CES 2015: It's Time For Gadget Overload

The tech industry's biggest party of the year kicks off Monday at the 2015 CES megaconference in Las Vegas, where the gadget hungry hoards will wander the equivalent of 39 football fields of showroom floor gawking at everything from tiny wearables, to latest in smart car tech, to hulking 5K HDTVs.

While CES doesn't officially kick off until Tuesday, Sunday and Monday are chock-full of pre-show press conferences and other related events. This year's hottest CES trends are wearables, smart home tech, 3D printing, automotive tech, TVs (of course), and tablets, detachable and convertible hybrid PCs, and other new compute form factors.

Connected gadgets, or Internet of Things, will steal the show. We're not just talking about net-connected Refrigerators. Think connected cars with touchscreen dashboards, home entertainment gadgets, front doors you can unlock from your smartphone, wearables, and manufacturing equipment.

[Related: 25 Hot Products At CES 2015]

With 24-hours before the official CES event kicks off Intel has already jumped the gun announcing 17 new SKUs of its Broadwell 5th generation microprocessor. The chips will show up inside dozens of mainstream consumer laptop and 2-in-1 PCs from major OEMs here this week.

Lenovo announced Monday a blizzard of PCs, tablets, and mobile gear from a new line of Flex 3 PC systems, Vibe Band smartwatches, X2 Pro smartphones, and a new AnyPen Technology that allows you to use any pointing device to draw with accuracy on a Lenovo tablet – no digitizer-type stylus required.

Hewlett-Packard unleashed its CES lineup Monday announcing Vegas-sized buffet of PCs including a hockey puck sized HP Pavilion Mini that supports dual monitors, an enterprise-friendly HP DL380z Gen9 Virtual Workstation, and curved and 5K monitors.

One standout gadget from HP is its HP Zvr 23.6-inch diagonal Virtual Reality Display that will preview at CES. The Zvr allows you to not only see the 3D image, but allows you to manipulate the image using a stylus. HP says applications for this eye-popping tech include education, design, and engineering.

Speaking of virtual reality, electronics giants Samsung and Sony will both be trying to upstage Mark Zuckerberg-owned Oculus VR with their own virtual reality headsets. Sony is expected to reveal details of its Project Morpheus virtual reality headset. Sony has promised to introduce a pair of clip-on smart glasses at CES that compete with Google Glass.

The event organizer, the Consumer Electronics Association, said this year's CES will feature more than 3,500 exhibitors unveiling more than 20,000 new products. The show floor size, which is guaranteed to be chaotic, crowded, exhausting and often strange, has grown since last year from 33 to 39 football fields worth of one part digital candy land to one part cluttered, over-the-top, digital purgatory.

CRN will be filing reports throughout the week from 2015 CES. Look for coverage on both big news from industry leaders and also reports on innovative tech from companies you have never heard of.