HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2018: Editor's Choice - Part 2

Honoring the very best in tech

Last week, we published the results of our Readers' Choice polls, and Part 1 of our Editor's Choice articles, which focuses on the best in consumer electronics products, like digital cameras, smartphones/tablets, 4K TVs, and headphones.

In this third and concluding part, we turn our attention to the best in computing products such as PC components, notebooks, and routers. Also featured in this article are the winners of our Innovation awards category, which is set up to recognize innovative products and cutting-edge technologies that emerged over the past year.

But before that, here's a highlight video and some pictures of the awards ceremony that took place on January 31:

Tune in to our new video series created just for this event and find out what the commotion was all about.

Find out the detailed wins and how the products stack up against one another in our second part of our continuing coverage of the Editor's Choice awards over the following pages!

Best Desktop CPU

2017 was an exciting year for CPUs, as AMD stormed back onto the scene in a big way with its Ryzen processors. There has seldom been a better time to invest in a new desktop chip, as you now have very competitive selections from both AMD and Intel. Intel may have enjoyed a near monopoly in the high-end CPU market, but the good news is that it's a proper two-horse race now. That's why we've brought back this award category for this year.

For this year's Tech Awards, we've pit the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X and Intel Core i7-8700K against each other. Both are high-end CPUs for the mainstream market, and deliver excellent performance without the exorbitant prices of an Intel Core X or AMD Ryzen Threadripper processor.  

Nominees:

• AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
• Intel Core i7-8700K

And the winner is...

The Intel Core i7-8700K can be thought of as Intel's response to AMD's Ryzen processors. It's an admirable riposte to the key advantages of Ryzen, which delivers strong multi-threaded performance at a never before seen price point. 

Ryzen brought an unprecedented number of cores and threads to the mainstream market, and Intel didn't have an answer for a while, even after it trotted out its pricey Core X series chips. However, the Core i7-8700K turned out to be a formidable champion for Santa Clara, as it boasts a 6-core/12-thread configuration that significantly closes the gap with the Ryzen 7 1800X. 

By doing so, it reduced the edge AMD had over Intel, and it did this without sacrificing gaming performance. The Ryzen 7 1800X still requires more widespread optimizations from game developers to be at its best, and 1080p gaming performance was one of its most glaring weaknesses. However, the Core i7-8700K suffers from no such issues, and it effectively succeeds the Core i7-7700K as the best gaming CPU you can buy. What's more, it's by far the more capable overclocker, so it is the chip to get if you want to push your CPU further. 

As a result, it trumps the Ryzen 7 1800X as 2017's best desktop CPU, with a price in reach of mainstream consumers, strong multi-threaded performance, and a clear lead in games and overclocking.

Here's a small snapshot of the performance results from our shootout:

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Motherboard

Intel’s Z370 chipset may not bring major upgrades to the table, but you’ll need one of the new motherboards if you want to take advantage of the new 8^th-generation Coffee Lake processors. After all, Coffee Lake adds more cores and threads across the board, so you get compelling multi-threaded performance and strong gaming prowess.

That said, Z370 does offer some minor upgrades compared to the previous generation, and you’ll get higher memory multipliers and real-time memory latency controls that don’t require a reboot.

On top of that, it supports beefed-up overclocking capabilities, such as per-core overclocking, which was absent on Kaby Lake.

For this year's Tech Awards, we've rounded up top-tier boards from various brands to see which one comes out on top.

Nominees:

• ASRock Z370 Taichi
• ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero
• Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 7
• MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC

And the winner is...

The ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero sits in something of a sweet spot between the mainstream and enthusiast market. To be sure, it skews more toward the latter, but it manages that without an exorbitant price tag that will require you to sell a limb. Even though it is still the most expensive board in this shootout, it makes up for that with plenty of useful features and an attractive design.

Overclockers will appreciate the hardware controls, including Safe Boot and ReTry buttons and a Slow Mode switch for those looking to push their chips further. There’s decent support for liquid cooling as well, with dedicated headers for both AIO and custom pumps. All this is underpinned by solid overclocking performance and one of the most intuitive BIOS interfaces around, so overclocking should be quite a breeze.

