Ever since we landed here in Taipei, a team of seven of us from Tom's Hardware have been meeting, learning, and gathering the latest product news, and while we've been here for a few days, we're only at the end of first day of Computex 2015. Actually, I'm writing this from a cab on the morning of the second day, but the time zone difference affords me the license to say that it's the end of day one. Quibble amongst yourselves.
We've seen plenty and hopefully you've had a chance to keep up with our more than 30 news posts so far. Honestly, most of the press conferences are overproduced affairs with grand reveals about not much, and most of the gems and exclusive information we learn comes from behind-the-scenes meetings in private suites.
Day one had a mix of such fare. Asus showcased a dizzying array of consumer-oriented products, mixed with some professional and enthusiast-level ones, like the ROG G751JY/JT G-Sync enabled gaming laptops and the gorgeous ProArt PA329Q monitor. And of course there was the standard fare of smartphones such as the Zenfone Selfie (ugh, a selfie phone!) and some new tablets, including the ZenPad 8.0 Z380C Series, which now has a USB Type-C connector. Either way, it's always a treat to see Asus Chairman Jonney Shih pour on the charm and cheek on stage.
Intel's opening keynote featured many things we've already seen at CES and even last year's IDF, with a few new twists and turns, but the most anticipated bits for us were the new Broadwell SKUs (10 in all) and Thunderbolt 3.
The day before Computex, Nvidia unveiled the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, which we reviewed as always. And we're also hearing news from AMD, specifically about Carrizo.
Seth Colaner covered the ARM press conference which featured the low power Cordio Radio and IoT subsystem called mbed OS. He and I also sat down with MediaTek, but we'll feature that later in the week.
In the midst of the big dogs, we saw the usual unbelievable lineup of cases, including the typical eye-opening monstronsities from the likes of In Win with its transformer case, the H-Tower, and more practical new concepts from companies like Cooler Master's MasterCase series, Fractal Design's Core 500 and Node 202 cases, be quiet's Silent Base 600 and Antec's pricey Signature-Series S10, just to name a few.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Our PSU reviewer, Aris Mpitziopoulos is on site, and he has seen plenty of interesting new PSUs, including lots of digital implementations. See his coverage of Corsair's RMi lineup, Cooler Master's unnamed PSU (which uses a push-button for the on/off switch), Seasonic's Lightning Cube and another unnamed unit, Antec's new High Current Pro Platinum GRID PSUs, and more.
And finally our storage reviewers, Chris Ramseyer and Paul Alcorn, have been rummaging through the private suites in search of hidden gems, like the Phison S10 2TB SSD and a host of new products from SanDisk such as the Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive which contains a whopping 256 GB, the Ultra Fit 128 GB flash drive (which is about the same size as a dime), and the Extreme 900 and Extreme 500 Portable SSDs which feature USB Type-C.
We saw several new motherboards with the 100-series chipset, and Thomas Soderstrom is writing about those for day two, so stay tuned.
Tell us what you liked, and what you want more of, although our schedule is set and with a seven-person team there isn't much we won't get to! More tomorrow for day two.
Agreed, that's crazy. A flash drive the size of a dime, but with 4 times the storage of the first PC I bought back in 1998...boggles the mind sometimes how much technology has changed yet we've managed to get used to it somehow.
Looking forward to the z170 board news. (Then again was and still looking for the Transcend 370 series SSD review we were supposed to get. Did I miss it?)
