HWM+HWZ.com Tech Awards 2021: Readers' Choice Results

Singapore's top technology brands, according to you

As with most physical tech events in the past year, the 12th annual HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards continues to be an online affair due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. However, that didn't stop us from reviewing nearly 100 products for our Editor's Choice categories and holding our Readers' Choice polls for the top brands of the year.

And what a year it's been. For the 2021 edition of the Tech Awards, we have a total of 42 Readers' Choice categories spread across four major sectors: Computing, Consumer Electronics, Communications & Services, and Gaming. 

This year's voting participation has been amazing with our 8,000 voters, and we'd like to thank all our readers that have helped make these awards a success. In this article, we'll share the full outcome of our Readers' Choice voting results that determine what the tech enthusiasts in Singapore have to say for the best brands on the island and help shape our local tech landscape.

Don't forget to also check out our Editor's Choice results in these four categories for the definite best tech gadgets for every need: Best devices for Home, Work, Mobile and Gaming.

Best CPU Brand - Intel

In the past, this award was a shoo-in for Intel, with an average split of about 80% of the votes to AMD’s 20%. However, 2020 wasn’t a great year for Intel. From the Apple break-up, to its often confusing 10th and 11th Gen processor roadmap and inability to progress to a 7nm manufacturing process, Intel’s lead as a consumer microprocessor giant has been steadily eroding. AMD on the other hand grew their vote share to 45%. AMD already had 7nm desktop processors out in the market since 2019, with the Ryzen 3000 series based on their Zen 2 microarchitecture. In 2020, AMD released the Ryzen 4000 series, also based on Zen 2 in the middle of the year, and launched a brand new Zen 3-based product with the Ryzen 5000 series. It was so impressive that we actually bestowed the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X our Best Gaming CPU Award in the Editor’s Choice category this Tech Awards season.

Best Graphics Processor Brand – NVIDIA

Unlike the CPU results, things in the GPU world remain similar to past years. In 2019, NVIDIA captured 82% of the votes, and while there is a slight drop, NVIDIA still garnered 79% of your total votes. Yes, AMD has been making good progress with last year’s RDNA 2-based Radeon RX 6000 series. In fact, we were very favourable with our Radeon RX 6800 XT review as a solid 4K gaming GPU. However, it doesn’t look like NVIDIA’s charge since the launch of its RTX series can be stopped. Ray tracing performance is now the benchmark and with last year’s Ampere architecture and RTX 30 Series GPU, NVIDIA just keeps raising the bar. With such a massive lead, it’s no surprise that the NVIDIA RTX 3080 is also the winner of this year’s Editor’s Choice Best Graphics Chip Award.

Best Graphics Card Brand - ASUS

For 12 years in a row, you’ve voted in ASUS as the Best Graphics Card Brand in our Readers’ Choice category. And with 45% of votes, that’s saying a lot. We’ve always attributed ASUS’ popularity with the fact that they not only have a vast range of cards for just about any GPU you could want, but also having built up a reputation for custom components and technology that stand out from the usual OEM reference crowd. With high interest in the latest GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA, as usual, ASUS covers all bases with a full slate of ROG Strix and TUF Gaming Radeon 6000 Series cards, as well as ROG Strix, TUF Gaming and Dual cards for NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 Series.

Best Motherboard Brand - ASUS

It’s probably safe to say that ASUS has the entire PC DIY scene locked down, at least in the views of our readers with 54% of total vote share. The same reason why ASUS has been so successful with graphics card also applies to motherboards. ASUS has so many variations of every chipset, board type and platform that most likely, if you can’t find something that fits your needs, it doesn’t exist. Of course, variety isn’t the only reason for its popularity. ASUS is highly regarded for quality components as well; its motherboards often the choice of enthusiasts, overclockers and gamers for their durability and performance. Of course, that doesn’t mean its position is unassailable. As impressive as 54% sounds, it’s actually an 8-point drop over last year’s survey, where ASUS got 62% of the votes.

