Having only been founded in 2008 – making it a relative newcomer in hi-fi terms – the Chinese outfit has wasted no time in spreading its net as wide as possible, from desktop DACs to stereo amplifiers, preamps and network music players.

There have been signs of real quality, too. We recently reviewed the more premium Topping D900 DAC, and while it stopped short of the full five stars, its combination of versatility and appealing audio ability hinted at a brand heading in the right sonic direction.

The Topping DX1 II is smaller and cheaper than its D900 DAC counterpart, but if it can showcase a similar range of abilities, it could confirm Topping as one to watch for the future.

Build & design

Thanks to its neat design, the DX1 II DAC and headphone amplifier doesn’t take up much space. Viewed from the top down, it’s barely larger than your average wallet, and it’s only slightly bigger than the diminutive Chord Mojo 2 by virtue of its greater height. If you’re relatively au fait with DACs, the DX1 II sits somewhere between the smaller iFi hip-dac 3 and the larger Chord Hugo 2 on the size chart.

This is a purely desktop DAC, so you’ll need to have it plugged into a power source via its USB-C port in order to use it. That USB-C port doubles as an audio input, meaning you can use your laptop as both your audio and power source, or enhance your gaming sessions by plugging the DAC into a PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch. A mere iPhone, however, won’t be able to power the DX1 II on its own.

Alongside its dual-purpose USB-C port, the Topping houses an optical input and output, while analogue outputs include stereo RCA and balanced 4.4mm. For personal listening, standard 3.5mm and balanced 4.4mm headphone outputs are also provided, but you can’t connect via Bluetooth.

For seeing exactly what you’re playing and how you’re playing it, the DX1 II has an LED display, from which you can view your source’s file rate, current inputs and the volume at which your tunes are playing. That display is easily legible even from a distance, and the rotary dial is responsive and precise in its operation.

Adjusting key parameters such as volume and your desired inputs can be performed via the dial, but we’d recommend using the supplied remote instead, as doing so via a single rotary knob can be fiddly and requires quite a bit of practice before you become familiar with its various functionalities.

Features

The DX1 II supports hi-res PCM files up to 32-bit/384kHz alongside DSD256. Internally, the digital-to-analogue stage is built around an ES9039Q2M ESS DAC chip, featuring a dual-DAC architecture which combines twin digital-to-analogue converters to process left and right audio channels independently. This, says Topping, helps reduce noise and distortion, thus improving the resultant sound.

The Topping also harnesses a 16-core XU-316 XMOS chip to handle input-signal processing, aiming to deliver “exceptionally high dynamic range and ultra-low noise” while minimising channel crosstalk. The analogue stage features a fully balanced architecture, again with the aim of minimising unwanted audio distortion.

To make the most of your experience, it’s worth using the Topping Home Web control platform, which can be done by plugging the DAC into your computer and accessing the platform online. From here, you can perform the standard tasks of adjusting your volume, inputs and gain settings, as well as accessing the eight provided digital filters.

That’s a lot of filters, and it’s worth experimenting to find the one that suits you and your headphones best. We prefer the well-balanced, forgiving profile of the standard ‘Minimum Phase’ option for our testing. The DX1 II also provides a headphone gain button to match the power sent to your headphones with their sensitivity.

The Topping desktop app lets you tinker with a 10-band parametric equaliser, from which you can also adjust frequency, gain and bandwidth across left and right channels, all while saving three of your chosen profiles to the DAC itself.

This is all rather in-depth stuff that may be beyond the needs of many of the DX1 II’s more casual users, but it’s impressive to have such a comprehensive tuning tool for a DAC that costs less than £150 / $150.

Sound

At this kind of money, we’re not expecting the DX1 II to be paired with the most expensive wired headphones you can get your hands on. To ensure we test the full range of connections, we do connect a pair of high-end Sony MDR-Z1R over-ears to the provided 4.4mm balanced output, as well as a pair of Beyerdynamic T1 (3rd Gen) (£699 / $999 / AU$1599) plugged into the 3.5mm port.

Still, the bulk of our testing is performed using more price-compatible headphones, such as the closed-back Røde NTH-100 (£149 / $149 / AU$249) and the open-backed Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro X (£189 / $199 / AU$399).

With the Topping DAC connected via USB-C to our Lenovo ThinkPad laptop at one end and a pair of the ever-revealing DT 990 Pro X slotting into the 3.5mm output, it’s time to see what the Topping can do. The DX1 II and DT 990 Pro X combine to produce a sound that benefits from ample textural detail and a refreshingly uncluttered presentation, providing a noticeable improvement over the performance of the Lenovo’s built-in DAC chip.

If a clean, analytical sound is what you desire, then the DX1 II does a decent job. The DAC digs into the myriad textures and twists across alt-J’s Every Other Freckle playing at 16-bit/44.1kHz via Tidal, revealing those fuzzy hums, meaty synth pulses and clattering percussive hits with considerable precision.

That said, we plug a pair of the DT 990 Pro X straight into a MacBook Pro 2026, and in terms of pure detail resolution, it’s actually a pretty close-run thing. The Topping might be a little more spacious and analytical, but the MacBook actually delivers a more articulate and expressive midrange than the budget DAC can manage.

Resolution levels aside, the DX1 II operates across a clear and uncluttered soundscape. We switch to the closed-back Røde NTH-100, and while the resultant signature is a little less open than before, our music remains open, well ordered and easy to follow.

This is a DAC that leans towards poise and precision, yet be warned that this can come at the expense of full-blooded thrills. That analytical leaning becomes starkly apparent when we play a DSD64 version of Michael Jackson’s mega-hit Billie Jean. We all know how this one goes – it should sound snappy, propulsive and relentlessly effervescent – but the Topping struggles to express the tune’s vivacious energy as enthusiastically as Jackson originally intended.

To get that feeling of energy and effervescence, you’ll have to spend a little more cash and spend £149 / $149 / AU$249 to grab the five-star iFi hip-dac 3 or the former Award-winning AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt (£179 / $200). On both Billie Jean and a 24-bit/96kHz recording of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky, the hip-dac 3 grants a richer, smoother performance than that of its Topping rival, while the portable DragonFly Cobalt injects more energy and spark into the music we feed it.

This, then, is where the DX1 II’s limitations become most apparent. There’s something to be said for the Topping DAC’s clean, clinical reproduction, but its key rivals’ more engaging handling of rhythms and dynamic shifts leaves the DX1 II sounding somewhat listless and mechanical by contrast. As a result, the plucky Topping fundamentally fails to engage with us on an emotional level.

We can accept that the DX1 II might fall short against costlier rivals, but even in absolute terms, it doesn’t offer enough over a laptop to justify the outlay. Even at its reasonable price, a DAC such as this needs to have more dynamism and expressiveness to be worth considering.

Verdict

The Topping DX1 II shows signs of promise. Like its more premium D900 counterpart, it’s a versatile, well-made DAC that earns plaudits for its clear, uncluttered and reasonably detailed reproduction.

Where it falls down is with regard to its flattened dynamics and poor sense of timing, both of which limit the extent to which we feel engaged by our music. It may be an appealing budget proposition on paper, but a lack of drama and musicality prevents us from giving the DX1 II our full seal of approval.

Review published: 11th September 2026

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Build 4
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt

Also consider the iFi hip-dac 3

Best DACs: USB, desktop and portable digital-to-analogue converters

At the Sydney Hi-fi Show back in May 2026, Richter was rocking its demo room with two pairs of ‘Series 7 Special Edition’ speakers.

The smaller pair were substantial standmounters, the new Aurora S7SE, while the larger pair were beautifully-proportioned floorstanders, bringing back a classic Richter name from the past: the Dragon.

Over the decades some Richter model names, which favour legendary creatures and such like mysticism, have become legends in their own right, perhaps most famously the Wizard, which has a nebulous claim to have sold more units Down Under than any other speaker designed here.

But also the Dragon, which qualifies as perhaps Australia’s cult‑classic floorstander par excellence, the step-up model engineered with unusually serious cabinet design and driver tech for its price class.

Build & design

It’s a timely arrival, this being an anniversary for Richter: 2026 marks 40 years since the original founder Ralph Waters launched the company with three pairs of home-made speakers while battling to overcome the Aussie ‘cultural cringe’ that kept many stores stocking only English, Japanese and American brands. Fortunately the press were impressed, and Waters’ designs found favour with the Australian public, Richter going from strength to strength ever since.

This new Series includes S7SE versions of the Wizard, Dragon and Excalibur floorstanders, along with the Aurora bookshelves, and they share revised design elements which CEO Brian Rodgers says were conceived “to bridge aesthetic sophistication and acoustic performance... Our brief was clear – to design a speaker you’re as proud to look at as you are to listen to, speakers that feel at home in today’s modern living spaces, yet deliver the power, precision, and emotional engagement Richter is known for.”

The development saw Richter’s long-time acoustic engineer Dr Martin Gosnell working closely with industrial designer Adam Hobbs to create a softer, more contemporary form, reducing the visual dominance of traditional large black boxes, while maintaining the integrity of Richter’s sound. Their solutions include newly-curved cabinet designs, with real natural walnut veneers and matching anthracite-grey baffles, optional mottled-grey cloth grilles, and “just enough shiny bling to draw your attention”, says Rodgers.

There are several notable updates with the S7SE range over the previous Series 6 – but there never was a Dragon S6, so the changes are even more significant if you compare the new Dragon to the previous Dragon V, which was in production from around 2010 to 2015.

In driver terms the mid-bass drivers are new and improved, with ultra-rigid, lightweight cones in precision-engineered cast-alloy baskets. The bass drivers gain larger voice coils, but the biggest change is the arrival of a new high/mid module, the ‘SE Teardrop’, housing not one but two domes — a 25mm high-output neodymium-backed HF dome and a new 70mm soft-dome midrange. The module is vertical in the floorstanders but pivots sideways to fit the baffle height of the Aurora standmount design.

In the larger Dragon and Excalibur models, Richter uses the teardrop module D’Appolito-style, flanked by the two 6.5-inch mid-bass drivers, also new and improved, arriving with ultra-rigid lightweight cones in precision-engineered cast alloy baskets. This all creates a symmetrical “wall of sound” that should disperse widely into the room while retaining the precision of the double domes.

The teardrop shape also minimises sharp baffle edges around the tweeter, which helps to cut down on diffraction that can cause high-frequency ripples and uneven response.

The final driver for the new Dragon is a 165mm high-excursion composite paper cone bass unit that also gains a larger voice coil.

Further improvements include a newly developed 4-way, bi-wire-ready crossover network, with dedicated circuits feeding specific driver groups. One for the SE tweeter and mid-dome, one for the twin 6.5-inch mid-bass drivers and a bass-shelf extension circuit (a dual-chamber tuning system) for the bass driver.

Critical to both the new aesthetic and performance upgrade is the move to newly-curved dual-chamber vented bass reflex enclosures, with real Natural Walnut veneers and matching anthracite-grey baffles. The 285mm quoted figure for width refers to the total width including the stabilising feet; the cabinets themselves measure 230mm at their widest point, tapering elegantly down to 140mm at the rear. This curved design reduces resonances, in addition to allowing improved forms of internal bracing.

On the rear of the 109cm-high cabinets are two bass reflex ports of differing depths. The top one is 15cm long, while the one at the bottom is 24cm. Both are just under 7.5cm wide, with shiny, black plastic extrusions that flare at the exits. If you prefer the sound of fully sealed enclosures, Richter supplies two foam bungs for each, which can be used to block the ports and convert the naturally vented enclosure to a sealed one. All four foam bungs measure 7cm × 7cm, so you needn’t worry about wondering if a specific bung should be used for the deeper reflex port.

If you’re perusing the dimensions of the Dragon S7SE, wondering if you can fit them in your home (perhaps subject to other half approval) you’ll want to know the 109cm quoted height of the Dragon S7SE cabinet is correct, as is the 419mm quoted depth — including speaker terminals and with magnetic grilles attached; each pair of Dragon S7SE comes supplied with mottled-grey cloth grilles.

A newly designed set of terminal plates complete the look, including high-quality nickel-plated binding posts which accept bare wire, pin/spade connectors and banana plugs.

As far as numbers go, Richter claims an in-room frequency response of 25Hz-30kHz at -6dB, a sensitivity rating of 90dB (2.83V/1m), and a nominal impedance of 4 ohms (minimum 3.5 ohms).

They will perform to their best with stable high-current amplification to unlock their full potential; Richter says that Dragon S7SEs will benefit from 100-300W RMS amps rated for 4-ohm loads, though our testing included the more modestly specced Marantz Model 50n (~100W/4 ohm), which still yielded impressive results.

Overall build quality is top tier, and with each speaker coming in at 29.1kg on the scales, they feel utterly solid. Each pair of Dragons comes supplied with spikes and discs for hard floors.

Listening sessions

First up was Lady Gaga’s smash hit Abracadabra, an upbeat techno anthem which immediately showcased the Dragon S7SE’s low-end credentials – tight, controlled, and impactful from the opening beat. Dynamic shifts landed spot-on, and their lively rhythmic presentation filled the room.

The SE Teardrop module excelled in projecting Gaga’s vocals wide across the soundstage while slicing cleanly through the bassline. We experimented with the bottom-port foam bungs, having settled on having the Dragons some 30cm from the rear wall. To our ears, the port-filling made vocals shine brighter, drum hits feel more solid through being a tad tighter – a subtle but meaningful refinement. To be honest, the speakers impressed with either configuration, but the easy tunability is a bonus to get things just right in different circumstances or tastes.

Jessie Ware’s Ride proved a fine Dragon demo tune: each frequency band clear and present within a composed and coherent overall performance. Her soft, sultry vocal emerged from the SE Teardrop module floating high up in the mix with ethereal presence and pinpoint imaging. With the foam inserts out of the rear ports, we could enjoy the extra low-end output afforded by this configuration to lend the track some real toe-tapping drive and rhythmic propulsion.

For a proper workout, we loaded Björk’s Bachelorette from her 1997 album ‘Homogenic’, a serious test for any set of speakers as it surges from delicate rising classical strings to a genuine onslaught, comprising dense orchestration, eccentric rhythms, and vocal acrobatics.

The Richter Dragon S7SE never once baulked at this organised chaos. These floorstanders portrayed all the layers with absolute authority, keeping harp twinkles crystal-clear from the SE Teardrop tweeter, while Björk’s shape-shifting vocals – from throaty sweeps to sibilant whispers – remained textured and planted dead centre. The pounding percussion was delivered with control and impact, all while maintaining a vast, three-dimensional soundstage. Even with ports open and walls close, bass stayed articulate without masking mids. It was clear we were in the presence of a remarkably talented pair of speakers.

Verdict

The Richter Dragon S7SE are, in every conceivable way, a stellar set of speakers,
and they arrive at an impressive price, given their ability to dig deep while unearthing the detail, to deliver scale and presence, while also being room-friendly through
their cabinet curves and the level of finish.

Add in the suite of driver upgrades, and especially the fact that mid-domes are more expensive to engineer than an equivalent mid-range cone, and Richter’s AU$7999 pricing looks and sounds exceptional value, winning themselves a recent Sound+Image Award, and maintaining Richter’s reputation for delivering the combination of outstanding performance at a high-value price.

• See all our Australian reviews from Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi magazines!

That's for good reason, as both the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) and Arc Ultra (and the Arc before it) have been mainstays at the top of our soundbar guides.

And now there's a new kid on the block hoping to make the same impact – let's hear it for the Sonos Beam Ultra. The US brand claims that the latest edition to the Beam family delivers "true Dolby Atmos sound and clear dialogue from a compact soundbar that fits your room".

Whether the Beam Ultra is truly that good will only become clear once we've had it in our testing room for exhaustive, comparative testing, but we have had a brief listen to the new soundbar at a launch event in Berlin, and the early signs are very positive.

Price

The Sonos Beam Ultra will set you back £699 / $699 / AU$1099.

That puts it directly between the Sonos Beam Gen 2 (£449 / $449 / AU$649) and the Arc Ultra (£999 / $999 / AU$1799), both of which have scored What Hi-Fi? Awards and five-star reviews.

A little surprisingly, the Sonos Beam Ultra isn’t a replacement for the Beam Gen 2, and the older model will remain on sale. That feels like a good move to us, as it leaves a more affordable Dolby Atmos soundbar (albeit without dedicated drivers) in the range.

Design

Having briefly handled the Beam Ultra at the demo, it felt lightweight yet well-built and sturdy.

The new bar comes in at 2.9kg, which is slightly heavier than the Beam Gen 2’s 2.8kg. It is also a little thinner and longer than the older Beam model, which means it should fit nicely under your TV screen. You can also mount the bar to your wall if you prefer.

The soundbar comes in two colour options: Black and White. That’s the same as the rest of Sonos’s soundbar models, and the matte finish looks quite stylish.

It also features perforated grilles on the top. On the lip of the bar, you will find a press button to activate Bluetooth, as well as touch controls for volume and play/pause.

Features

Those perforated grilles at the top are included to allow the two up-firing drivers on either end of the bar to work their magic.

The Beam Gen 2 is an excellent deliverer of Dolby Atmos audio, despite its reliance on virtualisation rather than physical up-firing drivers. That said, the addition of up-firers for the Beam Ultra should result in an even more convincing Atmos performance.

In fact, the Beam Ultra has nine drivers in total – four more than the Beam Gen 2. These are arranged in what Sonos says is a 7.1.2-channel configuration.

Sonos states that the centre channel has been redesigned to feature a coaxial transducer, which embeds a tweeter into a woofer. With this new arrangement, the brand says the Beam Ultra will make “movies sound wider” and “dialogue sound clearer”.

While the new bar supports Dolby Atmos, DTS:X is still not on the cards. That’s not a big surprise considering this has been the case with all of Sonos’s products, but it could be a drawback for those wanting fully comprehensive surround sound options.

For physical connectivity, you will find a single HDMI eARC port at the back of the bar. The lack of dedicated HDMI inputs and passthrough functionality is no surprise (no previous Sonos products have had either), but it's still a shame for those who are already running out of HDMI sockets on their TV.

You will also spot a USB-C port, which is an upgrade on the Beam Gen 2. Sonos offers the optional Line-In Adapter which lets you connect any piece of traditional hi-fi with a 3.5mm aux jack, such as a turntable or CD player. There is also the Combo Adapter so you can hardwire the soundbar to your router.

While there is no remote control to adjust the soundbar, the newly updated Sonos27 app is on hand. This gives you access to advanced EQ settings and lets you adjust the input and volume.

You can also switch on the Night Sound setting from here if you don’t want to disturb the neighbours. Once again, the firm's Trueplay calibration is on hand to fine-tune the sound to your space.

As with previous Sonos soundbar models, music can be sent directly from apps such as Spotify and Tidal. Bluetooth 5.3 is on board, too.

There is the option to link the Beam Ultra with other Sonos products to create a multi-room listening experience, including the newly announced Sonos Ace Ultra over-ear headphones. That’s handy if you want to move around your house and still get audio from the TV, or simply want to keep the sound to yourself.

You can also add Sonos's wireless speakers as the surrounds, including the Era 100, which we gave a five-star rating. There's the option to transform its portable speakers, such as the Move 2 and Play models, into surrounds.

Sound quality

So, how does the Beam Ultra actually perform? While we will have to wait until we have it in our test room to deliver a final verdict, we got a taste of the soundbar’s audio performance at the demo.

Sonos kicked off with a Dolby Atmos mix of Harry Styles’ Ready Steady Go!, and the vocals felt clear, direct, and expansive, which immediately drew us into the track.

There are four AI Speech Enhancement levels to choose from, and we got a chance to hear them at various levels. As you would hope, these made voices even clearer and more centred, but we need to listen more to see how they affect the rest of the sound before deciding if they are worth using.

The instrumentals sounded reasonably well-placed around the soundstage, with the guitar plucking in the mid-section delivered with a strong sense of precision.

Next, some TV. The first episode of Widow’s Bay in Dolby Atmos showed off the bar’s wide soundfield, as atmospheric choral singing and crashing waves surrounded the listener as we followed a fisherman on a nighttime ocean trip. These built to a spooky crescendo, which demonstrated the bar’s promising dynamic handling.

From our first listen, the bass was not the deepest, but the soundbar delivered refined and detailed lower frequencies that gave the demo scenes a strong foundation.

As we said, we will hold off on delivering until we have reviewed the bar properly, but this initial listen made a promising first impression.

Early verdict

The Beam Ultra’s upgraded speaker arrangement and stylish design make us hopeful that the new model will build on Sonos's strong soundbar heritage.

Judging by this initial listening session, this latest soundbar continues to deliver clear vocals and an engaging overall experience.

Stay tuned for our full review, where we’ll compare the bar with the Beam Gen 2 and Arc Ultra to establish whether it’s the ideal combination of both or an awkward middle ground, before also testing it against rivals from the likes of Sony and Samsung.

MORE:

Here is our review of the Sonos Beam Gen 2

These are the best soundbars

And check out the best Dolby Atmos soundbars on the market

The original Pro-Ject Debut broke cover at the end of the 1990s, carving out a stellar reputation as one of the best-value decks for buyers who wanted a terrific budget turntable that delivered that coveted combination of reliability and simplicity.

Like a young executive upgrading their home as they climb the corporate ladder, the Debut line has become steadily more premium over time, with 2023’s Award-winning Debut Pro making the transition to a more upmarket price of £699 / $999 / AU$1079 to significant acclaim.

At a not-trivial £999 / $1499 / AU$2349, the new Debut 10 Reference turntable once again moves the price needle upwards. Sporting a similar overarching design to the Pro-Ject Debut Pro, this new iteration incorporates a new tonearm, platter and sub-platter as it looks to compete in the higher echelons of vinyl society.

The Debut Reference 10 has traded Cup-A-Soup for caviar, but in moving even further upmarket, does Pro-Ject still remember its Award-winning roots?

Build & design

We have few complaints about the construction of the Debut Reference 10. Certain ‘blingier’ design elements won’t be for everyone, but there’s little question that this is a turntable of admirable build quality.

Those blingier elements include a rather whopping aluminium bearing block and counterweight attached to a carbon fibre tonearm, contrasting starkly with the matte finish of the MDF chassis. The turntable is only available in the satin black finish of our review sample, a colourway that, in our experience, is susceptible to attracting fingermarks.

The Debut Reference 10 incorporates a good deal of shining metal in its construction, from the various milled aluminium components – including an optional record puck and that massive shining counterweight – to the height-adjustable damped feet at its base.

The main platter of the belt-driven record player is made from acrylic, designed to contribute to what Pro-Ject describes as a “natural, liquid sound signature” while reducing the need for additional damping materials.

The main platter is paired with an aluminium sub-platter, machined to add mass to the ensemble and further reduce unwanted sonic resonances, sitting atop a main bearing that uses a stainless steel axle with a bronze bushing.

Setting the Debut Reference 10 apart from its forebears is a new 10-inch tonearm – a good deal longer than the 8.6-inch model of the Debut Pro – made using a carbon-fibre and aluminium sandwich construction. According to Pro-Ject, this longer arm helps reduce tracking and inner-groove distortion, thus improving the resultant sonic fidelity.

At the end of the tonearm is Pro-Ject’s own Pick It Pro Balanced moving magnet cartridge, a revised version of the brand’s Pick It model, and built for reduced noise and interference via its balanced signal transmission.

Nothing here is tricky to set up or to use. The cartridge comes accurately aligned in the tonearm’s headshell, while a detachable acrylic dust cover clicks in and out of place without much trouble. You’ll need to attach the small anti-skating weight and large counterweight to set the cartridge’s recommended 2g tracking force, and while there aren’t any numbers marked on the arm to assist you, Pro-Ject thoughtfully provides a stylus weight scale in the box.

Pro-Ject also provides a decent-quality detachable tonearm lead, which allows an avenue for future upgrading, meaning you can try different leads depending on your personal preference. There is also a mini XLR cable provided to make a balanced connection with Pro-Ject’s own suitably equipped phono stages.

Internally, the Debut Reference 10’s 15V AC motor is decoupled from the rest of the turntable and housed in its own substantial base to prevent vibrations from transferring to the chassis. A small switch on the left-hand side of the deck controls your turntable’s speed electronically, with a click to the left setting it to 33⅓ RPM and a click to the right setting it to 45 RPM.

If you want to go up to 78 RPM, you’ll need to attach the alternative round belt to the outer edge of the deck’s larger pulley, and then move the speed changer to its right-hand setting. The belt does slip off a couple of times as we test out our test turntable’s 78 RPM rotation, but after a few tries, we manage to get everything spinning at the speed we require.

Sound

There’s a weight of expectation sitting on the Pro-Ject’s shoulders as we connect it to our trusty Naim Nait XS 3 stereo amplifier and a pair of five-star Epos ES-7N standmounts.

We need to know exactly what this player can do, so to fully spotlight the extent of the Debut Reference 10’s abilities, we also spend time listening to it plugged into our reference Burmester 088/911 MkIII pre/power combination and a pair of the super-revealing PMC MB2 SE loudspeakers.

These choppy waters aren’t short of rival sharks willing to take a chunk out of the Debut Reference 10, including the Award-winning Rega Planar 3 RS Edition (£1099 / $1795 / AU$2399) and the new Technics SL-1500CS (£1099 / $1800 / AU$2499).

We don’t let the Debut Reference 10 off lightly as we spin our first records, either. We flit between Beethoven’s challenging Ninth Symphony and Dirty Diana from Michael Jackson’s Bad, yet the Pro-Ject takes everything admirably in its stride. Beethoven’s Ninth is handled with precision, authority and stability, while Dirty Diana is suffused with bite and ample lower-end grip.

So easily could the former have sounded muddled and the latter hurried, but Pro-Ject’s impressive performer gives each track just the right amount of rope – not too much for the music to sound strangled and restricted, not too little for things to become slipshod or hurried.

This finely judged balance isn’t the only weapon in the Reference 10’s arsenal. The Pro-Ject’s delivery sounds clear, organised and authoritative, and its presentation is open and spacious, too. Resolution levels are impressive, be it the punchy percussion scattered across Bad or the hazy basslines that are the trademark of Nas’ Illmatic.

The Debut Reference 10 has won us over, but how does it shape up against its key rivals? The Technics SL-1500CS sounds more powerful and authoritative thanks to the deck’s considerable sonic brawn, whereas Rega’s raucously entertaining Planar 3 RS Edition continues to lead the pack when it comes to rhythmic and dynamic expression.

In a pitched battle against the Debut Reference 10, the Rega outguns its Pro-Ject rival, bringing so much snap and verve to Jackson’s Dirty Diana that the Reference 10 can’t quite keep up. For making you want to don your white suit and bust out your best Moonwalk, the Rega remains the king of this particular castle.

That doesn’t, by any means, render the Pro-Ject obsolete or unworthy of praise. This is still a terrifically talented turntable, and with the Rega’s recent price hike taking it from £999 to £1099 in the UK, one that costs a not-inconsiderable chunk of money less.

Drop back to something a little slower-paced, such as Tom Jones’ Did Trouble Me, and the Pro-Ject is back in its element. Jones’ voice is as rich and smooth as a cigar soaked in malt whisky, and the Debut Reference 10 has the requisite weight and warmth to give the gospel tune that lovely feeling of soulful sincerity.

Verdict

Amid such strong competition, there was always a danger that the Pro-Ject Debut Reference 10 might become lost among the crowd. After all, when you’re up against the likes of Rega and Technics, you’re always going to have your work cut out.

Fortunately, the Debut Reference 10 is talented enough in its own right to grant it significant appeal. For its expertly judged blend of sonic authority and spaciousness, not to mention its quality build and ease of use, the Reference 10 is a smart choice for customers not willing to break the £1000 / $1500 barrier.

Review published: 9th September 2026

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Build 5
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Rega Planar 3 RS Edition

Also consider the Technics SL-1500CS

Read our Rega Planar 3/Nd3 review

Best turntables: top record players tested by our expert reviewers

The US brand has yet to make much of a mark in the world of headphones, though. Sonos’s first pair of wireless cans, the over-ear Sonos Ace, scored a disappointing three-star rating when we reviewed them back in 2024, and were outperformed by its Sony and Bose rivals.

As we said in our review: “the Sonos skip over the finer details and simply don’t stir the emotions like the very best pairs do.” Room for improvement, then.

This latest effort could spell a fresh start, though, with the new Sonos Ace Ultra headphones promising improved features and teasing a “rich, detailed audio” that aims to be more on par with the competitive premium wireless headphones market.

To get an idea of what the new headphones can do, I had an initial listen to the new Ace Ultra can at a hands-on launch session in Berlin during the IFA 2026 showcase.

Price

Sonos’s newest cans will set you back £399 / $449 / AU$699, pitting them against the Award-winning Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones, which launched at £400 / $450 / AU$699. That’s some tough competition already for the bushy-tailed Sonos hopefuls.

The original Ace headphones launched at £449 / $449 / AU$699, but they are currently available for less at £299 / $299 / AU$449. Surprisingly, Sonos says they will keep the original Ace on sale alongside the new step-up model, rather than Ace Ultra being a direct replacement.

Design and build

As I slip the demo pair of Ace Ultra headphones over my head, the first thing that becomes obvious is that Sonos is looking to prioritise wearer comfort. The soft memory foam ear cushions and the firm adjustable headband make it easy to imagine that, over longer listening sessions, the Ace Ultra would be easy to live with.

The ear pads attach magnetically and you can buy replacement ear cushions from the Sonos store, and you can even replace the battery yourself. That is great from a sustainability and cost perspective, and it’s all too rare from the major tech brands.

The Ace Ultra look very similar to the original Ace, but under the hood you will find brand-new Sonos-designed 40mm drivers. In theory, that should give the new headphones a big boost in sound quality.

Sonos has also included two more colour options as well as the classic Black and White: Agave (which looks like a greenish blue) and Sand.

Instead of opting for touch controls like many of its rivals, Sonos has once again gone for tactile buttons on the side of each cup, including controls to adjust noise-cancelling settings and power. The silver slider, or ‘content key’, gives you the same functionality as the previous model, so you can control volume, pause, and answer calls by sliding it up and down.

Features

If you hold down that content key slider, you can make the most of Sonos’s newly named ‘Fabric’ feature, which encompasses the multi-room capability of the brand’s ecosystem. This includes using the 'headphone linking' feature, which lets you transfer sound from a Sonos speaker or soundbar to the Ace Ultra headphones. This feature was restricted to select soundbar models in the original Ace, so it’s great to see the full feature that works with all current Sonos speakers on board this time around.

I get to see this in action during the demo, as the sound jumped from the Sonos Move 2 portable speaker to the headphones with a touch of a button in a matter of seconds. We then move to a different room, where the sound again transfers to a different Sonos speaker with the same ease.

A lot is going on behind the scenes, but the short of it is that the sound jumps to whatever product is within the closest proximity. It was all pretty impressive to watch, and it certainly speaks to the unique setup that you can get if you have several Sonos products in your home.

Active noise cancellation (ANC) is on board again, and Sonos claims that its effect is twice as powerful as the original Ace headphones. It’s an adaptive system which should be able to adjust in intensity as your surroundings change, and can also take into account any gaps in the seal due to glasses or hair. Presumably this is partly down to the fact that the new model boasts ten mics compared to eight used on the original Ace from 2024.

As with the previous Ace headphones, the Ace Ultra offer an Aware mode, which lets outside sounds in to keep you mindful of your surroundings, and there’s also support for Dolby Atmos spatial audio content with head tracking.

