HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2014: Editor's Choice - Part 2

Honoring the Best Tech Products & Services

In the last couple of weeks, 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, TVs, and headphones. In this second and concluding part, let us shift our attention to the best in computing products. Also featured in this article are the inaugural winners of our new Innovation category, which is set up to properly 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 was held on February 20 at the Goodwood Park Hotel.

Play

Best Desktop CPU

For AMD, since 2012, the company soldiered on with their tried and tested 32nm SOI fabrication process. Their efforts culminated in their most powerful 8-core desktop processor that had a turbo clock speed of 5GHz. The AMD FX-9590 CPU has a base clock of 4.7GHz, and features an improved Piledriver microarchitecture. For dominant Intel, its 4th generation "Haswell" Intel core CPUs are still based on the same 22nm process technology, with 3D Tri-Gate transistors, as featured on the previous "Ivy Bridge" processors. However, Intel made several enhancements that include renewed graphics cores for better display support, Haswell's incorporation of the CPU voltage regulation phase, and improvements made the new chip's power efficiency. We pitted the best, top-end consumer desktop processors from both chip makers.

Nominees: 

• AMD FX-9590
• Intel Core i7-4770K

And the Winner Is...

The latest 4th generation Intel i7-4770K was launched in June 2013. Due to its new LGA 1150 package, it isn’t compatible to the previous generation Intel Z77 motherboards. Hence, upgrading to the new Intel processors entailed a motherboard upgrade as well. Despite this, the Core i7-4770K is considered a direct replacement of the previous Core i7-3770K chip.

Although the Intel Core i7-4770K processor is older than the AMD FX 8-Core FX-9590 Black Edition CPU, our benchmarks showed the Intel processor to be the consistent winner. The only exception was the Handbrake video encoding test where the AMD CPU beat its Intel counterpart by being almost 6 seconds faster, but that's primarily due to AMD's vastly higher clock speed than any other reason. The microarchitecture of the FX-9590 processor hasn’t changed as it features the 32nm Piledriver one. The main point mooted by the company is the ability of the processor to hit a theoretical high clock speed of 5GHz under the right operating conditions, courtesy of its AMD Turbo Core 3.0 technology. However, this didn’t bode well for the processor as it was consistently weaker than the competing Haswell chip in many applications. It also guzzles a lot more power than Intel and thus requires a more accomplished CPU cooler. One of its limited strong suits is its compatibility with existing AM3+ socket motherboards; hence, its upgrade path will definitely be less costly in comparison to the Intel Core i7-4770 processor.

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

Best Motherboard for Intel

The Intel 8-series is made up of the Z87, H87, and H81 Express. There are also the Q87, Q85, B85 Express chipsets that are meant for corporate desktop systems. For end-users, the Intel Z87 Express chipset is the only one in the entire range that will allow you full access to the overclocking features of the K-series Haswell CPUs. With native support for PCIe Gen 3.0 bus communication (courtesy of the CPU), the chipset supports both AMD CrossFire and NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU configurations. Since there is a wide variety for Intel Z87-based boards, we looked across them and rounded up the top-end enthusiast boards that are very much in their own class. Here then are our nominees:

Nominees: 

• ASRock Z87 OC Formula
• ASUS Maximus VI Extreme
• ECS Gank Domination Z87H3-A2X Golden
• Gigabyte Z87X-OC
• MSI Z87 MPower Max

And the Winner Is...

The performances of the boards were rather close; however, we focused more on their gaming and overclocking performance. At the same time, we also paid attention to their operating temperatures. The two boards that meet in fierce contention, were the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme and the Gigabyte Z87X-OC. The ASUS board turned in high performance for the gaming benchmarks. The ASUS board also took the pole position for our overclocking tests. It also helped that the UEFI BIOS utility of the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme was lag-free and well-organized, such that we could push the board to operate beyond normal bounds.

