CES 2021 begins on Monday, January 11, not in Las Vegas but online — a first for CES — thanks to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The shift from swanky hotels to virtual halls isn’t keeping anyone away. All the major brands, including Samsung, Sony, LG, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, and AMD, will be involved. Though not all of them are waiting for CES 2021 to get started to reveal their slate of announcements. Lenovo and Dell have already gone ahead and unveiled everything they had. Samsung has slated three events: one prior, one during, and one after. Both Sony and LG have given us a peek of what they will talk about, but others like Microsoft remain mum on what they are doing at CES 2021.
All the CES 2021 News at Our CES Hub
CES 2021 schedule
The 2021 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show will run from Monday, January 11 to Thursday, January 14. Here’s a selection of the biggest events to look forward to:
Monday, January 11
6:30pm IST — LG
7:30pm IST — Samsung
Tuesday, January 12
3:30am IST — Sony Square
9:30pm IST — AMD
10:30pm IST — Nvidia
10:45pm IST — Intel
11:30pm IST — Asus ROG
Wednesday, January 13
12:15am IST — Sony North America
7:30pm IST — Microsoft
10:30pm IST — Asus
Thursday, January 14
12:30am IST — MSI
CES 2021 — what to expect
With both AMD and Nvidia launching their newest graphics cards recently, it seems CES 2021 could be a place where the former’s CEO Dr. Lisa Su reveals the next generation of Ryzen mobile chips for laptops alongside a more affordable Radeon 6000 series card, while the latter will also reveal laptop versions of its GeForce RTX 3000 series graphics cards. AMD’s chipmaking rival Intel meanwhile is expected to detail its next-gen Rocket Lake processors, and you’ll also see it talk more about its work in AI, 5G, and autonomous vehicles. Asus and MSI will no doubt reveal laptops powered by all the things revealed by AMD, Nvidia, and Intel.
No one really knows what Microsoft is doing at CES 2021, though it has a prominent place given its tech is powering the all-virtual event. Here’s what you can expect from the other big names at CES 2021.
LG at CES 2021
When: January 11 at 6:30pm IST / 8am ET / 5am PT
CES has always been the place to announce a lot of new TVs, and CES 2021 doesn’t look to be any different. The Korean giant has already unveiled a bendable OLED TV designed for gamers that can produce sound without any speakers, the world’s first Eyesafe-certified TV to reduce blue light emissions, and its TV software webOS 6.0 for the 2021 TV lineup. Expect all of them to be showcased during its presentation.
We might also get to hear more about LG’s continued experimentations with OLED technology, resulting in rollable and transparent displays.
Samsung at CES 2021
When: January 11 at 7:30pm IST / 9am ET / 6am PT
The Galaxy S21 isn’t due until the end of CES 2021 — January 14 to be precise — and Samsung already revealed its 2021 lineup of TVs in a pre-CES event, which means that its actual CES 2021 event will focus on everything else it hasn’t yet talked about. Though some of it has already been mentioned, such as the portal oxygen device Air Pocket, a food and wine pairing service in Food & Sommelier, and automatic TV picture calibration based on ambient light with EZCal.
Sony at CES 2021
When: January 12 at 3:30am IST / January 11 at 5pm ET / 2pm PT
Like Samsung, Sony too has unveiled its range of 2021 TV models — they all make use of PlayStation 5’s fancy HDMI 2.1 features — before CES 2021 has actually begun, leaving you to guess what it’ll actually deliver at the real event. With Sony’s flagship truly wireless WF-1000XM3 now a year and a half old (though they arrived in India 13 months late back in August), some believe the Japanese giant could release an updated version — a WF-1000XM4, if you will — that will borrow features from the recently launched over-the-ears WH-1000XM4.
Asus at CES 2021
When: January 13 at 10:30pm IST / 12pm ET / 9am PT
Asus is expected to showcase a bunch of new laptops from its ROG (gamer) and TUF (consumer) range at CES 2021, having released teasers over the past week that hint at as much. They will likely be running Nvidia’s new range of RTX 3000 series, and are guaranteed to be powered by Intel, given the chipmaker’s logo is part of the event invite itself.
