The survey saw more than 11,000 PC Pro readers nominate their favourite IT products and gave them the chance to voice what they really think about tech companies.
There was bad news for Britain’s biggest broadband provider, BT, after its Home Hub device was voted amongst the worst wireless routers by PC Pro’s readers. It was described as “unreliable” and “very slow” by customers. The router, which is supplied with BT broadband accounts, failed to impress against the routers manufactured by category-winner DrayTek, with TP-Link claiming a Highly Commended award.
PC Pro editor, Barry Collins, said: “Our reader survey confirms what we at PC Pro have advised for a long time: it almost always pays to ditch the router supplied by your broadband provider and pay for a decent, dual-band router.”
This year’s other winners also included:
• Laptops – Apple
“A staggering 92% of Apple customers would purchase from the company again”
• Desktop Computers – Chillblast
• Broadband – Zen Internet
• Mobile Broadband – 3 & Virgin Media
“For speed, 3 reigned supreme and Virgin Media finished top for both reliability and customer service”
• Wireless Routers – DrayTek
“No other vendor could match DrayTek for range and reliability”
• Printers – Brother
“Value for money is where Brother surged ahead, with an overall value score of 88%”
• Storage – Synology
“Only one of the 259 Synology customers surveyed expressed dissatisfaction at the reliability of its products”
• Monitors – Iiyama
“Reader comments about Iiyama monitors were peppered with remarks about great value for money”
• Digital Cameras – Panasonic
“Panasonic’s cameras topped the overall table: 70% of its customers said they were ‘very satisfied’ with image quality”
• Motherboards – Gigabyte & EVGA
“While Gigabyte had the edge on reliability and the percentage of people who would buy again from the firm (96.6%), EVGA excelled on post-sales support and speed”
• Graphic Cards – EVGA
“No fewer than 98% of EVGA graphics card buyers claimed they would buy from the company again”
• Smartphones – Apple
“Apple remains top of the pile for smartphones, but HTC was close on its heels”
• Online Retailers – Quiet PC
“More than 92% would use Quiet PC again – a glowing endorsement”
• Web Hosts – Memset
“Memset’s phones are answered in less than ten seconds and emails in less than ten minutes”
Products of the Year:
Software of the Year – Adobe Photoshop Elements 9
Education Product of the Year – Amazon Kindle
Buinsness Product of the Year – Adobe Creative Suite 5.5
A-List Product of the Year – Intel Core i5-2500k
