DR’s Choice Yearend Awards 2018 Winners

Before I let another end without me noticing, I would like to announce the winners of the DR’s Choice Yearend Awards for 2018. I haven’t had the chance to give out this award since 2015, but I vowed to do it for 2018 since we reviewed a lot of devices for that year. We’re also including laptops this time, both consumer and gaming for we have reviewed quite a number of them as well.

Without further ado, here are the categories:

BEST ENTRY-LEVEL SMARTPHONE

The entry-level smartphone is within the price range of P1,000-P9,999. I have reviewed a few this year but only two are worthy candidates. They are:

WIINER: REALME C1

The Realme C1 offers remarkable performance for a sub-6k entry level smartphone. It looks trendy, takes good photos, and has a looong battery life! Also, Realme offers flash sales that would bring the phone’s cost to as low as P5,490!

BEST MID-RANGE SMARTPHONE

The mid-range segment ranges from P10,000-P20,000. I reviewed a lot of smartphones in this segment, and the war among them will still continue this 2019. Among those I’ve reviewed, there are only two phones that offer really good value for their respective prices. These are:

WINNER: CHERRY MOBILE FLARE S7 PLUS

Honestly, this is a tough call because both phones were excellent. I eventually chose Cherry Mobile Flare S7 Plus because:

  • it’s cheaper at P11,990
  • it comes with a wireless charger

BEST HIGH-END SMARTPHONE

The candidates are:

THE WINNER IS: SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE9

Huawei’s P20 Pro and Mate 20 Pro almost lured me to get one of them, but I eventually picked the Note9. The Note9 became my main flagship smartphone because it has everything I needed. Water and dust resistant, headphone jack, DeX compatibility, 4,000 mAh battery, expandable storage up to 1TB, and even if I’ve said that a notch doesn’t bother me numerous times, the Note9 doesn’t have a notch! It might still be my main phone even the Note10 comes out.

BEST CONSUMER LAPTOP

We have reviewed three for this year. These are the candidates:

WINNER: ASUS ZENBOOK S UX391

Superslim outside, Power inside. That’s my ideal notebook!

BEST GAMING LAPTOP

We have reviewed quite a number of gaming laptops this year but only these stand out:

WINNER: ROG ZEPHYRUS S GX531

The world’s slimmest gaming laptop was built from solid materials. Its screen has thin bezels with 144Hz refresh rate with 3ms response time. Cooling system was more effective with this Zephy. It may not be as powerful as the other Zephyrus models, but it showed efficiency. It’s my current gaming laptop and may stick with it until at least early 2020 before I move to a new one with RTX GPU.

CONGRATULATIONS to all the winners! I will be sending certificates to brand representatives within a couple of weeks.

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