’s the first camera to use a sensor of this type, which is only 20 percent smaller than the “APS-C” sensors used in single-lens reflex cameras, or SLRs (though some luxury compacts from other manufacturers use APS-C sensors).

The G1 X will have a 4x zoom lens that retracts into the metal body and will sell for $800.

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