Battery life is a very healthy 35 hours with ANC activated (up from 30 hours from the original Ace) – that’s five more than the Sony WH-1000XM6’s claim of 30 hours under the same conditions. Sonos also says you can get three hours of playback from just three minutes of fast-charging, which is the same as the previous model.

The higher-quality aptX Lossless Bluetooth codec is supported for streaming files up to 16-bit/44.1kHz, while native support for 16-bit/48kHz resolution is available via a wired USB-C connection.

I didn’t get to connect the newly updated Sonos 27app to the headphones myself during the demo, but I get a glimpse of a few new features, including an interactive, granular volume dial that is activated by placing two of your fingers on the screen at the same time, then twisting to adjust.

Sound quality

So, how do the headphones actually sound? I had a chance to listen to the new cans during the brief demo, so what follows is an initial impression of the performance. We will have to wait for our review sample and put them through our comprehensive testing process before giving a final verdict.

With music streaming from Qobuz, I start with Muna’s Dancing on the Wall, and the sound is portrayed with a decent sense of spaciousness, and the instrumentals are reasonably well-placed around the soundfield. There’s a good sense of power from the bass, and it gives the track a solid foundation without overpowering the rest of the sound.

Moving to keep going! by Montaigne, the width of the soundstage really continues to blossom, although it's hard to get a handle on how well the Ace Ultra are handling the swell of dynamics during the track's intro in our brief listen.

It will be interesting to hear how the Ace Ultra measure up when pitted against price rivals such as the Sony WH-1000XM6 and the five-star Sennheiser HDB 630 during a longer listen, especially when it comes to subtler detail, dynamics and rhythmic ability. Those are key sonic features that are harder to discern during our brief demo, and we're hoping that Sonos has taken note of our concerns from the older Ace model to bring greater improvements here in the Ace Ultra.

The headphones’ noise-cancelling does seem to be working its magic, however. The conversation happening a couple of metres away in the demo room is barely audible, helping me feel more immersed in the music as it plays. Again, we’ll have to test these new over-ears in a greater variety of environments to see how their ANC quality fares against the best in class.

It’s also worth noting that I don’t get a chance to adjust the EQ controls during this demo, which could also have an impact on the sound quality.

Early verdict

The Ace Ultra have kept much of what we liked about Sonos’s debut over-ear headphones, with a comfortable and practical design, and new features that should make them appealing to those with multiple Sonos products at home already.

Judging by this initial experience, it seems the new premium Sonos wireless headphones offer clear vocals and a reasonably organised sound, along with improved ANC, but we’ll need further dedicated testing time to discover if they surpass the original Aces’ three-star appraisal and come close to – or even beat – the current class leaders in this highly competitive category.

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At first we thought the SL-1500CS was intended to replace the original, but Technics sees it as the next step in its turntable hierarchy, with the standard model continuing in production.

Build & design

What’s the difference between the two? It comes down to the direct-drive’s motor controller circuit. The new SL-1500CS design repurposes the company’s Delta-Sigma Drive technology, as seen in its digital amplifiers, to give the motor a purer signal feed. The result is a motor that spins more smoothly and accurately. This may not sound like much, but it affects every aspect of the record player’s performance.

Elsewhere, everything feels reassuringly familiar. The robust-feeling plinth remains a sturdy mix of aluminium, ABS and glass fibre to deliver a rigid, low-resonance structure. It is only available in a single finish, Metallic Grey, and to our eyes at least, looks smart.

The resonance-control theme continues with the SL-1500CS’s platter. It is made of die-cast aluminium and heavily damped with rubber on the underside to produce a more inert support for the record.

The record player’s ‘S’-shaped tonearm is a well-proven aluminium design. Its bearings are smooth and relatively play-free, while the detachable headshell makes cartridge swapping a breeze. The easily adjustable arm height is another tick in the Ease-Of-Use column. The lift/lower lever works well enough but doesn’t feel particularly precise or positive in use.

Technics has included an Ortofon 2M Red moving magnet cartridge as part of the package, and it is a good choice. This much-respected design is an unfussy yet capable performer that tracks securely at a steady 1.8g.

Speed switching is easily done at the touch of a button, with the SL-1500CS offering 78 RPM alongside the usual 33 ⅓ and 45 choices. We like the way the platter gets quickly up to speed without the judder and fuss of most belt-driven rivals.

The SL-1500CS is a semi-automatic design. It can be set to lift the arm at the end of a record side. This takes around ten revolutions to kick in, so don’t worry if it doesn’t happen as soon as the stylus tip reaches the run-out groove.

There is also a built-in phono stage, unchanged from the standard SL-1500C. Most included phono stages tend to be stop-gap efforts that are easily bettered by modestly priced outboard units. That’s not the case here.

We think this Technics phono module is good enough to hold its head high against most sub-£200 phono stages we’ve heard. If the urge to upgrade does strike, the circuit can be taken out of the signal path with the flick of a small switch on the back panel.

Setting up the SL-1500CS is easy. Once the deck is out of the packaging, the user just needs to fit the platter, attach the headshell, and set the tracking weight and bias to match. The Ortofon cartridge is already fitted and aligned in the headshell.

A quartet of large spring and rubber feet provide a degree of isolation from external vibrations, though as with any turntable, a level, low-resonance support is still recommended.

The deck’s tonearm leads are detachable. They do the job, but still leave a little too much on the table for our tastes. They would be our first port of call when the urge to upgrade strikes. All the SL-1500CS’s sockets are deeply inset under the plinth. While this makes for a neater installation, making the initial connections is more fiddly than we would like.

A record player at this level demands a good quality partnering system. We get great results with the Technics feeding an Arcam A15+ amplifier and KEF LS50 Meta speakers. We also installed the Technics into our reference system of Cyrus Phono Signature/PSX-R2 phono stage, Burmester 088/911 MkIII amplifier and ATC SCM50 speakers, to really put a spotlight on its performance.

Our benchmarks are the similarly-priced Rega Planar 3 RS Edition and the standard SL-1500C (fitted with an Ortofon 2M cartridge as standard). The comparisons are intriguing.

Sound

How much difference does improved motor control make? It turns out that the answer is quite a lot. Given how similar the two Technics decks are, the sonic differences are surprisingly large in a suitably transparent system.

The SL-1500CS is a livelier and more energetic performer. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony comes through with greater conviction, with more expressive dynamic shifts and a stronger handle on the individual instrumental strands.

The new model sounds composed and organised, making more sense of the music. We’re having more fun too, thanks to an increased sense of verve and drama.

Both Technics decks are supplied with the same Ortofon cartridge, so there is little difference in tonal character. They both sound even and balanced, though the new model offers notably more insight into the recording.

In general terms, the SL-1500CS proves to be an excellent performer for the money. That improved detail resolution doesn’t just better its cheaper stablemate; it is impressive for the price too. Control and composure are also top class.

We love the Technics deck’s sense of power when playing large-scale music. Its presentation is big, muscular and punchy. Crucially, it avoids sounding brutish; there is too much in the way of finesse to let that happen.

However, given appropriate music, the low-end kicks hard with plenty of weight and authority. Bob Marley’s Catch A Fire comes through with its energy and attitude fully intact. Move up the frequency range, and there is a good degree of clarity, with Marley’s voice coming through with natural warmth, body and emotion.

Add an impressive sense of stability coupled to surefooted rhythmic ability, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is one of the best record players we’ve heard anywhere near this price.

Our current class leader is Rega’s mighty Planar 3 RS Edition, of course. This comes fitted with the excellent Nd5 moving magnet cartridge, and sets sky-high performance standards for the price.

Unlike the standard Planar 3, the RS Edition features electronic speed change as well as a smarter finish on the plinth. There is no built-in phono stage, so this isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison, but it is close enough to prove useful.

Cutting to the chase, the Rega is ultimately the more transparent and insightful performer. It tells us more about the recording and edges ahead when it comes to dynamic subtlety and rhythmic precision. The Technics counters with more powerful, though less articulate bass and a fine sense of stability, so it isn’t all one-way traffic.

Verdict

If you are after the most sonically capable record player at this level, then go for the Rega. It is a superb product that’s beautifully engineered and a pleasure to use. However, the Technics SL-1500CS isn’t short of appeal either.

It too is superbly made, and feels like it will survive decades of use. If you are the kind of person that loves swapping cartridges, it makes that so easy. Factor in the impressive built-in phono stage and there are enough plus points for the Technics to be considered a worthy alternative to the Rega. The SL-1500CS deserves a high place on any shortlist.

Review published: 7th September 2026

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Build 5
• Features 5

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Read our review of the Rega Planar 3 RS Edition

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Given the significantly larger internal volumes and formidable driver arrays featured on those towering rivals, the Parker Duo Diamond Edition’s chances don’t look good. In the event, it turns out that these modestly-proportioned Swedish boxes can look after themselves.

Any company that names its product ranges after Jazz greats shows, at the very least, a good amount of musical appreciation. Marten invokes the likes of Coltrane, Mingus and Oscar, among others, and uses the Parker name for its step-up series.

It may be shocking for some to discover that the Parker Duo on test here is merely one of the early steps on the Marten ladder. Unusually, it is available in two forms: the standard version of the Duo (£11,995 / $19,000 / AU$18,500) and the Diamond Edition on test here.

Design & build

The standard Parker Duo uses ceramic diaphragms in both its 25mm tweeter and 19cm mid/bass unit. Its crossover point is set at a fairly typical 2200Hz, and the network design is a mixture of first and second-order filters. A rear-firing 23cm aluminium passive radiator is used to tune the bass.

Sensitivity is claimed to be 88dB/W/m and nominal impedance is rated at 6 ohms. Note, the minimum impedance is just 3.1 ohms, which suggests these speakers will perform best with a muscular amplifier.

The Diamond Edition adds more spice to the formula by swapping the standard model’s ceramic tweeter for a diamond dome, and upgrading the crossover’s polypropylene capacitors for more exotic copper-foil types. The internal wiring is upgraded too. Everything else, including the electrical specifications, remains the same.

See the Diamond Edition in real life, and it gets off to a good start. Build quality is as immaculate as the price demands. The gloss black finish of our review samples is wonderfully deep and mirror-like.

Not all our team like the unusual styling of this product, or the fixed metal grilles over the drive units, but we have no complaints about fit and finish.

The Parker Duo’s front panel is 6cm narrower than the rear, which looks a bit odd at first. This unusual shape reduces the build up of internal standing waves, while the use of 35mm-thick M-Board (a proprietary laminated material) for the enclosure’s panels is claimed to produce a more rigid and inert structure than more conventional alternatives.

The performance of any standmounter is massively dependent on the quality of its support. Marten makes dedicated stands for the Duo, and they are impressively weighty and rigid. Their construction is based around three rigid pillars and a thick steel base, fitted with four isolator feet co-developed with IsoAcoustic. These stands cost a chunky £3295 / $5000 / AU$5750 per pair, but are good enough for us to consider them an essential part of the deal.

Any product at this level positively demands a top-class system. Our reference set-up consists of Naim’s ND555 / 555 PS DR music streamer and the Technics SL-1000R/Kiseki Purpleheart record player feeding a Burmester 088/911 MkIII pre/power amplifier combination.

The cables are a mix of premium offerings from Chord Company and Vertere Acoustics. For benchmarking purposes, we have the ATC SCM50 and the PMC MB2 SE speakers.

These Marten speakers perform best when given plenty of space to breathe. In our 3 x 7 x 5m test room, they sound most at home with the front panel around 90cm from the back wall and angled in slightly towards the listening position so that the tweeter axis crosses a little behind our heads.

Given such a placement, these speakers produce a lovely, consistent tonal balance combined with the kind of three-dimensional stereo imaging that almost feels physical.

Sound

That huge price tag may lead many to expect sonic fireworks every time these speakers play music. That’s not how it works.

The Parker Duo Diamond Edition does exactly what every truly great speaker should, and that’s reproduce the source material with the minimum of alteration. So, if you have a poor compressed recording, or less than capable electronics in your system, these standmounts will merely reflect that, imperfections and all.

Unusually for such revealing and analytical performers, these Marten speakers won’t go out of their way to highlight those flaws. You can hear the shortcomings easily, of course, but they remain in proportion, and the good parts of the recording will still shine.

However, feed these speakers a diet of great recordings – classics such as Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue or Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, for example – and they will turn in a performance full of subtlety, dynamics and cohesion that’s almost eerily convincing.

That the Marten Parker Duo Diamond Edition are capable of a high level of resolution should not be a surprise. Such qualities should be a given at this level. However, what sets them apart from most rivals is the degree to which they step beyond the mechanics of hi-fi – you know, a cone moving backs and forward, crossover components and enclosure resonances – to put the music front and centre.

These speakers sound impressively natural regardless of whether we are talking about rendering instrumental textures in classic jazz recordings or the nuances of Billie Eilish and Khalid’s vocals on the wonderful song, Lovely.

When we play Tchaikovsky’s Marché Slave Op.31, these Marten standmounts stay controlled even when pushed hard to high levels. Just as pleasingly, they refuse to harden up and compress to any significant degree under such circumstances.

There are certain boxes that need to be ticked for a speaker to succeed at this level. Tonality has to be spot on, and it is. These standmounts sound neutral while still displaying natural warmth and richness; this is a rare combination that few rivals manage.

Next, dynamic expression should be top class. That’s another tick here, whether we are talking about the wide-ranging sweeps of Tchaikovsky’s symphony or the finesse needed to get the most from the Billie Eilish/Khalid track, the Duo Diamond Edition manages it.

Then we come to rhythmic drive, a quality many hi-fi products struggle with. A quick spin of Michael Jackson’s Who Is It? reveals that these Marten speakers excel in this area too, communicating the song’s momentum and energy beautifully.

We haven’t even got to the icing on the cake yet. These relatively small speakers do bass, proper deep bass, way beyond that we would expect for this size of standmounter. As we listen to the Jackson track we are floored by the power and authority of the lows. The Parker Duo Diamond Edition hit hard and true, delivering the lows with enviable articulation and precision.

Compared to the cheaper but appreciably larger ATC SCM50 speakers, the Martens deliver richer, punchier bass with broadly comparable extension. The company claims low-frequency extension down to an impressive 36Hz ±2 dB. That sounds believable.

Verdict

The real shame of a product like this is that very few people will actually be able to hear and enjoy it, given its price and restricted exposure.

However, if you are one of the lucky few with the budget and system to do a speaker like this justice, we recommend a serious audition; the Marten Parker Duo Diamond Edition is a true endgame speaker.

Review published: 2nd September 2026

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Build 5
• Compatibility 4

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They can deliver bigger images and usually cost much less than the largest TVs, and do so while sat just inches from your screen, rather than having to squat in the middle of your living room.

It’s also easy to see why Hisense UST projectors in particular have done so well.

Hisense has more experience with them than most brands, which now typically pays off in superior performance levels, and it has the economies of scale to sell UST projectors more cheaply than most rivals.

Even by Hisense’s standards, though, the PT1 is quite the head turner, offering full tri-chroma (RGB) laser projection, built-in Vidaa smarts, a premium design and a potent integrated sound system for just £1599 in the UK.

Is this really Hisense’s biggest bargain to date, though, or does the price come with strings attached?

Price

The Hisense PT1’s £1599 / $2199 / AU$2500 price is aggressive for any UST projector, never mind one as well specified and richly featured as this one.

If your projector doesn’t need to be a UST model, Hisense has a strong ‘coffee table’ offering in the shape of the C2 Ultra, while BenQ’s Award-winning W2720i is a strong rival if you’re after a projector focused more on a dedicated home theatre approach.

Design

The PT1 doesn't stray too far from the conventional rectangular UST projector design, with speakers on the front edge and a lens slit on top. That's quite a contrast to models such as the futuristic AWOL Vision Aetherion Max and gleaming metallic Leica Cine 1.

It offers enough eye-catching refinement in its build quality and the crisp bronze metallic trim and side detailing, though, to look like it should cost more than it does.

Hisense’s love affair with UST projectors started with the notion that when partnered with a screen they could essentially replace the traditional TV set, so it’s no great surprise to find the PT1 shipping with pretty much the same long, sleekly finished and button-packed remote control you get with the brand’s latest premium TVs. It even has the same solar recharging panel at the bottom of its front edge, and a series of buttons for directly accessing various streaming apps.

Features

As a UST projector, the PT1 is capable of producing images as large as 150 inches when sat just inches from your wall. However, thanks to a slightly restrained claimed peak brightness of 2500 lumens (less than you get with Hisense’s cheaper PL2 UST model), you’re probably better off thinking of 120 inches or so as being the maximum image size this projector can stretch to while retaining the sort of punchy images you’ll likely want in today’s HDR world.

Talking of HDR, the PT1 joins other current Hisense laser projectors in supporting all four of the main HDR formats: HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. Such comprehensive HDR support remains uncommon in the projector world, and it means the PT1 will always play the best version of any HDR content you feed it. It’s able to apply dynamic tone mapping to HDR10 content, too, in a bid to optimise such images to the projector’s capabilities.

The PT1 is capable of playing 4K images through its 2.07 million micro mirror DLP optical engine courtesy of Texas Instruments' XPR technology (a combination of pixel shifting and fast DLP mirror ‘flashing’), and its light comes from three separate lasers, one for each of the red, green and blue colour elements.

This is the most important way it differs from the cheaper PL2 model, which only uses single-element laser lighting, and it should enable the PT1 to produce a much wider colour range.

In fact, Hisense claims it can reproduce 110 per cent of the AV world’s most extreme (and actually rarely used) BT.2020 spectrum, making full coverage of the smaller DCI-P3 spectrum typically used in HDR mastering well within its reach.

The PT1 also carries an AI Colour mode that claims to fine-tune every frame to deliver, in Hisense’s words, “richer, more accurate colours that go beyond what typical displays can offer”.

The PT1's built-in smart system is the ninth generation of Hisense’s own Vidaa platform. While Vidaa might not be the most glamorous or ‘intelligent’ smart system on the market, it is straightforwardly organised and presented, making it relatively easy to use.

It also carries all the main global and UK apps, including the relatively new Freely UK platform that lets you livestream most of the UK’s terrestrial broadcaster channels rather than having to depend on an aerial to receive them. This is particularly handy given that the PT1 no longer sports the digital tuner input you used to get on Hisense’s earliest laser TV projectors.

Connections are still decent, though. They include three HDMI ports (two with ‘enhanced’ HDMI 2.1 gaming features), a USB-C port, an optical digital audio output, a headphone jack and a LAN port. There's also wi-fi and Bluetooth support, including Apple AirPlay.

Home theatre fans will be pleased to hear that the PT1’s available picture presets include both Filmmaker and IMAX Enhanced modes, while gamers will appreciate the projector’s support for 240Hz frame rates (at HD resolution), 4K resolution at 120Hz refresh rates, ALLM switching, and a reasonably speedy (for a projector) measured input lag of 37.1ms with 60Hz feeds in the default Game mode.

This input lag can be reduced, too, to 20.4ms if you activate the DLP Turbo feature in the picture menus. Activating DLP Turbo, though, switches off all your auto and manual keystone correction work – not ideal for us given the unexpected difficulties we experienced with getting the PT1’s provided auto keystone correction feature to get the edges of the images straight.

The relatively deep and substantial bodywork associated with UST projectors often helps them integrate substantial sound systems, and the PT1 sports an unusual 2.0.2 channel arrangement, where the two main front-firing speakers are partnered with a pair of up-firing units. Total amplification is 46 watts.

Picture quality

If you’re careful which settings you use, the PT1 is capable of delivering plenty of the impressively natural, balanced and refined pictures we’ve come to expect from Hisense UST projectors.

Provided you use its Filmmaker Mode or IMAX Enhanced presets with HDR10 footage, and the Dark Dolby Vision setting with Dolby Vision content, images enjoy a wonderfully no-nonsense and essentially glitch-free quality.

This is expertly built on a combination of remarkably deep and consistent blacks for such an affordable UST projector. There is excellent sharpness and texturing with both native 4K and upscaled HD sources; and eye-catchingly natural skin tones of the sort that elude so many other similarly affordable projectors.

Motion with 24p movie sources looks natural out of the box in the presets we’ve just recommended too, without the need to mess around with any motion compensation settings.

Both the Filmmaker Mode and IMAX Enhanced presets default to the Film option for the PT1’s Ultra Smooth Motion setting, confirming the sense we’ve got from other recent Hisense projectors that this Film setting is now one of the most cinematic movie motion presets in the projector world.

However, while the Filmmaker Mode, IMAX Enhanced and Dolby Vision Dark modes are endlessly watchable in pretty much fully blacked out rooms, they look a little dim and dull in any even half-bright living room environment.

This doesn’t matter, of course, if you’re looking for a projector to go into a dedicated home cinema room, but UST projectors such as the PT1 are typically positioned as lifestyle options, designed to cope with bright as well as dark room settings. So, while the PT1’s lack of brightness versus most UST projectors might actually serve its pictures well when it comes to their excellent black levels, they become a limitation if you’re looking for a UST projector to essentially take the place of a living room television. Don’t forget, either, that if you try to push the PT1’s pictures towards the biggest extremes of its claimed screen size range, the picture will shed significantly more brightness.

It’s perhaps telling that if you go into the PT1’s Screen Type menu, the only options available are Wide Angle ALR screen, High Gain ALR Screen 1, High Gain ALR Screen 2, and No Screen. There’s no option for a relatively neutral or negative gain screen of the sort a home cinema purist might prefer to use, perhaps acknowledging that the PT1’s limited brightness needs extra ‘help’ from whatever surface it’s being projected onto.

We were able to confirm that the PT1’s most accurate image modes do indeed benefit from a brightness boost when projected onto the 120-inch AWOL Vision Cinematic+ ALR Motorised floor-rising acoustic screen. However, the screen’s relatively high gain made dark scenes look a little less convincing in a dark room than they did on our usual almost-neutral-gain screen.

It also adds to the overall cost of the projector set-up, of course, as a good-quality ALR (Ambient Light Reflecting) screen is considerably more expensive than a regular neutral-gain screen.

Naturally, the PT1 has picture settings that can push the picture quite significantly harder in terms of brightness and colour saturation than the relatively accurate modes we’ve recommended so far. Using the HDR Standard, HDR Dynamic or, to a lesser extent, Dolby Vision Bright modes, however, has a really quite strange impact on the projector’s colour performance, with the tones that generally looked so balanced and authentic in Filmmaker Mode especially suddenly starting to take on some quite ‘off’ tones.

A kind of bluish green hue tends to dominate the overall tone of the HDR Standard setting, while skin sometimes takes on the sort of tones you only see in the real world with people who’ve spent way too long on a sun bed.

For example, the leaden skies over Los Angeles as Agent K heads to the old orphanage in Blade Runner 2049 take on a curious purple hue at times, and what should be subtle tonal differences become overstated, drawing too much attention to themselves by simply not looking subtle or authentic enough.

The brighter settings do create a more HDR feeling with HDR sources, including giving peak bright highlights impressive punch for a display technology that doesn’t have any local dimming processing to draw on. The overcooked nature of some of the colour tones is reduced a little by the natural desaturating effect of ambient light, too, if you’re in a non-blacked-out space.

Overall, though, we don’t find the Standard and Dynamic HDR10 settings and Dolby Vision Bright modes as truly engaging and immersive as we would have liked while using the projector in day-to-day living room conditions.

The PT1’s brighter presets also cause an increase in the rainbow effect, where the DLP projector engine causes stripes of pure red, green and blue to flit over stand-out bright objects, though it is far from the worst offender we’ve seen in this respect.

Sound quality

You certainly can’t accuse the PT1 of not trying to deliver a compelling audio performance to go with its king-sized pictures. In fact, if anything, it tries a bit too hard.

At first hearing, you’re immediately impressed by two striking audio achievements: loudness and the size of the soundstage. The speakers mounted on the projector’s front edge drive their sound forward with impressive power and volume, easily filling the gap between the projector and seating position with a potently expressed three-dimensional space.

The smaller up-firing speakers built into the PT1’s top are a little less well-rounded, but they deliver a palpable sense of height and plenty of subtle placement details within the resulting vertical wall of sound. Cooling fan noise, meanwhile, is noticeable by its absence, even during the quietest movie scenes.

Lower mid-range sounds are rich and rounded, too. The projector can even deliver enough bass to give big movie moments a level of heft and scale not found on most integrated TV and projector sound systems.

The only problem is that this bass doesn’t know when to stop, sometimes trying so enthusiastically to reproduce the movie world’s most foundation-troubling low-frequency sounds that the speakers either collapse in on themselves, so that the overall sound becomes swallowed and muted, or succumb to distracting crackles and buzzes.

Deep male voices can sound a bit thick and dominant, too, though we can finish on the good note the audio mostly deserves by adding that voices sound connected with the action on the screen, rather than as if they’re coming from the speakers below.

Verdict

The Hisense PT1 is yet another highly competent projector from Hisense. In its most accurate, dark room-friendly picture settings, in fact, it’s rather more than competent, delivering excellent images for its money, with outstanding black levels and natural colours.

Its relative lack of brightness compared with many of today’s UST projectors, though, together with some colour issues when using its brightest picture settings, make the PT1 less of a dark room/bright room all-rounder than people looking for the convenience of a UST projector might want it to be.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 4

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As it says on the tin, these are Sennheiser ‘Pro’ headphones, which means they come from the part of Sennheiser which is still fully Sennheiser, designed in Wedemark, Germany, by Sennheiser’s pro-gear people, then hand-assembled in the company’s extensive manufacturing facilities in Romania.

The HD 480 Pros are, therefore, much differentiated from the consumer Sennheiser brand licensed (though currently up for divestment) by Swiss medical company Sonova, which manufactures its consumer lines like Momentum and Accentum noise-cancellers over in Ireland.

In pro circles, as in consumerland, Sennheiser is a respected brand regarded as providing both quality and reliability. And we often comment that there are bargains to be found in professional headphone ranges, as these haven’t faced quite the surge of raging competition that has marked the last couple of decades of consumer headphones. Not all the HD Pro headphones are priced like these 480s: the HD 280 Pro headphones, say, can be found for as little as £83 / $100 / AU$139. The HD 380 Pros are no longer available, but will be familiar workhorses to many; we use a pair as regular headgear for studio and radio work.

Now here’s the new HD 480 Pro, with quite the price differential from the workaday lower cans, but then these, along with the open-back HD 490 Pro, reside at the very top of the 400 series of purpose-built professional audio headphones. They are priced on Sennheiser's own international sites at £339 / $399 / AU$739, but we have already seen the Australian price significantly discounted.

However, we were supplied the slightly-superior HD 480 Pro ‘Plus’ version, raising the price to £369 / $439 / $819, although the ‘Plus’ bonus is entirely an upgrade from a mere carry bag to a hard travel case like the ones you’d get with upmarket noise-cancelling headphones; there is no change to the headphones themselves for the additional Plus pricing.

Design & facilities

As with the hard case of the Plus version, the exterior design of these closed-back cabled headphones veers towards a consumer look: plain oval headshell and pivoting yokes, rather like those used with increasing monotony in recent years on Sonova’s consumer headphones. Previous Pro models were different: the HD 380 Pro had a yoke design which cut right into the shell, while the yokes and cables on the HD 280 Pros almost entirely obscure the shell, stuck to the outer surface like face-huggers.

Here the oval shell is more like that of the Momentums – free, although significantly larger in size, and not flat-backed but interestingly concave, the smooth surface unadorned other than some almost-invisible writing in black on black, like Disaster Area’s spaceship in Hitchhikers’ Guide, reading ‘HD 480 Pro Professional Studio Headphones’ (image below).

The headband extension system is entirely different to consumer cans however, employing a wide flat steel slider with nicely firm ratchets to keep it at your preferred length on either side. The earcups are velour, for our money better than pleathers and their ilk for hot and heavy use, as well as being very comfortable, and easily replaced. And they include a Sennheiser-patented feature for fit, known as Special Axes Geometry, where the mechanical design is supposed to adapt to any shape of head, maintaining equal and comfortable contact pressure.

Their overall weight will certainly seem remarkably low to anyone used to carrying electronics in their earshells: despite being larger than Momentums they are lighter: 274g on our scale versus 295g for the Momentum 4s (Momentum 5 specs say 290g). You can feel a little added weight from the hanging cable, of course, which here connects via a mini-XLR 4-pin plug to a socket on the left headshell. But there’s a little rubber seal over a socket on the right headshell, which you can switch to the left, should you prefer right-sided cable entry. Super handy.

The cable is long and curly, and at the plugging-in end it has a minijack plug and 6.5mm (quarter-inch) adaptor. A coily cable structure can claim to block cable-borne noise for the wearer, but some studio technicians hate coily cables, because they hang down and make audible tapping noises hitting things as musicians nod their heads! Happily optional non-curly cables are available in 1.8m and 3m lengths. A cable for balanced 4.4mm sockets is also available.

As for the interiors, the HD 480 Pro have 38mm dynamic drivers backed by neodymium magnets, their voice coils described as “ultra-light” without any further detail. The shell design promises multiple stages of passive sound shielding, with the interior chambers designed, says Sennheiser, to eliminate unwanted vibration, reflections and distortion in what it calls a ‘Vibration Attenuation System’.

These models are said to be aimed at being versatile for applications in the studio and beyond, but especially for recording, mixing and production; increasing numbers of mixers and producers are now favouring open-backed models like the HD 490 Pro, but those spill sound, so can’t be used in recording rooms and booths where the privacy of closed shells works both ways.

With mixing and studio work in mind, Sennheiser is presumably targeting a neutral response. Its literature promotes two things in particular: long-term comfort, and tight, accurate bass reproduction.

“With closed-back headphones, a good reproduction of the low-end is usually difficult to achieve,” says Sennheiser. “This is where the HD 480 PRO excel… their low-end is super-accurate and realistic.” notes Jimmy R. Landry, Category Market Manager, Music Industry at Sennheiser.

They claim a response down to -10dB from 3Hz to 28,700Hz, and offer a nominal impedance of 130Ω at 1kHz, making them versatile enough to be driven by sources from professional mixing desks and audio interfaces to laptops and even mobile devices.

Listening sessions

Coily cable attached and the HD 480 Pros under the considered control of the excellent headphone output on Eversolo’s DAC-Z10, we settled in for some serious listening. For this we had the quarter-inch adaptor screwed on to the integrated minijack plug, though later we used the minijack alone into a 2026 MacBook Pro headphone output, which now has DC load detection and adaptive voltage output to suit the headphones plugged in. (The Eversolo conducts a similar analysis.)

Both of these put the headphone socket on our left, but we’d been warming them up with use at a radio studio which had the socket on the right; for this we simply detached the cable from the left headshell, moved the rubber grommet and reattached the cables to the right. This is a very convenient system, and sturdily connected with a four-pin miniDIN using a release tab. We would note, though, that it will get heavy use for those moving the headphones around in the hard shell case which comes with the ‘Plus’ version of these headphones, as you have to detach the cable each time you stow them in that case.

The HD 480 Pros achieve excellent relative accuracy for use in studio and mixing scenarios; bass elements in particular are toned and tight, full but not pumped up. Yet they don’t lack emotion; they’re also a very enjoyable listening when you’re simply there to enjoy the music, for their insight especially – we found ourselves analysing the vocal lines on the Madonna/Kylie Love Sensation, listening to separate Mags from Kyls. The HD 480 Pros easily distinguished between the Madonna vocal line, treated and slightly raspy with age, and the subsequent sexier (and better phrased) Kylie lines. Compare Kylie’s kitten version of the line “It’s more than love… yeh!” with an emotionless Madonna-only version (on the third track of the EP release) to hear one queen of pop very much schooling the other… Kylie wins! We didn’t think too much of the song, but these headphones certainly laid out its pumped-up beats and swirly production tricks to their best advantage.

