IPVM Launches Best New Product Awards

IPVM is launching its own Best New Video Surveillance Product Awards in 2019. The goal is to provide the industry with a legitimate program, based on testing, transparent analysis and no pay to play. This will help buyers make better decisions and reward manufacturers who build genuinely better products.

No Pay-To-Play

Awards are a money making racket for SIA / ISC West, ASIS / GSX, etc. Products will not even be considered unless the entrants spend thousands of dollars. The organizers wind up making hundreds of thousands, the manufacturers get some questionable marketing and buyers get misled.

Just like IPVM never accepts advertising nor sponsorships, these awards program will have no fees whatsoever. Any product can enter, at no cost.

Moreover, we will include products for consideration even if a company does not submit it as we do ~100 tests per year as is and will automatically enter / consider all products tested as well.

Every Entrant Tested

Industry award programs do not test products. Companies simply submit marketing materials and the 'judges' declare winners based on that. It is a foolish process that results in awards rewarding big talkers (or biggest spenders) rather than products that work.

IPVM will ensure that every product considered is tested so that awarding factors in how well the product does or does not work (e.g., see Hikvision DeepInMind).

Transparent Analysis

Industry award programs do not explain why one product won and another lost. Given that it is based on 'judging' marketing materials, what could they really say but a fair process would be clear about what reasons drove the decision.

IPVM will not only publish all of our test results, we will explain the selections.

Industry Input

IPVM's awards will leverage our industry-leading membership base where members can comment and make their case why certain products should win or lose.

How IPVM Benefits

Given IPVM is not charging manufacturers for these awards, we will not make money directly from them. Our goal is to further strengthen our reputation as the industry's premier resource for video surveillance information and product recommendations.

Criteria (Updated)

We are discussing the criteria for the awards here.

Schedule

The program will run over a 3-month window from January to March, with submissions being made and then a series of public evaluations on IPVM where we will share feedback on our evaluations of the products and members can provide feedback on what products they believe are best and why. The schedule below overviews the specific dates and times:

We will discuss more details in the comments here and over the next few months to finalize details, based on feedback from the community.

UPDATE

We decided not to do it this year. We want to be able to test more products and did not feel we were ready to do this. In the meantime, we have opened up our new 8,000 sqft facility and are adding another 4,000sqft this summer to better accommodate this.