The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) showcases the gadgets of the near future. We're listing down the hits and misses from this year's show.

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2013 has been called everything from a gadget bonanza to an annual innovation showcase to a gigantic, tangled web of a show. Whatever description you want it to go by, there is, however, one thing that CES never fails to deliver year after year: an insider look at the gadgets of the near future.

4 days of techno-goodness

Before we discuss the winners and the losers of this year's CES, let's talk a bit about what the show is all about and why, even if it has lost support from many major PC vendors over the past few years, it is still considered as one of the most important events in the technology industry.

Owned and produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), CES "boasts of more than four decades of success, reaching across global markets and enabling CE innovations to grow and thrive." CES 2013 was held from January 8 to January 11, 2013 in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada and was attended by over 3,000 exhibitors including Samsung, Intel, Panasonic, Nvidia, Research in Motion, and many more.

Without further ado, let's get to the hits and misses of CES 2013. We'll start you off with the best ones so you can give it your best SMH (this means "shaking my head", in case you haven't been hanging out on the Internet) when we’re listing down what's at the bottom of this barrel.

The hits

• Samsung S9 (S9000) 4K UHD TV – Can you believe that this massive (85-inch to be exact), LED backlit TV had already snagged a CES 2013 design award even before the show had hit full swing? We're not surprised, as this behemoth really is a thing of beauty. Oh, and did we mention that it’s powered by a quad-core processor and sounds like a dream? The only downside here is that you can and should expect to pay a pretty penny for every inch of this TV.

• The Pebble Watch – According to Forbes.com, this "smart" watch, has been the most well-funded Kickstarter project so far. The brainchild of young Canadian inventor Eric Migicovsky, the Pebble can connect to your iPhone or any Android smartphone using Bluetooth and display incoming calls, emails, and messages. We’re assuming that it can also display voice mail transcribed into text, but you'll probably need to download an app for that.

• NVIDIA Project Shield – A welcome departure from a company known for PC graphics processors and mobile chips, NVIDIA Project Shield is a handheld Android-based gaming system that runs on a Tegra 4 processor (also from NVIDIA). But what sets it apart from other portable handheld gaming devices is that it can also stream games, videos, and audio from your PC over your home network connection. No word yet on how much it will cost, but reports say that the company plans to release the device this spring. 

The misses

• HAPIFork – Well it's not like we don’t get what it's for. After all, there is scientific evidence that eating slowly can cause pounds to melt off. But for almost $100 a pop, we feel that it’s too much for by a vibrating fork that tells us off we chew our food too fast. We also wonder if just eating slowly is really that difficult to accomplish without the help of a gadget. If it is, then we would try chopsticks first! They get the job done and are easier on the pocket, too.

• iPotty – Really? A potty with an iPad holder will just magically teach toddlers to pee the right way? Color us skeptical but we really wonder how an iPotty trained kid will fare at a public toilet, especially one that doesn't come equipped with an iPad. And for $40, we would rather toilet train our kids the hard way than bribe them with a piece of gadgetry.