Tech Awards 2024 Readers’ Choice: Best of Mobile & Lifestyle Tech
Readers voted for the best brands in mobile and lifestyle tech. Here are the results.
HWZ Tech Awards 2024 Best of Mobile
You've read our picks in the Editor's Choice series showcasing the best products of the year as tested by our editorial team, and now we present the results of the Readers' Choice series of Tech Awards 2024.
This segment of the awards highlights the top tech brands and services in Singapore, as chosen by you. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all our readers for participating in these polls, now in their 15th year. Your participation in the Tech Awards process helps democratise these results, providing a clear message of real consumer sentiment and brand recognition across the tech industry.
This year, we have 47 award categories for polling—many of them are brand new as we constantly retool our survey to stay relevant to our audience. After a month of compiling the results from thousands of our readers, we're ready to share the outcome to help Singaporeans make an informed buying decision and highlight why these brands came out ahead.
This article is Part 3 (out of 8) and covers the four awards that comprise the Best of Mobile categories. Be sure to stick around to check out the results of the other categories that will be published in the coming days. Meanwhile, here are the contents of this article:-
Best Smartphone Brand - Apple
A whopping 48% of our reading voters voted for Apple as the best smartphone brand, maintaining last year's #1 spot with a mildly larger share of the pie. Samsung also kept second place despite losing some love amongst our readers, partly because of the excellent competition in the Android phone segment. Confirming that sentiment is OPPO, who came in from the rear and is now finding itself in third place by blowing past big, long-time names in the phone industry. We think it's because it has been doing very well in providing all-around top-end mobiles despite their high relative cost amongst peers. It also doesn't hurt that they've enlarged their portfolio of offerings locally with good options, which helps its cause from a product ecosystem perspective. Meanwhile, Google managed to hang on to the fourth spot with the same percentage of votes. That's an impressive feat, given the sheer number of voters we saw this round.
Best Foldable Phone Brand - Samsung
Now that we finally have more foldable phone options in the local market, we thought it was time to ask our readers to choose a favourite in this inaugural category. Samsung, being one of the most prominent and consistent foldable phone makers, firmly held the lead with an overwhelming 62% of votes. This shows the effort Samsung has put into making foldable phones a mainstream option amongst users here since the first Galaxy Fold (2019). In the other corner, OPPO further cemented with aggressive outreach to win Singaporeans over through their Find N3 and Find N3 Flip. That has rewarded the brand with second place among our voters, at 13% of the share. It's clear that the combination of high-end devices, easy access, and the effort to connect to its users here helped these brands get strong brand recall when it comes to a nascent and rapidly developing form factor.
Best Mobile Processor Brand for Android - Qualcomm
Frankly, we didn't think having a favourite mobile processor brand would be possible, considering how little control consumers have in deciding which chipset goes into their favourite phones. After gathering the results of this inaugural poll, we realised how wrong we were. Thousands of readers and voters aren't only aware of what goes into their phones, but it's also surprising that only a minority (12%) have no preference. Qualcomm comes in strong with a 39% vote, seated in first place well above Samsung, which came in second at 22%. It's almost as if our readers like chipsets that are powerful, expensive, and increasingly hard to get, no matter what they use their phones for.
Best Tablet Brand - Apple
It's hard to beat the optimisations found on Apple's iPad tablets, and our readers seem to think that way, too. With Apple in first place, holding 60% of the votes, it's clear that users and readers are well aware of when a company puts in great effort to make different mobile form factors live up to user expectations. This is further proven by Samsung, which is in second place at 20%. For hardcore Android users, the Galaxy Tab S series tablets represent the same effort needed to make a compelling tablet that's powerful, beautiful, properly optimised, and well-supported (even with the limits of its operating system).
That wraps up the Readers' Choice voting segment for the Best of Mobile. Next up, here’s the Readers’ Choice results for Lifestyle Tech.
Best of Lifestyle Tech
You've read our picks in the Editor's Choice series showcasing the best products of the year as tested by our editorial team, and now we present the results of the Readers' Choice series of Tech Awards 2024.
This segment of the awards highlights the top tech brands and services in Singapore, as chosen by you. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all our readers for participating in these polls, now in their 15th year. Your participation in the Tech Awards process helps democratise these results, providing a clear message of real consumer sentiment and brand recognition across the tech industry.
This year, we have 47 award categories for polling—many of them are brand new as we constantly retool our survey to stay relevant to our audience. After a month of compiling the results from thousands of our readers, we're ready to share the outcome to help Singaporeans make an informed buying decision and highlight why these brands came out ahead.