Then there are small quality-of-life features such as large-sized buttons for clearing CMOS and updating the BIOS, so you won’t find yourself squinting for the right one. The integrated I/O shield is also a great inclusion, and it confers great looks and simplifies the installation process.

Here's a small snapshot of the performance results from our shootout:

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Graphics Chip

2017 was a good year to be a gamer. AMD returned to the high-end GPU market as it did in the CPU space, and consumers everywhere now had a viable high-end alternative from the red camp in the form of the Radeon RX Vega 64. 

Elsewhere, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti had pretty much established itself as the card to get for 4K gaming, and it was pretty much the fastest consumer graphics card you could buy.

As a result, we're pitting both flagship offerings against each other to tease out a winner for this year's Tech Awards.

Nominees:

• AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

And the winner is...

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is without a doubt the faster card by a significant margin here. Yes, it is also more expensive, but the fact remains that the Radeon RX Vega 64 is the most powerful card AMD had to offer in 2017. 

It's no slouch by any means, but the results show that if you're gunning for the best possible performance, there's still no unseating the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. What's more, the Radeon RX Vega 64 actually performs closer to the GeForce GTX 1080, NVIDIA's 2016 flagship, despite sitting at the top of AMD's line-up. Furthermore, the Vega card costs S$999, which is more expensive than the retail prices of some GeForce GTX 1080 cards.

The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti also consistently comes ahead in gaming benchmarks, despite the Radeon RX Vega 64 employing HBM2 memory. All things considered, NVIDIA's card has the edge, in large part thanks to its consistent, unrivaled performance.

For the full performance results, you can head to our respective reviews of the Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. For now, here's a snapshot of the results:

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Gaming Graphics Card

If you’re looking to game at 4K, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti is the card to get. It was without doubt the most powerful consumer graphics card in 2017, and it ensured NVIDIA held the performance crown even after AMD announced its new Radeon RX Vega GPUs. 

The Founders Edition card is an actual beast, and its die-cast aluminum body and faceted design is to die for. But custom cards take things up another notch with aggressive factory overclocks, hulking coolers, and dazzling LEDs. Some of them also come with unique differentiating features, such as additional fan headers.

For this shootout, we've rounded up the flagship cards (at the time of launch) from ASUS, GALAX, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit and Zotac to tease out a winner. 

Nominees: 

• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Ti OC
• GALAX GeForce GTX 1080 Ti HOF
• Gigabyte Aorus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition 11G
• MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X 11G
• Palit GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GameRock Premium Edition
• Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti AMP Extreme

And the winner is...

Ultimately, it was a super close call as there was a lot to like about all the cards, but the Aorus clinched first place for us because of the balance it strikes between design, performance and price. It’s got the performance aspect covered with its aggressive factory overclocks, but it also evinces a thoughtful design in the decision to go with three overlapping 100mm fans to reduce the length of the card. Attention has been given to cooling crucial components such as the memory modules and VRM as well, and not just the GPU, which contributes to the impression of a well-thought out product. Furthermore, the backplate isn't just a structural and aesthetic showpiece, and adds a further degree of passive cooling as well. 

Another nice touch is the front HDMI port (in addition to two more HDMI ports at the rear), which allows for more convenient pairing with a VR headset and an HDMI monitor. Overclocking performance wasn't particularly impressive, but given that these things often come down to the luck of the draw, it feels a little premature to make judgments on a single sample alone, especially since all the right ingredients seem to be in place. 

The S$1,290 price tag is also reasonable compared to the competition, which further enhances its standing. 

Here's a small snapshot of the full performance results from our shootout:

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Portable External Drive

As a result of falling SSD prices, portable external SSDs have also become more affordable. In the year of 2017, we have seen more portable external SSDs entering the market, offering users external storage solutions that are almost as fast as their internal SSDs.

To make the cut for this category, the portable external SSD must be offered in capacities of 500GB and greater and must support USB 3.0 or above.

