Best devices for your home: Tech Awards 2020 Editor's Choice Results (Part 1)

Note: This article was first published on 21 Feb 2020.

The very best devices for your home (Tech Awards 2020)

Home is where the heart is, so goes the saying. It is also where we are most likely to spend most of our time – current circumstances surrounding Covid-19 notwithstanding. Therefore, it makes sense to invest in the best electronic devices and gadgets for your home. No one wants to be stuck at home watching a crummy TV and certainly, no one wants to live in a house with patchy Wi-Fi.

Fortunately, for Tech Awards 2020, we have gathered and tested all the major devices that you need for your home through these award categories that the editors have assessed for this segment:-

• Best 4K and 8K TV
• Best Wi-Fi 6 Router
• Best Desktop CPU
• Best Motherboard
• Best Graphics Card
• Best Gaming Notebook
• Game of the Year
• Best SOHO Printer
• Innovation Awards

Other segments include the Best devices for Home (this article), Mobility devices, Work and Gaming. Not to forget, our Readers' Choice results for the Best Tech Brands. 

Read on and find out who the winners are in each category! For this segment, we begin with the centrepiece of all living rooms – TVs.

Best TV

There are really very few reasons left today to not buy a 4K TV if you’re looking to replace your crummy HD set. And you know what? Unlike past years, a top-end 4K TV with high picture quality can now be had without breaking the bank.

For those looking to get the very latest in TV tech, 2019 was the first year 8K TVs came to the fore. While the jump in resolution is the most obvious difference, there are other nuanced considerations that would-be buyers should be aware of too, especially for features that hinge on the availability of HDMI 2.1.

While this year's award segment was really set to find the Best TV, in our process of testing and gathering relevant comparison details, screen sizes and their respective prices played out an interesting twist for recommendations where 4K models were better suited up to certain screen sizes (and technically, it made sense too), while 8K models were a much better fit for larger screen sizes (even from a value perspective). As such, without further ado, let us tell you which is the best 4K TV and the best 8K TV you can buy right now!

Nominees:

• LG C9 OLED 4K TV
• Samsung Q900R QLED 8K TV
• Sony A9G OLED 4K TV

Best 4K TV

For 4K, you can’t go wrong with any of LG’s 2019 OLED TVs. But if we were to choose one, the LG C9 gets our nod because it offers terrific performance at a very reasonable price.

For a start, the LG C9 possesses all the hallmarks of a great OLED TV — perfect blacks, infinite contrast, great viewing angles and near-instant response times.

While not an 8K TV, the C9 is equipped with no fewer than four HDMI 2.1 ports and supports HDMI eARC. The latter means it can do lossless Atmos or DTS:X passthrough via Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio respectively to an external receiver.

The C9 plays nice with HDR10, Dolby Vision and HLG formats. With a typical HDR peak brightness of around 750 nits, it offers very good HDR performance overall. That said, this isn’t the brightest TV we’ve test to date — if you’re super into HDR or need a TV that performs well under high ambient lighting, there are brighter options (e.g., Samsung’s QLED TVs).

Gamers will love the C9 for its very low 13ms input lag. Better yet, it supports both VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode). In fact, a G-Sync update that arrived in late 2019 means that the C9 is one of the very few TVs today that will work well with not just recent Xbox One consoles but also systems that use an NVIDIA GeForce graphics card.

The best thing about the C9 is its price. Other than build quality, speaker and design, there’s not much that separates the C9 from its most expensive OLED siblings. For the most part, they offer the same picture quality. Versus the other TVs (see table below), its value at the 65-inch class is unmatched.

Best 8K TV

If you need a very big screen and 8K resolution, the Samsung Q900R QLED 8K TV is the one to get.

The Q900R’s greatest strength is its extremely high brightness, which means the picture will look good whether you’re using it in a bright family room or in a dark man cave. If you watch a lot of HDR content, this increased brightness can only be a good thing as it enhances realism.

