TechX Awards: The Most Innovative Products and Technologies of CES 2021

CES 2021 gave PCMag editors their first chance to vet candidates for our new Technical Excellence Awards, aka TechX.

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The award is given to products, concepts, and services we think are going to be game changers in their respective markets. CES has always been a proving ground for new concepts, and even without a trade show floor this year, there were plenty of innovations to be found. Although there were fewer official exhibitors than usual—less than half by some accounts—the vendors that showed up (albeit virtually) came to play.

We found desktops with new form factors; slim, powerful laptops with clever external GPUs; and refrigerators that use UV light to purify water, just to name a few. AMD continued its assault on Intel chip hegemony, and Nvidia strengthened its position in the graphics market. Of course, there were plenty of cool new variations in display technology as well—particularly in the form of LG’s rollable smartphone. When (or whether) some of these innovations will actually hit the market is hard to say, but they’re undoubtedly pushing the industry forward.

PCMag’s TechX awards might have launched at CES, but we’ll continue to give them out throughout the year. After all, innovation doesn’t stop when the show ends.—Dan Costa

AMD RYZEN 5000 “CEZANNE” MOBILE CPUS

High-performance CPUs for laptops have long been the near-exclusive stomping grounds of chip giant Intel, but that’s been changing over the past year. At CES 2021, AMD teased a total of 13 new chip variants that will join the Ryzen 5000 series this year to power laptops of all types: U-series chips for thin-and-light laptops, and HX-, HS-, and H-series chips for more powerminded models.