CNET UK Editors' Choice winners August 2009

With various members of the team on holiday, at car shows, looking at the latest hotness in Berlin or celebrating their blissful nuptials, August's Editors' Choice awards are rather late. We can only apologise profusely and hope the outstanding quality of this month's winners will placate you.

Olympus E-450
Micro Four Thirds might be grabbing all the headlines, but the Olympus E-450 shows there's still life in the entry-level dSLR. As well as being one of the smallest and lightest dSLRs on the market, it's the cheapest to include an optical viewfinder, which is always a virtue even over the decent electronic viewfinders sported by most Micro Four Thirds snappers. The E-450 is an incremental upgrade from the E-420, but takes our Editor's Choice award for August thanks to a massively improved processor, and for being such a well thought-out and easy to use entry to the world of dSLRs.

Alienware M17x
Let's get one thing straight -- the M17x offers more power than you could feasibly require right now. It'll run circles round desktop gaming rigs, make mincemeat of even the most demanding of games, and cost you an arm and a leg -- but that's why we like it. It's a twin graphics card-sporting, quad-core CPU-toting beast of a machine that absolutely will not let you down when high performance is required. Unlike most gaming rigs, it's even quite pleasant to look at. If you want the absolute best of the best, look no further.

Sony Bravia W5500
Sony's Bravia Engine 3 takes the credit for this particular award, supplying a magnificent picture on what's effectively a budget Bravia -- the 46-inch model in this series sells for little over a grand. All the connectivity you could wish for is further boosted by an Ethernet socket for Sony's fledgling AppliCast Internet system. That aside, this is a set refreshingly free of gimmicks, focusing on what really matters -- spectacular high-definition images.