LG C1 OLED TV: The Big Winner at CES 2021?

LG C1 OLED TV: The Big Winner at CES 2021?

AMD won with its Ryzen 5000 chips and LG made a big splash with its new OLED TV.

As the 2021 virtual International CES approaches its end on Thursday, the show’s official partner for awards, Engadget, has announced its official Best of CES Awards. Engadget hosted a webcast announcing the winners on the CES platform, although it had announced winners earlier in the day.

The winner of the Best of the Best Award, from Engadget, is AMD’s new Ryzen 5000 laptop chips.

“For the Best of the Best category the Engadget team tends to look for the products that have the greatest potential to change the technology landscape over the coming year. For us, that would be AMD’s new mobile chips,” Engadget said.

The chips also won in the Best Gaming Product category.

For Best TV, the winner was the LG C1 OLED TV, from LG’s new lineup.

“For the past several years, LG’s OLEDs have been the cream of the crop for anyone who demands the best TV quality. Unlike LCD TVs, OLEDs don’t require a backlight. Instead, each individual pixel can turn itself on and off, allowing them to display pure black levels in ways that LCDs still can’t match,” Engadget said. “Sure, we’re seeing higher-quality MiniLED LCD sets coming (LG has those two in its QNED line), but even they’re still trying desperately to catch up with the picture purity of OLED.”

LG noticed another win in the Best Phone or Mobile Device category, for its LG Rollable phone. As Engadget noted on the broadcast, several companies have introduced similar prototypes, but LG’s is actually scheduled to arrive this year.

Sony was also a double winner. It won the Best Home Theater product for its 360 Reality Audio Speakers, while also winning Best Robot or Drone for its AirPeak camera, a drone which will reportedly be used for movie filming.

Samsung, meanwhile, was the winner of three awards. Its Solar Cell Remote was the winner for Best Sustainability Product, while its Samsung Health Smart Trainer was the winner in the Best Sports Tech category. And the Samsung JetBot 90 AI+, a robot vacuum cleaner, was the winner for Best Connected Product.

The winner for Best PC or Tablet was the ASUS Zenbook Duo, which Engadget called “The best dual-screen laptop we’ve seen to date.” Another computer, the gaming-oriented Razer Blade 15, was the winner for the People’s Choice Award.

The Hyperscreen, a Mercedes in-car central display, won for Best Transportation, while the Kohler Stillness Bath was named Most Unexpected Product.

Other winners included Goodmaps Explore for Best Accessibility Tech, and Omron’s VitalSight for Best Digital Health & Fitness Product, and Wearable Devices Limited’s Mundra Band for Best Wearable.

The Best of CES awards, which are traditionally announced at the end of CES and chosen by Engadget’s editors, are not to be confused with the Innovation Awards, which are chosen by CTA itself, and announced a few months prior to the show. Within that, there is the Best of Innovation awards, which are a subset of the regular Innovation Awards.

Engadget took over the awards eight years ago, following a kerfuffle in which the previous awards outlet, CNET, was prevented by their corporate bosses at CBS from presenting an award to Dish, as CBS was in litigation with Dish over that very product at the time.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: LG.