HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2019: Editor's Choice - Part 2

Celebrating the very best in technology

Last week, we published the results of our Readers' Choice polls and Part 1 of our Editor's Choice articles, which focus 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 as determined by the editorial team in areas such as PC components, notebooks, routers and much more. Also featured in this article are the four 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 video to wrap up what went down at our awards event, followed by photos from the awards ceremony that took place on February 28 at the National Gallery:-

Best Desktop CPU

AMD's new Ryzen processors are among the most attractive products from the company in recent years. They've finally forced Intel to release its stranglehold on the high-end CPU market, offering both excellent multi-threaded performance and good bang for your buck. However, Intel has also hit back with the Core i9-9900K, an octa-core processor that goes up directly against the Ryzen 7 2700X. It's been a while since we've seen so much competition in the CPU space, which is only good news for consumers who now have more options than ever. 

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

Nominees:

• AMD Ryzen 2700X
• Intel Core i9-9900K

And the winner is...

The Intel Core i9-9900K is a potent answer to the Ryzen 7 2700X. While AMD's processor may still offer better value for money, Intel's chip comes ahead on sheer performance alone. In addition to better multi-threaded performance than the Ryzen 7 2700X, it also boasts stronger gaming performance, effectively giving consumers the best of both worlds. In other words, it has what it takes to appeal to both serious gamers and content creators. Gamers in particular will appreciate the Core i9-9900K's ability to boost up to 5.0GHz for a single core, especially since games still tend to be more sensitive to clock speeds. The chip also uses solder TIM this time around, which is more efficient compared to previous Coffee Lake CPUs. 

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 Z390 chipset is everything the Z370 chipset should have been. While the two are still quite similar, Z390 adds key features like native support for USB 3.1 (Gen 2) and integrated Intel Wireless-AC with support for Gigabit Wi-Fi. Unsurprisingly, motherboard makers are now out in force to woo gamers looking to upgrade to Intel’s new 9th-generation desktop processors with a flood of new board models.

Z390 boards boast plenty of new designs and more features to entice users. This takes many forms, including everything from additional expansion card options to fancy OLED displays and even more RGB LEDs. It's especially important to form a compelling argument with beefed-up power delivery circuits as well, since the Core i9-9900K will also work with more affordable Z370 motherboards. 

To make the cut for this shootout, the motherboard has to be the flagship representative of their respective brands' Z390 line-up.

Nominees:

• ASRock Z390 Taichi Ultimate
• ASUS ROG Maximus XI Extreme
• Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme
• MSI MEG Z390 Godlike

And the winner is...

The Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme just screams quality. From its tank-like construction to its beefy, finned VRM heatsinks, the board just feels like an excellent product that's armed to the teeth with useful features. There are thoughtful inclusions like the front USB connector that supports fast charging, in addition to a convenient one-touch OC button and two Thunderbolt 3 ports. The plethora of fan headers and temperature and flow sensors also means that you have plenty of tools to get a custom liquid-cooling setup going, which will pair nicely with the board's strong overclocking capabilities. To cap things off, it also has additional power connectors for both the CPU and graphics cards to better support high overclocks. It's expensive at S$799, but it more than justifies it with good design and performance.

Here's a snapshot of its performance:-

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

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is one of the most expensive consumer graphics cards NVIDIA has released in a while. It serves up bleeding-edge performance and comes with the latest ray-tracing technology baked in, but the steep price it commands means that this isn’t a card for the average gamer.

Put simply, this is a card for those who are sure that they want the best and are willing to pay for it. While the Founders Edition model is a beauty in its own right, custom card manufacturers have gotten to work installing massive coolers and working in their own factory overclocks.

This means cards that are slightly faster and cooler, complete with fancy add-ons like RGB lighting, and in some cases, even customizable OLED displays.

Nominees:

• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
• GALAX GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Hall of Fame
• MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z
• Palit GeForce RTX 2080 Ti GamingPro OC
• Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 2080 Ti AMP Extreme Core

And the winner is...