Like Samsung’s flagship QLED TVs in the past few years, the Q900R offers a class-leading local dimming performance. Coupled with an Ultra Viewing Angle tech that solves past QLEDs’ narrow viewing angle problem, this is the most OLED-like (in terms of black levels) Samsung TV we’ve tested to date.

The Q900R also sports a very low input lag, FreeSync/VRR support and excellent motion handling. One minor gripe we’ve is that while there’s an HDMI 2.1 port on the One Connect box, there’s no eARC support.

Samsung’s QLED TVs, including the Q900R, also support Apple’s AirPlay 2 and are the first TVs to offer the new Apple TV app. LG has announced that its 2019 TVs will be getting the Apple TV app soon.

Strange as it may sound but we think that the Q900R offers good value for the money — especially for the 75-inch and above segment. At S$17K, the 75-inch 8K Q900R costs about the same as the 77-inch LG C9, which is a 4K TV, which costs more. And versus the S$60K 88-inch LG Z9, which is the only 8K OLED TV that LG sells here, the 82-inch Q900R, which costs S$30K, looks like a bargain.

Here's a comparison of various 4K and 8K TVs' SRPs:

References

• LG C9 4K OLED TV review (reviewed on HWM 2019)
• Samsung Q900R QLED 8K TV review
• Sony A9G OLED 4K TV review

Best Wi-Fi 6 Router

Wi-Fi 6 or 802.11ax, as it is also known, is the next big thing in networking. It improves overall networking performance in two ways. The first is by increasing data transfer rates by increasing the maximum amount of data that can be carried by each stream. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it enables routers and compatible devices to communicate with each other simultaneously – something that cannot be done using Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) technology.

To make the cut for this year's awards, the router must have been released in 2019 and it must be a tri-band AX-11000 class router.

Nominees:

• ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000
• Netgear Nighthawk AX12 (RAX200)
• TP-Link Archer AX11000

And the winner is...

The ASUS ROG GT-AX11000 is the winner of this category for its blend of performance, features, and price. As you can see from the snapshot of results compiled below, it may not be the outright performance champion, but its data transfer speeds, both download and upload, were still very decent across all ranges. To better understand the test results, the test routers are planted in the living room, while the compatible Wi-Fi 6 capable notebook was used as the client device to test the file transfer throughput at different locations within a typical apartment.

What's most impressive about the ROG GT-11AX11000 router is its suite of features. Gamers can look forward to features like Game Radar and data prioritization, whereas other features like DFS (dynamic frequency selection), real-time traffic monitor, and remote management via the ASUS Router app, makes it easy for users to manage and optimise their connection. Parents will also be happy to know that the ROG GT-AX11000 has robust parental control settings.

And while the ROG GT-AX11000 is a pricey router, we feel that it's reasonably-priced when compared to its rivals. All in all, it's comfortably the best tri-band AX11000-class Wi-Fi 6 router you can buy today.

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

References

• Wi-Fi 6 AX11000-class router shootout

Best Desktop CPU

AMD continues to go from strength to strength with its Ryzen processors, and its third-generation Ryzen chips are no different. They continue to work on the series' traditional areas of weaknesses, such as 1080p gaming performance, while extending its lead in multi-threaded performance with a mainstream 12-core processor with the Ryzen 9 3900X. Meanwhile, Intel is looking to solidify its advantage in terms of single-threaded performance with the release of the special edition Core i9-9900KS, which boosts to 5.0GHz on all cores. If you're in the market for a desktop CPU today, you'll have plenty of good options from both camps to pick from, which is more than could be said just a few years ago.

For this year's awards, we're pitting high-end chips in the mainstream segment from both companies against each other.

Nominees:

• AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
• Intel Core i9-9900KS

And the winner is...

