Best of 2013: Most popular and noteworthy tech products

[Julio Franco]

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Please leave your feedback here.

 

[Jad Chaar]

The Titan and R9 290X should be on there instead if the 270X.

 

[Julio Franco]

We truly debated on the Titan, after all it was THE card to have for the majority of the year if you could part with $1,000. However, ultimately decided to include the products we would still buy today, and for less money the GTX 780 Ti is the effective Titan replacement. As for the 270X, if your budget is ~$200, that's the best GPU you can buy.

 

[Guest]

I don't know about the other gear but those camera recommendations seem off. For example, the Panasonic GM1 is the same size and price as the Sony RX100II but it has a much better sensor and interchangeable lenses. The D5300 is pretty much the same image quality as the D7100 but you get a tilting screen, wifi, etc for less money. So I wouldn't rely on these recommendations and do some reading around.

 

[cliffordcooley]

So how does "most popular" fit into this list? Would that be among enthusiast or based off of sales figures? I'm picturing the majority of those items under a most desired status instead.

 

[TS-56336]

Was hoping Razer Ouroboros to be here.

 

[VitalyT]

Nice list, although personally I would argue against many ratings there. I was putting together a new top-notch desktop just 5 month ago, buying only the best component according to most reviews I could find, and yet none of them made into this list.

For the PC case, I still think Corsair Obsidian 550D is the best;
The best generic mouse to buy today is Logitech G500S;
I still believe that Logitech K800 is the best generic keyboard to have today;
I still love the NVidia GTX 780 I purchased, it is every bit as good as I expected;
I still prefer my DELL U3014 monitor to anything else that's out there;

Samsung SSD 840 Pro isn't on the list? - come on, give me a break, what kind of list is this? This product is by far the most popular on the SSD market this whole year!

 

[Julio Franco]

It may not be overly obvious (I just added a small note to the intro for clarity), but only products released this year or very late into 2012 apply. It's our third year putting together this list and we've consistently drawn a line there.

For example, the Obsidian 550D and 840 Pro made it into our best of list of 2012. Now, I wasn't expecting to catch everyone's favorite product with the list, but evidently some work went into picking the different products across categories. Where we didn't feel as comfortable (e.g. cameras) we let the general consensus among reviewers dictate what was best.

 

[Guest]

It does feel like that GPU and CPU improvements are slowing down. Maybe reaching the end of silicon.

 

[VitalyT]

It does feel like that GPU and CPU improvements are slowing down. Maybe reaching the end of silicon.

The market is in pause, anticipating 4K-generation video cards. It is a huge change for the industry, and a messy one, so it won't be fast...

There is DisplayPort 1.3 in the works, and HDMI 2.0 should be included in the next line-up.

 

[cliffordcooley]

It does feel like that GPU and CPU improvements are slowing down. Maybe reaching the end of silicon.

Probably due to the majority meeting their software needs in hardware requirements. In other words as much as I hate to say it, there just isn't a huge demand in more processing power. The single most evident fact of this, is the rise in mobile processing. With the server environment pushing forward, I can see a huge gap between mainstream and professional hardware. A larger gap than has ever been seen. Perhaps that is why Intel has plans for 18 core CPU's, while keeping mainstream at 4 cores.

 

[treeski]

I would have thrown the Dell Venue 8 Pro on the list, but overall good collection.

 

[Guest]

It does feel like that GPU and CPU improvements are slowing down. Maybe reaching the end of silicon.

I disagree. We're quickly reaching a point where GPU's are capable of playing games at decent rates at resolutions up to 4K, and new features like G-Sync and Mantle have massive amounts of potential.

 

[Jad Chaar]

We truly debated on the Titan, after all it was THE card to have for the majority of the year if you could part with $1,000. However, ultimately decided to include the products we would still buy today, and for less money the GTX 780 Ti is the effective Titan replacement. As for the 270X, if your budget is ~$200, that's the best GPU you can buy.

I was just thinking Titan, because it was a revolutionary achievement on nVidia's part to bring a compute card to the masses. But, then again, this is about popularity more than achievement. So your choices are great as far as I am concerned .

 

[Guest]

I remember when duo core came out, it was a big leap forward and not long after quad core came out. now it just is quad core with higher GHz. There is 6 core chips out but that is out of bounds for most people. I also understand that most software does not even utilise duo let alone quad cores.

I disagree. We're quickly reaching a point where GPU's are capable of playing games at decent rates at resolutions up to 4K, and new features like G-Sync and Mantle have massive amounts of potential.

Yea, but the leaps are getting smaller. I do remember times, when every two years I had to upgrade my GPU so I could play the latest games, now with my 2 year old card, I still can play all new games on full settings with no problems. The only noticeable advance was when I upgraded to a SSD disk.

 

[Guest]

Yea, but the leaps are getting smaller. I do remember times, when every two years I had to upgrade my GPU so I could play the latest games, now with my 2 year old card, I still can play all new games on full settings with no problems. The only noticeable advance was when I upgraded to a SSD disk.

I think there are several aspects to that. Most notably the aging of the last-gen consoles. The 360 and the PS3 were running basically 2005 hardware by the time they were refreshed this year with the XB1 and PS4. With consoles being the bigger market, the graphics of games being ported to the PC were being capped by the limits set by the consoles. With the jump to the new consoles, It's likely that PC graphics will start taxing GPU's more again. In fact the releases of Crysis 3, Battlefield 4 and (next year) Watchdogs should demonstrate that.

Interestingly, because the PS4 and XB1 are already "last gen" by PC standards, it's likely that the PC market will continue to see less demanding games for the foreseeable future. Which to me is quite disappointing.

PCs are being replaced in cases where tablets and consoles are more convenient (basically people who don't need PC functionality, but simply consume content). 7 million concurrent Steam users should tell you that PC's aren't going anywhere in the near future though

 

[Rishad]

There are various gazettes in the it market. In 2013, iphone 5 is the best.