New year, new beginnings, and new tech. CES 2014, or the Consumer Electronics Show, happened two weeks ago with hundreds of vendors coming to highlight their innovative products. With companies as big as Samsung and Sony to as small as ChefJet and Mophie, CES truly was a week of witnessing the future.

With so many new pieces of tech revealed, it’s hard to keep track of everything. I’ve distilled a list of what I think are the top 5 coolest and innovative gadgets and how they’ll change the future in which we live.

LG Curved TV and Sony’s 4K Ultra Short Throw Projector

4K TV’s are all the rage now. With such a high resolution of 3840×2160, the TV looks almost like real life. Put it this way. When you approach your typical TV, you can still see the individual pixels on the screen. The red, green, and blue are all still visible, but with a 4K TV, the pixels are so small that they are indistinguishable. The movement and the overall quality of the TV is so vibrant, so clear, that it seems almost real. 4K TVs were revealed at CES 2014; this is CES 2014.

The curved TV allows for a more immersive TV experience, allowing the viewer to see more of the screen at one time. When viewing a normal flat TV, details at the edge of the screen are lost because you focus on the image in the center; with a curved TV, all the details are seen.

Sony’s 4K Projector, on the other hand, is innovative in that there is no actual screen. Like the name suggests, it projects a 147 inch image in 4K quality onto a wall of your choosing, turning the home into an ultimate home-theater experience.

Oculus Rift Crystal Cove

The Oculus Rift is quite amazing: it is an immersive piece of technology that you wear on your head. They’re goggles that are fastened to your head, and are used as an accessory to your video game. It literally places you into the game: as your head moves, your view moves. Every angle and every movement is tracked by a camera on the top of the device, and makes you feel like you’re in the game yourself. In addition, it lets you control depth perception through leaning in and leaning out. For example, you can simulate peering around a wall, a great advantage when it comes to video games.

Pebble Steel Stopwatch

The Pebble smart watch, long heralded as the best of the wearable wrist tech, is back with a new, sleek design. The features found on the original watches, such as synching notifications from your iPhone or Android device, customizing the home screen, and even providing apps that link up with different devices such as your car. It provides stats like your current mileage, how much fuel is left on your tank, and your current tire pressure as well as delivering vibration alerts that notifies you when traffic is getting heavy ahead.

Razer’s Project Christine

Computer engineers will go head over heels for this new idea. In the past, if you wanted to change the RAM, processor, or graphics card, you would have to open and dissemble your computer, move pieces out of the way, and reassemble everything again. Project Christine is a modular approach to computer customization: each part, including RAM, memory, graphics cards, processor, etc. is self-contained. If you want to swap out a part, you simply take out the old part from the central tower, and fit in the new part. A simple switch, taking as much as 30 seconds, allows the user to keep up with the latest model and parts, is a computer gamer’s dream come true.

PlayStation Now

Finally, the PlayStation Now is changing the way that we approach video games. Think about it this way: Netflix for video games. Instead of buying individual games, you subscribe to a single service that allows you to play games that off a cloud server, eliminating the need for any physical CDs. All you need is the controller, and you’re all set. This has numerous uses: never will you lose a game CD, never will they be scratched or damaged, and if you want to go over to your friend’s house to play, the bulk is eliminated.

As you can see, tech is going the way of immersion. It’s integrating into our lives, changing how we interact with the world. CES 2014 is a mere glimpse into the future, and I can say, with the way things turned out this year, I’m excited for what is to come.