Gadget Show Live Press Day 2012 Roundup
Gadget Show Live 2012. With the slimming down and increasing enterprise focus of Channel Expo, it’s become one of if not the biggest tech trade show in the UK. I visited it yesterday for the press day, checking out what was going on before the masses arrived today and over the next half week.
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While the show wasn’t exactly the most exciting, there were a few sights worth seeing. One such view was the interior of this rediculous i7 system at the Overclockers stand which had Quad SLI GTX 680 cards running in it. Unecessary doesn’t even come close to describing it.
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There were quite a few Star Wars Kinect stands available for trial. They suck. It’s a horrible game. Laggy, feels antiquated and gimmicky and doesn’t even look that great. You also feel like a complete ass.
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I did like checking out these mechanical keyboards from “The KeybOard Company.” They had some nice spreads of black, blue and brown Cherry switch boards, so look out for reviews of them here soon.
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The Kingston combo Zotac stand was fun to check out as we’ve been working with those guys and their PR people for years. There was a new Z-Box on display, and Kingston had a revamped, cheaper version of its Hyper X SSD.
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Gadget Show 2012 was a show dominated by audio. Lots and lots of headsets competing with the speaker firms. These were most evident in the few heavily modded vehicles on display.
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Easily my favourite part of the day was the big spread of retro arcade games. Granted I lost in steet fighter against one of the other XSR writers, but I did pull off a resonable score on Donkey Kong. Good luck beating it if you’re showing up in the ensuing few days.
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Cooler Master had a few keyboards to show off, again we should be getting these for review soon. There were a few mini and full options which seemed from the quick look we had to be relatively nice. I particularly liked the large wrist rest on this model.
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There was also had a small action figure on display. Captain Cooler Master. There’s about 3,000 of these, so try and get one if you can. It might not be as rare as the NZXT swords given out a few years ago, but if you’re a fan of the company, this could be a fun collectible.
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Here’s one such example of the many, many headphone companies showing off their wares. I’m not joking either. 50 Cent was there with his new range, Ludacris’ Soul headphones were on show, Sony had some, so did Plantronics, Sennheiser, Turtle beach and at least ten more.
Really how excited can you get after listening to high quality music through your 10th overpriced headset?
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Scan had quite a good stand going as usual with some overclocking demos, but it’s more there to try and sell hardware than anything so it’s not really there for the press punters like myself.
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And that’s it really. There were some bits I didn’t snap pictures of, like the we’re-seen-it-all-before thin LED displays with the over-done 3D technology. There was also a fair few F1 racing experience pods which have been around for at least three years now and were all over the place at last year’s Gadget Show Live.
Altogether a pretty underwhelming show. I’ll be attending again next year, but I hope there’s some more innovation in the intervening 12 months to give companies more to show off.
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That fellow playing on the Street Fighter booth looks mighty charismatic if you ask me.