Into the main section of the HKEF 2017, sorry but I didn’t have the patience to get to the upper floors which I’ll explain later, where the ‘Hall of Fame’ was situated. The ‘Hall of Fame’ has the main 100 top companies in attendance at the HKEF 2017, but I’ve found the selection to be dubious as some great more established companies such as the drone makers Hubsan were not in this hall, placed in the public hallway, with some obscure Chinese companies showing off their tacky and garish wares in oversized booths…….money speaks.
To be very honest, the HKEF 2017 autumn edition turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Innovative ideas were lacking, with multiple booths showcasing near identical products with VERY similar functions. The onus this year is definitely on AR, Amazon Alexa and Google Home, so every other booth were either showing some sort of VR/AR/action/360 camera (or a combination of them), or some IoT lock/lights/blender/steamer that connected to Alexa or Google Home.
As mentioned, the main hall, and along its main thoroughfare, were populated by big booths of obscure Chinese brands, whilst more established companies, and the ones FunkyKit have ties with, such as SJCAM, ThiEYE, Pica-Gear and Manli were pushed to the edges of the hall. This meant I had to hunt down anything interesting by going down each and every aisle.
Tucked away deep in one of the central aisles was Lilliput’s booth. I have fond memories of Lilliput, having used one of their 5.5″ touchscreen TFTs for a car PC build over 17 years ago! On the left hand side of Lilliput’s booth was what really peaked my interest as they showcased several 5 and 7 inch HD monitors which are marketed for videographers. The one in the photo above is the Q5 (5 inch) which does really sharp images, with its slightly bigger brother the Q7 (7 inch) just behind it. Also on display was the A7+ (not to be confused with the Sony mirrorless cameras), a 7 inch monitor that does 4K, and the image quality was superb! With any one of these there is absolutely no excuse for your videos to be out of focus!
I must apologize as at this point coach loads of buyer tours had turned up (must have been hundreds of these coaches) and the HKEF 2017 got packed. Getting access to booths turned out to be struggle let alone getting unobstructed photos without heads and hands being in the way, or greasy hand prints on the display glass. So I had to leave the HKEF 2017 prematurely. But don’t worry, we plan to be back again tomorrow so that we can do some video coverage of the event and hope to get some interesting interviews done.
Don’t worry, there were one or two booth babes about.
