If you’re after a pair of wireless headphones for around £150 / $150 / AU$200, your choices are roughly as follows.

You’ve got the excellent Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT if you don’t need noise cancelling, or you could go for the four-star Philips TAH8000E if you want ANC powers and don’t mind taking a bit of a hit on the sound side. Apart from that, it’s pretty slim pickings in what appears to be a strange market hinterland between budget-friendly cans and their premium, plus-£300/$300 counterparts. Or, you could spend a good deal less and buy a pair of our budget favourites, the Sony WH-CH720N for around £75 / $100 / $AU259.

At £130 / $130 / AU$220, the Soundcore Space 2 seem to fill this gap nicely, at least on paper. With the Hi-X25BT failing to provide ANC and the TAH8000E’s sound not quite reaching five-star heights, the path is open for the Space 2 to stick their flag in this potentially vacant soil. Let’s find out how they perform.

Build & comfort

Both to look at and wear, the Soundcore Space 2 are a well-made, sensibly designed pair of wireless headphones.

They play things reasonably safe on the design front, opting for simple circular earcups, an amply padded leather headband and some functional plastic on-cup buttons, but it would be hard to accuse the Space 2 of feeling cheap. They don’t have the boundary-pushing aesthetics of the more costly Nothing Headphone (1), for example, but this is still a neat, simple yet fairly classy pair of over-ears at a nice price.

They’re rather comfy, too. At a very reasonable 264g, the Space 2 don’t weigh a huge amount, meaning they’re rarely burdensome to wear over extended listening periods. The padding on the earcups and headband is a little on the soft side – some may prefer more firmness – but we don’t feel starved of comfort during our tests.

That headband is easily adjustable via a fairly smooth mechanism which grants roughly an extra inch of wiggle room, while the earcups will rotate from side to side and, even better, fold away fully to make carrying them in a bag easier.

In terms of general usability, it’s a standard, simple showing from the Space 2, and we don’t necessarily mean that as a criticism. The budget cans opt for the same general configuration as many wireless headphones of this type – including the Sony WH-CH720N – with noise cancelling and power buttons found at the bottom of the left earcup, and volume and Bluetooth controls on the right.

They’re not exactly luxurious, and actually finding the buttons when they’re hidden at the bottom edge of your headphones’ exterior requires some acclimatisation – but again, there’s little to really complain about here.

Features

The Soundcore Space 2 go big on battery life, offering around 50 hours with active noise cancelling switched on, and up to 70 hours if you turn ANC off and don’t listen at ear-splitting volumes. We used ours throughout a busy two-day press trip and barely made a dent in their battery. Better yet, a hurried five-minute charge will grant around four hours of standard playtime in a pinch.

For context, the Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT offer around 30 hours from a single charge, while even the Sony WH-CH720N’s 50 hours (ANC off) and 35 hours (ANC on) can’t keep up with the Soundcore.

Bluetooth codec support includes the standard SBC and AAC codecs, while those with compatible sources get the bonus of the higher-quality LDAC codec too. There’s also a 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio cable for wired listening, but no direct support for USB-C audio.

Spatial audio is provided, in a sense at least. Soundcore’s spin on the tech is dubbed ‘3D Sound’, and, as the name suggests, it’s designed to make stereo audio sound more three-dimensional by expanding the soundstage. There are hints of the tech working well here, and while it’s not going to challenge Dolby Atmos, we do get a sense of instruments being set further away from our ears a little more noticeably when using the mode.

If you do want to have a go with ‘3D Sound’, the best way to find it is via the Soundcore app. It’s a neat app bursting with features – even its own AI chatbot called “Anka” – and there is plenty to discover. You get an eight-band equaliser, ANC mode toggling and even some on-cup button customisation living alongside quite a few ambient sound options.

While you’re on the app, it’s worth taking advantage of Soundcore’s ‘HearID’ hearing test, which assesses your listening abilities and preferences and then purports to construct your own personalised sound curve. How much of this actually pays off is debatable, but it’s nice to have the option at this level, and we do find ourselves conducting much of our testing with our personalised hearing profile switched on.

ANC & call quality

It’s time to find out how the Soundcore Space 2 handle noise cancelling, and what better way to test out their ANC capabilities than with a quick flight over to Germany? No, we didn’t book the flight just to test out a pair of wireless headphones – we’re committed to our jobs, but we’re not that committed.

Both the flight and the busy airport give us the perfect opportunity to discover what the Space 2 can do, with noise cancelling available in its standard active form as well as a Transparent Mode for letting the world in.

Considering the price you’re paying, both settings are competently realised. The general hubbub of a busy airport terminal is softened nicely, even if peakier higher frequencies can tend to pierce through, while the rumbling and swooshing of an airplane in flight are diminished ably as we take to the skies with the Space 2 clamped over our ears. At this price, we’ve very little to take issue with.

It’s tricky to take voice calls on a plane, so that’s a test for when we’re back on terra firma. The Space 2 harness a 3-mic array and AI-powered algorithms in a bid to give calls sufficient intelligibility, and while speech comes through clearly enough, voices can sound a touch robotic and mechanical when compared with the more natural-sounding Sony WH-CH720N.

Still, the Space 2 are capable of blocking out exterior noises really rather well – perhaps even more so than the WH-CH720N – so that the swirls and whooshes of wind on a particularly tempestuous day barely register. All in all, a box ably ticked on the voice calls front.

Sound

Given the Space 2’s solid performance across other areas of our testing, we’re disappointed that the same levels of talent haven’t translated over to how the headphones actually handle music. In short, there’s very little about the Soundcore cans which we find engaging or exciting, and even less which has us wishing to return for repeat listening sessions.

They are, all told, rather bland performers. True, there’s something to be said for a pair of undemanding, composed headphones if you want to avoid that weary sense of fatigue that can often occur with more over-eager alternatives, but the Space 2 go too far the other way. Where is the excitement when we play Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal? Where is the drama of Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting?

We pick out Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine, and while we discern a decent amount of clarity and cohesion, as we listen we find there’s a real lack of emotional involvement, which mars our enjoyment. Withers’ voice is fairly robust yet lacking in any emotional heft, and the strings introduced at around the 30-second mark don’t have the free, swooning effect we might have hoped for.

Part of those strings’ uninvolving presentation owes to the headphones’ flattened dynamics. Muse’s Panic Station is next, and though the Space 2 are able to bring some cohesion and restraint to proceedings, we don’t discern much contrast between each deep bass pluck or the alternating percussive thumps of that key bass-snare drum pattern. Again, a compressed, flat sound prevents things from taking full flight.

Digging out the cheaper, Award-winning Sony WH-CH720N confirms our reservations. Okay, the Sonys sound a little flavoured at times, and their bass can be a little over-eager, but they’re far more entertaining and insightful across the various songs we play. Panic Station immediately pulses with more verve than the Soundcore cans manage, whereas those varying instrumental textures on Goose’s funky So Ready are more fleshed out and have the authenticity and personality we’ve been craving. The Sonys made music sound musical – the Soundcore, conversely, made it sound dispiritingly mechanical.

The similarly-priced Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT also provide an impressive benchmark which the Space 2 cannot match. They’re not as punchy or vicarious as the WH-CH720N, nor do they offer as much bass weight, but these are evidently far clearer, more delicate and more detailed headphones. Switching back to the Soundcore Space 2 simply makes the latter sound lacking in proper detail and bite.

It’s moving over to these five-star rivals that further makes us realise what has been missing from the Space 2s’ presentation. Balanced and reasonably clear they may be, but Soundcore’s over-ears don’t have that je ne sais quoi – be it the expressiveness of the WH-CH720N or the delicacy of the Hi-X25BT – to set our hearts aflutter.

There’s something to admire about how organised and unfussy the Soundcore cans sound, even as the music becomes more demanding and complex, but rarely do they make us feel in any way involved with or excited by the various songs we feed them.

Verdict

While we had hoped that the Soundcore Space 2 might have filled a gap in the mid-priced wireless market, we’re instead struggling to see how they fit into the current landscape.

Yes, a healthy arsenal of features does give them a potential competitive edge, especially with regard to their impressive battery span and comfortable fit. But when they’re sonically outmatched by finer – and cheaper – alternatives, they don’t quite seem like a viable option in comparison with the class leaders.

Review published: 22nd May 2026

SCORES

• Sound 2
• Build 4
• Features 5

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Also consider the Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT

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Portland-based brand Campfire Audio has announced its latest wired earbuds, the Chimera, and like the hybrid creature of Greek mythology, they certainly have quite a lot going on.

Campfire's flagship in-ear monitors bring together four distinct driver technologies – dynamic, balanced armature, electrostatic and bone conduction – resulting in what the US brand describes as "a listening experience that is both vividly detailed and physically immersive".

Those four driver technologies equate to nine total drivers, with a 10mm glass dynamic driver handling the lower frequencies and a dual-diaphragm balanced armature taking care of the midrange.

Twin high-frequency balanced armatures seek to provide "clarity and articulation", while four electrostatic super-tweeters handle the highest highs with "air and precision". The Chimera even incorporates a bone-conduction driver, allowing for lower frequencies to land with "weight and impact".

Aiming to get the best out of this handsome array of drive units are an embedded pressure valve to regulate airflow behind the dynamic driver, as well as a final-stage tuning damper integrated into each nozzle.

The exterior shell of the Chimera is machined from magnesium and finished with a PVD coating. The faceplate features a carbon fibre-brass construction, wherein layers of brass are folded into carbon fibre and CNC-machined to form a patterned surface that is subtly distinct from unit to unit.

The new wired IEMs also include an ALO Audio Valence-6 cable, featuring four copper conductors alongside twin copper and silver-plated conductors, as well as three types of ear tips – traction silicone, standard silicone and marshmallow foam – in sizes small, medium and large.

According to Ken Ball, Campfire Audio's founder: “Chimera is the most advanced in-ear monitor we’ve developed so far. It reflects a new horizon in the performance of Campfire products and expands on what is possible from compact, portable audio systems. It brings together a range of technologies and engineering techniques to create an experience that truly deepens the listener’s connection to music.”

The Campfire Audio Chimera will be available around June 2026, at a suggested price of £6999 / $7500.

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The Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 now come in a Nike special edition. The Powerbeats Pro 2 – Nike Special Edition come in the fitness brand's radioactive 'Volt' colourway, with the Nike swoosh on one earbud and the beats 'b' logo on the other.

They also come in a black, Volt-speckled charging case with Nike's "Just Do It" motto printed inside the lid.

In terms of sound quality and features, they're identical to the standard Powerbeats Pro 2.

For the uninitiated, the Powerbeats Pro 2 have the same Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency mode as the AirPods Pro 2, built-in heart rate monitoring that syncs with the Apple Fitness app and Nike Run Club, and up to 45 hours of battery life.

They're rated IPX4 water resistant, and have ear hooks to help them stay put during sports.

To celebrate the launch, Beats and Nike have produced a humorous ad featuring basketball legend and Beats ambassador LeBron James. It goes on a bit too long.

Beats is keen to stress this isn't just a new colour, but a "collision of two brands that define performance, culture, and sports." But it is a new colour.

We haven't reviewed the Powerbeats Pro 2, but the original Powerbeats Pro only scored three stars. Here's hoping the sequel fares better.

Nike has lent its name to headphones before (like 2009's Nike Aero Sport), but not for some time. It has also collaborated with Apple (Beats' owner) on a special edition Apple Watch.

The Powerbeats Pro 2 – Nike Special Edition go on sale on 20th March for the same £250 / $250 / AU$399 as the standard pair.

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It can’t be easy making a pair of wireless headphones in today’s market. Your main priority should be to get the audio sounding as good as it can possibly be, and that’s a tricky beast when customers are becoming increasingly aware of just how good a set of decent buds or over-ears can sound.

It’s even trickier when you’ve got a near-endless raft of competitors looking either to make a name for themselves or further cement their burgeoning reputations. Apple, Bose, Sony, Dali, B&W, Sennheiser, JBL – it’s hardly a one-horse race these days.

Overcome that particular hurdle and the job is barely even half done. Considerations regarding design and comfort must come high on the agenda, and then it’s time to think about supplying your latest contenders with the bulging feature-sets customers now so greedily expect. Noise cancelling, on-head wear sensors, custom equalisers, ‘find my’ facilities, spatial audio; the list goes on.

That last one remains relatively divisive, but I know plenty of people who are keen exponents of pure spatial tech. In short, it creates a wider, more immersive soundscape by making sounds seem as though they are anywhere within a three-dimensional space. (I also know many others who avoid it like the plague). I know not everyone is a fan, but I'm rather fond on Bose's patented 'Immersive Audio' spin on the technology – it's not perfect, but for some tracks, it works a treat.

What I have never found is a person who, when listening to music, actively and openly proclaims their love of spatial audio’s quirky cousin: spatial audio with head tracking. So am I missing something, or is head tracking one item that could be culled from an ever-growing menu of headphone features?

What is head tracking?

For those not familiar with the concept, head tracking is essentially a type of spatial audio which sticks your sound source to a single point in the soundscape rather than having it follow you around naturally as your head moves.

The idea is that by anchoring the sound to a single location – move your head right and it moves to your left ear, move it to the left and it moves it to your right – you’ll receive the experience of standing in front of a stage or speaker at a live performance. That's the core concept.

Except, you never do. Aside from all of the other ingredients missing from this apparent simulation of a live gig – overpriced refreshments, heaving crowds, low standards of personal hygiene – it’s almost impossible to convince yourself that head tracking is actually having the desired effect of making the audio sound as though it's emanating from anywhere other than inside your cans.

The problem is, listening to music with earbuds or headphones is such a specific sonic experience that it’s almost impossible to convince yourself of head tracking's desired effect.

Standard spatial audio can be effective in pulling the soundstage further away from your head to mimic the openness of a fully fledged surround system, especially if it works well and you’ve got a really decent pair of high-end cans such as the Apple AirPods Max. But I have yet to find any form of head tracking which has created the intended illusion of a source of live fixed audio.

That’s partly because the sound is so localised in your own head, and partly because head tracking with headphones essentially uses a sort of binary system whereby the audio has to switch from one earcup to the other.

That flitting from left to right isn’t something you naturally experience in the real world; but with headphones, that slight delay as the sound shifts from one side to the other – something we experienced with the otherwise commendable Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen) – shatters the illusion.

I’m not the only one to have picked up on this particular problem. To quote our ever-perceptive contributor Joe Svetlik: “When I'm pottering around my kitchen, hearing the audio adjust every time I move my head just reminds me I'm wearing headphones, which is the antithesis of an immersive experience. I want to get lost in the music, not have the left headphone cut out because I put my phone in my right pocket.”

Too right, Joe.

Android, on its spatial audio explainer page, freely admits that while head tracking “helps the user understand the nature of the spatialized sound stage being simulated around their head”, the experience “is effective only when the latency is low”. If a delay is present, as it often is, the illusion very quickly shatters.

Also, I don’t know about you, but my head tends to stay on a pretty set axis whenever I’m firing out my favourite tunes. Yes, occasionally I will turn one way or the other to look out of a window or notice that the dog is currently chewing her way through another pair of trainers that need rescuing. For the most part, though, I spend most of my time staring dead ahead.

If I do have to move my skull from side to side, I have never once felt that the immersion was shattered by having the sound move with me as I do so. It’s music from headphones – it goes where you go. Isn't that sort of the point?

Move over, music

Let’s not be all doom and gloom. Head tracking might have its place in your headphones' arsenal of weapons; just possibly not when it comes to music. If the technology isn't quite capable of effectively replicating the experience of having music emanating from a fixed source, it may make more sense when it comes to enjoying your favourite movies and TV series.

Here's our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, to explain why:

“I share Harry’s fairly negative view of headphones head tracking for music; but I’m actually a big fan of it for movies. When my family hits the hay, I often switch from my ‘real’ Dolby Atmos system to listening via my AirPods Max, which are connected to an Apple TV 4K.

“The way the Spatial Audio head-tracking anchors the audio to the on-screen movie makes for a really natural aural experience that’s much closer to the listening-out-loud experience than you usually get from headphones. I genuinely think this is a great way to enjoy Dolby Atmos movies if you don’t have the space or budget for a home cinema speaker system.”

That makes a lot more sense. If you're not able always to enjoy your movies ‘out loud’, a technology which can replicate the feeling of having audio emanating from the screen, all while keeping it from spilling out all over the place when you’re trying not to wake up the wife and kids, feels far more appropriate.

Provided you have a pair of headphones that are good enough in the first place, of course…

The right tech in the wrong place?

Head tracking, it seems, has its place – just not when it comes to listening to your favourite music.

I can still see an argument for the virtues of pure spatial audio, yet it's hard to think of an instance when adding head tracking into the mix elevates, say, Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York set to the heights of the original recording. I don't think the tech is going to get to the point where I'm convinced I'm sitting in the same room as Kurt Cobain and his tatty green cardigan.

For movies, however, I'm far more sold. As many of my colleagues have pointed out, it feels far more appropriate for immersing you in your cinematic experience, especially when circumstances demand that you are restricted to head-bound listening.

Perhaps the lesson here is that there’s a time and a place for every emergent audio technology: you sometimes just have to figure out what works best for you.

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With any deal event, whether it’s Black Friday or Cyber Monday, our review team doesn’t just have a duty to point you towards the best tech deals, but also to steer you away from savings that look pretty tempting on paper, but deep down, we just know there’s a better alternative elsewhere.

It might be the same price, or, if you’re lucky, even cheaper. Or, it might also be a tiny bit more expensive but we’d still recommend spending a tiny bit extra to get the added performance benefits that the product brings.

This is what I’ve done below. There are still plenty of tech deals ongoing for Cyber Monday but I’ve highlighted a handful which we think are worth avoiding because we have tested something that gives you more than just a low price to admire.

Stick with these alternative recommendations, and you won’t go wrong…

Don't buy… Amazon Echo Dot Max

On paper, the Echo Dot Max looks like a good upgrade on the 5th Gen Dot – bigger, twin driver units, and a new verison of Alexa. However, in our Echo Dot Max review, we felt that the Bluetooth speaker missed its mark completely, especially when it comes to sound quality. And this is why we think you should skip this model and go for the cheaper, smaller and older Echo Dot.

Buy this instead… Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen)

Don't buy… Samsung QE65S95F

In our Samsung S95F review, we described it as “the best Samsung OLED” money can buy. Now, that's high praise in itself, but we can go one better than that with a TV that boasts even better picture quality for an even better price. Movie fans need look no further than the all-conquering Sony Bravia 8 II 65-inch, which just edges out the Samsung on our wish list.

Buy this instead… Sony Bravia 8 II 65-inch

Don't buy… Technics SC-CX700

We love the convenience of all-in-one hi-fi systems like the Technics. They squeeze streaming smarts, a range of useful inputs and amplification into a pair of speakers. All you need to do is add power. However, in our Technics SC-CX700 review, we were left feeling slightly disappointed by the user experience and the lack of refinement in the sound quality department. Which is why we recommend the KEF alternative below.

Buy this instead… KEF LS50 Wireless II

Don't buy… Sony ULT Field 3

You'd think Sony would be able to mix it with the very best with its Bluetooth speakers, but we didn't think that was the case here. In our Sony ULT Field 3 review, we were left a little disappointed, concluding, "There’s nothing particularly offensive about how the Sony ULT Field 3 sounds, but by the same token, there’s nothing really memorable about it." For sound quality, it's easily trumped by this quality JBL alternative.

Buy this instead… JBL Charge 6

Don't buy… Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen)

For the past few years, we think Bose has been neck-and-neck with Sony when it comes to the performance of its flagship noise-cancelling headphones. But following our time spent testing its latest model, it would appear there's now some daylight between the two. Our Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen) review was generally positive, but this Sony alternative is clearly more musical-sounding and just provides a better overall experience. And they're cheaper.

Buy this instead… Sony WH-1000XM6

Bose's flagship ANC wireless headphones are getting an upgrade.

The new QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen) are the follow-ups to Bose's five-star first-generation QC Ultra Headphones, which gave us class-leading ANC and hugely entertaining sound.

The brand is hoping to deliver "a suite of meaningful enhancements" across the board, especially as these new flagships have strong competition to deal with from the current crop of five-star rivals from Sony WH-1000XM6, Dali IO-8 and Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3.

The new Bose flagship ANC headphones promise upgrades to audio and noise cancelling thanks to refinements to their digital signal processing. Bose has also made subtle adjustments to overall audio performance, claiming to deliver deeper bass, more natural highs and greater clarity at high volumes.

The drivers are the same as before, but that needn't be a disaster – the latest QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) didn't upgrade their drivers either, but that didn't stop some canny tuning refinements from earning five stars when we reviewed them recently.