Best PC Components Retailer (Singapore) - Dynacore Technologies

We’ve got a new winner in the Best PC Components Retailer category this year. Dynacore Tech crept up from the middle of the pack in the past two years to knock crowd favourite Fuwell off its pedestal, ending their 11-year consecutive winning streak. Yes, both brands look like they have the same 12% vote share on the chart above, but it came down to the actual vote count to determine the winner, and Dynacore Tech got 50 more votes, which is a tiny margin of win considering the thousands of readers who've cast their votes.

Best SSD Brand - Samsung

This year’s Readers’ Choice results see Samsung gaining even more mind share from our readers. A total of 35% of you voted Samsung as the Best SSD Brand, an award they’ve note won seven years in a row. This is an increase from last year’s result of 27%. With prices of SSDs dropping enough for it to become a mainstream storage solution for many, Samsung’s focus towards speed and capacity allowed the company to remain relevant. The 980 Pro was 2020’s speed king, marketed at professionals and gamers, while the 870 QVO brought SSD capacities in line with traditional HDDs, boasting up to 8TB of storage.

Best External Storage Brand - Seagate

With 25% of the votes, this would be the third consecutive year Seagate has won the award of Best External Storage Brand in the Readers’ Choice category. The brand increased their vote share from last year by 3%. The next three spots go to WD (21%), SanDisk (19%) and Samsung (18%). These top four positions remain the same as last year, with everyone gaining a little more vote share, eating into the positions of the rest of the market. We believe Seagate’s continued leadership here is due to its wide range of products, and constant innovation that helps improve performance as well as lower costs. that cater to more than just portable personal storage. While you can still have an affordable and efficient pocket drive in the likes of the Seagate Backup Plus series, they also have niche offerings for dedicated use cases such as the Firecuda Gaming Dock, which acts as a multi-functional Thunderbolt 3 hub with a 4TB storage that’s further expandable via M.2 NVMe.

Best NAS Brand - Seagate

It was a tight race in last year’s tech awards, with Synology winning by a slim margin of 19% of the votes with Seagate closing in at 17% of the votes. This year’s voting results show Seagate pulling ahead by a wider margin of 29% over Synology’s 20% in total vote share to win the Readers’ Choice Best NAS Brand award. Now, these results are pretty interesting when you consider Seagate doesn’t actually sell NAS devices. They only sell the drives used in a NAS under the IronWolf branding. They’re actually a close partner with Synology, and if you visit Seagate’s website, Synology’s NAS devices are featured with Seagate’s IronWolf drives. What we can possibly gather from this is that while Synology still has a comfortable lead (third place WD has 14% of votes) for NAS offerings, having a good, dedicated HDD/SDD product designed for NAS usage may be a more important factor for our readers.

Best Wireless Networking Brand - ASUS

For the 8^th year running, you have voted ASUS as the Best Wireless Networking Brand in the Readers’ Choice category with 33% of total votes. ASUS’ popularity is most likely due to their focus on powerful hardware with cutting edge networking features across their Wi-Fi 6 range from the flagship ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 to the RT-AX86U. Not only that, ASUS also had a successful collaboration with GUNDAM in late 2020, which also included GUNDAM editions of the RT-AX82U and RT-AX86U. With everyone stuck at home in 2020, it’s not as important to just have fast wireless speeds, but a robust one too that’s capable of supporting an increasingly large number of simultaneous connected devices, which is why  it’s no surprise that the ZenWiFi AX (XT8) is also our Editor’s Choice winner for Best Wi-Fi 6 Mesh Networking System. In second place, TP-Link (15%) actually edged past networking stalwarts D-Link (14%) and linksys (13%) this year, most likely due to their positioning of affordable Wi-Fi 6 routers such as the Deco X20 mesh system and Archer AX11000 router.

Best IP Camera Brand - D-Link

D-Link continues to be a strong presence in the IP camera market. Last year, they garnered 19% of the vote, which has now grown to 24%. This makes D-Link the winner of our Readers’ Choice Best IP Camera Brand Award for five consecutive years. IP cameras have gotten a lot more popular in recent years due to improvements in image quality and connectivity speeds as well as price point and AI assisted alerts to reduce false alarms. Last year’s Wi-Fi IP camera models like the indoor DCS-8526LH and outdoor DCS-8630LH offer Full HD recording, cloud storage and smart assistant integration with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. The DCS-8526LH also has improved AI-assisted motion detection to reduce false alerts, while the DCS-8630LH has a 400-lumen spotlight and has intelligent glass break detection. Samsung remains at second place with 18% of votes, while TP-Link overtook Xiaomi’s Yi for third spot at 16%.

