LAS VEGAS—Sure, you might think connected cars offer all kinds of bells and whistles that your current bucket of bolts can't match. But you'd be wrong. Invest a few upgrade dollars in your current ride, and there are several vendors here at CES 2018 that give your car a big IQ boost.

We've already discussed how to get a smart assistant in your car using devices like the Muse Auto kit or the Garmin Speak, but CES brings us several more options, each with their own set of capabilities.

Smarter Heads Mean Smarter Cars

First there are the head units. The ones I liked best were Sony's XAV-AX5000 and Kenwood's DNX995S. Both of these guys are compatible with Android Auto, which means you'll be able to use Google Now, Google Maps, Voice Search, and a whole bunch of apps in addition to using these devices as in-dash phones. The Kenwood DNX995S is expected to run you $1,500 and will play 192kHz 24-bit FLAC and .WAV files.

The Sony XAV-AX5000's price wasn't available at the show, but if it follows the rest of Sony's XAV-AX line, then I'd expect something in the $500 range, especially since it combines Android brains with the ability to play not only high-resolution 96/24 FLAC files, but also 48/24 .WAV files, generally considered to be superior to CD-quality sound.

The Brain to Beat

Those are great, but you can get even smarter. In my opinion, the current auto brain to beat is the Raven, basically a connected car brain in a box based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 SoC. This nifty guy is about the size of an upside down rear-view mirror and mounts to your dashboard. The size might take a little getting used to, but it's really not much bigger than mounting your smartphone to your dash, and it comes in a much slimmer form factor, too. It packs a lot into that form factor.

First, it's easy to connect as long as you can find the ODB-II connector on your car—if you can't, your dealer definitely can. That's the only in-vehicle connection Raven needs, and it supplies the device with both power and access to your car's diagnostic data.

Once up and running, Raven also supplies both a cabin-facing and a road-facing camera. The road-facing cam captures everything in front of your car using a 140-degree lens while the inner cam includes night vision and also recognizes gesture commands to some of Raven's functions. You can record clips in a variety of ways, including a very cool time compression format if you want to record the entirety of your favorite road trip. Raven only has 16GB of internal storage out of the box, but it can take microSD cards and expand that capacity up to 256GB.

Aside from the cams, Raven also includes GPS, air pressure sensors, and microphones for clear notifications. The ODB-II connection means Raven can display and react to your car's telematics in real time while its Wi-Fi connection means pairing it to your smartphone is a snap and that same connection can double as a Wi-Fi hotspot, too. Raven says it'll be releasing additional functionality using the Android app platform, but for now, it can already track your car's location as well as provide crash detection and security alerts.

Raven is $299 ($269 if you pre-order now), and is expected to ship at the end of February. While you can walk the floor at CES and hear about connected cars that offer more bells and whistles than the Raven, few if any will be shipping in Q1 of 2018 and none of them will smarten up your current ride. We'll be testing the Raven in an upcoming review, so stay tuned.