Noise-cancelling is naturally a priority for Bose. The new QC Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen) have been engineered for "world-class noise cancellation", with an updated algorithm aiming for a more natural experience when adjusting to sudden spikes of noise in the Aware Mode.

Again, that's something Bose focused on for its second-gen QC Ultra Earbuds, and the results were, to quote from our review, "deeply impressive".

For the first time, the noise-cancelling can also be turned completely off.

New to the second-gen headphones is wired USB-C listening for lossless audio up to 16-bit/48kHz, a feature which also enables low-latency audio for gamers.

Bose's own take on spatial audio, Immersive Audio, also gains a new Cinema Mode. The new mode promises to "deliver a movie-like experience" by widening the soundstage and placing it in front of the listener, making dialogue clearer and balancing background effects for a more immersive, cinematic listen.

Battery life figures have also been improved. The second-gen headphones boast up to 30 hours of playback with ANC switched on (45 with ANC switched off), beating the 24 hours offered by the outgoing model.

Additional features include support for the higher-quality aptX Adaptive Bluetooth 5.4 codec, Bluetooth Multipoint for connecting to two devices simultaneously, as well as Google Fast Pair for Android users.

Even the design has been updated. The QC Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen) feature metal adornments for a sleeker, more modern aesthetic, while soft ear cushions promise a "lightweight fit and secure seal" for longer listening sessions. Like their predecessors, they fold completely flat, which is always useful for portable use and long-haul journeys.

The new Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen) are available in Black, White Smoke, Driftwood Sand or Midnight Violet finishes, and are priced at £449 / $449.

That's pretty much the same price their predecessors landed at, but more expensive than the current Sony WH-1000XM6 (£400 / $450) and B&W Px7 S3 (£399 / $449) for UK customers. Pre-orders start today and global release is set for 10th September.

We're expecting our review sample any day now, and can't wait to put it through the full review process.

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US audio manufacturer Campfire Audio has revealed its latest pair of in-ear monitors, the Grand Luna. Campfire is a big fan of an outlandish in-ear design – just look at their outlandish Alien Brain IEMs as proof – and the Grand Luna's angular, distinctive aesthetic is once again sure to grab the eye.

Will they grab the ear, though? The new IEMs combine a set of 14mm planar magnetic driver with twin balanced armatures, aiming for a listening experience that is "effortlessly smooth, richly detailed, and deeply immersive".

Externally, each earphone unit is housed in a red transparent shell. The Grand Luna feature a stainless-steel lid hand-finished at Campfire’s workshop, while the earpieces themselves feature a Campfire Audio logo and a textured stainless-steel finish.

The Grand Luna come with three interchangeable terminations included in the box: 3.5mm single-ended, 4.4mm balanced, and a USB-C DAC module powered by a Cirrus Logic Master HiFi CS43131 chip.

According to Ken Ball, Campfire Audio's Lead Acoustic Designer: “Grand Luna is the perfect balance of new and intriguing tuning, design, and materials, while having a performance that is incredibly accessible and versatile. It can be a one-size-fits-all solution for any level of listener or audiophile, while still providing something fresh and explorative".

The Campfire Grand Luna IEMs are available now, priced at £1399 / $1399.

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This year, Sony has already released its five-star Sony WF-C710N wireless earbuds and equally successful WH-1000XM6 over-ear headphones, and it looks as though the brand could be going for the threepeat in 2025.

According to a filing spotted by thewalkmanblog, we could well be edging closer to the arrival of the Sony WF-1000XM6, the highly anticipated sequel to the Award-winning WF-1000XM5 wireless earbuds and one of the year's most anticipated audio launches.

The import filing for what we can only presume is the XM6 has appeared under the name 'YY2985'.

Don't let that codename perturb you: the sequel to the Sony WF-C700N used the moniker 'YY2986' before they officially arrived as the WF-C710N.

Details are scant at this stage. All we have is the description of goods, which describes the new earbuds as "headphones without a frame" and reveals that the new model was imported into Vietnam for testing in a black finish.

It's not much to go on, but it does indicate that Sony is moving forward in its development process for its latest set of flagship buds.

When will the XM6 arrive? A 2025 release is certainly on the cards, considering that Sony is already at the testing stage of development and, looking at the company's release schedule, it tends to refresh its flagship line every two to three years.

The WF-1000XM5 dropped in August 2023, whereas their predecessors, the WF-1000XM4, landed in August 2020. Does another mid-summer unveiling beckon?

We'll give you further details as and when they emerge, but if you're keen to wait for the upcoming Sony buds, check out our Sony WF-1000XM6 predictions page for insights into what to expect from this sixth-gen model.

Until then, we're just keeping our fingers crossed for what could be one of the biggest launches of the year.

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Noble Audio’s new wireless earbuds – the FoKus Amadeus – will be hard to miss when they land on 18th June.

Their lustrous red finish immediately stands out from the usual black and white offerings, and there’s a story behind them – the company drew inspiration from the legendary composer Mozart’s signature tailcoat. How many earbuds can say that?

The new Amadeus earbuds have a launch price of £299, placing them firmly in premium territory, and outpricing the likes of the excellent five-star Sony WF-1000XM5.

Sony’s buds – which are our current overall best pick in our list of the best wireless earbuds – are priced at £199 these days, while the also-superb and more premium Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 can be snapped up for £299.

But enough about the competition. At the heart of the Amadeus lies a newly developed 8.3mm custom dynamic driver featuring a triple-layer diaphragm design.

Noble has tuned the driver to deliver what the company describes as full-bodied bass response, open midrange presentation, and extended treble that reportedly maintains detail without clinical harshness.

Following the implementation in the higher-end Rex5 model, the Amadeus also features Audiodo Personal Sound technology. This calibration system analyses individual hearing characteristics in each ear to create a personalised sound profile that's stored directly on the earbuds themselves.

The end result? Noble is promising a more enjoyable listening experience overall, though we can’t comment on that until we try them ourselves.

The earbuds are also powered by Qualcomm's QCC3091 chipset, and feature Bluetooth 5.4. High-resolution audio codecs include LDAC, aptX Adaptive alongside standard AAC and SBC. Multipoint pairing and TrueWireless Mirroring are also thrown into the mix.

Battery performance delivers up to 12 hours of playback per charge with active noise cancellation disabled, reducing to eight hours with ANC turned on. The charging case also provides an additional 2.5 full charges, extending total usage time to 42 hours.

Both USB-C wired and Qi wireless charging are supported, with a 10-minute quick charge providing approximately two hours of playback time.

For voice calls, the Amadeus employs dual microphones with clear voice capture noise cancelling technology to enhance call clarity in challenging acoustic environments.

If all of that’s enough to entice you, the Noble FoKus Amadeus can be pre-ordered today ahead of their 18th June release date for £299 / $320 / €349 (Australian pricing and release date to be confirmed).

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When the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e arrived a few years back, we thought they were an excellent pair of wireless headphones. Boasting a premium quality of build alongside excellent sound and lots of features, it was hard to pick too many holes in their credentials.

Good as the Px7 S2e are, B&W wanted to go one better with the sequel. Promoting them as their most "advanced and capable headphones ever", the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 have arrived burdened by seriously high expectations.

Thankfully, they're another excellent pair of over-ear wireless headphones, but how do they stack up against the older model and, more importantly, should you stick with the Px7 S2e or upgrade to the newer cans?

Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e vs Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3: price

As you'll know if you're a frequent hi-fi or headphones buyer, the older a product gets, the lower its price tends to drop. Considering they arrived around two years ago, the PX7 S2e have fallen to roughly £249 / $350 / AU$460 as the five-star over-ears begin the slow process of being phased out.

The newer Px7 S3 won't see prices slashed anytime soon, so their debut figure of £399 / AU$699 is the one you're going to have to pay if you want a pair. Note also that the Px7 S3 aren't yet available in the United States and don't even have a US price tag thanks to ongoing political and economic uncertainties. We'll update you as soon as we have those prices, of course.

A convincing win for the excellent-value Px7 S2e, then.

**Winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e**

Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e vs Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3: build and design

Oh, these really are lovely headphones.

We haven't changed our minds about just how nice the older B&W headphones are. The earcups' two-tone finish with a metallic oval and a textured surround just works so nicely, while gold accents and the cylindrical ‘Bowers & Wilkins’ logo text combine to make a very visually desirable product. Whatever finish you pick – and there are a few more with the Px7 S2e than the Px7 S3 at the time of writing – you won't be disappointed by how they look.

It's the same story with the third-generation cans, which follow roughly the same configuration as their predecessors. There are differences, however, including a decreased weight from 307g to 300g and a flatter, slimmer profile whereby the earcups don't protrude as far from the body of the overall design. That makes the Px7 S3, and their smaller case, more portable and easier to wear for long periods.

We've found both pairs to justify their premium price tags. The Px7 S2e felt like a well-made pair of headphones, a legacy that continues to the Px7 S3. From the fabric used on the headband to the quality of the metal arms, both sets feel like they've been built to last.

Both sets of headphones use old-fashioned button controls, and that's something with which we have no issue. The layout of the buttons makes sense and, once you get used to where everything is, you won't have too much trouble locating your desired functionalities.

The small fly in the ointment? Neither folds away, with the earcups instead swivelling from inwards to outwards, but not collapsing up and into the headband like, say, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones. It's not a huge deal, but worth noting all the same.

Two lovely sets of headphones, but their slimmer, lighter and more comfortable design gives the win to the Px7 S3.

**Winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3**

Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e vs Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3: features

Scan down each respective spec sheet and you won't find too many gaps. Battery life is a commendable 30 hours for both both pairs, though we're a bit miffed that the Px7 S3 couldn't build on that and add a few more hours to the total. Still, their ability to offer seven hours of playback from a mere 15-minute charge is mightily impressive and super convenient.

Codec compatibility is solid for both. There's support for the higher-quality Bluetooth codecs, with both offering aptX Adaptive as well as both USB-C and 3.5mm cable connections provided in both boxes. The S3 take things a little further, offering all flavours of aptX so you're covered if you have a compatible device; aptx Adaptive, HD, Classic and Lossless are all available, plus 24-bit/96kHz quality when listening via USB-C.

The accompanying Bowers & Wilkins Music App is where you'll control your headphones, with the newer cans working from the updated version of the platform. It's a place we like to be, allowing owners to adjust their phone settings, change the sensitivity of the wearer detection feature for automatic pausing, select noise-cancelling modes or access the customisable five-band equaliser. You even get many streaming service libraries, including the likes of Deezer, Qobuz, Tidal and TuneIn, all in one place.

The Px7 S3, naturally, will have some features not available with the older cans. Auracast will be available soon, meaning the Px7 S3 can receive audio transmissions from compatible broadcast sources when the time comes. This will be available alongside LE Audio support and the LC3 higher-quality codec as a future over-the-air update, says B&W.

**Winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3**

Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e vs Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3: noise cancelling and call quality

The Px7 S2e’s noise-cancelling capabilities are solid, and it's a similar story for the third generation of the brand’s premium over-ears. Thanks to their repositioned eight-mic array, the Px7 S3 have a natural-sounding ability to block out unwanted sounds and intrusions in much the same way as their predecessors.

Neither set matches the cocoon-like feeling of impermeability you get with the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, nor are they quite as comprehensive at reducing mid and upper frequency noises compared with Sony WH-1000XM5 and AirPods Max rivals, but the subtler ANC is decent enough from both sets when it comes to reducing the rumble of engines. The Px7 S3 are a little better than the previous model, as we would have hoped, and we certainly discern more of a difference when switching between full-fat ANC or the more permeable pass-through mode.

Voice calls are competently handled by each contender. Repositioned microphones and B&W’s ‘ADI Pure Voice’ voice processing technology tease “outstanding voice clarity” for the Px7 S3, and while the Px7 S2e weren't bad with voice calls, we feel that the newer model is better at muffling background noises such as passing cars or the whooshes of wind and air.

**Winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3**

Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e vs Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3: sound quality

Make no mistake, the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e are an exceptional pair of headphones at this price. Their sound is excellent, and it only took the brilliance of the Award-winning Sony WH-1000XM5 to prevent us from considering them to be the absolute leaders in their given field. Some of our test team actually prefer the older B&W cans to the Sony, so it's a very close run thing.

Why are the Px7 S2e so good? They remain tremendously detailed for wireless headphones at this level, able to bring out finer details and communicate dynamic shifts to an extent that few rivals can match. The B&W cans have the transparency to dig out the emotional depth to vocals, making sung performances sound authentic and sincere rather than rote and non-committal.

They're great at the lower-end, too, all while retaining a lovely feeling of space and scale. To quote from our review: "How the headphones render lower frequencies remains a highlight, with bass depth and punch in head-bopping supply. Bowers has not only aired out the soundstage slightly for added openness and coherency but also smoothed the presentation somewhat. It’s sweeter and easier to listen, and none of their predecessors’ clarity and tonal balance has been relinquished either."

So, there's no need to get the newer Px7 S3 then, right?

Wrong. The Px7 S3 are the step above, elevating an excellent pair of headphones to exceptional new levels. Compare them with any price-comparable rival and the Px7 S3 will hold their own and, more often than not, trump the competition. They offer class-leading levels of insight, instrumental detail and sonic punch. Even against the more expensive Dali IO-8, we found them to be more capable of pulling out textures with greater talent and a more perceptible feeling of weight and body.

To borrow from our recent review: "These are wireless headphones that dig deep into your music, eschewing a broad or general sonic overview and instead pulling out instrumental timbres with the relentless curiosity and enthusiasm of a bloodhound on the scent of a new lead." High praise.

We loved the bass reproduction of the outgoing B&W, but here the bar has been raised. The newer model offers a lower-end reproduction that drops to new depths, yet the B&W are cultured enough to keep things from sounding blobby or unwieldy. Powerful bass reproduction blended with true finesse isn't easy, but it's a trick the Px7 S3 pull off like it's no big thing.

Across the board, if sound quality is your key priority, the Px7 S3 have to be somewhere at the top of your shortlist. In a straight shootout against the Px7 S2e, they're the clear winners to our ears.

**Winner: Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3**

Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e vs Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3: verdict

Regardless of which pair they're put up against, the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 are some of the best wireless over-ear headphones you can buy at their premium price point. If sound and style matter to you (and you're rather keen on a healthy feature set, too), we'd have no problem recommending them, even at full price.

What's the case for the Px7 S2e, then? In short, it's a question of price and value. The older cans arrived at £379 / $399 / AU$599, yet now that they're often more than £100 / $100 / AU$150 off, the sound-per-pound value they represent is seriously attractive.

Like so many things in life, this one might simply come down to a question of money.

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Brooklyn-based audio manufacturer Grado has announced the release of its latest pair of open-back headphones, the Signature S950. Following on from the release of the new flagship Grado Signature HP100 SE last year, the S950 are the second set of cans released in the nascent Signature line.

The Signature S950's earcup housings are made using Brazilian walnut which not only makes for a more lightweight construction (just 395g) but offers what Grado describes as a "relaxed musical presentation". Grado has used wood extensively across a number of its most recognisable headphones, including the GS1000X Statement, the five-star Grado RS1x and the RS2E Reference cans, so the incorporation of Brazilian walnut for the S950's ear cups is a return to familiar territory.

The Signature S950 use an incarnation of Grado's 52mm S driver originally designed for the Signature HP100 SE cans. When developing this new 52mm iteration, Grado strove to create a driver unit that would deliver "exceptional high-frequency detail, a smooth midrange, and powerful bass", all while keeping distortion levels at a minimum for a pinpoint accurate sound.

Each new driver deploys a paper composite cone paired with a high-flux magnetic circuit, as well as a copper-plated aluminium voice coil. When combined, Grado claims that the magnetic circuit and voice coil enhance the new headphones' dynamic reproduction while providing a "refined sense of space, soundstage, detail and imaging".

The Signature S950's updated headband includes 50 per cent more padding than earlier Grado models for extra comfort and features a stainless-steel band and adjustable height rods for customising your fit accordingly.

The new cans are equipped with a six-foot cable ending in a 6.3mm connector, while they connect to the headphones using 4-pin balanced mini XLR plugs. Grado is offering varying lengths of detachable cable options in the future, with 4-pin balanced XLR and 4.4mm balanced terminations available, granting users greater choice depending on their personal preference and the source being used.

The Grado Signature S950 will be available in March, priced at £2495 / $2195.

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After a good deal of speculation, the Beats Powerbeats 2 have officially landed. The first-gen Powerbeats Pro arrived in 2019, meaning there has been a gap of over five years between generations of the sporting buds – that's more than enough time for Beats to have improved upon the disappointing sonic performance of its original set of premium workout companions.

To make those sonic gains, the second-generatioin Powerbeats employ a bespoke acoustic architecture which strives for a "powerful, balanced sound profile" to put some pep in your proverbial step. Dual-layer drivers seek to minimise distortion and are aligned to each earbud’s nozzle for "optimal sound delivery", while a new venting design has been deployed to improve bass reproduction.

The new buds mimic the over-ear hook design of their predecessors, but this time Beats promises a lighter (by 20 per cent), more secure fit thanks to the Powerbeats Pro 2's updated ear hook which has been redesigned using a lightweight nickel-titanium alloy for "exceptional shape memory and flexibility". To get the perfect fit, the Apple-owned brand claims to have conducted more than 1500 hours of rigorous testing with nearly 1000 athletes to obtain the ideal blend of comfort and security.

Adding to their sporting credentials is an IPX4 waterproof rating for protection against sweat and liquid splashes, as well as on-ear touch controls, five ear-tip sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL) and hands-free voice call capabilities when you're out on the move. Each bud packs a voice accelerometer and the same three microphones as found in the five-star AirPods Pro 2, leading to "exceptional voice targeting and noise suppression" from the new Beats.

Unlike their ancestors from way back in 2019, the Powerbeats Pro 2 feature active noise cancelling, with Beats claiming that the new running buds offer "the best adaptive noise cancelling" the brand has ever developed. In addition, transparency mode is also on the menu for hearing the world around you as you run.

Aside from noise cancelling, the new Powerbeats' big headline feature is heart-rate monitoring for your workouts, with the new buds using biometric sensing to provide in-depth for improved fitness tracking in real time. There is also support for customisable spatial audio with dynamic head tracking thanks to the inclusion of Apple's H2 chip, the same unit that powers the AirPods Pro 2.

Your workouts won't be cut short, either. The Powerbeats 2 offer up to 45 hours of playback with the charging case, with each earbud granting up to 10 hours of playtime before needing a refill. That case, meanwhile, has been designed to be 33 per cent smaller than the original and, handily, is compatible with wireless charging.

Coming in four finishes – black, quicksand grey, purple or orange – the Powerbeats Pro are available now, priced at £250 / $250.

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If you’ve perused What Hi-Fi?’s home cinema section, you’ll know we’re fairly big fans of Dolby Atmos – when it's done right.

To catch the uninitiated up, this is a form of surround sound that includes additional height channels to create a more three-dimensional sonic presentation. Dolby itself describes Atmos as offering a “dome of sound” experience, and that’s a pretty accurate summary of what it's like when it’s delivered properly.

What do you mean by "properly", you ask? Jump over to our best Dolby Atmos movie scenes to test your home cinema surround sound system guide and you’ll get a detailed breakdown of the best uses of the technology.

The short version is that Atmos is at its best when the director uses the 360 sphere available to them to do things such as replicate the sound of jet planes screaming overhead during a dogfight, or the terrifying footsteps of a monster creeping in the dark above its intended victim.

Trust me, once you experience it, you’ll be rushing to our best surround-sound systems and best Dolby Atmos soundbars guides to get a speaker set-up capable of replicating the experience in your home.

And while we mainly talk about Atmos for films at What Hi-Fi?, myself and the AV team can also confirm it’s great for sports, which is why we were delighted to hear Comcast will be broadcasting the Super Bowl with the tech for the first time this year.

This means that when Super Bowl LIX kicks off and the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans at 11.30pm GMT / 6.30pm ET / 3.30pm PT / 10.30am AEDT on Monday, Xfinity TV customers will be able to hear it in Atmos.

Cards on the table, I’m not a huge NFL fan. So much so that my only connection to it is the fact that our staff writer Lewis Empson (a Swifty), is excited one of his favourite pop stars will be there. But others, including our Deputy Editor, Andy Madden, are cautiously excited. Why cautiously? Because, like movies, Atmos sports can be very hit-and-miss in their Atmos implementation.

There are three big reasons for this.

The first stems from the fact that, like films, having an Atmos signal doesn’t guarantee the audio will be good.

