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There is a whole portfolio of official "best of CES" awards, 14 of them this year. Of course, every publication lists its own best-of list, but the official CES awards are judged by endgadget.

Previous posts about CES 2021 are:

• Consumer Electronics Show 2021: GM, Intel
• CES 2021: AMD, NVIDIA, and Mercedes

Awards

In a normal year, I don't really bother to cover this or even look at the winners. Too many of them fall outside of my areas of expertise or the interests of Breakfast Bytes readers. Of course, we are all consumers, so there is some interest in who wins "the best TV", but so many of the products exhibited are prototypes or concepts that they are not relevant to us as actual consumers—you are not going to be buying an 8K TV this year since there is no content and no good way to deliver it even if there was.

But this year, there are two reasons that make it more interesting. First, there were no exhibits to wander around and serendipitously find interesting things. Online exhibits don't really work, in my experience, and with about 2,000 exhibiting companies there is no way to sample CES. If you have specific companies you want to talk to, then you can do that, but there is not really much reason that CES is a better forum for that than just talking to them the week before or the week after.

The Best of the Best

The second reason is that we won, as in a semiconductor product was voted best-in-show. Normally, this would come at the end of this post since the other awards build up to it. But it seems appropriate to put it here.The award is for "best of the best", the best of all the other award winners, and this year's winner was AMD's Ryzen 5000 Mobile CPU. It seems unusual in a consumer electronics show to give it to a chipset that is not really sold to consumers. As was said during the presentation:

Look, in a show full of flashy TVs, and emotional support robots, and AI-connected everything, picking a laptop chipset might seem a little odd. We picked the Ryzen 5000 for the potential that it has to make laptops more powerful than we are used to.

The 5000 is a meaningful leap forward and will increase competition and innovation in the space.

So here are all the awards. If you watch the video at the end of this post, you can see the shortlist for each award, each with another two or three competing products.

Best Accessibility Tech

This is the best innovation or device that can best help seniors and people with disabilities live fuller and more independent lives. Winner: Goodmaps Explore, presented by American Printing House for the Blind. This is a navigation map for people who are visually impaired or blind.

Best Digital Health and Fitness Product

Winner: Omron Vitalsight. This is a blood pressure monitor that can automatically send information about your heart health to your doctor.

Best Wearable

Winner: The Mudra Band by Wearable Devices. This makes the Apple Watch controllable without touch things like moving your fingers. This means you can control it with one hand, or if your touch is not accurate enough.

Best Transportation Technology

The Mercedes-Benz Hyperscreen. I was really surprised at this one. I was critical of this after watching the presentation, as was Wired. Shows how much I know!

Best Home Theater Product

Surprisingly, this seems to be all about audio this year, with soundbars being a big thing in the consumer space over the last couple of years. See my post Tensilica HiFi DSPs with Dolby Atmos for Soundbars.

Winner: Sony 360 Reality Audio Speakers.

Best Connected Home Product

All sorts of things, including a refrigerator with voice-recognition. Winner: Samsung JetBot 90 AI+. This is a vacuum, like a Roomba on steroids, with cameras and lidar.

Best Phone or Mobile Device

CES is not really a mobile conference, despite smartphones being consumer devices. MWC Barcelona is where any serious announcements get made. Traditionally, this is at the start of March, but this year it will be from June 28 to July 1. Current plans are for it to be an in-person conference, with all the obvious caveats.

Winner: LG Rollable. A picture doesn't do this justice, so here's a 15-second video.

Best TV Product

Winner: LG C1 OLED TVs. This provides Dolby 5.1 surround sound through its built-in speakers, which I think is actually Dolby Atmos.

Best Gaming Product

Winner: AMD Ryzen 5000 mobile CPUs. I covered this at the start of this post.

Most Unexpected Product

For this one, I think it is worth listing all the nominees.

• Volvo Penta Assisted Docking System (that's for actual boats and docks, not a computer dock). 
• Samsung Solar-cell Remote (this is a solar-powered remote that doesn't require batteries to be changed)
• Targus Two-Office Antimicrobial Backpack
• Kohler Stillnes Bath

Winner: Kohler Stillnes bath. 

Best Sports Tech

Winner: Samsung Smart Trainer

Best PC or Tablet

Winner: ASUS ZenBook Duo.

The best dual-screen laptop we've seen to date.

Best Robot or Drone

Winner: Sony AirPeak AI Drone. A quadcopter powerful enough to carry a full-size DSLR camera.

Best Sustainability Product

Winner: Samsung Solar-cell Remote (back again, having lost out in the most unexpected category). Estimates are that widespread use of this remote could prevent 99 million AAA batteries from winding up in landfills.

People's Choice

Winner: Razer Blade 15 with NVIDIA RTX graphics. This is a gaming laptop, and I guess a lot of gamers voted in the popular vote. It has a 240Hz refresh rate on its 1040px screen.

The Best of the Best

AMD's Ryzen 5000 Mobile CPUs, which I already discussed at the start of this post.

Watch the Video

You can watch the whole "best of" presentation (21 minutes):

 

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