The Gigabyte Z87X-OC was a strong winner, especially for our standard application benchmarks; however, its outstanding performance came at a price as its operating temperature hovered at 40.5 degrees Celsius; in comparison, most of the board's operating temperature was much cooler at around 33- to 35 degrees Celsius. Its features weren't as comprehensive as compared to the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme that topped the rest with its OC Panel, and has high-end PLX PEX 8747 high speed switching chip for serving out PCIe 3.0 bus lanes from the Haswell CPU. With its high performance levels and enthusiast feature set, the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme is the best top-end motherboard, even though it commands a much higher premium. Here are select benchmark results from our shootout to support our findings:-

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

Best Graphics Chip 

In the latest quarter of 2013, AMD unveiled its new R9 and R7 series graphics cards; however, only the top-end R9 290 family features the new and improved Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. The top-end card from AMD was the R9 290X. The rest of the GPUs, from the R9 280 series and lower, were essentially rebranded graphics cores from the Southern Island GPUs (Radeon HD 7900 series). There was an exception as the R7 260 that features a new ASIC, so that it supports the new AMD TrueAudio technology. The riposte from NVIDIA came in the form of its GeForce GTX 780 Ti GPU that features a fully-unlocked GK110 Kepler chip. It features 2880 CUDA cores for single precision processing; in comparison, the GTX 780 has 2304 CUDA cores, while GTX Titan has 2688 such cores.

For the purpose of our Best Graphics Chip title, we pitted the AMD Radeon R9 290X and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti, both of which represent the very best single GPU offering from both camps.

Nominees: 

• AMD Radeon R9 290X
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 TI

And the Winner Is...

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti is the clear winner as it consistently outperformed the AMD chip. Although their scores were rather close on the 3DMark (2013) tests, the NVIDIA chip pulled ahead in our real world gaming benchmarks. In addition, the GeForce GTX 780 Ti also shone during our overclocking exercise. Another advantage of the NVIDIA chip was that it performed cooler at 79 degrees Celsius under load, in comparison to the high operating temperature of 87 degrees Celsius of the AMD Radeon R9 290X. The NVIDIA counterpart is also the quieter of both cards, which again plays well to the overall proposition.

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

Best 2.5-Inch Portable External HDD

One might think that as a matured form of technology, not much has changed in the world of portable hard disk drives. While that might be true to true to a certain extent, there are still significant changes and advancements in technology that though subtle, are important enough for us to warrant investigating them.

With USB 3.0 is now the de facto interface, portable hard disk drive manufacturers are now turning are now turning their attention towards design and form factor. And for the past year, the emphasis has been on slimmer designs. To make the cut, nominees must offer 1TB of storage capacity and must be around 12-13mm thick. Key considerations would be performance, design and also features.

Nominees: 

• Seagate Backup Plus Slim
• Toshiba Canvio II Slim
• Western Digital My Passport Slim

And the Winner Is...

The Western Digital My Passport Slim may be simply designed and not as attractive as the competition, but it remains remarkably portable thanks to its 12.9mm thin form factor and feather-light 134g weight. While it may not score high marks for design, it blew away the competition when it came to raw performance. Across our benchmarks, it consistently recorded the highest transfer speeds, leaving the competition in the dust. It also comes bundled with Western Digital’s new WD Smartware backup utility, which lets users quickly and effectively organize and schedule backups. In closing, it is a solid portable hard disk drive that offers good portability, performance and functionality. 

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

Best Solid State Drive

2013 saw SSDs entering mainstream computing. Thanks to falling NAND memory chip prices and improved reliability, OEMs and consumers alike are turning to SSDs as their preferred choice of storage.

This year we are comparing no less than eight drives, some of which are completely new and others which are refreshed versions of last year’s nominees. To make the cut, the drive has to be from the company’s high-end range, be introduced or refreshed this year, offered in 240GB or 256GB capacities and have a SATA 6Gbps interface.

Nominees: 

• Corsair Neutron GTX
• Crucial M500
• OCZ Vector 150
• Plextor M5 Pro Extreme
• Samsung SSD 840 Pro
• SanDisk Extreme II
• Seagate 600
• Toshiba Q-Series

And the Winner Is...

The three most critical components in an SSD are its controller, memory and firmware. And Samsung is one of the few SSD makers in the world to have complete control over all three as it not only develops its own controller and firmware, it is also one of the world’s biggest producer of NAND memory chips. This puts Samsung in a very unique and enviable position, one that will allow it to succeed.

And succeed it did with its flagship SSD 840 Pro drive. For its latest drive, Samsung pulled out all the stops and gave it a brand new controller and the latest MLC NAND memory built on a 21nm manufacturing process. Since Samsung owns its own NAND foundry, it was also able to cherry pick the best chips for the SSD 840 Pro.

The end result is a drive that is both blazing quick and super consistent across all benchmarks and workloads. It might cost a pretty penny, but if you want the best of the best, the SSD 840 Pro from Samsung is hard to top. Furthering its already consistently high performance, it has yet another trick up its sleeve via RAPID caching technology. We share a select few benchmark performance graphs (without RAPID enabled) and our final assessment bearing in mind the current state of availability, pricing and performance since some of the drives were first reviewed.

