CES Roundup: Swag or Schwag

Anyone who has ever been to a tradeshow or big convention knows the drill- most every vendor or booth will attempt to hand you something. It may be a CD or sheaf of papers, but those tend to get overlooked. The real excitement comes in the form of giveaways and promotional items, usually cheap trinkets like pins or stickers or magnets. But at CES, many companies aim a a little higher, especially when it comes to reaching the notoriously cynical press- we've seen it all before, and you can't get us excited about some silly thing like... hey, is that a free T-shirt?! Wait, I need two! All you have is XXL? That's fine, it'll fit someone!

As you can see in the pictures, not all of the stuff we brought home is more suitable for the trashbin than our desks. We carefully avoided coffee mugs or other heavy items, and the only things shown are items provided free of strings. That's not to say everything we kept around is going in the scrapbook of love though- the items in the upper right-hand, for instance, we only lugged back home as displays for this piece. And we have some tips at the end of the piece for just about everyone who displays at a tradeshow of any kind.

Casio's 2011 CES press conference was a lesson in what not to do. They led and focused on a silly sharing service that can take any of your photos and make them HDR, which might have been cool a few years ago when your iPhone couldn't do a much better job. The T-shirt they handed out- emblazoned with the tagline "A New Take On Photographic Expression"- shows off a perfect example of how not to use HDR (high dynamic range). Thanks Casio! We'll treasure the cheap, uncomfortable Gildan shirt always. Might we suggest reconsidering your apparel provider (Uniqlo, anyone?), not to mention changing the photo, hiring some marketing help, getting some locals to actually speak to the press, and... we give up.

The bright-orange-burn-your-eyes necktie was courtesy of Computex Taipei and TAITRA, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council. It's a bit odd to push one tradeshow at another, but we overlooked it. At least this one is 100% hand-made silk, or so the label tells us. Ladies got a scarf in the same shade. At least both will go nicely with the Casio shirt...

Beyond those flubs, the rest was pretty nifty. We've already hit on the Etch a Sketch cases in our roundup, for instance. And Monster's Superthin Micro HDMI cable was useful, even if they tend to be overpriced and overfeatured (ours offered "low-loss nitrogen gas-injected dielectric"). The Star Wars R2D2 headphones from Coloud and Zound Industries were the standout- we had a choice, but these were clear favorites. Not only do these over-the-ear phones look awesome, but they sound decent. Blue leatherette pads are comfy, but the headband isn't. They fold up nicely, and include a mic to boot. At $50, they're not going to impress audiophiles, but are a fun collectible.

On a similar note, Audio-Technica provided a limited number of their new ATH-ANC23s, the active noise-canceling earbuds. A bit heavy, the eartips were super-comfortable and unlike many others actually stayed put. Like most good models, audio functions even if the single AAA battery is absent or goes dead, and a travel pouch is included, along with in-line volume controls. $100, and should be available soon- we couldn't find them for purchase at press time.

The last piece of audio gear we should mention were the Etymotic Research Plugs- technically the ER20-BSCs and ER20-SMCs. The latter are meant for small ear canals, but both offer solid resusable hearing protection, sealing out external noise. $13 a pair, and they come with a case.

Finally, as you can see from the second picture, we came home with the usual bounty of USB flash drives. The best one we picked up actually isn't in the picture- Victorinox gave away a limited number of their quite awesome 32GB USB Flash Flight Alox keychains, which look like miniature Swiss Army knives but are airplane-safe and seem remarkably rugged. Probably the best flash drive we've yet used, it's USB 2.0, but has been blazingly fast in our tests so far. The offer a bunch of other models- with laser pointers and even Bluetooth presentation controls- but this one is tiny, light, and offers enough storage to serve as a movie and music backup. The only issue we've found is that it can be hard to keep in some sockets, since the rest of the keychain tends to drag it down.

We wanted to end on a helpful note, offering some constructive criticism to pretty much every vendor at this year's show who gave away flash drives. Small request: get rid of the lanyards and packaging. House of Marley's wooden drives offer a nice showpiece of how to do it right- nothing extraneous, not wrapped in plastic or encased in an annoying box. Left out of the picture were the dozens of lanyards we removed and threw away, adding to the likely mountain of trash from the convention. I'm sure they cost money, and they simply aren't worth it- I don't see anyone wearing these around, and they get caught around one another and tangled up like so many strands of spaghetti.

Thanks to all of the companies that participated unwittingly in this year's grab bag of swag. See you next year!