Striving to bring recognition to manufacturers of high-technology equipment, the iXBT.com editorial team decided to institute three awards:

Reviewed by iXBT.com

The Reviewed by iXBT.com award recognizes the products, which have gone through the iXBT.com lab tests. This award is presented to a manufacturer, whose products were tested in our lab, got reviewed, and their reviews are published on the iXBT.com web site, in the iXBT.com magazine, or on the Digit-Life.com web site.

Original Design

Modern IT market is flooded with clones. Life-cycle of a product became shorter, so most manufacturers do not spend their time and resources on their own designs. Instead, they often follow the so called "reference design", changing only the name of the product and the package appearance. That's why in order to encourage efforts of the manufacturers who create innovative products different from reference designs, the editorial team of iXBT.com institutes the Original Design award.

This award can be honored to a product with an original design, which is essentially different from the reference design. The product must be tested in the iXBT.com lab and then have a review (concerning the test results) published on the iXBT.com web site, in the iXBT.com magazine, or on the Digit-Life.com web site.

The Original Design award can be selected only once a month and must provide links to the reviews of the awarded products.

MP3 Players and Multimedia Centers Awards

A player or a center can be honored with the Original Design award, in case it:

• Possesses unique functionality for these days
• Either contributes something revolutionary new to the market, or is an absolutely new device on the market
• Provides the outstanding quality of multimedia content playback
• Demonstrates a model of design (by its appearance, compact size or ergonomics)
• Other things that are not listed here

April 2005 Awards

MP3/HDD/WMA player Archos Gmini XS200

Network Devices Awards

A network device (including a wireless device) can be awarded with Original Design in case it...

• Possesses unique functionality for these days
• Offers something new to the market
• Demonstrates a model of design (by its appearance, compact size or ergonomics)
• Other things that are not listed here

April 2005 Awards

3Com OfficeConnect Wireless 108Mbps 11g XJACK PC Card is awarded for an interesting antenna construction.

3D Video Cards Awards

A video card can be awarded with Original Design, if the tests revealed the following features distinguishing it from the reference design:

• Original cooling system, which is more effective at the least possible level of noise
• Support for extra features, such as Video-In (if it is not provided by the reference design)
• Other things that are not listed here

It goes without saying that, for example, a PCB color different from the reference design cannot be considered an innovation.

April 2005 Awards

HIS RADEON X850 XT AGP IceQ II Turbo 256MB

HIS RADEON X850 XT Platinum AGP IceQ II 256MB

Excellent Package

It's always pleasant to buy a product and find out that the package includes additional equipment, software, games, souvenirs, etc. It's nice to think that the product you bought is well worth its price, and it's twice as nice to buy a well-bundled product at a moderate price. In practice, some manufacturers tend to save on every item, even if the inclusion of this item into the product package raises the price by less than 10%. Thus, the editorial team of iXBT.com institutes the Excellent Package award to bring recognition to those manufacturers, who offer nice boxes with excellent package content (the product plus useful accessories) instead of featureless boxes with minimal package content (CD with drivers).

This award can be presented to a product with an original box and unique package content. The product must be tested in the iXBT.com lab, and the results of these tests must be published in a review on the iXBT.com web site, the iXBT.com magazine, or the Digit-Life.com web site.

The Excellent Package award can be selected only once a month and must refer to the awarded product reviews.

TV Tuner and Multimedia Video Card Awards

TV-tuner or a multimedia video card can be selected for the Excellent Package award based on these criteria:

• Original package (retail)
• Homeware with unique functionality
• Rich set of extra software
• Souvenirs or useful/nice knick-knacks in the package
• Other things that are not listed here

April 2005 Awards

Kworld V-Stream Creator TV-MCE 202 Deluxe and TV-MCE 200 Deluxe - for the bundled InterVideo Home Theater that supports hardware MPEG1/2 encoding.

Network Devices Awards

A network device (including a wireless device) can be awarded with Excellent Package in case it has...

• Original package (retail)
• Homeware with unique functionality
• Rich bundle
• Other things that are not listed here

April 2005 Awards

Wireless adapters ZyXEL ZyAIR G-220

Additional information

The same award cannot be given to a product more than once.

A product can get several different awards.

Printed award certificates can be provided by written request via e-mail: pr@ixbt.com