Best of CES 2013: Hottest gadgets and new tech

CES 2013 just closed up shop in Las Vegas. It showed us all the new tech we can expect to see on shelves this year. But what were the best new gadgets and tech treats of the show? Here’s our pick of the hundreds of products we saw this year.

Best TV: Sony 65X9000 4K LED
CES 2013 wasn’t the first time we’d seen 4K TVs, not by a long shot, but they’re finally starting to feel real – rather than future concept gadgets. The Sony 65X9000 is the best of the bunch. Fantastic picture quality, stunning design and speakers far better than you find built into just about any other TV, this is the full package.

Best Phone: Sony Xperia Z
This year’s CES showed us the trends to expect in 2013’s top phones. This year is all about the 5-inch 1080p screen. Huawei, Sony and ZTE all revealed their full-HD offerings, but the Sony Xperia Z packed the most “wow factor”. A glass-topped body, stunning design and weatherproofing team-up to make this a convincing rival for the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Best headphones: Onkyo ES-FC300
If you own something by Onkyo, it’s most likely one of its home cinema receivers. However, Onkyo says that the headphone market is just too big not to try to get a slice of. Its first full-size pair is the ~£150 Onkyo ES-FC300. They look and sound great. Dynamic and exciting, without the bass boominess of some rivals.

Best home audio: Pure Jongo A140B/T640
Pure unveiled its Jongo multi-room audio system in 2012, but the reveals of CES 2013 brought the series’s aims into sharp focus. It wants to offer a multi-room system that only need cost a fraction of what you’d pay for a Sonos setup. The 140 lets you hook up an existing hi-fi, while the u90u is a full speaker dock.

Best camera: FujiFilm X100S
The FujiFilm X100 is a Trusted Reviews favourite, but FujiFilm has refined the formula with the FujiFilm X100S. It features a redesigned sensor and processing engine, crucially improving autofocus speed. It’s just as beautiful as the original, this time with most of the kinks ironed out.

Best desktop PC: Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon
Blurring the lines between a tablet and AIO PC, the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon is one of the most accessible and affordable large-screen portable PCs we’ve seen. It has a 27-inch touchscreen, an internal two-hour battery and multiple personalities. When in upright position, it’s a normal Windows 8 PC. Set it flat and the Aura UI kicks-in – it’s an easy-to-use media browser.

Best tablet: Asus VivoTab Smart
A bit like an Asus-made take on the Microsoft Surface, the Asus VivoTab is a slim Windows 8 hybrid tablet that uses a magnetic cover-case combo instead of a mechanical base. It’s a great tablet to look into if you’re going to use the tablet on its lonesome a good deal of the time.

Best laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad Helix
The road warrior of Windows 8 hybrid laptops, the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix has the chunky solidity and excellent build quality of Lenovo’s ThinkPad tablets, and offers much more flexibility than most tablets and laptops too. The tablet part of the Helix can be plugged into the keyboard base either way round, making it function as a stand if needed.

Best gaming: Nvidia Project Shield
Nvidia surprised us this year. We thought we’d see the company simply unveil the new Tegra 4 processor. We got Tegra 4, but we also saw Project Shield, a Tegra 4-powered Android handheld games console. It’s not the prettiest thing on the block, but will let you play high-end PC games on the sofa, streaming from your PC – as well as playing Android games.

Best new tech: PaperTab
CES 2013 wasn’t a tech show of major technological innovations, but there were a few gems hidden away in there. The PaperTab is a proof of concept tech demo made by Plastic Logic in association with Intel. It’s a tablet of sorts, but one that uses multiple 10.7-inch E-ink screens, or pages, that can interact with each other. It may be far from a final product, but this new tech got us scratching our heads much more than the show’s curved TVs.