This was a hard choice, but the ASUS card ultimately inched ahead because of its performance in areas that really matter, such as cooling. Its excellent thermal performance was miles ahead of the competition, which helped it score huge points. The MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z may have had higher factory overclocks and proved the better overclocker, but the performance differential between the two cards was rather minuscule. Furthermore, it seems unfair to assign too much weight to overclocking performance given the possible variances between samples and the fact that most cards perform rather similarly (more so when overclocked). At the end of the day, the ASUS card offers a selection of features that is more useful to a wider audience, such as the BIOS switch to change fan profiles and additional RGB and fan headers. What's more, its performance out-of-the-box was excellent, without too much deviation between it and the MSI card - especially in real-world games. At S$2,359, it is one of the more expensive GeForce RTX 2080 Ti cards around, but what you get is great design, performance, and cooling.

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

Falling prices of flash memory have caused portable external SSDs to become much more affordable. This is great news because these drives provide numerous advantages over traditional mechanical portable hard disk drives. Not only are they considerably faster, the lack of moving parts also mean that they are more shock-resistant and hardy.

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 better interfaces like Thunderbolt 3.

Nominees:

• G-Drive Mobile Pro SSD
• SanDisk Portable Extreme SSD
• Samsung Portable SSD X5
• Seagate Fast SSD

And the winner is...

The Samsung Portable SSD X5 was the winner mostly because of its stunning performance. It might not have the best sequential read and write speeds, but it was extremely adept at handling smaller data sizes and high queue depths. This makes it the strongest all-round performer. Sure, you can argue that it is  pricey but the old adage of you get what you pay for is very true here. Not only is the Portable SSD X5 fast, it is also fairly compact, shock-resistant, and comes with optional password protection with hardware AES 256-bit encryption for security.

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 Solid State Drive

SSDs are truly mainstream now. There is a wealth of SSDs to choose from today, ranging from affordable SATA-based ones to state-of-the-art PCIe-based ones that can attain transfer speeds in excess of 3GB/s. In the past year, we saw major storage brands all release flagship SSDs supporting the ultra-fast PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and the compact M.2 2280 form factor. However, while some brands stuck with using the tried-and-test MLC NAND, some others opted for more affordable TLC-NAND in an attempt to create a better balance between affordability and performance. Who will reign supreme?

To make the cut, the SSD must support the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, support the NVMe protocol and be a performance-tier part.

Nominees:

• ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro
• Samsung SSD 970 Pro
• WD Black NVMe SSD

And the winner is...

The acquisition of SanDisk has turned Western Digital into a flash storage powerhouse. Despite utilizing slower TLC memory, the WD Black NVMe SSD turned in a very commendable performance in our tests. Not only is it fast, Western Digital also offers a 5-year long warranty, which matches any other high-end SSD in the market. And that's not all, the drive even comes with a handy drive monitoring utility and a copy of Acronis True Image that makes it easy for users to clone their drives and backup their systems. It may not be the outright speed champ, but it's as fast as Samsung most of the time and is far more affordable, making it a great all-around choice for most people looking to upgrade to a high-performance SSD drive that doesn't hurt the wallet.

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

Advances in processor and battery technologies have helped made notebook thinner and lighter. Most ultraportable notebooks today are just a smidge over a kilogram heavy and are small enough to slip into most bags. And despite their portability, they offer good performance and can do just about anything (even light gaming).

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, it must be powered by a full Intel Core processor (no ultra low voltage variants).

Nominees:

• Acer Swift 5
• ASUS ZenBook S UX391
• Dell XPS 13 (2019)
• HP Spectre X360 (2018)
• Lenovo Yoga C930
• LG gram 13
• Microsoft Surface Pro 6
• Razer Blade Stealth (2018)

And the winner is...

Windows notebooks have advanced tremendously in the past year, so naturally competition was very keen in this category. However, after poring over performance charts, comparing dimensions and weights, a winner emerged and that was the HP Spectre X360. Overall, this notebook offered the best blend of performance, design, portability, and features.

