The dust has long since settled, the residents of Las Vegas have returned to their quiet, innocent lives, and the Consumer Electronics Show is over for another year. But we've made our picks for the best jersey of the show and are highlighting the winners below.
The event was always about “AI this” and “AI that” and in fact there were a variety of different devices across the show floor that were given the AI treatment, whether they actually had anything to do with it or not Artificial intelligence, machine learning or just a small algorithm.
But there were at least some interesting applications of the technology, and even one that could be useful in gaming beyond just faking new frames. In gaming monitors, supposedly to help you cheat. Yes, it's a strange gaming tech world, isn't it?
There were also some great new GPUs, SSD technology and processors. And we even managed to get our hands on some of the new hardware at CES 2024, and I still think our awards went to the right people.
Best gaming laptop of CES 2024
1. Best gaming laptop of CES 2024
Razer Blade 16 OLED
The new Razer Blade 16 comes upgraded with a 240Hz OLED screen as standard, and as panel obsessives here on the PC Gamer Hardware team, we're hard-pressed not to see that as a wonderful thing. Sure, they're incredibly expensive devices anyway, so having it as your default screen should almost be a given, but it's quite a wonderful panel, even if it's just a 2560 x 1600 display. What matters is still a 16:10 ratio, but now with a level of vibrancy and contrast that we love in laptop OLEDs.
Best gaming monitor of CES 2024
2. Best Gaming Monitor of CES 2024
Alienware AW3225QF
This is the gaming monitor we've all been waiting for: a proper 32-inch 4K OLED. I mean, we enjoyed the ultra-wide 34-inch screen that topped our list of the best gaming monitors, but its still fairly low pixel density is our only gripe. But with this 240Hz 32-incher, you get both a nice QD-OLED panel and the pixel density we're looking for. And with this high resolution and density, there should be less of the font fringing that plagues many QD-OLEDs on the desktop. We hope there is a glossy coating option too.
Best graphics card of CES 2024
3. Best graphics card of CES 2024
Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super
Of all the RTX 40 series super cards, the RTX 4070 Ti Super is the only one that actually uses an entirely new class of GPU. By integrating the AD103 of the famous RTX 4080 into the new card, it not only gets more cores, but also significantly increases the memory and memory bus compared to the non-Super version. Just don't get me started on how stupid it is to have both “Ti” and “Super” endings on the same card… or how unreliable the MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super was at launch.
Best processor of CES 2024
4. Best Processor of CES 2024
AMD Ryzen 7 8700G
AMD's latest desktop APU takes one of our favorite mobile chips of all time, the Ryzen 7 7840U, and turns it into a powerful desktop chip with the most powerful integrated graphics you can find. In fact, it's so good that you can easily build an affordable gaming PC with the 8700G alone and not have to pay for a graphics card to play at 1080p. However, as we discovered in the Ryzen 7 8700G review, the performance coupled with a discrete GPU is only worth it if you want to build without a graphics card.
Best new gaming tech at CES 2024
5. Best new gaming technology at CES 2024
Nvidia ACE with Convai
Jacob spent some time at CES I'm casually chatting with a guy at a cyberpunk ramen bar, and it became the only thing that got me excited about AI in games. The technology enables real-time conversations with game characters that can have a significant impact on the environment around them. Jacob tried to break it, of course, but the AI Ramen guy handled everything he could throw at him, and that convinced me that the future of NPCs has to be real-time AI.
Best SSD of CES 2024
6. Best SSD of CES 2024
Samsung 990 EVO
It may seem strange to choose a Gen5 SSD with half the bandwidth of the best CES storage technology on offer, but it is a hybrid solution to the problem of the lack of PCIe 5.0 lanes in the latest motherboard platforms. Even if you put a modern PCIe 4.0 SSD in a Gen5 socket you're still occupying a pair of PCIe 5.0 lanes, but the x2 Samsung 990 EVO delivers the same theoretical bandwidth but only on a pair of Gen5 lanes, so one more left two left.
Most Innovative Use of AI at CES 2024
7. Most Innovative Use of AI at CES 2024
MSI MEG 321URX QD OLED
OLED gaming monitors represented some of the biggest news at CES 2024, but there are still only a handful of actual OLED panels being built into modern gaming monitors. You have LG and you have Samsung, which used MSI in its 32-inch 4K OLED display. There's nothing innovative about it, you might say, and you're right, but the company has integrated a smart AI accelerator that can analyze a game played on it to help the user. The example is monitoring the minimap in League of Legends to show the user where the enemies are coming from with a hint on the screen. Cheat? Perhaps. Innovative? Oh yeah.
Best product update of CES 2024
8. Best product update of CES 2024
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is a common motto in product design in the PC industry, which is why Razer has stuck with essentially the same case design for 37 years. It takes a confident manufacturer to make a concrete update to a product that has rightly been hailed as one of the best gaming laptops in recent years. But that's exactly what Asus has done with its Zephyrus G14, our favorite 14-inch gaming laptop, giving it an all-new body and feel. And everything for the better. It's the device that impressed Jacob, our man in Sin City, the most this year, and now he has one in his hands. Good luck trying to get it out of their pockets.