Nominees:

• ADATA SE730H
• Samsung Portable SSD T5
• WD My Passport SSD

And the winner is...

The Samsung Portable SSD T5 is our pick because of its compact stylish design and outstanding performance. In our benchmarking tests, we found that it was easily the quickest drive by a fair margin. It also comes with two cables (USB and USB-C) so it works with just about any device. The icing on the cake is that it also features an easy to use app that secures your drive against unauthorized access. So even though it is slightly pricier than its rivals, we feel that its premium is justified and that, overall, it is the most ideal portable external SSD for most users.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Gaming Monitor

For most if not all PC gamers, the most important component combination is the graphics card and the gaming monitor that we choose to play our games on. One of the great things about gaming monitors is that, unlike graphics cards where their lifespan is usually a few years, a good display can keep you going for the better part of a decade. With such a long lifespan, it pays to get something you’ll be happy with for years to come.

Or so we thought, as the year 2017 was when monitor manufactures clearly saw a window of opportunity to expand their product range to cater to new growing segment of e-sports. Unlike 'traditional' gaming monitors, where color production, display size and resolutions (e.g., 1440p or 4K) were the key considerations by gamers, e-sports-focused gaming monitors tend to come with TN panels, superior refresh, and response rates. They are also typically smaller at 25 inches, thus allowing for competitive gamers to transport them easily and to view the entire competitive scene at one glance without having to pan.

Make no mistakes. E-sports monitors are here to stay, especially with the burgeoning popularity of e-sports and competitive gaming. These monitors are born and bred purely for fast gaming, and while it does so spectacularly, it’s also no slouch when it comes to everyday tasks, even if in most cases, gamers use them as their secondary monitor purely for their competitive gaming matches.

This year's Tech Awards, all our e-sports gaming monitor finalists have similar specifications. They are all 25 inches in size and feature an ultra-fast 240Hz TN panel that have a resolution of 1080p.

Nominees:

• ASUS ROG Swift PG258Q
• BenQ Zowie XL2540
• ViewSonic XG2530
• Alienware AW2518H
• Acer Predator XB252Q

And the winner is...

The Alienware AW2518H is a specialized monitor with a singular purpose — to deliver the best and fastest competitive FPS experience to any e-sports gamer. Granted, monitors of this class won't give you the best Netflix or productivity experience where color accuracy and even resolutions take precedent over refresh and response rates. But the AW2518H still handled itself pretty well in those regards. In fact, we were impressed with its color performance for a TN panel-based monitor.

The biggest drawback to such a fine monitor, of course, is the price. At S$1,199 it's also one of the pricier 25-inch e-sports gaming monitors. Scrutinizing it further, we thought the overall built quality, blistering fast performance, as well as its better versatility, put it above the rest of the competition. Certainly, the rest of the monitors featured in this Awards category have their own merits. But it is our opinion that the Alienware AW2518H represents the pinnacle of e-sports gaming monitors, and quite possibly, the best you can buy right now.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best SFF Gaming Desktop

Small form factor gaming PCs are an up and coming niche that looks like it could have considerable mass appeal. We’re at the point in system and hardware design where it’s possible to fit the power of a full-sized desktop into a chassis just a fraction of the size, so there are really few trade-offs if you decide to go this route.

The systems reviewed here are a testament to the fact that small and powerful systems are entirely possible today. However, what’s interesting is that they all go about doing it in slightly different ways.

For this year's awards, we've rounded up four brands, each with their unique strengths. There’s the Zotac for those who want the smallest possible footprint, and the ASUS for those who want a little more bling to their system. On the other hand, the Aftershock and Dreamcore machines favor the DIY route, with plenty more customization options and performance.

Nominees:

• Aftershock Impulse V2
• ASUS ROG GR8 II
• Dreamcore One
• Zotac Magnus EN1070K

And the winner is...

The Aftershock Impulse V2 is a smartly designed mini-ITX PC with the power of a full-fledged gaming tower. It makes few compromises in terms of specifications and performance, and manages to maintain full upgradeability, with the freedom to swap out things like the GPU, memory, and storage drives. It even avoids one of the pitfalls of systems in this category by fitting the power supply unit in the chassis itself, so there’s no need to contend with a clunky power brick.