It has a bold and edgy design with angled sides and gold accents, and it is one of the notebooks to come with both USB-C Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.0 USB-A ports. It even has a microSD card slot to help transfer data out of phone/camera memory cards. It doesn’t end there. Some interesting features that it has include a built-in screen privacy filter that can be activated with a single press of a button, and a kill-switch for the web camera that gives users a peace of mind. Battery life is also very respectable - especially if you consider that this is a convertible notebook that really feels like a regular ultrabook in terms of portability. Overall, the HP Spectre X360 is simply the best all-around notebook.

Best Gaming Notebook

NVIDIA's Max-Q technology helped pave the way for a new breed of slim and light gaming notebooks that redefined conventional expectations of what a gaming laptop is. Finally, you could get a laptop that combined both portability and performance. Today, there are plenty of gaming laptops that let you comfortably take them out with you, and they no longer feel like lugging a sack of bricks around. Better still, the Max-Q optimizations mean that they also have better-than-usual battery life. 

To make the cut, the laptop must feature a 15.6-inch display and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Max-Q GPU.

Nominees:

• Alienware m15
• Gigabyte Aero 15X
• HP Omen 15
• MSI GS65 Stealth Thin
• Razer Blade 15

And the winner is...

The Razer Blade 15 is Razer's most refined laptop yet. Compared to the competition, the Blade offers few compromises, boasting a sleek and light design, good performance and battery life, and probably the best build quality of the lot. Its slim bezels also mean that it is more compact than your usual 15.6-inch laptop, and the 144Hz display is nice and bright. The large glass precision trackpad also helps it stand out from the crowd, and it is among the best available now. Better still, this is also one of the few gaming laptops that will blend in in the board room, and the minimalist design gives it an added touch of class.

Here's a snapshot of its performance:-

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

As an inherently visual medium, monitors are our literal window to video games. In that regard, we have been absolutely spoilt for choice! We’ve seen bleeding edge framerates from esports-targeted monitors, just as we’ve seen highly immersive widescreen options and impressively detailed screens.

While display performance is an obvious factor, we also considered each monitor’s build quality and their perceived value based on price and features. This year's contenders must support 4K resolution natively and HDR. Picking our winner among the two only available nominees in the market took plenty of deep thought. Our eventual decision should keep future owners happy as they shoot, drive, and jump across multiple gaming genres.

Nominees:

• ASUS ROG Swift PG27UQ
• Acer Predator X27

And the winner is...

Quite frankly, from a performance standpoint you really can't go wrong with either monitor. Both panels have equivalent HDR performance and professional-level colour accuracy. But the Predator X27 comes with better factory calibration right out of the box, with the ROG monitor requiring a little more manual fiddling to get the best out of it. We also thought the Predator X27 has a nicer overall design (even its bezels are thinner than the ROG's), and were pleasantly surprised to find that it even comes with a light hood - something normally seen in high-end professional monitors. Perhaps more crucially, and the push factor that swung our votes towards the X27, was its price tag - which made it an unbeatable value offering than the ROG Swift.

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 was launched in 2018, supports a true mesh networking topology and offer three wireless bands (tri-band Wi-Fi system).

Nominees:

• D-Link Covr-2202
• Netgear Orbi RBK20
• TP-Link Deco M9 Plus
• Synology MR2200ac

And the winner is...

The D-Link Covr-2202 easily takes this category thanks to its great performance, ease of use, and decent feature set. Its performance was outstanding across all of our tests, whether as a single unit or in a mesh network. Its speeds were higher and also more consistent across all tested ranges when compared to its rivals. And since the nodes are paired right out of the box, setup was a breeze. And although it doesn't have the rich features of some of its rivals, it has all of the basics such as guest networking and parental controls. Overall, this is the mesh networking system to have.

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 Home Printer

For home use, inkjet printers still make the most sense because of their flexibility and ability to print lab-quality photos. While the majority of inkjet printers today still use ink cartridges that have limited yield, many printer makers have started making ink tank printers that can literally print thousands of pages with just one set of ink bottle refills. As a result, ink tank printers have also found favor with SOHO users.

For this category, we tested three ink tank printers from Brother, Canon, and Epson. They are all-in-one printers that support fax and have an ADF to make light work of multi-page scan jobs.

