Coming soon: Digit Zero1 Awards and Best Buy 2023

For over 22 years, Digit readers anticipate and associate the end of the calendar year with the unveiling of Digit Zero1 Awards, which crowns the best-performing products of the year. For over two decades, Digit Zero1 Awards has been recognising and rewarding brands for putting in years of research and development to come up with products that value raw, unadulterated performance over everything else. If you’re out in the market looking for the best-performing products to own, look no further than the upcoming Zero1 Awardees.

Zero1 Awards & Best Buy 2023: Categories

What makes the Zero1 Awards so unique

Each and every product category that we cover in the Zero1 Awards and Best Buy Awards has a rigorous test process and each and every product is made to pass this test. Calculating the scores, a winner is declared. The test process for Zero1 Awards is almost the same as our review test process, except that we don’t consider scores for features, price or design — nothing but performance is concerned. This is what makes our Zero1 Awards unique.

Nowhere else will you get such laser focus on the best-performing products of the year, simply because most others ‘review’ products instead of testing them. For the Zero1 Awards, opinions of reviewers aren’t considered. This is about pure performance and the ability of the product to do its advertised job in the best possible way. That’s what matters above everything else.

So, when you ask “What’s the best performing gaming laptop in India?”, you need to check out our Zero1 Award winner in that category because that’s the only place where it’s only about pure performance and not about the features of the laptop or how it looks or how much it costs.

That’s also another reason why the Zero1 Awards are so important. Because we don’t look at the price, but only pure performance, we get to showcase products you might have missed or didn’t pay much attention to because of budget restrictions. That doesn’t mean this award caters only to the rich kids with deep pockets since most of the products on the list are usually expensive. But that’s not our rationale for doing it, though. The product that wins our Zero1 Award is considered the industry benchmark for the year. And what do brands love to do with benchmarks? Beat them of course! So think of the Zero1 Awards as a predictor of things to come next year. The new devices that will launch in 2024 will have to do better than the benchmarks of 2023 – and not just in terms of performance, but also the price!

Best Buy Awards 2023: For excellence in value for money

Along with the Zero1 Award for best-performing products of 2023, we will also crown the Best Buy Award in each of the 35+ categories of products in contention this year. Unlike the Zero1 Award, which is price agnostic and only focuses on the performance of a product in each category, the Best Buy Award will only be awarded to products with the best value for money score in our category-wise product comparison sheet.

So, technically, can one product in any given category win both the Zero1 as well as Best Buy awards? We aren’t saying no to that possibility yet, and whether it comes to pass remains to be seen when we finally announce the Zero1 Awards 2022 winners in December 2022 (more details on the exact date to follow soon, watch this space).

Eligibility for participating in Zero1 Awards 2022

Because the Digit Zero1 Awards are given out based on tested performance scores, no product that we have not received in our Test Centre can participate. We make every effort to test all possible products launched in the year, however, sometimes we just do not receive some products at our Test Centres because of logistics issues, or because brands cannot send us review samples in time.

In order to keep things fair, we accept products that were launched in the 12-month period between Zero1 Awards. For 2023, the best products will be chosen from products launched after November 15, 2022, and on or before November 14, 2023. Why such weird dates? That’s because we publish the awards in our December issue of the magazine every year, and considering we don’t have superpowers (yet!), we need time to test them. As a result, for products launching near the end of our acceptance period, we call for them under embargo. Entries for Digit Zero1 Awards close by 14th November 2023.

If you are a brand thinking about sending us your product to be nominated for the Zero1 Awards, reach out to editor@digit.in. Do note that products launched after November 14th 2023 will not be considered for this year’s awards. You can visit our Zero1 Awards & Best Buy Awards page for answers to frequently asked questions, understand more about the awards’ legacy and see all the Zero1 and Best Buy Award winners from 2022.

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Mithun Mohandas

Mithun Mohandas is an Indian technology journalist with 10 years of experience covering consumer technology. He is currently employed at Digit in the capacity of a Managing Editor. Mithun has a background in Computer Engineering and was an active member of the IEEE during his college days. He has a penchant for digging deep into unravelling what makes a device tick. If there's a transistor in it, Mithun's probably going to rip it apart till he finds it. At Digit, he covers processors, graphics cards, storage media, displays and networking devices aside from anything developer related. As an avid PC gamer, he prefers RTS and FPS titles, and can be quite competitive in a race to the finish line. He only gets consoles for the exclusives. He can be seen playing Valorant, World of Tanks, HITMAN and the occasional Age of Empires or being the voice behind hundreds of Digit videos. View Full Profile