Best Home Printer Brand - Canon

With work from home, and home-based learning being the norm throughout 2020, one would expect the need for personal printers to see a surge in demand. However, the popularity of major players has not changed much and the positioning for our Readers’ Choice Best Home Printer Brand remains the same this year with Canon in the lead spot, capturing 39% of total votes, while HP, Brother, and Epson falling into rank in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th spots. Throughout 2020, Canon continued to release printer updates throughout its range, with a larger focus on ink tank technologies, from the affordable Pixma Ink Efficient G1020 and G3020 to the more heavy-duty SOHO-focused G7070. But that’s not all, Canon has everything in between as well, from laser workgroup printers  (imageCLASS MF746Cx) to professional graphic printers (imagePROGRAF Pro-300) and fun photo printers (Selphy Square QX10).

Best Office Printer Brand - Fuji Xerox

We had to double check our graphs for a moment, because the results from this year’s voting is almost identical to last year, including all the positioning and vote share for each brand. The only difference is that Fuji Xerox took an extra 1% of the votes to win the Best Office Printer Brand category by 31%. You can look at last year’s results here to see for yourself. It’s uncanny. One of the factors we can think of is that this category is entrenched in terms of branding. Businesses do not change printers or printer providers often and most of us would probably only know of the brand that our office uses. Be that as it may, that doesn’t mean printer manufacturers do not need to update their products. Fuji Xerox launched no less than 19 new printer models in 2020, covering both SMB up to enterprise needs with a bigger focus on data security, automated workflows and cloud connectivity. Impressive.

More recently, Fuji Xerox operations have been rebranded under the Fujifilm Business Innovation group. Back before Covid-19 struck,  Fujifilm made its intentions known for full ownership of Fuji Xerox and that it would operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujifilm. With more time and streamlining of operations, the rebrand is a natural progression. So don't be surprised to find  business printer solutions from Fujiflm and the brand marketing their Tech Awards win.

Best Ultraportable Notebook Brand – Apple

With 29% of the votes, Apple remains the thought leader when it comes to ultraportable notebooks and there’s little doubt that the interest in MacBooks have gotten an even greater boost in 2020 after Apple announced they’ll be parting ways with Intel and making their own chips. Not only that, Apple managed to leapfrogged the industry by developing a 5nm microprocessor at a time when Intel hasn’t been able to transition to 7nm. If our own review of the new MacBook Pro with Apple’s M1 chip is any indication, it is an amazing product. ASUS (20%) and Lenovo (12%) are in second and third place, but what’s interesting this year is that Razer has gotten into the chart, and even eating into LG’s vote share. Besides the Razer Blade Stealth, the company added a new product in 2020 catered towards productivity, the Razer Book 13.

Best Convertible Notebook Brand – ASUS

The Best Convertible Notebook Brand award was first introduced in 2018, and since then, little has changed in terms of brand positioning. However, the fight for top spot between ASUS and Microsoft have been quite fierce. The inaugural winner was ASUS with a slim 1% margin. In 2019, Microsoft got 26% of the votes against ASUS’ 24%. In 2020, ASUS took back the award from Microsoft with a slim 1% margin (26% vs 25%). This would be the first time ASUS has retained the award for a second consecutive year. ASUS maintains a range of convertibles in their ZenBook, VivoBook and Chromebook Flip series, but ASUS even has a gaming class convertible in the new ROG Flow X13, a unique combination of a compact 13-inch notebook configurable with an AMD Ryzen 9 5980HS CPU with an external NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 eGPU docking unit.