Nominees:

• Brother MFC-T910DW
• Canon Pixma G4010
• Epson EcoTank L5190

And the winner is...

Among the three printers we've tested, the Brother MFC-T910DW offers the best balance of features and performance. As a reminder, this is an ink tank printer, which means refills are easy and you can quickly check ink levels from the front. Also, each refill set can last for up to 6,500 pages in black and 5,000 pages in color. (To sweeten the deal, the printer comes with two black ink bottles in the box.) The printer also sports a regular 150-sheet paper tray, an 80-sheet multipurpose tray for envelopes and other specialty paper, and a 20-sheet auto document feeder at the top.

More importantly, the Brother MFC-T910DW gets our vote because it was able to handle the majority of the tasks we've thrown at it. Print quality-wise, the MFC-T910DW is about on a par with the Epson L5190 for text, though when it comes with graphics, its colors don't look as vibrant. However, the T910DW is a faster machine, with a print rate of up to 12 ipm in mono and 10 ipm in color, faster than the L5190’s 10 and 5 ipm speeds. For the most part, we found their one-pager and black-and-white print speeds to be about the same, but the T910DW did noticeably pull ahead in our multi-page color test.

The other advantage the T910DW has over the L5190 is that it supports automatic two-sided printing. This means you don’t need to manually flip the sheet over if you want to print or copy on both sides of the paper. For Epson, you need to look at the L6000 series if you want this auto duplex function.

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 Mono Office Printer

While most home users go for color printers, there are still many office users who prefer mono-only machines because all they print is black text. So for this category, we try to answer the question on which is the multi-function printer to get if you care about print speed and cost but couldn't care less about printing in color.

Nominees:

• Canon imageCLASS MF269dw
• Epson EcoTank M2140

And the winner is...

The Canon imageCLASS MF269dw is a very fast mono laser printer with a print speed of up to 28ppm. It also has a 50-sheet duplex auto document feeder (ADF) that we like a lot because it supports automatic duplex scanning (in two passes). To incentivize you to save paper, it also comes with an auto duplexer, which means it will automatically flip the paper when you choose to print or copy on both sides of the paper.

With support for PCL language and network printing (it has built-in wired and wireless connectivity), the MF269dw also comes with a 250-sheet paper drawer and a single-sheet input slot. The operation panel, which has both an LCD screen and tactile buttons for key functions like print and the numpad, can be tilted so users can adjust the angle to have a better view of the controls. We also like that we can create a shortcut key that remembers our favorite scan settings, like save destination and file type. Scans can also be sent over email or saved to a shared folder for easy retrieval later.

We also tested Epson's M2140, an ink tank printer that's specifically designed to rival its laser cousins in the print speed and print quality departments. While we like that the M2140 can print 6,000 B&W pages with one ink bottle, it doesn't support Wi-Fi (USB only) and it has no ADF. Its top print speed of 20ipm is also slower than Canon's printer.

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 Color Office Printer

For business users who care more about document print quality and print speed and don't give two hoots to other features, a laser or an LED printer is often the best option. But that rule of thumb has changed today thanks to advancement of inkjet printers, especially ink tank/ink pack models that offer low cost per print. For this category, we took it upon us to find the best ~S$600 color multi-function printer for SOHO and SME use. Both laser/LED and inkjet models were shortlisted.

Nominees:

• Brother MFC-L3770CDW
• Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5790
• HP Color LaserJet Pro M281fdw

And the winner is...

After days of testing, we believe that the Epson WorkForce Pro WF-C5790, a color inkjet printer, is the best sub-S$600 printer to get for office use. For some background, the WF-C5790 uses Epson’s Replaceable Ink Pack System (RIPS), which basically consists of four packets of ink (the usual cyan, magenta, yellow, and black colors) capable of printing up to 3,000 pages in black-and-white and 3,000 pages in color. And replacing these ink packs couldn’t be simpler: just eject the ink pack tray, pull out the old pack and put in the new one, and then slide the tray back.