We used Roon to play Nick Drake’s ‘Bryer Later’ at 24-bit/96kHz, the delicacy of the delicious folk-and-strings instrumental Introduction, then the surprisingly rocky Hazey Jane II, driven along by the chugging guitar of Richard Thompson and the solidity of a Pegg/Mattacks rhythm section from Fairport Convention. Even with levels high, everything held solid here, the bass sufficiently present while nimble and clear in pitch and tone, with the drum work almost entirely tucked in a little pocket behind Drake’s unique vocal, while the horn arrangement sit at far left and right extremes.

It’s a joy to sit under a mix like this under headphones of this clarity; it’s not pumpy, it’s not enthusiastic, it’s just on the money. You’d have to go electrostatic or planar magnetic to hope for more in the way of detail, but here you gain the airshifting power of a conventional dynamic driver to underpin it all.

From our MacBook Pro hard-drive we played Pete Townshend’s 2026 ‘remake’ remixes of the 2019 album ‘Who’. Every element of Ball and Chain was laid clear: the opening guitar intro, the crisp piano motif, the distant soaring guitars joined by close-up acoustic plucking, until Daltrey arrives central and strong, rich and more gravelly even than Madonna, though his energy gives little betrayal of the fact he was 74 when he recorded it.

In addition to giving free access to each element in the mix, the headphones presented the track as a cohesive whole, and it was all tonally spot on from the transducers in their geometrically-angled positions, from Daltrey down to the running bass lines that were delivered at full strength from top to bottom.

We played a lossless Apple Music Classical Session by Max Richter, new arrangements of bits from the ‘Hamnet’ soundtrack. See things that others don’t begins with piano so very gentle that its presence is almost outweighed by the sense of an audience trying not to cough or rustle their programmes around the hall acoustic – which was very successfully created by the Sennheisers, then washed through by the entry of simple mournful strings in a kind of well-tempered version of Pärt-style sadness. It’s a short piece, but made beautiful by the HD 480 Pros.

They loved an open mix, so that while slamming home most of the new Stones album, the relaxed country shuffle of Ringing Hollow had the space to again enjoy each element individually, as well as the song as a whole. Steve Jordan’s drums got the space to shuffle, with the kick drum as only the gentlest of underpinning bass taps, but the snare rim shots snapping through.

This album, which is mastered at quite a high level, did occasionally get a little shouty through the Sennheisers when we took the level above their comfort levels. While the sweet spot was plenty loud enough, those liking even more might find there’s a limit to their smooth delivery.

It was similar with Amy Shark’s It’s Kinda Hot (the chorus sounding very Alex The Astronaut): beautifully handled up to the last few stops, then a little overwhelmed by the combination of complexity and sheer level.

We doublechecked these from the Eversolo DAC’s headphone output and found the same effect, also something odd, where the bass pedal imparted about the same energy all the time even as everything else was turned up, as if the pedal just wasn’t going to push any more no matter where we went. In an all-in-one speaker we might think this to be algorithmic speaker feedback limiting output short of distortion, but here it may just be the physical limit of the phones to give that element any more energy.

We found them impeccably comfortable despite their significant size, although we never quite got the hang of putting glasses on while wearing them, despite a special ‘soft zone’ for this purpose, and Gunnar Dirks, Senior Product Manager for professional headphones, saying specifically that they fit every head precisely and comfortably even if you’re wearing glasses. Not that he's wearing glasses on his LinkedIn photo.

These were very small notes against many hours of listening delight. We used them for at least 12 hours during radio broadcasts, and they proved perfect cans for the studio as the closed shells prevented feedback while the sound all came through at their ‘studio’ monitoring quality. We’ll leave the engineers to complain if the curly cable is tapping on the desk…

Verdict

The HD 480 Pros are extremely high-quality headphones, suited to both studio use via their good passive isolation and relative accuracy, and to music listening, where their high frequencies open up a mix to examination and appreciation, while the bass is tight and full but never swampy. They are quite large but super-comfy, so well-suited to long sessions whether making or enjoying music.

No noise-cancelling, no app, no messing with endless EQ options; we found it all rather relaxing, as well as a reminder that if it’s cabled headphones you’re after, then there are two Sennheisers to choose from, and you certainly shouldn’t ignore the Professionals.

• See all our Australian reviews from Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi magazines

Stereo wireless streaming speakers from Yamaha: two boxes, but the simplicity of an all-in-one system. There's no extended system required, because the speakers contain both amplification and a streaming system (here Yamaha’s MusicCast), so that as a minimum you could just place the speakers, cable them up and start enjoying your hi-fi – with high‑fidelity streaming on offer, an HDMI TV connection, and control from a well-established multiroom-capable app.

And these are most definitely hi-fi, with several of the compromises more generally involved with all-in-one systems going out of the window. There's no lack of stereo separation here, nor any questions over whether a particular manufacturer is able to excel across the hi-fi chain: Yamaha’s MusicCast streaming is well-established, the company makes award-winning amplifiers and AV receivers, and it also has a strong record in loudspeakers going back to the 1950s.

And as musical instrument makers, the Japanese company might even claim a unique insight into the sounds which form our music in the first place.

We were delighted to have the new NX-70A speakers in for review in Sydney, as they were first revealed to the world here in Australia, at the Sydney Hi-Fi Show back in May. Euro-Yamaha had hoped to hold their reveal for the recent High End Vienna, so in Sydney they were slightly anonymised, their product cards redacted, our reportage restricted!

Now at last we can tell all, and listen in earnest, to see how these streaming active speakers neatly straddle the convenience of an all-in-one system with the sonic strengths of genuine stereo hi-fi.

Build & drivers

The Yamaha NX-70A speakers are substantial standmounters, available in black or white, and unusually shaped, with fairly subtle rounded curves and a top plate which rises to be higher at the back (335mm) than the front (315mm). Either side of the rear back spine, a selection of inputs sits among a back plate of lovely shining copper-coloured metal.

The speakers port fairly traditionally to the rear but the cabinets also have grille openings to the rear with more copper-accenting, and most unusually in a curved strip on the top. These we presume to be for passive cooling of the internal electronics: thermal management rather than acoustic design.

Perhaps unusually, that top plate doesn’t have any control buttons, such as a local volume control; it’s clean aside from the grilles at the back, Yamaha’s ‘tuning fork’ logo at the front, and four structural fasteners which secure the top plate to the main cabinet of MDF, enhanced to mitigate vibration, with the front baffle reinforced with a 25mm panel (designed, we’re told, using a laser Doppler Vibrometer). The very front panel layer is an ABS plate, shaped to incorporate a new tweeter waveguide. All this is beautifully integrated, kept clean and attractive up front, with the cool tech stuff going on mainly at the back.

One feature easily overlooked is a small white light and a text display in the black section at the bottom of the left speaker; the display shows the input or song information and other messages. The right speaker has just the white light. The text display might be useful if you’re up close in a desktop situation, but it’s too small (for our old eyes) at a normal listening distance. If you find it intrusive you can set the dimming options to zero, though even this is not quite ‘off’, but then this text panel sometimes shows error messages (e.g. ‘Version Error’ during a firmware update), which might be useful to see.

You get a rather nice half-size remote control included, with a copper-ringed central circle. A set of optional stands is available (A$799.99 in Australia), in the same black and white colour choices as the speakers.

The pricing of the NX-70A ranges them as obvious competitors to, among others, KEF’s established wireless speaker range, and specifically the KEF LS50 Wireless II. But the Yamaha aesthetic is very different, partly by virtue of using separate 30mm tweeters and 13cm woofers (compared with KEF’s single coaxial driver) and also by going for a taller, more conventional if quirky look, compared with the fat curves of the KEFs, which look rather as if inflated to the point of bursting.

Both drivers in the NX-70A use the same material blend, described by Yamaha as their ‘Harmonious Diaphragm’, as used also in the company’s highest hi-fi speakers. This combines wood fibre from spruce (which Yamaha notes is used in its grand piano soundboards) with the synthetic polymer Zylon, a material to which Yamaha switched after its period favouring beryllium, which is an excellent lightweight alkaline earth metal, but sadly a highly toxic one to work with.

By contrast Zylon is more easily manipulated, yet an extremely strong polymer claimed to have an acoustic velocity comparable to beryllium and a tensile strength 1.6 times higher than Kevlar. Its versatility for use in tweeters as well as woofers provides the possibility of a tonally-matched sound across the full frequency range.

Each driver has its own dedicated amplification module (so an active system, rather than merely powered). Yamaha claims to have taken great efforts to optimise these relationships, announcing a new arrangement called Synergistic Drive: “an innovative unified circuit design,” says the literature.

“By connecting the speaker unit directly to the amplifier circuit, the system precisely manages electric current flow, minimising distortion that is fundamentally rooted in conventional amplifier and speaker interactions.”

You might this would be something which could apply to any active design, yet it implies a technology “unique to Yamaha”. Further investigation reveals the use of current feedback around individual drivers, detecting distortion as variations in electrical current and aiming to reduce it in real time. This reduces the negative effects of distortion caused by Eddy currents, says Yamaha, and specifically addresses third harmonic distortion. It reminds us of the feedback in Yamaha’s YST subwoofers.

So Synergistic Drive is Yamaha’s particular take on active speaker design, raised to higher hi-fi levels of priority than on Yamaha’s smaller active speakers and soundbars.

Room correction is another thing possible by having processing, amps and speakers all in one package. Yamaha not only here includes its YPAO (Yamaha Parametric room Acoustic Optimiser) straight out of its AV receivers of renown, but also provides a bundled microphone for the purpose, rather than the common practice of leaving such crucial measurements instead to the vagaries of a smartphone microphone.

Ins, outs, and apps

Physical inputs are fairly limited, which is typical of the smart speaker breed: that back panel hosts one minijack analogue input, one optical digital input, a USB-A slot, and one HDMI eARC/ARC input with CEC.

This last plays back audio from whichever HDMI socket on your TV is marked for HDMI ARC, and makes these speakers ideal for flanking your TV to provide sound for all your entertainment, not merely music. We have no hesitation in recommending the solution of stereo speakers either side of your TV rather than a soundbar in front of it.

Additional socketry provides a subwoofer output, so you can add depth if you need it (only in a larger room, we’d say), and an Ethernet socket if you can give the NX-70A a wired network connection; otherwise MusicCast will help make the Wi-Fi link to your network. This MusicCast app controls everything from input selection to streaming and even multiroom sharing between rooms.

The left and right speakers can connect to each other wirelessly, so there’s no need to run a cable between them. But you can choose to do so using the very coily Ethernet-style cable provided, length three metres, so still allowing good separation between the two boxes. Using the cable provides stability in a busy Wi-Fi environment, and also allows a higher digital connection rate which actually doubles the highest frequencies these speakers can deliver: they go up to 35kHz (-10dB) when using a wired connection, only 21kHz (-10dB) when using Wi-Fi. From this we assumed (and Yamaha confirmed) the wireless connection to use a 48kHz sampling rate with the cable raising this to 96kHz, both at 24-bit.

There is Bluetooth available for direct streaming, but we note its codecs are limited to the lower SBC and AAC codecs, so MusicCast here can provide preferable and higher-quality ways to stream. This is also true of AirPlay 2 streaming, currently limited (by Apple, not Yamaha) to the AAC codec at 256k, even though it’s capable of far more.

You can get higher quality using Tidal or Spotify via their Connect versions, which means just using the service’s native app as the controller, and directing the music to flow straight from the internet to the speakers at whatever quality you’re paying for.

There’s also Google Cast here, good from Android phones and devices.

But if you store music actually on your device, the most reliable way to play is the tab for ‘This iPhone’ (or whatever) at the top of the MusicCast app’s interface. This seems to send the file at full quality, most likely via some UPnP/DLNA in the background. We hear the difference in our listening notes.

Yamaha MusicCast also allows multi-room playback, combining ‘rooms’ within the app so that any MusicCast device can share its inputs with any other MusicCast devices in the home. Given Yamaha’s MusicCast ecosystem of products runs from small wireless speakers to hulking AV receivers, this is potentially a powerful method of home unification.

The NX-70A speakers are also Roon Ready, if you have invested in this music organisation software.

Also under fingertip control in the MusicCast app there is internet radio, a Podcast section, and ‘Server’ access, which instantly found various file shares on our home network, through which we could then navigate through folder structure or artist/album lists slightly laboriously (no permanent library is created). Files loaded via USB are accessed in a similar way.

All these will benefit from the DAC implementation here, using an 8-channel 32-bit ESS DAC, the ES9017S. We were told that “3× channels of differential output are combined and then sent to the tweeter and another 3× to the woofer, creating a more precise representation of the original signal with wider dynamic range and lower noise levels as it’s combining 3× versions of the conversion to capture more detail.” (We’re just gagging to ask ‘so why not 4×?’ but we’ll let it lie.)

Many ways to play, then: let’s fire them up.

Listening sessions

Set-up proved fairly simple whether or not the stands were attached for use in the music room, or simply sat on a firm surface either side of the TV as we used them later with HDMI; for such surfaces they have pre-attached silicone feet. We gave them the Ethernet-style cable connection between the speakers to ensure we heard them at their best.

We also gave them a wired Ethernet connection to our network, and this cable was coming from the right, a bit strained to reach the left speaker which has all the inputs. The speakers are very clearly labelled as to left and right, arriving with huge cardboard covers telling you so, but the first thing we did once inside the MusicCast app was to check if we could switch left speaker with right. And yes we could, so we were able to restore cable neatness, hoorah. (We later found a button on the back which can do the same thing.)

Since our environment already has MusicCast elements in residence, adding the NX-70A was just a case of selecting ‘add device’ then scrolling down a very long list, which shows how many MusicCast-enabled products Yamaha has released. When you get all the way to the NX-70A, it’s not there! An enquiry to the local Yamaha team revealed that Yamaha puts new products at the top, above ‘A’, but doesn’t think also to include them in the right place. This oversight aside, we had the NX-70A connected pretty much instantly, and checked for a firmware update.

We ran background internet radio and AirPlay 2 streams from an iPhone for a good week just to have the speakers soaking through, as it were. This was when we discovered that playing music stored on our phone via AirPlay 2 sounded radically different to playing the same files via the ‘My iPhone’ tab of MusicCast. It’s a great demonstration of what such transmission does to your files. Playing the beginning of Kate Bush’s Aerial Tal via ‘My iPhone’ at 16/44.1, the vocal had a quicksilver edge while the gentle piano beneath was richly toned across the soundstage from left to right; we could hear the pedal being lifted. All that was just gone when playing via AirPlay: softer, blander, less in the way of life and dynamics.

Spotify and Tidal users can do better; selecting these services within MusicCast simply opens the native app and you choose the Yamahas as the target. Because MusicCast has already allocated these to become a ‘Room’, it is this ‘Room’ you’ll see as the target, rather than the Yamahas themselves. This can be confusing, especially if you have two streaming devices in the same room. If you want to see ‘Yamaha NX-70A’ as the target for streaming services, then just name the MusicCast room as ‘Yamaha NX-70A’.

If you want Apple Music at better quality, currently we could only suggest the extended workaround of having an AppleTV 4K playing Apple Music into your TV, and then out via HDMI into the Yamahas.

The ‘Server’ option within the MusicCast app looks for files on your network. We have assorted old NAS drives humming away around the home and MusicCast found them all. Not all such platforms do so.

Even more conveniently we attached an old WD powered hard drive to the USB-A slot, and could thereby play our collection of high-res albums through the Yamahas.

And playing from this USB drive we really found what a high level of hi-fi performance the NX-70As could achieve. The guitar on Audio Alchemy’s Marrakesh at 24-bit/96kHz sounded delightfully clear and clicky-edged, while the bass sounded not so much as if it was emanating from the two speakers but more as if a small bass guitar cabinet was somewhere in the middle of them, so like the real thing was the bass fullness and tone. There’s a double-time section in the middle of this track which showed also the system’s speed, keeping up with the gaps in the machine-gun bass notes: individually punchy, no blur. We used this section to find our ideal speaker positioning, which in our room locked the bass into the best combo of tightness and depth with the ports 22cm out from the rear wall, close enough to suit general use with TVs as well as making stereo lounge use convenient. Nor does their treble fade excessively off-axis, though keep the tweeters at ear height to enjoy best imaging.

There was an almost alarmingly real delivery of the percussion that somehow sits in 3D among Chick Corea’s piano and ensemble on his Australia Concerto No. 2; this wildly dynamic piece burst unrestrained from the Yamahas with all its impressive imaging and ping-pong bursts of sound intact – exactly the kind of spread that would be lost on a smaller all-in-one system or speaker. The Yamahas bring all the hi-fi qualities of proper speakers, without compromise from stuffing electronics inside, we’d say, and quite possibly benefitting from all that Synergistic Drive! With the Chick Corea they sounded simultaneously musical and clinical, laying out the soundstage with both width and depth, everything in its place to make this whole popping piece stand forth in a three-dimensional presentation, among which we could still hear the wide ringing roll-off of a China boy cymbal, or the gaps between separate rolls of the brushes on the snare, the richness of orchestration around Corea’s marvellously close-miked piano (home territory for the Yamahas) which brought this piece to life. They did the same with a super-crisp delivery of Herbie Hancock’s Cantaloupe Island and its still more extreme ping-pong elements; during the piano solo the left channel was silent like a hole in the Matrix.

They can certainly rock, as proven by their smashing out of Yes’ studio version of Heart Of The Sunrise (24/96) with thrillingly tight and real drums to the fore. Alan Parsons came through as DSD 2.8MHz files no problem (it’s good to quad-DSD), all our FLAC and WAV tests played fine (up to 384kHz), and the speakers absolutely excelled when blasting out The Eagles’ Life In The Fast Line at 24-bit/192kHz, again spreading the panned guitars wide while pumping out a bass that was tight and full. They go loud with glee.

YPAO Volume & YPAO Room Calibration

We were by now preferring not to engage the YPAO Volume option (as opposed to the room calibration, see below). This YPAO Volume slider (under the MusicCast app’s sound settings) had been on by default as a kind of loudness EQ “to hear balanced low, mid and high frequencies clearly at all levels”. It may be useful at lower levels, but for anything higher it often seemed to have a mildly deleterious effect when playing at a decent volume; on the Eagles specifically it had softened the bass pedal, taking realism out of the rhythm section, while mildly veiling the wonderful airiness up top that the Yamahas were otherwise delivering.

Happily you can toggle this YPAO Volume on and off easily at the top of the sound settings panels, so it’s easy to try for yourself, and develop a preference.

YPAO room calibration, though, is a different thing, combining a parametric EQ with what Yamaha calls RSC (Reflected Sound Control). Kudos to Yamaha for including a proper puck microphone with the NX-70As, rather than relying on phone speakers to achieve what is an extremely complicated job, attempting to measure room characteristics and then adjust the speaker EQ accordingly.

To do this, you construct the little cardboard stand for the puck, then attempt to balance it where your head might be for listening; you certainly won’t be limited by the length of the cable attached to the puck microphone, as this is long enough to wrap twice around the Moon and back. (Recoiling the YPAO microphone cable to fit back in the plastic bag is the key challenge facing reviewers when returning any so-equipped Yamaha review item.)

With the puck in place, you set the measurements off, and it’s very quick – slightly longer if you’ve attached a subwoofer. Two hisses, two whoops and it’s over. Accept the scan, and you can then toggle YPAO on and off to see if you like the results.

It seemed accurate, identifying and correcting a bass dip which we know to exist in our lounge room, pleasingly less critical of our music room’s response. We tried using the correction in the lounge: sometimes it seemed to clarify the upper bass, sometimes it seemed to mask the clarity of things, like Diana Krall’s vocal on Here Lies Love, softened back significantly, the spread and openness of the mids and highs also crushed, and everything slightly monofied. Of course that’s just us, in our room. Again it’s free to try, so try it.

Meanwhile there are plenty of other tone controls inside the MusicCast settings (with sophisticated Finite Impulse Response EQ filtering, we gather), so plenty more to play with. The app also links to a separate IP browser interface for network tweaks.

They worked well as HDMI TV speakers (or optical if no HDMI ARC); indeed the speakers proved ideal for movie sound, with dynamics and spread and especially dialogue clarity all in a league which no soundbar would match. (Yamaha also kindly adds a dialogue enhancer slider in the app settings, should it be required.) There’s apparently no attempt to respond to Atmos soundtracks with virtual processing; thank heavens for that. Stereo clarity is invariably to be preferred.

We almost forgot to mention the remote control. We had quickly became accustomed to using the MusicCast app for everything, especially as this app is not like some others which disappear or disconnect when momentarily not in use; the MusicCast app returns to being fully active as soon as selected. However, the physical remote can be very handy for quick actions, especially when the phone rings, and feels just that bit more sophisticated in the hand, especially when enjoying just a music session, screen off.

Verdict

Any final issues, however minor? We have to say no. The NX-70A speakers were easy to set-up, easy to address using an established and powerful app, and they sounded great. We even liked the clever packaging.

For their best sonic results just find the purest path to playback (keep Bluetooth and AirPlay for convenience use only), and get banging out your tunes. The Yamahas do not sound in the least bit processed or woofed up in the bass like so very many all-in-one systems, and especially the smaller wireless speakers. These are genuine hi-fi speakers, made active, wireless, and streaming.

Yes, at the price, you might attempt to build a separates system which combines a great streamer with a great amp and great speakers; you would potentially gain flexibility of replacement and repair/replacement. But you would lose all the convenience, the minimising of component count, and we don’t think you’d get a much better sound either. Yamaha is experienced in streaming, in amplification, and in loudspeakers. They’ve done top work in bringing all that together so effectively, so synergistically, in the NX-70A.

• See all our Australian reviews from Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi magazines

In fact, if Apple does as expected, the iPhone 17 Pro we have before us today will be replaced in just a couple of weeks.

So, why bother reviewing the iPhone 17 Pro at this late stage? There are two main reasons: it will likely be available to buy for a little while yet, and probably at a discount; and it gives us a good benchmark to judge the new model against.

As ever, we’re interested in the iPhone 17 Pro not for its rocket ship power or fancy camera array (though those are interesting), but for its picture and sound quality. We want to know if this is the best phone for taking movies and music with you on the move.

And it is – for the next couple of weeks, at least.

Price

The iPhone 17 Pro launched with a starting price of £1099 / $1099 / AU$1999, but it is now possible to get discounts of around £100 in the UK if you shop around.

That price gets you the entry-level 256GB version (Apple is no longer offering a 128GB Pro model), but 512GB and 1TB versions are also available, at a premium of £200 / $200 / AU$400 and £400 / $400 / AU$800 respectively.

If the 17 Pro’s 6.3-inch display isn’t large enough for you, an upgrade to the 6.9-inch Max will incur an additional premium of £100 / $100 / AU$200.

Design

The iPhone 17 Pro represents Apple's biggest design change to its Pro phones in several years, and it's one that took a little getting used to.

The most obvious change is the enormous new camera plateau, which now stretches almost the entire width of the phone. It looked rather shocking when we first saw it, but after spending time with the phone, we've come to think it gives the 17 Pro a more natural and balanced appearance than the asymmetrically placed square camera bump of its predecessor.

The move from titanium to aluminium also sounds like a step backwards for a phone at this level, but in practice it brings some advantages. The edges are smoother and more rounded than those of the 16 Pro, making the 17 Pro feel more comfortable in the hand, while Apple's new anodised finishes give it a character that's been missing from some of the more sober recent Pro models.

Our Deep Blue review sample is particularly lovely, with a rich, almost pearlescent finish that changes subtly as it catches the light. We're also rather taken with the Cosmic Orange option, although its unapologetically bold appearance inevitably divides opinion.

In fact, while the iPhone 17 Pro's design doesn't necessarily come across as dramatically different in photographs, this is an absolutely beautiful phone in the flesh, and one that feels every bit as premium as its price suggests. It's the most appealing-looking and nicest-feeling iPhone we've used in several years.

The physical controls remain unchanged from the 16 Pro, with volume controls and the Action button on one side, and the power/Siri and Camera Control buttons on the other.

The bottom edge has also been subtly revised, with both speaker grilles now appearing to be the same size rather than one being noticeably smaller than the other on the previous model.

The 17 Pro retains the same IP68 water and dust resistance as its predecessor, too; we even put that to a fairly vigorous test at Bude's Monster Slip And Slide, where it continued recording video while getting thoroughly soaked without any adverse effects.

Apple's new Tech Woven case is a particularly nice companion to the phone. Its woven finish feels more tactile and premium than many conventional cases, while the understated design complements rather than obscures the 17 Pro's new appearance.

The result is a Pro iPhone that feels both familiar and substantially refreshed. The camera plateau may take some getting used to, but the smoother shape, tactile finishes and excellent in-hand feel have made us rather fond of Apple's latest design.

Features

The iPhone 17 Pro's headline display specifications don’t look radically different to those of its predecessor. It's still a 6.3-inch Super Retina XDR OLED with a 2622 x 1206 resolution, 460ppi pixel density, ProMotion up to 120Hz and an Always-On display. The big changes are to what's happening on top of that excellent OLED panel.

Apple has introduced a new anti-reflective coating that it claims reduces reflections by 33 per cent, while outdoor peak brightness has increased from 2000 nits on the iPhone 16 Pro to a huge-sounding 3000 nits.

Apple says these two changes combine to deliver up to twice the outdoor contrast of the previous model. We'll examine what that means in practice in the Picture Quality section, but the ability to maintain a convincing picture when you're watching in bright sunlight is particularly relevant to a phone intended to carry your movies everywhere.

For AV consumption, the format support is excellent, too. The iPhone 17 Pro can play HDR content in the HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision formats, and Dolby Atmos is supported on the audio side.

What’s perhaps most interesting from our point of view is that all of the above also applies to the standard iPhone 17, which boasts the same OLED display with the same specs and the same anti-reflection tech. It will be fascinating to see if this is borne out in our picture testing.

The other major upgrade for the iPhone 17 Pro over the 16 Pro is Apple's A19 Pro chip and new thermal management system. The new chip retains a six-core CPU and 16-core Neural Engine, but the new six-core GPU now has a Neural Accelerator in each core, improving its ability to handle demanding graphics and AI-based tasks.

Just as important, though, is the new thermal management system. The 17 Pro's aluminium unibody is more than 20 times more thermally conductive than the titanium used previously, according to Apple, and it incorporates a vapour chamber that moves heat away from the A19 Pro and into the aluminium chassis. Apple claims this allows up to 40 per cent better sustained performance than the previous generation.

For most content consumers, such as us, this level of power is essentially overkill – the 17 Pro operates with the sort of slickness you'd expect from a flagship phone and can handle graphically intensive games without breaking a sweat.

The more important benefit is the sheer amount of headroom it provides, and the ability to maintain high performance over longer periods without thermal throttling. In practical terms, that means higher frame rates during long gaming sessions and a better chance of the phone still feeling effortlessly quick several years from now. Of course, if you are going to use your phone for content creation as well as consumption, all of this extra power becomes considerably more useful.

Apple has also substantially upgraded the camera system. The 48MP Fusion Main camera remains, but the Ultra Wide and Telephoto cameras are now 48MP Fusion models, too.

The Fusion branding refers to Apple's image-processing architecture as much as the sensors themselves, with computational processing combining multiple sources of image data to produce a final shot.

The camera system is also more flexible when it comes to zoom. Alongside the 0.5x ultra-wide and 1x main views, you can now choose 2x, 4x or 8x optical zoom, giving you more options for getting close to a subject without resorting to the potentially softer digital zoom.

The new 4x Telephoto is particularly useful as a middle ground between the standard camera and the long-range 8x option, while its larger sensor helps it capture more light and detail.

If that’s all Dutch to you, the upshot for casual photographers is brilliantly detailed, dynamic and balanced shots at various levels of zoom. This is a supremely talented camera system that’s a doddle for amateurs to use and an absolute beast in the hands of a professional.

The front-facing camera is an even more obvious upgrade for everyday users. It moves from 12MP to 18MP and, more importantly, introduces a new square sensor that gives you much greater flexibility over framing. You can tap to expand the field of view, switch between portrait and landscape framing without rotating the phone, and automatically widen the shot when other people join a selfie.

Centre Stage can also keep you centred during video calls, while Dual Capture lets you record from the front and rear cameras simultaneously – useful for vloggers, but also for anyone who wants to capture their own reaction alongside whatever they're filming. There's also ultra-stabilised 4K HDR video for smoother handheld footage.

Battery life has improved, too. Apple rates the 17 Pro for up to 31 hours of video playback, compared with 27 hours for the 16 Pro. A sufficiently powerful charger can also take the phone to 50 per cent in just 20 minutes.

Bluetooth has been upgraded from version 5.3 to Bluetooth 6. That doesn't bring any meaningful benefit right now, but Bluetooth 6’s improved efficiency, reliability and potential for lower-latency connections could make it more useful as compatible headphones and other devices catch up.

Picture quality

The iPhone 17 Pro doesn't reinvent Apple's approach to picture quality, and nor does it need to. The iPhone 16 Pro already produces one of the finest pictures we've seen from a phone, combining excellent detail and contrast with Apple's typically impressive commitment to colour accuracy and consistency.

The 17 Pro takes that formula and makes some subtle but worthwhile refinements.

Put the two phones side by side and the colour balance is remarkably similar. There is, however, a smidge more richness to the 17 Pro's presentation, which is particularly evident in skin tones.

Subtle variations have a little more depth and life, but there's no sense that Apple has achieved this by simply turning up the saturation. The overall balance remains remarkably natural, and that combination of richness and restraint is one of the things that is so appealing about the picture.

There's a similarly subtle improvement to black depth. The 17 Pro's blacks are just a little deeper and denser than those of the 16 Pro, and while the difference is small, it lends the whole image a little more solidity and lustre. It's not simply a case of dark areas having been made darker, either: shadow detail remains excellent.

The dark scenes of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey provide a good demonstration. As Bilbo, Fili and Kili track their missing ponies through the darkness, the 17 Pro delivers an excellent combination of insight and solidity, with fine details remaining visible while the deepest parts of the image look impressively dense.

The 16 Pro is also excellent here, but its slightly lighter blacks give the picture a little less depth, while the 17 Pro's richer colours and deeper contrast combine to create a more three-dimensional image.

The same characteristics repeat across everything we watch. The dimly lit opening of Conclave benefits from the 17 Pro's extra depth and richness without sacrificing any shadow detail. The brighter scenes of The Creator, meanwhile, absolutely pop, with the vivid greens of the terraced rice paddies contrasting beautifully with the blue of the police ships and the red of “the weapon's” jumpsuit.

In fact, we find ourselves repeatedly drawn towards the 17 Pro's picture when switching back and forth between the two phones. The differences aren't dramatic, but the newer model has a little more of that lusciousness that makes an image particularly enjoyable to watch.

In normal indoor lighting, there's little to separate the two phones in terms of outright brightness. Both produce wonderfully dynamic pictures with plenty of pop, and neither is crying out for more light. Move into really bright ambient conditions, though, and the 17 Pro's new display technology makes a much more obvious difference.

The new anti-reflective coating significantly reduces glare bouncing back at you from the screen, while the display can automatically unlock its additional outdoor brightness in very bright conditions. The combination makes the picture noticeably easier to see and enjoy when the environment would otherwise be fighting against it.