Best Business Notebook Brand – Lenovo

As voted by you, our readers, Lenovo once again beats Apple by a slim margin to win the Best Business Notebook Brand award. Interestingly, Lenovo has managed to hold on to this lead over the past few years, though Apple has been slowly eroding Lenovo’s vote share year-on-year. Now, this is no surprise. No matter how much you want a MacBook, it’s a fact that Lenovo remains the global market leader in both PC shipments and market share according to a recent Q3 2020 Gartner report. Besides the usual annual chipset refreshes, Lenovo has also introduced new products in 2020, namely the ThinkPad X1 Fold and ThinkPad X1 Nano. It has also rebranded its Yoga line-up for a better technological positioning. We were impressed enough with the new Yoga Slim 7i Carbon that it’s our new Editor’s Choice Best Ultraportable Notebook.

Best Smartwatch Brand – Apple

“There are smartwatches and there’s Apple Watch.” That was the line we used last year and guess what? We’re going to be reusing it again this year. With a massive 50% vote share, Apple continues to be your favourite smartwatch brand and there’s no denying its popularity. According to Counterpoint Research’s quarterly global smartwatch shipment tracker, Apple had 40% market share in Q4 2020 compared to Samsung’s 10%, which feels indicative of our own reader sentiment. In 2020, Apple didn’t just introduce the new Series 6 Apple Watch, but also expanded its offerings with the Apple Watch SE. It also improved its wearable ecosystem and services with Family Setup and Fitness+.

Best True Wireless Earbuds Brand – Apple

The true wireless earbuds (TWS) market quite literally exploded in the past two years with more phones eschewing physical headphone jacks and advances in Bluetooth connectivity performance. But even in such a crowded space, Apple has managed to secure 30% of your votes for a comfortable win. Although Apple didn’t release updated earbuds in 2020—the AirPods Max is actually a headphone despite its name—the AirPods Pro is still considered a benchmark for many TWS earbuds in terms of natural sounding transparency modes and in-ear active noise cancellation performance. We would say that Sony remains a strong presence because their flagship WF-1000XM3 is really that good, but that was launched back in 2019. Jabra on the other hand gained a lot of ground with hype around their Elite 75t and Elite 85t models in 2020.

Best Noise Cancelling Headphones Brand – Sony

Now, while we’re still waiting for the newer WF-1000XM4 earbuds to show up, Sony did release the WH-1000XM4 headphones in 2020, and it still is widely recognised as the benchmark for active noise cancelling headphones. It’s no coincidence that the Sony WH-1000XM4 has been awarded Best Noise Cancelling Headphones in the Editor’s Choice category and our readers agree that Sony is the Best Noise Cancelling Headphones Brand with an increased vote share of 26% in the Readers’ Choice category (Sony also won this category last year with an 18% vote). Bose is still in second place with 19%, but Sennheiser has moved up into third spot with 9%. Interestingly, we thought 2020 was a bigger year in terms of TWS earbuds rather than headphones for Sennheiser.

Best Smart Speaker Brand – Bose

Although Bose lost the ANC headphone crown to Sony—the newer Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones series hasn’t yet gained enough popularity or cult status of the older Quiet Comfort range—the company managed to grab 17% of our readers’ votes to win the Best Smart Speaker Brand this year. Interestingly though, last year’s winner, Sonos dropped three spots to fourth place with 12% of the votes. JBL (14%) and Google (13%) takes second and third spots. Unlike the headphone categories, where there is a clear runaway leader, results from the smart speaker category show that the market is more evenly saturated, and the top 3-4 brands are always within reach of each other.

Best Home Theatre System Brand – Bose

Here’s a category that’s solidly in Bose’s favour. With 24% of votes, this would be the 11^th straight year that Bose has won our Readers’ Choice Best Home Theatre System Brand. If it seems like you’ve read this same sentence before, well that’s because we’ve written it eleven times now. What’s interesting though is that the second and third place spots seem to be a constant battle between B&O and Sonos. In 2019, B&O came in second. Last year, it was Sonos. And this year, B&O is back in second place.

Best Business Projector Brand – Epson

In the world of business projectors, Epson is unassailable in the minds of our readers. And for the 8^th consecutive year, they’ve won Best Business Projector Brand for our Readers’ Choice category with 21% of votes. In October 2020, Epson announced that they’ve reached a milestone of selling 30 million units of 3LCD projectors globally. Besides focusing on high-brightness installation projection segment with their 30,000-lumen EB-L30000UNL, Epson also launched their first affordable laser projectors for small offices and classrooms, the EB-L200 series in 2020. Over the last three years, BenQ has also slowly increased their vote share in our polls, and this year’s results put them in second place with 16% of total votes, overtaking Canon (15%).