But best of all is the fact that it is quite a bit cheaper than the Dreamcore One while offering very similar specifications. The Dreamcore has an Intel B250 board versus the H110 one on the Aftershock, a higher clocked MSI GPU, and a larger 250GB SSD, but those differences aren’t that apparent in real-world usage. As a result, the Aftershock Impulse V2 comes across as an overall better choice at an attractive S$1,840, and also saves you the trouble of dealing with a bulky power adapter. This may not be the fastest system you can get, but it's definitely the most well-rounded option from a performance and value perspective. As such, the Aftershock Impulse V2 gets our nod for the best overall winner of this shootout.

Here's a quick snapshot of its performance from our shootout:

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Value Gaming Notebook

The notion of a budget gaming notebook seems supremely bland, tepid, and uninteresting. Gaming is an expensive hobby, and it’s often the premium products that generate the most interest with their cutting-edge designs and blazingly fast performance.

However, progress on system design, CPU and GPU fronts mean that you don’t have to look at a so-called entry-level gaming notebook like it’s something the cat dragged in. A GeForce GTX 1050 Ti mobile GPU that's often found in this class of products these days offers performance similar to last generation’s GeForce GTX 970M, a mobile GPU that found its way into many high-end laptops.

If you’re looking for an affordable gaming laptop, today’s budget notebooks are capable of running most games at 1080p and Medium settings. For this category of comparison, we've considered 14 and 15-inch gaming notebooks launched in 2017 that sport a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or better GPU and cost less than S$2,000.

Nominees:

• Acer Aspire VX 15
• Aftershock MX-15 Elite
• Gigabyte Sabre 15
• HP Omen 15
• Lenovo Legion Y520
• MSI GP62 7REX Leopard Pro

And the winner is...

HP’s Omen 15 is a solid and well-rounded laptop that more than makes up for its S$1,999 asking price with an attractive design and thoughtful features. In a field that offers relatively similar performance, the Omen 15 stands out because of its long battery life and relatively good audio quality and display. It also comes with a 2x2 Wi-Fi module and PCIe NVMe SSD, which stacks up well against the 1x1 module and SATA drives found on some of the other laptops.

On top of that, it supports dual displays with the HDMI and Mini DisplayPort outputs, whereas the Acer and Lenovo notebooks only have a single HDMI port. Finally, we also like that HP ditched slower USB 2.0 connectors in favor of USB 3.0 across the board, the only laptop in this shootout to do so. It's difficult to stand out in such a homogenous arena, but HP has made quite a winner with the Omen 15. What's even better is that the street price of the HP Omen 15 is now available for much less than its launch price.

Here's a quick snapshot of its performance from our shootout:

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Performance Gaming Notebook

2017 was the year NVIDIA introduced its Max-Q technology to the world, and it's turned out to be quite a game changer. It consisted of just a bunch of optimizations at the software and hardware level, but it has enabled manufacturers to cram more powerful GPUs into even thinner designs. The past year saw a slew of slim, light, and fast gaming notebooks, putting to test the notion that you have to trade portability for performance.

It's now possible to put either an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 or 1080 Max-Q into a thinner chassis than ever, and some manufacturers have achieved this through truly innovative designs. The 15.6-inch notebook category has seen the bulk of these Max-Q designs, and the Alienware 15 is the only notebook here to not employ Max-Q optimizations.

For this year's Tech Awards, we've rounded up laptops from different brands to find out which 15.6-inch gaming notebook should take the crown.

Nominees:

• Acer Predator Triton 700
• Aftershock PRIME-15
• Alienware 15
• ASUS ROG Zephyrus GX501
• Gigabyte Aero 15X
• MSI GS63VR 7RG Stealth Pro

And the winner is...