Done badly, Atmos can even distract rather than aid the experience. This has been the case in certain sports, including F1. The sport’s fundamentally quite flat, soncially speaking, with all the action happening on a level track. The streams we've seen with Atmos also didn’t include much in the way of crowd noise from the stadium, so even though it was an Atmos signal, the experience didn’t feel much more immersive than standard surround sound.

The best experiences are when the added height channels are used to make you feel as though you’re in the stadium, or on the pitch hearing what the players on screen are saying. The best examples of this tend to come from Premier League matches on Sky Sports, TNT and Amazon Prime Video, where the added sound of the crowd cheering, or jeering, adds to the immersion and helps the match take on a character you simply don’t get with regular sound.

This brings me to our second complication – the venue. Recording live events is an art, which is why bands pay such attention to where they play and how live records are made. The acoustics of an arena are all different, and capturing sound in them needs to be tailored for the best results. This remains true with sports.

The recording and broadcast need to be optimised for the stadium and, even when it is, some venues have better acoustics than others – which is why Atmos performance varies massively, even when watching the Premier League on the same streaming platform, on a match-to-match basis.

Then, third and finally, there’s your home speaker set-up. Having reviewed more Atmos soundbars and packages than I care to remember, trust me when I say they’re not all created equal.

Dolby Atmos soundbars in particular are a minefield. I’ve reviewed plenty that have the eARC connection required to recognise an Atmos signal and up-firing drivers designed to replicate the dome of sound experience by reflecting audio off the ceiling, and many offer very little by way of a sense of height.

That’s why myself and the What Hi-Fi? team spend so much time testing Dolby Atmos soundbars to ensure they deliver Atmos properly, rather than just recognising the signal.

To get a truly great Atmos experience with the Super Bowl, all of these factors will have to be dealt with. Which is why, while I’m excited to see more sports fixtures stream with the audio, I’ll wait until I actually hear it before singing its praises.

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It’s time to dust off my crystal ball and speculate on which new headphone models I think could appear this year. Since Covid, traditional launch cycles for some brands and products seem to have gone out of the window, but I believe that in 2025 there’s a good chance we will see at least a handful of huge launches in the wireless headphones world.

And they will need to be big given the number of quality five-star pairs out there now. Most of the big hitters, including Apple, Bose and Sony, currently all have pairs we have given five stars to, so the launch of any successor will not only be huge news but also hugely exciting. As someone who has experienced pretty much everything that these brands have to offer, I can't wait to get my hands on the next big thing, especially when it comes to new flagships.

Of course, you can never be sure if traditional naming conventions are going to continue or a manufacturer might throw a spanner in the works and tweak more than just a digit here and or letter there. For my list, I've assumed brands will pick up from where they've left off.

Only one pair below has been heavily rumoured to appear on the Internet, while the others are all my own speculation based on previous launch dates and taking into account other new headphones I've seen launch over the past couple of years.

Is there a particular pair you would like to see hit the market in 2025? Is there a sequel you’ve been waiting for, or maybe just a tweak of an existing model to add a feature or change a design element? Let me know in the comments below…

Apple AirPods Pro 3

Apple didn’t exactly set the headphones world alight with its 2024 update to its flagship over-ear headphones, the AirPods Max. I’m hoping for bigger things from the AirPods Pro 3 wireless earbuds if they arrive in 2025. Apple’s current flagship buds, the AirPods Pro 2 impressed us enough to give them a five-star review when they appeared on the scene in September 2022. They are undoubtedly Apple’s best buds to date, but there’s always room for improvement.

Although, to Apple’s credit, the tech giant has continued to add new features to the AirPods Pro 2 since they launched, including Adaptive Audio, Personalised Volume and Conversation Awareness, so they have evolved quite nicely.

If the AirPods Pro 3 do materialise in 2025, I’ll be looking for even better sound quality, boosted ANC (which I have a hunch Apple will enlist the help of AI to help tweak), tweaked battery life (which currently sits at six hours) and a more stable connection in crowded environments. As I’ve been testing more and more wireless earbuds this year, the drop in connection stands out when I’m out using them and walking around crowded train/tube stations.

The latest AirPods Pro 3 rumours point to a possible launch early in the year, but historically Apple’s AirPods have launched later. Needless to say, I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.

• Read our AirPods Pro 2 review

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds 2

If you’re looking for launches that could potentially happen towards the end of 2025, then a second-generation pair of QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds might not be out of the picture. After all, September will mark the second anniversary of the originals and Bose has been known to refresh some of its pairs every couple of years.

Another reason why I think next year might see the launch of new flagship Bose wireless earbuds is because of the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2024) that launched last September. Their unveiling ushered in not only a new look but also new features that aren’t available on the QC Ultra Earbuds. Bose also introduced a brand-new companion app that isn’t compatible with the current flagship. To me, it would seem strange to leave the Ultras in limbo longer than they need to be, and bringing them in line with the new app and adding extra features as soon as realistically possible would make sense.

So what could we expect to see from any new flagship Bose buds? I’d expect a boost in battery life of sorts – the Ultras offer six hours per charge, which is okay but feels a little low by some modern standards – and improvements in call quality and even potentially an ANC tweak, even though Bose seems to have the formula for noise-cancelling earbuds well and truly sorted at the moment.

• Read our Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds review

Bowers & Wilkins PX9

The luxury headphone market has grown significantly in recent years. With options approaching the £1000 / $1000 mark, it’s going to be interesting to see who is next to market with a pair that attempts to take headphone design and sound to the next level.

One brand I can see potentially making a move is Bowers & Wilkins. Its Px8 wireless headphones launched back in September 2022, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the audio giant was well along the path with a successor that maybe sits even higher up the price scale. The Px8 launched at £599 / $699 / AU$1150 and wowed us with their classy looks and luxurious build elements such as the use of nappa leather on the headband, earpads and earcups, and beautifully finished aluminium arms. And they backed this up with outstanding sound quality. We were also blown away by their “outstanding clarity” and “fast and punchy sonic presentation”.

We’ve already seen Bowers & Wilkins have great success with its latest pair of flagship wireless earbuds, the Pi8, which we thought justified their hefty price tag and a five-star rating. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the company tries to mirror this with its over-ears and go one better than the Px8.

• Read our Bowers & Wilkins PX8 review

Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless

One brand that quietly and efficiently goes about its business in the wireless headphones market is Sennheiser. Its Momentum range has proved to be a consistent and much-loved line over the years and has spawned several pairs that we’ve rated five stars.

The Momentum 4 Wireless arrived in August 2022, so if we’re looking at a two to three-year cycle, 2025 could be the perfect time for a new pair to come to market. It’s interesting to note that the company’s Momentum True Wireless 4 earbuds only came out in January 2024, so I’m wondering whether Sennheiser would want a fifth-generation over-ear on sale at the same time as the 4th Gen earbuds, or would it prefer to wait a little longer to bring the product cycles closer together?

To its credit, the current Momentum 4 Wireless model is still extremely competitive, especially given recent price discounts. Its claimed 60-hour battery life when Bluetooth and ANC are enabled is quite remarkable, while their neutral, musical sound keeps you entertained. They also boast many useful features and good noise-cancelling too. Sony seems to have had the edge in recent years but I think Sennheiser could really push them close with a new model if it gets the formula right.

• Read our Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless review

Sonos Ace 2

Sonos’s much-rumoured move into the headphones space became a reality in 2024 with the arrival of the Sonos Ace. Going off the impact they had in the soundbar and wireless speaker markets, we hoped they would be a bona fide rival to the established competition from the likes of Bose and Sony.

But, when we tested them, we were surprised to find them a bit of a mixed bag. We really liked the build quality and streamlined design which looked pretty fresh given what else is in the market. They were nice to use with solid controls and we found them comfortable to wear for long periods. However, in our opinion, Sonos really missed the mark with sound quality, which surprised us. They just don’t sound exciting or dynamic to listen to. There’s a real lack of clarity and expression compared to the class leaders.

Now, I’m not expecting Sonos to go back to the drawing board and launch a brand-new model, but could Sonos tweak the Ace’s sound profile via a firmware update? Manufacturers are constantly making small updates to their headphones during their shelf life, so I think there could be a chance, but only a slim one. I suppose the next big question is, could Sonos launch a pair of premium wireless earbuds so they have both in-ear and over-ear headphones categories covered?

• Read our Sonos Ace review

Sony WH-1000XM6

This would be huge news and the launch I've been waiting for. It’s coming to that time of the headphones cycle when we are due another pair of flagship wireless over-ears from Sony. Its current WH-1000XM5 model is over two years old now, but I think they are still the benchmark for wireless headphones at their level. It will be interesting to see whether Sony consolidates or decides to try and push the envelope if it chooses to launch a new model.

After all, the XM5 were quite a big departure from the build and styling of the WH-1000XM4, so I’d be surprised if they ripped everything up and started again for their successor. To its credit, Sony has been able to consistently up the audio quality from generation to generation, so if it can do this with a new model that would be half the battle. What else would I like to see? I still think Sony could learn a thing or two from a couple of other brands.

Bose still just has the edge when it comes to noise-cancelling (thanks to the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones) and Sennheiser’s Momentum 4 Wireless over-ears deliver some big numbers when it comes to battery life. You could also argue that the build quality of the WH-1000XM5 took a bit of a backwards step compared to XM4, so I’m fascinated and excited to see what might appear.

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We love it when a manufacturer proves that you can get great sound and comfort from a pair of headphones without having to dig too deep into your back pocket – and that’s exactly what Sony did when it launched the WH-CH720N over-ear headphones.

Even at full price, we found them to be so talented that we bestowed a What Hi-Fi? Award upon them for the best wireless headphones in the budget category. But right now, JB Hi-Fi has slashed an insane AU$136 off their price, bringing them down to an Australian all time low of just AU$123. We really can’t think of any other pairs of headphones that can match this for price and performance.

As we said in our Sony WH-CH720N review, “No shrinking violets, they imbue their musical cargo with heft and conviction, operating on the front foot in delivering an immediate, assertive sound with an emphasis on forceful, burly bass.” On the subject of that bass, we did find it could become a little overzealous at times, but Sony’s companion app lets you adjust the EQ to your heart’s content.

We did also find, as should be expected given the huge price disparity, that more premium pairs such as Sony’s own WH-1000XM5, are more effective at blocking out external noise with more powerful ANC technology, but we ultimately found that, for the money, “these affordable Sonys do an effective job of dampening, if not silencing completely, the rumble and swoosh of each passing car as it whizzes its way past on a busy nearby road.”

We could go on and on about how well we think they perform, but we think you should judge for yourself. Fortunately, you don’t need to spend much to find out, and perhaps the even better news is that JB Hi-Fi has discounted all three colours to the same price (we’re particular fans of the blue colour option). We’re not sure how long this deal will last, so we suggest jumping on it quickly, the CH720N will make a terrific Christmas gift.

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Hollywood isn't too fond of AI – see the recent writers' strike – but in this case it could make an exception. BenQ's new AI Cinema Mode uses artificial intelligence to optimise the picture depending on the viewing conditions and the type of content being shown. So it should help Hollywood movies look their best.

AI Cinema Mode features on the new BenQ W2720i home cinema projector. It can adapt the image to ambient light to give more accurate colours and details, enhance the picture to best suit what's on screen, and optimise the brightness dynamically.

It also promises to make the projector a doddle to set up, meaning you can enjoy an as-the-director-intended experience without having the foggiest about colour calibration. BenQ has an entire team tasked with calibrating colour, which means the 2720i meets commercial digital cinema standards like DCI-P3, giving you a cinema-style experience right in your lounge.

Each unit comes with its own factory calibration report, proving its D65 colour temperature and colour accuracy, which should make for vibrant, true-to-life colours as the director intended.

It supports the HDR10+ format of HDR, which should be improved by the Global Contrast Enhancer, Local Contrast Enhancer and Dynamic Black technologies onboard. The 'Global' tech enhances the contrast across the whole image, while 'Local' zeroes in on specific parts within a frame. Dynamic Black, meanwhile, optimises the contrast dynamically, adapting the light output to match the content on-screen. Which again, should make it true to the director's original vision.

The eco-friendly LED should run quietly and give you up to 30,000 hours of movie time, so no need to replace the bulb (not unless you're watching a lot of films). It can produce a 120-inch screen from a distance of just 2.7m, so pretty close, though not as close as ultra short throw (UST) projectors. It should be simple to accommodate into most rooms too, with features like 1.3x zoom, Auto Screen Fit, 8-point Corner Fit, and Vertical Lens Shift making it versatile.

Want to stream? Not a problem. Android TV is at hand courtesy of a streaming stick that comes bundled with the device. That will give you access to all the big hitters like Disney+, Netflix and Prime Video. And with three HDMI 2.1 ports (one of which doubles as an eARC), and SPDIF, you can connect a soundbar or surround sound set-up.

The W2720i is available now for £1999 (about $2600 / AU$3900). Find out more here.

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October is upon us, which not only means the imminent arrival of Amazon’s Big Deal Days sale event, but also a fresh entry into our Pick of the Month column.

With testing for the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2024 in full swing and our first raft of winners set to be announced on 9th October, it was a particularly busy month for our team of testers. It also means this is one of the longest Pick of the Month columns to date, with a staggering eight products earning perfect marks from our reviewers.

Every one was tested by our team in one of our dedicated viewing or listening rooms, where it was put through its paces in a series of comparative tests, directly against its closest rivals, so you know they’re good if they made the list!

Pro-Ject Debut Evo 2

The Pro-Ject Debut Evo 2 is an updated version of the five-star Debut Carbon Evo. It's a bit pricier than its outgoing predecessor, but the £599 / $699 / AU$1299 deck comes with a few key upgrades. These include a new heavy aluminium platter, as well as a new precision-milled aluminium block with a low-friction bearings mount for its tonearm. As a cherry on top, it also comes with a new Pick-It MM Evo cartridge.

Putting it through its paces paired with a variety of reference equipment, including Epos ES14N speakers and a PMC Cor amplifier with a Vertere Phono-1 MkII L phono preamp, the results were excellent. Across every track, be it bopping pop or thrashing 70s rock, the turntable delivered a lively, detailed and fluid sound. Hence our reviewers’ conclusion:

“Pro-Ject has taken a friendly, capable deck and furnished it with significant upgrades to make it a more sleek and engaging performer. There are those who will prefer Rega’s more mature and precise presentation at this level, but the Evo 2 is a capable and likeable alternative whose lively, fluid delivery and lovely way with voices might just win you over.”

Score: 5/5

Read our in-depth Pro-Ject Debut Evo 2 review

Rega Planar 2/Nd3

The Planar 2/Nd3 is the latest package from Rega that pairs its mid-range turntable with its new moving magnet cartridge.

The upgraded cartridge raises the turntable’s price up to £599 / $795 / AU$1299, a slight premium on the £499 / $775 / AU$999 you’ll have to pay to get the Planar 2 with the company’s standard factory-fitted Carbon MM cartridge. But based on our testing, it’s well worth considering the upgrade.

Paired with our reference system of the PMC Cor amplifier and Epos ES14N speakers, with a Vertere Phono-1 MkII L phono stage, the cartridge yielded solid sonic improvements. Whether it was Beethoven’s Symphony No.5 or Slipknot’s Wait And Bleed, the package delivered an authoritative and engaging sound that was wonderfully dynamic, rhythmically precise and agile. Hence our conclusion:

“An assured, subtle and rhythmically exciting deck with high build quality and fuss-free set-up – the Planar 2/Nd3 package is a strong performer at this level.”

Score: 5/5

Read our in-depth Rega Planar 2/Nd3 review

Sony WF-C510

The WF-C510 are the latest affordable wireless earbuds from audio heavyweight Sony. While many people’s attention may firmly be on the AirPods 4 with ANC, you’d be foolish to ignore the Sony WF-C510, based on our testing.

Putting them up against their five-star, Award-winning predecessors the Sony WFC500, we found they’re an incredibly accomplished set of earbuds considering their low £55 / $60 / AU$110 price tag.

For the money you’ll be treated to a stellar value pair of earbuds that deliver a wonderfully comfortable fit and solid, musical sound that you won’t get on anything else at this price. Hence our reviewers’ conclusion:

“At this level, it’s hard to pile on too much expectation, but Sony’s previous track record has us doing just that. And the WF-C510 don’t disappoint. They might look and feel cheaper than what has gone before them but we can’t really argue with the comfort, sense of fun and musicality that they convey. They’re brilliant buds with a bargain price tag.”

Score: 5/5

Read our in-depth Sony WF-C510 review

LG C4 (OLED42C4)

The OLED42C4 is the smallest option in LG’s middle-child C-series of OLED TVs. For the money you get the same core formula that made the larger 48-inch LG C4 and 65-inch LG C4 great, but in a smaller package. These include flawless gaming specs with four full-speed HDMI 2.1 inputs, with eARC, that will let you take full advantage of a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S's graphical grunt.

But, most importantly it also delivers an excellent movie watching experience. While we found the smallest model doesn’t offer quite as warm colours as its siblings, it’s still capable of delivering a wonderfully punchy but authentic picture. That’s why you’ll currently see the 42-inch LG C4 front and centre in both our best gaming TV and best OLED TV buying guides. As we said in our 42-inch LG C4 review:

“The 42-inch LG C4 is the best small OLED TV money can buy right now. Though its audio isn't the best, it delivers a wonderfully punchy, immersive viewing experience despite its small form factor, with noticeably higher peak brightness than its older rivals.”

Score: 5/5

Read our in-depth LG C4 (OLED42C4) review

Qobuz

When we first tested it we initially weren’t sold on hi-res service Qobuz. But after a wealth of improvements since we last fully reviewed it, we can confirm it has evolved into the best music streaming service for audiophiles.

The biggest and most appealing of those improvements are its stellar hi-res streaming powers, which now include a much wider range of tracks and artists. Add to this its clever pricing changes, which now put it roughly in line with direct rival Tidal, and it quickly became an easy recommendation among our experts during our joint testing sessions. Hence our updated conclusion:

“It’s clear Qobuz has really worked hard in recent years to bring its pricing, catalogue and user experience in line with the competition, while also keeping its niche for the audiophile user. Yes, other services offer high-res music, but Qobuz feels like it lives and breathes it.”

Score: 5/5

Read our in-depth Qobuz review

Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined

The Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined are a squat pair of floorstanding speakers that have been 45 years in the making. Having finally gotten them into our listening rooms our team of reviewers can thankfully confirm they are worth the wait. The speakers may have a wonderfully eye-catching, retro design, but under the hood they’re a modern marvel full of clever engineering.

Every one of the four drivers has been bespoke-crafted with painstaking attention to detail that takes inspiration from and improves on the designs of the original Trapeze speakers. The end result is a wonderfully unfussy pair of floorstanding speakers that delivered stellar results paired with our reference system. This includes a Naim ND555/555 PS DR music streamer, Technics SL-1000R/Kiseki Purpleheart MC and Burmester 088/911MkIII amplifier.

Whether it was Mahler’s 8th Symphony or Massive Attack’s Angel, the Trapeze Reimagined delivered a performance full of clarity, excellent dynamics and impressive bass power, agility and grip.

This makes them an easy recommendation and led our testers to conclude:

“There is always a danger with retro-inspired speakers that the sound quality takes a back seat to the nostalgia value. That isn’t the case here. The Trapeze Ri may resemble their famed ancestors, but in every other respect are thoroughly modern speakers that, at their considerable best, deliver a wonderfully spellbinding sound.”

Score: 5/5

Read our in-depth Audiovector Trapeze Reimagined review

Sony Bravia 8 (K65XR80)

The Sony Bravia 8 is the only new OLED TV from Sony this year. If that wasn’t enough pressure to put on the unit, it’s also the direct successor to the Sony A80L – a Product of the Year winner at last year’s What Hi-Fi? Awards.

Putting it through its paces directly against its predecessor in our viewing rooms last month, we can now confirm it is a stellar OLED TV that delivers a wealth of small but important improvements on last year’s model.

Highlights include a slightly higher maximum brightness, which makes bright scenes a smidgen more detailed and immersive than the outgoing, and still excellent, A80L, plus refinements to its colours. The latter adds a layer of warmth that makes skin tones in particular look more authentic and true to life.

Add to this its best in class motion handling and good, by TV standards, audio (though you’ll still want a soundbar for truly immersive viewing), and it easily earned a five-star rating. As we said in our review:

“The Bravia 8 is a refinement rather than a big step forward for Sony’s OLED TV offering – but it's still a great TV.”

Score: 5/5

Read our in-depth Sony Bravia 8 review

Dali Rubikore 2

The Rubikore 2 are our first taste of hi-fi house Dali’s new Kore-era speakers. This means they come with a number of engineering features we’ve not had in our listening rooms before.