The AMD Ryzen 9 3900X delivers in all the key areas, serving up excellent multi-threaded performance and very respectable gaming numbers. In games, the AMD chip still lags behind at 1080p, but that difference soon becomes inconsequential as you ramp up the resolution to 1440p and 4K. Single-threaded performance isn't that far behind the Intel Core i9-9900KS either, while it remains miles ahead in terms of heavily threaded workloads. Granted, we're comparing a 12-core chip against an 8-core one, but these are both high-end chips from their respective brands, and the Core i9-9900KS is currently Intel's top mainstream offering. They're both technically mainstream chips, and AMD simply offers more in terms of multi-threaded performance for this market segment.

Whichever way you cut it, the Ryzen 9 3900X is the more compelling option. And when you take into consideration its price, which sits at US$499 to Intel's US$599, the choice becomes pretty clear. What's more, the Core i9-9900KS is really just a top-binned Core i9-9900K, so it doesn't bring anything particularly new to the table.

References

• AMD Ryzen 9 3900X vs. Ryzen 7 3700X vs. Intel Core i9-9900K
• Intel Core i9-9900KS Special Edition review

Best Motherboard

AMD launched its X570 chipset alongside its new Ryzen 3000 chips, and it offers some fairly compelling new features, most notably support for the next-generation PCIe 4.0 standard. Your graphics card may not be able to saturate a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot yet, but there are already storage devices that can benefit from PCIe 4.0. Manufacturers have dressed up the new chipset with a bunch of new designs and additions as well, and the flagship X570 motherboards we're looking at here are among some of the best-looking boards around. Some of them have customisable OLED displays and bundled expansion cards, but they're all bristling with a wide array of connectivity options that should make most folks quite happy.

To make the cut for this shootout, the motherboard has to be the flagship representative of their respective brands' X570 line-up locally.

Nominees:

• ASRock X570 Taichi
• ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula
• Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme
• MSI MEG X570 Godlike

And the winner is...

The Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme is quite clearly a cut above the rest here, boasting premium features like a true 16-phase VRM design, onboard 10G Ethernet, and passive cooling for the PCH that does away with noise entirely. The VRM implementation and passive chipset cooling are things that no other X570 board has, so the Aorus Xtreme is entirely unique in this respect.

The MSI board is too pricey, while the ASUS motherboard lacks meaningful differentiation from the Hero (Wi-Fi). The ASRock board is a decent alternative if you're on a tighter budget, but it doesn't really compare in terms of usability and features. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula or MSI MEG X570 Godlike though. The ASUS board will still serve you well if you want to try liquid-cooling your VRM and prize bells-and-whistles like the configurable OLED display. Similarly, the Godlike motherboard places a strong focus on aesthetics and will be a good fit for someone who can utilize its bundled 10G and M.2 expansion cards. 

But if you're just looking for a solid board that will give you the most utility, there's no beating the overall proposition of the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme. 

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

References

• ASRock vs. ASUS vs. Gigabyte vs. MSI: Which flagship X570 motherboard should you get?

Best Gaming Graphics Card

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 Super is very, very fast, but if you're looking to take things up a notch with factory overclocks and custom cooling solutions, there are plenty of cards out there vying for your money. This means cards that are slightly faster and cooler, complete with fancy add-ons like RGB lighting and even extra fan headers. Clock speeds don't matter that much though, and all the cards produce near-identical results in games. Instead, things like thermal performance and design matter more.

To make the cut for this year's awards, the cards must be at least high-end representatives of their respective brand line-ups, given that it's not always possible to obtain the flagship model for review locally.

Nominees:

• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080S A8G Gaming
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Super XC Ultra, Overclocked
• GALAX GeForce RTX 2080 Super EX 1-click OC
• Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming OC
• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio
• Palit GeForce RTX 2080 Super White GameRock
• Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 Super Triple Fan

And the winner is...