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus GX501 trumps the competition with its combination of strong performance and an attractive, lightweight chassis. It is equipped with class-leading hardware and ASUS has managed to cram an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q graphics, an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor, 24GB of RAM, and a 512GB PCIe SSD in a chassis that is just under 18mm thick.

It's also thinner than all our tested notebooks, with the exception of the MSI GS63 7RG Stealth Pro, but that only comes with a GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q. 

Furthermore, it employs a truly novel cooling solution, with a bottom panel that opens like a trapdoor when the lid is raised. The keyboard has also been shifted forward, and the entire area above it is reserved for air intake to improve cooling the essential hardware. The touchpad sits beside the keyboard, and can also double up as a digital number pad. This approach is more comfortable to use than what Acer did on the Triton 700, where the touchpad is located above the keyboard.

And when you consider the fact that it also comes with a 120Hz G-Sync display and is still a lot cheaper than the Acer Predator Triton 700, the choice seems almost obvious. 

Here's a quick snapshot of its performance from our shootout:

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Ultraportable Notebook

Thanks to advances in CPU and GPU technologies, notebooks are only getting thinner and lighter. Gone are the days that you have to carry around a heavy brick just to get work done. These days, ultraportable notebooks offer a decent blend of performance and portability, and can do just about anything.

To make the cut for this year’s awards, the notebook must be amongst the slimmest and lightest in the brand's lineup. It can be a traditional notebook or a convertible or detachable. Finally, they must be released in 2017 and must be powered by a full Intel Core processor (no ultra low voltage variants).

Nominees:

• Acer Switch 5
• ASUS ZenBook Flip S
• Dell XPS 13
• HP Spectre
• Lenovo Yoga 920
• LG gram 14
• Microsoft Surface Pro
• Razer Stealth Blade

And the winner is...

It was a closely fought contest, but in the end, we felt that the LG gram 14 was the best ultraportable notebook in the past year. While performance isn’t its strongest suit, it was more than snappy enough when running everyday applications like web browsing, emails, and the occasional photo and video editing. More importantly, however, the gram 14 is unmatched in terms of portability. Not only is it easily the lightest notebook here, it also has the best battery life by some margin. It lasted over 9.5 hours in our benchmark, which is incredible especially when you consider that the second-placed notebook doesn’t even last half as long. To round off its good attributes, it has full sized USB and HDMI ports, which make it very convenient to work with cables and accessories without requiring converters and adapters.

*Note: Prices and ratings listed are accurate at the time of individual product evaluation.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Business Projector

Getting a bright projector is important if you’re buying it as a presentation tool. So for this business projector category, we requested for projectors with a brightness of at least 3,000 lumens. We also narrowed down to those designed for conference room and classroom use, and which are preferably priced around S$1,300. Additionally, they all must have at least a native WXGA (1,280 x 800 pixels) resolution.

Nominees:

• Epson EB-U42
• NEC NP-ME331WG
• Sony VPL-EW455

And the winner is...

With up to 3,600 lumens, the Epson EB-U42 is a very bright projector and is thus well suited for larger boardrooms and in situations when the presenter wants to keep the room lights on. Equipped with a 1.2x zoom lens, this 3LCD-based projector can do automatic vertical keystone detection and adjustment (there's a slider for manual horizontal keystone adjustment), supports mobile screen mirroring, and features a variety of connectivity options including built-in Wi-Fi, VGA, and LAN, as well as two HDMI ports, one of which is MHL-enabled.

Image quality-wise, it’s ahead of both the NEC and Sony projectors, due to the aforementioned high white and color light outputs and a higher native WUXGA 1,920 x 1,200 resolution. So not only does it give us vibrant colors and sharp text for office presentations, it also offers a meaningful difference when watching HD videos and Blu-ray content. Under normal mode, lamp life is rated at 6,000 hours; but this increases to a good 10,000 hours if you use the power-saving eco mode (which also drops the brightness to ~2,200 lumens).

The 3,300-lumen NEC NP-ME331WG and 3,500-lumen Sony VPL-EW455 are capable projectors, too. What's going for the NEC projector is its 1.7x zoom range and 20W speaker (the Epson projector only does 2W, the Sony projector 16W); and what's going for the Sony projector is its very good image performance (about on par with the Epson projector) and up to 10,000 hours lamp life. However, both models require a separate module for wireless connectivity, and both are WXGA (1,280 x 800) projectors.