Highlights include a brand-new hybrid tweeter design and a a 16.5cm mid/bass driver complete with Dali’s custom paper and wood-fibre ‘Clarity Cone’ and patented SMC (Soft Magnetic Compound) magnet material technology.

Pairing the standmount speakers with our reference hardware, while we found you will want to match them with a smoother-sounding amplifier, in our case the Arcam A15 and Naim Nait XS 3, they are capable of fantastic audio.

Once matched well, the Rubikore 2 delivered great audio full of class-leading levels of insight and rhythmic precision. Hence our conclusion:

“As entertaining as they are informative, the formidable Rubikore 2 deliver a good time, and then some.”

Score 5/5

Read our in-depth Dali Rubikore 2 review

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The Umbrella Academy started as a comic book before it was adapted for the screen by Netflix. That isn't all that special in itself, but creating a hit from mining comics is becoming a rare feat nowadays. That's why this fascinating and mind-bending series entering its fourth and final series is a big deal.

This show tells the story of a dysfunctional family in a very original way. The characters are born with powers and were adopted by a wealthy philanthropist at birth to be raised as a superhero team. What ensues is hilarious, moving, exciting and very often downright weird, with the series predominantly carried on back-and-forths between the siblings and their many enemies. 

It's not an understatement to say that some of these characters will be truly missed when the show comes to an end after five years. With that in mind, it's a great time to come to the show for the first time. The last two seasons racked up a series-best 91 per cent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.

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Apocalyptic excellence

Each series pits our team of unlikely and imbalanced heroes against an apocalyptic potential end for us all. And when all that stands in the way of planetary annihilation is a bunch of misfits that struggle to get along, queue a nail-biting and often unpredictable adventure of a show.

From super strong giants and teleporters to mind controllers and time travellers – The Umbrella Academy isn't short of fantastical imagination. Keep in mind that the creation comes from Dark Horse comics – a more mature arm of the already darker-than-Marvel DC comics – so it's not surprising that it's close to the bone in a very edgy and effective way.

Actors to look out for include Robert Sheehan (Misfits), who puts in a career-defining performance as Klaus, a loveable misfit who can see the dead and battles his own drug-based demons. Also, movie actress Elliot Page (Juno, Inception) leads the way as Vanya/Viktor who has potentially planet-destroying powers and goes through a personal journey of identity as the series progresses.

Is this the end?

The show started in 2019 and is already entering its fourth and final series, going to show just how popular it has been. Indeed, a massive 45 million households watched season one during its first week of release, and since then it has received six Emmy nominations.

It's also a measure of how much The Umbrella Academy will be missed by its many fans. Will there be a spin-off series or some sort of reboot to keep it going? It's hard to imagine that the studio will leave this where it stands – but with sci-fi and Netflix, it's hard to say.

A movie adaptation was originally floated some years back, so perhaps there's a chance that this could follow the final series.

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It’s fair to assume that human beings started singing long before the first musical instrument was invented, but there are plenty of brilliant songs that, for one reason or another, eschew vocals completely. 

While instrumentals were popular until the 1970s, pop music’s increasing reliance on vocal hooks means only one singer-free song has topped the UK charts since Mr Oizo’s Flat Beat in 1999 – the truly dreadful Animals by Martin Garrix back in 2013.  

That’s reflected in our list below, which, while taking in a variety of genres, isn’t exactly packed with contemporary household names, but is full of tracks that’ll give your hi-fi system something to chew on while it’s waiting vainly for the vocals to kick in.  

We’ve taken the executive decision not to include anything classical, or anything written specifically for a soundtrack (we’ve got other test track lists for that), and have only allowed vocal samples as long as they don’t sound like singing or talking. Instrumental versions of songs that normally have vocals are not allowed either.  

Think we’ve missed any obvious classics? Let us know in the comments, on our forums, or via our social media channels...

Booker T. and the MG's – Green Onions

Green Onions (or Spring Onions as it would’ve been known if Booker T. and the MG's had formed in Maidstone rather than Memphis) was originally conceived as a B-side, but after a local DJ played it on the radio the reaction was so strong that Stax Records quickly re-released it as a single. 

It’s not hard to see why the tune was so popular, with a wriggly Hammond organ riff, Steve Cropper’s electrifying Telecaster licks, a classic 12-bar blues bassline, and a drumbeat so solid you could build a house on it. 

In fact, Green Onions is one of only two instrumentals on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs ever written, sitting 74 places higher than Miles Davis’s So What in 418th. 

Buy Booker T. and the MG's Green Onions on Amazon

Explosions in the Sky – Your Hand In Mine

Post-rock is a genre that’s happy to let the instruments do the talking, and there’s more emotion packed into the eight minutes of Your Hand In Mine than some bands manage in a whole album’s worth of lyrics.

In truth, we could have picked almost any song from 2003’s The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, such is the ease with which the album flows from one to the next. Critics will argue it’s actually because they all sound alike, but where other post-rock bands leaned heavily into the noisier side of the quiet/loud dynamic that often defined the genre, Explosions in the Sky’s most arresting moments are at the other end of the spectrum.

That’s not to say Your Hand In Mine won’t test your system’s power, but the shimmering guitars will test your heartstrings, too. 

Buy Explosions in the Sky's The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place on Amazon

Flying Lotus – 1983

Until it ended in 2018, Low End Theory, a club night that ran at The Airliner in Los Angeles, was arguably the experimental hip-hop equivalent of CBGBs in New York. It played host to everyone from Thom Yorke to Prince, and helped launch the career of Flying Lotus, whose debut album, 1983, included this track of the same name. 

The influence of legendary producer J Dilla (whose own best tracks contain just too many vocal samples to be considered for this list) is apparent in the ever-so-slightly off-time beat that makes your brain sit up and take notice, as well as the bass that shape-shifts like it’s trying to escape from underneath the song.

Buy Flying Lotus' 1983 on Amazon

Mogwai – My Father My King

Mogwai aren’t exactly short of songs that’ll test the dynamics of a hi-fi – try Like Herod for an exercise in volume management – but from the single string of a guitar that begins My Father My King, to the waves of controlled noise and feedback at its extended crescendo, this will give your system plenty to get its teeth into. 

Based on melodies taken from an ancient Jewish hymn called Avinu Malkeinu, the track builds over 20 minutes, with the Glasgow five-piece gradually adding layers of guitar, viola and cello before stripping everything back down to that simple guitar again in preparation for the sonic assault at the end.  

My Father My King was recorded with the late Steve Albini, an engineer known for his ability to capture a band as they sound live, and that’s exactly what you get here in all its speaker-terrorising glory. 

Buy Mogwai's My Father My King on Amazon

Aphex Twin - Avril 14th

If all you know of Aphex Twin is the nightmare fuel of the Come to Daddy or Windowlicker videos, it might surprise you to learn that the famously reclusive artist is capable of composing something as delicate as Avril 14th – but he certainly didn’t play it.

Avril 14th was recorded on a Yamaha Disklavier, a piano that can be played using MIDI data rather than human fingers, making this gentle, two-minute instrumental sound like music for the uncanny valley. If you listen hard enough, and your system can pick it out, you can just about make out the sound of the mechanism at work, like there’s a pair of robotic hands manipulating the keys. 

Nestled among some fairly sinister ambience, mechanical folk and melon-twisting techno, Avril 14th is the standout track on an album that contains a few uncharacteristically fragile and not-quite-completely-organic moments.

Buy Aphex Twin's Avril 14th on Amazon

Van Halen – Eruption

There’s something quite ironic about Van Halen’s most famous song, Jump, being based around a keyboard, but there’s no mistaking which instrument is at the heart of Eruption. 

While it starts with the clatter of Alex Van Halen’s drums, Eruption is essentially a standalone guitar solo, but what else could it be? If this 102 seconds of string-melting musical witchcraft was sandwiched between verses and a chorus it would completely overshadow the rest of the song. 

To a lot of people, Eruption will sound like the epitome of self-indulgent fretboard onanism, but it’s important to put it in context. Released in 1978, Eddie Van Halen’s double-tapping technique on Eruption pretty much defined how rock music would sound over the following decade, so there’s nothing better to test how your system handles a bit of shredding. 

What’s perhaps even more amazing about this track is that Eddie always insisted that he could’ve played it better. 

Buy Van Halen's Eruption on Amazon

Tortoise – TNT

The problem with a genre label like ‘post-rock’ is that it encapsulates so many different sounds. At one end of the spectrum you have a band like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, whose post-apocalyptic symphonies bear very little resemblance to the light, jazzy tones of Tortoise’s TNT at the other. 

But don’t worry, this isn’t the kind of sonic wallpaper you’d hear in the lobby of an expensive hotel. It’s a track that is constructed a bit like a Lego model, with loose drums, swells of synth, and a repeated guitar riff bouncing off each other until the bass comes in and gives everything a single destination to aim for. 

Rather than the end of the world, TNT sounds like the hopeful start of a new one.

Buy Tortoise's TNT on Amazon

Pete Rock – A Little Soul

Many people will have heard Pete Rock’s work before they knew his name. He’s the man behind the boards on Nas’ The World Is Yours, and a producer who is widely credited with popularising the jazzier side of hip-hop, particularly on the albums he released with CL Smooth. 

2003’s PeteStrumentals was his first fully instrumental release, and while a lot of hip-hop sounds unfinished without somebody rapping over the top, it’s a testament to the producer’s talents that A Little Soul works as a piece of music in its own right.

It’s unmistakably the work of Pete Rock as well, built around his trademark jazzy horns sampled from a 1970 track by The Cannonball Adderley Quintet, and the hook from a Brazilian singer called Emílio Santiago.

Buy Pete Rock's A Little Soul on Amazon

Led Zeppelin – Moby Dick

When Led Zeppelin played Moby Dick live it would often stretch to way beyond the four minutes and 20 seconds that were recorded for the penultimate track on 1969’s Led Zeppelin II. There’s a 15-minute version on YouTube taken from a show at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970, but with some chemical assistance John Bonham would eventually stretch his drum solo out to over half an hour. 

If you’re thinking you’d need something similar to get through that, thankfully the studio version is more restrained. Bookended by short blasts of accompaniment from Jimmy Page’s guitar and John Paul Jones’ bass, Bonzo’s solo, which at one point sees him setting aside his sticks and playing with his hands, is the ideal way to see how your system copes with a drum kit.

Buy Led Zeppelin's Moby Dick on Amazon

Elliott Smith – Kiwi Maddog 20/20

When people talk about the genius of the late Elliott Smith they often focus on his lyrics – and it’s easy to see why. The singer, who died of an apparently self-inflicted stab wound to the heart aged just 33, had an incredible talent for writing simple, unpretentious lyrics that still have the power to be completely devastating, but he was also a brilliant musician.  

The majority of his debut solo album, 1994’s Roman Candle, is just Elliott’s voice and his acoustic guitar. In fact, it was recorded on a four-track recorder in a basement and was only ever intended to be a demo, but the label liked it so much they convinced him to release it as an album.  

But the final track, Kiwi Maddog 20/20, has a less lo-fi feel to it. It’s the only track on the album with no vocals – although rumours of a version with words exist online – but the more hopeful vibe and less understated guitar playing hint at the more complex arrangements he would showcase on later albums. 

Buy Elliott Smith’s Kiwi Maddog 20/20 on Amazon

Earth – Seven Angels

While most American rock bands, particularly in the Pacific Northwest where Earth formed, spent 1993 trying to piggyback on the success of Nirvana, Dylan Carlson (a former roommate of Kurt Cobain) had something significantly sludgier and less radio-friendly in mind. 

Seven Angels and the album Earth 2 that it appears on are considered landmarks in the development of drone metal. While bands they influenced, such as Sunn O))), play at a pace that’s comparable to a tectonic plate, Seven Angels is comparatively upbeat, but it bears all the hallmarks of the genre.

What’s important with a track like Seven Angels is that you can really appreciate the rugged texture of the chugging, Sabbath-esque riff and the incessant bass drone that underpins all 15 minutes, so how much dread it instils in you will probably depend on the quality of your kit.

Buy Earth's Earth 2 on Amazon

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I have had the pleasure this week of being involved in the testing of the Marantz Cinema 30, and it has made my current home system seem a little underwhelming. You will have to wait until our Home Cinema Week at the start of July to read our exclusive Marantz Cinema 30 review, but it has reminded me just how good a ‘proper’ Dolby Atmos system can be – and how enjoyable it is, if you’re the right sort of person, to own an AV receiver.

Regular readers of this column might remember that at the start of last year my family and I moved from London-ish to Cambridgeshire, and that the living room of our 'new' house is lounge first, home cinema second. We moved into the 'old' house right after it was built, and before the carpets were laid I was able to get in there and run speaker cables across the living room floor, up the walls and through the ceiling. That meant I was able to set up an 11.1.4 system, ceiling speakers and all, without the usual cable spaghetti – and that very much helped with the spousal approval.

With this house, things are a bit different. It was built in the 80s and it was well decorated and looked after by the previous owners, so I don’t really need to mess around with the living room. What’s more, there’s a large garage and we don’t feel the need to store our car in it. I have been given permission, therefore, to turn said garage into a more serious home cinema – so long as I don’t also do the same to the lounge.

That was an easy deal to make, as I’m sure you can imagine; but there’s just one problem – I have neither the time or skills to tackle the garage-to-cinema conversion myself, nor the money to pay someone else to do it for me. That means that, roughly 18 months since we moved into the new house, the amount of progress made on the garage cinema project is precisely none.

Before you break out the tiny violins, you should know that the new living room system is still much more substantial than that of most homes. We’re currently using a lovely 65-inch Panasonic OLED TV and, after stints with the Sonos Arc and then a pair of HomePod 2s, have settled on the Sony HT-A9 system for sound.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Sony HT-A9 system consists of four wireless speakers that you can place pretty casually around the room, but that will create a very impressive bubble of Dolby Atmos (and DTS:X and 360 Reality Audio) sound. Somewhat surprisingly, it was deemed by my long-suffering wife to be far more aesthetically agreeable than a soundbar, despite the increased number of boxes, and it offers an even more impressive Atmos experience, particularly when bolstered by an optional subwoofer.

That said, testing the Marantz Cinema 30 has reminded me that the better-than-a-soundbar Sony HT-A9 can’t really hold a candle to an AVR + speakers setup. Of course, that shouldn’t really come as a surprise: we’re talking about a huge box with multiple, high-quality amplifiers feeding hi-fi quality speakers via high-end speaker cables; versus a system designed to replicate all of those things as best it can with fewer speakers and no cables, at a fraction of the cost. Still, the sheer fidelity, detail, dynamics and drive of what I’ve been listening to this week has made me very sad for the AV receiver and speaker package that have sat neglected for 18 months in my one-day-to-be-glorious-but-currently-full-of-crap garage.

It’s not just the sound of the Marantz AVR and our reference speakers that has made me feel this way, either, but the joy I feel when operating an AV receiver. I fully appreciate that for most people an AVR is entirely incomprehensible and that solutions such as the HT-A9 and its soundbar rivals are designed to offer an undaunting alternative; but once you have learned the intricacies of AVR operation it becomes genuinely enjoyable. For what it’s worth, the Marantz Cinema 30 actually makes all of this stuff much more approachable than any AVR I’ve previously experienced, too – but more on that in the full review.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that as good as modern soundbars and wireless speakers are – and they are very good – they are also inevitably compromised by their quest for convenience. There’s nothing at all wrong with that and I implore you to go down that route if you are currently making do with your TV’s own speakers (believe me, even the good examples are awful in an ultimate sense), but if you have the opportunity to go with an AVR and speaker package setup, you should grab it with both hands and never let go.

Meanwhile, for me, there is only one solution: to pull my finger out and get started on converting my garage to a home cinema. More on that in the (hopefully) near future.

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Bose's popular QuietComfort 45 headphones are on sale at Amazon for just AU$279, the lowest price we've seen them drop to in Australia. If you're in the market for a new pair of wireless noise-cancelling over-ears, now's the time to checkout.

We awarded them four stars in our Bose QC45 review, complementing their effective ANC, punchy sound quality, and comfortable build. They were decent value when they launched at AU$499.95 in 2021, so now that they are almost half price, they are nothing short of a bargain.

Bose QuietComfort 45 Amazon deal

The QC45 are veteran members of Bose's long-standing QuietComfort noise-cancelling headphones range, which has made a name for itself over the years for its class-leading active noise cancellation technology combined with competitive sound and street-smart design. The QC45 happily continue that legacy, though you should note that the three-year-old pair has recently given way to their successors, namely the QuietComfort Headphones. We haven't gone twelve rounds with the newcomers yet, though they appear to be an evolution of, rather than a revolution over, the QC45 – and cost AU$365 at Amazon (also thanks to a hefty discount).

Still, while a few years old, the Bose QC45 offer up-to-date functionality, including Bluetooth 5.1, multi-point pairing and a 24-hour battery life. As with previous Bose headphones, the QuietComfort 45 are built with travel in mind; their double-hinge design means they can be folded up for easy storage in the included carry case.

Bose's brilliant noise-cancelling is once again the main draw here, though. It works superbly in the case of the QC45 and holds its own against several of its closest Sony and Sennheiser rivals. The only downside is there’s no scope to tweak the levels of noise cancellation and no ‘aware’ (otherwise known as 'transparency' or 'ambient') mode – something the new QuietComforts do offer. You can also get better sound quality from rival Sony pairs such as the WH-1000XM4 and newer XM5, but you pay for it.

Still, there's plenty to love about the Bose QuietComfort 45, especially at this price. If you want a set of premium, travel-friendly wireless headphones that can block out the world better than most, they're a terrific buy.

MORE: Our expert pick of the best wireless headphones

When it comes to noise-cancelling headphones, Bose is up there with the best. The brand's latest flagship over-ear pair, the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, earned a five-star review from us a few months ago, and now they're at their lowest price yet.  

We have seen the price of these headphones drop under £400 on previous occasions, such as during November's Cyber Monday deals. However, this is the first time it has fallen lower than that, now sitting just below the £380 mark. 

The QuietComfort Ultra Headphones sound rich and refined. There's balance to both high and low-frequency ranges and there's an enjoyable dynamism as tracks build in intensity. 

They also feature Immersive Audio tech, Bose’s take on spatial audio, and are designed to make music sound more three-dimensional. This feature might not be to your liking and didn't hugely convince us, but it does work better with certain tracks than others.

The headphones include a handy capacitive touch strip for controlling volume and shortcuts. On a full charge, you get 24 hours of battery life, or 18 hours if you have Immersive Audio engaged.

Bose is known for its impressive active noise-cancelling tech, and the QuietComfort Ultra headphones don’t disappoint, even edging out Sony’s WH-1000X5. The ANC did exactly what we expected, heavily reducing background noise and the sound of the London Underground during daily commutes, for example. 

Interested? Head to Amazon to get your hands on the flagship Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones for a new lowest-ever price of £379.

MORE:

Read our full Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones review

Find out about the differences between the Bose QuietComfort Headphones and QuietComfort Ultra Headphones

A selection of the best noise-cancelling headphones tested by our experts

REVIEWS THIS ISSUE IN SOUND+IMAGE

LEICA CINE 1 - 100 Cinema TV
The maker of luxury compact cameras uses its expertise in glass and lenses to deliver a higher level of all-in-one projector-TV-sound system.

HISENSE 65U8KAU Mini LED TV
The ‘Mini LED Pro’ 65-inch U8K shows Hisense moving from its traditional value niche into full performance that challenges all comers.

YAMAHA SR-B40A soundbar system
Yamaha says its latest soundbar combo fully immerses you in a sonic globe — a big claim for any soundbar system. Might they be exaggerating? 

SONUS FABER DUETTOS streaming stereo speakers
Italian-designed speakers with built-in amplifiers, streaming and external inputs including HDMI. Presto! — a thrilling complete hi-fi and TV system.  

ROKSAN ATTESSA streaming amplifier 
UK marque Roksan delivers a stylish exterior for a solid Class-AB amplifier enhanced by full BluOS streaming. Compulsory ‘red light’ joke included.

BARGAIN TURNTABLES!
From just $288 up to $1999, meet our pick of the hottest turntables at the most affordable prices. If you’re hankering to get back to the black stuff, or a total vinyl newbie, here’s how to spin for less.
- How to choose a turntable 
- Sony PS-LX310BT 
- Pro-Ject Primary E 
- JBL Spinner BT 
- Lenco LBT-225  
- Rega Planar 1 Plus  
- Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Evo  
- Cambridge Alva ST  
- JBL TT350 Classic  
- And there’s more... 

FEATURES & REGULARS

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WE’ll THROW AWAY 86% OF YOUR MUSIC, OK? 
The Editor wishes the world could be more lossless. But it can’t.