This article covers the six awards that comprise the Best of Lifestyle Tech categories. Be sure to stick around to check out the results of the other categories that will be published in the coming days. Meanwhile, here are the contents of this article:-
- Best Smartwatch Brand
- Best Wireless Earbuds Brand
- Best Noise Cancelling Headphones Brand
- Best Smart Speaker Brand
- Best Camera Brand
- Best Huddle Room Video Bar Brand
Best Smartwatch Brand - Apple
Apple is once again your Best Smartwatch Brand with 53% of the total votes. What's interesting about this year's results is that the gains made by Samsung and other Android smartwatch brands in the 2023 polls have regressed. These results show that our readers are sensitive to technology impact. While the Apple Watch experience remains largely the same year-on-year; we've even acknowledged as much in our Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Series 9 review, the promise of more refined Wear OS devices hasn't really been met. It also doesn't help that there are more Android brands competing for the same slice of the pie than ever before, and it's increasingly harder to stand out in a crowded space. This was a major contention point in picking our Editor's Choice Best Android Smartwatch too.
Best Wireless Earbuds Brand - Apple
This chart almost does not change year-on-year, poll after poll. While this is a testament to brand recognition, it also signifies how difficult it is for brands to differentiate themselves. Audio is after all one of the most subjective categories that is very much rooted in personal experience. Apple continues to be the leader in this category with 35% of total votes, while Sony comes in second with 11%. These are exactly the same results as last year. Everyone else falls into place similarly, but we've noticed that Beats has sneaked its way out of the "Others" grouping (brands with too few individual votes to be visualised on the chart) with a 3% share. If you count this as part of Apple's total branding, then they've actually extended their lead this year.
Best Noise Cancelling Headphones Brand - Apple
The big surprise for this year's results isn't just that Apple and Sony have swapped spots for first and second place, but also the huge shift in vote share - an 8% drop for Sony or 7% gain for Apple depending on which brand's perspective you see this chart from last year's standings. There were very few product updates in 2023; neither Apple nor Sony updated their flagships since the original AirPods Max (2020) and WH-1000XM5 (2022). We can only speculate that Apple has been very successful with its lifestyle branding, and existing products continue to be relevant as a statement piece. Sony on the other hand, are better known for their technical capabilities. So, while they have other headphones, such as the new ULT Wear, the absence of a WH-1000XM update in more than 2 years has hurt their standings.
Meanwhile, if you're looking for suggestions on best headphones to buy, we've something for everyone - tested.
Best Smart Speaker Brand - JBL
We did say audio is a subjective personal experience, and it would seem that our readers have chosen JBL for a third year running as their Best Smart Speaker Brand. However, the larger 4% lead they had in last year's polls have been shaved down to a close 1% race this year with second place Bose. B&O drops to fouth and is overtaken by Sonos with a mere 5 vote difference. Sonos was quite active in 2023, with multiple new smart speaker updates such as the Sonos Era 100, Era 300, and Move 2.
Best Camera Brand - Canon
Canon is still the undisputed choice for Best Camera Brand among our readers with 34% of the total votes. However, this is the first big drop for Canon in the last four years where they usually command around 38-39% of the votes. Perhaps it's because Canon's focus in 2023 seemed to be targeted at mainstream content creators at the entry-level with releases like the EOS R8, R50, R100, and Powershot V10. This year's flagship launches like the EOS R1 and R5 Mark II may give Canon a boost back to their original standings. Nikon on the other hand, has been slowly gaining votes over the same time period, from 19% in 2021 to 23% this year. They've been courting both vintage and modern fans alike with the Z f and Z 8 in 2023.
Best Huddle Room Video Bar Brand - Logitech
A brand new category for this year's Readers' Choice Awards voting, the Best Huddle Room Video Bar Brand recognises the dynamics of modern hybrid work setups where teams are often split between office and home. The term hybrid here doesn't just mean different physical locations, but also a mix of in-person and digital conferencing. The brands in this category provide audio and visual communication setups that specifically cater to such needs. Our inaugural winner is Logitech, garnering 32% of the total votes. In the last year, they've launched products that fit various scenarios from personal meeting spaces with the Rally Bar Huddle, to the AI-powered MeetUp 2 video bar. In second place, Jabra updated their Panacast 50 system with 4K video capabilities and built-in Andoid compute hardware.
That wraps up the Readers' Choice voting segment for the Best of Lifestyle Tech, but don't forget to check out the results in these other categories:-
- Part 1: Best of Personal and DIY Computing
- Part 2: Best of Mobile and Lifestyle Tech (this article)
- Part 3: Best of Home Appliances and Home Entertainment Brands
- Part 4: Best Service Provider Brands and Brands in Gaming
Lastly, don’t forget that we’ve also published our Editor’s Choice results here to help you get the best of the best gear.