CES 2022: Panasonic Launches Final Fantasy XIV Wearable Speaker, New Technics Headphones & More

Panasonic showcased quite a few interesting technologies during their CES 2022 press conference, so let's jump right into it.

The company announced a five-year collaboration with AREA15, an experiential event in Las Vegas that offers an immersive art and retail experience. The live event space, The Portal, is using 14 of Panasonic's PT-RQ35 4K laser projectors to bring the space alive, with the first experience being the "Van Gogh, The Immersive Experience" tour. We're definitely hoping we can head down to CES 2023 to check this out for ourselves!

Aside from that, Panasonic also showcased their AR HUD 2.0, now enhanced with eye-tracking. While AR Heads Up Displays (HUDs) are still being worked on by plenty of companies, the possibilities afforded by 5G make AR HUDs an incredibly exciting prospect. Imagine being able to see directions laid out on your windscreen, with text being automatically focused so that it's always sharp.

Thanks to the inclusion of an IR camera within the AR HUD, eye-tracking is now enabled without a standalone camera, which means complex, dynamic adjustments like parallax compensation, driver monitoring capabilities and such are all possible.

As for gadgets, Panasonic didn't disappoint either, announcing a whole range of products.

First, let's talk about the company's two new kitchen appliances. One is the Panasonic Smart Inverter Countertop Microwave Oven, Works with Alexa, a new smart inverter microwave oven that allows you to control your microwave through Alexa with 100 commands. So you won't have to search for the ideal time to set to reheat a cup of coffee, you can just tell Alexa exactly what you want to be reheated, softened, defrosted and more.

The other kitchen appliance is the HomeCHEF 7-in-1 Compact Oven that can air fry, convection bake, steam, steam convection, slow cook, ferment and sanitise. It's small enough to fit on a countertop, but it can still fit a whole chicken with a 20L capacity.

Panasonic also announced their first six-blade shaver, the Arc6 Cordless Electric Wet/Dry Shaver with a shaver head that can move in 22 directions to provide a close shave.

Moving on to the audio and gaming segments, there are new headphones from Technics with the EAH-A800 over-head headphones that come with noise-cancelling, multipoint connectivity and 40 hours of battery life with noise cancelling turned on and using LDAC. With how good the noise-cancelling on the Technics AZ70 and the Panasonic RZ-S500W were, we definitely have very high hopes for these headphones.

For the gamers though, Panasonic has also announced a new FINAL FANTASY® XIV Online Edition of the Wearable Immersive Gaming Speaker (WIGSS) SC-GN01. Designed in collaboration with Square Enix, this limited edition model comes in a special box and has the iconic meteor logo and game logo printed directly on the speaker.

Last but not least, the flagship OLED TV for 2022 is the Panasonic LZ2000 OLED TV, coming in 55-inch, 65-inch and 77-inch models. With new Game Control Board settings, there's automatic Nvidia GPU detection support, as well as improved 60Hz latency and HDMI 2.1 ports for 4K 120Hz gaming with Variable Refresh Rate (VRR). You also get Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support, HDR10+ Adaptive and more.

For more CES 2022 coverage, check out our CES 2022 special coverage page.