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Wilson Audio updates its amazing multichannel speakers, Arcam goes yellow (or orange), Yamaha’s CD multichanger, Electrocompaniet power...

CES 2024 show HIGHLIGHTS 
It’s Vegas, it’s January, it’s CES 2024! – new TVs, $1.4m speakers, etc... 

FRAUNHOFER & LC3: the big interview
Exclusive exposé with the engineers behind the new Bluetooth codecs. It’s long — but you won’t believe what they say about high-res audio. 

music & movies
THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY: 25 years on 
The Farrelly brothers reflect on the hits and misses of a box-office smash that smuggled a lot of heart in amid the filth, fluids, and Cameron Diaz.

THE BIG PICTURE: Stand By Me 
How that classic bridge scene was created, tears and all...

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New music from Gabriel, Bernie Marsden, The Pink Fairies and Steve Howe, plus classic re-releases from Mott, Lizzy — and Brinsley Schwarz.

Classic Track: American Idiot 
Green Day’s original ‘resurrection’ track is now 20 years old!

It’s all in Sound+Image #354 for November-December 2023. The magazine is available in newsagents now, and digitally through multiple platforms, including Readly, where you can peruse Sound+Image and thousands more Aussie and international magazines with a 1-month free trial, then AU$9.99p/m.

Samsung has officially unveiled its latest trio of Galaxy S smartphones during its Unpacked 2024 event in San Jose. The Galaxy S24, S24 Plus and S24 Ultra are set to release at the end of this month, and this year it's all about AI.

Samsung has coined the term 'Galaxy AI' which pertains to a lengthy set of new AI-powered features and tools on these new devices, with other upgrades regarding internal specs, screen brightness and camera performance also coming with this new generation of Galaxy devices. 

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Taking a closer look at the three devices, we'll start with the flagship S24 Ultra. This sits at the top of the new range, featuring the largest screen and most cameras out of all the new handsets. With a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED QHD+ display, the S24 Ultra is looking to continue its tenure as the most mainstream, big-screen Android smartphone on the market. Featuring a dynamic refresh rate of 1Hz to 120Hz and an upgraded brightness that now peaks at 2600 nits, the S24 Ultra looks to be a modest but meaningful upgrade over the Galaxy S23 Ultra it's replacing. 

So what's new with this phone? First of all, Samsung is ditching the curved screen (something it pioneered with the Note Edge and Galaxy S6 Edge nearly 10 years ago) in favour of a flat display, something we're certainly happy to see. It's also got thinner bezels for a more immersive, all-screen experience; considering the S23 Ultra has fairly slender bezels, this is quite impressive. 

The S24 Ultra also uses the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy processor, which should provide top-notch day-to-day performance, as well handling the new AI features and Ray Tracing support for mobile gaming. Speaking of gaming, the S24 Ultra gets enhanced cooling via an upgraded vapour chamber, which should ensure better gaming performance and less risk of overheating for more graphically demanding titles. 

While the camera layout is mostly the same this year, Samsung has swapped one of the 10MP telephoto lenses for a 50MP zoom lens, capable of reaching five times optical zoom, which it claims will result in sharper zoomed-in shots. Nightography, otherwise known as low light photography, gets a boost too, thanks to the 1.6 times bigger pixels that should allow for more light into the sensor. 

Finally, Samsung looks to have taken a leaf from Apple's iPhone 15 Pro Max book, as the S24 Ultra features a titanium frame. Paired with Corning's Gorilla Armour glass on the front and rear of the device, this phone is set to be four times as resistant to bumps and scratches as the S23 Ultra. 

The Galaxy S24 Ultra will come in four colours, with additional finishes coming exclusively to Samsung's web store. These colours are Titanium Grey, Titanium Black, Titanium Yellow and Titanium Violet. It will also feature 12GB of RAM across the board, with three storage options available. You'll need to pay more for upgraded storage, but the good news is that (at least in the UK) the S24 Ultra will launch at the same price as the S23 Ultra did in 2023. Storage and pricing are as follows:

• 256GB: £1249 / $TBC / AU$TBC
• 512GB: £1349 / $TBC / AU$TBC
• 1TB: £1549 / $TBC / AU$TBC

Samsung Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus

Moving onto the S24 and S24 Plus, these devices also bear a strong resemblance to the models they are replacing. 

Both phones feature Dynamic AMOLED displays with variable refresh rates, however, the S24's 6.2-inch display is Full HD+, whereas the S24 Plus' 6.7-inch display is Quad HD+. These phones also differ in internal specifications, with the S24 featuring 8GB of RAM, whereas the S24 Plus receives 12GB. Storage options and pricing are as follows:

The good news here is that both of these models are cheaper than their predecessors in the UK; £100 cheaper for the S24 and £50 cheaper for the S24 Plus. Both phones also feature the same camera arrangements, with a 50MP main lens, 12MP ultra-wide camera and 10MP telephoto lens, as well as a 12MP front-facing shooter, which appears to be the same arrangement as last year's S23 and S23 Plus.

Frustratingly, Samsung has opted to use its own Exynos chipset on the non-Ultra models. While they should be roughly equal in power, and they do support the same features, we often find the Exynos chips don't perform as well in gaming, or age quite as well, as the Snapdragon chips. We are hopeful Samsung may have ironed this out with its latest release but we can't confirm that until we've had more time with the handsets.

The Galaxy S24 and S24 Ultra will come in the same finishes as the S24 Ultra (Grey/Black/Violet/Yellow), although they will feature strengthened aluminium frames instead of the titanium found on the Ultra. 

Galaxy AI

The main draw of these new devices is Galaxy AI, a set of new tools shared across the whole S24 lineup. AI is slowly creeping into the world of TVs (just look at LG's newest models for proof), but it's been used in phones for a while with things like Google's Magic Eraser camera feature.

• Live Translate: translates two-way phone conversations in real-time using AI, with 13 supported languages at launch (more expected to be included in future updates).
• Chat Assist: can translate text conversations much like Live Translate, as well as amend messages with the ability to re-write them based on different tone presets. Some examples include professional, casual and social, with language and format changing with each preset. 
• Transcript Assist: allows for smart transcription of voice recordings with the option to identify different speakers, as well as format write-ups and summarise longer voice notes to important bullet points. This also works for written notes as Galaxy AI will intelligently format and summarise them as requested. 
• Circle to Search with Google; holding down the home button will allow you to draw a ring around a subject on the screen. This can be a person, an item, a building or even an animal. From there, Galaxy AI will conduct a Google search to bring up relevant information, directions and shopping suggestions based on what you have searched for. 
• Photo editing: Galaxy AI can create generative fill backgrounds to fill blank space when straightening an image, or empty space when moving a subject within an image. You can also add instant slow-motion playback to videos with additional frames created by AI for smoother slow-motion playback. Finally, you can view a full HDR image from within the camera viewfinder for a more accurate representation of how your image will turn out.

Samsung says its mission is to "democratise AI" by creating an accessible and user-friendly set of tools that anyone with a Galaxy S24 device can take advantage of, and while we're still apprehensive about AI, we can't deny that these features do look quite appealing. 

Pre-orders for the Galaxy S24, S24 Plus and S24 Ultra start today (17th January), with devices shipping on the 31st of January. If you pre-order through Samsung's web store you can receive double the storage at no extra cost.

MORE:

Read our Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra hands-on review

As well as our full Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review

Check out our picks for the best smartphones

If you believe hooking up speakers to your TV will enhance a movie experience, help immerse you in sports or let you better enjoy concerts via the screen, you're probably right. The speakers built into flatscreen TVs are more often than not small and lack sonic substance, offering a poor audio experience compared to decent external speakers.

Whether you already have, or indeed plan to buy, a wireless speaker, a pair of speakers, or a soundbar, it's possible to connect them to your TV for an enhanced audio experience. And there is likely more than one way to do so.

This guide lays out all the options for connecting a wide range of speakers to your TV depending on their connection ports and features, so you can find the ideal setup for your perfect TV sound system.

What speakers work with a TV?

First things first, you'll need to assess if your speakers can work with your TV through wired or wireless means. In most cases, you will be able to plug them in directly via some sort of cable, though some can be connected wirelessly. 

Since most modern TVs offer Bluetooth, you should be able to simply connect any Bluetooth speaker wirelessly by pairing the two together in the TV settings much as you would any other device. That said, for the best audio performance – and optimal syncing – it's usually still best to go the wired route.

You might be connecting a soundbar, a pair of stereo speakers, a surround system, or even an amplifier that then distributes the sound to speakers connected to it. In all of these scenarios, there are several methods in which to achieve this courtesy of the many connections found on equipment these days.

Feeling lost at sea with a lot of ports to pick from? Let's go through them and find which option is best for you...

Connect via HDMI cable

One of the most straightforward ways to connect a soundbar and some speaker setups to your TV is via HDMI, and it's the method we'd recommend if your TV and soundbar/speaker have HDMI ARC ports. Do you have an AV receiver as the middleman between your TV and speaker package? HDMI is the way to go here too.

This connection is fully digital and can carry not only stereo soundtracks but also surround sound, right up to the latest and greatest Dolby Atmos or DTS:X formats.

If your TV is less than 13 years old, it will likely have an HDMI ARC or, better yet, an eARC HDMI port. Your soundbar likely will too, though this is only more recently becoming a popular port for wireless speakers/speaker systems – and only on mid-to-high-end models like the KEF LSX II and Sonus Faber Omnia. Don't expect it to feature on your everyday Bluetooth speakers; use optical instead (see the section below).

Anyway, if it does have an ARC-enabled HDMI connection, simply connect it to the TV's ARC via an HDMI cable, and voila – the TV sound will be passed to your speaker.

HDMI ARC should work automatically, but if it doesn’t and you're finding that your TV is still outputting sound through its built-in speakers, grab the TV remote and tweak a few of your TV settings, including turning off your TV’s built-in speakers and enabling your telly to send audio out to an external speaker or amp. Naturally, you'll need your soundbar/speaker powered on, too!

Both the ARC and eARC allow for a TV to output audio, but the latter can pass-through high-quality Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio or DTS:X audio soundtracks in their truest, full-fat quality – ARC will, on the other hand, simply strip out the signal's core 5.1 data stream.

Connect via optical cable

Another very straightforward solution to output audio from your TV is to use its optical out, which features on most TVs and audio devices made in the past decade. This uses the medium of light to transmit data through a cable’s optical fibres (which can be made from plastic, glass or silica) and can transmit uncompressed stereo as well as compressed Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound. (Unlike HDMI ARC, there's no support for lossless audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks found on most Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays.)

Most soundbars, speakers and speaker systems feature an optical port, so if HDMI isn't an option, this is likely your next-best one. This way, you can have your TV set to always output via optical, so as you switch between HDMI input devices like a gaming console or Blu-ray player, the connected speaker will always be used as default.

This can be a good option if you have something like a PS5 connected to that HDMI eARC port, where full intelligent connectivity is available – like your TV turning on when your PS5 starts up – which can sometimes have issues if connected via a soundbar, for example. Optical cable connectivity helps give you the best of everything.

• Coaxial vs optical vs HDMI: which is the best audio connection to use?

Connect via RCA cable

If your TV and/or, more likely, your choice of speaker does not have an HDMI connection, they may well have RCA connectors. It's an older but likely more familiar connection type, so is often found on older equipment – modern TVs and audio gear often prefer optical connectors.

RCAs are identified as red and white connectors that send left and right audio channels independently of one another. While this won't get you surround sound, which is what you'll want if you have a Dolby Atmos soundbar or multiple speakers, it will transmit stereo sound to a pair of stereo speakers or a system just fine.

Connect via 3.5mm cable

Many TVs have a 3.5mm output designed primarily to accommodate wired headphones. But it can also connect to any speaker system with a 3.5mm (aux) input. You'll just need a 3.5mm audio cable long enough to run between them.

You can, by the way, get 3.5mm-to-RCA cables, so if your speaker has RCA but your TV doesn't, but there is a 3.5mm port – or vice versa – this could be a viable option.

Don't expect the best sonic results, as this is one of the cruder methods for connecting TVs and speakers on this page, but if you want to use an older speaker to give your television a bit more audio punch, this is undoubtedly a simple solution.

Set your TV output

Whichever method of connectivity you connect your speaker of choice with, you'll need to be sure that your TV knows about it. By default, the TV will output audio via its built-in speakers, so if you connect your speakers and that default doesn't change automatically, you'll need to change it manually.

Head to your TV's settings menu and in the section labelled 'audio' or 'sound', you will find an 'output'. Select the desired connection method – optical or Bluetooth, say – or the specific speaker/speaker system if its name is recognised.

Again, if you're using Bluetooth, you'll need to pair the TV with the Bluetooth speaker together just as you would a phone or tablet. Again, you'll find this in your TV's sound/audio settings.

MORE:

These are the best surround sound systems

And the best stereo speakers

How to combine stereo and surround sound in one AV system

They have been a long time coming, but we finally have a new flagship pair of noise-cancelling wireless headphones from Bose. The QuietComfort Ultra Headphones are a fantastic pair of premium over-ear headphones that take the fight to five-star rivals such as the Sony WH-1000XM5.

Bose has a reputation for making some of the best noise-cancelling headphones on the planet and the Ultra Headphones continue this tradition with punchy entertaining sound quality and noise cancelling straight from the top drawer.

If you have taken the plunge and are the proud owner of the new Bose, you might be on the hunt for a few tips and tricks on making the most of all the settings now at your disposal. You can find a list of key ones below, all of which can be accessed through the Bose Music companion app, which we highly recommend you download to your smartphone.

Bluetooth

• Main menu > Source

If you want to take advantage of multipoint Bluetooth and have two devices connected to the Bose simultaneously, you will need to head the the Source menu in the app and make sure the switch is flipped. You can also enable or disable previously connected devices too, which adds a little layer of customisation we haven’t seen in many pairs of wireless headphones before.

Aware with ActiveSense

• Main menu > Modes > Aware

Listening in Aware mode allows for greater transparency so you can hear external sounds better, and during testing we found it works extremely well. If you tick the slider for Bose’s ActiveSense processing too, this will allow the built-in noise-cancelling to intervene if there’s a huge, sudden jump in external noise. Think of it as a tiny safety net for your ears.

Immersive Audio

• Main menu > Immersive Audio

Immersive Audio is Bose’s take on spatial audio; it works with any stereo music to try to add a layer of extra spatialisation to the sound. While we’re not 100 per cent sold on the tech, we would still suggest it’s worth having a play with to hear the effects for yourself. It should work out of the box, and there is an option to recalibrate the headphones should the mode sound completely out of sorts.

Remember My Mode

• Main menu > Modes > Settings > Remember My Mode 

If you want the headphones to remember the same sound settings you were using before they were powered down, we suggest you enable the Remember My Mode setting. This comes in handy if you want to finish and start your day in one particular mode and don't want the headphones reverting to their default setting.

Shortcut

• Settings > Product Control > Shortcut

The raised strip on the bottom of the earcups isn’t just a smart, touch-sensitive volume control, it also acts as your shortcut button. It can be assigned to do several things, from giving you a voice prompt about the battery level to accessing your voice assistant, all of which can be turned off or on through the Bose Music app.

Power

• Settings > Power

The Bose already have 24 hours of battery life which should mean plenty of time between charges. However, why take the risk of getting caught short? In the app’s power settings you can change the time for the headphones’ Auto-off feature so they will power down in under five minutes if you inadvertently leave them lying around.

Equalizer

• Main menu > EQ

We don’t think there’s anything wrong with the sound of the Bose straight out of the box, but we realise some users might like a little more bass added to proceedings or a touch of extra sparkle to the treble. You can do this via the equalizer setting in the app, although you are restricted to being able to adjust the bass, midrange and treble and selecting from bass and treble boosting/reducing presets.

MORE:

Read our Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones review

Bose’s spatial audio tech is a nice idea for headphones but it’s too hit-and-miss

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones vs Sony WH-1000XM5

Bose QuietComfort Headphones vs QuietComfort Ultra Headphones

Our pick of the best noise-cancelling headphones

Halloween is nearly here and that marks the perfect opportunity to royally scare the pants off yourself by indulging in one of the sea of horror movies currently flooding Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, and the ilk.

But if you want the most terrifying experience possible, and have the hardware to do it, we urge you to ensure you consider the importance of audio in horror.

Whether it was the rumbling sound of Leather Face’s chainsaw creeping closer in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the bumps in the night happening around the house in The Amityville Horror, sound has been a constant tool in any good horror director’s arsenal for decades. 

And that’s why movies in the horror genre lend themselves so well to Dolby Atmos – a surround sound technology that lets compatible hardware deliver a 360-degree, “dome of sound" experience – and are often a staple part of our Atmos system and soundbar testing. 

Here to help you find and enjoy the best we have personally experienced we have created this handy guide detailing the best horror movies to test your Dolby Atmos system.

Editor’s note: Due to the focus of this article the below entries may contain minor spoilers detailing parts of the movies’ plots.

 IT 

IT is an iconic horror story by genre legend Stephen King that has been adapted into movies twice. Both follow the story of children in a small town attempting to fend off a clown-shaped monster, known as Pennywise.

The original IT with Tim Curry was a masterpiece that scared almost any child born in the 1980s. But the updated 2017 version in Atmos makes it look and sound like a children's birthday party and is definitely responsible for a fresh Coulrophobia pandemic.

Mixed in Atmos, IT is full of terrifying scenes where the added dome of sound effects is masterfully used to inspire a fresh level of terror. The best example of this is in a key scene we use while testing Dolby Atmos systems and soundbars to this day. 

Specifically, it’s the infamous garage scene where Pennywise morphs out of a projector screen. Putting aside how terrifying the imagery is, the scene is a great example of how Atmos can level up the terror level of any horror movie, with Pennywise's horrific dialogue tracking with his and the children's movements around the garage. 

Hearing Pennywise get closer as he emerges from the screen before rushing forward gives the movie an added layer of menace and is sure to make even the most seasoned horror buff jump out of their seat. 

A Quiet Place 

The original A Quiet Place is a masterpiece horror movie that came out in 2018 and remains one of the best Atmos mixes we have had the pleasure of experiencing.

This is because the premise lends itself oh-so-well to the "dome of sound" experience, with it telling the story of a family trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world plagued by mysterious creatures that hunt their prey through sound.

There are loads of great moments that do a great job using Atmos, but our favourite, and most horrifying, is the birth scene. In it, Emily Blunt’s character attempts to give birth in total silence as monsters encircle the basement they are in. 

The entire tense scene offers wonderful directional nuance in Atmos, with the sound of the monsters scuttling and thumping above her, before moving down the stairs. The sense of direction makes you physically feel the tension as they edge, closer and closer to Blunt, offering a layer of fear that's simply not there without Atmos.

Watch A Quiet Place in Dolby Atmos via iTunes / Apple TV

Buy A Quiet Place on 4K Blu-ray from Amazon

Midsommar 

Starring Florence Pugh and directed by Ari Aster Midsommar was originally released in 2019, with 5.1 surround sound. But it was later picked up and had an Atmos mix, which is available now on Apple TV and Blu-ray. 

The movie is the incredibly creepy tale of a group of Americans taking a trip with a friend to take part in the midsommar festival in a Swedish village. 

The movie does a fantastic job using sound to drive tension. A sweeping soundtrack and the use of ambient noise from the wind and people taking part in the pagan festivities in the background constantly leaves you on edge.

The Atmos mix ramps all of this up to 11 and makes some of the movie's already terrifying scenes even more horrific. 

Whether it was hearing Pugh’s character’s sister appearing behind her, or the dome of sound experience you get from the chanting cult members during the hard-to-un-see Copulation Ritual, Midsommar is a great example of what Atmos can do.

Annihilation 

Starring Natalie Portman, Annihilation was one of Netflix's best original movies when it launched in 2018; to this day it’s a fantastic example of how to use Dolby Atmos properly.

The movie focuses on a group of cellular biologists as they investigate “the shimmer”. This is an area of Earth that has seen strange phenomena and mutated plants and animals appear in the aftermath of a meteor strike.

The movie uses sound to put viewers on edge from the outset, with creepy chirps and rustling constantly firing at you from every direction, making you never fully at ease during its two-hour run time.

One of the best scenes to truly ramp up the fright level occurs when a monstrous “scream bear” appears. The creature is a grotesquely deformed bear that’s got the lovely ability to reproduce its victims’ dying screams. 

The scene finds the team tied up in a remote cabin with a scream bear. Watching the bear stalk around them, with the sound matching its position, as it creeps behind them. The added sense of direction from the audio puts the hairs on the back of our reviewers' necks every time we play it in our test rooms and is one of the most terrifying in the entire film.

