HOT Product of the Month: July – August 2010 Award Winners

Here they are, the HOT Products of the Month for the July-August 2010 period. Before we begin, you might want to evaluate the criteria for the award winner. The winners themselves are right below.

Gigabyte H55N-USB3

Mini-ITX motherboards are generally designed with basic features and performance in mind, but that is hardly the case with this one. The Gigabyte H55N-USB3 is a vicious little fellow whose overclocking ability and performance can outmatch larger ATX boards. Using this motherboard, we managed to push the Core i5 655K processor well to beyond 4 GHz quite easily. A second attempt in the overclocking lab further increased the frequency to above 5 GHz! This motherboard is arguably the best choice for system builders looking to put together a small but powerful system.

Click here to read the complete review of Gigabyte H55N-USB3

Digital Alliance GTX 460 768MB

NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 460 is undeniably the kind of product that steals the heart of many computer gamers. It embodies all the essentials of a good, modern day graphics card: high performance, DirectX 11 support, low operating temperature, and affordable price. From the two versions of GTX 460 available today (the 768 MB and 1 GB variants), the 768 MB version certainly proves to be more appealing with its cheaper price, while maintaining a performance level close to that of the 1 GB GTX 460.

Speaking of price, if we look at the graphics card based on the 768 MB version of GeForce GTX 460, Digital Alliance offers the cheapest product in the market today. According to our observations, Digital Alliance’s GTX 460 768 MB currently sells for around US$ 15 cheaper compared to the rest of the competitors. Despite the cheap price, this product retains all the basic qualities of the GTX 460: high performance, and support for the latest graphics features.

Read the full review here

Acer Timeline X (4820TG)

Notebook means portability, and Acer pushes the meaning of that word even further with their long-lasting Timeline series. Once you get used to all the comfort and ease provided by its superb battery life, there’s no falling back to others. The Timeline X 4820TG is one of their latest additions to the series.

The Timeline X 4820TG combine a speedy mobile processor (Core i5 430) with a switchable graphics (ATI Radeon HD 5470, and the integrated Intel graphics), along with 4 GB of memory, 640 GB Harddisk, and a DVD-RW drive. All of which puts it well within the middle-upper class performance category. You can even run 3D games on this notebook, though the fact remains that it is by no means a serious portable gaming device.

Its relatively thin physical feature and low weight should make this notebook easy to carry. Meanwhile, the Timeline X 4820TG ‘s extended battery life of up to 7-8 hours means that the notebook is one of the best in its class when it comes to battery life. Think of going out without having to carry the charger around. All of the mentioned advantages provide enough justification to reward this product with one of our first awards.

Follow this link to read the full review

Other nominated products

Aside from the three “HOT Product of the Month” award winners, we also have two other products that were previously included in the nominations: the MSI GE600 Notebook and a 32 GB SD card from Team. These products come along with their own distinct qualities; outpaced by the award winners only in some particular aspects.

The MSI GE600 is an affordable gaming notebook which happened to be one of the award’s strongest candidates. A serious mobile gaming platform that also comes with a friendly price tag is worthy of the award indeed. Unfortunately, this product has yet to enter the Indonesian market. This rather unfortunate situation has prevented it from winning the award because one of the required conditions is that the product must be available locally.

Team 32 GB SD Card is another contender proposed by one of our reviewers. Its data transfer rate is impressive, but that alone is not enough to earn the award. During our discussion, one of the critics argued that a super high-speed SD card is not all that necessary for consumers in general. Professional DSLR cameras store images in high-speed Compact Flash memory, while Camcorders are working just fine with average SD cards. The only chance it will likely get to show its teeth is during data transfer to desktop PCs, but even that is determined by the speed of the card reader.

That concludes our “HOT Product of the Month” reward for this month. Stay tuned to JagatReview.com to receive more updates on the hottest computer products in Indonesia!