Best Home Theatre Projector Brand – Sony

With 31% of the votes, Sony continues to be the Readers’ Choice Best Home Theatre Projector Brand. And in 2020, Sony launched their most advanced 4K home cinema projectors yet with the VPL-VW590ES, VPL-VW790ES, and VPL-GTZ380. These projectors feature Sony’s advanced 4K X1 image processing chip that can upscale Full HD and 2K content into 4K, and even enhance native 4K content further. If you’re building the ultimate home theatre, the flagship VPL-GTZ380 features SXRD technology, ultra-high brightness up to 10,000 lumens, and 100% of DCI-P3 colour gamut. It’ll cost you a pretty penny though, to the tune of S$130,000.

Best TV Brand – Samsung

It may not be a surprising result that Samsung is once again the Best TV Brand in our Readers’ Choice polls. Samsung is always consistent year-on-year upgrading their TVs with the latest display technologies. In 2020, Samsung focused on expanding their QLED 8K offerings with the Q950T and Q800T line, while simultaneously upgrading all of their 4K models. In 2021, you can expect to see TVs featuring smaller Quantum Mini LED lights source from the brand too. What is surprising is local Singaporean brand Prism+ leapfrogging all the big names like Sony and LG to nip at the tails of Samsung with a whopping 27% vote share. Prism+ started out with affordable gaming monitors, and recently branched out to offer 4K Smart TVs as well. Their proposition is simple, offer extremely affordable 4K Android TVs. And it looks like their gambit is paying off.

Best Camera Brand – Canon

With 38% of the votes, our readers have chosen Canon as this year’s Best Camera Brand, while Nikon and Sony hold on to their second and third spots with 19% and 18% votes respectively. Canon launched their high-end EOS-1D X Mark III early on in 2020, but we felt that the year was really punctuated by Canon’s mirrorless offerings. We saw two new full-frame mirrorless interchangeable cameras to beef up Canon’s EOS R line-up, the EOS R5 and EOS R6. And then there was the EOS M50 Mark II, which was catered more towards videography and livestreaming. Speaking of, almost all camera manufacturers, Canon included, started offering webcam utilities or functionality upgrades to cater to the fact that in a year of lockdown, a webcam became the most important function of a camera.

Best Electronics Chain Store (Singapore) – Challenger

Challenger continues to dominate the local electronics retail scene, as far as our readers are concerned that is. With 34% of votes, they continue to be your electronics chain store of choice. Now Challenger has won this category for eight years straight. And this year’s win would technically make it the ninth year in a row. However, as we’ve seen some shift in the ways consumers shop as well as the expansion of electronics products carried in both physical retail and online stores, we’ve re-evaluated some of our award categories in this segment. The Best Electronics Chain Store (Singapore) award used to be called Best Consumer Electronics Chain Store (Singapore). Yes, we know, it is semantics, but it is an important distinction.

Best Lifestyle Home Appliances Chain Store (Singapore) - Courts

The Best Lifestyle Home Appliances Chain Store award makes a return this year. It was first introduced in 2019 but removed in the 2020 edition of Tech Awards because we felt the categories overlapped. However, while we understood that you could purchase a laptop in both Challenger and Courts (that’s why these brands are also represented in the Best Electronics Chain Store category), the rapid expansion of smart and connected appliances meant that there were some things you just can’t get at a regular electronics store such as your robot vacuum cleaners or a smart fridge (like Samsung's Family hub). You can think of our classification rationale as this. These are the stores you go to when you’re shopping for your home, not yourself. And with 39% of votes, our readers have chosen Courts as the Best Lifestyle Home Appliance Chain Store in Singapore.

