Hasta La Gadget!

LG held its press conference this morning at CES 2013 in Las Vegas, and while there wasn’t much unveiled that we haven’t seen before from the Korean company, there were smart home appliance updates that promise to make the connected home a much more easy-to-use experience for the average consumer. LG was clearly pushing smart home tech, and made a point of illustrating what it means by the concept of “smart,” vs. what the term is generally used to imply.

The LG smart appliances shown off at the company’s press event included connected washers and dryers, refrigerators, an oven and the company’s new HOM-BOT successor, a Roomba-type vacuum with more advanced features than the version originally debuted in 2011. All of the devices are also now able to accept natural language input, a big step up in making them more user-accessible.

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The new line all include features that make it easy to connect your appliances to your smartphone without having to worry about complicated pairing processes. NFC means you can simply wave your smartphones over your devices to connect them to get them tied to one another. The idea, according to LG North America President and CEO Wayne Park is to make it so that consumers can engage with their smart home in a way that’s natural and automatic, rather than convoluted and anti-intuitive.

The new washer and dryer in the LG smart appliance line offers self-diagnosis capabilities, so it can tell a user via their smartphone when and why it’s experiencing a problem. It can also allow the machine to get better over time via washing cycle downloads – so if LG engineers a better way to wash your undies, theoretically they’ll be able to push it out to your smartphone and your washer whenever you choose to connect. All of this can also take place remotely via any data connection using LG’s smart home apps.

The smart oven also offers self-diagnosis capabilities, as well as downloadable recipes and new cooking modes. The 2013 smart refrigerator can grab recipes, too, as well as provide health information, do self-diagnosis, and work with smart grid tech in order to be able to maximize energy efficiency. It also gives you a look at what is or isn’t in your fridge for shopping trips.

Finally the new HOM-BOT robot vacuum can be remote-controlled via smartphone, and features an onboard camera to allow you to check its cleaning progress remotely from your devices. All of the above appliances are also tied into LG’s Smart TV platform for home control and monitoring, too.

Smart home used to be more of a tech demo, but LG is turning it into a shipping reality. They’ve laid the groundwork in the past, but these new systems (all of which appear to be Android-based, though a rep couldn’t confirm) take things a step further towards wide adoption thanks to easier setup and more intuitive implementation.

With Mobile World Congress about a month away, there wasn’t a peep about new smartphones at today’s LG press conference. The company was all about TV — well, TV and smart appliances, we guess. But we couldn’t help but be enamored with the giant TV sets, the company showed off once the curtains were drawn back at the end of the press conference. The most eye-catching of all, clearly was the 84-inch 4K display which downright dwarfed the LG rep standing to its side. Sitting just off to the right was the newly announced 65-inch model, which, like the 55-inch OLED that spent the show on-stage, looked like a relatively modest proposal sitting next to such a behemoth. Of course, these are 4K TV sets that we’re talking about here, so we use the word “modest” as loosely as humanly possible.

The set maintains the impressive life-like quality of its elder sibling (showing off massively detailed cityscapes) of course, but compared to incredibly sleek and shiny OLED sets that we saw early, the 4K seem a bit on the thicker side. Though, as with the OLED, LG’s clearly focused on making the the bezel as imperceptible as possible here. The 4K models are propped up by a shiny metal stand emerging from their center.

Myriam Joire contributed to this report

Filed under: Home Entertainment, LG

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Talk about distracting. While LG was discussing washing machines and other smart appliances, we couldn’t take our eyes off the 55-inch OLED display sitting on the side of the stage. It’s one of two new sizes being added to the family, alongside the enormous 84-inch model. The first thing you’ll notice, if you’ve seen its bigger brother is that, all things considered, this is a fairly modest set. Well, relatively, of course. The next thing you’ll pick up on is just how sharp the thing is. While playing some slow-motion video of liquid flying through the air throughout the event, it was impossible to take our eyes off the thing.

We managed to get a little closer after the end of the event, and caught a glimpse of some really great viewing angles on the set — though those were hampered a bit by the glossy finish. If you’re not watching the screen on stage at a CES press event, however, that shouldn’t be much of a problem. Also apparent once you approach is just how thin the set it — the bezel, too. The TV will run $12,000 when it starts shipping in March, so start saving those pennies now.

Myriam Joire contributed to this post.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, LG

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LG just gave a price to its entry level 55-inch OLED TV: $12,000. That’s the starting price, mind you. There are three different OLED sizes to choose from, but we’re only seeing 55- and 65-inchers — no word on pricing for the larger set, but we’d wager it’ll be a pretty penny over that initial $12K. You can put in an order now, and LG’s saying it’ll arrive in March. The South Korean electronics company also mentioned partnerships with Activision, Verizon, Google, and Disney for its OLED line, and teased a third size for launch in 2013. Presumably that largest size will require a second or third mortgage, but we’re hoping to hear more specifics during CES this week.

Update: We’ve added PR after the break.

Continue reading LG’s 55-inch OLED television starting at $12K, shipping in March

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Household, HD, LG

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We’re here live at LG’s CES 2013 press conference, where the company has just announced that its Hecto laser projector will arrive in the United States in March. It’ll project a screen of up to 100-inches in full HD quality and has Smart TV functions baked into the hardware. Naturally, LG’s favoring its home turf first, and the amusingly named device will be available in Korea later this month.

Filed under: HD, LG

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