Walk around the Consumer Electronics Show and you’ll hear a variety of different languages. There is, however, a common tongue on the show floor—and it consists entirely of buzzwords, marketing terms, and acronyms. It can get confusing, so we put together this handy cheat sheet to help you decode the announcements, presentations, and overstatements you’ll encounter when reading about new products.
5G
The king of buzzwords at CES 2019 is 5G. It mostly refers to the next-generation wireless data network that will eventually handle the internet needs of our mobile devices and even our home networks at some point in the future. To listen to many of the CES presentations, you’d think 5G is right around the corner, but the truth is that the technology is extremely limited right now. There are very localized tests going on in a few cities, but nationwide rollout won’t happen until 2020. Even once the network falls into place, we’ll still need mobile hardware that can take advantage of it, which we’ll probably hear about more during Mobile World Congress at the end of February.
This Wired story does a solid job explaining why you’re probably fine ignoring 5G for now.
8K
TVs are always one CES’s biggest draws and this year’s theme is 8K. The name refers to a TV’s overall resolution. To be precise, 8K TVs and monitors have a resolution of 7,680 x 4,230 pixels. It’s the next step up from 4K, which is the most common ultra-HD resolution on the market at the moment. Right now, 8K TVs are mostly overkill because there’s almost zero content that supports the full high-resolution picture. Many high-end TVs like Sony’s new flagship TV do a fine job of upscaling 4K content, but 8K won’t be essential tech in 2019.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
There are few buzzwords as broad as artificial intelligence. Products here at CES us “AI” to do everything from cook a chicken to drive a car down a crowded street. The truth is that AI can mean a wide variety of things. The common denominator is that computer algorithms are making some decisions within the product, likely using machine learning to be better at whatever it is they do.
So, when Panasonic’s in-car driver analysis system tries to figure out whether the person behind the wheel is falling asleep by analyzing their facial expressions, that counts as AI. When LG’s high-end TVs analyze the content showing up on its screen to help optimize picture quality, that’s AI, too. The examples go from simple to complex, but the bottom line is that AI is “cool” right now, and any product that can possibly claim to use it probably is.
Virtual reality (VR)
There are quite a few virtual reality headsets on the CES show floor this year, including the new HTC Vive Pro with eye-tracking, and a preview version of the Oculus Quest, which is coming from Facebook’s VR arm later this year. Virtual reality involves immersing yourself as much as possible in a digital world that you strap to your face. So, VR headsets totally replace the real world with computer graphics rather than just adding digital elements into a real-world setting (that’s augmented reality).
A popular use for VR here at CES is to put it in cars to entertain passengers. Both Intel and Audi have superhero-themed VR experiences that sync up with the motion of the car in which you’re riding to help pass the time.
Augmented Reality (AR)
AR mixes digital objects into the real world. Think of things like when you use the Ikea app on your smartphone to envision what a new couch will look like in your space or you play one of those games where little spaceships fly around your office and you shoot them on your phone screen. Headsets with translucent screens that make digital objects appear in the real world also count as augmented reality. That includes headsets like the Magic Leap and Microsoft’s Hololens. As a general rule, if you can still see the real world either on a screen or through a translucent screen, you’re dealing with AR instead of pure VR.
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