NAB 2025 is a wrap – and the Winners of this year’s CineD Best-of-Show Awards for NAB have been announced. Read all about the awarded products and technologies below, as well as a full list of nominees.
CineD congratulates the winners of this year’s CineD Best-of-Show Awards for NAB 2025! As a reminder, we had seven categories in which manufacturers were invited to submit their products.
CineD Best-of-Show Awards for NAB – categories:
- AI Innovation
- Audio Equipment
- Battery Innovation
- Broadcast Innovation
- Camera
- Camera Control & Accessories
- Camera Support
- Lenses
- Lighting Equipment
- Monitors & Recording
Now, it is important to point out that prior submission to the awards by the manufacturers was a requirement for us to be able to prepare and dedicate the required amount of time for judging.
But without further ado, here are our winners and nominees in each category!
AI Innovation – Winner: HeyEddie.ai
Before you scream, “traitors,” here’s the deal: You can hate on AI, but it will not make it go away. We will not consider products or technologies that are trying to replace creativity – we are considering the ones that are there to augment it.
Remember the days when our fantasies about the future centered around having robotic helpers that would do the work nobody wanted to do? This can also be extended to the most basic editing tasks, where many repetitive things have to be done regularly.
Turns out that both of this year’s nominees fall exactly in this category: the Adobe Media Intelligence and Search Panel in Adobe Premiere and Eddie AI (link to our article). Both are designed to take over the most mundane assistant editor tasks and help streamline the early, often tedious stages of editing.
We decided to give the award to Eddy.ai since we see lots of potential in their approach to help with mundane editing tasks, and their integration with all kinds of NLE’s makes it a versatile companion app. Congratulations! You can also check out their product on their website.
Audio Equipment – Winners: Saramonic and Hollyland
Lots of great innovation is happening in the audio field, which is why we decided to award two very different solutions catering to different ends of the spectrum – but equally relevant for independent filmmakers or small crews.
The nominees were Saramonic for the Saramonic K9, DJI for the DJI Mic Mini, and Hollyland for the Lark Max 2 and the Lark MS2.
Our first winner was Saramonic: The Saramonic K9 is a professional audio system that transmits in a UHF band instead of 2.4GHz. It brings internal 32-bit float recording, timecode sync, and UHF diversity to improve signal reliability and reduce interferences. But what really caught our attention is its miniature Lavalier microphone (only 3mm). In a convincing demonstration, we saw this Lavalier surviving dust, water, flour (and more) and still continuing to work. Even the cable attached to it seemed to be unique in the sense that it was hard to destroy.
Last but not least, $999 will buy you a kit of two professional transmitters and a single receiver, all in a compact, robust case.
Our second winner is the Hollyland Lark Max 2 wireless audio transmission system, which consists of two senders, an on-camera receiver, as well as a smartphone receiver. Compared to the first version, it has been updated to support 32-bit float recording inside the transmitters. They offer an optional hot shoe adapter that allows the receiver to communicate directly with Sony cameras, so there is no need to use the cable. What really convinced us was their optional wireless monitoring solution – over-ear headphones that connect to the receiver, which in turn can be connected to the camera, so you are actually hearing what’s being recorded in-camera (which is crucial!). A smart idea for monitoring that does away with the typical cable-connected headphones is especially relevant for one-man band content creation.
Battery Innovation
This is the only category we chose not to award this year. While the submission from CoreSWX for their Nano M-Snap Battery Packs was very solid, we felt it didn’t quite meet the threshold for an innovation award.
Broadcast Innovation – Adobe
We were discussing if this was a better fit in the AI category, but it definitely also fits here: the Adobe Generative Extend in Premiere Pro, which lets you add up to two seconds of new footage to the start or end of a clip using Firefly AI – useful for smoothing transitions without reshoots. Another time-saver for those times when you simply need a few more frames for an edit and don’t have them. Check it out on their website.
Camera – Blackmagic Design
In terms of Camera Innovation, Blackmagic Design stole the show once again with the introduction of the 12K version of their PYXIS camera. What’s remarkable is that they managed to put this extremely high-performing sensor in such a small body. Its performance was evidenced by the results of our Lab Test of the URSA Cine 12K, which was the first camera to have that same sensor.
Other submissions in this category were the Proton HFR camera, DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro, and OBSBOT Tail 2.
Camera Control & Accessories – DJI
This is traditionally a very diverse category with a wide range of submissions and nominations, so it’s never easy to judge.
Ultimately, the CineD team agreed to award the prize to DJI for the DJI RS 4 Mini since it shows the biggest advancement in gimbals in a long time because of its very convincing Intelligent Tracking Module.
Other nominees in this category include the Hollyland Cosmo C2, the Bun-G-Ring, and the OWC Jellyfish S24 and ThunderBlade X12.
Camera Support – MID49 and Tilta
Also never an easy category to judge, as camera support covers a broad spectrum of products that are often difficult to compare directly. In the end, we decided on two ex aequo winners for the CineD Best-of-Show Award for NAB in the category of Camera Support: MID49 for the TWIST Ball Arm, and Tilta for the Nucleus-M II.
MID49’s TWIST Ball Arm is innovative because in the area of “magic arms,” there’s usually little magic, but this one is different: its friction design allows for grabbing and twisting it without loosening a thumbscrew.
The other winner in this category is the Tilta Nucleus-M II, which convinced us it was a worthy successor of Tilta’s incredibly popular Nucleus M. Tilta proved that they listened to a lot of customer feedback, addressing many pain points of the original system, and also adding some really innovative functions to this remote follow focus, which is offered at a very competitive price.
Other nominees in this category were Ghost Kits for their Specter device, Atomos for the ATOMOSphere cloud service, and, again, Tilta for their Electronic Suction Cup Monitoring Kit (which allows you to check the status of up to ten of their electronic suction cups remotely – from inside the car, for instance – to check whether they are still safely attached).
Lenses – Laowa & DZOFILM
Lenses are always an interesting category, with many very different products to choose from. We decided to focus on the innovation aspect here and, in the end, awarded two competitors with very similar products, Laowa and DZOFILM, for their new probe lenses. Both models have their advantages, but we can see how both companies did a good job innovating in this field: both offer a wide-angle zoom, both cover full frame, and both have 360-degree versions and periscope versions available.
Other nominees in this category are FUJIFILM for the Duvo™ HZK14-100mm Portable PL Mount Zoom Lens, Blazar for the Mantis 1.33x FF Anamorphic Lens, and Beastgrip for the Beastgrip DOF Adapter Фoton.
Lighting Equipment – NANLITE
In the Lighting Equipment category, we opted to go for something “small” and chose the NANLITE PavoTube II 6XR 8-light kit. The light is the successor of an extremely popular tiny RGB tube light. It’s incredibly versatile, can be fully controlled and synched remotely, and so on. Check the details in our article!
Other nominees in this category include Godox for the MS60R/Bi, Astera for QuikSpot, NANLITE for the Evoke 5000B, and Aputure for the Storm XT52.
Monitors & Recording – ASUS
In this category of the CineD Best-of-Show Awards for NAB 2025, the ASUS ProArt Display OLED PA32UCDM convinced us. 10-bit color in an ultra-wide display, combined with a great maximum brightness of 1,000 NITs and 240 Hz for less than $2K, is kind of a big deal and a remarkable achievement.
Other nominees include the DJI SDR Transmission system and the SWIT K15 Field Monitor.
What do you think about this year’s CineD Best-of-Show Awards for NAB 2025? Let us know in the comments below!