It's worth stressing that this isn't a matte screen in the manner of Samsung's latest flagship OLED TVs. Those displays are exceptionally resistant to reflections, but their matte finishes can also sap some of the depth and richness from black areas. Apple's approach is closer to the treatment used by LG's G6: reflections are reduced significantly without turning the glossy OLED surface into something visibly matte, so you retain those deep, lush blacks while gaining a useful degree of protection from glare.

Motion, meanwhile, remains very good, as we'd expect from the 120Hz ProMotion OLED. There is, however, still some judder inherent in 24fps movie content, and the sheer responsiveness of an OLED display can make this more obvious than it might be on an LCD screen. It’s far from a major problem, and certainly not unique to iPhones, but it would be nice if in future phones Apple could offer an option for some very gentle motion processing to smooth this out without introducing the artificial, soap-opera-like quality of aggressive interpolation.

Finally, we have to mention the Dynamic Island. In the default letterboxed presentation, it's essentially a non-issue for movie watching because the picture doesn't extend far enough up the display for the Island to overlap it. Zoom the content to fill the entire screen, though, and it's obviously there.

But what's remarkable is how quickly you stop seeing it. Once you're engrossed in a film, your brain seems to erase it from your awareness. We'd still love a phone with a genuinely uninterrupted screen for movie watching, but in practice, the Dynamic Island proves far less distracting than you might expect.

Ultimately, the iPhone 17 Pro doesn't deliver a night-and-day improvement over the 16 Pro. Instead, it takes an already exceptional picture and gives it a little more richness, depth and lustre, while making it more usable in the brightest viewing conditions.

A comparison with the standard iPhone 17 is also revealing. Despite the two phones having the same headline display specifications, the 17 Pro has a little more pop and vibrancy.

In F1: The Movie, for example, the fluorescent tubes lighting the laundromat are a brighter, purer white, while Brad Pitt's race suit is a touch crisper and more detailed in texture. Skin tones are also very slightly more naturally saturated.

The differences are small, but they give the Pro a marginally more dynamic and three-dimensional presentation.

Sound quality

As with the picture, the iPhone 17 Pro doesn't represent a radical change to Apple's already excellent approach to sound.

That said, the built-in speakers are a little fuller and richer than those of the 16 Pro, with more weight and a smoother, more rounded presentation. The difference is subtle, but the older model sounds just a touch thin and hard by comparison.

The standard iPhone 17's speakers are broadly similar, but the Pro has the edge here, too. The 17 sounds a touch more aggressive and less fluidly rounded, and it seems to lean more heavily on its bottom speakers, resulting in a slightly left-sided balance when watching in landscape. The 17 Pro sounds a little richer, smoother and more spatially consistent.

It's with Spatial Audio movies that the iPhone 17 Pro’s tiny speakers really impress. The opening sequence of F1: The Movie is reproduced with a surprisingly wide soundstage, with cars sweeping from deep on the right to far over on the left, while the commentary and fireworks have a reasonable sense of height.

Effects, music and dialogue are also given enough space to breathe that the busy soundtrack remains surprisingly clear. You're certainly not surrounded by sound in the way you would be with a proper home cinema system, but the scale and spatial precision are remarkable for a tiny device such as a phone.

Stereo music is less impressive through the speakers. While they produce a decent amount of bass for their size, depth remains paltry by absolute standards, and tracks sound much thinner than they should. It’s a more congested delivery, too, with Sleep Token's The Summoning, for example, losing much of its spaciousness and scale.

That's hardly surprising given the physical limitations, though, and the 17 Pro is still very capable by the admittedly rather low standards of smartphone speaker audio.

Connect a good pair of headphones, meanwhile, and we no longer need caveats. Using a pair of AirPods Max 2 via USB-C, the 17 Pro delivers superb clarity, rhythmic drive and tonal balance, with enough composure to make complex recordings genuinely engaging.

Tool's Invincible is reproduced with absolute confidence, the steady dynamic build of the percussion gathering momentum without losing its precision, while Maynard James Keenan's vocals remain focused without sacrificing their deliberately airy, ethereal quality.

The differences between the 17 Pro and 16 Pro are smaller through headphones than they are through the built-in speakers, but as we switch between the two with Rosalia's Divinize, the new model sounds just a little tighter, particularly in the fluttering bass notes of the chorus, which have terrific punch and control. Rosalia's vocals are a touch cleaner and smoother, too, especially when listening at high volumes.

The standard iPhone 17 gets unsurprisingly close through headphones, but the Pro still has a small advantage. Playing Architects' Animals, the 17 Pro sounds just a little fuller and smoother without sacrificing any of the track's punch or dynamics. It's an overall meatier, more mature delivery, though the difference is subtle.

Verdict

The iPhone 17 Pro is an outstanding portable movie and music player, with a superb screen, excellent sound and small but meaningful improvements over its predecessor.

The picture is the real star. It retains the beautiful balance and authenticity we’ve come to expect from Apple’s phones, but gains a little extra richness, depth and lustre. At the same time, the improved anti-reflection performance makes it considerably more practical in bright conditions.

Sound is similarly refined, with a small but worthwhile improvement to the built-in speakers and outstanding performance through headphones.

The key thing is that none of these improvements is transformative. If you already own an iPhone 16 Pro, there isn't a compelling AV reason to upgrade, particularly if you mostly watch indoors and listen through headphones.

For someone buying a new phone, though, the equation is different. The standard iPhone 17 gets surprisingly close, but the Pro has a small but discernible advantage for both picture and sound, as well as its much more capable camera system and greater processing headroom.

Admittedly, those advantages are small enough that the standard iPhone 17 remains the most sensible performance-per-pound option if you only care about movie and music performance, but if you also feel like you might take advantage of the more advanced camera system and/or processing power, the extra money for the Pro model becomes easier to justify.

Ultimately, the iPhone 17 Pro is probably the best phone we've tested for taking movies and music on the move. The (presumably) impending iPhone 18 Pro might push things on even further, but that won't change the fact that the 17 Pro is an exceptional AV machine – and one that could become even more tempting with end-of-life discounts.

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 5
• Features 5

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In fact, as the many strong reviews the brand has received from us in recent years prove, Hisense hasn’t just got most of your potential projector needs covered; it’s got them nailed.

Not surprisingly, then, we have high hopes for the brand’s C2 Ultra model – despite its obvious focus on design and convenience.

Price

Value is usually a strong area for Hisense, and the C2 Ultra is no exception. Its £1799 / $2300 / AU$3495 pricing is aggressively low (particularly in the UK) for a projector that provides such specifications as 4K support, triple laser lighting, an integrated smart system, Dolby Vision support and 3000 lumens of peak brightness to go with its eye-catching lifestyle design.

There is some stiff competition around this projector's price, though, including BenQ’s Award-winning W2720i home theatre projector or, if you want something that maintains the C2 Ultra’s more portable, lifestyle design approach, BenQ’s TK705i or Epson’s significantly cheaper EF-72.

Design

The C2 Ultra’s compact (29 x 25 x 25cm) form employs one of the ‘cradle’ designs that have become all the rage these days, where the projector rests within a pair of support arms that allow the main body to tilt up or down to help you to get images to the right height on your wall/screen.

The projector also rotates around on its circular base to easily adapt to any tricky angles your room might present you with, and that base rather niftily carries a fairly large up-firing speaker on its top edge.

The C2 Ultra is finished in an appealing gunmetal grey colour, and boasts a neat combination of smooth matte, high gloss and grilled finishes over various parts of the main projector body’s ‘slightly squashed cube’ shape.

Unusually for a cradle-style projector, the C2 Ultra can be mounted onto an optional thin pole floorstand or ceiling mount bracket if you’re not happy just sitting it on a coffee table.

The C2 Ultra’s provided remote control features a nice finish, backlit buttons and an ergonomic layout that includes buttons for direct access to some of the world’s most popular integrated streaming apps. There’s also a mic button on offer, indicating that you can control aspects of the projector by talking to it courtesy of Hisense’s own ‘Vidaa Voice’ system or built-in Alexa support.

Features

The C2 Ultra is a 4K-capable DLP projector illuminated by a triple laser lighting system.

We should qualify the 4K claim by saying that, as ever with DLP projectors, it’s not ‘true’ 4K to the extent that it features a full 4096x2160 or 3840x2160 count of digital mirror devices on its image control chip. The combination of pixel shifting and rapid mirror ‘flashing’ created by Texas Instruments’ XPR system, though, creates a 4K effect from DLP projectors such as the C2 Ultra that’s actually been approved as genuine 4K by the influential Consumer Technology Association in the US.

The C2 Ultra’s laser lighting is rated to deliver up to 3000 lumens of brightness – a high number for such a portable projector, and one that raises the possibility of the projector genuinely holding its own against quite high levels of ambient light.

This brightness is also important to Hisense’s claims that the C2 Ultra can support images as big as 300 inches across – though because the larger you go, the more brightness you lose, we argue 100-150 inches will give you more satisfying results from an all-round image impact perspective.

Hisense also claims that the C2 Ultra can reproduce more than 100 per cent of the AV world’s most extreme BT.2020 HDR colour spectrum. Experience suggests such claims are optimistic in the real world, but Hisense quoting it at least points to a projector that is likely to deliver most if not all of the narrower DCI-P3 colour spectrum used for most of today’s HDR mastering.

The C2 Ultra’s small shape and cradled design make it a particularly portable projector, easily moved to different rooms or houses. It even ships with a neat cloth carry bag.

It builds on its portability, too, by being just about as easy a projector to set up as we’ve seen. It can rotate through a full 360 degrees on its circular base, for starters, and it supports a generous 135 degrees of vertical tilt to help you get the image in the right place.

Obviously, the sort of angles created by rotating and tilting projectors can cause distortions to the shape of the image on your wall/screen. Here again, though, Hisense has got you covered with its Auto Magic AI Adjusting 2.0 system.

Despite its awkward name, this combination of auto keystone correction, auto focus, auto obstacle avoidance, intelligent wall colour adaptation and intelligent eye protection works remarkably well and extremely consistently, contributing to a genuine plug-and-play experience that seldom needs any manual intervention to improve on its results.

The C2 Ultra even carries a 0.9-1.5:1 optical zoom system to help it adapt to a wide range of room sizes and room layouts. That’s more zoom range than you would typically expect to get with this sort of projector.

Most lifestyle projectors these days provide some sort of AI set-up system, of course. But the C2 Ultra’s system just works out of the box more straightforwardly than most.

The C2 Ultra’s connections comprise two HDMI ports (one with eARC support), an optical audio output, two USB 3.0 ports, a headphone socket, and ethernet, plus Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6e wireless connections.

The wi-fi connectivity feeds the built-in Vidaa smart platform. This isn’t as sophisticated or visually attractive as the popular Google TV system many projectors use, but it’s easy to follow and is strong on native streaming app support.

Netflix, BBC iPlayer, ITVX, All 4, My 5, Now TV, Disney+, Prime Video, YouTube, Apple TV, Paramount+, and HBO Max apps are all present, and a firmware update has now also added support in the UK for Freely, through which you can live-stream many of the UK’s terrestrial broadcast services rather than having to use a traditional aerial system.

The C2 Ultra supports HDR video, as we’d expect of pretty much any proper home entertainment projector these days, but it doesn’t stop at the usual HDR10 and HLG formats – it also supports both the HDR10+ and Dolby Vision formats.

Finding one of these premium HDR formats on a projector at this level is still quite rare, so finding both on the C2 Ultra is excellent. Basically, it means the C2 Ultra will always play the best version of any source you present it with.

The playback flexibility doesn’t end there, either. The C2 Ultra has also earned IMAX Enhanced certification, and carries an IMAX Enhanced picture preset, while Hisense’s other usual punchy HDR Standard and HDR Day picture presets are also joined by a Filmmaker Mode calibrated to try and deliver pictures that get as close as the projector can manage to current mastering standards, for that ‘as the director intended’ feel.

There’s also support for 3D if you sort yourself out with a pair of DLP-Link 3D glasses, and an official ‘Designed For Xbox’ badge in the C2 Ultra’s marketing points to some unusually advanced gaming support. Confirmed features include ALLM switching when gaming sources are detected, 240Hz refresh rate support, and a measured 34.4ms of input lag in Game mode with a 60Hz signal.

You can get this down to 17.6ms if you call in a DLP Turbo Mode option, at the expense of some of the projector’s auto image correction tools.

A dedicated Gaming menu and information screen comes up if you hit the menu button with a game source running into the projector, and hooking up an Xbox Series X confirms 4K/120Hz support with HDR and VRR. Excellent.

One last feature in the C2 Ultra’s impressive feature locker for its money is a JBL-designed/tuned 40W sound system comprising 2 x 10W amplification and a 20W bass speaker cleverly built into the projector’s chunky circular desktop base.

Hisense’s materials on the projector suggest this sound system only supports DTS Virtual:X 3D audio, but Dolby Atmos also plays fine during our tests. Quite a lot better than ‘fine’, actually, but we’ll come back to that later.

Picture quality

As well as being fantastically easy to set up, the Hisense C2 Ultra’s pictures are effortlessly watchable. Hisense appears to have been doing living room projectors for long enough now to have forged a great feel for the sort of picture elements that most immediately warm viewers to a particular model’s cause.

The C2 Ultra’s HDR images are bright, for starters, making full use of the available 3000 lumens to deliver images that look both excellently punchy in a dark environment, and strong enough to hold their own, retaining good colour saturation and solidity, even in fairly bright living room conditions.

The C2 Ultra is even able to deliver bright highlights of HDR images with enough potency to almost have you believing it must be using a local dimming system somehow – even though this is, of course, not something current home projection technology can do.

Pictures are sharp and clean enough to look and feel like real 4K too, and the sharpness holds up well when there’s motion in the frame. Judder levels with 24p movie content feel strikingly natural rather than exaggerated or inconsistent.

Colour tones look nicely balanced and full of subtlety, too, helping 4K images deliver that three-dimensional feel that’s only fully unlocked by displays that are capable of a good combination of colour blending, contrast and clean, natural motion.

Black levels are only respectable rather than great, but for much of the time this relatively average part of the C2 Ultra’s performance is ‘hidden’ by the intensity and brightness of the rest of the images. It’s only uniformly dark scenes that suddenly reveal quite a cloak of greyness hanging over proceedings – especially if you’re using the projector’s Dolby Vision Bright, HDR Day or HDR Standard settings. You can also sometimes see a bit more detail in these elevated black areas than the content creators really intended you to.

The Dolby Vision Dark and HDR10 Filmmaker Modes improve on the excessive detail flaw without taking things so far that subtle details start to be crushed out of the image, but these modes are significantly less punchy than their brighter siblings, and the level of greyness lying over proceedings feels more or less the same. It’s just not offset by as much brightness as you get in the lighter HDR presets.

We also spot moderate levels of DLP projection’s rainbow effect over stand-out bright highlights, and while colours look well balanced, they can start to look slightly pallid in the brightest HDR images when using the projector’s relatively bright settings.

The brightest modes can also reduce the 3D effect that’s such a strong attraction with the Dolby Vision Dark and Filmmaker Mode settings.

Unless, however, you’re particularly susceptible to seeing the DLP projector rainbow effect (which a few people are), there’s nothing wrong enough or limited enough about the C2 Ultra’s pictures to prevent it from being consistently great fun to watch by class standards.

Yes, it sacrifices a little insight in the darkest and brightest scenes in its mostly highly successful quest to deliver as easy an ‘out of the box’ experience as we’ve come across in the projector world. But the overall picture results are still seriously easy on the eye for a projector that also has so many features and so much flexibility to offer.

Sound quality

The C2 Ultra’s clever integration of an unusually powerful three-speaker sound system pays off brilliantly. The volume and depth of bass delivered by that large up-firing woofer built into the projector’s base, for starters, are remarkable for such an affordable projector. It’s able to vary both the frequency response and volume of the bass it puts out better than the vast majority of TVs and pretty much all projectors, too.

The C2 Ultra builds on its strong bass foundations with similarly remarkable amounts of power and expressiveness for its midrange, too. It can get seriously loud without becoming muddy or congested, combining its raw power with strong levels of detail, without anything sounding too bright, clipped, thin or harsh.

The C2 Ultra even manages to deliver a palpable sense of three-dimensionality to its Dolby Atmos presentation, casting a soundstage that has genuine depth, height and width – and into which effects and scores are placed with excellent precision and dynamism.

As the cherry on the cake, the C2 Ultra not only delivers voices with a lovely rounded quality and great sense of context, but also ensures they’re projected, along with much of the rest of the sound, towards your screen, so that dialogue doesn’t sound as disconnected from the onscreen action as projector sound usually does.

The only problem with the C2 Ultra’s sound is that, while its woofer works brilliantly for the vast majority of the time, it can get caught out by the movie world’s most extreme and sustained low-frequency moments, suddenly succumbing to quite distracting amounts of crackling, whooping and phutting. It helps at such moments if you haven’t got the volume set much higher than its 60 level, but there’s no way of completely avoiding the occasional bass kerfuffle.

It’s also worth mentioning that even at its best, the integrated sound system isn’t a patch on the sound you would get from a decent soundbar, let alone a dedicated home cinema set-up, but that’s to be expected.

Verdict

The C2 Ultra isn’t perfect, but no lifestyle projector packed with so much flexibility and so many features at this price was ever going to be.

Even so, its rather grey dark scenes and rainbow effect issues cost it a mark in the context of the improved picture quality you can get from one or two less flexible rivals – especially the BenQ W2720i.

If its flexibility and features – especially its strong gaming support – sound like just what you need, though, you’ll likely be pretty amazed that such a user-friendly projector can also perform so well.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 5
• Features 5

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Read our review of the BenQ W2720i

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It combines the brand’s established taste for innovation and pushing projector boundaries with features clearly aimed at serious home cinema fans – a combination neatly summed up by Xgimi itself, variously describing the Titan as "Commercial Grade" and capable of delivering “true home theatre in any living room”.

Headline features such as a 5000-Lumen 4K laser optical system, unusually large 0.78 DLP imaging device and proprietary brightness-enhancing lens are certainly promising, but can the Titan really live up to the hype?

Price

The Xgimi Titan costs £3499 in the UK and $3999 in the US at the time of writing. That’s certainly not shockingly expensive for a projector apparently targeted at serious home cinema enthusiasts that boasts, as we’ll see, a pretty extreme set of features and specifications. But it is quite expensive by Xgimi standards, raising a high level of expectation for its performance given how well some more affordable Xgimi projectors have performed in recent years.

In Australia, meanwhile, the Titan costs an even more serious AU$9999.

Rivals in the same price ballpark include the excellent recently reviewed AWOL Vision Aetherion Max UST projector, and the What Hi-Fi? Award-winning, dedicated home theatre Epson EH-LS9000 model.

Design

The Titan is a robustly built and striking-looking projector. Its basic rectangular shape isn’t particularly out there, but it’s reasonably compact for such a highly specified model; boasts an unusual but effective mixture of a slightly rubbery top edge, smooth plastic grilled sides and front felt finishes; and the lens features a striking red highlight running around its outer edge.

Most eye-catchingly of all, the projector ships with four elongated mounting legs that attach diagonally out from each underside corner, making the projector look like it’s sitting in some kind of cradle. We’re a bit torn on both the usefulness and aesthetic appeal of these feet, honestly, but they’re well made and certainly help the Titan stand out from the crowd.

High wall/ceiling and floor mount options (the latter of which essentially adds a long pole to the stand) are also available for an extra £350 each.

The remote control shipped with the Titan combines sleek silver metallic and smooth black plastic design elements with elegant button backlighting and a logical layout to attractive and ergonomic effect.

Features

While the Titan’s design does a good job of establishing it as a premium model, it’s the features that really set our hopes high. Particularly striking are its high claimed peak brightness of 5000 lumens, delivered by a dual laser light engine; a monster claimed dynamic contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1; claimed coverage of a seriously high 150 per cent of the DCI-P3 colour spectrum used in most of today’s HDR mastering; and support for all of the main four HDR formats, including Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

As a logo under the lens confirms, the Titan has also earned IMAX Enhanced certification, meaning its picture quality has been deemed capable of doing justice to the special IMAX Enhanced video mastering system.

The projector is also sold as 4K capable. As ever with domestic DLP projectors, this 4K resolution isn’t truly native, depending on Texas Instruments’ XPR system of pixel shifting and ‘double flashing’ to achieve a 4K effect. This 4K effect has been deemed a true 4K experience by the independent Consumer Technology Association, however, and we’ve seen many 4K DLP projectors now deliver pictures that really do appear dense and crisp enough to feel like 4K.

The Titan actually claims an extra 4K advantage over other consumer DLP projectors, too, by using a 0.78-inch imaging chip rather than the 0.47- or 0.66-inch chips commonly used in DLP projectors. This should greatly improve the light efficiency and controllability of all the tiny mirrors mounted onto the DLP DMD device, as well as enhance pixel separation, resulting in potentially more native contrast and a generally more stable, detailed and consistent image.

Xgimi has introduced a couple of promising new proprietary features for the Titan, too. First, its complex multi-element lens design has been specially created by Xgimi to enable more of the light the projector is capable of producing to actually arrive on your screen. Second, the Titan carries Xgimi’s first self-developed 4K-grade AI image processor, the Xgimi X1.

The Titan supports full HD 3D playback if you pair it with optional active shutter 3D glasses, while among its picture presets is a Filmmaker Mode to provide a one-button way of getting the projector to produce pictures designed to get as close as the projector can to the image standards and values typically used in the content creation world.

When it comes to gaming, our resident Xbox Series X confirms that the Titan’s HDMI ports can’t handle frame rates higher than 60Hz at 4K resolution, even with the HDMIs set to Enhanced mode. It does at least hold on to HDR in 4K/60Hz mode, though, and can be set to handle 120Hz at 1080p resolution if you activate the high frame rate feature in the projector’s dedicated Game onscreen menus. Choosing this higher frame rate seems to come at the expense of HDR, though, and there’s no support at any frame rate for VRR.

There is support for ALLM, though, where the projector can automatically switch into its best game settings when a game source is detected. This best game set-up reduces input lag to 32.3ms.

While the Titan doesn’t feature one of the sophisticated fully automated picture set-up systems that increasingly many living room projectors do, it does feature auto focus and auto keystone correction, and the motorised lens system features both more extensive and more finely tuned adjustments than most. Optical zoom is available across a 1.2-1.8x range, and the image can be shifted left, right, up or down over a +/- 100 per cent vertical range and +/- 40 per cent horizontal range.

Xgimi claims the Titan’s 5000 lumens of brightness can drive a screen as large as 250 inches, and it has an integrated 2 x 12W sound system. The projector also supports playback of DTS-HD, DTS Virtual X and Dolby Atmos in the Dolby Digital+ format.

The Titan’s connections are decent for a premium projector. It might have been nice if there were more than two HDMI ports, and if those supported HDMI 2.1 bandwidths, but these are backed up by two USB ports (one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0), analogue and optical digital audio outputs, plus Ethernet and RS-232C ports for integrating the projector into a wider home control network.

When it comes to integrated smart TV features, finally, the Titan leans towards the dedicated home theatre room projector market by not actually having any. The only thing it offers that’s remotely along those lines is a built-in media player that can handle AV files played from USB drives.

Picture quality

First impressions of the Xgimi Titan are really spectacular. With native 4K HDR content, you instantly feel the impact of both its extreme 5000 lumens of brightness and the extra detail and clarity that we assume is down to the projector’s use of the new 0.78-inch DLP DMD chip.

The brightness is particularly useful to the side of the Titan’s personality focused on living room use, helping it punch its images through even summertime levels of ambient light with enough colour saturation and contrast to leave them not just watchable but actually enjoyable.

The Titan’s colours don’t push into levels of saturation, vibrancy and volumes that some other recent premium projectors we’ve tested have achieved, but we rarely feel as if the colour on offer is struggling to reach the levels required by even the most vibrant content we feed it.

The Titan’s image really does look 4K. There’s a purity and naturalism to its reproduction of fine details and textures as well as a general sense of immediacy and real-life density to its images that’s a notch above anything we’ve seen from the vast majority of other DLP projectors.

This helps to create a strong sense of depth, and the clarity is delivered so effortlessly that the viewing experience feels incredibly natural and immersive. At least when the source content is playing to the projector’s strengths with images that are bright, colour-rich, clean and detailed.

The naturalism extends to superbly natural management of grain and appealingly natural-looking judder with 24p movies if you call in the lowest setting of the projector’s motion processing options. Perhaps because of the image’s high brightness, judder feels slightly too pronounced in its ‘native’ form with no processing applied.

The Titan adapts itself to HD SDR content very nicely, too, retaining good shading and colour balance/naturalism despite evidently being designed with HDR in mind.

The Titan also adapts its images well in many ways between its key Standard and Filmmaker Mode presets. The Standard mode is your go-to for bright rooms, but is also mostly a solid option for a dark-room film night if you prefer punchier images to the more accurate ones delivered by the Filmmaker Mode.

The Filmmaker Mode, though, while significantly dimmer, flatter and actually quite a bit softer than the Standard mode, does deliver that creative intent ‘feel’ that home cinema fans will be familiar with.

There are a trio of areas, though, where the Titan’s pictures fall short of the generally high standards it sets elsewhere.

First and worst, its black levels are underwhelming for a projector that sells itself as delivering home theatre in all room conditions. This isn’t a big problem in relatively bright rooms, but home cinema fans who like to really black out their rooms for serious movie nights will at least sometimes be distracted by the greyness that creeps into dark scenes. Especially as the greyness is actually most noticeable in the projector’s most ‘cinematic’ picture presets due to these not aggressively using the projector’s Dynamic Black Level feature.

This feature auto-adjusts the projector’s light output based on constant analysis of the source image, and it really can substantially enhance black reproduction. Unfortunately, though, the Low setting for the Dynamic Black Feature causes lots of subtle image detail to disappear into the darkness, leaving the picture looking hollow and flat, while its medium and high settings can cause the image to look a bit unstable during high contrast shots as the projector becomes a bit hyperactive with its workings.

For us, the Titan’s Dolby Vision Dark mode delivers the best out-of-the-box option for dark room viewing – though this still isn’t as perfect for black levels as we’d have hoped. Plus it relies on the projector receiving a Dolby Vision source, of course.

You could improve the black levels by using a low-gain (0.5 or so) screen, and reducing the projector’s brightness setting also helps a bit – though this obviously reduces the impact of the potent HDR effect that’s arguably the Titan’s biggest selling point.

The Titan’s DLP images also reveal a little rainbow effect during shots that contain stand-out bright objects. This issue is, to be fair, less aggressive than we might have expected with such a bright projector, but it’s definitely there – even to people like us who only consider ourselves to be moderately susceptible to seeing it (sensitivity to the rainbow effect varies from person to person).

The third picture issue is that the so-called Performance mode, where performance appears to mean driving every aspect of the picture to the outer extremes of the projector’s capabilities, is one of the weirdest and most unwatchable picture presets we’ve ever seen.

Yes, it’s bright. Arguably the brightest picture we’ve seen from any projector costing under five figures, in fact. But colours look absolutely bizarre in this mode – about as far from natural and balanced as you could imagine in your wildest AV fever dream – while the projector’s Dynamic Tone Mapping seems to lose the plot pretty much entirely, delivering picture extremes with so little thought for balance and consistency that you’d swear different elements of each frame must have been mastered at different times by different people on different mastering monitors.

The Performance mode also suddenly escalates the Titan’s running noise from practically (and brilliantly) non-existent to a level that’ll have you thinking you must have left the fan oven in the kitchen on.

Of course, you don’t have to choose the Performance mode, thankfully. And in its key Standard, Dolby Vision Dark, IMAX Enhanced and Filmmaker Mode modes, the Titan is capable of delivering generally very enjoyable pictures – especially if, contrary to typical ‘home theatre projector’ practice, you leave a little light in your room.

Sound quality

The Titan’s built-in speakers give good TV sound systems a run for their money. The projector can go as loud as a good-sounding TV, for instance, without starting to sound strained. The speakers project their sound well, too, including towards the distant screen, substantially reducing that eternal projector audio problem where the sound doesn’t seem to be attached to the pictures.

The midrange is rich and full, and the speakers are sensitive enough even under quite heavy pressure to retain great levels of detail and clarity. Even when they’re dealing with shrill treble or heavy beats. The midrange is also able to expand very effectively as escalating action or horror scenes grow in density, layering and volume, avoiding that common integrated TV/projector audio system issue of the sound falling away just when it should be entering full-throated mode.

However, while bass is typically convincing, Hollywood’s deepest bass moments can catch the Titan out a little, with prolonged rumbles sometimes sounding rather coarse against the quite hi-fi feel of the rest of the sound. A faint crackling effect can creep into the most extreme bass sounds, too.

More broadly, while the Titan sounds good overall by projector standards, its audio is a long way from a suitable match for the epic scale of the pictures it produces. A dedicated home cinema system really is the only way to go here.

Verdict

The Titan has enough swagger in both its hardware and software to compellingly back up Xgimi’s latest bid to be taken seriously as a potential home theatre rather than simply ‘living room’ projector brand. Much of the DNA required to get home cinephile hearts thumping is present and correct, and its pictures can look incredible at times.

In the end, though, the Titan perhaps pushes its ‘True Home Cinema anywhere’ bid a bit too far, leaning slightly too hard into the sort of picture abilities required for the ‘storefront displays or digital signage’ applications Xgimi also claims the Titan can support, rather than dedicating itself hook, line and sinker to the home cinema world.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the AWOL Vision Aetherion Max

Also consider the Epson EH-LS9000

Best projectors: the best options tested by our home cinema experts

Those are some big expectations to meet, but can it outperform the Award-winning Sonos Arc Ultra? Let’s just say that our current front-runner has been left untroubled by its latest competitor.

Price

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is priced at £1000 / $1099 / AU$1800, which places it firmly against the Sonos Arc Ultra (£999 / $999 / AU$1799).

The Sonos rival is not only a five-star product, but it’s also the current class-leader, having picked up a What Hi-Fi? Award in 2025 for its troubles. If you want the best Dolby Atmos soundbar we’ve tested at this level, the Sonos is the one to beat.

Another close rival is the Sony Theatre Bar 9, which started life more expensive than the Bose when it launched a couple of years ago, but has dropped from £1399 / $1400 / AU$1795 to around the £999 mark if you shop around.

There is the option to upgrade the Bose soundbar to a 7.1.4-channel system by adding a pair of wireless speakers (£300 / $299 / AU$545 each) and one subwoofer (£900 / $899 / AU$1295). We reviewed the former (the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker) in July this year as a standalone wireless speaker, where it received a three-star rating.

Here, though, we are looking at the bar on its own.

Design

The Bose bar has a premium-feeling design befitting its price thanks to a stylish glass top and textured-knit fabric (available in either a black or white smoke finish).

Built into the glass top is a dial to adjust volume, which allows you to control music playback and volume via a combination of tapping and sliding your finger around the inner edge clockwise (volume up) or anti-clockwise (volume down).

That all makes it stand out from the crowd, as we have seen our fair share of non-descript black plastic rectangles pass through the test room.

As you would hope from a premium soundbar, there are a variety of drive units packed into the body. The nine drive units include one full-range 6cm up-firing driver at either end of the bar, which fires sound up at 90 degrees to add height and immersion to movie soundtracks. Note that this means the bar isn’t suited to being under a shelf with a TV above, as this will block the sound.

Across the front of the bar are four full-range ‘racetrack’ drivers that measure around 75mm wide, and two of Bose’s 20cm PhaseGuide drivers, which use special processing to fill in any gaps in the soundfield. There’s also a 25mm centre tweeter for dialogue.

