TECH OF THE YEAR 2020 – YOU DECIDE
Man this has been a crazy year. Not just thanks to COVID, but in the tech world we had a tonne of amazing launches, and yet next to no one actually has the stuff that launched. We’ve had games like Cyberpunk launch that are simultaneously the best and worst games of the year, and had games like Fall Guys and Among Us get massive practically overnight. So, of all of that, who do we crown tech of the year?
Well, I asked you guys on Twitter and on Youtube, a series of 5 questions to help decide just that. Lets start with the first question, product line of the year. I wanted to do it this way as there have been so many impressive launches even in the last couple months, but Twitter only lets you put in 4 options, soooooo I can pick a few. In this category, the options were AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, their RX 6000 GPUs, NVIDIA’s RTX 3000 series GPUs, or you could reply with another answer. I totalled the responses from both Twitter and Youtube, making the very, very clear winner, Ryzen. It won with 63% of the vote. I might argue this is a tad biased as I can imagine more people are looking to upgrade their GPU, meaning lack of stock is more frustrating and therefore they’d have more positive feelings towards the part they themselves don’t immediately want, but that’s a bit of a wild guess.
As for question 2, that was a follow up. Based on the winner from the day before, in this case Ryzen, which of the chips was the best, or most favoured. This one probably shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, but it’s the 5600X, with just shy of 50% of the vote. The 5900X wasn’t too far behind, but yeah, the most value chip is the one more people are interested in. Who’d-a-thunk-it?
As for question 3, I had a little fun with the options. This one was best console of the year, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Stadia, or PC. I know, PC isn’t exactly a console, and yes, this is a very, very biased audience to ask that with PC as an option, but it was fun to see what happened. Unsurprisingly, 76% of you said PC. I knew that’d happen, but what I was really looking for was the most engagement – which it got by far – and to look at the results of the actual consoles, excluding PC. Across both Twitter and Youtube, the PS5 came out on top by a reasonable margin, with almost double the votes than the Xboxes on Youtube. Stadia, as some of the comments put it, got a few pity votes, and the Xbox did well, but still a good bit behind the playstation.
Question 4 I wasn’t expected to be as engaged as the consoles one, this was monitor of the year. I review a lot of monitors, so it’s only right for me to cover them here too. Technically speaking, “other” got the most votes by a few percent, although there wasn’t a consensus in the comments over what “other” monitor was best. The winner based on most responses then, is Gigabyte’s M27Q. I would generally agree with that, it’s an amazing spec, and while I assume they are using lower quality panels to achieve the low price point, it’s a gamble that has a massive payoff if you get a good one.
Finally, game of the year. This one is hard as there are so many new, popular, and interesting games out, but again since there was only 4 options available on Twitter polls, Cyberpunk, Half Life Alyx, Microsoft Flight, and “other” were all I had. I would like to have included Fall Guys and Among Us too, but ah well. Cyberpunk, despite it being rather buggy and honestly horrific for PS4 and Xbox One players, still won out here with 39% of the vote. It’s an incredible game that definitely needs a lot of refinement, but is one hell of a play (if you can get it to work).
