I mean, sure, we got LG's rollup OLED TV, which looks sexy but costs US$8000, and which will need to be replaced in two years' time because of OLED's severe screen burn-in issues. Who can afford to spend $8K every two years on a roll-up gimmick TV? Who is this for?
We also got a plethora of 8K TVs, at a time when even 4K TVs aren't really a thing yet. I mean, it's great that the likes of LG are making 4K sets that are comparable in price to 1080p sets; if you're needing to replace your TV, and don't need a refresh rate higher than 60 Hz for any reason, then you can certainly go 4K because it won't cost extra so why not? But you still don't need a 4K TV for which there's almost no content available, and you definitely don't need an expensive 8K set for which there's even less content on the menu. 8K is nothing but costly, boasting high price points while delivering zero value to the consumer... which was basically the prevailing trend of CES2019.
Oh, yes, and then there's 5G... which, again, boasts a premium price while being completely useless to consumers since there are no 5G networks. And, no, AT&T's 5G E nonsense is not a 5G network, and does not count. Which brings us to CES2019's other prevailing trend, which was straight-up lies told to consumers about expensive products which are being marketed at them, without being in any way designed for them.
Worse yet, the one big discussion about technology that consumers actually care about was never mentioned by any of the big exhibitors.
What were tech companies doing about privacy? Only Apple even mentioned the subject, and only in a highly-misleading claim made on a billboard; they didn't actually exhibit anything at the show. On the contrary, AI was a big, increasingly-meaningless buzzword, with LG showing off exactly the same Orwellian approach to user interaction that killed Microsoft's Kinect 2. Or, as Mashable put it:
Consumer data is a product, and, looking at the valuations of the largest tech companies in the world, an extremely valuable one. For a show that purports to be about the most important tech products in the world, CES had shockingly little to say about it. That's more than a missed opportunity — it's a sad indication that as world-changing technologies like 5G and automation progress, the hard lessons from the past year will likely need to be learned again and again.CES 2019 was so thoroughly disconnected from anything consumers might have been interested in that one wonders why they even bothered. I kept waiting for some of the week's breathless coverage to produce something that I was actually interested in, and only got the Radeon VII. What a snooze-fest.
Here's my advice. If you were wondering whether your credit cards can take the hit of a new 8K display, don't bother. If you were wondering whether your credit cards can take the hit of a new 5G mobile device, don't bother. If you're wondering whether your life could or should be restructured to include an Internet of Things device that had been of zero interest to you before now, don't bother. If you were wondering whether your life needs a big dose of Orwellian surveillance being marketed as "AI," don't bother.
Vote with your wallet; tell these gigantic companies that you're not going to spend good money on shit that has no value to you, and no obvious place in your life. Make the bastards chase you. Because they're the ones that need you; you don't need them for a damn thing.