2013 Unbox Gadget Awards!

The Unbox Gadget Awards is an annual activity where we recognize the best gadgets available in the Philippines. The deliberation and selection of winners is done by our editorial team as well as our co-hosts in the Unbox Podcast (Eason, Paolo, and Alora). After a lot of debate, we’re happy to share with everyone our first batch of winners for the Unbox Gadget Awards!

This batch includes: Best Flagship Smartphone, Best International Mid-range Smartphone, Best Tablet, Best Android 10-inch Tablet, and Best Android Tablet Below 8-inches. The second batch, which we’ll post later today, includes: Best Local Smartphone Flagship, Best Local Budget Smartphone, Best Breakthrough Technology, Best Phablet, and Best Hybrid.

We actually had an awarding ceremony during the last (finale) episode of the Unbox Podcast. We’ll embed the whole episode here as soon as it gets uploaded in full on YouTube.

Okay, without further delay, we present to you the first batch of winners of the Unbox 2013 Gadget Awards! Huzaaahhh!

Best Flagship Smartphone: LG G2

The LG G2 came out as our pick for the best smartphone for 2013. It has an outstanding 5.2-inch Full HD display, monstrous specifications, great optics for the camera, LTE connectivity, amazing long-lasting battery life (3,000mAh), and it has a lot of funky innovations like Rear Key and KnockON. Add to that the fact that it’s one of the most affordable flagships out there and you have a surefire winner.

In short, the LG G2 delivers maximum performance at the lowest price.

Click here to read our full review of the LG G2

Best Mid-range International Smartphone: Sony Xperia SP

The Sony Xperia SP is another fantastic example of a smartphone that delivers great value at a good price! While it “only” packs a dual-core processor, the user experience and the benchmark tests show that it surpasses the performance offered by quad-core processors used by local brands. In short, it’s better than most of the local flagships out there. More than the power, the Xperia SP is also one of the most affordable high-quality LTE smartphones that you can get (yes, it can connect to Smart LTE). It also doesn’t hurt that it looks flippin cool, especially their red variant.

Click here to read our full review of the Sony Xperia SP

Best Tablet: iPad Air

Simply put the Apple iPad Air is in a league of its own. No other tablet compares to the power, design (ridiculously lightweight and thin despite all the power), and app ecosystem that it boasts of. There’s just not getting around that fact that when it comes to tablets, the iPad is still truly the king of the hill.

Click here to read our full review of the Apple iPad Air

Best Android 10-inch Tablet

For 10-inch tablets, the Sony Xperia Tablet Z is a clear winner. It has powerful internals, super razor thin form factor, and it’s also water resistant. There’s even an LTE variant if you don’t want to just have the WiFi model. The only drawback? Local SRP is ridiculously overpriced (more than 35k when launched).

Click here to read our full review of the Sony Xperia Tablet Z

Best Android Tablet (Less than 8-inches

For 8-inches and lower, there’s no doubt that the best offering out there is the Nexus 7 (2013 Model). Not only are the specifications competitive, it’s also not that expensive. Just to stress the point of affordability, the LTE variant is cheaper than the WiFi variant of a lot of other Android tablets, lol. It’s lightweight, a superb mobile gaming and media consumption machine, and the price won’t burn a hole in your wallet. What’s not to like? 🙂

Click here to read our review of the Google Nexus 7 (2013)

Watch the Full Unbox Gadget Awards Show Episode

Update: NMF just finished uploading the Unbox Gadget Awards podcast episode! Watch the full episode below. It’s shorter than our usual ep (just around 30 mins).

Batch 2 Coming Soon

And that’s a wrap for batch 1! We’ll be uploading the second batch very soon. By the way, batch two winners are actually in the video above but we’ll do a separate post for them. Congratulations to the first batch of winners! Cheers!