The Conjuring 2 

You may question why we have the second film in the Conjuring-verse in this list over the original or one of the new Anabelle or Nun movies. But the reason is simple: though it may not be the scariest visually, its use of Atmos is a cut above the rest.

The movie tells the story of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, as they battle to help a London family plagued by ghosts.

Though the audio is great throughout the movie, there are a couple of standout scenes that really are masterclasses in how to use Atmos in horror. Early on, one sees one of the children in the haunted house get a glass of water. The film then uses sound to ramp up the scare levels, with one of his toy fire engine’s sirens blasting off in the distant background, masking a later jump scare when one of the ghost’s voices suddenly booms directly in front of you.

The use of direction extends into a later scene when The Crooked Man ghost’s voice can be heard moving around the room as his spirit rages against the Warren’s presence in “his house”.

Though the movie itself is a little hammy for most of our testers’ liking, its use of audio is unquestionably good and a reason we still use it in some of our system and soundbar testing.

Nope 

Pretty much any Jordan Peale movie is a masterpiece in many of the What Hi-Fi? reviews team’s mind, but Nope is the best you’ll find if you want to experience horror in Atmos.

Telling the story of a farm beset by strange goings on in the sky, the movie does a fantastic job of using sound to maintain a constant sense that something is wrong. 

But the most notable we regularly use when testing Atmos systems happens early on in the film. Unlike many of the scenes listed on this list, it’s a quiet moment in the movie, showing one of the characters riding out into the desert and then dismounting.

In it you will hear sounds in the distance echo around you, before a growing strange sound starts to emanate above you before the movie delivers one of its many jump scares with dramatic effect and impact.

It’s this use of direction throughout the movie that makes it one of the most immersive you will find – and a great way to put any Atmos system through its paces.

Stream Nope in Dolby Atmos from Apple TV

Buy Nope on 4K Blu-ray from Amazon

MORE:

These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars we have tried and tested

Check out our picks of the best surround sound systems

Looking for a top-end TV? These are the best OLED TVs we have reviewed

Something struck me the other day, as I sat at my desk navigating my laptop mouse awkwardly around several pairs of over-ear headphones that I can’t bring myself to stow away, despite only one being able to plug into my DAC and sit on my head at any given time: all but one pair (a wireless pair) were open-backs.

Just briefly for the uninitiated, the headphones to which I am colloquially referring are those with ‘open-back’ designs. That is, over-ears that a) don’t have enclosures behind their drivers, and b) do have perforated or otherwise unsealed earcups that leak (some) sound both in and out. Essentially, sound from those ‘free’ drivers is fired both towards and away from your ears – as opposed to just towards them as is the case in your more commonplace ‘closed-back’ design, where sound is predominantly enclosed between your ears and the earcups. Consequently, open-backs are wired and intended for home use… unless you're the illogical albeit brilliant Grado GW100x.

When I think about it, it’s no coincidence that open-backs make up 100 per cent of my home headphones stash; I have heard, tested and lived with more pairs of both types than I would care to hazard a guess at over the years, and downright prefer them to their closed-back companions. And at any budget too, from entry-level Koss and Grado pairs to high-end Grados, Focals and Beyerdynamics. While closed-backs certainly have their advantages – which I will go into shortly and which is ultimately why the majority of headphone manufacturers produce more models of that type – open-backs are my personal preference. And if you haven’t put a pair into action before, they could – you never know – be yours too. Here’s why.

Less fatiguing, more comfortable

I’m someone who listens to music casually for a good portion of the daily 9 to 5, and ‘properly’ for typically one or two albums at a time. As I’m sure many of you will agree, listening to music through headphones can be tiring – it’s a direct, intimate assault on your ears no matter the volume you are listening at – just as watching something on a screen two inches from your face would be even with the brightness turned down. But, in my experience, open-back designs aren’t nearly as fatiguing; this makes sense when you consider they allow air pressure to flow outwards as well as into (and building up around) your ears. Physically, they are less direct. While I often need a break after an hour or so with closed-backs, I can comfortably go several hours straight with open designs.

Speaking of comfort, open-back headphones tend to chalk up a point here too. It isn’t a hard and fast rule, but they do generally tend to be lighter than closed-back models, due to the absence of a driver enclosure. And less weight equals less pressure on the crown of your head.

Again, the greater airflow in open-back designs means they are typically more breathable and less likely to be an oven for your ears over longer listening sessions – though admittedly a headphones’ earpad material and clamp force are going to play a big part here too. If headphones have leather earpads, for example, warm lugs are inevitable.

Clearer, more expressive sound

The best open-backs are typically clearer and more dynamically expressive than the best closed-backs; physics can explain why. Where, with open-back designs, most of the driver’s rearward sound is allowed to escape out of the enclosure, with closed-backs it is trapped inside and can detrimentally affect sound quality in three ways. First, the sound bouncing around can excite resonances in the enclosure, causing unwanted noise (or distortion); second, it can find its way back to the drive unit diaphragm and add to its output; and third, that trapped air can cause inertia against the driver and restrict the movement of its diaphragm during big excursions, negatively affecting dynamics.

That inherent spaciousness or ‘airiness’ tends to deliver a wider sonic canvas with better instrument separation that sounds less ‘in your head’ too – more comparable to that you get from loudspeakers.

Closed-backs reply with generally greater punch and solidity, especially in the lower (and lower-mid) frequencies – that sealed air resonating does them one favour at least! I’m not necessarily someone who enjoys ample bass – probably due to my fondness for indie, folk and ambient electronic music. To some degree, that's probably also why I generally prefer standmount speakers to floorstanders – though I’d be lying if I said I haven’t craved greater low-end punch from open-backs before.

But they aren’t for everyone

This flag-flying for open-back headphones should be caveated by the fact that they may be great for me but they won’t be for everyone. I have the luxury of quiet when listening – no commutes, no kids, barely any disruption at all save for the lawn-mower visit every Tuesday. My music-listening world is very open-back friendly. While it isn’t the case for me, I have heard some people say that they actually like being able to hear a little bit of their surroundings, so they don’t feel completely off their home’s audio grid. 

But if you value alone time with your music library and your listening environment is in any way noisy, I’m afraid open-backs will not work for you. Remember, they bleed sound in as much as they bleed sound out. Closed-backs inherently offer an isolated and more intimate experience.

If your preferred music genre is hip-hop or EDM, for example, you may well side with a punchier, more muscular, bass-heavy sound. And if you’re after only one pair of headphones to cover home and on-the-go listening (I for one couldn’t live without a pair of wireless noise-cancelling over-ears that are naturally closed-back), again you will require the practicality of closed-backs.

If you, like me, can accommodate open-back headphones in your music-listening world and prioritise clarity and transparency above all other sonic traits, I promise you will be utterly won over.

MORE: 

How to choose the right pair of headphones

Closed-back vs open-back headphones: which one is best for you?

Best headphones 2023 – for every price and preference

If you are in the market for a premium pair of noise-cancelling wireless earbuds, your search should probably start with the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II (although the excellent AirPods Pro 2 might have something to say about that).

Having spent a lot of time testing and living with Bose’s brilliant headphones, we know they are a cut above the competition as regards sound quality and noise-cancelling. They are also great to use. But did you know there are a few audio settings that can make your user experience even more satisfying?

They are contained with the Bose Music companion app and they're easy to miss. So, we have tested them and highlight them below with a brief explanation of their benefit and directions. You should be able to find them without any fuss.

• The ultimate music tracks to test your hi-fi system

1. Eartip fit test

• Settings > Eartip fit test

The nice thing about the Bose is that you can mix and match the different sizes of eartips with stability bands so you get the best seal and most comfortable fit possible. To make sure there is no leakage of sound, Bose provides you with an ‘eartip fit test’. A test tone is played through the earbuds – it takes a split second to do and the headphones indicate whether or not you have got a satisfactory seal.

2. Modes

• Main menu > Modes > Create Mode

You can have up to four different Modes active at any one time, including the standard Quiet and Aware. Want to keep ANC to a minimum while you’re running? Or maybe you want enough noise-cancelling to cut out the rumble of your commute but still hear announcements? This is where you can customise to your heart’s content.

3. Remember My Mode

• Settings > Modes > Remember My Mode

Listening on one of your preset audio modes, or in the ‘Aware mode’, when you turn them back on they automatically default to the quiet mode where the active noise-cancelling is in full effect. If you tend to start and end your day in anything other than quiet mode, then it’s worth switching this on.

4. Battery Level on Startup

• Settings > Voice Prompts > Battery Level on Startup

This feature does what it says on the tin. A voice prompt tells you the percentage left in the earbuds so you know if it’s time to put some more juice in the charging case. You can see the percentages in each earbud in the Bose Music app, but this saves you the job of booting up the app every time you use them.

5. Auto Transparency

• Settings > In-Ear Detection > Auto Transparency

It sometimes feels weird when you remove one earbud to hear an announcement but the one still in your ear is in full-on noise-cancelling mode. Enable Auto Transparency and that bud will drop to the lowest ANC level possible so you can hear more of what’s happening around you. In the same menu you will also find 'Auto Play/Pause', which automatically pauses playback when you remove an earbud and resumes when you put it back. This can definitely come in handy.

6. ActiveSense

• Main menu > Modes > Aware > ActiveSense

When you are listening in Aware mode you are getting complete transparency so you can hear external sounds better. ActiveSense automatically allows noise-cancelling to jump in if the noise around you gets too loud. We have found it can be a bit hit or miss, but we would definitely suggest you experiment to see whether you prefer it on or off.

MORE:

Read our Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II review

The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II finally have the upgrade I’ve been dreaming of

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II vs Apple AirPods Pro 2: which noise-cancelling earbuds are better?

Our pick of the best wireless earbuds deals

Clearaudio is turning 45 this year, for which we proffer our hearty congratulations. 

The German family-owned company has become a byword for analogue precision in vinyl reproduction, reaching for the musical firmament with products such as the Statement turntable, its linear-tracking tonearms, and the spectacular bling of the ‘Goldfinger’ moving-coil cartridge, but also trickling hard-won expertise down into turntables affordable to new vinyl fans and indeed those who have, like the company, made it through the years of the format’s decline to enjoy today’s glorious resurgence of all things groovy. 

Among various anniversary activities, Clearaudio has been re-examining its heritage to produce the Reference Jubilee turntable, as pictured above. Clearaudio says it “marries the best of past, present and future to usher in a new era of analogue precision”.

The new Jubilee took as its starting point the company’s first-ever turntable, the 1993 Reference, and notably retains that deck’s unusual V-shaped chassis, but then loads up on the company’s latest and greatest technologies.

“The original shape is kept, but everything else is new and up to date,” Robert Suchy tells us of this turntable. 

And showing how Clearaudio can do things rather differently, the Reference Jubilee includes (whisper it quietly) a digital-to-analogue converter, which is an odd thing to find on a turntable, and we bet you can’t guess what it’s doing. 

We’ll come back to that later. 

But Clearaudio’s team clearly enjoyed revisiting the brand’s first turntable design?, we asked?

“Yes, this was wonderful,” confirms Robert Suchy, “wonderful to show what is possible today by adding new materials and components, combining them with the original design to create a new one.”

In the beginning

Robert Suchy is one of three siblings – Patrick, Veronica and Robert Suchy, pictured above – who have run Clearaudio for nearly two decades now, since their father and company founder Peter Suchy “withdrew from active day-to-day business” back in 2005. 

That was 28 years after the company’s founding in 1978, which Clearaudio’s history notes as “the year our first moving-coil cartridge was developed and patented”.

But in fact, Suchy the elder’s first products were loudspeakers, called the Delta and the Sigma. In this, Clearaudio’s story appears superficially to resemble the many speaker companies that began as ‘garage businesses’, usually by a musician/engineer – and yes, Peter Suchy had been in a rock band back in Prague. 

But from the start there was evidence of a difference here, and of Clearaudio’s future direction. 

There was, for example, an early involvement with Dr. Ernst Weinz in the development of the Weinz ‘Paroc’ (parabolic oval cone) diamond stylus, the first to use a boron cantilever. The early Clearaudio released a ‘Trygon’ parabolic stylus, the first of a series. Such precision engineering showed something beyond other speaker manufacturers who were reading up on their Gilbert Briggs and banging some cabinets together. 

But then Robert Suchy was no house-and-garage engineer. He was born in South Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic, a little over an hour south of Prague, where he went to study nuclear engineering. Following 1968’s Prague Spring he came to the west and found work in Germany on ship-based nuclear reactors, and then for Siemens-KWU on fuel rods for pressurised water reactors. (Presumably successful: there are currently seven Siemens-KWU reactors operational across Europe and Argentina.)  

After handling delicate systems like nuclear fuel rods, a little stylus design must have seemed a relaxing occupation, and one serving pleasing musical ends. And even with speaker design Peter Suchy wasn’t just banging boxes together; he was involved in the intricacies of designing an ultra-low-distortion tweeter. 

Robert Suchy describes his father’s switch from loudspeakers as a realisation of the importance of the source-first philosophy which had swept through hi-fi in the 1970s – notably driven, of course, by turntable manufacturers.

“In the 1970s, good hi-fi was an important part of a great many households, and a hobby for many,” he says. “It had been quite a challenge to produce good speakers. But pretty quickly we realised that the source is the most important part of the system, the ‘First Player’, if you like. That‘s why Clearaudio switched quite quickly to its first patented moving-coil cartridge design.”

From carts to tables

Judging from the patent listings, by 1980 Clearaudio was on a roll. There was one patent for a ‘quartet magnet circuit’ for moving-coil pickups; one for a dynamic pick-up system; and another for a pick-up assembly “with induction coils joined to a needle carrier and fixed in permanent magnet yolk”.

“My original patented symmetrical MC design was about balance – electrical, magnetic, and mechanical,” Peter Suchy told Jonathan Valin in 2018 when he was being inducted in The Absolute Sound’s High-end Audio Hall of Fame. “The cartridge is unique in many regards including its use of independent coils for each channel – not both stereo channels on a single armature. My original design used four magnets, not a single magnet with pole pieces. Unlike the typical suspension tie wire, I designed a fulcrum-balanced suspension.”

The world’s first fully symmetrical moving-coil system impressed the hi-fi world in 1980, and from there the list of landmarks extended onward – the world’s smallest high-end phono pre-amp in 1984, a patented ‘Optimal Connection System’ for audio cables in 1985, and the crucial acquisition of patents and licences from Souther in the US for its linear tracking tonearm.

Among all this, one key event was the relocation in 1983 to Erlingen, where Clearaudio still resides, now located in the Meilwald nature reserve, “pioneering ecological sustainability”, its website notes. 

It is also usefully able to benefit from proximity to the Frauenhofer and Max Planck Institutes (both in Erlangen), and Friedrich-Alexander University too. We asked Robert Suchy how the company makes use of these resources. 

“Since Erlangen has a great University, the foundation in research for these Institutes is very good,” he tells us, “and that means we benefit from engaged students who may start working for us during their study. The chances that some stay with us are very good, something which gives our company a regular nice young push of energy.”

The strong technical foundation in Erlangen allowed Clearaudio to make ongoing investments in its own production capabilities, as the company increased its independence from the vagaries of third-party supply. It began producing even precision components in-house, and the company boasts that “when standard measurements are insufficient to meet our needs, our in-house engineers develop our own measuring devices”.

Clearaudio sees this as a key philosophy: it can ensure consistency through quality control, careful documentation, and results tracing.

A new Reference

By the time Clearaudio had all the elements in place for its first turntable, Robert Suchy had already joined his father’s firm as a precision mechanics apprentice. The Reference was launched in 1993, with its unusual resonance-optimised shape, and clearly displayed Clearaudio’s dedicated to materials.

It was made from acrylic and featured brass metal parts (later stainless steel), distinctly placed feet, heavy arm pillars and resonance control weights.

But enough of the nostalgia – the 1993 Reference turntable has now been reborn in the new Reference Jubilee (pictured above and below), a limited edition of 250 pieces. As Suchy says, the original shape is kept but everything else is new and up to date: it references the past albeit showcases the company’s present skills.

So Clearaudio’s patented (2006) ceramic magnetic bearing is here in a special variation for the main platter, while the lower drive platter has an inverted bearing. But it’s a new air-core (non-magnetic) DC motor and motor control system in the Reference Jubilee which has the company buzzing, one staffer calling it ‘the beginning of a new generation of motors and motor electronics’.

“The new control board design certainly makes it unique,” Suchy tells us. “There is a D-to-A converter built in, which creates a reference voltage, and we are combining this with the analogue control section; we check both speed circuits, so we get a much more accurate speed stability and fewer corrections of the motor in general. 

“With this design we can control any ongoing imperfections that might arise just through wear and tear, as well as temperature drifts, which do not create issues with our design. 

“Also the motors are that strong – enormous torque – that the tables behave like direct drive. It’s certainly one of a kind.”

To expand on that description, the 12-bit DAC isn’t doing any converting; it’s being used to generate a reference voltage for the drive motor’s (purely analogue) control unit. This works in tandem with the company’s optical speed control system, where every three seconds a sensor reads a strobe to establish the sub-platter’s rotational speed, feeding that back for the control unit to correct any deviation. At initial start-up it should self-regulate to perfection within 30 seconds.

Also unusual is the way the motor housing is elaborately decoupled from the chassis by “an elaborate network of rubber ‘tightropes’”, as they’re described in one place, elsewhere as “18 rubber bands”, ‘O-rings’ and, best of all in German, as ein Zusammenspiel von Gummibändern.

What’s the structure of this ‘Innovative Motor Suspension’?, we asked Suchy. Is it a series of circular bands surrounding the motor, or some interwoven Gordian knot suspending it? Is it all good to survive Australia’s tropical conditions? 

“It is a rubber O-ring construction,” he says, “and since we have a long history with belt-drive systems, we are using rubber that has a higher silicone value, so they will last very long. But if something were to happen, it’s also easy to swap out.”

The Reference Jubilee can be purchased without tonearm or cartridge (£17,500, A$30,499), with a Clearaudio pivoted arm (seemingly the default system in the US, at $30,000), or with a tangential arm (A$44,999 in Australia, including cartridge). 

We presumed that Suchy would pick the tangential arm by preference, and we were right.  

“Tangential tonearms are by nature theoretically the better solution,” he confirms. “I would always prefer it in my playback system. But historically they haven’t been ‘in vogue’, and we have concentrated on higher-end tangential tonearms, where we have created trouble-free designs. But of course then these are not for everybody‘s budget, which is sad.”

The acrylic plinth of the original Reference has gone, replaced by one of Clearaudio’s secret weapons: Delignit Panzerholz. This is made by bonding beech hardwood veneers with phenolic resin and then ‘densifying’ the panel. Turntable aficionados will note the phenolic resin as much used by another turntable company, Rega, whose Roy Gandy cannot complete a turntable without a few ladles of phenolic resin in there somewhere. 

By ‘densifying’ the hardwood and resin, they mean compressing it down to just half its original thickness under massive pressure. 

The result is so dense that it’s bulletproof, and the official specs sheet of Panzerholz even goes so far as to assure us that 35mm thickness is enough to protect against a DM51 hand grenade with an amplified explosive charge at 5cm distance. (You can build a whole house out of Panzerholz panels should you be particularly worried about your neighbours.) 

In turntable terms, it’s the density and rigidity of the material which does the job: Penzerholz beats aluminium for acoustic damping and much else. And for good measure, the Reference Jubilee laminates the Panzerholz to aluminium. So why, we asked, are the two combined? 

“There are some secrets which we have discovered during our long history in designing analogue products,” says Suchy, “and some of these are related to the right material combinations, as well as shaping. The Reference Jubilee is such a creation!”

• How to choose the right record player

Other creations

Such a creation indeed. Clearaudio has a good many of them, most famous of which is perhaps that Statement turntable above, currently available from £136,500 / AU$226,999), described by no lesser authority than Australian Hi-Fi's Greg Borrowman as “without any shadow of a doubt the finest turntable in the world” (though we aren’t sure when he said that).

Unless you’re considering playback using a Neumann cutting lathe, he might also have called it the heaviest turntable in the world, given that the Statement weighs in at 350kg – without a tonearm.

The original Statement turntable arrived in 2004, a year after the iconic  ‘Goldfinger’ moving-coil cartridge (above). It’s aptly named, housed in a 14-karat gold body, doubling up the number of magnets from the patented four to eight, for an even more homogenous flux field. 

As Suchy mentions in the rest of our interview (see below), that gives Clearaudio a virtuous circle: a better turntable enables better cartridge development, and vice versa. 

