And The Winner Of Our First Hardware Battlefield Is… CubeSensors!

Three days go by awfully quickly, don’t they? The Consumer Electronics Show — and by extension our Hardware Battlefield — only started on Tuesday but we’ve seen no shortage of cool gadgets and hot startups take our stage here in Las Vegas.

This is the first time we’ve tried to put together a Battlefield solely for hardware startups and to be quite honest, we were blown away by both the number and the caliber of the companies that threw their hats into the ring. In the end we saw hundreds of applications beget 14 great contenders, and here we are — three days later — faced with the task of choosing a winner from a great batch of finalists that includes Atlas Wearables, Blaze, CubeSensors, and Owlet Baby Care.

That unenviable decision fell to our final panel of judges — Bre Pettis, Yves Béhar, Matt Turck, and Jen McCabe — who deliberated for half an hour until they came up with a winner. We’re awfully proud of all the companies that participated in our inaugural Hardware Battlefield, but in the end only one can take home the trophy and the giant $50,000 check, the metal man, and, surprisingly, a fresh Makerbot from Bre Pettis who agreed to give us one on stage. So without further ado, say hello to our 2014 Hardware Battlefield winner and runner-up:

The Winner: Cube Sensors

CubeSensors are home air monitors packed with seven different sensors that measure over air quality, temperature, humidity, noise, light, weather pressure, and motion. You can read our full coverage here.

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The Runner-Up: Owlet

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The Owlet is a baby sock that tracks a young one’s heart rate, oxygen levels, skin temperature and even provides rollover alerts during sleep. You can read our full coverage here.