TheBolt

Since 2006, DJI has been on the forefront of consumer and professional grade drones, producing unmanned aerial vehicles—more commonly refereed to as drones—which are designed to capture aerial content for all types of users. The entry level Phantom model has been designed to make flying easy, even for someone who has never flown anything before.

The Phantom comes ready to fly, meaning you can un-box the drone and in less than 10 minutes have your new toy up in the air. Be cautious though, because pilots will tell you the easy part of flying is getting in the air; the hard part is landing. But you can have peace of mind, thanks to the intelligent flight system that gives the Phantom stable hovering assistance, collision avoidance, and an auto landing feature. Flight times on the Phantom range around 25 minutes thanks to the impressive battery that is easily swapable so you can keep flying when one pack is empty. There is a lot of impressive technology crammed into this space age looking drone, and lets not forget to mention that the Phantom is capable of shooting 4K video at 60 fps.
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In a sea of biggest, brightest new products you can imagine from the industry powerhouses, sometimes it’s the clever, small items that catch your eye the most. Here are some of our favorite gadgets from CES 2017.

iPowerUp Solar Charging Phone Case

Solar-powered phone cases are nothing new, but good solar-powered phone cases are. In our experience, the cases typically never meet their claimed specs, taking much longer than expected to deliver any worthwhile juice to your phone. So we’re optimistic that the iPowerUp cases live up to their claims. Thanks to refinements in photovoltaic technology, the extra-efficient panels on this case can produce 450-500 mAh of power in one hour of sun exposure. That means a typical smartphone battery should be charged to full capacity in five to six hours.If the iPowerUp Solar Case lives up to its claims, we can see this being one of the year’s most popular iPhone accessories.

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CES 2017 wasn’t much for shocking new technology debuts or any real game-changers. Instead, we saw plenty of refinements and advancements to the wowing tech that debuted maybe last year or the year before. That trend was especially evident with televisions and associated home theater stuff. Here are our Top 5 Developments in TV from this year’s CES.

1.) More OLED

For nearly three years now, LG has had run of the court as the only manufacturer with a commercially-available OLED set. While a bit pricey, they also produced what was unanimously considered the best picture possible in a backlit display that you could fit in your family room. That changed this year, with both Sony and Panasonic showing off their own OLED models.  The Sony Bravia A1E OLED has a few other tricks up its sleeve, in addition to the stunning picture. Meanwhile, Panasonic’s 65EZ1000 OLED is claimed to have double the brightness of a typical OLED, which may make it reigning champ of the home theater picture quality, a crown they often wore in the Plasma TV days.

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Listeners who were impressed by the Klipsch Heritage  speakers but might want something a little more portable are in luck. Also debuting at CES were the Klipsch Heritage Headphones, which follow the same “new inside, old outside” philosophy of the rest of the lineup. These headphones are crafted from a variety of machined metals, fine woods and hand-selected leathers, which gives them a rustic, old-school look and superior comfort.

The Klipsch Heritage headphones include multiple models with different fits and options. First in the lineup is the Klipsch HP-1, which features 40mm drivers in a closed-back, on-ear design, and which will be available in wired, wireless, and active noise-cancelling models. The HP-2 is an open-back, on-ear design, while the HP-3 will be an open-back, over-the-ear model. Both the HP-2 and HP-3 will available only as wired models. Each model is designed home-quality sound even without amplification. Very excited to get our hands on these, but we’re going to have to wait. Klipsch expects them to be available in late 2017.

Klipsch is a brand that most would not consider when hearing the words “vintage design.” Though they’ve been in the game for seventy years, most of their current product line has a decidedly modern aesthetic, from the sleek black cabinets to the characteristic copper cones. But many have never been introduced to the Klipsch Heritage lineup, a series of high-end products that are hand-made in Hope, Arkansas, the town where Klipsch was founded. Each Heritage product features a vintage-inspired design, but is packed with the brand’s top-of-the-line audio technology, creating heirloom products meant to be treasured for generations. We caught up with Klipsch at CES and got a look and listen at some of the newest products in the Heritage line.

The Forte III speakers resurrect one of the most popular nameplates in the company’s history. These full-range, floor-standing speakers are crafted to deliver a multi-dimensional listening experience in just a single pair of speakers, without the need for an external subwoofer. Loaded with Klipsch’s newest technology, the Forte III meld the best of past and present Klipsch.

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Alpine’s CES booth is one of our favorite stops each year, featuring tons of new products and some very impressive display vehicles. This year was no different, as we got to check out an abundance of their upcoming audio products, as well as some other goodies.

We learned about the new Alpine X-Series, which is the company’s new overarching series of flagship amps, speakers and subwoofers. The X-Series will focus on audio attributes of imaging and soundstage, terms normally reserved for describing high-end home sound systems.

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Scandinavian companies are often known for melding practical functions with striking, minimalist designs. Think Bang & Olufsen audio equipment or basically anything you can get at IKEA. At CES, we caught up with Libratone, a newer Danish company who are putting out some interesting products that espouse that same design philosophy.

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Technology has rattled many industries in recent years, even the fashion world. So as anyone could imagine combining the two is not a simple feat. However, when it comes to a name brand company such as Fossil Group, merging the two has proved to be only successful. Fossil Group’s focus and fashion design expertise has successfully launched over 40 new smartwatch hybrids across a few of their accessory brands including Fossil, Skagan, MisFit, Kate Spade and much more. The cool thing about these hybrid models is that they look and feel like traditional analog watches, because they don’t have typical smartwatch displays. Yet they count your steps, monitor your sleep and send notifications to your wrist. Just download the associated app with each different brand and see your activity data. Our CES 2017 crew stopped by Fossil Group to learn more about their new fashion forward smartwatches.

So each brand’s app and functionality is different. For example, Fossil’s collection of hybrid smartwatches not only count your steps and alert you with notifications through the Fossil Q App, but with new Q Link technology you can also choose between ringing your phone, controlling music or taking a photo. In addition, if you’re someone who wants a smartwatch but dislikes the idea of having to charge yet another smart device, then the hybrid watch is exactly what you need. These watches’s battery lasts up to six months, give or a take a few!

Since the debut of the first mass-market OLED TVs by LG a few years ago, the entire industry has been waiting for a second major player to start implementing the technology into their high-end TV lines. Sony had previously shown an OLED concept at CES, but it never made it to market. This year, they came out with guns blazing, revealing a new OLED set that just might be the most beautiful TV we’ve ever seen. Meet the the Sony Bravia OLED A1E:

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Hisense has not historically been a household name in the USA (they actually refer to themselves as “The biggest 4K TV company you’ve never heard of”), and what products did bear their logo were often looked at as inferior options. In recent years, the Chinese mega-corporation has been working to change that. In 2015, they shook up the TV industry by acquiring Sharp’s North and South American TV business and branding rights. And they’ve continued to work on their product line, putting out TVs that are more competitive with models from the major manufacturers. We stopped by Hisense’s CES area to see some of the products they were spotlighting and found an intriguing selection, some ready to hit the market and some still in the prototype stage.

First up were the Hisense H10D TVs, which will be the company’s flagship sets. Available in 70-inch and 75-inch models, these sets are packed with premium features, including UHD Alliance and THX certifications, quantum-dot technology, Motion 480 processing for ultra-smooth fast scenes, and full array local dimming which promises a stellar contrast ratio.

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