Computex is an annual technology conference where all leading vendors showcase new products, research and upcoming releases to the press and industry. Companies are invited to submit models and services for consideration to the Best Choice Award.This is a kind of "yeah, this is pretty neat" competition, and the 2024 winners are, perhaps unsurprisingly, mostly very expensive.

You can see the full list of winners here (pdf warning), it's a pretty mixed bag of selected ones. For example, there are two graphics cards: the Asus ROG Matrix Platinum RTX4090 and the MSI RTX4090Suprim Fuzion 2 — both are water-cooled, but oddly enough the latter has a radiator built into the card itself. The price of the latter does not yet exist, but the price of the Asus card is well over R3,000/£3,000 (more than 4090 times the MSRP of the RTX2).

But not all are megabucks, because some sensible-priced laptops have won awards. I was delighted to see Framework 16 get a nod not only being a feat of excellent engineering (according to our Dave in his review), but it's also a genuine attempt at doing something different and positive in the laptop market.

If you are wondering what criteria judges use to select winners, you can look into this YouTube video. I'm not entirely sure how the water-cooled power-suction graphics card "emphasizes environmental protection, energy saving and carbon reduction," but the judges have made it clear that they know these kinds of things better than I do.

But there are some strange winners. For example, the Asus ROG Ally handheld gaming PC was 1, but so was MSI's claw. We don't have our own nails on the nails yet, but our companions in Tom's guide have and they were clearly not impressed with it. How it won is a bit of a puzzle.

However, my favorite is the j-mex MOXI Smart Mo-Cap body suit, and one of the reasons for the victory is "easy to install while maintaining easy and accurate data collection capabilities in the wallet"

I don't know what digital nomads are, but the ultimate wearing a Moxi smart suit at the same time as the AirVision M1...hmm...I strongly doubt that I am a technician - thingy.

To be honest, I'm a bit stumped by the whole scheme of awards. The majority of products chosen as winners just as normal craft items. I was wondering where the real innovation is, where the technology that pushes the real boundaries, and why so many products are well priced out of most people's budgets.

Nvidia's GH200 and Spectrum-X chips ignore the huge price tag, and while Framework16 is a worthy choice, the water-cooled PCIe5.0SSD certainly isn't. Anyway, I might submit a water-cooled mouse pad next year, but I think it can win hands-down.