Announcing the 2026 TechRadar Australian PC Awards finalists

Now more than ever, Australians need expert guidance to help navigate the world of technology. Choosing tech you can trust is critical in this fast-moving world, where products and pricing are evolving rapidly. For anyone that uses a PC—be it a desktop, laptop or tablet, and whether that’s for gaming, creating or productivity—any investment in new gear today needs to be well informed.

To meet that need, the Australian editorial teams behind PC Gamer, APC and TechRadar have expanded the annual TechRadar Australian PC Awards to include more major tech products than ever before. Now covering 40 categories, the experts that actually test the gear have rated the products and services from the past year and singled out the very best of the best.

From PCs and all the essential components that go inside them, to everything that connects to a PC including monitors, keyboards, mice and headphones, through to exciting new tech like handheld gaming PCs and essential services like the best NBN for every type of user—we’ve highlighted the devices and services we reckon Australians should consider above the rest.

testing and rating the best NBN deals on offer, and the winners they’ve picked will bring you the performance and value you expect.

We’ve also gone deep into adding more monitor categories, as this is one of the most popular PC products on TechRadar and the pace of change in display tech is incredible. Now, we have awards for the best in Everyday monitor, alongside Gaming and screens for Creators and Professionals.

We’ve added more components to the Awards too, and refined a few existing awards to be more relevant today.

Antivirus and complete Security Suites is another new addition. Once again, the TechRadar team knows its stuff and covers PC, Mac and mobile security year-round.

Our mission is to help you choose the best gear and services for your life, whether for business or pleasure, and we reckon we have more experience and expertise than anyone else to do just that! These Awards leverage the combined knowledge of the Future Publishing network, which brings together the experts in every area that of technology that matters.

AMD Ryzen 7 7500X3D
AMD Ryzen 5 5600F
Intel Core Ultra 5 Processor 245
Intel Core Ultra 5 Processor 235
Intel Core Ultra 5 Processor 225
Intel Core Ultra 5 Processor 225F
Intel Core Ultra 5 Processor 235U

Finalists: Excellence

Gabe Newell: Not selling out
AI everywhere: For better or worse…
Intel Arc B-series (Battlemage): An actually competitive GPU alternative to Nvidia and AMD
AMD Radeon RX 9000 series: Made mid-range GPUs interesting again
Valve: Steam OS is advancing Linux gaming in huge strides. Microsoft is worried
AMD Strix Halo: One of the best mobile chips in years
MSI: Project Zero made cable-hiding stealth boards a success
Nvidia: Never gave up on CUDA, now it drives most AI
ARM: Slowly but surely taking on every kind of processing
QD OLED: High refresh rate, high PPI, falling cost

The company that impressed us the most, overall, over the past year

Finalists: Gold

Every company that has a product or service that was selected as a finalist in this year’s Awards is automatically in the running for the prestigious Gold Award.

In addition, the editorial team may give the Gold Award to a company that is not a finalist here, but that we feel deserves the big prize. The Gold winner – along with all other TechRadar 2026 Australian PC Awards winners – will be announced on March 15th!

APCA 2026 epic fail — (Image credit: Future)

Finalists: Epic fail

Apple: Apple Intelligence is the gift that keeps on not giving
AI: Overpromising and under-delivering for the consumer, causing the RAM apocalypse. AI slop. Grok deepfakes. And more…
Borderlands 4: Game runs poorly but Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford said it’s “pretty damn optimised”, “Use DLSS. It’s great”.
Cloudflare outage: Wiped many websites and services offline. Too much of the internet is dependant on it!
Intel: Still hasn’t properly dealt with Raptor Lake issues
Memory shortage and price surge: AI driven insanity
Meta AI stage fail: Zuck’s glasses failed to work live on stage
Micron/Crucial: Abandoning consumers at their time of need
Microsoft: Multiple windows update fails, Agentic AI integration, efforts to kill Windows 10, including updates that brick your SSD!
Nvidia: RTX 5000 series launch, melty connectors 2.0, crappy drivers, outrageous pricing
Optus 000 outages: People died, nuff said

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