And with the big ‘50’ coming up for the company in 2028, we can safely assume that some junior technician in an Erlangen laboratory is currently fiddling with something that will eventually find its way to market as another patented Clearaudio wonder yet to come.

Bonus material

To put this article together we threw Robert Suchy a fair wealth of questions both general and technical, and many of his more specific answers are included in our main article. Here is some of the more general conversation. (Interview by Jez Ford.)

AUDIO ESOTERICA: Congratulations on Clearaudio’s 45 years! With you as one of three next-generation siblings in the business, Clearaudio is the very definition of a family firm – is that something that can be maintained in today’s corporate world? Do you have grandchildren in training already?

ROBERT SUCHY: Thank you very much! Yes, 45 years can be considered something special in this day and age, I would say. Since we, the three children, Veronika, Patrick and Robert, took complete operational responsibility more than 15 years ago, we’ve maintained the company’s heritage quite well, we think, and have established our products and quality in the high-end industry.

As for ‘The Next Generation’ – which will be the company’s third – they are still in school and will need more training! So while we can not say the future is secured, we are certainly working on it. For sure, they live – and they are listening to vinyl!

AE: How important to the company are reference products like the Statement and the Goldfinger?

RS: For us these products are like the Maybach Series for Mercedes. We can show what we are capable of in terms of technical solutions and build quality or design concepts. And as with Formula 1, there are always some ideas which can be trickled down into other product series. So our other product ranges benefit from these statement products as well.

AE: Have better cartridges driven you to develop better arms and turntables, or the other way around?

RS: Yes, both! When you’re always looking for where and how improvements can be made, you need better and better equipment in order to reach new levels. I would call it a process of natural evolution, since humans always want to improve our nature…

AE: One of my favourite Clearaudio ideas was the ‘Absolute Phono’ concept in 2014, which put a tiny preamplifier in the headshell itself. It seems such a great idea, why isn’t it more common? 

RS: Well, technically it is a challenge, and that is giving it a higher price tag, which limits the product in terms of marketing and sales. Sometimes products are too early in the market or too late… I think here we might have been too early!

AE: Migrant waves, pandemic, the Ukraine effect – how has the company been affected by recent times?

RS: During difficult times, you need to concentrate on your core business, and to realise that in such times you need to be creative, maybe reorganise something in your organisation. This is positive, as you should never stand still.

I think we have been blessed in this regard, actually, as we see challenges as a positive; they make us stronger as a company and as a family.

AE: I couldn’t find much information on your music division – can you tell us a little about that? It’s always good to see a hi-fi company with a music division!

RS: This was originally a result of the digital CD coming onto the market in 1985. So we started around 1989 to print and press vinyl with our own label ‘clearaudio Music’, when the majors were already pushing records out of the stores. The idea was to keep them available for fans of analogue music. 

AE: Well that seems to have worked well, with so many vinyl fans new and old. You must have watched the revival of vinyl in the last 15 years with delight?

RS: This is a very nice outcome for us, of course, especially as this would seem to indicate that quality will always survive. We want to keep it that way. As for the music production, we still retain this and today we are into reissues and own productions. Not on a big scale, but it’s part of our love for the music and the pleasure it brings. 

• See all What Hi-Fi? reviews of Clearaudio products

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

During my tenure on this Earth, I’ve been exposed to many disappointments at Christmas. There was the time I got a SEGA Saturn instead of a PlayStation. The day Grandma “forgot” I was vegetarian back in '91. The brussels sprouts war of '95. 

The list goes on.

But having just joined the ranks of What Hi-Fi? less than a month ago, I can’t help but flash back to one of the worst Christmas travesties I’ve experienced – the day my parents gave me a cheap record player.

In the spirit of objectivity, I’m not going to name the specific company that made the unit, though I can safely say you won’t find any of its products in our best record player guide. I’m also not saying there aren’t good affordable record spinners on the market – because there are, few and far between they may be, as the Pro-Ject Primary E (pictured below) ably demonstrates. Instead, consider this a general warning about the dangers of investing in a cheap turntable without researching the specific model you’re getting, based on my personal, harrowing experience.

Let me set the scene.

The year was 1999. Westlife may have been dominating the charts with whatever vacuous pop melody they’d spun out, but I in my rebellious tween years had found something cooler. Specifically, I’d discovered rock and prog.

It happened that summer after a disciplinary incident that won’t be detailed here left me confined to the house with no hope of parole. Isolated while my parents and brother were out shopping, I did what all kids do – I rummaged through all the old wardrobes and storage units around the house hoping to find something to entertain me.

And after hours of rooting through drawers only to find table clothes and pillow sheets in my dad’s study, I finally hit gold and found a pile of vinyl records stashed in an old trunk.

But this wasn’t the standard Van Morrison easy-listening stuff I’d seen sitting in our lounge. Opening the trunk I was confronted with some of the coolest album covers I’d ever seen – to this day, I challenge you to find a kid who doesn't find Iron Maiden’s Eddie, Rush’s Star Man or the lavish fantasy scenes adorning Rainbow’s work awesome. 

Rushing down to the lounge my excitement continued as I blasted through the albums, getting more excited with each thundering track. To this day I get shivers whenever I hear Dio bellow out “man on the silver mountain”.

Sadly, while my parents initially found it adorable that I liked the same music they did at my age, after months of playing the same albums on repeat every second I could, their patience wore thin and I was given a measly hour a day where I could use the lounge’s turntable.

Not content with this, I did what any good kid would. I begged them, repeatedly and aggressively, to get my own record player. After a few well-spent months wearing them down, I achieved a minor victory when my mother told me to “ask Santa” – which we all know is code for 'you’ll get one for Christmas'.

Come the big day, they technically did deliver on this promise. Racing down the stairs in my best Thundercats pyjamas (which to this day I wish I could find in an adult size), I b-lined to the tree and was elated to find a box with my name on it that was perfectly turntable sized.

Ripping the paper off my faith was rewarded and I found myself the proud owner of a new all-in-one turntable. At the time I didn’t care that I didn’t have a clue how to pronounce, let alone recognise, the brand name adoring its shiny plastic case. I was equally unperturbed about the fact its chassis noticeably creaked when I excitedly ran upstairs to get it set up.

All that mattered was that I could now listen to my records in my bedroom whenever I wanted.

While my father set the turntable up, I devoted my remaining time carefully picking what my first record would be. I flipped between the high energy, pure joy of Rush’s Permanent Waves to the thundering hard rock excellence of Motörhead’s Ace Of Spades before finally settling on Yes’ iconic fifth studio album, Close to the Edge.

But to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a rapid turn in my fortunes. Before I’d even gotten one minute into the album’s majestic 18-minute opening track my world shattered as I heard distortion rear its ugly head.

After foolishly ignoring the issue, my idiocy was laid bare when I took the album off the player and found its tracking force was so insanely high it had gouged my beloved album beyond repair. Looking at the album the damage was plain to see and the record never sounded the same again even when played on my dad's infinitely superior system.

I now know that this is a common issue on cheaper players, which based on my experience using them, need the weight to stop their outright terrible needles from jumping around like a toddler high on Haribo. But back then the damage was an outright shock that all but ruined Christmas. Sheepishly coming back down the stairs I was a sobbing mess that couldn’t be consoled by any of the subsequent games or TV specials that would ordinarily have filled me with festive joy. 

Which is why I’ve penned this to warn future generations of record adorers. Even if you can’t afford a premium unit, like the Pro-Ject Debut Pro that sits at the top of our best record player guide, make sure you do your research when picking a turntable or risk suffering my fate. At the very least invest in one where you can adjust the tracking force...

MORE:

We built a superb five-star turntable system to get the best out of your vinyl

Here are the best turntables around

Our pick of the best budget hi-fi speakers

If you're keen on updating your home screen, Boxing Day sales represent some of the best opportunities to get your hands on quality TVs with solid savings attached. Big-name manufacturers and retailers are both beginning to look at the year ahead and their next fleet of TV releases, meaning they're eyeing off opportunities to offload stock of their already excellent screen options.

That's great news for you! Whether you're on the hunt for a premium OLED, high-value QLED or something more affordable, there's already some opportunities to take advantage of excellent savings even with not all retailers having unleashed their formal sales.

Included among these is deals on various sizes of the multi-award-winning LG C2 OLED TV, handy savings on the budget-friendly, but feature heavy TCL C-Series TVs and even some opportunities to save some coin on quality soundbars. 

With the big day upon us, you can rest assured we'll be keeping a close eye on the best opportunities to save on quality home screens for you to find right here.

• Our expert pick of the best Boxing Day deals on tech

Best Boxing Day TV deals 2022

• Amazon Australia: discounts on TVs from Sony, Samsung, Philips and more
• Appliance Central: discounts on 4K TVs, OLEDs and QLEDs
• Appliances Online: savings on TVs and home appliances
• Bing Lee: great prices on the world's most popular TVs
• The Good Guys: savings on TVs, home appliances and more
• Kogan: TVs from AU$269 in the Christmas sale

Boxing Day TV deals

Soundbar deals

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• Fancy a big screen? Check out the best 65in TVs
• Discover the benefits of Dolby Vision
• Classy OLED TVs that won't break the bank

Monster TVs are all well and good, but what if you don't have space? What if you don't want – or can't have – a ridiculous 70-inch-plus screen in your living space? What if all you need is a 43-incher with a decent feature set and great picture quality?

Then step right this way, as we have the deal for you. It's on the four-star Hisense 43A6GTUK – it's dropped to just £240, down from our 'tested at' price of £329 (though going on data from CamelCamelCamel, Amazon previously sold it for £100 more than that, at £429). Whatever the saving, £240 is a great price. Viva Cyber Monday!

Cyber Monday Hisense 4K HDR deal

Even at full price, this Hisense TV is fantastic value for money. It supports features that are more commonly found in marquee TVs like Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos sound, and even 120Hz gaming.

So we can forgive the basic looks. And the rather pale colours. We can even forgive the iffy operating system, the unhelpful picture presets and the occasional colour banding that rears its head with HDR content.

Because along with the features already mentioned, this TV supports VRR and ALLM. Throw in a pretty low input lag of 14.1ms, and you've got a treat for gamers. (Xbox Series X owners will also be delighted to hear that the 43A6GTUK’s support for Dolby Vision HDR extends to the console’s new Dolby Vision gaming support.)

Picture quality is surprisingly good for the money. While black levels can't match that of an OLED TV (or even a much more premium LCD), they are very good, with the backlight displaying an impressive uniformity. It goes plenty bright, too. So whatever you're watching, this TV should do it justice.

There's enough sharpness and detail to satisfy most viewers, while HD upscaling isn't half bad. And we repeat, it costs £240. Really, what are you waiting for?

MORE:

Read our review of the Samsung UE43AU7100

See our round up of the best budget 4K TVs

Track down a bargain with the best TV deals

The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II and Sony WF-1000XM4 are the reputable brands' flagship wireless earbuds and some of the best pairs we've ever tested, offering cutting-edge active noise cancellation (ANC) technology and class-leading sound. Both have our rubber-stamped approval, not only evident by a five-star review but also a 2022 What Hi-Fi? Best Buy Award. So if you are in the market for a premium pair, how do you possibly choose between the two?

Well, that's where we come in. To help you pick the best wireless earbuds for you, we have road-tested both, assessing everything from design and build to battery life and sound quality, and presented the pros and cons of both below.

So without further ado, let's see who comes out on top in the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II  vs Sony WF-1000XM4 debate... 

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II vs Sony WF-1000XM4: price

The QuietComfort Earbuds II are Bose's latest flagship wireless earbuds. They arrived in September 2022 and command an asking price of £280 / $299 / AU$429, which is pretty much as high as the asking prices for true wireless earbuds get. For reference, the five-star Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 3 debuted this year at £219 / $250 / AU$400.

The class-leading Sony WF-1000XM4 debuted at £250 / $280 / AU$450 back in June 2021. As is often the case when earbuds have been around a while, their price has since dropped a fair bit, so you should be able to pick them up for at least 25 per cent less now. Today's cheapest prices on both prices are below.

**Winner** Sony WF-1000XM4

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II vs Sony WF-1000XM4: design

The second-gen QuietComfort Earbuds are around a third smaller than the originals and come with a wide range of soft ear tips. They also feature new 'stability bands' (which replace the old rubber wings) for improved grip.

The Sony WF-1000XM4 come with a comparatively limited choice of firmer foam ear tips and tend to sit deeper in your ear canal. They're slightly heavier (7.3g vs 7g) than the Bose buds, too, and not quite as comfortable. That said, as they plug your ear canals they do provide very good levels of noise isolation.  

Like to brave the elements? Both these wireless in-ears are rated IPX4 water-resistant, meaning they're protected from the odd splash of rain or sweat.

**Winner: Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II**

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II vs Sony WF-1000XM4: battery life

The Sony WF-1000XM4 promise eight hours of battery life from a single charge, with the carry case providing another 16 hours of juice for a total battery life of 24 hours. In a hurry but have a flat battery? Five minutes of wall charging will give you up to an hour of playback.

You might expect the Bose QC Earbuds II to have more endurance considering they are newer, but no dice. They offer six hours of battery from a single charge, plus three extra charges from the charging case for the same total battery life of 24 hours. A 20-minute quick-charge can offer around two hours of playtime.

Note too that the Bose's charging case cannot be wirelessly charged, whereas Sony's can be with a compatible Qi wireless charger. It can even be boosted by being placed on the back of a compatible Qi smartphone.

**Winner: Sony WF-1000XM4**

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II vs Sony WF-1000XM4: features

The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II promise "the world’s best noise cancellation from any headphone – banded or in-ear". A bold claim perhaps, but Bose's noise-cancelling is more than a match for Sony's and does a great job of removing rumbles without the intense vacuum-sucking sensation you get from some earbuds.

That's not to say that the Sony buds don't block noise well; it is extremely effective, although you do get a bit of that ‘vacuum’ feeling when it’s turned on.

Like many wireless earbuds, both the Boses and Sonys have companion control apps. The Sony Headphones Connect app lets you customise the sound and noise-cancelling effect, run a 'fit' test to see just how good your seal is, and remind you when the case's battery life drops below 30 per cent.

Bose's app offers even greater flexibility when it comes to noise-cancelling adjustment. It also features Bose's CustomTune sound calibration tech, which uses a microphone to measure your ear canal’s acoustic response and optimise ANC performance accordingly.

The Bose buds support a more current version of Bluetooth (5.3 vs 5.2), but the Sonys are due a software upgrade that will add support for multipoint connectivity, which allows the wearer to be connected to two Bluetooth sources simultaneously. 

**Winner: Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II**

• 6 sound settings you shouldn’t ignore on the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II vs Sony WF-1000XM4: sound quality

The WF-1000XM4 feature Sony's DSEE Extreme engine, which upscales low-quality audio files and supports hi-res audio including Sony's own LDAC codec, meaning you can listen to files up to 32-bit/96kHz over Bluetooth at up to 990kbps.

Performance-wise, the XM4 offer clarity across the board and a fantastic sense of rhythmic precision. They are musical, dynamic and detailed performers that offer plenty of bass and oodles of detail, sounding pleasingly smooth and full-bodied.

The newer Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II are a little more tonally balanced. They ooze even more sonic sophistication, offering new levels of detail from wireless earbuds. In fact, they are now our go-to recommendations at this extreme end of the market.

Slightly disappointing, however, is that the Bose buds lack support for high-quality wireless audio codecs such as LDAC and aptX HD, and call quality is nothing special. The Sony XM4 are better at suppressing blustery winds.

**Winner: Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II**

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II vs Sony WF-1000XM4: verdict

Bose’s flagship buds are the more expensive option, but they offer stellar noise-cancelling, sound impressively refined and detailed, and come with a wider range of ear tips that provide added comfort. If you're working with a healthy budget, the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II are a magnificent choice.

The Sony WF-1000XM4 might not sound quite as sophisticated or block noise as effectively, but they still deliver a wonderfully musical performance – and wireless charging, better earbud battery life and support for higher-quality Bluetooth transmission are the other big plug points. The Sonys have a strong argument for being the best value pair of the two at their now-reduced price, though those who can meet either asking price have a difficult decision on their hands and should go with the pair that best meets their priorities.

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Bose vs Bose: QuietComfort Earbuds II vs Quiet Comfort Earbuds

Out with the old? Sony WF-1000XM4 vs WF-1000XM3: which are better?

With the PS5 stock issues of 2020 and 2021 all but over, Sony is treating gamers to more good news: the PS5 DualSense Edge wireless controller will launch globally on 26th January 2023.

According to PlayStation.Blog, pre-orders will begin on 25th October 2022 in the US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg (while supplies last).

It's not cheap, though. The DualSense Edge carries a recommended retail price of £209.99 / $199.99 USD (around AU$375), putting it above Microsoft's high-end Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 (£159.99 / $179.99 / AU$249.95).

In fairness, Sony claims that the DualSense Edge is the first "ultra-customizable" controller, and lets you "craft your own unique gaming experiences" thanks to the modular design.

Players can fine-tune the sensitivity of the sticks/triggers to their liking, remap the buttons in hopes of improving their reactions, and set up multiple control profiles for multiple games. All of this is apparently made possible by the "unique" on-controller user interface. 

The DIY-minded can even tweak the hardware itself: three changeable sets of stick caps and two changeable sets of back buttons ( both lever and half-dome) are supplied with the carry case.

The DualSense Edge wireless controller will make its debut just before the PlayStation VR 2 headset, which is due out in early 2023. There's also rumours that Sony will launch a PS5 Pro in 2023, so it could be a busy time for the Japanese giant.

After a cheaper accessory a bargain game? Check out our rundown of today's best PS5 deals. 

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Bose makes some of the best noise-cancelling headphones in the business and has two pairs of wireless over-ears with ANC to choose from: the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 (or 'Bose 700') and the Bose QuietComfort 45 (or 'Bose QC45').

The Bose 700 arrived in 2019 as an offshoot from the company's long line of QuietComfort models. The premium wireless noise-cancelling headphones impressed us with their luxurious design, comfortable fit and advanced, best-in-class active noise-cancelling technology.

Then, in September 2021, Bose released the Bose QuietComfort 45, the long-awaited successors to the 2018-released QuietComfort 35 II – not to replace the 700 but to sit alongside them.

The two models still coexist in Bose's wireless headphones line-up, so what's the difference between them and which pair is best for you? Strap in, as we have been 12 rounds with both pairs and have compared their price, design, noise-cancelling, battery life and sound quality.

Read on as we pit Bose against Bose...

• The best Bose headphones you can buy

Bose QuietComfort 45 vs Bose 700: price

The Bose 700 hit the shelves at £350 ($399 / AU$599) when they launched in 2019, but naturally, due to their age, there has been a price drop since. Below you can find today's best Bose 700 deals, which at the time of writing offer a decent discount over the original RRP.

The newer Bose QuietComfort 45 headphones were released last year for £319 ($329 / AU$499) but are also now knocking around considerably below that, around the same price as the 700.

Both pairs are generally well-priced within the market, similar in price to the popular Sony WH-1000XM4, though undercutting the class-leading Sony WH-1000XM5.

The QC 45 and 700 are currently on decent late Novemeber Black Friday 2022 discounts, with nearly £100 off the UK retail price and about $80 off in the US.

**Winner** Draw

• Sony WH-1000XM4 vs Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700: which are better?

Bose QuietComfort 45 vs Bose 700: design

The Bose QC 45 generally don't look all that different to the first QuietComfort models launched over a decade ago, but that's no bad thing – we have always praised their comfort and practical design – and modest modern updates to the aesthetic have kept them looking and feeling contemporary enough in the market.

The Bose 700, meanwhile, mark a departure from the QC look, introducing a sleeker, classier style. They boast a slender design that exudes elegance, with the combination of 'invisible' hinges and a swooping stainless steel headband giving the 700 plenty of wow factor.

Both models are suited to travel of course, but note that the Bose 700 only fold flat; they don’t collapse inwards into a ball like the QC 45 due to their hinge-free form. In terms of weight, the QC 45 are just 10g lighter – 250g vs 240g.

The QC 45 are available in a choice of black or 'Smoke white', while the Bose 700 come in black, white, navy or 'Soapstone' (cream, in case you don't have a colour chart handy).

**Winner** Draw

Bose QuietComfort 45 vs Bose 700: battery life

The Bose 700 headphones boast a 20-hour battery life with Bluetooth and noise-cancelling switched on. That's not bad, but the new QuietComfort 45 have greater endurance.

Bose claims the QC 45 provide 24 hours of battery life with noise cancellation deployed, and during our testing we found that pretty much spot on. A five-minute charge via USB-C returns 2.5 hours of playback, too, compared with the 700's two hours of playback from a 15-minute charge.