On the rear, you’ll find two of Bose’s QuietPorts, which work with the company’s CleanBass technology and internal digital signal processing (DSP). The brand claims this can deliver low frequencies in a deep, controlled way with minimal distortion.

The bar looks at home next to our 55-inch screen, although it would fit equally as well with a 65- or 75-inch model.

Features

There’s no remote control in the box, so you will find yourself relying on the Bose app a fair bit. It offers an intuitive and simple overall experience, letting us set up the bar without much of a fuss.

From here, you can adjust the volume, input, and you can calibrate the soundbar to your space. This is done via the built-in microphones in the bar, and takes just a few minutes. During the process, the soundbar outputs a few test tones to adjust to the space. The soundbar’s presentation improves in scale and clarity once we go through the calibration process, so this is something well worth doing.

In terms of physical connectivity, you are limited to an Ethernet and a single, eARC-compatible HDMI socket. It’s a shame Bose hasn’t seen fit to include any additional HDMI inputs, as it limits the flexibility of your set-up, but this criticism can (and is) also aimed at the Sonos Arc Ultra.

Wi-fi is onboard, and streaming comes via Google Cast, Apple AirPlay 2 or Spotify Connect. The soundbar also supports Bluetooth 5.3. Tidal Connect and Qobuz Connect are not supported by the soundbar (or Lifestyle Ultra Speaker) yet, but we have been assured that these are in the pipeline.

There are no preset modes for movies or music, but you can manually adjust the centre, surround and height channels on the app.

Sound

Let’s start with the positives. The Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar offers a nicely balanced sound that makes for easy listening.

When watching F1: The Movie, the bassy revving of engines as cars zoom around the race track does not stand out from the rest of the frequencies and blends seamlessly. There is a decent amount of weight and power in the Ultra’s bass performance, and it gives the soundtrack a firm foundation.

Dialogue is clean and relatively clear, as we can hear every word during the tense racing scene at the start of the film, even through the crackling headsets of the pit crew.

There is a fairly good sense of detail as we continue with the scene, as the beeping of the vehicle tracker and the scuffle of the pit crew are clear without being distracting. It’s certainly an improvement on the vast majority of TV speakers, and longer listening periods do not make for a fatiguing experience.

However, the Bose soundbar is not without its flaws. The synth-heavy soundtrack and revving engine should grow into an exciting crescendo. But the Bose bar’s timid handling of dynamics results in a flat performance that doesn’t create a sense of anticipation.

Given that this is a Dolby Atmos soundbar, there is not a great sense of scale, either. Watching Blade Runner 2049 when Joi experiences rain for the first time, the width of the sound does not extend much further than the length of our 55-inch Samsung S90H TV screen. The limited sense of height doesn’t make for an immersive experience, either: the rain should be heard overhead, but instead the drops are locked to the screen.

In an attempt to fix this, we go into the app’s audio settings and turn the height and surround channels to their maximum levels. This helps to create a wider sense of space, but the increase in scale information isn’t as obvious as it should be.

Later, as the holographic adverts pop up on the street, the Bose fails to locate individual sounds with any great focus compared with a class-leading rival such as the Sonos Arc Ultra.

We switch to Tidal via Bluetooth to test the Bose’s musical chops. Compared with the Arc Ultra, there isn't a great deal of detail with Yiso Horikawa’s Bubbles. This track starts with a series of bouncing balls of all types, resulting in a cacophony of textures that make for a stern audio test. The Bose struggles here, lacking the insight and precision to differentiate the range of sounds.

Verdict

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar offers a premium-looking design that stands out from the crowd. Its audio performance may be undemanding to listen to, but at such a premium price, that is not enough to earn our recommendation. We also demand punch, dynamism and immersion, and in these regards the Bose is sadly lacking.

When a rival such as the Sonos Arc Ultra achieves so much more for the same price, it’s clear that the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is no more than an also-ran in this particular race.

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Design 4
• Features 3

MORE:

Read our review of the Sonos Arc Ultra

Also consider the Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9

Read our Samsung HW-Q990F

Best soundbars: options for every need, recommended by our experts

iFi has billed its latest creation, the premium iDSD GR 2 DAC, as “a legend perfected”. Acting as the de facto successor to the company’s xDSD Gryphon from 2021, the new model promises wholesale changes from its predecessor, including redesigned balanced circuitry, a new Burr-Brown PCM1795 DAC chip, and a touchscreen display.

A lot of promise on paper; time to find out how the iFi iDSD GR 2 performs in practice.

Build & design

iFi’s premium DAC/headphone amplifier feels like a quality item. Constructed using a ridged aluminium chassis adorned with an OLED touchscreen and topped with a metal control knob, the iDSD GR 2 does a fine job of making you feel as though you’re getting your money’s worth.

If out-and-out portability is your primary concern, iFi offers smaller, cheaper alternatives in its arsenal of DAC/ headphone amplifiers, including the iFi hip-dac 3 (£199 / $199 / AU$449) and Zen DAC 3 (£229 / $229 / AU$399), with the iDSD GR 2 designed to straddle that tricky hinterland between desktop use and on-the-go listening.

Viewed from above, it’s about the size of an iPhone, but the DAC’s metal chassis and chunky profile mean you might struggle to get it in your pocket comfortably. 268g isn’t exactly heavy, but when you consider that an iPhone 15 weighs about 170g, you’ll realise that it isn’t feather-light, either.

Battery life clocks in at around seven hours, and there are plenty of ways to connect your headphones and music sources to the premium DAC. It features balanced 4.4mm and single-ended 3.5mm inputs and outputs, as well as a USB-C input alongside a combination optical/coaxial input. You can also accept a signal from a Bluetooth (5.4) source, with codec support coming in aptX Lossless, aptX Adaptive and LDAC flavours.

The iDSD GR 2 features a narrow OLED colour touchscreen, from which you can access volume adjustment, input selection, choose your desired digital filter and see your music’s file rate.

A display is nice to have, and the touchscreen itself is responsive and precise in its operation. Some aspects of operation take a bit of practice, such as holding certain icons down and then swiping across in the same motion to switch the desired gain mode, but we imagine those are things we’d grow accustomed to with time.

Away from the display, a few little usability quirks are worth flagging. The inputs and outputs at either end of the unit aren’t labelled particularly clearly, meaning that we sometimes had to bust out our phone’s flashlight to find our desired connection. Labelling each port with clearly contrasting white text would make legibility a little easier.

The volume control operation also seems counterintuitive – moving the dial forwards with the DAC lying flat turns the volume down a notch, while moving it backwards raises it up. That feels like the mirror image of what we’d expect, but again, we’d likely get used to it over time.

If you’re planning on taking the DAC out and about and want to keep it safe from knocks and scrapes, iFi offers a faux suede protective case, sold separately for around £50 / $50 / AU$79. The case comes with a cut-out so that you can still operate the touchscreen, though we do find that it can make tapping icons near the edge of the screen a bit trickier due to the cut-out being a little too small.

Internally, the iDSD GR 2 employs Class A amplification, in service of iFi’s pursuit of what it describes as a “natural analogue character”. The brand has also refined its new DAC’s circuitry – which is fully balanced from end to end – to reduce noise within the signal path.

The iDSD GR 2 delivers up to a claimed output of 1513m/W RMS – an increase of 50 per cent over the outgoing xDSD Gryphon – to grant more headroom to handle more demanding loads. That matches up with our testing, as from the premium Beyerdynamic T1 (£899 / $999 / AU$1599) to the high-end Sony MDR-Z1R (£1700 / $2100) headphones, we find that there isn’t much that the iFi can’t handle.

Features

The iDSD GR 2 supports DSD512 files and PCM playback up to a sky-high resolution of 32-bit/768kHz, though the chances of any layperson having such ultra-high-resolution recordings are slim. Still, it’s nice to know that, whatever music file you feed the iDSD GR 2, you’ve got a near-cast-iron guarantee it can handle it.

Doing said handling is a new Burr-Brown PCM1795 DAC chip sitting at the heart of the circuitry, which is claimed to produce a "warm, analogue character" with "lower distortion and greater dynamic range". That DAC chip is supported by 'K2HD' technology, a harmonic restoration algorithm built to bring recordings closer to their original character by "reintroducing subtle detail" and restoring musical tone.

iFi’s usual parade of digital filters is on hand for tweaking your sound to your own tastes, with four options consisting of ‘Standard’, ‘Bit-Perfect’, ‘Minimum Phase’ and ‘GTO’. Each will impart a slightly different flavour on your tunes – ‘Standard’ makes music crisper and more sharply defined; ‘GTO’ widens the soundstage a little – but for most of our testing, we stick with the smooth, pleasingly fluid balance of ‘Minimum Phase’.

iFi’s complementary ‘XBass’ and ‘XSpace’ analogue processing features have a more perceptible effect. ‘Xbass’ is useful for adding a good deal more lower-end muscle, even if it sacrifices precision and subtlety in the process, while ‘XSpace’ widens out the soundstage for an airier, less ‘on-head’ experience.

Both are fun to play around with – and potentially useful if you’re seeking to make up for a pair of cans with, say, not much oomph in the bass – but we perform the bulk of our testing with them switched off, as this grants the resultant sound a more natural, balanced character.

Away from filters, iFi’s latest DAC offers a hybrid power mode, meaning that the unit will prioritise mains power when connected to an external supply. If extra power is required, the iDSD GR 2 will utilise its internal battery and then switch to the external supply when the demand drops.

While you’ll likely spend a good deal of your time controlling the DAC using its on-unit touch controls, Android users can connect to iFi’s Nexis app. From here, you can access digital filters, fine-tune your listening profile, select your desired input and reap the rewards of any handy over-the-air updates.

It’s not the most stylish control app you’ll ever find, and most of the functionality can be adjusted via the DAC itself, but the Nexis platform is clear and easily navigable. Just be aware that, to get the most out of the app, you’ll need your source device to be connected physically, rather than via Bluetooth. iPhone users can still use the app via Bluetooth, but it’s a far sparser, more limited affair.

Sound

We use a range of premium and high-end wired headphones to test the iDSD GR 2’s capabilities, including not only the Sony MDR-Z1R, but also the budget-friendly Røde NTH-100 (£149 / $149 / AU$249) and premium Austrian Audio The Composer (£2249 / $2699 / AU$3999). We also make sure to test the full range of connections on offer, although we prefer using the punchier, crisper-sounding 4.4mm balanced output over its 3.5mm counterpart when possible.

With the iFi connected via USB-C to our laptop at one end and a pair of the high-end Sony MDR-Z1R connected to the 4.4mm balanced headphone output at the other, we reach for a 24-bit/96kHz rendition of Muse’s Panic Station. The iDSD GR 2 will give any music you play from a laptop a boost, no matter the quality of the files you use, but there’s no question you’ll really notice its full arsenal of capabilities with suitably high-resolution recordings.

Those abilities include impressive sonic clarity wedded to an ear for detail, all painted across a broad, big-picture soundscape. Panic Station is as crisp and funky as John Travolta’s iconic Saturday Night Fever suit, yet the iDSD GR 2 has the poise and restraint to prevent things from sounding sloppy or ill-ordered. Top-end notes are sharp but rarely bright or overdone, whereas low-end bass tones resonate deeply without sacrificing punch or precision.

A 24-bit/48kHz recording of Fleet Foxes’ Wading In Waist High Water further highlights the iFi’s uncluttered, detail-rich presentation. Tremulous vocals shine brightly as the DAC spotlights Robin Pecknold’s featherlight tenor, all while delicate guitar strums and hazy blasts of brass lull us into a relaxed repose.

We can’t stay basking in the glow of blissed-out indie beats forever, and so it’s time to put out the Bat-Signal and recruit the services of Hans Zimmer to see how the iDSD GR 2 can convey the drama and intensity of The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack (24-bit/192kHz).

iFi’s premium DAC has the poise and refinement to keep the many layers of the epic Rise just where they should be, even if we’re left yearning for a touch more dynamic drama as the music builds to its heroic denouement.

This is where the Award-winning Chord Mojo 2 reminds us why it’s one of the best DACs we’ve tested at this kind of level. At £395 / $725 / AU$899, it’s a good deal cheaper than its iFi rival, yet the bite and drama it brings to these big orchestral numbers are beyond anything the iDSD GR 2 can muster.

To see how both DACs perform in a hi-fi separates set-up, we plug each into our reference system. From our network server, we play Michael Jackson’s Burn This Disco Out (in 16-bit/44.1kHz and 24-bit/176.4kHz) via 4.4mm balanced to XLR feeding into our reference Burmester 088 preamplifier, and the subsequent rendition sounds sparkier and more rhythmically capable via the Chord Mojo 2 than it does through the premium iFi.

The Mojo 2 is already a certified legend in its field, and as we switch back to a DSD recording of Aimee Mann’s Lost In Space, we find ourselves continuing to appreciate the GR 2’s strengths rather than bemoaning its relative shortcomings. Mann’s voice is packed full of personality, and the iFi’s loose, relaxed presentation plays into the tune’s hands to create a pleasingly easy-going rendition.

What about Bluetooth? The iDSD GR 2’s wire-free performance is perfectly capable, as evidenced by its sure-footed handling of a 16-bit/44.1kHz rendition of Goose’s Dripfield. But if you want to make the most out of your DAC – and indeed, the premium headphones you’ll be partnering it with – Bluetooth should be seen as a nice bonus rather than a primary means of listening.

Verdict

The iDSD GR 2 is a fine addition to iFi’s considerable stable of DACs. It’s not as entertaining or dynamically expressive as the benchmark-setting Chord Mojo 2, but its clear, detailed sound and extensive feature set, not to mention sturdy build and strong arsenal of physical connections, make it a fine alternative.

Review published: 24th August 2026

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Build 4
• Features 5

MORE:

Read our review of the Chord Mojo 2

Also consider the Cambridge Audio DacMagic 200M

Best DACs: USB, desktop and portable digital-to-analogue converters

With a screen that measures in at 14.6 inches, it’s massive – bigger than a lot of laptops, and about as powerful as one too. If you’re looking for an Android tablet built for performance, on specs alone this has got to be a strong contender.

For movies on the go though, there’s a lot to love here too – and of course that large AMOLED 2X screen is a considerable part of that.

For people who don’t mind the extra heft in their backpack, and who can justify its equally hefty price, this could be one of the most cinematic ways to watch movies on the move.

Price

The Samsung Tab S11 Ultra is available in a number of configurations. There is a choice of either 256GB or 512GB of storage with 12GB RAM, or a 1TB storage option with 16GB RAM – plus you can also add up to 2TB of storage via microSD card.

In the UK, Europe and Australia, there’s also the choice of going for wi-fi only or opting for 5G cellular support across any of those configurations. However, the 5G version is not currently available in the US.

The wi-fi-only 256GB version costs £1089 / $1300 / AU$1799, with 512GB costing £1239 / $1500 / AU$1999 and the 1TB costing £1569 / $1900 / AU$2499.

For 5G, you will need to pay £1239 / AU$2049 for 256GB, £1389 / AU£2249 for 512GB, and £1719 / AU$2749 for 1TB.

There’s only one other tablet that’s sitting around these kinds of prices, and that’s the iPad Pro – though that is even more expensive still, in every configuration.

Considering the fact you’re likely Team Android if you’re considering the Tab S11 Ultra, how much the iPad Pro costs is probably of no concern to you – but it gives you an idea of where the Tab S11 Ultra sits in the overall tablet hierarchy.

To help turn this into the laptop replacement it wants to be, and to make its size feel less – well – sizeable, Samsung’s Slim Keyboard Cover is available as an add-on for £199 / $210 / AU$399, though it’s often offered for free on bundle promotions.

It’s a nice case with a decent keyboard for typing (but no trackpad), and it helps take the weight of the tablet out of your hands when watching movies. It thankfully doesn’t add too much extra bulk either, and also doubles up as protection for the tablet.

The new simplified S Pen stylus, also found with the S25 Ultra phone, is included with the Tab S11 Ultra for free.

Design

If you’re already familiar with Samsung’s Ultra line of tablets, you’ll notice that the S11 Ultra doesn’t break the mould of the last few years in terms of design. That’s no bad thing; it’s a smart-enough-looking tablet, with curved corners and flat, angled sides, available in a choice of grey or silver.

However, Samsung has managed to shave a few millimetres of depth compared with the Tab S10 Ultra, meaning it’s now slimmer than ever, measuring just 5.1mm thick – the same thickness as the iPad Pro, in fact. It’s lighter than its predecessor too, at 692g (wi-fi only), down from 723g.

Even with that weight off, it still feels quite heavy to hold one-handed for any extended amount of time, and its sheer size and 16:10 aspect ratio also make it a little unwieldy to use in portrait orientation – this is definitely a tablet that’s meant to be used primarily in landscape.

Considering what we look for in tablets, that certainly doesn’t bother us, but we can certainly feel the difference in our hands between this and the iPad Pro (579g).

For a pricey tablet, the S11 Ultra feels premium, but it’s reassuring to know that it’s pretty hardy too, using Samsung’s Enhanced Armor Aluminium (the same material used in the Galaxy S25 and S25 Plus) for its back panel, and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for its display. It’s also officially IP68 rated, which is more than the iPad Pro, meaning it’ll be safe if it gets wet.

Elsewhere, the S11 Ultra keeps things pretty simple, with just the power button and volume rocker on the top left edge (if held in landscape), a USB-C charging port to the right, along with an under-screen fingerprint scanner for unlocking on the right side too. This can be a bit tricky to find initially but works just fine once you have, though face recognition feels like the better, more consistent bet for unlocking on first try.

The included S Pen stylus snaps magnetically along the top edge, and comes with an updated hexagonal design to mimic real pencils. It’s also simpler this time round, requiring no charging whatsoever. That means it drops its Bluetooth capability, and Samsung’s Air Actions along with it (that offered shortcuts and remote functions based on gestures and button clicks with the S Pen), but the benefit of the pen not needing charging far outweighs that to our way of thinking.

Features

The Tab S11 Ultra is Samsung’s flagship tablet, and it has a spec list to match. First up, a suitably beefy chipset, MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400+, ensures the Samsung moves seamlessly between apps, quickly loads and buffers streams, and has no problem with multitasking – even when using Samsung’s window-based desktop system, DeX.

We won’t dig too much into this, but if you’re buying a tablet for movies and hoping to also use it as something of a laptop replacement, Samsung’s Tab S11 Ultra is probably the experience to beat on Android.

It’s still a stretch to suggest it could match the productivity of a proper laptop – the experience is just not as slick and the app selection not as extensive – but the desktop view is easy to access, and you can quickly flip between that and a more standard tablet experience, with DeX launching automatically whenever you shrink down an app to multi-task.

There are three cameras on the Tab S11 Ultra, one selfie camera and two on the rear. If you’re using the main cameras – a 13MP main and 8MP ultrawide – to take anything other than the quick snapshot in a pinch, you may need to have a word with yourself. Your phone will be easier to use and will undoubtedly do a better job, but in good lighting conditions you’ll get a sharp, passable shot from the S11 Ultra, with decent colours and a good amount of detail.

The 12MP front-facing camera is arguably more important on a tablet, and the S11 Ultra’s does a pretty good job with that, offering an ultrawide lens for getting all of the family in on video calls and managing variable lighting pretty well too.

Video quality tops out at 4K 30fps no matter what camera you’re using. Once again, it’s fine, but it’s probably not going to launch any YouTube careers.

With an 11,600mAh battery, battery life is decent, and while Samsung’s stated 23 hours of playback is ambitious for real-world use (this is apparently based on playing a 720p video saved on the device, rather than being streamed), you can get well into a second day with medium to heavy use – as long as you keep an eye on your screen brightness.

The Tab S11 Ultra runs on Android 16, with Samsung’s One UI 8 running over the top. Samsung offers an impressive seven years of OS and security updates, meaning that your investment should be sound for at least that long.

Picture quality

The Tab S11 Ultra’s whopping 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display is really the biggest talking point of this tablet, and perhaps its biggest selling point too – particularly if you want big-screen movies on the go.

The resolution remains unchanged here from its predecessor, at 1848 x 2690 and 239ppi, and with its 16:10 aspect ratio, you get much slimmer black bars than you do on the iPad Pro when watching most movies. That means the size of this screen really does have an impact on your experience, making it all the more immersive. Movies look considerably bigger on this screen than on the iPad Pro.

There’s been a peak brightness boost to 1600 nits too, which matches that of the iPad Pro, and that really comes into its own in HDR scenes. We’re comparing it against the iPad Pro 13-inch M4, but HDR highlights certainly have a bit of extra punch on the S11 Ultra, and overall brightness levels are also slightly higher too.

In the fight between K and Sapper in Blade Runner 2049, the bright windows pierce into the gloomy room with noticeably more intensity on the S11 Ultra, and there’s also a touch more subtlety in the light reflected onto their faces.

However, at the other end of the scale, it’s a different story. Blacks are deeper on the S11 Ultra than those on the iPad Pro M4, but the iPad retains more shadow detail, meaning this dingy scene has more dimension to it on Apple’s slate.

Colours are generally well handled across the board and, once you’ve turned the default screen mode from Vivid to Natural, it skews a lot closer to the tone of the iPad Pro, which we have long praised for its colour balance. The S11 Ultra is still richer though, with punchier handling of colours and warmer skin tones, but not in a way that looks misplaced or unnatural – particularly when viewed in isolation. In fact, sometimes it works in its favour, creating a lively image that doesn’t look out of place.

However, it’s not just in the shadows where the iPad pips the S11 Ultra for fine detail; it does so in brighter scenes too. There’s a greater sense of depth in landscape shots, and more natural insight into the textures of skin, hair and fabrics. The S11 Ultra struggles to find quite the same nuance, and so we sometimes notice some oversharpening as it tries a bit too hard.

The S11 Ultra’s screen is anti-reflective, and while it doesn’t kill all reflections, it actually does a pretty good job of dulling them down – better than the iPad Pro M4 does, though we are yet to test the nano-texture glass on the M5.

While not perfect, there’s a lot to love about the way movies look on the S11 Ultra – and how immersive it feels remains a big part of that. The iPad Pro still takes it for the most natural and insightful images, but if you’re looking for the closest equivalent on Android, this has got to be it.

Sound quality

If you’re not using headphones, the S11 Ultra leans on four external speakers for its sound, one at each corner. Those on the bottom edges aren’t placed brilliantly though, as they sit very close to where your hands would generally hold the tablet, and it can muffle them.

Be careful with where you place your hands, though, and they go really loud, and because the screen is so wide, they sound big too, with audio that fills the screen and the space around it. There’s support for virtualised Dolby Atmos for content that contains it too, which only widens this further, though any expectations for a real sense of height should be managed appropriately.

Pull up the first ten minutes of 6 Underground, and there’s a soundtrack full of car chases, crashes and gunfire to contend with. The sense of immersion remains, and the S11 Ultra has more scale and presence than the iPad Pro. However, Apple’s slate has a richer and more solid tonal balance compared with the S11 Ultra, which can veer into sounding a touch fragile and sharp at volume.

Listening via USB-C audio to Go by The Chemical Brothers streamed on Apple Music, and the age-old story goes on. The S11 Ultra sounds just fine – it’s much more assured when listening via headphones, with a much better tonal balance than its speakers. It’s a punchy, clean and upfront sound that’s plenty entertaining.

However, the iPad just sounds warmer and fuller-bodied, with more fine detail retrieval that helps tie all the elements of a song together more cohesively.

Verdict

There’s no doubt that the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra is one of the most capable Android tablets you can buy, with a bright, sharp screen that makes watching movies on the go more immersive than you can find on just about any other tablet.

It is enormous though, which means it takes up a fair bit of space in a backpack. It’s expensive too, so you’re going to want to make use of at least some of its broader performance features for that price to make sense. But if you’ve got the budget and the space, this is the Android tablet to beat for movies and music on the go.

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 4
• Features 5

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Also consider the iPad Pro 13-in M4

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They’ve delivered convenience and quality in pretty much equal measure, which isn’t always a given when you’re asking a single product to perform multiple functions.

The Evo 300 is the brand’s fourth such system and sits above the Evo 150 SE in Cambridge Audio’s current line-up.

The new model boasts double the power of the 150 SE (300W vs 150W), and the company has gone to great lengths to highlight the fact that it is its most powerful streaming amplifier ever.

But this increase in power comes with an increase in price, which not only makes it Cambridge Audio’s most expensive streaming amplifier ever, but also moves the Evo into new territory, and into the sights of new rivals.

Cambridge Audio has cooked up a solid recipe for its streaming systems so far, but does the Evo 300 have the ingredients needed to impress?

Price

The Evo 300 costs £3499 / $3999 / AU$6399, which places it slightly above our current favourite around that price, the Award-winning Arcam SA35. The Arcam costs £2999 / $3300 / AU$6495 and launched back in May 2024. Despite its comparative age, we haven’t seen much in the way of online discounts on the Arcam.

To give you some extra context, the Cambridge Audio Evo 75 and Evo 150 launched in 2021 for £1799 / $2250 / AU$3299 and £2249 / $3000 / AU$4299, respectively, while the current Evo 150 SE arrived in 2025 with a price tag of £1999 / $3299 / AU$5795. As you can see, that’s quite a jump in price to the new model.

Design & build

If you’re familiar with any previous Evo models, you’ll know what to expect from the Evo 300 on the design front. And it’s overwhelmingly positive.

Cambridge Audio has really nailed the design language – the Evo 300 is a good-looking unit, with styling that should look at home in a wide range of listening environments.

It has a premium-looking and feeling black aluminium cabinet which boasts the Evo’s party piece – interchangeable, magnetic side panels. You get two options in the box: a real wood veneer or a black slatted option, should you want a traditional or more modern aesthetic.

On the front of the amp is a large 7.8-inch display, which is the biggest Cambridge Audio has used to date. It’s an inch bigger than the screen on the Evo 150 SE, and it really helps the system stand out.

It’s bright, crisp and punchy when it comes to showing album artwork and track information. The way it makes use of that real estate means you shouldn’t have any problems reading it from your sofa.

You have several display options to cycle through, whether you want one packed with track information or simple album artwork – there’s even a VU meter for those wanting something a little different. Whichever you pick, it’s always legible. The fonts used are clean and crisp and the sizes well-judged.

A small strip of control buttons runs down the right side of the screen – these relate to system set-up, playback and power. At the far right of the screen is Cambridge Audio’s trademark volume dial/control wheel combination.

The outer wheel has a knurled pattern running around it, which makes it relatively easy to grip, although some members of the team thought the edge could be a touch wider. As it turns, the Evo 300 responds with a confident click. The volume dial turns smoothly.

Bonus points, too, for the supplied remote. The neat design makes a refreshing change from some of the dull, generic-looking wands we’ve come across at this and even higher levels. The shape and positioning of the buttons make it simple to grip and easy to navigate.

But it's Cambridge Audio’s StreamMagic app which will be your main point of interaction with the Evo 300. And it's as intuitive and impressive as ever.

The way it integrates all the various features of the system with a plethora of streaming services, and presents them all in a way which is satisfying to navigate, means it’s ideal for beginners and more advanced streamers alike.

Features

Besides 300 watts per channel (into 8 ohms) courtesy of Hypex NCOREx power modules, the Evo 300 has a broad range of features at its disposal.

On the rear of the streaming amp are two sets of speaker terminals should you want to power an extra pair in a different room.

Want to add a subwoofer to your hi-fi set-up? An adjustable sub output is included and, using the StreamMagic app, you can control crossover, level and phase to make integration as smooth as possible.

In the Evo’s audio settings, you have a seven-band equaliser to play with, plus a number of EQ presets for shifting the sonic balance.

We’d also suggest you experiment with the product’s room compensation feature, which allows you to tweak the sound to match the “reflectiveness” of your room. Move the slider across the screen to the corresponding image, and you’ll hear the Evo 300 change its tonal balance to suit either a damped room or a minimalist one full of glass and hard surfaces..

Beneath the unit’s aluminium chassis you’ll find a dual-mono layout, a balanced pre-amplifier stage and an ESS Sabre ES9038Q2M DAC which supports up to 32-bit/768kHz PCM and DSD 512 files, plus the likes of ALAC, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, WMA, MP3, AAC and OGG Vorbis.

As has been the case with previous Evo models, Cambridge Audio has been more than generous on the connectivity front. You have a choice between balanced XLR inputs and the standard RCA line-level variety. There are optical and coaxial digital inputs and a USB-Type B socket for connecting external digital sources.

HDMI connectivity is all the rage on products like this, and the Evo 300 duly obliges with an eARC-compatible socket. You also have a moving magnet phono stage for connecting a turntable.

As we’ve mentioned, Cambridge Audio’s excellent StreamMagic platform caters for all your streaming wants, with support for Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Amazon Music, Deezer and Qobuz Connect, UPnP and Internet Radio. The amp also supports Bluetooth 5.4 (including aptX HD), AirPlay 2 and is Roon Ready.

Last, but by no means least, anyone after a more private listening experience can plug a pair of headphones into the 6.35mm headphone input on the front of the unit.

Sound

It really is a case of so far, so good for the Cambridge Audio Evo 300.

During testing, we use the streaming amp with our reference ATC SMC50 speakers, the five-star Epos ES14N and multi-Award-winning KEF LS50 Meta to get a feel for the breadth of the Cambridge Audio’s abilities.

And in isolation, the Evo 300 is a confident, capable performer. We start with a blast of Starstruck by Lady Gaga and the Evo 300 dispatches several meaty, solid-sounding bass notes and crisp-sounding claps before it opens up a spacious, welcoming stereo image.

There's real power and weight behind the streaming amp’s delivery – you’re left in no doubt that the Cambridge has big muscles, and it’s not afraid to flex them given half an opportunity.

There’s good depth and height to the image too, with a decent amount of space around her vocal and the electropoppy, synthy highs that prod around at the top of the frequency range.

Similarly, the switch to Jupiter from Holst's The Planets shows the regimented delivery of the Evo 300. The tightly controlled string sections are neatly arranged alongside percussion and wind, and it’s a pleasant, straightforward enough listen with no hidden surprises.

Highs and lows are nicely balanced – the strings don’t exhibit any uncomfortable, harsh edges and low frequencies don’t overplay their hand and remain well controlled at all times even when pushed to antisocial levels.

But there’s something missing. The track lacks energy. The strings lack sparkle. The Orchestra Symphonique de Montreal sounds like it’s slumped in its chairs instead of standing to attention.

Dynamically, the whole ensemble just struggles to connect with us. Yes, it’s a powerful, robust sound, but the Evo 300 struggles to convey the sense of life with each instrument. Instead of sounding energetic and rising and falling as the orchestra stretches itself across the frequency range, it just sounds a little flat and lacks drama.

We unbox the Arcam SA35, the Evo 300’s closest rival (it’s actually £500 cheaper) and try the same track. Immediately there's a different feel.

The Arcam breathes instant life into the music, aided by a wonderfully quiet background which allows more detail to shine through, more texture for your ears to unravel and, most importantly, it turns the song into a proper orchestral performance with feeling.

Switching back to the Lady Gaga track, the Arcam’s dynamism hits you as soon as that first bass note kicks in. Set against a super-quiet background, the track’s energy and drive shine through.

Not only does the SA35 reveal more detail and texture in the bass notes and synthy highs, but the whole presentation is more infectious, encouraging you to tap along in time. It communicates with you much more clearly than the Cambridge Audio; Gaga’s vocal sounds more expressive and emotive.

The Evo 300 struggles to strike up a real connection across its other inputs too. We reach for a pair of Austrian Audio The Composer over-ears and the headphone output mirrors that of the speaker terminals. It’s a solid enough performance, but we are looking for more at this level.

