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HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2018: Readers' Choice Results

By Ng Chong Seng - 21 Feb 2018

Readers' Choice Awards - Consumer Electronics (Part 2)

Readers' Choice Awards - Consumer Electronics (Part 2)

 

Best Smartwatch Brand - Apple

There should be no doubt by now that the Apple Watch is a success, both in terms of sales and mind share. With half of the votes going its way, Apple is once gain our readers’ top smartwatch maker. Last year, Apple brought the latest Apple Watch Series 3 to Singapore, but only for the GPS version. Which is a bummer since LTE support is the biggest addition to the latest gen Watch. That said, the latest update is that the LTE Apple Watch is finally going on sale in Singapore from February 9. To be clear though, Apple isn’t the only nor the first to have an LTE-capable smartwatch. Samsung’s Gear S3 Frontier has been widely available here since January 2017. For those who prefer smartwatches that look less like a wrist computer, well, here’s our hybrid smartwatch shootout.

 

Best Activity Tracker Brand - Fitbit

With 50% of the votes, this is the third straight year Fitbit has snagged our Readers’ Choice award for Best Activity Tracker Brand. Early last year, we welcomed the Alta HR, a slim tracker that can do heart rate and sleep tracking. Later in the year, Fitbit did get real serious with the smartwatch game with the introduction of the Ionic, which offers GPS, heart rate tracking, on-device guided workouts, and automatic sleep tracking with Sleep Stages. And unlike most smartwatches (or, more like most fitness trackers), the Ionic boasts up to five days of battery life. In second place with 15% is Garmin, which launched the Vivosmart 3 and Vivosport trackers in 2017.

 

Best Consumer Electronics Chain Store (Singapore) - Challenger

With 42% of the votes, IT and CE chain store Challenger has now won our Best CE Chain Store award for six consecutive years. And that’s despite the closure of Funan, the mall in which Challenger was an anchor tenant. (For those unaware, Challenger's current flagship store is at Bugis Junction.) Harvey Norman (16%), which opened a giant flagship outlet at Millenia Walk in late 2015 and followed that up with the Games Hub in 2016, and Courts (10%) complete the top three.

 

Best Electronics Shopping Portal (Singapore) - Lazada

With 30% of the votes, Lazada has dislodged last year’s winner Qoo10 to be our readers’ favorite local online electronics shopping portal. For what it’s worth, the Alibaba Group-owned company also owns Redmart, and has this LiveUp membership program that offer benefits such as exclusive promotions, free delivery, rebates, etc. from Lazada, Redmart, Netflix, Uber, UberEats, and Taobao Collection. Amazon, which launched its Prime Now same-day delivery service in July last year and Prime membership in December, only came in fourth with 9%, behind Qoo10 (24%) and Hachi.tech (14%).

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