Endless aisles, countless booths, and enough iPhone cases, it seemed, to supply every Apple fan with a year-round wardrobe. This year’s CES was The CES of Things.

That feels different than, say, The CES of Innovation. Yes, we saw enhancements to market standards – 3-D plasma TVs, brave new tablets, phones playing catch-up with market leaders (some smart enough to get into MIT) – but breakthrough innovations? Not so much.

CES 2012 hit me as the “ripple effect” CES, the one that saluted top technology but tossed few new stones into the pond. From a true “consumer electronics” perspective, this year’s show was about repetition, not revolution – about even-betters of things that were already pretty darn good.

I hesitated to write that. I mean, who am I to say we don’t need another level of excellence in plasma TVs, devices, or accessories? After all, this PluggedIn writeup describes a CES that’s “littered” with innovation, TV-wise, but maybe that “littered” word is just the point. Showgoers on the zippy Las Vegas monorail gushed about LG’s innovations, OLEM TV, new motion-activated screens and at-home 3-D. But some I spoke with – like the two engineers from Dish Networks I cabbed to the airport with – didn’t +1 the additive levels, declaring that what they had at home was already enough. Dish, by the way, won a lot of love at CES for their big-news Hopper and Joey announcements.

Which kind of fits in. I felt less interested in the iterations to televisions, phones, or tablets and more inspired by the innovations built upon them. Many of us feel that we have the tech we need in our lives, and the next wave of innovation will be about how we use it. Take the iPad. We sensed its potential moment we touched it. On some intuitive level we knew “This changes everything” and began slinging our Angry Birds while we waited for the real innovation to emerge.

And CES did hint to real change, even if you had to look beyond the iPhone cases to find it. The Digital Health aisles, for example – and the add-on Digital Health track held upstairs from the show floor – showed at what’s to come as entrepreneurs put our favorite technologies to work on health.

The bustling Digital Health corridor.

Entrepreneur Sonny Wu, who raised the bar on personal medical testing with his iPhone compatible blood sugar monitoring device, hinted at new ways of leveraging established technology to address health challenges with Misfit Wearables, his next startup, backed by former Apple CEO John Sculley (whose keynote drew parallels between the emerging Digital Health field and the early PC days). Sculley also advises Audax Health, creators of Careverge, a social network supporting positive health habits – another healthcare innovation shared at the show.

A few cleantech announcements shone. Ford’s gorgeous new Fusion concept, due to market in 2012, hinted at the design and green value coming to the EV category. Our client Qualcomm’s new Halo – which charges EVs through induction, removing the need for plug-in charging (you simply park over the charger) – was a non-traditional star and a big cleantech attraction.

Halo charges underneath an EV chassis.

Our new friends at Ooyala echoed the theme of “extending platforms,” showcasing how big-name studios are using advanced analytics to make ad placements more relevant, actionable, and well-timed for media viewers (they weigh in on CES technologies here). And Seagate, a perennial CES favorite, won big yet again for their advances in storage and media access technologies.

I did have one jaw-drop moment, thanks to Vidyo’s dazzling videoconference capabilities. Vidyo shone at Verizon’s booth, with live conferencing so vivid and natural I can’t even compare it to other services – a whole new level. I actually asked my conference partner if she was really conferencing, to the chuckle of the helpful Verizon engineer guiding me through the booth. I also liked cool little cameras like the GoPro Hero. Taut design and the contagious appeal of their user-shot content (mountain bike descents, epic surfing, parachuting free falls) made me linger in the booth (and ask once again what Cisco was thinking when they closed shop on the Flip).

Now I’m talking myself out of curmudgeon-dom. Yes, it was The CES of Things, and honestly – there were just too many iPhone cases. But even a thing-muddled CES is still a hotbed of innovation, as CNET’s sparky “Best of” list shows. Maybe Microsoft’s exit from CES and the that-fast booking of their prime booth spot by Dish and a Chinese device manufacturer Hisense is a sign of the times. Like at this year’s show, CES 2013 will again push the consumption of things while showing the power of innovation to make these things more useful, relevant, helpful – and fun – in day to day life.