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

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

Best Windows 8 Ultra Portable Notebook

With much improved battery life and more powerful integrated graphics, Intel’s fourth-generation Haswell processors represent a huge leap forward for Ultrabooks. But with higher resolution displays and full SSD drives becoming the norm, which Haswell Ultrabook reigns supreme?

For this category, we looked at the best of the best, with only the top spec Haswell Core i7 flagship 13-inch Ultrabooks from each brand making the cut. As Lenovo does not actually make a non-convertible Ultrabook (and its Yoga 2 Pro doesn't compromise for its convertible design), it is the only convertible Ultrabook under consideration.

Nominees:

• Acer Aspire S7 (2013)
• ASUS Zenbook Infinity UX301
• HP Spectre 13
• Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro
• Sony Vaio Pro 13
• Toshiba Portege Z30

And the Winner Is...

We love the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro for its ultra sharp QHD+ 3200 x 1800 pixel resolution display and versatile convertible form factor. Unlike many other convertible Ultrabooks, the Yoga 2 Pro’s simple hinge-based convertible design doesn’t require any compromises (like a smaller trackpad or fragile swivel hinge) for its notebook form factor. Performance was also good - even with its super high-res display, battery life didn’t suffer and its Intel HD Graphics 4400 integrated graphics had no problem driving its display. While it's not a top performer, the Lenovo notebook makes up for it in other aspects.

Best of all, Lenovo has managed to keep the Yoga 2 Pro affordable without cutting back on build or design quality. It remains slim, lightweight and, while the build materials are mainly plastic, the finishing looks and feels premium. 

*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 at the References section at the end.

Best Windows 8 Business Tablet

These Windows 8 tablets are sleek and stylish, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have what it takes to keep up with your business. Straddling the consumer and enterprise markets, these full-featured machines all offer productivity, security and portability, but which one is the best?

For this category, we looked for 10.1-inch tablets running on full Windows 8 OS, with enterprise-level security features, including a TPM chip. Each tablet also had to have a dedicated keyboard dock peripheral available for it. 

Nominees: 

• Dell Latitude 10
• Fujitsu Stylistic QH582
• HP ElitePad 900
• Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2

And the Winner Is...

In a very tightly contested category, Lenovo’s ThinkPad Tablet 2 is our winner. Out of all of our tablets, the ThinkPad 2 is the most well rounded, offering excellent productivity capabilities, in both tablet mode, with its included Wacom active digitizer stylus, and in notebook mode, thanks to its solid and responsive Bluetooth keyboard which includes a trackpoint nub and essentially turns the device into a 10-inch ThinkPad notebook. Add to that, great connectivity, over six-hour battery life, and comprehensive security features and you’ve got a clear winner.

*Note: Prices listed in this article are accurate at the time of product evaluation.

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

Best Enthusiast Gaming Notebook

With the release of Intel’s fourth generation Core processors, faster mobile GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD and advancements in display technology, notebook design and cooling, gaming notebooks have become more powerful and faster than ever.

2013 saw no less than six new state-of-the-art gaming notebooks launched, from the biggest names in the business. To make the cut for this category, the notebooks’ display must be larger than 17-inches and they must have enthusiast-grade gaming GPUs. Overall performance, portability, price and features will all play an important role in determining the winner in this tightly contested category.

Nominees: 

• Aftershock Titan
• ASUS ROG G750JX
• Dell Alienware 18
• MSI GT70 Dragon Edition 2
• Razer Blade Pro
• Toshiba Qosmio X70
  
   

And the Winner Is...

Aftershock is a locally-based custom gaming notebook specialist, which has been making a name for themselves amongst gamers locally. The Titan is the biggest and baddest notebook that the company makes and can be equipped with a bewildering number of options. However, the recommend setup for the Titan comes with an Intel Core i7-4700MQ processor, 16GB of memory, dual GeForce GTX 780M GPUs in SLI, and a 256GB SSD with 1TB HDD combo.

The powerful processor coupled with generous amounts of RAM and blazing quick SSD means that the Titan is more well equipped for general computing tasks such as word processing and web browsing. As for gaming, the twin GeForce GTX 780M GPUs in SLI made short work of just about any game we threw at it.

Blazing performance aside, its choke full with features and connectivity options such as four USB 3.0 ports, a Thunderbolt port, an onboard discrete Creative X-Fi audio chip and Killer network connectivity that helps ensure low latencies when playing online multiplayer games. No other notebook comes close to its levels of performance and features and therefore it wins this category.

