The best PCs, gadgets, and future tech of CES 2019

Enlarge / Samsung's Space monitor in a lowered configuration. (credit: Samsung)
CES 2019 has finally come to an end—and by and large, it was a more interesting show than last year's. To that end, the Ars reviews staff has put together another annual Best in Show list, and this group of products we consider particularly interesting.
As was the case with CES 2018, the main takeaway from most of the press releases and product pitches we've read and heard over the past couple of weeks has been 'Google Assistant and/or Amazon Alexa are in everything.' But to be frank, we don't find that to be the most interesting thing happening at CES right now. For most users, digital voice assistants are still just a curiosity, and nothing major happened at CES to push them forward—the voice assistant story this year was simply one of ubiquity. The best innovations and products in this category were largely iterative ones or one-off clever designs that wouldn't find a place in broader 'CES trends' pieces.
By contrast, our list is a small one given the vast number of products at the show. There's always a tension when judging CES products this way: do we select the products that represent remarkable innovation and give us a glimpse of something neat or useful in a not-too-distant future or the products that are going to be easiest to recommend to prospective buyers right now in 2019? This year, the Ars team wants to err on the side of the here and now, but we stretched that a little bit for certain gadgets that pushed the envelope while still being viable products that will ship to real users.
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