The Cambridge’s moving magnet phono stage isn’t at the same level as the SA35, either – plugged into our reference Technics SL-1000R/Nagaoka MP-200 record deck, the Arcam produces a more balanced and more convincing sound.

Verdict

As a proposition, the Cambridge Audio Evo 300 ticks several boxes. It’s a smart-looking, well-built, feature-packed unit that comes with a streaming platform and control app which many brands could only dream about creating.

It also produces a weighty, powerful sound with a decent amount of detail. However, in our opinion, despite all that power, the sound it produces falls flat.

Music should take you on an emotional journey where you feel it just as much as you can hear it, but the Evo 300's lack of dynamism and expression leaves you feeling distant. By contrast, Arcam SA35 draws you into the music and keeps you there, and it’s quite a bit cheaper, too.

We had big hopes for the Evo 300, but in that search for more power it feels like something has been lost along the way.

Review published: 20th August 2026

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Build 5
• Features 5

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Also consider the Arcam SA35

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The AV legend crawled out of that particular woodwork in 2023 to introduce its first audiophile headphones in decades, launching its ‘special edition’ open-back YH-5000SE (and a partnering HA-L7A headphone DAC/amplifier) to industry-wide acclaim, and putting itself back on the personal listening map.

The following YH-4000 were more affordable, mass-production revisions with a tweaked design and fewer bundled accessories, released to appeal to a wider audience. And, with Yamaha clearly reluctant to take its foot off the gas, we now have a closed-back pair that is even more affordable still. Meet the Yamaha YH-C3000, the ‘C’ denoting their closed-back design.

Design & build

Unlike the two open-back models, which use Yamaha’s sophisticated orthodynamic (planar magnetic) driver, the YH-C3000 are built around a dynamic driver that was newly developed specially for them over the course of a decade.

This ‘armodynamic’ driver – named after the Italian noun ‘armonia’, which refers to musical ‘harmony’ – has a unique three-layer diaphragm design that combines Zylon (also used in the drivers of Yamaha’s flagship loudspeakers) with composite materials such as paper and resin.

Completing the driver design is a clever ventilation system at the rear and a patented Y-shaped reinforced mesh damper for promoting clarity and reducing distortion, plus a pure iron pole designed to enhance speed and punch.

Being closed-back in design and thus having sealed enclosures behind their drivers, the YH-C3000 naturally look pretty different to their open-back siblings, which have perforated ear cups that ‘leak’ the sound that their drivers inherently fire away from the ears.

While the YH-4000’s magnesium ear cups comprise an intricate spider-pattern structure, the YH-C3000’s beech wood housings are ‘marble-like’: round, solid, shiny and smooth.

It’s a comparatively ‘safer’ look – more polished, less industrial-looking – and in tune with the company’s signature glossy black aesthetic, as adopted by its iconic pianos and motorbikes.

The only slight repercussion of this hallmark mirrored finish on such a tactile product is that it is unavoidably a fingerprint magnet.

Thankfully, Yamaha bundles a microfibre wipe cloth into the semi-hard fabric carry case, and giving them a quick polish after each use doesn’t feel taxing when you consider that the same skilled hands that handle Yamaha’s flagship grand pianos and audio components in the company’s Kakegawa factory in Japan have spent hours carefully sanding, painting and polishing multiple layers to achieve the desired finish.

We also like how you can make out the natural beech wood grain beneath it when you hold the headphones up to the light.

Considering the YH-C3000’s dynamic, closed-back nature, it’s also impressive that they weigh only 10g more than the planar-magnetic, open-back YH-4000.

Their 330g structure tips the scales slightly less than the rival closed-back Sennheiser HD 820 and Sony MDR-Z1R headphones, and doesn’t feel like a burden on the top of the head thanks to how effectively the soft pleather head pad spreads the pressure evenly across it.

The stainless steel band hovering above it connects to smooth stepless sliders for easy fit adjustment, although it’s a pity the plastic outer piece somewhat compromises an otherwise luxurious, premium build.

Yamaha has ensured there’s plenty of vertical movement in the ear cups’ swivel rotation axis so that the earpads sit snugly against your head, preventing sound leakage.

The clamp of the silk protein leather-coated memory foam earpads is indeed firm, but not so much that it causes discomfort. During a heatwave, they feel sticky in a way that suede-like alternatives on other headphones don’t, but in normal, cooler conditions they are exceptionally comfortable to wear for our two-hour listening sessions.

Sound

Supplied is a two-metre 3.5mm cable that connects to each ear cup, plus a 6.3mm adaptor, although Yamaha offers a range of balanced cables and a headphone stand as optional extras.

More important for your YH-C3000 setup than those accessories, however, is a quality DAC/headphone amplifier that can reveal the extent of the headphones’ talents – something a laptop, for example, isn’t capable of.

We drive the YH-C3000 using a Chord Hugo 2, and from the very first song we are smitten.

Deep Blue by BrhyM, the joint project of Bruce Hornsby and contemporary chamber ensemble yMusic, is a jazzy, groove-laden flurry of energetic, experimental sound, and the Yamahas do the esoteric collaboration justice.

There’s plenty in the mix to wrap your ears around, from piano and clarinet melodies and Hornsby’s lead vocal to a percussive beat and an array of strings including electric sitar, some of which are woven together in rhythmic patterns while others are more disparate. Everything has room in the soundstage to perform and flaunt its musical purpose.

The YH-C3000 have the top-to-bottom clarity and resolution to grasp instrumental textures and bring minute details and dynamic subtleties to the fore, as well as the precision and organisation to ensure music remains well imaged and coherent no matter how dense.

They’re clean and perceptive, and while leading edges of notes are crisply defined, that always stays within the confines of naturalness, never crossing into hardness. That said, some may find the Yamaha’s directness and top-end bite fatiguing compared to richer, smoother alternatives.

Despite their impressive insight, the YH-C3000 don’t feel in any way systematic. They know how to have a good time. With Eminem’s The Way I Am, the rhythmic interplay between the piano and beat pattern is tight and propelling, while his iconic rapid-fire rapping packs all the attack and conviction we know it to have.

A pleasing combination of low-end weight and agility can meet the challenge of upbeat, bassy bravado like Jamie xx’s It’s So Good, too. They sink to the depths demanded by the club-ready bassline, while affording plenty of headroom and dynamic attention to the rattling percussion, glitchy beats and squeaking synths that dance above it.

We finish with Oneohtrix Point Never and Iggy Pop’s The Pure And The Damned, a piano ballad with a dystopian undertow, and the Yamaha headphones convey the track’s gravitas and the sense of longing that it – and the film it scores – bathes in.

The tectonic droning backdrop anchors the recording, while the piano notes drip through with harmonics intact and can be easily tracked as they move and fade throughout the soundstage. Iggy’s raspy, spoken-word vocals pack an emotional punch, and the celestial synths emerge with a spot-on balance of warmth and sizzle.

Such is the YH-C3000’s completeness that our comparative testing with the veteran Sony MDR-Z1R is rather short-lived. While the recently discontinued Sonys offer a pleasing depth and richness and a nice flow to music, they come second best in clarity, detail and punch, ultimately sounding comparatively muffled, flat and laid-back.

Verdict

So that’s three for three for Yamaha. Rather than rush out a line of models off the back of the inaugural YH-5000SE’s success, the company has taken time to consider and engineer an attractively priced closed-back companion.

Understandably, the YH-C3000 don’t possess the clarity, airiness and transparency of their higher-end open-back siblings, but by setting new standards in their own price and design class, they continue one of head-fi’s greatest modern comebacks.

Review published: 19th August 2026

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Build 5
• Comfort 5

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Also consider the Sony MDR-Z1R

Best over-ear headphones: wired and wireless pairs tested by our in-house experts

At first glance, that pitch continues with the Z Fold 8 Ultra, which offers a refined take on its Z Fold 7 predecessor – including a huge boost to both its screens' peak brightness levels and upscaling powers.

And were it not for one key issue, we would wholeheartedly be praising it as the best foldable for our discerning readers. But sadly, thanks to the appearance of a wildcard from Samsung, the Ultra is, ironically, not the ultimate option for Android AV enthusiasts; its cheaper sibling, the Samsung Z Fold 8, is.

Price

The Z Fold 8 Ultra is undeniably a premium product. The cheapest 256GB model we have in for review costs £1899 ( $2099 / AU$2999). The 512GB model will set you back £2069, while the top-of-the-line 1TB model sells for £2049. The extra increase for the 1TB model is also due to it having more RAM.

To put that in context, you could easily pick up enough entry-level Android phones and tablets to equip a family of three, or 2.4 Award-winning iPhone 17s, for the same price.

That also makes it over £100 / $100 more expensive than the older Z Fold 7 was at launch, £200 more expensive than the entertainment-focused Z Fold 8 and £620 more than Samsung’s flagship non-folding phone, the five-star Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Build

The price will be a hard pill to swallow for some, but there is no denying the Z Fold 8 Ultra feels premium and, dare we say, rugged (at least compared with past foldables we’ve tested).

The final point is a particular surprise for the team, one of whom had the joy of watching his first-generation Z Fold handset break in his hand when he first tested the folding mechanism many moons ago.

This is mainly thanks to Samsung’s Flex Titanium Technology display tech. The tech places a thin alloy mesh and flexible titanium plate under the AMOLED screens, which lets the firm reduce the phone’s size while improving its folding mechanism’s usability and durability.

Gone are the days when you would wince and pray to the tech gods whenever you opened it up. Now the Z Fold’s mechanism feels solid and suitably easy to use without requiring uncomfortable levels of force.

Uniformity is also improved, and unlike past Samsung Fold phones, the inner display’s crease is close to unnoticeable, resulting in a more immersive experience, especially when playing media.

The rigidity, smaller dimensions and generally polished design make the Ultra feel premium – though be warned, its IP45 rating means it's still not beach or pool-ready, and won’t survive most aquatic adventures.

The only other downside is that it retains the Fold’s atypical form factor, which, while having benefits for movie fans, is still firmly focused on 'power users' who want to have multiple apps open at the same time.

The 21:9 aspect ratio 6.5-inch outer display is thinner than most normal phones and has intuitively placed power and volume controls on its side, and also houses its fingerprint scanner.

But its 8-inch inner screen is still decidedly square-shaped, and the two side-facing speakers are pretty easy to block if you turn it on its side to make the most of the extra real estate. Doing so will also force the internal hole-punch-design selfie camera to block part of the screen, even when watching 21:9 content.

This makes the smaller Z Fold 8 feel fresher and more attuned to media consumption, thanks to its new passport-sized 10:16 aspect ratio outer screen and 7.6-inch 4:3 landscape interior display.

Features

Despite the power-user focus, the Fold 8 Ultra still houses several treats for movie and TV fans in particular.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset and 12GB of RAM ensure our review unit never stutters and is a speed demon with most processes – you’ll be able to game, edit spreadsheets and reels with zero issue. This is further aided by both screens’ variable refresh rate (VRR) 120Hz support.

For media, the phone doesn’t have the same Samsung ProScaler tech that wowed us on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. Instead, it relies on Samsung’s mobile Digital Natural Image engine (mDNIe) hardware. Rather than upscaling content, as ProScaler does, mDNIe uses advanced image processing to help the Ultra deliver more subtle and lifelike colours. Samsung specifically claims it’s “four times more accurate” than the older Z Fold 7.

Outside of this, both the Fold 8 Ultra’s screens support Samsung’s HDR10+ standard. The internal screen also has a staggering 3000 nits peak brightness. That’s 400 nits more than the older Fold 7. Combined with the handset’s Vision Booster feature, which adjusts contrast and the screen’s settings based on ambient light conditions, we never struggle to see what is onscreen, even in direct outdoor sunlight.

Dolby Atmos support is also included, both for the inbuilt speakers and connected headphones – though you have to activate it in the Ultra’s settings.

Despite its 4.1mm slimness when unfolded, the phone’s battery is also reasonably sized. The 5000mAh cell is quoted as offering 27 hours of video playback from a single charge. That figure requires some sacrifices to the display’s brightness, but we still find ourselves only losing an average of four-to-seven per cent of the phone’s charge watching Netflix on our hour-long commute home each day, which is solid by mobile standards.

Samsung’s One UI software sits over its base Android 17 OS. The skin brings some useful features, but they’re mostly to do with AI and making the most of the second screen. These include the ability to have multiple apps open on the inner display, which can be a boon.

Whether it’s chatting on Slack with the spreadsheet you’re discussing open on the other side of the screen, or WhatsApping your friends with Google Maps open as you try to navigate your way to the pub you’re meeting at, there are plenty of moments it's useful – though we do occasionally find ourselves hankering for a stylus like the one seen on the S26 Ultra, especially when working with spreadsheets.

Outside of the split-screen functionality, Now Brief and Now Nudge are probably the most used features. The first feature pushes contextual information throughout your day, while Now Nudge, rather creepily, raids data from all the apps on your device and the cloud to offer contextual replies.

Finally, the Ultra comes with a competent camera set-up. On its back you’ll find a 200-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide (up from 12 megapixels on the Fold 7) and a 10-megapixel telephoto. It also features the same ProVisual Engine with advanced AP processing for Nightography video.

The Fold 8 has a downgraded set-up, featuring a basic 50MP main and secondary 50MP ultrawide lens. Both feature 10MP selfie cameras with a hole-punch design embedded in each screen.

Given our AV focus, we won’t delve into too much detail here, but the cameras are good, though not the best you’ll find at this end of the market. The Ultra can take captivating shots and is more than good enough for shooting video for social media – as evidenced by a number of Reels we've posted on our channels using it.

Stabilisation is solid, and low-light photography looks good and is generally noise-free. But Samsung’s processing is still a smidgeon aggressive for those who value realism. Unless you go full manual, it still can oversharpen slightly, especially compared with a modern iPhone or Pixel, and colours occasionally look a tad overbaked.

Picture

The big question is, how does the Ultra perform as a home cinema in your hand? And here the answer is interesting. Our reviewers tested both of this year’s Fold phones and, despite the phones having the same nit count and upscaling powers, ended up using them fairly differently.

Side by side, playing Crime 101 in HDR10+ on Amazon Prime Video on the unfolded screens, it is immediately clear both are cut from the same cloth. Colours are nicely rich, despite the low-light scene’s tricky nature, and there’s a pleasing level of dark detail throughout the cityscape.

But interestingly, the basic Z Fold 8 goes a smidgeon brighter in certain parts, with the night-time sky initially offering a tad more contrast than the Ultra.

We make next to no adjustments to the screen settings, outside of turning off the ambient light and colour temperature controls, to ensure uniformity, as Samsung has refreshingly set the screen to its natural, not vivid mode, out of the box.

Moving to Ready Or Not 2 on Disney+, the phone’s AMOLED screen does a stellar job, delivering dark details that are lost on cheaper handsets, but it's the Fold 8 Ultra’s ability to retain colour volume, even in low light, that steals the show.

Avoiding spoilers, the viscera during a heated scene, mixing intense sections of light and dark elements, retains a pleasing level of realness, without ever being oversaturated. Skin tones as characters creep through the shadows retain a realistic warmth, never looking jaundiced or flat as they often can on phone screens.

Masters Of The Universe, on Prime Video, continues the strong performance, with the intentionally bright, almost cartoony, colours of Eternia popping, but never veering too far toward becoming oversaturated.

If anything, the screen feels like it could go harder, especially when pushing the numerous explosions billowing around He-Man. Here, interestingly, the base Fold 8 appears to be willing to push the brightest part of the picture a little harder than the Ultra. But, as always, we’ll take finesse over bombastic artificiality any day of the week.

The upscaling is also solid. Switching to Batman Begins, the phone admirably sharpens the Caped Crusader, giving the film a wonderfully three-dimensional but never artificial feel. Movements in particular retain their weight, as we feel every one of Batman’s precise but heavy blows. It’s only when he switches to the Batmobile and begins racing across Gotham that we detect a hint of oversmoothing.

With episodes of One Tree Hill on Netflix, the upscaling can’t completely remove the fuzzy grain from the ageing millennial melodrama, and some black crush does creep into certain scenes. But the show looks leagues sharper, more three-dimensional and ultimately immersive than that which we find on most rivals.

Were it not for one big elephant in the room, we would wholeheartedly say that, for the most part, it feels like we’re watching a shrunk-down Samsung OLED. That elephant in the room is the aspect ratio. The tablet screen only offers a smidgeon more real estate than its smaller sibling. And taking advantage of it means putting up with giant black bars on the upper and lower edges, with the hole-punch camera intruding on what you’re watching.

Before, this was easier to put up with. But with the standard Fold 8 being cheaper and having a more entertainment-focused aspect ratio, for people who just want to watch media, it makes the more expensive Ultra a harder sell.

In fact, the lack of extra real estate garnered from unfolding the handset means that at times, especially when commuting (unless, say, we are reading a comic or book on Kindle), we regularly just use the front screen, with its much more movie-friendly 21:9 aspect ratio.

Sound

Audio performance is an area where Samsung phones have proven to be good, but not best in class for a while – hence the four-star (and below) 'Sound' ratings on every handset we’ve reviewed since the Galaxy S23.

And this is largely because, outside Atmos and Spatial Audio, the firm doesn’t seem too bothered about improving its phones' musicality. This is a key reason Apple iPhones have dominated our Awards recently.

Does the Fold 8 Ultra reverse this trend?

Testing the audio with a pair of wired headphones using a USB-C to 3.5mm converter, the handset leaves a positive opening impression playing Philip Glass’s Floe on Apple Music.

There is a pleasing separation to every instrument as the demanding, rhythmically driven, harmonic progression strides forward. And the sound never feels out of control – an impressive feat considering how easy it is for the low-end, heavy bass synthesiser to overpower the more subtle string and flute sections.

As we move to 16 Horse Power’s Sinnerman, the phone’s focus on control continues. The handset accurately articulates the mid-heavy nature of the piece, retaining the track's intentionally swampy, raw, gritty Gothic Americana tone without pushing its own sonic signature on it.

But switching gears to the more energetic Good To Your Earhole (the all-analogue remaster, of course) by Funkadelic, the performance is a bit too tame. The attacking funk guitar doesn’t land with the intended scooped tone or have the rhythmic drive and precision we want. Our reviewers' feet remain firmly on the floor, rather than tapping along as they normally would, as a result.

Shifting to Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, the phone once again plays it a little too safe; the crash of John Bonham’s drums entering the composition doesn’t have the weight and impact it should, showing the phone’s middling handling of dynamics and, dare we say, a lack of fun in the sound.

There’s nothing disastrously wrong with the audio. We just wish the Fold 8 Ultra was a bit braver, a bit more confident and ultimately a bit more exciting to listen to.

Switching to the handset’s speakers, the Fold 8 Ultra offers a nicely wide soundstage by phone standards.

The cars in F1: The Movie feel like they’re zig-zagging left to right with a precision and speed lacking on many phones. But the speakers are underpowered, lacking the low-end heft required to do the rumbling engines justice.

Musically, the sound is also too thin for enjoyable listening. Nine Inch Nails’ The Day The World Went Away sounds hollow and lacks its intended lumbering menace – though this is the case on nearly all the phone speakers we review.

The combination of factors makes the Z Fold 8 Ultra a reliable, albeit unremarkable, phone for audio.

Verdict

The Galaxy Fold 8 Ultra is a competent phone that’s ideal for its target market: power users and ’80s-style business folk who need to edit spreadsheets on the go. It’s also a competent mobile entertainment device for people who like to watch films and TV while out and about.

But thanks to its productivity-focused form factor, the benefits to AV fans of the second, foldable screen aren’t as pronounced as they are on its cheaper sibling, the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Its safe but unremarkable audio also puts it behind modern iPhones for anyone on the hunt for a phone that can double as a portable music player. This all adds up to make it a good, but not perfect option for AV fans.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 5

MORE:

Read our review of the Samsung Z Fold 8

Also consider the iPhone 17

Read our Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review

These are the best smartphones for music and movies

Having an expanding, tablet-style display that can neatly fold away and slip into a pocket should be a sure-fire hit for us; the concept lends itself well to taking movies on the go, in theory. But there’s been one sticking point that stops us from going all-in on ditching our “slab” phones in favour of these foldables: the aspect ratio.

That all changes with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, which has gone more movie-focused with its screen dimensions.

That’s not to say we haven’t enjoyed previous Samsung foldable phones – the Z Fold 6 and Z Fold 7 were both impressive handsets for movies – but this totally redesigned smartphone takes Samsung’s Galaxy Z series in a whole new AV-focused direction, and it’s all the better for it.

Price

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold smartphones have always been expensive, and the Fold 8 is no exception. At £1699 / $1899 / AU$2699 for the starting 256GB configuration, this phone is best avoided if you’re looking to stick to a strict budget.

Samsung also offers the handset in a 512GB storage option for £2069 / $2100 / AU$3299, and a 1TB option for £2239 / $2700 / AU$3599. It’s worth noting that the 1TB model is the only one to feature 16GB of RAM, while the others sport 12GB of RAM.

Interestingly, the Z Fold 8 launches at a slightly lower price than the Z Fold 7 (£1799 / $1700 / AU$2899); however, that is because the Z Fold 8 isn’t technically this year’s equivalent of the Z Fold 7. That honour goes to the Z Fold 8 Ultra, which starts at £1899 / $2099 / AU$2999.

Looking at the wider smartphone market, we reviewed the five-star Galaxy S26 Ultra at £1279 / $1300 / AU$1799, and the iPhone 17 Pro (review incoming) can be found for £1099 / $1099 / AU$1199. For a more like-for-like foldable comparison, Google’s new Pixel 11 Pro Fold starts at £1799 / $1899 / AU$2799.

Design

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is the biggest departure from Samsung’s foldable formula to date. The slender folded and square(ish) tablet-style unfolded form factor is traded for a stockier, more compact design this year.

When folded, the Z Fold 8 takes on a passport-like shape, which is surprisingly charming and satisfying to use. The 5.5-inch cover display is ideal for brief tasks – think quickly typing out a text or finding a track on your streaming service of choice – whereas the internal 7.6-inch screen is best suited for entertainment and web browsing.

We’ll dig further into the displays shortly, but for now we have to marvel at how thin the phone is. At 9.7mm when folded, the Z Fold 8 is only slightly thicker than the Galaxy S26 Ultra, and at just 4.7mm unfolded, the phone is barely thicker than the USB-C socket on the bottom of the device.

On the other edges you’ll find a combination power/lock button with an integrated fingerprint sensor and a volume rocker.

Samsung is also challenging the notion that foldable phones are fragile, as it's clad the Fold 8 in tough materials that should ward off dings and scratches. The cover display features a Gorilla Glass Victus Ceramic 3 coating, whereas the back glass is covered in Gorilla Glass Victus 2.

The metal frame is constructed from Samsung’s upgraded Armour Aluminium material, so the phone should resist the odd drop, but we won’t be throwing our review unit on the floor any time soon.

Samsung has drastically reduced the crease that runs down the centre of the display. This is thanks to the new Flex Titanium Technology display structure, which now incorporates a thin titanium mesh layer and flexible titanium plates below the AMOLED panel.

This has been implemented to improve display uniformity, enhance structural rigidity, and reduce air pockets beneath the display. While it’s difficult to say in the short term, this should ensure that the display isn’t compromised by a deep crease the more it's used.

Here is where we should also mention that the Z Fold 8’s new hinge feels much smoother and slicker to operate than the Z Fold 7’s. Less force is required to pry the two halves apart, and the folding mechanism feels buttery smooth.

The Z Fold 8 comes in four finishes; ours is the calming Lavender shade, though you’ll also find the Graphite and Cream finishes widely available. Samsung also sells a Pistachio version through its official channels.

Features

Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but this is yet another feature-packed handset from Samsung.

We’ll begin with the AV-focused specs, starting with the displays. The Z Fold 8’s 5.5-inch Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X cover screen sports a 1248 x 1972 resolution with a pixel density of 428ppi and a 1-120Hz variable refresh rate.

The more compelling of the two displays, however, is the interior one. It’s a 7.6-inch Foldable Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X display, with a 1848 x 2448 resolution and a 404ppi pixel density. Samsung claims that it can reach an impressive peak brightness of 3000 nits, and its 1-120Hz variable refresh rate makes for smooth scrolling and gaming.

However, the new aspect ratio is what truly makes this a killer portable AV machine. Samsung has switched to a 4:3 aspect ratio on the Z Fold 8, which means that the letterboxing bars above and below most content have been significantly shrunken down compared with the previous generation of Z Fold devices.

While the size of the content on screen isn’t drastically different to the Z Fold 7, the smaller bars mean that content fills more of the screen, resulting in a more immersive experience, and it generally means that more of that big internal screen is put to use.

And while it may not be the most common use for this phone, older 4:3 content (think TV shows from the early 2000s and before) looks absolutely fantastic, as it fills the entire display with no black bars at all.

HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos – the latter supported via headphones and the stereo speakers – flesh out the AV features, and while we don’t have Dolby Vision support here, that’s to be expected given Samsung prefers to push its HDR10+ rival.

The Z Fold 8 is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy processor, backed by either 12GB or 16GB of RAM depending on your storage configuration. This underpins the Android 17 software experience, which is delivered via Samsung’s One UI 9 software platform. It’s worth noting here that Samsung is promising up to seven years of software updates.

In practice, the Z Fold 8 is very responsive and slick to use. Apps load quickly, and the 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling and app animations buttery smooth.

One area in which the Z Fold 8 lags slightly behind the other Samsung smartphones we’ve tested recently is in the number of cameras. It features just four cameras: two rear cameras and two selfie cameras.

The duo of rear cameras includes a 50MP main sensor and a 50MP ultrawide camera, while the main display’s selfie camera is a 10MP ultrawide camera. The cover display features a 10MP wide camera, although we found very little use for it when the main cameras are on hand for selfie duties.

Unfolding the phone and flipping it around allows us to use the cover screen as a viewfinder, which has been a godsend for selfies with friends, and even for shooting videos for our social channels.

As this is a modern Samsung smartphone, you can expect a raft of Galaxy AI features. This includes the expected suite of auto translation, writing prompts and photo editing tools, as well as Samsung’s Now Brief app, which can deliver contextual information based on your routines and information from throughout your calendars, texts, email inboxes and more.

There's an exhaustive list of features, and they can sound overwhelming, but Samsung has done a good job of integrating them into the operating system fairly naturally.

However, there’s one AI-backed feature that seems to have been removed this year, and unfortunately it was the best aspect of recent Samsung smartphones. ProScaler – the video upscaling feature we’ve raved about on other Samsung handsets – hasn’t been mentioned in the same breath as the Z Fold 8 by Samsung, and while we’ve quizzed the brand a couple of times to check if it’s been quietly included on the Fold 8, we’re yet to get an answer.

Finally, we should mention battery life and charging. Samsung has implemented a new 4800mAh silicon carbon battery, which is split across the two halves of the Fold 8, and it can be charged quickly with 45W wired USB-C charging or 20W wireless charging.

Battery life has been incredibly solid throughout our testing, with the phone lasting well over a day even under our video-heavy testing procedures.

Picture

This is a phone that’s been designed for content consumption, which has naturally inspired us to put it through its paces to ensure its picture performance is worthy of its considerable price tag.

The good news is that watching movies on that expansive foldable screen really is a joy; however, we need to make a few tweaks from the default settings to ensure that it performs at its best. We switch to the natural colour profile for our testing, and turn off auto brightness in favour of the extra brightness.

With these settings dialled in, the Z Fold 8 delivers a sharp, colourful and solid image that is impressively impactful considering it can easily fit into your pocket. Streaming Superman on HBO Max reveals a bright, punchy image that suits the exciting content well; the blues, reds and yellows of Superman’s suit are especially eye-catching.

These colours can sometimes be a touch too excitable, especially when it comes to the slightly rosy skin tones of some characters. That said, the Samsung’s natural colour preset is definitely more balanced than the vivid alternative.

As Superman zips around the air above Metropolis, we find that motion – a noted shortcoming of the Z Fold 7 – is handled very well. We don’t find judder noticeable throughout any of our testing, and we could even accuse the Fold 8 of being a little too slick at times, though that doesn’t break our immersion.

Switching to the dark and gritty Crime 101 on Amazon Prime Video in HDR10+, the Fold 8’s contrast capabilities become quickly apparent. The shimmering lights of Los Angeles offer punchy bursts of brightness against the night sky, and there is a tangible sense of depth and solidity to the city skyline that makes it all feel impressively immersive.

Much like the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the Z Fold 8 feels like a little Samsung OLED TV here, as it shares some characteristics with the brand’s five-star S99H TV.

Interestingly, the Z Fold 8 handles dark detail like a Samsung TV too. That’s to say that some detail is sacrificed to maintain the solidity of shadows and general black depths.

While a touch more dark detail would be nice, it does mean that the moody shadows present throughout the opening sequence of this film are conveyed with integrity.

Overall, the Z Fold 8 serves up a very enjoyable cinematic experience that almost makes us forget that we can snap the screen closed at any moment.

Sound

As is the case with many recent Samsung smartphones, the sound performance isn’t quite on par with the picture. That’s not to say that the Z Fold 8 gets things explicitly wrong, but it doesn’t go above and beyond in the same way that Apple and Sony smartphones do.

Plugging a pair of wired headphones into the Fold 8 via our trusty USB-C to 3.5mm adapter – unsurprisingly there’s no headphone jack built in here – and streaming from Apple Music, we find that this Samsung phone really doesn’t put a foot wrong.

Detail levels and the clarity of vocals and instruments alike are all very impressive, and the placement of sounds is also handled well. There’s generally a good sense of space and openness to the sound; however, switching on Dolby Atmos makes this even more evident. You do sacrifice some focus with this setting applied, but it’s not a detrimental tradeoff by any means.

Timing is solid, and dynamics are good too. Even so, the Samsung doesn’t feel like it's trying all that hard to impress.

Swapping to an Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max or the Sony Xperia 1 VIII (review coming soon) reveals a warmer, richer and more textured sound, with a particular focus on dynamics that Samsung seems to neglect in its smartphones.

Swapping to the speakers, and the Z Fold 8 does have a smattering of positive attributes worth celebrating. The sheer size of the device means that the stereo speakers are separated to an extent that sound has a surprising sense of scale and punch, and the speakers can also go quite loud.

Switching Dolby Atmos on once again, we find that the Z Fold 8’s positioning of sounds is really quite impressive

At their maximum volume, a little bit of fuzz and distortion can creep in, but this is only really evident with the volume cranked all the way up.

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 is the most compelling foldable phone we’ve tested to date. The fun and functional new form factor is a pleasure to use, and the enhanced screen uniformity and durability should soothe the nerves of those reluctant to embrace the folding format.

It also happens to be a stellar portable movie-watching device. That bright, colourful and contrast-rich OLED display makes up for a few audio-related shortcomings, although it’s hard to ignore that substantial price tag.

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 4
• Features 5

MORE:

Read our review of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra

Also consider the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

Read our Apple iPhone 17 review

Thes are the best smartphones for music and movies

Sonik is Dali’s newest entry-level speaker range. The series also includes a larger standmounter, the Sonik 3 (£599 / $1200 / AU$1199) as well as wall-mounted, home-cinema and floorstander options, which top out at the Sonik 9 floorstanders, costing £2199 / $4500 / AU$4099.

Dali says the Sonik series has been designed to replace the discontinued Oberon range. In practice, this makes the Sonik 1 the successor to the five-star Oberon 1. Not insignificant shoes to fill. Notably, although they are currently in the process of being replaced, the Oberon 1 are still available for a price of around £400 / $550 from certain retailers.

