Our CES 2021 Day 2 recap: Razer’s futuristic N95 mask, smart lipstick and a flying car

This story is part of CES, where our editors will present the latest news and the hottest gadgets from CES 2021 entirely virtual.

CES being completely digital is certainly weird, but the sheer amount of luxury and crazy products presented on day 1 it brought with it a sense of familiarity. Day 2 kept its momentum, although here things look much more futuristic. Literally, a flying car was one of the great concepts of the day.

Although day 2 has come to an end, the show is not over yet. In addition to a Microsoft keynote on Wednesday and a continuous stream of announcements of new products from companies around the world, Thursday will bring Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Event, where the Galaxy S21 is expected to be revealed.

Let’s be conceptual

Razer has created a tradition of exhibiting conceptual gadgets at CES and has become one of the highlights of the fair each year. In 2021, Razer had two of these concepts: Project Brooklyn and Project Hazel.

The first is the Brooklyn Project, a game chair with a wraparound and rotating screen. It’s an amazing screen too: A transparent 180 degree OLED. In addition to this cutting edge technology, the Brooklyn Project also has seats in carbon fiber and leather with haptic vibration and RBG lighting. Obviously.

The second is Project Hazel, a concept for living COVID-19. It is an N95 mask full of technology: audio processing pods that dampen your voice, active ventilation and self-sterilization, a complementary case that works as a UV sterilizer. And RBG LED lighting.

Obviously.

So yes, both are intriguing. But Razer’s CES concepts don’t usually result in real products, so don’t wait either. That said, Acer has a similar (though less elegant) chair in the Thronos. British company Binatone also showed its own technology-clogged mask at CES, an N95 mask with a bluetooth headset. It’s not as sophisticated as Razer’s, but it’s real and costs $ 50 – much less than Razer’s.

GM brings us closer to the Jetsons

On Monday, Samsung showed a set of robots designed to help with household chores, a baby step to live like the Jetsons. General Motors is helping us take a giant leap, showing his concept for a flying car. It is called eVTOL, or droid Verticle TakeOff and Landing (electric).

“We are preparing for a world where advances in electrical and autonomous technology make personal air travel possible,” said GM design chief Michael Simcoe. GM now joins us as Archer and Aston Martin, companies that also work with flying vehicles.

Chip wars

Day 1 of CES featured a lot of TV competition between Samsung and LG, Korea’s two big electronic giants. Day 2 was a battleground for processors, with Nvidia and AMD, each holding their own talks.

Nvidia, the champion of graphics cards, announced several new RTX GPUs. At the top was the RTX 3080, for those who take their games very seriously (such as e-sports seriously), which starts at $ 1,999. But while this offers great power for 4K gaming and intense video editing, the GPU at the lower end of the spectrum is just as remarkable. The RTX 3060 costs just $ 329 and Nvidia says it is 10 times more powerful than the GTX 1060. In other words, you’ll be able to play most of the new big games on it, although you may have to decrease the resolution.

Although AMD makes GPUs, his speech on Tuesday was more about laptop CPUs. It is announced Ryzen 5000 chips are coming to laptops, with brands like Lenovo, Asus and HP committing to Ryzen 5000 laptops later this year. AMD insists that this will mean thinner, lighter and more powerful laptops. These CPUs will compete with Intel’s 11th generation Tiger Lake H35 chips, announced on Tuesday.

Oh, and just for fun, Samsung unveiled the Exynos 2100 chip that will feed the international version of Samsung Galaxy S21. The phone will receive a full reveal on Thursday, but hey, it’s Chip Day, so why not show off some products sooner?

Single-screen laptops are outdated

The chips are cool, but what about the real machines they’re housed in?

Just as phone manufacturers are trying to get ahead of the curve with rotating and folding screens, laptop manufacturers are trying to differentiate themselves with useful new designs. Thinner, lighter and more powerful is good, but real innovation in such a mature industry is great.

For Asus, this means doubling down on its powerful dual-screen Duo line. At CES, he revealed the Zephyrus Duo 15 SE, which has a 15.6-inch screen with a 14.1-inch secondary touchscreen that sits above the keyboard, as you can see above. It’s a beast, geared towards performance-obsessed players: it can be configured with a 4K 120Hz panel, with options for AMD or Nvidia graphics.

The company also launched its new Strix Scar gaming laptop, that can be configured with a 360 Hz screen – the fastest on any laptop.

But while Asus is investing in brute force, the Chinese brand Lenovo is looking for efficiency. In addition to the main screen, your new Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 i has an E-ink screen on the cover so you can check notifications, your calendar, take notes and more without actually opening the machine. It can also be charged using a Lenovo charging mat, so it’s one less cable to worry about.

Smart lipstick, smarter perfume

The IoT industry is destined to grow hundreds of millions of dollars each year. What this means in practice is more everyday items being filled with computing intelligence. A new example from CES? Lipstick.

Displayed at CES last year and presented as a real product that you can buy on Tuesday (coming in the spring, costing $ 299), Yves Saint Laurent Perso is a device that contains three cartridges of liquid lipstick. With the help of an included brush, you can mix colors to get the exact color and shade you want.

It is a similar story with Ninu, an intelligent fragrance. Inside there are three aromas, in three different bottles. Ninu connects to your phone and, through an application, you can mix aromas, personalizing them exactly according to your tastes. Obviously, this can go very wrong, so there is an AI wizard in the app that will help you not smell like garbage.

The future, huh?