Whirlpool CES 2014 – I made it to CES!

Greetings from Vegas!

You won’t believe this, but I almost didn’t make it here. I’m sure you’ve heard about all the crazy flight cancellations going on a couple days ago. Well, our flight to Vegas was one of them. We went through Herculean efforts trying to grab a flight out Tuesday.  Everything was completely sold out and overbooked. Bryan was actually half tempted to consider our only option: taking a last minute train to New York, then get on separate flights from two different airports in New York to Miami, and then finally to Vegas.

I really didn’t want to spend 15 hours getting to Las Vegas, so we finally gave up and conceded that we would miss a whole day of CES. We finally arrived in Las Vegas late Wednesday afternoon.


As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m partnering with Whirlpool at CES and will be writing a couple posts about some of the cool new things they are showcasing at the booth.

Well, I finally had a chance to head over to the booth on Thursday morning!

There was a lot of emphasis on making products that make life simpler for the user. One of my favorite concepts that was being demonstrated (it was only a concept, not a working model) was this idea of an interactive induction cooktop that would adjust its cooking surface based on the pots you put on it. You could put your pots or pans anywhere on the surface and the heating surface would detect the pot, know how big it needed to be, and then only heat that area.

Furthermore, on the other side of the cooktop, you’d have all your social media, internet, recipes, etc. at your fingertips while you cook. You could look up recipes, check your email, or even tweet or write something on Facebook while you cook.

There was also a big emphasis on the idea of appliances that were more design-oriented, allowing customers to pick the design the design that best suited their personal style. This year, they are actually rolling out these duet washer/dryers. It’s hard to tell, but the front one has a sleek black diamond texture while the back one has a “chrome bubbles”design.

They showcased an art installation of their microwaves painted with designs from a Mexican artist that they found (shown behind me in the photo above). I shot a quick little video where they interviewed me and asked me a few questions about CES and their products.

All in all, it’s been fun here so far. I haven’t had a chance yet to visit the Las Vegas Convention Center yet, which is where all the big TVs and all that other gadgety stuff is. We will check that out tomorrow! I plan on posting photos throughout the day of stuff I see at the convention center, so feel free to follow me on Twitter or Instagram if you want to keep updated.

Last day in Vegas!

Sigh, this visit just felt way too short.