Best Electronics Shopping Portal (Singapore) - Shopee

In one of the most dynamic categories of our Readers’ Choice awards, it’s been really interesting to see which e-commerce platform has managed to innovate and remain relevant. In as little as four years ago, Qoo10 was the runaway winner in our 2017 Tech Awards for this category. In 2018, Lazada grew to prominence and Shopee didn’t even register on our charts then. In 2019 and 2020 editions of the Tech Awards, Lazada continued to be the clear leader, while Qoo10’s vote share dropped from 24% to 9%. Shopee on the other hand grew from 7% in 2019 to 27% votes this year, overtaking Lazada as your new favourite Electronics Shopping Portal. We believe that Shopee’s colloquial marketing efforts have resonated with our readers more than Lazada’s international approach. For example, in 2020’s 11.11 campaigns, Shopee tapped into local comedians and characters, while Lazada banked on Korean celebrities.

Best Shopping Rebate Service (Singapore) – Shopback

E-commerce really enjoyed a boom in 2020 as online shopping became something of a necessity for everyone stuck at home and shopping rebates have become another piece of the puzzle in the e-commerce journey. We started this category only last year, and with 61% of total votes ShopBack continues to enjoy being the primary rebate service as voted by our readers. Now, many of the major e-commerce apps like Shopee and Lazada have integrated their own memberships, point and rebate systems, including regular games and activities, and digital wallet apps such as Google Pay have started to take notice of this category, offering direct cashback rebates to entice users. It would certainly be interesting to see where this category will be in the next few years. And since you’re reading this, here’s a little self plug. You can also check out coupons.hardwarezone.com.sg for some of the latest coupon codes and offers while you’re at it. Yes, that's right, we even have coupons on our own site.

Best Smartphone Brand – Apple

The past three years have been telling about the state of the mobile industry according to our Readers’ Choice polls. Apple undisputedly still leads the pack with an incredibly strong 48% of the vote, and Samsung comes in second place with 27%. It would seem that Huawei’s fanbase is still strong among our readers as the company still holds onto third spot, even though their vote share has decreased to 9%. However, with the ongoing US sanctions against the company affecting their ability to create new devices, even though it looks like they're still going ahead with a P50 launch in 2021. Outside of Huawei’s woes, 2020 was actually a very strong and innovative year for the mobile sector. Apple, Samsung, and even Huawei debuted 5nm chipsets in all their flagship devices. Apple put the A14 Bionic in the iPhone 12 series; Samsung’s Galaxy S21 series featured the Exynos 2100; and Huawei’s Mate 40 Pro debuted the Kirin 9000.

Best Telco Service Provider (Singapore) – Singtel

With the proliferation of mobile service providers, we split the main telco and MVNO providers into their own categories for last year’s awards. Singtel won the votes last year with 43% of votes, and further increased their vote share among our readers to take the Best Telco Service Provider award again with 55% this awards season. In 2020, the main focus for telcos was to launch and expand their 5G network services and solutions. Singtel hit a few milestones, including being the first 5G telco to offer more than 1Gbps on the 3.5GHz band, up to 3.2Gbps on 28GHz mmWave, and the first to deploy indoor 5G coverage in Singapore.

Best MVNO Service Provider (Singapore) – MyRepublic

MVNOs have proliferated the scene in the past few years, but it’s pretty clear among our readers that there are really two main contenders who are almost neck to neck in vote share. MyRepublic is this year’s Best MVNO Service provider with 33% of the votes, narrowly edging out Circles.Life’s 30%. Third place goes to GOMO with 20% of the votes, but GOMO isn’t exactly an independent MVNO as it is run by Singtel—interestingly, to fight against the growing MVNO scene. Now, unlike actual telcos, MVNOs do not have their own infrastructure to entice customers, much like Singtel’s 5G developments we talked about in the previous Best Telco award. MVNOs operate pretty much on who is able to give the best deal in town. MyRepublic is very consistent with really affordable large data bundles, while Circles.Life has recently launched a very attractive Family Share plan with 200GB of data that you can customise and share with up to six household members.