The ASUS card ultimately came ahead because of its strong performance in areas that really matter, such as cooling. Cooling is the one area where there's an obvious and measurable difference between the cards, so ASUS scores big points here. On top of that, it comes with several value-added features to help it stand out, such as additional RGB and fan headers. The card also features a BIOS switch to change fan profiles and a toggle button to instantly switch off its LEDs. Overclocking performance may be lacklustre, but no one else did well either, and it seems unfair to assign too much weight to overclocking performance given the possible variances between samples. The biggest drawback is its price. At S$1,499, it's significantly more expensive than even the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio, which costs S$1,288. Still, the fact remains that this is the best performing card in this shootout and the one with the richest feature set.

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

References

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super shootout: Which custom card should you buy?

Best Gaming Notebook

15.6-inch gaming laptops sit in something of a sweet spot today, both portable and powerful enough to run most modern games at 1080p. NVIDIA's Max-Q technology has also helped pave the way for a new breed of slim and light gaming notebooks, redefining conventional expectations of what a gaming laptop is. Finally, you could get a laptop that combined both portability and performance, effectively getting the best of both worlds. Today, there are plenty of gaming laptops that let you comfortably take them out with you, and they are almost the norm now rather than the exception. 

To make the cut this year, the laptop must be the flagship 15.6-inch model from their respective brands. But because it wasn't always possible to get the same configuration from every model, some laptops like the HP Omen 15 were reviewed with the GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q instead of the 2070 Max-Q. Others, like the Aorus 15 XA, are also not available with a Max-Q configuration, so we reviewed them with the GeForce RTX 2070 instead.

Nominees:

• Acer Predator Triton 500
• Aftershock Vapor 15 Pro
• Alienware m15 R2
• Aorus 15 XA
• ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502
• HP Omen 15
• Lenovo Legion Y740
• Razer Blade 15

And the winner is...

It's amazing how much has been packed into this laptop without driving up the price. At S$2,799, the Aftershock Vapor 15 Pro makes hardly any sacrifices and is fully capable of competing toe-to-toe with laptops that cost nearly a thousand dollars more. If you liked the Razer Blade 15 but thought it too pricey, the Vapor 15 Pro will make you very, very happy. The two laptops look really similar, and the Vapor 15 Pro even offers additional features like a mechanical keyboard and SD card reader. It also has slightly better port placement with the Thunderbolt 3 and HDMI ports located at the rear. More importantly, it's a lot lighter, weighing just 1.87kg to the Blade's 2.15kg.

In a nutshell, the Vapor 15 Pro is light, has a long-lasting 94Wh battery, and is affordable. It will take any modern game you throw at it, and it'll do so without outputting a ton of heat and noise. As a result, it handily beats the rest of the competition and is quite simply the best gaming notebook you can get today. 

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

References

• Acer Predator Triton 500 review
• Aftershock Vapor 15 Pro review
• Alienware m15 R2 review
• Aorus 15 XA
• ASUS ROG Zephyrus S GX502GW review 
• HP Omen 15 review
• Lenovo Legion Y740 review
• Razer Blade 15 review

Game of the Year

Putting together a list of the best games of the year is always an incredibly difficult task. So many video games arrive every year in many different genres and platforms - and most turn out to be great in their own ways and 2019 was no exception.

There were many, many games we loved playing in 2019. To find our game of the year, we went through every possible criteria – gameplay, visual fidelity, audio design and most importantly, the fun factor.

Having to cut the list down to just five nominees was extremely difficult, as there were many, many more fantastic games in 2019. Out of these five incredible nominees however, one game stood above the rest and delivered a gaming experience like no other.

Nominees:

• Borderlands 3
• Devil May Cry 5
• Resident Evil 2 Remake
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
• Total War: Three Kingdoms

And the winner is...

Most gamers would have a screen-smashing, controller-tossing relationship with this title, just like they would for Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Yet, while I find myself part of this demographic, I have to admit there’s just something about From Software’s gritty, Japanese-inspired adventure that keeps me coming back for more (deaths). Is it the stunning, graceful beauty of the landscapes? The unrestrictive sandbox nature of the gameplay? Or is it something even more primal yet; the simple satisfaction and sense of achievement that comes with beating a difficult opponent? 