But, returning to the present, the crucial question is, will the baby of the bunch uphold the Sonik family name, or see to their fall from grace?

Price

The Dali Sonik 1 are currently priced at £449 / $900 / AU$849, which places them among the cheaper speakers that Dali makes.

At this price, their main rival is the former Award-winning B&W 607 S3, which cost £599 / $1000 / AU$1149, although we have seen these available for as low as £449 in the UK during sales events. We also have the older Oberon 1 and the smaller, even more affordable Dali Kupid (£299 / $599/ AU$599) in our test rooms, so we used all three speakers for sound comparisons during testing.

Build

The Dali Sonik 1 are the smallest standmounters in the Sonik range, measuring just 27.4 x 16.2 x 23.1cm (hwd), meaning they will have no trouble looking at home, even in smaller rooms.

While the Sonik 1 are small and will fit on a bookshelf, we suggest placing them on dedicated speaker stands to make the most of their sonic capabilities. Dali has tried to make these speakers as flexible as possible by also including rear brackets for wall mounting, which will be a welcome addition for anyone running low on floor space.

The MDF cabinets are clad in a smooth laminate and are available in four finishes: natural oak, white, walnut and black ash. Our test pair’s walnut finish looks classy for laminate, lending an air of aesthetic finesse when paired with the tweeter’s aluminium surround and clean front panel.

The speakers feature a 13cm mid/bass driver, tuned with a rear port, and the same 29mm lightweight woven fabric soft dome tweeter as featured on the Sonik 5 floorstanders. The mid/bass diaphragms use Dali’s proprietary mix of fine-grain paper pulp reinforced with wood fibres, which the company says provides rigidity, improved damping and light weight.

The mid/bass drivers across the Sonik range use Dali’s patented SMC (Soft Magnetic Composite) technology in the motor system to reduce distortion, optimising detail and dynamic performance. Both drivers are connected through a single-wired crossover.

The Sonik 1 have a sensitivity of 86dB/w/m and a nominal impedance of 6 ohms. These figures are fairly conventional for a pair of standmounters at this level, so these speakers are unlikely to present any system-matching problems when paired with price-compatible amplifiers.

Compatibility

Ideally, speakers of this price should be fairly unfussy, and could see themselves partnered with a budget streaming amplifier such as the WiiM Amp Ultra (£499/ $529/ AU$899). They can also be used in an affordable separates system, featuring the Rotel A8 amplifier (£399 / $449 / AU$649) paired with a Cambridge Audio MXN10 network player (£399 / $499 / AU$799), Marantz CD 70 CD player (£499 / $750 / AU$1000), or a Rega Planar 2 turntable (£525 / $895 / AU$1149).

During our testing, we tried the speakers with both the Rotel A8 and the step-up Arcam A5+ amplifiers (£749 / $1200 / AU$1595), and we are pleased to confirm that they work well in both cases, providing more than enough punch and expression. Notably, however, the Soniks are talented enough to really come to life when paired with even more expensive amplifiers, such as the Arcam A15+ (£1199 / $1099 / AU$2295), which provides an extra portion of textural detail and dynamic nuance.

For our music sources, we stream hi-res music from our reference Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition music streamer and play CDs from our Cyrus CDi player. Both of these are more capable than the sources that would typically be used with these entry-level speakers, but we have chosen them in order to really put a spotlight on the Dali speakers’ performance.

Falling in line with Dali’s suggestion, we find that the Sonik 1 sound most well-balanced when facing straight ahead with a gap of around 20cm between the back of the speakers and our testing room’s rear wall. When angling the speakers in towards the listening position, as might conventionally be expected, we found that the stereo image narrowed and high frequencies became too prominent.

Bring the Sonik 1 further into the room, and we find they begin to lose out in terms of bass authority, which is what we would expect for such a small speaker. Up against our test room’s wall, bass increases and the speakers stay nicely controlled, but we prefer the more articulate balance that leaving a little space provides.

Sound

We had every hope that these standmounters would echo the performance of the five-star Sonik 5 floorstanders, and that certainly appears to be the case. Much like the Sonik 5, these standmounters impress us immediately with their intricate and expressive sound.

Their capacity for scale, both sonic and emotional, comes as a welcome surprise given their dainty stature.

Beginning with Norah Jones’ Don’t Know Why, acoustic guitar and piano are delivered with a shimmer that complements the speakers' full-bodied presentation.

The same is true of Jones’ vocals, and we can’t help but appreciate how well-integrated the speakers’ drivers sound, boasting eloquent expression across the frequency range.

Thanks to their lush midrange, Jones’ voice has real body, evoking a palpable sense of presence in our test room.

In treble-heavy recordings such as This Charming Man by The Smiths, the Sonik 1 keep a firm handle on the high-frequencies, delivering guitars with an appropriately jangling sheen without becoming fatiguing.

For a more rhythmically driven track, we play A Tribe Called Quest’s Show Business, and the Dalis have no trouble providing the kind of low-end kick that hip-hop thrives on – for their size, at least. Kick drums and basslines hit hard, but never obscure the vocals or percussion, even when we crank the music up to almost uncomfortably loud volumes.

At low volume, too, these speakers hang on to a sense of musical momentum and clarity, so it doesn’t all have to be windowsill-rattling beats. Most alternatives sound a little lifeless when listened to at such levels, but the Sonik 1 retain an impressive amount of character.

In terms of textural detail, there’s no doubt that the Sonik 1 outperform their predecessor, the Oberon 1. Whether it’s the subtle passing of fingers across guitar strings, or an inward breath before a vocal line, we notice details through these speakers that we miss on the outgoing Oberons.

The Sonik 1 have a strong sense of rhythmic drive and are highly responsive to transients. While rivals like the B&W 607 S3 sound snappier overall, they are somewhat more tonally uneven and, in relative terms, coarser in the treble region.

Dynamically, the Sonik 1 handle intricate shifts, such as the decay of vocal reverb in You Sun Nah’s Kangwondo Arirang, with sensitivity and grace, bringing the track’s most delicate minutiae to the surface with an immersive, intricate sound.

On classical recordings, such as Minnesota Orchestra’s rendition of Infernal Dance Of King Kashchey from Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite, orchestral stabs and sweeping ebbs in the dense arrangement are conveyed with equal amounts of refinement and gusto.

Classical music provides a great test of the speakers’ stereo image, too, which retains focus and clarity throughout testing. Notably, the Sonik 1 have a satisfying sense of depth, and during Infernal Dance Of King Kashchey, the relative positioning of the orchestra’s sections is blatantly apparent, with the woodwind section sitting comfortably behind the grand, dramatic strings.

Verdict

We are pleased to say that the smallest speakers from Dali’s new Sonik range walk firmly in the footsteps of their floorstanding sibling, the Sonik 5.

With an expressive, well-balanced sound, these standmount speakers are an excellent pick for anyone seeking serious sonic performance in a compact package at this price.

The Sonik 1 will also forgive less than ideal placement, making them a strong choice for music lovers without a dedicated listening space. All things considered, we highly recommend these talented and adaptable speakers.

Review published: 17th August 2026

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Compatibility 5
• Build 5

MORE:

Read our review of the B&W 607 S3

Also consider the Dali Kupid

Read our Dali Oberon 1 review

Best bookshelf speakers: top standmounts for every budget tested

Topping Audio is based in Guangzhou and was founded in 2008, so it is hardly a start-up. Take a look at the company’s website, and you will find that it makes a bewildering range of hi-fi electronics. We counted more than 20 models of digital-to-analogue converters alone, alongside an extensive range of amplifiers, be they headphone, integrated, pre or power.

The Topping Audio D900 on test here represents the pinnacle of the brand’s DAC technology. Along with its junior sibling, the D90MKIII, this converter uses a proprietary, discrete 1-bit DAC design called PSRM (Precision Stream Reconstruction Matrix).

This works by converting the original digital audio stream into a sequence of 1-bit pulses. The density of these pulses, whether weighted towards 0 or 1, represents the waveform level. In contrast, other models in the company’s range employ standard off-the-shelf DAC chip solutions, as does much of the competition.

Features

The D900’s digital design is fully balanced, with 32 discrete high-speed switching voltage references for each channel. The cheaper D90MKIII makes do with half that amount. In principle, PSRM reminds us of the high-end Ring DAC technology developed by dCS.

Given that this Topping DAC sells for a fraction of the price of one of dCS’s converters, the use of such a design is impressive.

File compatibility is excellent, with the D900 happy to accommodate hi-res PCM datastreams up to 32-bit/768kHz and DSD512. We can’t imagine this DAC falling short of anyone’s requirements, at least not for the foreseeable future.

The D900 is well-equipped. It has a wide range of connectivity, including two coaxial, two optical and USB in both Type B and C varieties. The D900 also has AES/EBU and I2S digital inputs, which may prove useful for some. Bluetooth 5.1 is included and is compatible with high-quality LDAC and aptX HD codecs.

On the output side, Topping has gone all in with balanced XLR connections for both its variable and fixed outputs. Those whose systems lack balanced connectivity will have to use appropriate adaptors. Such adaptors aren’t particularly hard to source, but it is still a shame that Topping didn’t find a way to include a pair of standard RCA connectors on the back panel.

Build

This DAC is nicely made and reassuringly solid. We have no complaints about the fit or finish of the metal casework. The multi-function rotary dial on the front feels positive and precise, while the 2in display is crisp, but on the small side for reading at any significant distance.

It is good for adding visual excitement to the front of the DAC, though, and can be made to show an analogue VU meter or frequency spectrum bar graph. The display also makes it easier to work through the set-up menus and the built-in equaliser function. There are numerous parametric equaliser settings, but in our system at least, none is quite as satisfying as the default neutral option.

Take a look inside the D900, and it’s clear that the engineers have taken a great deal of care with the circuit layout and appearance.

Our digital sources for the Topping are Naim’s ND555/ 555 PS DR music streamer, a Cyrus CDi CD player and a MacBook Pro running Audirvana music-playing software and loaded with plenty of hi-res files.

The rest of our reference system is Burmester’s 088/911 MKIII pre/power driving a pair of ATC SCM50 speakers. We also use a PMC Cor integrated and Epos ES-14N combination to hear how the Topping performs in a more price-appropriate set-up.

Our DAC comparisons are Chord’s Qutest (£1249 / £1795 / $2400) and Hugo 2 (£1795 / $2595 / AU$3800) along with recent experience of the Rotel DX-3 (£1399 /$1699 / AU$2199).

Sound

Does the D900’s clever DAC circuitry give it any advantage over those that use more conventional off-the-shelf chip solutions? In truth, we can’t be sure. It is impossible to separate the contribution of the conversion technology from everything else inside. Analogue output stages, power supplies, component quality and signal paths all have a huge impact on the final result.

What we can say is that the D900 sounds unusually talented in some regards.

Regardless of input, with the exception of Bluetooth, of course, the Topping D900 resolves an impressive amount of detail. Give it a complex recording such as Mahler’s 4th Symphony, and it delivers a sound full of texture and subtlety.

We love the sense of space this DAC imparts, even when the music becomes dense, and the delicate way it renders low-level dynamic shifts.

The music comes through with an appealing fluidity that puts us in mind of a good analogue source rather than the usual digital stereotypes. The D900 sounds neutral and unforced; qualities that may not impress on a short demo at a dealer, but we think hold plenty of appeal in the long run.

This Topping DAC is flexible in its approach to music replay. Its insight allows us to dig deep into the fabric of the recordings if we want to; alternatively, we can just sit back and relax, letting the music’s emotional impact wash over us. The D900’s ability to resolve plenty of detail without sounding overly analytical is unusual and welcome.

Stereo imaging is expansive and airy, the Topping layering the soundstage convincingly while delivering a fine sense of scale. There is a good degree of stability too, so that the D900’s focus doesn’t waver as the music becomes more demanding.

Tonally, it is as neutral as they come, with no part of the frequency range dominating. Highs are smooth yet don’t lack in bite while the midrange is as clear and articulate as you like. Bass could be better, though. It digs deep but doesn’t have the tautness or muscularity of rivals.

As we try more upbeat music such as Raye’s Click Clack Symphony, Chicago by Michael Jackson and Zion by Soul II Soul, we can’t help but want a bit more energy and drive in the presentation, too.

This Topping sounds restrained and slightly lacking in authority compared to either of the two Chord DACs. We miss their sense of musical cohesion and ability to deliver dynamic contrasts with conviction.

That said, we are still able to enjoy the D900’s clarity and finesse, particularly through the midrange and upwards.

Verdict

There is no denying that the Topping D900 is a talented DAC. Its detail resolution and fluid delivery are right up there with the best at the price, as is its file compatibility and build quality.

While we think this Topping falls short of being a complete all-rounder, it remains a viable and appealing alternative to the established benchmarks.

Review published: 14th August 2026

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Build 5
• Features 5

MORE:

Read our review of the Chord Hugo 2

Also consider the Rotel DX-3

Read our Chord Qutest review

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We had been anticipating this Music Studio 7 since last year, when we had reviewed a Samsung soundbar which turned out to be one of the last products to emerge from the company’s California Audio Lab under Allan Devantier. The Lab continues; Mr Devantier has moved on to a company intending to revolutionise magnets in loudspeakers by avoiding rare-earth metals and other cunning stuff.

It was Devantier who almost singlehandedly revolutionised Samsung’s soundbar performance after creating the Audio Lab in 2014. For its test facilities he incorporated ideas from the legendary National Research Council of Canada audio rooms created by his guru and collaborator Floyd Toole at Harman, from where Devantier had been headhunted not long prior to Samsung’s purchase of the entire company and all its audio brands.

We had exchanged a few questions with Mr Devantier for the soundbar review, but we had not known he was shortly to leave Samsung; we found out only after publication, when he linked to our review on his LinkedIn account.

“The last interview with me as the Audio R&D Leader at Samsung is part of the review of the HW-QS700F SoundBar that the Audio Lab in Valencia California and I were heavily involved in,” he wrote. “Fitting that they decided to mention my decades-long collaboration with Floyd Toole.”

And then he added: “Be on the look-out for reviews of the Music Studio 7 which features 2 technologies invented at the Audio Lab in Valencia California. I first proposed the concept to management a L O N G time ago. I am so happy we were finally able to bring it to the market. It’s a fitting swan song. Thanks to the entire team at the Valencia [California] Audio lab and especially Felix Kochendörfer, Matthew McDuffee and Yuan Li.”

So we made an early request, and finally we have the Music Studio 7 in for review. Samsung’s publicity for the speaker doesn’t clarify which are the two new invented technologies mentioned by Devantier, though the heavily plugged “patented Immersive Waveguide technology” might be a frontrunner for one of them.

Nor is there any mention in despatches of those three names from Devantier’s Audio Lab. Samsung’s press releases instead emphasise “renowned industrial design studio Erwan & Ronan Bouroullec” from Paris, and indeed we were asked if we would like to interview Erwan Bouroullec.

Not really, we replied; while we're sure M. Bouroullec is très magnifique et accompli and all that, the industrial designers oversee the outside of products, by and large, while we’re far more interested in the inside. They also speak nebulous design language (“I consider sound to be like air and light: fundamental elements of a room's atmosphere”, says Erwan), and several of our previous interviews with industrial designers have been, well, disastrous; we recall a slightly furious debate with a pair working for Bang & Olufsen who had decorated a waterproof loudspeaker with materials that weren’t waterproof, so you couldn’t then get it wet. They thought this very cool; we thought it idiotic, and the antithesis of good design.

But we digress. Mr Devantier whetted our appetite for the Music Studio 7. What has Samsung delivered here?

Build & drivers

In brief, this is a wireless streaming speaker. It has only two physical inputs (optical and HDMI eARC; the USB-A slot is for service only), plus a variety of streaming options. At the price (currently RRP A$749 each in Australia, though we've seen it at A$599 during promotional periods), it might be considered Samsung’s equivalent of Apple’s HomePod, or the Sonos Era 300.

You can buy just one, which might well be enough for a bedroom or study scenario with streaming. But we found that the HDMI input proves essential to their best performance, and if you’re using them for TV sound, we’re not sure how you’d put just one of these chunky speakers in front of your TV.

So this points towards their use as a stereo pair; they link wirelessly, so you can pop them either side of your TV, making a full music and movie system.

It is an unusual streaming speaker in a number of ways, and we certainly won’t diss the quality of work by Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec (fraternal designers who over nearly 30 years have designed everything from jewellery to architecture), because we like the exterior very much, including the way that a small light behind the front ‘Dot’ moves clockwise as you increase volume and anticlockwise when you reduce it.

“Their goal was to move away from the traditional, aggressive look of high-tech audio gear (which usually features exposed black cones and foam surrounds) and instead turn acoustic physics into modern art,” says Samsung. Job done.

The Bouroullec design input is perhaps more obvious on the smaller Music Studio 5, with its almost triangular base and curious stand-up circular frontage rather like a ‘Napoleon's hat’ tambour mantle clock (so suitably French-influenced!).

The Studio 7, however, is a far more conventional speaker shape, but again with no drivers visible at all. It presents as a minimalist rectangular box with nicely-radiused corners; the height-to-width measurements are 268 x 184mm, a pleasing 16:11 ratio though rather lower than the golden one, so that they appear slightly squat.

We were shocked at the packaging in which they arrived. There almost wasn’t any; the cardboard box was only slightly larger than the speaker, leaving the front baffle protected by a mere centimetre of sculptured cardboard padding, covered by a thin sheet of cardboard.

No damage? No damage, indeed nothing that can be damaged, because that larger circle on the front is not an exposed driver: it’s solid as a rock, a flush-mounted waveguide, presumably, moulded directly into the front matte-finished baffle. The baffle looks impervious but is actually a tightly punched grille that is both audibly transparent and visually so, if you hold a torch up to it. We tried breathing through it; no problem.

Our torch revealed a tweeter at the bottom behind the flat section; indeed this is described elsewhere as a Super Tweeter which “can capture ultra-high frequencies up to 35kHz” (though we assume it’s actually delivering rather than ‘capturing’, unless it’s listening for bats).

Also at the front, behind that Dot, our torch revealed a deeply-coned woofer, about four inches in diameter when measured across its wide roll surrounds; these and the cone profile indicate this is a long-throw design designed to move a lot of air for its size.

The centre of this driver lies directly behind the ‘Dot’, though what you actually see through the ‘Dot’ seems as solid to an inquiring tap as is the depression around it; we could not ascertain how it integrates directly into the baffle structure.

We think it fires from a tuned acoustic chamber, projecting sound forward. But it was confirmed by Samsung that the ‘Dot’ structure in front of this driver is NOT the aforementioned “patented Immersive Waveguide technology”. That is actually used on the supertweeter below: “Samsung's proprietary 'Immersive Waveguide (Patented)' delivers uniform directivity, spanning from 1kHz up to an ultra high-frequency of 35kHz,” they confirmed. The waveguide shapes and directs the sound waves – like a lens on a camera, but for sound instead of focusing light, as Samsung neatly puts it. One of its key goals is the delivery of a wide sweet spot for listening.

But the ‘Dot’ above is not mere industrial design. Samsung adds that the ‘Dot’ is meant to “visually represent the physical ‘origin of sound’ while quietly doing the heavy lifting of audio dispersion behind a calm, minimal facade.”

It is also apparently signature stuff from Erwan Bouroullec: “From the Pico and Punto coverings for Mutina to Cappellini's Cloud bookcase and the Maap lamp for Flos, he has explored the expressive potential of the dot and its repetition for years,” reported Archiproducts when the Music Studios were announced.

All this from a little circle; oh, the brilliance of industrial design.

But what we really wanted to know was where all the rest of the drivers are, and what they’re doing.

The Music Studio 7 is advertised as a Dolby Atmos-compatible speaker, and a graphic on Samsung’s product page shows sound emerging not only from the speaker frontage but also flooding sideways from each side, and upwards from the top. In one of the graphics, these sound beams then magically veer towards the listening position, though we presume they are really intended to bounce off ceilings and possibly side-walls (Samsung’s images are marked as AI and for illustrative purposes only).

Such side-bouncing can be a problem in Australian architecture because often the listening rooms are wide and simply don’t have side walls, being either open-plan or open to outdoor spaces. But as we’ll find, the Music 7 did manage this task well.

They can receive Dolby Atmos signals via Tidal Connect or Amazon's top music tier, or via any number of sources piped via HDMI.

The Music Studio 7s are also marked as able to play Eclipsa Audio, an open-source spatial audio format developed by Google and Samsung; this ability has also been integrated into some recent Samsung TVs. There seem no movies or commercial video yet available in Eclipsa, though there is some YouTube content and "select Samsung TV Plus content", and we note that Miami’s Classic Master USA mastering facility is also doing Eclipsa music masters. It’s early days, but if Eclipsa does eventually take off properly, the Music Studio 7 is ready to handle it.

As for the rest of the drivers, Samsung’s literature talks about “five advanced speakers delivering true surround sound”, stating that each Studio 7 alone delivers 3.1.1-channel sound.

Yet there are clearly seven drivers here. Using our torch-technique we peered beneath the side and top surfaces, seemingly aluminium, again punctured through with a fine grille pattern.

On top there is a single driver angled slightly forward, presumably bouncing off the ceiling; the angle looks like it would bounce off a normal ceiling height to serve a listening position some three metres distant. The driver is a little 40mm diameter cone with a large and prominent 20mm dustcap; we considered whether this might actually be a coaxially-situated tweeter dome, but Samsung confirms it as a single driver.

On each side of the Studio 7 there is a similar 40mm driver in the bottom section of each side, apparently firing directly sideways rather than angled to attempt the side bounce.

So that’s five drivers already, yet the top section of each side hosts a large curved-rectangle (racetrack) driver, some 95mm x 60mm, which must therefore be passive.

The centre driver behind the Dot seems to be considered the ‘subwoofer’ (it fired when we sent through an LFE signal only), augmented by the passive racetracks.

So there’s genuine LCR plus height plus bass, and the 3.1.1 claim is justified, though it’s not a direct signal they’re playing. Samsung shared with us engineers’ comments explaining that phase control signals based on the left, right and top channels are added to the front channel, to prevent the directivity of each channel from spreading unnecessarily.

We have no idea about either the amplification type, the DACs used or the materials from which the drivers are made.

Streaming and other tricks

Streaming is supported in a number of ways. With Spotify Connect and Tidal Connect, you simply use those native apps and select the Studio 7 as the output, sending music direct from the internet to the speakers at the best quality for which you are paying.

Other music can be streamed via AirPlay 2 or Google Cast; Apple currently throttles AirPlay 2 to a fairly meagre 256k AAC (despite endless ongoing rumours this may soon be raised), whereas Google Cast can go to CD quality and above, generally to 24-bit/96kHz depending on implementation, making it the preferable system here.

There is also Roon, the paid music organisational software which supposedly delivers best possible quality from a file-based music collection and from some streaming services to devices around the home. (Samsung benefits here by owning Harman, which now owns Roon!)

If you use a Samsung smartphone, DLNA casting is also integrated directly into the Samsung Music app, and should yield full-quality file replay, depending on your settings.

And there’s Bluetooth, version 6.0, but including only the basic SBC codec plus Samsung's own Galaxy-ecosystem SSC codec. So Bluetooth might be best kept for occasional convenience only, rather than regular use. There's no provision here for the new Bluetooth LE using the LC3 codec or Auracast broadcasting.

With the rear USB-A slot turning out to be for service only, the only physical inputs are the optical digital and HDMI eARC; both are likely considered as inputs for your TV audio, though only the HDMI connection will bring Dolby Atmos across from your TV.

The TV connection can do rather more if you’re pairing the Studio 7, or preferably two of them, with an actual Samsung TV – though we would say, after testing, that they’re good to go with any TV brand/model that offers HDMI ARC or eARC; don’t reject them just because you don’t have a Samsung TV.

But if you do have a suitably recent and compatible Samsung TV, then you can connect that wirelessly to the Studio 7s using Samsung’s Q-Symphony technology, which then integrates the TV’s own speakers into the overall sound, for better or for worse; it wasn’t something we could check. Indeed you can apparently connect four (or five?) speakers and the TV using Q-Symphony, Samsung then claiming a 15.0.5-channel layout (which we’re not going to begin trying to work out!).

There’s also talk of wireless Dolby Atmos being possible from a compatible TV, but there’s enough compression on Atmos signals already; we’d very much recommend using a cable.

Pairing two Studio 7s without Q-Symphony was our main listening configuration, and we think it probably a purer path than adding in the TV drivers. Allan Devantier once confirmed to us that audio purists (“like us”, he said, including himself) should not consider using Q-Symphony with its soundbars, advice surely doubly true here with the even more hi-fi Studio 7s.

With the speakers linked together and set up either side of our TV, how did this affect their driver use? It seemed, with both stereo and Atmos material, that both Studio 7s then shut down their inner facing side tweeter, though the passive side radiator kept pumping. This makes sense; in our scenario the inner tweeters were now firing uselessly behind the screen of the 75-inch Samsung TV, so turning them off and rebalancing the output is an excellent idea.

Both outer drivers, both top drivers and both forward tweeters continue firing with both stereo and Atmos material. From playing Atmos test channels through them, the front Super Tweeters, once the speakers were paired, seemed to take on both a share of the centre signal and their respective left or right signal as well, while the side speakers were also taking a share of left and right signals while handling all surround information. So clearly some cunning algorithms are overseeing job-sharing for the drivers to achieve the best effect.

There are a few technologies on top of this. Samsung’s ‘Sound’ app has a slider to invoke ‘SpaceFit Sound Pro’, which it says adapts the sound to the room, though at first we couldn’t imagine how, as there are no test tones, no microphone waving process involved, and Samsung has no mike position out in the room. But after reading up we gather it uses far-field microphone arrays within the speakers to measure (continuously) how the audio bounces off your walls, ceiling, and furniture, then using EQ to compensate accordingly. We try it out below.

There’s also Active Voice Amplifier (AVA) Pro, which adjusts voices to overcome specific background noises, and ‘Auto Volume’ which both keeps different sources at similar levels, and works within sources to avoid spikes. The first is useful input matching; the second likely involves dynamic range compression, so is again ‘not for the purist’.

Plus there are a few listening modes and on-the-fly EQ adjustments available, which we’ll encounter during our listening.

The speakers are listed as allowing Alexa control, but we think the day for Alexa control of audio gear has passed, at least in Australia. More interestingly when we opened Samsung’s SmartThings app (we were looking for a way to DLNA-cast to the speakers), it immediately found and registered the speakers within SmartThings in addition to the ‘Sound’ app we’d used to set them up, yet SmartThings seemed to maintain our ‘Sound’ settings, even clearly pointing us back to that app as a more convenient and dedicated method of control. Good work.

Listening sessions

Set-up was as simple as any wireless speaker we’ve reviewed, and easier than many of them. Although weighty enough at 5.6kg each, the composite back panel includes a handgrip which makes them easy to carry around, and little possibility of damage given all the drivers are hidden away.

The power cord plugs upward underneath from the back, and in nice attention to detail, the black speaker has a black mains cable and the white speaker a white one! Samsung had sent us two Music 7s – one black (LS70H), one white (LS71H).

Getting the first unit online required no hunting for pairing buttons on the back: the speaker was instantly visible in Samsung’s Sound app as soon as we powered it up. There was even a sticker on the top telling us to hold down two buttons for a built-in demo – it sounded great, and should impress people in-store!

There are five rectangular press buttons on top: + and – for volume, then a music note in the middle (play/pause/next track, but also can be set to Spotify Tap, launching Spotify Connect without need for the app), and finally a circle on the left (multifunction) and a circle with a line through it on the right (mic on/off).

Hang on, what microphone? Turns out this is the one used for ‘SpaceFit Sound Pro’ and AVA Pro. These are continuous functions, requiring continuous microphone monitoring of the room. If you’re nervous about privacy, this button allows you to turn the mike off. We see this more often on products where there’s a voice assistant, and we often do turn it off, since this doesn’t much affect other functionality. But as we’ll see, we ended up very much wanting the SpaceFit on, and mike muting would disable this useful function.

Once we’d got the first speaker online, we whipped out a phone and started throwing tunes, initially via AirPlay. Out flowed Olivia Dean sounding lively, friendly and punchy, good bass support. But we were later to hear this playing through the same speaker, transformed. How? Read on.

Paired up

We really wanted to use these speakers as a stereo pair. It’s easy, almost encouraged indeed, to link them together within the Samsung Sound app (above). Once done you can access their settings together in the app, including a ‘Device Control’ option which we set to be our left speaker, as that would receive the HDMI cable.

We then opened up Spotify and later Deezer to throw some tunes to the paired stereo set. We expected to find them offered as a pair, and under the ‘Connect’ list it listed the left speaker, showing an icon of two linked speakers.

But it also listed each individual speaker alone as a Google Cast option (third screengrab above), which is a bit confusing.

We chose the two speaker option and started to play. It didn’t begin well. Stevie Wonder’s Superstitious emerged just all broken apart, bass faux, horns thin like sandpaper at short range, softening only as we sat back further away.

Carpenters, it’s hard to go wrong with Carpenters, but here there was no depth to it, no silence behind the soundstaging, and none of your classic warmth. Judy Blue Eyes from CS&N: soft and dull, though with a full bass.

We punched the sound mode to ‘AI Adaptive Sound’, tried ‘Standard’, preferred being back on ‘Music’. ‘Standard’ is in fact the purer choice, playing the stereo through left, right and centre direct, while ‘Music’ additionally fed the sound to the height driver. But this extra spread seemed non-destructive in sonic terms, and we preferred it, though things were still often sounding thin.

We experimented with speaker positioning, not forgetting that there’s that ‘Space Fit Pro’ option still to try. Pushing the speakers back to within 20cm of the wall certainly strengthened the bass, and things picked up with Long Train Runnin’ from The Doobie Brothers, supercrunchy guitar opening, now a fuller bass, but still becoming sufficiently unpleasant to play much higher than the lower side of enjoyable critical listening. We wondered if there might even be a timing mismatch between the speakers.

But we thought – perhaps we’re feeding it less than optimal source material. The casting, the streaming, the network: too many variables, even if Spotify Connect or Deezer via Google Cast should play well enough.

So we took it straight to the good stuff, supplied via the HDMI cable. Since these are Dolby Atmos speakers, we loaded Dolby Atmos music discs into a Blu-ray player, which was attached via HDMI to a Samsung TV which was attached via HDMI to the black Studio 7, so that it emerged playing across them both.

The first disc in the tray was the recently-released Atmos mix of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’. And this was immediately magnificent. No longer any need to restrain volume levels: we could nudge it stop after stop using the TV remote, and what a wide and wonderful world of sound opened up. Buckley’s vocal was held completely pure and isolated at the front, with swirling perfection all around, the bass now entirely unfettered in its ability to dive deeper towards what we might consider subwoofer territory for any other speaker this size.

The stereo combination had an unerring ability to handle the highest dynamic peaks at the end of Grace without any hint of congestion, banging out the climax like a well-resourced power amp and speaker combination, yet also having the low-level detail to allow a thrillingly delicate handling of the quick-silver sliding guitar that opens Last Goodbye, and to overlay upon that an astoundingly weighty and real kick drum. Judging as a fine hi-fi system, we might have said the bass could perhaps have a tad more definition, but heck, these are AU$749 speakers.

Leaning back in the chair, allowing the mind to wander and accept the cues being thrown out by the Music 7s, we had a genuinely immersive experience, even hearing stuff from behind, when there was nothing there. If they’re doing sidebouncing stuff, they’re lucky it was winter so there was a side wall at all. But the effect was not only effective, but unobtrusive, non-artificial. And normally we have to work with a system like this to get the effect happening: here it just happened.