Very good performance aside, what finally seals the deal for the Epson EB-U42 is its attractive price. At S$1,329, this more-than-full-HD projector is only slightly more expensive than the NEC model that costs S$1,290. It's also more affordable than the Sony model, which is going for a rather steep S$1,799. NEC does have a brighter (3,600 lumens) model in the form of the ME361WG, but this is still a WXGA projector and it costs S$1,389. Sony also has another VPL-EW435 with a maximum brightness of 3,100 lumens that is going for a more budget-friendly price of S$1,399, but this too is a WXGA model.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best AIO Color Inkjet Printer

While laser printers still lead the way in terms of print speed and throughput, today’s inkjets are no slouches either. Volume of print notwithstanding, nothing quite beats an inkjet when it comes to printing photos and graphics. And when you add more functions like scanning, copying and faxing, an all-in-one (AIO) inkjet printer can be a very useful addition to home and small businesses. We put three such inkjet multi-taskers to the test, basing them on specific criteria: besides print, copy, and scan, they must also do fax and have an ADF. Coincidentally, all three models we've in this test has a mono print speed of up to 15ipm and a color print speed of between 8 and 10ipm.

Nominees:

• Canon Pixma TR8570
• Epson L6190
• HP Envy Photo 7820

And the winner is…

At S$539, the Epson L6190 is the most expensive inkjet AIO in this roundup, but with a good reason: a 4-color ink tank system printer, the L6190 can print up to 7,500 pages in black-and-white, and up to 6,000 pages in color with just a single set of ink bottles. The replacement bottles don't cost an arm or a leg too, with a bottle of black ink priced at S$14.90, and a bottle of color ink at S$9.90. So while the initial printer cost is higher versus the other models, if you print a lot, you'd save more in the long run.

In terms of features, the L6190 is equipped with a 30-page automatic document feeder (ADF), a 250-sheet paper tray, a 2.4-inch touch panel, and supports double-sided printing (a rarity for ink tank printers). In addition to Ethernet and USB connectivity, it supports Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct, so it’s easy to print from smartphones or tablets. Comparatively, the Envy Photo 7820 also has a 35-sheet ADF and the Pixma TR8570 has a 20-sheet ADF. Also, both the Canon and HP printers use standard ink cartridges instead of ink tanks, which explains why they don't print as many pages as the Epson printer with each set of inks.

The L6190's print performance doesn't disappoint, too. Using Epson’s advanced PrecisionCore printhead to hit a top resolution of 4,800 x 1,200 dpi, the L6190 is able to churn out prints with very sharp and full-bodied text, and graphics that handle color gradations well. Additionally, its black ink is pigment-based for better blacks and water resistance. All three printers can't print gallery quality photos, but for family photos in 4R or even A4, they are more than up to the task. If we were to pick, the Pixma printer had a slightly more more faithful reproduction of our Photodisc test image than the Epson printer.

Speed-wise, the Epson L6190 is able to churn out our PDF test document at a speed of 14.3ppm for mono and 8.3ppm for color, with a fast first-page-out timing of 8 and 14 seconds respectively. Comparatively, the Pixma TR8570 clocks in at 11.4ppm for mono and 8.4ppm for color, with a first-page-out timing of 13 and 17 seconds respectively. The HP Envy Photo 7820 manages 15.5ppm for mono and 10.9ppm for color, but its first-page-out timings are often in excess of 20 seconds. In essence, while the Envy Photo 7820 is the fastest of the bunch in full stride, it takes longer to print a set of multi-page documents due to the time it needs to print the first page. Comparatively, the Epson L6190 finishes ahead most of the times, and this applies to both simplex and duplex printing.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Best Mesh Networking System

Mesh networking systems are the hottest things in the world of networking in the past year. Essentially, these are systems that are sold in bundles (usually in packs of two or three) that spreads Wi-Fi across homes. The nodes communicate with each other via Wi-Fi and are vastly superior to Wi-Fi range extenders. They also broadcast a single SSID and feature intelligent switching, so there's no need to worry about manually switching networks.