Perhaps it's all three, but there's no doubt that Sekiro is an amazing game through and through because of it. Try (and die) as you might, it's certainly a marvellous throwback to a time when we gamers were really "in it to win it", so to speak.

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

References

• Borderlands 3 review
• Devil May Cry 5 review
• Resident Evil 2 Remake review
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice review
• Total War: Three Kingdoms review

Best SOHO Printer

Once All-In-One printers became mainstream solutions from manufacturers, they steadily made their way into offices as essential productivity tools, easily replacing single-function printers.

Able to print, copy, scan and fax, the divide between these and their higher-end brethren usually lies in the fact that the majority are still using inkjet technology. Indeed, two of the printers tested here are inkjet-based.

For this category, we tested printers from Brother, Canon, and HP that cost around S$500 and placed no restrictions in the type of print engine used. We looked at the size and footprint as space could be at a premium in a SOHO setup, along with the features and connectivity options. While ease of use was important, the overall price of the printer, print quality, and cost of printing were key winning criteria. 

Nominees:

• Brother DCP-L3551CDW
• Canon G7070
• HP OfficeJet Pro 9020

And the winner is...

Canon launched the PIXMA Ink Efficient G7070 recently with added productivity features such as automatic two-sided printing, massive paper feeding capacity, large document automatic document feeder, and full network compatibility. Besides network printing capabilities, it could print from various mobile devices through wireless printing.

With its fairly small footprint, the Canon PIXMA Ink Efficient G7070 was still able to handle most print, scan, and copy demands we threw at it. 

While it was the slowest to print in this group of printers, the results for both the text and image quality were very good and accurate with little colour saturation or bleeding.

One really good feature is the low running cost. The high print volume coupled with the lowest costing replacement cartridges made this the most cost-efficient model tested. Being able to physically see ink levels made it easy to judge when you needed to buy more.

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

 

References

• Brother DCP-L3551CDW review
• Canon PIXMA G7070 review
• HP OfficeJet Pro 9020 review

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. One of them has made it to this category and that's Samsung's micro-LED display technology.

 

Samsung micro-LED display technology

Can you have your cake and eat it? Samsung seems to have found the way with TVs with micro-LED technology. It’s a new display technology that claims to have all of the benefits of traditional OLEDs (inky blacks and high contrast levels) with none of the drawbacks (image burn-in and inadequate brightness for vidid HDR content).

Very briefly, micro-LEDs are so-called because it uses tiny LEDs to create images. And because each LED has its own RGB sub-pixels and can generate its own light (much like OLED), there’s no need for backlights like traditional LEDs. This means deep blacks and uniform lighting across the entire display. And because they are LEDs, they can get bright, which makes them great for HDR content and more flexible in homes that can get very bright during the day. Finally, because micro-LEDs are inorganic, they can have a long lifespan (up to 100,000 hours) and there’s no risk of burn-in. The latter is perhaps OLED's greatest shortcoming.

The poster boy for micro-LED display technology that's currently available for commercial and residential use is Samsung's The Wall Luxury, which uses multiple micro-LED panels to create a screen that can range from 73 inch, all the way to 292 inches.

Unfortunately, micro-LED remains difficult to manufacture, hence its high price. But it’s a promising piece of technology that could have a great impact on not just TVs but all kinds of displays.

 

Read Next

For a full list of content related to the HWM and HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2020 outcome, you can refer to the following links:

• Tech Awards 2020: Readers' Choice Results
• Tech Awards 2020: Editor's Choice Results
  Part 1: Best devices for your home (this article)
  Part 2: Best mobile devices on the go
  Part 3: Best devices for Work
  Part 4: Best devices for Gaming
• Full list of winners: HWM+HardwareZone Tech Awards 2020 microsite

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