They were equally hi-fi if a little less successful in the room-spreading stuff with the Atmos mix of Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust’. Then we loaded the ultimate Dolby Atmos music disc: The Flaming Lips’ ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’. Track 10, All We Have Is Now, starts in the surround channels: Wayne’s vocal back right, electric piano back left. And Wayne really did come from a semi-rear right position, and elements panned wide on both sides, even if most of the rest was still coming from the front. The Lip’s effusive bass content poured out, and the full picture was musically enjoyable, very impressive from two speakers at this price, if not as magnificently open and wide as a full Atmos system can deliver. Very impressive stuff.

And of course this bodes well for movie Atmos soundtracks. From Blu-ray we played ‘A Star is Born’, which we’ve heard many times on large systems. The Atmos soundtrack did seem to genuinely push crowd sound around us in the opening live number Black Eyes, which emerged absolutely massive, the guitar solo clearly panned left, and bass content rather too much, even if loaded up for effect on this opening. We were encouraged to try the AI Adaptive mode again: it may be the go for movies, adding enthusiasm and size.

We also looked to notch back the bass delivery: there are two options: straight bass and treble EQ sliders, or a separate control for woofer. Taking either bass slider down to -3 sorted out the excess, and it’s easy to tweak on the fly since these controls are available reasonably easily within the Sound app – just three taps from the home screen to get to the Woofer slider, once you’ve learnt the way. Having to drop the bass on speakers this size is remarkable, and shows how effective Samsung’s team has made the combination of solid and effective speaker design in concert with algorithmic control of driver travel and the like, something which played a key part in the success of those first Californian-designed soundbars. Something similar is surely again in evidence here.

Back then, in 2017, we had interviewed Mr Devantier and he told us about “distortion-cancelling technology” developed by the team's Pascal Brunet, a software-based amplifier-distortion cancellation. And later, when we thought to Google those names which Mr Devantier had thrown out on his LinkedIn post, we found that two of them, Yuan Li and Felix Kochendörfer, had co-authored with Pascal Brunet in 2022 a paper revealing results of using trained time-delayed neural networks to create an AI control algorithm for driver behaviour, instead of the previous model-based control. There was also consideration of Long Short-term Memory and a fascinating Nonlinear Autoregressive Network with exogenous inputs (‘NARX’), but the neural networks won out in the end.

Presumably something similar is used here, an AI-style feedback system inverting errant loudspeaker driver behaviour at higher volumes; indeed this is most likely what Samsung calls 'AI Dynamic Bass Control'. This is not an effect to switch on and off with a slider in the app; it’s the inherent control system behind at least that big Dot-fronted woofer. The effect is a bit like Bjørn Erik Edvardsen’s soft clipping used in NAD amps in the 1980s: you can push beyond the natural limits, pulling back just before distortion occurs, thereby achieving maximum air-shifting and a remarkable sense of power even from relatively small enclosures and drivers. Remember that all the active bass here is coming from a single driver in each Studio 7, the driver behind that Dot, with only passive radiators in support. It’s an amazing result.

If the driver tech/bass control is the speciality of Ms Li and Mr Kochendörfer at the Samsung Audio Lab in California, what of the other name, Matthew McDuffee, the Lab’s Principal Audio Engineer? We find him coauthoring papers on implementation of simultaneous deconvolution, which relates to in-room speaker system equalisation. That fits in with the goals of 'SpaceFit Sound Pro', which we are about to encounter below.

Putting all this together, we might place our bet that the two new technologies from the Lab, which Allan Devantier mentioned in concert with those three names, are AI Dynamic Bass Control, and SpaceFit Sound Pro. So perhaps not that ‘Immersive Waveguide’ acoustic lens after all, given that waveguides have been around since the 1990s since Geddes differentiated them from horns in 1989 (and they’re all ‘immersive’, really, by dint of operating in a 3D world).

So, technical discussion aside, we were loving everything coming through HDMI. But was all the streaming stereo stuff still sounding not so impressive? The relative quantities of the two media types would not weigh well for the Studio 7 in that case.

We played from other sources, including stereo from the Blu-ray player (Atmos discs have high-res stereo too), and this maintained the quality, at the expense of course of much of the immersion. Back on streaming, we played from Apple Music and our own phone collection via AirPlay 2 (the Apple app usefully provided a volume control, see below); it was OK, but male vocals seemed a bit thin, lacking in mid-bass, and the bass itself less rounded than we’d hope for the material playing.

On a whim, we unpaired the two speakers and sent the same tunes to a single Studio 7. Smaller, similar. When we went back to pair the speakers again, we found we could ‘group’ them, rather than ‘pair’ them, so that both speakers played in stereo. This actually gave a rather nicer bass response, though it caused some issues with stereo staging, since the inward speakers were now firing sound behind the television and creating all kinds of slightly phasey interactions as the left moved right and the right moved left. Having said that, for a real party, this is how we’d run them.

Through all this, we had been trying all the sonic tweaks available – happily not a crazy number of them compared with some competitors, which is a credit to Samsung.

We kept on with 'Music' mode for music, sometimes AI mode for movies. Initially we didn’t get any useful result from ‘Space Fit Pro’, and we had left it off.

Later, however, we realised that its effects take a while to appear: it’s not a simple switch flick to hear the difference. Once it had taken a minute to adjust, flicking the switch to remove it most certainly revealed the difference. It had filled in exactly the midbass we had been missing from vocals and presented all that material with a warmer heart. We are impressed, then; well done Mr McDuffee! We recommend you at least try this.

There are also Channel Level adjustments to push the side and top channels higher (or lower) as you might like. This option is also handy for hearing exactly what is going on from the various drivers.

Advanced Sound Settings include bass enhancement (not generally required), and ‘virtual’ on top of AI (not generally pleasant).

We moved our streaming sessions to using music apps playing on an AppleTV media player through the TV, and comparing them with streaming from the phone. Spotify: not much difference, since Connect was already playing direct; it was just slightly smoother via the AppleTV. Deezer seemed clearer this way, perhaps higher-res or less squeezed coming from the media player through HDMI that it had been from the phone, even though we had thought that was via data-friendly Google Cast.

We then rather tardily realised that the Samsung TV itself can host these apps, removing a link in the chain. We loaded Deezer as an app on the TV, and just played from there. Just as good! It’s a reminder that our televisions can now be used as hubs for music playback via their digital outputs, as well as for mere TV and movie fare (and here also extended smart-home operations via Samsung’s SmartThings).

While the better paths for playback certainly edged up the streaming quality, the main thing which overcame our initial uncertainty with the sound was that ‘Space Fit Pro’ correction; we are much impressed with that, especially with on-the-fly adjustments for bass easily to hand. But the ultimate playback experience came with high-quality files and very particularly with real Atmos material, whether music or movies. For the money, this is an astounding big and relatively hi-fi sound compared with the normal compressed sound of most rivals. It’s well superior, in some cases.

Right at the end, we went back to one speaker, and plonked it right in front of the TV, part blocking the screen. We re-ran Black Eyes from 'A Star Is Born', and its single-box drivers still managed to spread the crowd into an almost immersive presentation, although the left-right cues were inevitably reduced; the guitar solo, for example, panned less left than with speakers either side of the TV.

But we also played Olivia Dean again, and instead of AirPlaying from our phone, we ran it in Atmos from Apple Music on our AppleTV 4K through the TV into the Music 7 by HDMI. And this was the transformation we mentioned earlier: from friendly and punchy to clear, wide and wonderfully hi-fi – the lesson being that while the Music Studio 7 (or two of them) can do great things with compressed streaming signals, the better the source signal you give them, the better they sound. Which sounds like a ‘duh’, yet we fear very few people do take the trouble.

General issues

Problems? We’d really like a remote control; it would much improve the music listening experience when streaming from the phone. If you’re Google-Casting your music across from your phone, as we were from Deezer, then the TV remote no longer controls the Samsung volume; indeed if you try to use it, it may instantly return you to the HDMI input and cut off your music.

While Spotify and Apple include volume sliders in their apps, these can be quite coarse, and the volume buttons on the side of the phone (an iPhone, sorry Samsung) were extremely coarse: each tap jumped 10 full steps of the resolution available within the Samsung Sound app’s slider. And of course most of the time we were choosing music in the Deezer app, with no volume control at all, so we had to keep popping back to the Samsung Sound app, or else make do with the coarse control via our phone buttons. Or, of course, walk over and press the buttons on the speakers themselves.

We’d suggest investing in a programmable remote to overcome this, but does the Studio 7 even have an IR receiver built in? We think not.

Oh, and by default the speakers talk to you, in a synthesised female voice which interrupts every time you change a sound mode, talking over your music, and sometimes quite loud. Awful. Can you turn this off? Yes, thank heavens, under the ‘Voice Guide’ option in the Sound app.

As a final thought, we’d love to hear how the Studio 7 would sound without all the grilles. Grilles like this are not 100% audibly transparent, and very solid grilles cover every driver here. Without these things, might sound be more open and airy? (Though the speaker would then also fall into pieces and probably destroy its acoustic design.) We just wonder.

Verdict

Returning to the industrial designers Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec, Ronan was once quoted in an Institut Français Exhibition feature saying: “I find perfection extremely boring… The charm is the balance between the perfect and the imperfect.”

He should mention this to his brother Erwan, because the industrial design work on the Music Studio 7 has no imperfections we can see to weigh against its apparent perfection. The Samsung Audio Lab team has taken everything they’ve learned about soundbars since 2014 – rigid grille construction, speaker distortion cancelling, room acoustics – and applied it to a pair of rock-solid streaming speakers which we suspect that few companies other than Samsung could bring to market at such a low price. They’re a tribute to the Lab, to Devantier and his team.

No doubt they’ll find some way to tweak them up for a Mk.2 in a year or two, just as they’ll upgrade those neural networks controlling the big woofer and improve the sound processing. But aside from wanting a remote control, we wouldn’t change a thing here: the Music Studio 7 is a near-perfect product in a perhaps perfect form.

Devantier says he proposed this concept to management “a L O N G time ago”. Hopefully they’re quicker to recognise its success and will commission more along the same principles. This could be Year Dot for a new breed of Samsung hi-fi.

• See all our Australian reviews from Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi magazines

After all, it’s a lucrative pie that every speaker manufacturer, new and old, seemingly wants a slice of. Harman Kardon has been munching on it for longer than most, and yet it clearly feels it still needs to offer something extra to attract the attention of music lovers.

Build & design

Experts in etymology may well guess that, for the Luna 2 Bluetooth speaker, that ‘extra something’ relates to the Latin root of ‘Luna’ – ‘to shine’. Specifically, this Harman Kardon model offers a light show alongside an audio one, via an ambient light ring at its base.

We’ve previously encountered such approaches to catch the eye, primarily through speakers with bold, multicoloured ‘party’ lights that can turn living rooms into miniature discotheques. But Harman Kardon’s is a classier affair.

Rather than streams of garishly bright light pumping out of LEDs with the intensity of a ‘cocktail bar’ neon sign, the Luna 2’s ring light serves as a subtler, elegant enhancement to its already aesthetically pleasing design. It moves in accordance with the music and also visualises volume adjustments, though the effect is rather muted in bright daylight, and you can turn it off altogether if you prefer.

Even with the light ring deactivated, the pill-shaped, pencil case-sized Luna 2 is one of the more stylish speakers in its category, available in Classic Black, Warm Sand or, as pictured, a cool Ice Mint.

Thoughtful design elements include shiny accents around the anodised aluminium grille; a sloped, grippy rubber enclosure that keeps the profile compact and makes it easy to hold. The positioning of the USB-C charging socket on the side of the speaker, as opposed to the customary rear placement, makes it easy to plug in a cable if your speaker is placed near a back wall.

A USB-C cable isn’t supplied with the Luna 2 – an eco-conscious decision by Harman Kardon – but you’ll likely have one in your household already.

Despite not appearing as rugged as some portable speakers, like those from JBL and Bose, its IP67 dust/water-resistance rating means it can weather the elements – reassuring if your Sunday afternoon picnic or weekend camping trip turns soggy. Uncharacteristically, the British weather behaved itself during our testing period, but the speaker did survive us briefly running it under the tap.

Features

Completing the design are six soft-press buttons for power, Bluetooth pairing (two devices can connect simultaneously), volume up/down, light on/off, and Auracast.

Auracast is an increasingly prevalent feature of wireless speakers nowadays, allowing compatible speakers to synchronise their playback. You can even sync the Luna 2’s lighting with that of multiple light-enhanced Auracast-enabled speakers, though we didn’t have another to hand to test this feature.

AirTouch is the name Harman Kardon has given to its stereo pairing functionality, where two Luna 2s will automatically configure for true stereo sound when moved within close proximity of each other.

This can also be managed in the Harman Kardon One app, where you can also change the speed, colour theme and brightness of the light ring; select one of four audio EQ modes (the default Signature Sound is the clear winner) or create your own; and see battery status.

The claimed 12-hour battery life holds up well in real-world use, with five straight hours of playback on mid-to-high volume draining the battery by just less than 40 per cent. That spec is rather miserly in today’s market, though; the JBL Charge 6 offers double that playtime from a single charge.

Sound

That What Hi-Fi? Award winner from JBL is the Luna 2’s natural rival, and performance-wise sets a high bar for portable Bluetooth speakers under £200.

The Luna 2 makes a solid first impression as we get our testing underway with Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club, which plays to the Luna 2’s biggest talent – midrange insight.

Roan’s strong pop soprano is faithfully delivered, well projected, and soars through the soundstage with plenty of space around it. It isn’t every day we come across such an expressive and articulate vocal delivery from a speaker of the Luna 2’s size and price.

There’s weight and dynamic variation to the piano underneath, and a sense of musical flow as the keys act as the track’s melodic backbone. And thanks to a well-tuned 62mm x 82mm woofer and passive radiator, which sit beside a 20mm tweeter, the Luna 2 produces a tight, prominent bass that allows the synth beat to make itself duly known.

That the open, spacious soundstage has clear instrument separation and precise imaging helps the presentation sound more lucid than most at this level, too.

Unfortunately, the Luna 2 conforms to its name where higher frequencies are concerned. Its treble is a little bright and edgy, even after tens of hours of use.

We play Wet Leg’s catch these fists, and while the intense shimmering cymbals aren’t really a fair fight for any budget Bluetooth speaker, they are more listenable through the Charge 6, which offers greater treble subtlety and refinement.

The JBL rival is bigger sounding and fuller in the bass, too, but what makes it the more enticing speaker is its greater dynamic punch and rhythmic cohesion. The Harman Kardon isn’t flat or ponderous sounding by any means, it just doesn’t pin down a rhythm with the adept timing and effortless flow of the benchmark-setting Charge 6.

Verdict

Harman Kardon’s latest effort may not shine above the best-in-class competition, then. But the Luna 2 does produce one of the most articulate and vocally impressive performers this sort of money can buy, and does so from a portable design that isn’t just necessarily practical but also promises to soundtrack your al fresco adventures in elegant style.

Review published: 13th August 2026

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Features 4
• Build 5

MORE:

Read our review of the JBL Charge 6

Also consider the JBL FLip 7

Best Bluetooth speakers tried and tested for every budget

The company has launched its own answer to the issue – a five-piece Dolby Atmos system in a box that connects to your projector via a single dongle. And, while this wireless solution is primarily designed to hook up to a projector, it can also be used with your TV.

So, can the Thunderbeat live up to its name and deliver a room-filling, emotion-inducing audio performance?

Price

The Valerion Thunderbeat 4.1.2 is available for £639 / $799 / AU$1799, placing it around the mid-range in the sound system category. For that price, you get four satellite speakers (two fronts and two rears) and a subwoofer.

There is also the option to add a wireless central speaker, taking the whole package up to £899 / $1098 / AU$1949. For reasons that will become clear soon, we recommend sticking to the cheaper option and leaving out the central speaker.

At this price, the system is up against soundbar-based Atmos systems such as the Sony Bravia Theatre System 6 (£499 / $798 / AU$1199) and last year’s Samsung HW-Q990F (which you can consistently find for around £749 / $873 / AU$1395).

Design

As mentioned, the system is all connected via a compact dongle that fits into the palm of your hand. You can plug it into your TV or projector via HDMI eARC, making for an easy-to-connect system that doesn’t require a confusing jumble of wires to snake around your home. All you need to worry about is the power supply for each speaker.

The design of the speakers doesn’t feel particularly premium, instead taking a more basic approach. The black plastic boxes don’t feel as well-made as those of the Sony Theatre System 6, nor do they sport the more interesting angular build of the Samsung Q990F.

Inside each surround speaker is one 10cm full-range front-firing driver, an upfiring 50mm full-range driver, and a 38mm tweeter. Each speaker measures a reasonably large 23 x 14 x 13cm (hwd), and weighs 2kg.

The speakers can be wall-mounted or placed on floor stands, and we opt for the latter. The front speakers are best positioned either side of the TV, and we find that putting them as close to our TV screen as possible achieves the best combination of focus and openness.

The surrounds sit behind or to the sides of the listener, and angling them slightly towards us in our test room delivers the best performance.

Also included in the package is the subwoofer, which is relatively small and narrow. That means it can be placed fairly discreetly next to a wall if you are short on space. There is a single 16.5cm woofer inside, and it’s powered by 120W of amplification. As a package, Valerion claims the system delivers a total power output of 840W.

Features

The speakers are designed to automatically pair with the dongle, but we needed to manually pair one of the speakers to get the system working smoothly. Doing this is a fairly simple matter of temporarily connecting the speaker to the dongle via the USB cable.

Each piece of kit has a light to indicate if the system is fully connected. If you don’t want said lights to bother you while you’re watching movies, there is the option to dim them via the remote.

The system doesn’t feature wi-fi streaming, but you can connect to it via Bluetooth, which of course allows you to send any music you fancy from your phone and hear it through the Valerion speakers.

There is no companion app to control the system, so you must rely on the physical remote control, but this features a useful built-in screen on top to show your current selections. From here, you can control power and volume, EQ modes, and input.

There's no automatic, mic-based calibration, and manual adjustments are limited. You can adjust the system's bass and treble, and the volume of the surrounds in comparison with the fronts, but you can't adjust each speaker individually, and there’s no test tone for accurate manual calibration.

When most rivals offer generally pretty precise, automatic calibration, the lack of it here feels like an oversight.

In terms of surround sound support, the Valerion offers both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

Sound

Once we start listening to the Valerion Thunderbeat 4.1.2 system, we are met with a pleasant movie experience. There is a selection of sound modes to choose from, but after a good amount of testing, we opt for Movie mode, which delivers the best balance between openness and precision.

The sound is big and meaty. In Blade Runner 2049, as Officer K drives through the dystopian cityscape, the Valerion delivers the weight of the epic soundtrack, and there’s good tonal balance and integration.

But there’s not the big punch at the start of each note that we hear with rival systems, and the intricate details in the score are missing. The broad strokes are there, but the subtleties are not.

Later in the film when Ryan Gosling’s protagonist is interrogated, there is enough distinctive character to differentiate Officer K and the interviewer, but we have heard these voices delivered with greater subtlety by rival systems.

Other systems in the category such as the Bravia System 6 and the Q990F use their speakers to create a seamless, enveloping dome of sound around the listener. The Valerion system, on the other hand, feels more like four speakers that produce a much more localised performance.

When watching Top Gun: Maverick, as the titular pilot’s jet zooms from one side of the screen to the other, the sound fails to pan seamlessly. Surround effects aren't passed smoothly from one speaker to the next, and it does not deliver the immersive experience we are hoping for.

The speakers do render height effects fairly well when the plane heads to higher ground, but each channel produces something more akin to a pillar of sound than a section of a dome that fully encompasses the listener, which is what the best in this class can achieve.

We test out the system’s Mapping setting. This spreads the sound across the four speakers more evenly, delivering a wider soundfield but also sacrificing too much of the system’s sonic precision for our tastes.

When watching the genre-melding medley in Sinners, for example, the Mapping feature delivers a greater sense of scale as the camera swoops around the room, but the exactness of individual voices and instruments is less clear compared to when the feature is switched off.

The best rivals are able to combine scale and accuracy, but the Valerion forces you to choose one or the other, and we ultimately choose the latter and switch Mapping off. It’s simply too vague.

Big leaps in dynamics are handled well, though. Continuing with Sinners, as a snake appears suddenly in front of the Smoke and Stack twins, the jump from ominously quiet to a loud screech is portrayed effectively.

But more subtle or gradual dynamic changes are handled with less skill. When the villainous vampire Remmick sings Rocky Road To Dublin with his new troupe, the build-up in dynamics is not delivered with much tension and so does not feel as exciting as it should.

When playing music, we recommend, perhaps predictably, the Valerion’s Music preset. This narrows the sound and makes it more direct, and the mix shifts to all-channel stereo.

The bass is not as prevalent here as it is with movies, but it remains well balanced with the rest of the frequencies. There still isn't enough punchiness with each beat, though, and it is not the most rhythmic system we have heard.

When playing Sign Of The Times by Harry Styles, the start of the track is portrayed with a pleasing delicacy, but the build to the chorus does not have the soft subtlety we are listening for. Styles’ vocals are clear in the mix, but there’s also a bit of sibilance that makes for a slightly distracting performance.

It’s worth noting that there is the option to upgrade the Valerion system to a 5.1.2-channel configuration with a centre speaker. This seems appealing on paper, but this centre speaker is a significant sonic mismatch with the system’s other speakers. There’s a noticeable shift in both character and quality as audio moves from one of the front satellites to the centre, which is harsher, less dynamic and less detailed.

Considering how much of a movie’s sound is mixed for the centre channel, including most of the all-important dialogue, it’s clear that adding this extra speaker is a net negative. We therefore chose to review the centre-less 4.1.2-channel system. It may not be perfect, but it is the Valerion at its best.

Verdict

The Valerion Thunderbeat 4.1.2 is an improvement on the majority of TV speakers and a pleasant performer overall. But there are more immersive, integrated Dolby Atmos sound systems on the market that you can get for the same (if not less) money.

In 2026, this ultimately feels like quite a basic solution in terms of both features and sound quality. It’s decent, but you can do better if you spend your money elsewhere.

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Features 4
• Design 4

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Read our Samsung HW-Q990F review

Best surround sound systems: home cinema speakers and soundbars put to the test

You don’t have to have actually been around during that heady period to know just what the decade gave us, from classic action cinema to New Wave tunes and the rise of hip-hop. Maybe you miss the Yuppies, the shoulder pads and the big hair, or maybe the cosy family sitcoms accompanied by a piping hot chicken Kiev.

Or maybe you miss the tech. More specifically, you miss the audio trends of the decade, from stacked hi-fi systems to portable cassette players, boomboxes and foam-capped on-ear headphones. Those were the days.

If you do find yourself hankering for that bygone era, Philips might have just the thing. To mark its centenary last year, the Dutch manufacturer announced it would be reviving its classic Moving Sound range of products from the 1980s, with the new ‘The Roller’ emulating the radio-and-cassette design of the original model, now repurposed as a Bluetooth speaker.

Modern streaming and sleek, feature-laden designs are all well and good, but Philips is looking to put the fun back into audio – and what’s so wrong with that?

Price

The Roller (MS60) will set you back £169 in the UK and $229 when it launches in the USA later this year. This, for UK buyers, is the same launch price as the five-star JBL Charge 6 (£170 / $199 / AU$200). The Charge 6 has seen a few price drops in the intervening months, however, and at the time of writing you can pick one up for £129 in the UK and $160 in the US.

If you want something that’s about the same size but costs a good deal more and comes with our firm recommendation, the JBL Xtreme 5 can currently be yours for £300 / $300.

Build

The 1980s never really went away, at least not for Philips.

The Roller’s design takes direct influence from Philips’ combined radio and cassette player of the same name (the D8007 and its D8008 sequel to be specific), whereby a central body is flanked by integrated circular speakers built into the casework, topped by a rigid carry handle.

Naturally, changes have been made to see The Roller keep up with the demands of the 21st century. The cassette deck and radio display housed at the centre of the original have been replaced by a crisp, clear LCD colour screen, while an array of control buttons is found directly above. Around the back, charging and physical audio playback are handled by a USB-C port, and we’re pretty sure they didn’t have those in 1987.

Despite its relative portability, The Roller is not a particularly small speaker – it’s about the size of an elongated shoebox. While its price puts it in more direct competition with the JBL Charge 6, Philips’ colourful throwback is closer to JBL’s burly Xtreme 5 in terms of its size. In essence, it’s a Bluetooth boombox with a retro design and a modern feature set.

It is, however, a little lighter, weighing in at a more reasonable 2.3kg when compared with the 2.9kg of the current-gen Xtreme, and while it isn’t lightweight, it’s not a chore to lug from place to place if you’ve been to the gym a few times this year.

It’s well-made, too. While some may baulk at its novel aesthetics, The Roller feels far more substantial and robust than a mere toy. The speaker’s IP67 rating will keep it properly protected from dust ingress, water splashes and even some light liquid submersion, and as we run our hands across its exterior, tapping and probing as we go, we’re struck by how substantial and well-made everything feels.

There are no rubberised bumpers or shock absorbers to speak of, so we wouldn’t feel confident dropping our test speaker from any great height, but the overall quality of construction is impressive given The Roller’s fun-focused aesthetic and reasonable price. The plastic body and metal speaker grilles are of an admirably weighty standard, while a quick spray with a garden hose proves that those waterproofing credentials check out.

Whether we’re actively using it or just admiring its show-off retro aesthetics, we very much enjoy our time with The Roller. It looks particularly fresh and funky when sporting its bright yellow finish (you can go for black if you’re more conservative), and while there’s a touch of the Fisher-Price here, we don’t mind. The Roller is supposed to be fun, and that’s just what it is.

The various controls are chunky and respond with a satisfying click, and we particularly enjoy the customisation options available for the colour display. It’s not often that a Bluetooth speaker comes with an actual display screen, but with Philips’ retro offering, your display will show the song you’re playing and the speaker’s current battery life. You can even add novel animated widgets – like a spinning virtual cassette deck – in a nod to The Roller’s heritage.

The good times don’t stop there. The Roller comes with customisable lighting effects which can be cycled through or switched on/off either via the app or using the on-unit buttons. Are they strictly necessary? No. Are they a nice touch that adds a dollop of fun to an already exciting recipe, like a few colourful sprinkles dusted over an already-eye-catching sundae? We think so.

Features

Despite its retro appearance, Philips’ The Roller has been kitted out with a number of modern-day features.

The Roller boasts Bluetooth 6.0, and while there isn’t any hi-res codec support to speak of – you’ll have to make do with standard SBC – Auracast is available, meaning you can connect it to any number of Auracast-enabled speakers at once. That includes most of JBL’s current-gen offerings and other members of Philips’ Moving Sound range.

Thanks to its rear-mounted USB-C port, The Roller can double as a portable power bank for charging your phone or similar portable device. You can also use the USB-C port for direct listening, but only via USB-A to USB-C rather than USB-C to USB-C, which seems odd considering we can’t imagine many listeners using their laptop, say, as a source for a portable speaker. No matter how you listen, audio processing is capped at 16-bit/48kHz.

Battery life is decent for a speaker of this size and type. The Roller will grant you around 24 hours of playtime from a single charge, which is the same as the standard runtime offered by the rival JBL Charge 6 and the larger Xtreme 5.

Glance at the array of rectangular controls at the top of Philips’ 1980s-inspired speaker and you’ll notice a bright pink button etched with the letters ‘M/S’. Give it a press and you’ll activate The Roller’s ‘Moving Sound’ mode, which adjusts the digital signal processing by shifting the bass to a higher frequency and reducing its deepest low-end output, increasing the resultant dynamic headroom and allowing sound to travel more convincingly in outdoor environments.

In our experience, activating the mode has its trade-offs. It’s undoubtedly better for outdoor listening by granting a more forward, muscular and entertaining presentation, but you do lose a little clarity and refinement as part of the deal. A matter of taste and context, then.

Beyond the physical buttons, controlling your speaker is performed via the Philips app. It’s a useful platform for making certain tweaks to your experience, such as selecting the widget you want displayed on the display screen or adjusting the pattern of the speaker’s light modes, but we’re disappointed to see that no customisable equaliser, or indeed any sound profile presets, are included.

Sound

With our mature adult hat on, we’ll get our po-faced caveat out of the way and reveal that, perhaps unsurprisingly, you can buy more sonically sophisticated Bluetooth speakers at this level.

The five-star Charge 6 doesn’t go as loud as The Roller, but the JBL class-leader puts music together in a more convincing manner. It’s clearer, more detailed and far more musically nuanced, with a layered, cohesive performance that can make The Philips speaker seem somewhat unrefined by comparison. For outright sound quality, the Charge 6 remains the one to pick.

When we remove our businessman’s bowler and don the backwards baseball cap of youth, however, we’re far more inclined to take The Roller for what it is: a brash, bold–looking speaker that makes a similarly brash, bold sound. Thanks to its 60 watts of RMS power feeding a pair of 25mm tweeters alongside twin 9cm woofers, Philips’ substantial Roller really is capable of putting the “boom” into boombox.

With the volume dialled up towards the higher reaches of social acceptability (sorry, neighbours), the opening bars of System Of A Down’s Highway Song nearly take our ears off. Power and punch are not in short supply, and while that extends across the entire frequency range, there’s a particularly large helping of muscular bass to really give the tune some kick.

Hard rock and hip-hop appear to be where The Roller is the most comfortable, and again, that isn’t much of a surprise given its fun-focused, boombox-esque nature. Turnstile’s SLOWDIVE sounds big, bold and suitably crunchy – enough to get heads banging – while Black Veil Brides’ epic Saviour II and Eminem’s hard-edged The Way I Am are given similarly powerful treatment.

Those qualities remain no matter how or where we use our bright yellow test speaker. Thanks to its assertive presentation – and that handy ‘Moving Sound’ mode – The Roller’s rich, full-bodied reproduction carries confidently when we take the speaker outside for some fun in the sun.

Big dynamic swings are generally communicated with the appropriate heft, as evidenced by the crashing thumps peppered across Rosalía’s ever-dramatic Berghain, even if The Roller can struggle fully to tease out the subtler shifts bubbling away in the background.

On the subject of The Roller’s blind spots, detail levels are adequate but not outstanding, with subtler nuances generally lost at the expense of that irrepressibly ‘have at ’em’ approach. Listen to subtler fare, such as alt-J’s Every Other Freckle or Agnes Obel’s The Curse, and the JBL Charge 6 will handle such delicate tunes with a lighter, more skilful touch.

Such relative weaknesses aren’t quite enough to temper our affections for Philips’ fun-focused ‘80s-inspired Bluetooth boombox. Subtlety and nuance may tend to fall somewhat by the wayside, but in terms of pure fun factor, The Roller really knocks it out of the park.

Verdict

If you’re serious about getting the best-sounding Bluetooth speaker at this price, buy the JBL Charge 6. It’s smaller and not as enjoyable to look at, but musically, it’s in a league of its own.

If you want something that’s a bit off the beaten track, though, The Roller is a cheerful charmer. Its funky design will likely appeal to younger listeners who want something quirky and unique, as well as audio veterans who still hanker to have their '80s boombox held proudly upon their shoulders.

All told, Philips has done a marvellous job in putting the fun back into portable audio.

Review published: 11th August 2026

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Build 5
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the JBL Charge 6

Also consider the JBL Xtreme 5

Read our Bose SoundLink Plus review

Best Bluetooth speakers tried and tested for every budget