What does a Gold Award really mean?

The Gold and Silver awards are based on the reviewer's overall subjective feeling about the camera, as opposed to the clinical reviewing and "sum of the parts" approach used for the ratings. To some extent, you could say it's about how much a typical buyer is expected to enjoy that camera model (versus its contemporaries), rather than how highly-specified the model is.

DPR has an article that describes their scores, ratings, and awards.

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