T3 Awards 2021: all the Garden Living award winners announced

In this year's Garden Living category we reveal the winners of T3's Best Barbecue, Best Lawnmower and Best Outdoor Lighting awards in the T3 Awards 2021.

Combined, products from these categories are crucial to enjoying a garden to its maximum. With a quality lawnmower you can make sure your lawn looks pristine, while with a great BBQ at your disposal cooking for friends and family becomes a breeze. And, with the right outdoor lighting, a garden's look or mood can be changed instantaneously, while also making it more characterful at night.

These categories have been incredibly competitive this year, so let's get on and reveal the big T3 Awards 2021 winners.

Best Barbecue: Char-Broil Professional Pro S2

As anyone will know, there's barbecues and then there's barbecues. Yes, you can cook food on the most basic flame, no matter how you've conjured it, and there's definitely something to be said for that – building a fire and then cooking on it can be a magical experience.

However, with one of the best barbecues on the market today you make cooking food outside for friends and family easy and rewarding, while also taking the preparation of food to the next, professional level. Put simply, with a modern pellet, charcoal or gas BBQ at your disposal your outdoor catering is kicked up more than just a notch.

And this year saw some incredible barbecues compete with each other for our attentions, with top models from Char-Broil, Webber, Traeger and more offering outdoor cooking packages that left very little, if anything, to be desired.

After an incredibly tight judging session, though, the judges narrowly favored the Char-Broil Professional Pro S2 for our prestigious Best Barbecue Award this year. Currently our number one recommendation in terms of gas barbecues in our best barbecue buying guide, the Char-Broil Professional Pro S2 is described as "an absolute cracker".

Central the Pro S2's capabilities is its chunky 47.8 x 44.5cm porcelain-coated, cast-iron grate and uses Char-Broil’s renowned ‘TRU-infrared’ technology. This advanced tech means that an even cooking temperature is maintained across the entire grill surface.

The Pro S2 also comes with a side steak searer, too, which our reviewer stated delivered "a fillet with a superb caramelised crust and succulent pink centre."

Throw in illuminated dials, which is useful for low-light and night time usage, a stylish design and room for a concealed 5kg Patio Gas bottle, and you've got a recipe for a very, very good gas barbecue.

For these reasons we are therefore proud to announce that the Char-Broil Professional Pro S2 is the winner of the Best Barbecue Award at the T3 Awards 2021.

The best barbecue shortlist

Char-Broil Kamander Kamado

CharBroil Kettleman

Char-Broil Professional Pro S2

Traeger Ironwood 650

Weber Master-Touch GBS E-5750

• These are the world's best portable barbecues

Best Outdoor Lighting: Philips Hue Lily

Lighting, no matter where you are, is really important. How you light something adds so much to its character, ambience and mood, which is why T3 is a huge fan of colour-changing smart lights. With a few button presses or, in some cases, even through the power of your voice, you can radically alter the feeling of any room or area in a matter of moments.

For interior rooms we chart the best of these in our best smart bulbs guide, but for outdoors, which is often a lighting area people tend to overlook, we have guides to the best outdoor lights as well as the best Philips Hue outdoor lights.

And this year saw the category of outdoor lighting more packed and competitive than ever before. There's been great outdoor lights of many types, including solar powered, wired and colour-changing, hitting the market and offering people fresh and exciting ways to light their home's exterior as well as their garden.

After fending off stiff competition from John Lewis, The Solar Centre, Nordlux and others, though, the winner of the T3 Awards 2021 Best Outdoor Lighting Award goes to the simply superb Philips Hue Lily.

Rated by T3 as the "top choice for garden lighting", the Philips Hue Lily is a low-voltage, colour-changing spot system that can either be mounted on stands for walls or spikes for ground installation. Equally as at home in shrubs, flowers and trees as they are on decking, fences or walls, the Philips Hue Lily spots are really versatile outdoor lights that don't cost the Earth, either.

The base Philips Hue Lily kit delivers three 600 lumens spot lights, which can be connected together via waterproof connectors, and those deliver about 25 meters in coverage area, so more than enough for most medium and small gardens. Plus, if you need more lighting then extra Lily spots can be added in to the lighting system as required, as individual lights can be bought separately.

Naturally, as the Lily comes from Philips Hue, colours can be changed via app or via voice control through a compatible smart speaker, while various lighting schemes can be created and stored for use at any time.

Overall, an affordable and scaleable colour-changing outdoor lighting solution, and for these reasons along with many others, T3 is proud to announce that the Philips Hue Lily is the winner of the Best Outdoor Lighting Award at the T3 Awards 2021.

The best outdoor lighting shortlist

Atlas Solar Powered Outdoor Spotlights

John Lewis Festoon Outdoor Line Lights

John Lewis Strom

Nordlux Vejers Outdoor Wall Lantern

Solar Centre Lumify

Philips Hue Lily

• These are the world's best outdoor solar lights

Best Lawnmower: Stihl RMA 443 VC

When it comes round to slicing through sward technology really can make your life and garden better, which is something that is attested to clearly in T3's best cordless lawn mowers buying guide.

There are many different types of lawnmowers, including the best petrol lawn mowers and best robot lawn mowers, suited to different gardens and applications. But for us here at T3, cordless grass cutters are the ultimate turf masters and the area where we've seen the most impressive new products released over the past year.

And this year saw some seriously impressive competition for T3's Best Lawnmower gong, with top models from Kärcher, Bosch, Greenworks and more vying with each other for the prize.

In the end, though, it was the brand new for 2021 Stihl RMA 443 VC that grabbed the Best Lawnmower gong, with the judges impressed with its brilliant balance between strong cutting power, smart energy saving features, well-engineered quick-swap battery system and easy-to-operate automatic drive mechanism.

In T3's Stihl RMA 443 VC review we gave the cordless mower a maximum score of 5 stars, too, stating that it delivered "everything a serious gardener could want", before praising its vario drive propulsion system, easy to use quick-swap batteries and robust polymer and metal design.

We concluded that the mower was pretty much perfect for anyone with a medium to large garden who desired a cordless mower, making it very easy to recommend.

And, for those reasons and more beside, we are proud to bestow the Best Lawnmower Award in the T3 Awards 2021 to the Stihl RMA 443 VC.

For even more winners be sure to check out the T3 Awards 2021 hub page, which is stuffed full of this year's top tech, gadgets and products.

The best lawnmower shortlist

Bosch CityMower 18

Cobra MX3440V

Greenworks GD60LM46SP

GTech Cordless Lawn Mower 2.0

Kärcher LMO 18-36 Cordless Lawn Mower

Stihl RMA 443 VC

• See all the T3 Awards 2021 winners