Sony have a whole new range of very cool gadgets, tablets, laptops and phones coming out and JOE got a chance to cast our eye over the lot
JOE loves a good gadget, which is why we got the chance to have a look over what Sony are going to be offering in the coming months in their product showcase.
We were very impressed by the giant 65" 4k television, which offers some ridiculously clear pictures, which is possibly more clear than real life. Everything seems so dull to us now. The video they showed us to demonstrate it used a huge football pitch with four times as many players as usual to show that there was four times as much detail, and it was pretty impressive, in particular we noticed that the sense of depth was heightened.
In terms of what you can watch on this bad boy...well not a huge amount, yet, but in September there's a range of 4k remastered blu-rays coming out that should let this TV show itself off a bit more. The built in speakers on the side are slightly unsightly, but they do produce good quality sound without needing a sound bar plugged in. Price wise, this ain't cheap, but it's dang impressive. The 55" comes in at around €5,000 while the 65" is €7,500.
Speaking of sound bars, the CT 180 was on display as well, and was plugged into the Bravia W9. We're not sure why, but we're borderline obsessed with soundbars at the moment, and this was a lovely neat number that was pretty powerful. The sub-woofer, while pretty bulky, slotted away nicely under the display, and it had NFC and Bluetooth, so it would double up as a speaker for your smartphone or Walkman.
The Sony Bravia W9 TV was also hugely impressive. You could also mirror the screen of your smartphone on the display, which is great for showing off your photos, or videos. The triluminous display means that there are much more rich and vivid colours displayed, and it was a real treat to watch, even when we'd seen the 4k just before hand. Triluminous means that there is about a 50% increase in the range of colours shown, and they're the first consumer TVs to come with them. That's pretty exciting we have to admit.
We saw the Xperia Z smartphone too, which had the nifty addition of being waterproof. Now, while that might seem pointless, any of the lads out there who've tried to text while standing over the toilet will know how handy this feature is.
The Xperia Z also packs a 13 megapixel camera, so that your images and videos come to life, and Sony's flagship handset intrigued us.
There were also the MDR-1RBT bluetooth headphones (which we had for a while and will be putting up a review on them soon) and while they're pricey, they were really comfortable and had a very impressive battery life, not to mention brilliant sound quality.
In terms of laptops, we had our eye on the Vaio Pro, a very neat and compact ultrabook that looks to be packing a pretty decent punch inside. It also has an 18-hour battery life when you add the extra sheet battery, and looks like the ideal machine if you want to bring it around the place. It's about €1200, but as it's the world's lightest touch screen Ultrabook, you get plenty of bang for your buck.
The Vaio Duo 13 and the Xperia Z tablet were also very impressive, with the former having a 15-hour battery life and the latter also being waterproof. Once again, that one is actually going to come in handy for those of us who use our tablets as recipe books.
One thing that the guys at Sony are definitely pushing this year is the NFC connectivity feature amongst their devices, from headphones to docks and speakers to laptops, and having already used it ourselves between our smartphone (android) and bluetooth headphones, it's pretty great, and works without much hassle. It's a really great idea, and we're looking forward to seeing it rolled out across their devices. Anything that can remove wires from our lives gets our vote.
There was a whole pile of stuff there that looked pretty exciting, and hopefully we'll get our grubby mitts on them in the near future for a few test drives. For now, we're simply left with a load of gadget lust.
