Why CES 2021 was Filled with Business Laptops and Chromebooks

This story is part of CES, where our editors will bring you the latest news and the most popular articles from the all-virtual CES 2021.

If we look back at the virtual CES 2021, we will mostly reflect on what did not happen. No memorable Las Vegas dinners, no attractions in the convention center, no crazy personal demonstrations of fantastic new prototypes. Instead, what we saw through our browser screens was mostly a parade of practical products, not designed to inspire or enjoy, but just to help us go through the next few months wearing masks, to from home to work and wait our turn on the vaccine line.

Most years at CES I’m excited to show you the latest concept pieces and game laptops, or talk about trends I see emerging, such as flexible screens or secondary screens. When I talk about direct business laptops, it’s usually an afterthought. They are usually not very caught up in the rah-rah excitement of Las Vegas.

Then 2020 happened. It turns out that the biz laptop people were actually the most important people in the room right now, and that their products dominated at CES 2021. Some of the largest computer manufacturers, including Dell and HP, have mostly announced commercial laptops and added and refined features. for the semi-permanent work from home. I think I’ve never paid so much attention to Latitude and EliteBook laptops during CES. But work-friendly laptops were one of the big themes of the program, along with a few other notable topics.

Business only

Because of the long timeline required to develop new computer hardware, it is not as if computer manufacturers had a new range of COVID machines to show us. It’s more of a shift from the emphasis, to bringing the biz laptops that are already in development to the forefront, adapting features and pointing out that these machines have the better webcams and photos, and more advanced security features that full-time home office types required. .

Dell added some recycled bioplastic from trees to some Latitude models, and better webcams for others. HP has made a biz version of the very clever Folio two-in-one design and a major webcam upgrade to the Dragonfly Max. Lenovo’s new X1 Titanium are both the thinnest two-in-one of the company, but also have a larger 3: 2 aspect ratio screen for easier spreadsheet. Yay, I think so.

Kids & Chromebooks

Chromebooks usually do a decent job at CES, but this is once again in the forefront. So many distance learning students are learning on the Chromebook train by 2020 that the ratio of laptops per family member has come pretty close to 1: 1. Families who may have had children to share a single laptop, or children had to borrow a parent’s machine, were forced to buy one for each remote student.

Chromebooks have won because they were almost universally a cheaper alternative to Windows laptops and MacBooks, and they work easily with the tools most school systems use (Google Classroom, Epic, Khan Academy).

Acer’s Spin 514 Chromebookfor example, Gorilla Glass and offered some mil-spec toughness features that honestly many high school students need. And Samsung has lowered the price of its Galaxy Chromebook with 30-50% above last year’s model, while looking particularly sharp.

New ideas for two screens

Last year, at CES 2020, we saw a lot of cool, crazy prototypes and concepts, from folding laptops to Alienware Handheld (and Very Switch) Computer. This year, things were generally more practical, but we also saw some more polished outré devices. And after years of missed attempts, dual screen laptops can finally be a real thing that is actually useful to people.

Asus’ latest review of the ZenBook Duo concept really deepened me. It has a larger second screen, with a smarter placement, but more importantly: it’s something useful to do with it. With Adobe app integration, I enjoyed using jogging wheels and shortcut buttons in Premiere and Photoshop, while regaining real estate on the main screen.

I also loved the larger, more useful E-screen on the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 i (it’s a mouthful of a name), because the back of your laptop’s lid is honestly a lot of unused real estate. Here it becomes an E Ink display, like a Kindle, that can keep track of your calendar or single notes or even an email box, and also make it easy to record notes, all with a very minimal battery drain. The current Kindle app integration is not very smooth, but it feels like some tweaks to a very useful aircraft computer.

Ironically, the most ubiquitous second screen in years, Apple’s OLED touch bar may be on its way out, according to a recent rumor.

I think so?

My favorite part of CES most years is the rush of new computer game hardware and accessories. This year, it’s hard to get pumped about it, with both the PS5 and Xbox X Series still so shiny and new.

That said, new Nvidia Laptops GPUs (the 3000 series, first introduced in desktops in 2020) comes to laptops like Acer Triton 300 and Lenovo Legion 7 Slim, and most of these new systems are surprisingly subtle. In part this’s because new, more efficient GPU and CPU hardware enables thinner designs and fewer fans – before you needed quite large lights and glowing alien heads to disguise the fact that your game laptop is the size of a compact car had to be. .

Even now, a pocket-sized laptop is more powerful and has more future performance costs than the new game console in the living room, but it is also now difficult to pay $ 500 for the latest console hardware. Over the next few years, while the PS5 and Xbox ages are in their embedded configurations, PC games will be at the forefront again.

At least that’s how CES looked to me. For a little of what it is may look like in 100 years, see Scott’s view of CES 2121 here.