*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 at the References section at the end.

Best Portable Gaming Notebook

2013 saw the creation of a new breed of notebooks - ultraportable gaming notebooks. Thanks to more power efficient CPUs and GPUs, notebook manufacturers are able to design slimmer and lighter gaming notebooks without having to fit bulky coolers, large batteries and sacrificing on performance.

To make the cut for this category, the notebook has to have a display that is 15-inches or less and must also have a gaming-grade GPU. Performance, features. portability and price will be considered to determine the winner.

Nominees: 

• Aftershock XG13
• Dell Alienware 14
• Lenovo IdeaPad Y510p
• MSI GE40 2OC Dragon Eyes
• Razer Blade

And the Winner Is...

The Aftershock XG13 might not be the most portable gaming notebook in this category, but there is a lot to like about it. First and foremost, it was one of the few notebooks to offer a Full-HD 1080p IPS display, which looks absolutely gorgeous. Furthermore, performance was very competitive, thanks to its powerful quad-core Core i7-4700MQ processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M GPU. And although the XG13 only came with a 256GB SSD, users can also opt for an SSD and HDD combo.

However, the real kicker is its price. Despite its specifications and features, it costs substantially less than its competitors. For example, an equivalently specced Razer Blade would cost a whopping $560 more, whereas the Alienware 14 costs nearly $500 more. One may argue that both the MSI GE40 Dragon Eyes and Lenovo Y510p cost less, but the Aftershock XG13 offers better performance than the two and the difference in price is only about $100. All in all, the Aftershock XG13’s combination of performance and price represents good old value for money that is tough to beat.

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

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

Best Mechanical Gaming Keyboard

Mechanical gaming keyboards may cost a premium but they deliver unparalleled precision, durability, feel, speed and typing satisfaction. But with so many options available, which one is the best?  We rounded up the best from notable brands that were either refreshed or launched last year.

Nominees: 

• Corsair Vengeance K95
• CM Storm Mech
• Func KB-460
• Logitech G710+
• Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2013
• Roccat Ryos MK Pro
• TT eSports Meka G1

And the Winner Is...

We loved the Roccat Ryos MK Pro for its customizable per-key backlighting, which turns every key into an individual notification light, informing you of in-game conditions and actions. We doubt this feature will be legal for pro tournament play as it can provide a pretty unfair advantage, but it will be incredibly useful for anyone gaming at home.

We also appreciated its comprehensive macro functionality, and the conveniently located ‘thumbster’ macro buttons under the space bar. The MK Pro’s wrist rest was also well sized and provided a good level of comfort. Finally, it’s the only one of our keyboards available in all four of the most popular Cherry MX switch types, ensuring that no matter what your preference, you’ll be able to get an MK Pro that suits you.

*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 at the References section at the end.

Best AIO Color Inkjet Printer

Laser printers will always be a staple in offices due to their fast print speed and ability to handle high volumes. However, inkjet printers are catching up in terms of speed, and nothing 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 cost no more than S$500.

Nominees: 

• Brother DCP-J752DW
• Canon PIXMA MX927
• Epson L550

And the Winner Is...

The Canon PIXMA MX927 takes the cake here. It performed well in terms of print quality; managing to edge out the competition when it came to both monochrome documents as well as documents with colored images and charts. It also performed reasonably well when it came to printing photographs. 

In terms of speed the Canon PIXMA MX927 did quite well by outpacing the competition in three out of four speed tests. And don't forget the PIXMA MX927 allows for mobile printing from your iOS devices via Apple AirPrint, while you can print Gmail messages, Google OCS and file attachments with Google Cloud Print. Here's a snapshot of print speed performance:-

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

Best SOHO Color Laser/LED MFP

While it's handy to have an inkjet printer if you need to print photographs or documents with color images and graphics, inkjet printers aren't exactly known for their fast print speed. That's why laser/LED printers are commonly found in offices; they are quick, are able to print high-quality text and are able to handle high print volumes. 

And if you need to print documents with color images and charts every once in a while, perhaps it's wiser to invest in a color laser/LED multifunction (MFP) printer. Designed for SOHO use, these two printers that qualify for this year's awards are able to print, copy and scan, though they lack automatic document feeders (ADF). 

Nominees: 

• Canon Imageclass MF8210Cn
• Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CM215 fw

And the Winner Is...