The WF-C5790 can also be expanded with an optional 500-sheet paper tray to bring total paper input capacity to 830 sheets. It has a USB port at the front so you can print from or scan/save fax directly to a flash drive; and it comes with Epson’s fleet management tools like Epson Device Admin and Print Admin.

At 24ipm, the WF-C5790 prints fast too. In fact, it prints faster than both the Brother MFC-L3770CDW and HP LaserJet Pro M281fdw in both simplex and duplex modes. For multi-page, duplex copy jobs, while Brother's printer has the advantage of a dual-CIS ADF (i.e., it can scan faster), the Epson WF-C5790 is overall still the fastest because of its fast first-page-out time and negligible warm-up time.

Print quality-wise, the WF-C5790 will also give laser printers a run for their money. While the quoted 3.8-picoliter ink droplet size may seem larger than some inkjet printers, we found both printed documents and photos to look sharp and vibrant, with gradations well handled. The printouts dried quickly too - the only giveaway was that they didn’t have the smooth, powdery feel of laser printouts.

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 Award Winners

Apple Watch Series 4

With each passing year, the Apple Watch gets more focused, more polished, and more refined. The latest Apple Watch gets a minor redesign with a larger but flatter case. It doesn't sound like much, but it vastly changes the way the watch wears and looks on your wrist. It is a far more elegant device (as much as a smartwatch can be). It's also faster and has more features, the most noteworthy of which is its ability to generate ECG reports. Granted, this feature is only available in the US for now, but it should be coming to the rest of the world soon. The latest Apple Watch is so good that some would argue that it is Apple's most thoughtful product. We certainly do.

Read next: Apple Watch Series 4 review: The best Apple Watch yet

Creative Super X-Fi Headphone Holography

Like great inventions, Creative's Super X-Fi Headphone Holography technology is something you really need to experience to understand. After all, when you're wearing headphones, you expect the music to be going straight into your ears; not coming at you from all directions. Creative has managed to do something incredible by personalizing the way headphones play sound to perfectly match the individual make-up of our ears. By doing so, they're able to use your personal head-related transfer function to give you a cinematic audio experience that's independent of source. It doesn't work with all tracks, and the database of supported headphones definitely needs to grow much more. But when it does work, the result is nothing short of magical. And that's the beauty of good innovation. That it comes at a relatively cheap price is just a bonus.

Read next: What's next for Creative's SXFI technology?

Google Night Sight

Google's Night Sight on the Pixel phones is a clear example of computational photography done right. For most people, just think of it as night photography on steroids, designed to improve photos taken with lighting between 3 and 0.3 lux with just a single camera and no LED flash. Sure, traditional cameras have been capturing and merging multiple frames to get a better image for years, but do they also use a combination of hardware and software smarts to adjust for shaking hands, intelligently fill in colors, and do tone-mapping at the same time? All these combine to enable Night Sight's most amazing feature: the ability to "illuminate" scenes that are seemingly nearly pitch black. Try it and you will be amazed.

Read next: This is how Google’s Night Sight works on your Pixel phone

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is one of the most expensive consumer graphics cards NVIDIA has released in a while. That said, it serves up bleeding-edge performance and comes with the latest ray-tracing technology baked in, so it is truly the card for those who are sure that they want the best and are willing to pay for it. However, what really makes it novel are the aforementioned ray tracing capabilities and the new Turing architecture. Ray tracing is a graphics rendering technique that involves following the path of light beams backward from your eye to the objects that the light ray interacts with. Normally, this requires immense computational power, which is why it’s been restricted mostly to the post-production stages of a movie, where filmmakers can take their time to render scenes and take advantage of render farms. But with Turing, NVIDIA could pave the way for a new generation of games that can generate photorealistic scenes in real-time.

Read next: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 shootout - All hail a new generation of cards

References

For a full list of content related to the HWM and HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2019 event, you can refer to the following links:

• Tech Awards 2019: Readers' Choice Results
• Tech Awards 2019: Editor's Choice Results - Part 1
• Tech Awards 2019: Editor's Choice Results - Part 2 - this article
• Full list of winners: HWM+HardwareZone Tech Awards 2019 microsite

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