CES 2016 was as drab as the rest of the year

Probably the best thing you can say about 2016 is that it sets up 2017 to be an awesome improvement no matter what happens. Then again, 2016 itself started on a highly optimistic note, having succeeded the bland 2015 and started with the traditional gala event of the tech calendar that was the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. CES 2016 was the January harbinger of what was to come: we thought it’d be a fresh dose of techno optimism, with a shot or two of smarter cars and homes, but it ended up a distressing series of unhappy events. So let’s look back on it! (If only for the sake of closure.)

Laptops promised much, but delivered a great deal less

When we, The Verge’s editorial staff, were having our Verge Awards debate for CES 2016, the richest field of candidates was laptops. There were just so many appealing and attractive new options, each one of them thinner than the other, each a little bit sleeker and more refined. We liked Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Yoga a lot, especially with its gorgeous new OLED screen. Then we were charmed by the HP EliteBook Folio, which looked like a very legitimate Windows alternative to Apple’s MacBook – only with the added benefit of two USB-C ports rather than just one. Progress, we thought.

My personal highlight from among the bunch was the Razer Blade Stealth, the gaming company’s first ever ultrabook, which also capitalized on USB-C’s greater bandwidth to introduce an awesome concept: a universally compatible graphics card dock, which would allow mobile gamers to hook up a full-bloodied desktop GPU to their ultraportable laptop. With a pretty, high-resolution display and a handsome matte-black finish, the Blade Stealth promised to be a modular realization of one of the oldest dreams in PC-land: a gaming laptop without performance limitations or enormous size.

Related

Lenovo’s X1 laptop line gets even better with OLED screens and a folding hinge

HP’s EliteBook Folio is like a MacBook that runs Windows

Razer’s first ultrabook wants to be your only gaming PC

Alas, as 2016 ticked on, it became clear that none of our favored laptop heroes would live up to their initial hype. The Blade Stealth suffered from substantial delays to the Razer Core, the GPU dock that made it more than just another ultrabook, and the Core was mightily priced at $499 ($399 when purchased alongside a Razer laptop). Expected around April, it wasn’t until the latter half of the year that the Core was properly available, by which point there was already a fresh revision of the Blade Stealth, though even the September update didn’t improve the ultrabook’s battery life to the point of competing with better alternatives in the ultralight category.