While the Canon imageCLASS MF8210Cn has faster print speeds, the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CM215 fw is only slightly behind. However, print quality is just as important as speed if you're going to be printing business documents and materials. And while print quality is generally the same across the board for printers in the same class, the Fuji Xerox CM215 fw has better slightly better copy quality (print quality is the same for both), but Canon’s disappointing color accuracy when printing photos really lets the imageCLASS MF8210Cn down, proving that the Fuji Xerox DocuPrint CM215 fw is a better overall printer.

 

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

Innovation Awards

Four Innovation awards were also given out this year, with the aim of recognizing innovative products and cutting-edge technologies that have emerged during the eligibility period. The inaugural winners are HGST, Intel, Olympus, and Sony.

HGST - Ultrastar He6 6TB HDD

Solid state drives may be much faster than traditional mechanical hard disk drives, but SSDs still have some ways to go if it wants to compete with the cost and capacity that hard disk drives offer, especially now that HGST has a developed a new 6TB drive called the Ultrastar He6.

One of the biggest challenges that hard disk drives face has to do with turbulence and resistance. Typically, hard disk drives aren’t sealed but have filters to keep contaminants out of the drive. Air is allowed into the drives and it is this air which causes turbulence when the platters spin, this affects the platters as they need to be thick enough to withstand the turbulence. Not only that, air creates resistance too, which in turn limits the maximum RPM the drive can spin.

To overcome these problems, the Ultrastar He6 has a hermetically sealed chassis which doesn’t let air in. Additionally, air inside the drive is replaced with helium gas, which is seven times less dense than air. This reduces resistance and turbulence, effectively allowing Hitachi to fit more platters in the drive; up to seven in fact to achieve a total capacity of 6TB.

Additional Read: News & Price Announcement.

Intel - 4th Generation Core Processors

Intel’s fourth generation  Core processors (Haswell) are all about one thing: battery life. So while Haswell also saw improved benchmark performance, it’s Intel’s efforts at reducing power consumption and increasing power efficiency which lands Haswell our innovation award.



The use of tri-gate transistors and design improvements on the chipset have resulted in reduced power consumption compared to Intel’s third generation Ivy Bridge processors. As a result, low-power devices like Ultrabooks have seen massive gains in battery life. Apple’s 2013 MacBook Air - one of the first computers to utilize Haswell - gets close to double the battery life of the 2012 model. Haswell also lets notebooks remain in standby mode for longer, with Windows 8 Ultrabooks easily capable of remaining in sleep mode for more than seven days without needing a recharge. This is what Ultrabooks were always meant to be - and it’s only now with Haswell that that’s finally possible. With these capabilities, Intel's fourth Generation Core processors have also brought about a new breed of ultraportable gaming notebooks.

Additional Read: Haswell's Singapore Launch, Integrated Graphics in Haswell.

Olympus - OM-D E-M1

Mirrorless cameras are inching closer and closer to DSLR-like performance, and nowhere is that better embodied than in the Olympus OM-D E-M1. The flagship camera comes with a new hybrid AF (autofocus) which mixes the phase and contrast detection AF systems found in DSLR and mirrorless cameras. This provides significantly improved continuous and tracking AF, which have been the weakness of mirrorless cameras.

The body itself is weather-resistant, and it comes with a luxurious electronic viewfinder which compares favorably to the best optical viewfinders around. You may have thought that mirrorless cameras were only for hobbyists, but try the E-M1 and we think you’ll have a change of mind.

Additional Read: Hands-on with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 DSLR Killer.

Sony - Alpha A7 Series

The Alpha 7 series is perhaps Sony’s most ambitious camera range yet, and it realizes a grand dream for digital photographers: large full-frame sensors in relatively compact bodies. If Sony had just released the A7 with its 24MP sensor that would already have been a sensation, but Sony also released the A7R with a whopping 36MP sensor which ignited a storm.

Both cameras push the state of the art forward for mirrorless cameras and fire a clear shot across the bow for DSLRs - larger APS-C DSLR cameras today actually have smaller sensors inside than the smaller Alpha 7 series. It’s still early days - the new full-frame mirrorless series only has two lenses - but it’s exciting early days indeed.

Additional Read: Sony A7R 36MP Full-frame Compact Mirrorless Camera Review.

References

For a full list of content related to the HWM and HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2014 event, you can refer to the following links:

• Tech Awards 2014: Readers' Choice Results
• Tech Awards 2014: Editor's Choice Results - Part 1
• Tech Awards 2014: Editor's Choice Results - Part 2
• HWM+HardwareZone Tech Awards 2014 Microsite

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