THE PRICE OF PERFORMANCE

If there is anything that’s constant in the world of tech, there is this one word that gets thrown around more than any other. And that word is ‘flagship’. And while the word itself often denotes one particular model that headlines a brand’s entire product range, these days, it’s used in a similar way to clickbait.

Flagship-class, flagship specifications, flagship components, flagship performance, flagship quality...if you slap ‘flagship-anything’ on a product, it raises its perceived value. Sometimes, it is purely a marketing ploy; wrapping budget components with an expensive exterior or brand association. For example, using a fancy alloy instead of plastic for the casing, or associating with another designer brand to create a ‘special edition’. In most cases, these premiums only serve to raise the price of a product, but serve no other functional use or deliver any performance gains.

On the other hand, from time to time, you do find some hidden gems where budget or affordable devices genuinely seem to come with real ‘flagship’ components that rival more expensive products, sometimes even from the same brand itself.

So in this issue of HWM, our stories take a look at the value of things. We’ve got a special focus on Singapore’s own young app developers, who are building their own solutions for problems of the world, we’ve got a guide to source quality components for custom mechanical keyboard builds, and we’ve got a MacBook buying guide to name a few.