GIVEN THE LAST two years of digital-only or poorly attended physical shows, it was great to see the Las Vegas Convention Center packed with new technology once again. Fighting through the accompanying throng of journalists, analysts, and industry professionals was less welcome, especially when the corridors were blocked by people inexplicably trying to claim a free skateboard but, overall, it was great to feel the buzz of the world’s biggest tech show return. We left with the impression that the industry, and the PC market in particular, was in rude health, with loads to look forward to this year.
In terms of overall themes, there were some clear winners, such as Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, who all brought their latest-generation chips to laptop manufacturers eager to snap them up for this year’s machines. But the winner for the tech of the show was monitors—2023 is going to be the year of the display. We saw more OLED gaming monitors than you can shake a redundant LCD backlight at, as well as some fantastic ultra-wide, large format, and high-refresh-rate screens. Narrowing it down to the 35 products here was a difficult task, but these are our picks for the best PC goodies of CES 2023.
SAMSUNG ODYSSEY NEO G9
If you’re an ultra-wide aficionado, the Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 is a dream monitor. With its dual UHD 7,680x2,160 resolution, mini-LED tech, 240Hz refresh rate, HDR1000, and DisplayPort 2.1, it’s the kind of screen that will last for years. Which is handy, because you’ll probably need to wait that long for a GPU powerful enough to drive it.
There’s no price or release date yet, but that gives you time to buy the huge desk you’ll need to accommodate it.
• Out: TBC • www.samsung.com • Price: $2,300+ (estimated)
INTEL CORE I5 13400F
We loved the previous-gen Intel Core i5 12400 CPU from last year, and this is its successor. The big improvement is the addition of efficiency cores, meaning you now get six big Performance-cores and four smaller E-cores for your $210,