Best Fibre Broadband Service Provider (Singapore) – Singtel

With a massive 40% vote, our readers have given Singtel another strong win as their Best Fibre Broadband Service Provider. This year’s results are actually an increase of 10% from last year, solidifying Singtel’s presence as the top choice for home fibre broadband. MyRepublic is the one to look out for, as the company has been gaining popularity and votes since two years back. In 2019, they were fourth place, behind M1 and StarHub. In 2020, they came in third. And this year’s 22% vote share places them in second place. While fibre broadband plans in Singapore is a somewhat matured market—with a 1Gbps plan being the most common home broadband solution—ISPs focused heavily on upgrading consumer networks towards mesh networking setups, Wi-Fi 6 compatibility, and smart home solutions. The combination of a pandemic lockdown, increased device connectivity and consumer demand for 4K streaming basically drove the need for more robust networking at home.

Best Pay TV Service Provider (Singapore) – StarHub

After regaining the Best Pay TV Service Provider award last year, 53% of our readers agree that StarHub has done enough to maintain the top spot for yet another year. While it is true that StarHub is somewhat the stalwart pay TV provider here in Singapore, the concept of cable programming is lost on a younger generation. One of the ways StarHub has managed to stay relevant in this climate among the diverse group of consumers is to basically be a one-stop shop. In March 2020, StarHub introduced a HomeHub Plus plan which consisted of a 1Gbps home fibre plan, a StarHub Entertainment Pass, and a Netflix subscription as a bundle. Later in the year, StarHub launched StarHub TV+, which combines the company’s Pay TV and popular streaming apps like Netflix and HBO Go into one box. When Disney+ was launched in Singapore, StarHub also inked an exclusivity deal with Disney to bundle the service together as well, giving them a well-deserved perceived boost in streaming service adoption.

Best Video Streaming Service Provider (Singapore) – Netflix

2020 was Netflix’s year. There is no doubt about it. Not only did the brand win our Best Video Streaming Service Provider award yet again, but they’ve also grown their vote share from 66% (last year) to a massive 78%. The brand has basically become synonymous with streaming. 2020’s Netflix slate was so feature-packed with originals that it’s impossible to list everything here, but some of the ones we enjoyed the most definitely are The Queen’s Gambit, Cobra Kai, Space Force, Dracula and BlackPink. Sorry Bridgerton, not you. Now, with Disney+ entering the fray, next year’s Readers’ Choice voting will see if Netflix is able to fend off princesses and the Force…

Best Gaming Monitor Brand – ASUS

The ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) branding has been highly successful when it comes to truly building a sub-brand that targets gamers. Be it motherboards, graphics cards, notebooks or routers, anything labelled ROG is consistently looked upon as gaming-grade. And anything ‘gaming-grade’ is essentially high-performance. And with 34% of your votes, ASUS is once again the Readers’ Choice Best Gaming Monitor Brand. Now, you’ll see Prism+ in second place with 16%, and while their proposition with monitors is the same with TVs, they aren’t exactly a big threat to ASUS at this point, which is different from how our readers voted in the Best TV Brand category. We think this is because unlike TVs, which are more universal devices where affordability trumps performance for general consumers, gamers want the best gear and are willing to pay for it, like the ROG Swift PG259QN for example, a 360Hz refresh rate G-Sync gaming monitor. Essentially, what you’re seeing here in this chart is a battle between hardcore gamers and everyone else.

Best Gaming Keyboard Brand – Razer

Where ASUS hasn’t been able to properly penetrate with their ROG branding is in the peripheral categories. Here, the mass market stalwarts continue to rule the roost. With 31% of votes, Razer is your chosen Best Gaming Keyboard Brand. And for good reason. If 2019 was the year of the Huntsman, 2020 was the year of the BlackWidow. While we must admit that Razer has one too many variants of the BlackWidow to keep track of, the 2020 BlackWidow V3 Pro is essentially the most advanced wireless mechanical gaming keyboard you can get.

Best Gaming Mouse Brand – Razer

You would think that gaming mice and keyboards should go hand-in-hand, but while Razer has a firm hold of the keyboard category, our readers really like Logitech’s mice. Case in point, gaming keyboards & mice used to be a single category till we diverged them last year. And for the first time, Logitech narrowly beat Razer to win the newly minted Best Gaming Mouse Brand with 26% of the votes. Razer came in second place with 25% of votes. This year’s voting showed a much stronger Razer. With 35% of votes, they’ve retaken the Best Gaming Mouse Brand award. This is a position that we concur with, as we’ve found last year’s Viper Mini and Viper Ultimate to be truly exceptional mice in our Editor’s Choice categories as well.