To make the cut for this year’s awards, the nominee must be a mesh networking system that supports a true mesh networking topology. Additionally, it must have been released in 2017.

Nominees:

• Google Wifi
• Linksys Velop
• Netgear Orbi (RBK50)
• Samsung Home Connect Pro
• TP-Link Deco M5

And the winner is...

The Netgear Orbi is bulky, expensive, its mobile apps are confusing to use, and its management interface is a little clunky. However, it does a couple of things very well, which is why we think it was the best mesh networking system of the past year. The performance of a single node might not be class-leading, but its mesh performance was easily the strongest of the lot. This means that there is very little performance degradation even when you are connected to its secondary nodes. Additionally, it is the only mesh networking system where each of the nodes come with not two, but four Ethernet ports and USB 2.0 ports. This makes it easy to connect the Orbi to peripherals that may need an Internet connection such as your Smart TV, TV set-top box, gaming console, or network speaker. The Orbi may not be perfect, but when you weigh the pros and cons of each system, we found that it was the best system, overall.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section at the end.

Innovation Awards

Four Innovation awards were also given out in this year's Editor's Choice segment, with the aim of recognizing innovative products and cutting-edge technologies that have emerged during the eligibility period. The winners are Apple, ASUS, Nintendo, and Sony.

1.) Apple iPhone X

The iPhone X is the most distinct iPhone since, well, iPhone. It’s the first iPhone without the iconic Home button, as well as the first iPhone to ship with a (nearly) full-screen OLED display. Say what you will about that notch, but the Face ID tech it houses is a marvel that just works. Plus it brings Portrait Mode to selfies for the first time. As the first iPhone without a Home button, the iPhone X ships with a fork of iOS that runs on intuitive gestures. Rounding off the X are the dual cameras on the back, each of which has optical image stabilization. The iPhone’s cameras are consistently good, and the X is one of our two winners this year in the best smartphone camera category.

Additional read: Apple iPhone X review: The future of iPhone

2.) ASUS ROG Zephyrus GX501

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus deserves to be recognized for its creative and novel cooling solution, which enables it to cram an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Max-Q into a chassis that measures just under 18mm thick. The bottom panel opens like a trapdoor when the lid is raised, while the keyboard has been shifted forward to accommodate additional mesh intakes. It's slim, light, and powerful, and redefines traditional notions of the trade-offs you have to make to get this level of performance in such a lightweight and portable package.

Additional read: Hands-on with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus: A new breed of slim and very, very powerful notebooks

3.) Sony A9

Sure, some people might discount the improved shooting rate to the mere maturation of technology. But the fact of the matter is that Sony has absolutely made the right choices with everything else here. There's an advanced autofocus system, improved handling, and a buffer large enough to let you keep firing away until you get the shot. For once, you literally have a camera that makes it easier for you to get the shot, and that's innovation.

Additional read: Sony A9 pro mirrorless camera review: Built to outperform

4.) Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is the first gaming console to truly bridge the gap between home and on-the-go gaming. Its unique form factor, consisting of a 6.2-inch, capacitive HD touchscreen display sandwiched between a pair of removable controllers, makes it not much bigger than the average phablet, letting you take it with you anywhere. And when you're at home, you can just dock it and connect it to your big screen, removing the controllers to use independently. Most importantly, the Switch's custom NVIDIA Tegra processor is powerful enough to play triple AAA titles, so unlike past Nintendo consoles, you're not sacrificing gaming power for innovative design.

References

For a full list of content related to the HWM and HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2018 event, you can refer to the following links:

• Tech Awards 2018: Readers' Choice Results
• Tech Awards 2018: Editor's Choice Results - Part 1
• Tech Awards 2018: Editor's Choice Results - Part 2 - this article
• Full list of winners: HWM+HardwareZone Tech Awards 2018 microsite

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