The technology judges decide
Every year, the shortlists for theT3 Awards are whittled down to winners by an expert panel. Here's how things went down in 2017
The T3 Awards is our yearly celebration of the best tech released that year, bringing together the greats of the gadget world. As you can imagine, filtering everything released down into a list of winners is one hell of a job – especially for the 2017 awards, which features more categories than ever before to reflect the way tech has expanded into every part of our lifestyles, from lightbulbs to bikes.
Once shortlists are selected (with nominations coming from the T3 magazine and web teams, as well as our friends on other publications, including techradar.com, Digital
Camera magazine, PC Gamer and more), it's time to get an elite panel from across the tech press to get together and work out which products deserve to win.
On a muggy day in August, we gathered our judges together and shut them in a room with enough pastries and coffee to hammer things out for good.
For each category, the nominees were shown, and we kicked off the discussions. In some cases, a clear winner stood out above the rest, for whatever reason, and a consensus was easy to reach. At other times, we had to call a vote between two or three products, dividing the judges, but putting democracy into action. On occasion, the decision was so close that we felt it was only right to award a Highly Commended title to the runners-up.
The discussions themselves ranged from the technical to the philosophical, as we tried to weigh elements such as usability and design against flash features and specs. Does a company deserve to win brand of the year because it's been talked about the most, or because it's released more great products? How big an impact does something need to make to be innovation of the year?
Eventually, we worked through it all, and crowned our winners. Find out what they are in the next issue!