Best Gaming Headset Brand - Razer

This year’s awards will see the return of the Best Gaming Headset category as there have been a lot of activity in this segment. Razer wins the award with 22% of the votes, but as you can see from the chart, it is a pretty competitive space with many players in the game. What we saw from gaming headsets in 2020 were pretty much moving forward with wireless connectivity. There was also a bigger trend for each brand to focus on audio immersion through different technologies in order to stand out further. Razer’s BlackShark V2 Pro for example features THX profiles specifically designed for competitive gaming, while Logitech’s G Pro X Wireless came with DTS audio and Blue Voice mic profiles; Creative’s SXFI Gamer headset comes with their own proprietary Super X-Fi audio technology.

Best Gaming Desktop PC Brand – Aftershock

With 35% of the votes, local gaming PC maker Aftershock retakes the top spot for Best Gaming Desktop PC Brand, after coming in second place behind ASUS for the past two years. Gaming PCs are less subjected to performance losses or gains as a result of proprietary technology or design considerations, unlike say a notebook. In this regard, we can only surmise that a properly built DIY gaming PC is really no different than one you buy off the shelf. In this case, you can customise an Aftershock gaming PC with ASUS motherboards and graphics cards as well, so it makes sense to us that Aftershock is seen by our readers as the more competitive choice for Best Gaming Desktop PC Brand. And in the world of boxy desktop PC designs, Aftershock’s 2020 Trixel case was a breath of fresh air.

Best Gaming Notebook Brand – ASUS

Like we said before, gaming notebooks are a different breed from gaming PCs. They are highly integrated devices that require good design and rich, useful features. A vast majority of our readers favour ASUS as their Best Gaming Notebook Brand, and we think it’s for good reason. Besides just refreshing their existing models year-on-year with new CPUs and GPUs (ROG Zephyrus G series and ROG Strix Scar series), ASUS has consistently tried to innovate in the notebook scene. Sure, you might think some of it is gimmicky, like the new Zephyrus Duo 15 SE, but ASUS continues to push for use cases with dual-screen notebooks ever since the first ZenBook Pro Duo hit the scenes. And then there’s the ROG Flow X13, a compact 13-inch laptop powered by AMD’s Ryzen 9 5000 series CPUs with an external graphics dock that can house up to an NVIDIA GTX 3080.

Best Gaming Console Brand - Sony

There was no Best Gaming Console Brand category in the last Tech Awards because there were no real changes in the console market, but with the launch of Microsoft and Sony’s next generation consoles, the Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5, we’ve opened up the polls for our readers again this year to gather some sentiment. Sony once again takes the top spot with nearly half of the total vote share at 49%, with Nintendo coming in second at 34%, and Microsoft at 17%. This vote distribution is actually very similar to 2019’s Readers’ Choice results, and although it may seem at first glance that the Xbox Series S/X launch didn’t do much to sway our readers’ opinions, we must remember that both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X devices were only launched at the end of 2020 for the holiday season, and there's very much a shortage of consoles till today. Globally, even professional reviews of these two consoles are only starting to trickle out in the past two months, so we believe that these results are still more historically linked, rather than a direct correlation to console performance of the new options. Still, even in this case, Sony has a massive loyal fan base among our readers, and Microsoft has ways to go to improve their standing.

Best Gaming Publisher - Activision Blizzard

The top spots in this year’s Readers’ Choice polls haven’t changed for the last two years. Activision Blizzard once again wins the Best Gaming Publisher award with 24% of the votes, and Nintendo comes in second place with 17% of the votes. Electronic Arts (13%) and Sony Interactive Entertainment (12%) have a closer fight to round off third and fourth place respectively. There’s immense hype for Blizzard’s upcoming Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2, but if we’re talking about 2020 specifically, Activision basically had a Call of Duty year, with Warzone, Modern Warfare 2 Remastered, and Black Ops Cold War releases spread throughout the year. Blizzard on the other hand released the latest World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion and Warcraft 3: Reforged.

And there you have it - the very best brands as voted by you, our readers. Don't forget to check out our other 2021 Editor's Choice recommendations for the best gear you can get.