Tablets are tops for 2011

Every year we look back at the gadgets that have crossed our path at Stuff magazine and draw up a list of the best.

The Stuff Gadget Awards reflect not just the winners in the 11 categories, but trends that defined the year.

Like the previous awards, 2011's gadget of the year was a tablet: the Asus Eee Pad Transformer.

It's not just another Android tablet.

It cleverly uses an additional keyboard dock that lets you use it like a laptop, but also gives you a power boost with the built-in battery.

As we said in the magazine, the Transformer's "additional skills compensate for the paucity of Android tablet apps. It bridges the tablet/laptop divide: through its keyboard dock it gains all the power of a netbook, but with the immediate start-up and swish touchscreen skills of the best of its brethren".

The tablet of the year, however, remains the iPad 2, which is still the gold standard in this new category of computing.

Apple was also a winner with the MacBook Air in our computer of the year category.

It's such a good laptop that I am using it now, combining the power of laptop computing with the portability and lightness of a tablet.

It's a compelling format (which finally has decent enough processing power and storage) to prompt a new Intel-backed category for Windows laptops called Ultrabooks.

To meet this definition, which is copyrighted by Intel, laptops must have at least five hours' battery life, have solid-state hard drives and a tiny weight. You'll hear about them a lot next year.

Stuff's phone of the year was the superb Samsung Galaxy SII, a large-touchscreen wonder that is the top-dog Android smartphone. A slick interface and powerful processor set it apart.

Samsung also won the TV of the year with its 55in/140cm UA55D800, a beautiful-looking TV that does media streaming and runs a range of clever apps.

Nintendo's 3DS, arguably the only 3D device to truly succeed this year, was our gaming gadget of the year, letting you play 3D games without glasses.

Camera of the year went to Olympus' Pen E-P3, the latest of the reinterpreted iconic models from the 1970s, while the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active won for sports and fitness and the Sonos Play: 3 for audio gadget of the year respectively.

Car of year was the Range Rover Evoque and the sat-nav went to TomTom's Live 1000.

• Shapshak is editor of Stuff magazine. Read the full reviews in the current issue