Both pairs' battery life figures are below many of their five-star competitors, however, with the aforementioned Sony XM4 and XM5 and the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2 offering 30 hours and the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless a staggering, well above par, 60 hours.

**Winner** Bose QuietComfort 45

Bose QuietComfort 45 vs Bose 700: noise-cancelling

While both models boast active noise-cancelling technology capable of blocking out the world, the Bose 700 have eight microphones (six to cancel noise, two to pick up your voice) and an intensity level that can be altered on a scale from zero to ten – you can scroll through the levels in the Bose Music App to find the right level for you.

Despite the QC 45 boasting 'just' six mics with four beamforming, and the fact that they offer only two levels of preset noise cancellation (Quiet and Aware, so you can hear what's going on around you when required), the noise-cancellation is no less effective. In fact, it's perhaps the best we have heard, propelling Bose's reputation for being the best at the job in the business.

We put the QC 45 through their paces, and although it is clear that the Bose 700 offer a smarter and more customisable noise-cancelling experience, it isn't necessarily better if you simply want to nix all the noise you can in the office. Even at 10 (the highest level of noise-cancellation), the Bose 700 can't eliminate quite as much noise as the QC 45 operating in 'Quiet' mode, particularly through the midrange – ie. voices.

It's a very close-run thing between two sets of headphones that sit pretty comfortably at the top of the noise-cancelling pile, but the Bose QC 45 has the slight edge. That said, if you want the option of having a less intense noise-cancellation intensity for some occasions, or a more tailored, robustly featured experience generally, you should look to the Bose 700. 

**Winner** Bose QuietComfort 45

Bose QuietComfort 45 vs Bose 700: controls

The QC 45 have four physical buttons on the right ear cup, and one on the left for switching between noise-cancelling and transparency modes. Whereas to reflect their strikingly modern aesthetic, the Bose 700 offer intuitive touch controls.

Both headphones connect to your voice assistant of choice via your mobile device, but the Bose 700 have Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant built-in. They also feature Spotify Tap, which lets you return to your last listening session simply by tapping and holding the right ear cup.

The QC 45 and 700 can both connect to two devices at once, too, so you can switch from listening to music on your tablet to taking a hands-free call on your phone. Therefore, you are guaranteed a good amount of wireless freedom whichever pair you buy.

This one largely comes down to preference. If you're a fan of swiping up on the ear cup to alter volume, look to the Bose 700. Prefer good old-fashioned actual buttons that work just as reliably? You will favour the Bose QC 45. 

**Winner** Bose 700

Bose QuietComfort 45 vs Bose 700: sound quality

Bose has been in the noise-cancelling game for decades and tends to deliver excellent sound-per-pound performance – and crucially, one where the noise cancellation doesn't negatively affect the quality or neutrality of your music. 

That's certainly the case when it comes to the Bose 700, which display superb levels of musicality and clarity. They can't match the depth of detail offered by the similarly priced Sony WH-1000XM5 or the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless – our current favourite pairs of wireless noise-cancelling over-ear headphones at this level – but they sound direct, dynamic and detailed all the same.

As for the QC 45, Bose's new TriPort vents do produce a slightly fuller sound, and sonically the presentation is accurate, exciting and zealous across the frequencies. It's a similar sound profile, although the QC 45 suffer marginally for timing and dynamic build against their direct competition – the Bose 700 and the Sony XM4/XM5. It may be only a minor shortfall, but it is (of course) our job to notice. 

**Winner** Bose 700

Bose QuietComfort 45 vs Bose 700: verdict

It's been more than two years since the Bose 700 made its debut, and these classy cans remain a tempting buy – especially when they are heavily discounted. They combine sleek looks and lightweight comfort with an exceptionally good noise-cancelling experience and a reasonably strong sound that, while not class-leading, is enjoyable to listen to.

The all-new QuietComfort 45 are another valid proposition, and Bose has certainly improved upon the previous QC 35 II to take the popular QuietComfort line forward once more – if only incrementally. It's true that given the five-year wait for a significant revamp in the QC range, we had hoped for a little more in terms of the feature set and sound quality improvement so that they could more confidently go shoulder-to-shoulder with Sony's Award-winning XM5.

But if your heart is set on Bose, the model you opt for will depend on your priorities. Ultimately, if you want dependable noise cancellation, a slightly longer battery and physical on-cup controls, the QC 45 should be on your shortlist. If you don't mind a slightly older model that gives up a little in terms of battery life, the more robustly featured Bose 700 edges it for sound and style.

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The iPad Air (5th Generation) – aka the iPad Air 5 and iPad Air 2022 – is a big deal. That’s almost entirely because, in a move predicted by next to no one, Apple has decided to cram into its supremely slim and lightweight chassis the awesomely powerful M1 processor.

The intention is clearly to make the Air a sort of iPad Pro Lite that will satisfy the creative types for whom the full-fat Pro models are expensive overkill.

But what’s in it for those of us whose interests lie primarily in the consumption of the creative endeavours of others? According to the spec sheet, the screen and speakers are the same as those that adorned the iPad Air 4. So are there undocumented changes in these departments or is this simply the same AV experience as before, and would that be such a bad thing?

Price

The new iPad Air 5 (2022) price starts at £569 / $599 / AU$929. Somewhat surprisingly, that means the new model is £10 cheaper in the UK than the iPad Air 4 was at launch, while in Australia it's slightly more expensive. The price in the States has stayed the same.

That price will get you a 64GB wi-fi-only model. The 256GB wi-fi-only model will set you back £719 / $749 / AU$1159.

Adding cellular to whichever storage option you choose will add a cool £150 / $150 / AU$230 to the price.

Design

The iPad Air 5 is available in five colours, just as the iPad Air 4 was, but, Space Grey aside, they're all slightly different to the colours they replace: 'Silver' is now 'Starlight', which appears to be a slightly less stark and cold hue; 'Rose Gold' is now a slightly subtler 'Pink'; 'Sky Blue' is now a richer, more vibrant 'Blue'; and 'Green' has now been replaced by 'Purple'. We thought the green finish of last year's model was rather lovely but perhaps buyers didn't agree. Green can't be that unpopular though, as Apple has just launched it as a new option for the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro phones.

Colours aside, the design of the iPad Air 5 is essentially identical to that of the iPad Air 4, with the only difference on the spec sheet being a 3g (0.02lb) increase in weight. Dimensions remain 248 x 179 x 6.1mm (9.7 x 7 x 0.2 inches), and that makes this a very svelte proposition. As before, there's no home button and only slim bezels, with the screen very much taking centre stage.

As before, there are speakers on the top and bottom edge when the tablet is held in portrait mode, which means they work in a traditional left and right stereo configuration when it’s in the movie-friendly landscape orientation. The single-lens camera is the same as before, too, at least in terms of hardware, and it sticks out from the same top-left corner of the tablet’s rear, just as it did on last year’s iPad Air 4.

The front-facing camera has had an upgrade though, from 7MP to 12MP, but it’s still fairly well hidden in the black bezel along one of the iPad’s shorter edges. That camera placement is actually a missed opportunity, as it means that the camera is quite a long way off to the side when you’re using the tablet for video calls in the preferable landscape mode. This uncharacteristically poor design decision by Apple means it can appear to the person on the other end of the call as if you’re trying to avoid eye contact.

Features

The big news on the features front is that the new iPad Air is powered by Apple’s super-fast M1 processor, which features in the company’s desktop Macs and MacBooks, as well as the iPad Pro (11-inch and 12.9-inch versions). In short, this is now the most affordable M1-powered product you can buy and, according to Apple, that makes it 60 per cent faster than the iPad Air in terms of CPU performance, and twice as powerful from a graphics perspective. 

So why has Apple decided to pack a Pro-level processor into arguably its most lifestyle-oriented iPad? Seemingly to increase its credentials as a productivity and creativity device so that it can bridge the gap between the fairly media consumption-oriented iPad and iPad Mini and the heavyweight Pro models. One suspects that Apple noted a lot of iPad Air 4 users who were making use of its Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil 2nd Generation compatibility and decided to give them the performance to match their ambitions.

The M1 isn’t only powerful, though – it’s also efficient, so battery life remains around 9-10 hours of constant use despite the performance upgrades.

Of course, our prime concerns are the picture and sound quality and the specs suggest that nothing has changed here. Apple’s own data sheet indicates that the new iPad Air has the same two-speaker sound system as its predecessor, as well as the same display, with no changes to size (10.9 inches), resolution (2360 x 1640), pixel density (264ppi) or peak brightness (a quoted 500 nits).

It's always a shame when specs stay static across device generations, but the iPad Air 4 was a superb video playback device so it’s little surprise that Apple hasn’t sought to make big changes here.

Picture

Playing It in 4K Dolby Vision from the Apple TV app, there’s an extraordinary degree of similarity between the performances of the new iPad Air and its predecessor. And we do mean extraordinary: it’s extremely rare to see this level of consistency between two samples of the same device, let alone from one generation to the next.

While it might seem disappointing that there’s been no obvious upgrade here, there’s simply nothing to complain about in the picture quality. The image is supremely authentic and natural, with an unquestionable colour balance, oodles of detail and crisp definition. Motion is handled adeptly without any hint of active processing and blacks, while not OLED-inky, are plenty deep enough and packed with detail. There’s a satisfying HDR punch to the sundrenched exterior scenes, despite the 500 nits limit to the brightness, and plenty of dramatic contrast in the scenes that take place in the terrifying tunnels beneath the cursed town.

Interestingly, it’s when we switch to 1991’s Cape Fear, delivered in HD and standard dynamic range, that the new iPad Air produces a better picture than the outgoing model. There are broad, familial traits, from the cinematically warm but natural colour balance to the clean, controlled handling of the comparatively low resolution source material, but the new model is noticeably brighter, not only in obvious highlights such as the lights of a diner and the sparkle from a piece of jewellery, but across the whole image, which is brighter and punchier without looking exaggerated. This is an image that simply pops from the screen that little bit more, drawing you even more effectively into the action.

These characteristics carry over when you switch to Blockers in standard HDR10, suggesting that the consistency offered across the two devices when playing Dolby Vision is down to the outgoing model’s existing adherence to the format. With SDR and standard HDR, though, Apple has found room for improvement, increasing impact.

In summary, this is the best tablet picture performance made just a little bit better when viewing non-Dolby Vision content.

Sound

The changes in the audio department are even more slight, to the extent that you’d be very hard pressed to hear any difference at all. Again, though, that’s something about which it’s hard to complain, because the iPad Air was already an excellent-sounding tablet.

While it takes a bit of effort to teach yourself to hold the iPad in landscape without blocking the speakers, it’s effort worth making, as the side placement enables the Air to produce an impressively open and spacious sound that’s surprisingly involving with music and a really atmospheric boon to movies. We’re obviously not talking about sound that wraps around you, but the degree to which effects stretch beyond all four sides of the tablet is very impressive and very enjoyable.

There’s plenty of punch and detail, too, and enough dynamic range to deliver a surprising amount of drama. Bass doesn’t extend incredibly deep, as you’d expect, but neither is the delivery lightweight, and the bass that is there is tuneful and controlled. It is worth mentioning here that the tablet does vibrate a fair bit when pushed to high volumes, though.

Of course, hearing the iPad Air at its best involves connecting a pair of headphones. To go wired and you’ll need to invest in a USB-C headphones adapter – the official Apple one will set you back £9 / $9 / AU$15. Plug that into a pair of Grado SR325x cans and the sound is fabulously clean, punchy and energetic. We’ve long applauded Apple’s dedication to neutral, balanced sound, and the new iPad Air doesn’t deviate from that approach. This is all about hearing your music (and movies) as intended, without overt exaggeration or colouration, and that’s just how it should be.

Verdict

While the iPad Air 5th Generation is undeniably an improvement over the iPad Air 4, its key upgrades are to its processor and front-facing camera. Those upgrades are each great in their own right, but for us what really matters are the picture and sound performance, and in these areas it’s pretty much business as usual.

There’s nothing wrong with that, though, as the iPad Air is supremely talented in these areas and more or less untouchable by other tablets in its price range. There’s an argument that the standard iPad is the better performance-per-pound proposition for the pure content consumer, but the new Air is the model to go for if you can afford it.

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 5
• Features 5

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If you are looking for the best noise-cancelling headphones whether your heart is set on in-ear or over-ear headphones, we are guessing a pair or two from Bose features somewhere on your shortlist. Probably somewhere near the top.

And why wouldn't they? The company's noise-cancelling technology is celebrated worldwide and it has forged a reputation for serious quality built on decades of experience manufacturing consumer electronics. We are now in a position where Bose headphones are some of the most compelling wireless options you'll find – despite the likes of Sony, Sennheiser, Bowers & Wilkins and Apple knocking at their door.

The current core products in Bose's over-ear headphone lineup are the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, the QuietComfort Headphones and the QuietComfort SE. As far as earbuds are concerned you have the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds and the Ultra Open Earbuds.

These models are all fine-tuned by Bose engineers, and all but a couple have been reviewed by our test team, with the majority getting five-star ratings. But, there are huge differences across the range and there's far more to it than price differences and whether they go over or into your ears.

We traditionally see some of the best and lowest prices around sales events like Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday but that's not to say there won't be any price fluctuation outside of these times.

Of course, your particular needs and priorities will determine which pair you should buy, so to work out which Bose headphone model is best for you, let us run you through each pair, including features, perks and where possible, all-important sound quality...

Should you buy the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones?

Verdict

The QuietComfort Ultra Headphones are Bose’s flagship noise-cancelling headphones. And they’re not cheap. We reviewed them at £450 / $429 / AU$649 which means you’ll be paying a decent premium over rival models such as the Sony WH-1000XM5, Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e and Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless.

The Ultra replace the old Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 and revert back to a more traditional design. They might not feel as premium as their predecessors, but they are more portable with hinges that allow them to fold properly. The same can’t be said for the rivals mentioned above, which only fold flat.

The Bose are comfortable and combine buttons with a touch-sensitive strip for controlling playback, volume and sound modes. Battery life is 24 hours which is good, but you couldn’t call them class-leading. Sony’s XM5 offer 30 hours and Sennheiser’s Momentum 4 Wireless go for 60 hours!

Where the Bose excel is noise cancelling and sound quality. During testing, we found the ANC to be superb and having compared them to all the key rivals at the money, including the new Sonos Ace, we think they’re best-in-class. They do a great job of blocking out a wide range of frequencies and you can customise the intensity of the noise cancelling for different environments through the companion app.

They sound like a flagship pair of wireless headphones should, with an excellent sense of musicality and enthusiasm but there’s a real sense of refinement there too.

Bose’s take on spatial audio, Immersive Audio, is quite hit-and-miss and cuts battery life to 18 hours. It’s a feature that we could honestly live without. But, if you’ve got the budget and want arguably the best noise-cancelling currently available, then these Bose have your back.

• Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones vs Sony WH-1000XM5

Should you buy the Bose QuietComfort Headphones?

Verdict

We haven’t tested the Bose QuietComfort Headphones before but they sit just below the Ultra model in Bose’s hierarchy of wireless over-ear headphones. They’re a more affordable model and this is reflected in the design, and the features on offer. They still boast noise-cancelling and 24hr battery life, but use an older version of Bluetooth (5.1 versus 5.3 in the Ultras), don’t have Immersive Audio and don’t have the ActiveSense automatic ANC adjustment feature which you do get on their more expensive siblings.

Their position in Bose's range is reflected in the price with the Bose QuietComfort Headphones coming in cheaper at £350 / $349 / AU$550. It’s still a relatively premium price and puts them in the same ballpark as the Sony WH-1000XM5 and Sennheiser Momentum Wireless 4.

Buttons and switches are onboard for controlling playback and noise-cancelling, but their design has no touch-sensitive element. They are available in more colours than the flagship model, including eye-catching Cypress Green and Moonstone Blue.

They’re an interesting pair because Bose also has one other pair of noise-cancelling headphones that sit just below them, the QuietComfort SE. These headphones launched at the end of September 2022 and were seen as an upgrade to the then QuietComfort 45 model.

The SE cost £240 / $330 / AU$450 but this is one pair we haven't tested. We wouldn't be surprised to see the SE the next to be discontinued, leaving the non-SE model as Bose's entry-level noise-cancelling model.

For those interested in a potential bargain, the QuietComfort 45 were officially on sale from 2021 to 2023. You can no longer buy them through Bose but shop around online and there's a chance you might find a pair or two still on sale. Because of their age, they could likely be bought at quite a hefty discount – but at full price, better options now exist at the money from Sennheiser and Sony.

• Bose QuietComfort Headphones vs QuietComfort Ultra Headphones

Should you buy the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds?

Verdict

Bose has two pairs of Ultra headphones currently on the market. Its traditional wireless earbud model is called the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds. Like their over-ear siblings, they deliver excellent noise-cancelling and sound quality in a premium package.

We originally tested them at £300 / $299 / AU$450 which makes them a little more expensive than their closest rivals such as the Sony WF-1000XM5 and the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4. The Sonys are a little older so their price regularly comes down, while the Bose should be discounted more regularly the longer they’re on sale.

The design and fit of the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 is virtually identical to their predecessors, which also feature on this page, the QuietComfort Earbuds II. During testing we found the soft silicone tips comfy over long periods while the ear fins help keep the buds firmly in place.

Noise-cancelling on this model is excellent but it’s the sound quality where Bose has pushed the envelope compared to its previous models. They produce a refined and mature sound which is familiar, but there’s even more drive and punch on display. The Ultra sound wonderfully dynamic when the music demands.

The features on offer are also very similar with Immersive Audio the main new addition if you want to experience your favourite music in spatial audio. We weren’t huge fans during testing and, like the QC Ultra Headphones, using the mode has a big impact on battery life, slashing it from 6hrs to 4hrs.

• Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds vs Sony WF-1000XM5
• Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds vs Apple AirPods Pro 2

Should you buy the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2024)

Verdict

If you want to experience what Bose's flagship QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds have to offer, but don't want to pay the flagship price, then you'll want to check out the entry-level QuietComfort Earbuds (2024).

We have seen two previous iterations of these earbuds over the years, but the latest version brings a new look and new features to the party. Battery life is better than the Ultras at 8.5hrs and the charging case is wireless. However, there is no aptX support, just SBC and AAC.

The oval design might be different but build quality and comfort levels are still good, even if the earpieces might be a little chunky fpor some. You're still getting quality plastics for the earpieces and soft, supple eartips and 'stability bands' to help keep them in place.

While it's true that the flagship Ultra model has better and more advanced noise-cancelling and does sound more detailed and dynamic, the QuietComfort Earbuds (2024) still exhibit a huge chunk of what we like from their premium siblings and deliver a great all-round performance at a more affordable price.

• Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2024) vs QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds: which is best?
• Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2024) vs Apple AirPods 4 with ANC: how do they compare?

Should you buy the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds?

Verdict

If you want a pair of wireless earbuds that shirk the traditional design that we’ve all come to know and love, then Bose has this smart little number up its sleeve. Part of a new breed of ‘open’ earbuds, the USP of the Ultra Open Earbuds is that they’re designed not to drill into your ear canal. Instead, they clip around the ear with their tip nestling just at the entrance. There’s no need to mess around with silicone tip sizes here.

This will make them an attractive proposition for anyone who finds normal wireless earbuds uncomfortable and anyone who wants a pair of earbuds that do the sonic business but also allow the outside world in; handy if you’re out running, for example.

During testing we were surprised by just how capable the Bose are. They manage to create an impressive amount of bass weight considering there’s no traditional seal as such, but bass notes also come with detail and definition. They’re a balanced and enjoyable listen no matter what your musical taste. You get physical controls, Bluetooth 5.3, aptX Adaptive support and an IPX4 rating. Battery life is a competitive enough 7.5 hours.

They are quite expensive by wireless earbuds standards and at £299 / $299 / AU$449 cost just as much as their siblings, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra II which have built-in noise-cancelling. We would probably take those over the open earbuds, but we think in certain use cases they’ll work a treat.

MORE:

What are open earbuds? How do the headphones work and are they worth it?

The best Bose deals live right now

And our pick of the best wireless headphones and best wireless earbuds

How to choose the right pair of headphones

Wireless earbuds are everywhere. And wherever you look online, you're likely to see wireless earbuds deals too.

But with multiple options available across a wide range of price points, it can be difficult to cut through the noise and pick out the very best wireless earbud deals.

After all, just because a pair looks dirt cheap on paper doesn't mean to say it's a good deal or that they even sound decent.

And this is where we can help. On this page, we only bring you the lowest prices on a selection of the best wireless earbuds we’ve tested.

Remember, it's not just the size of a discount that should matter. Always think about whether the wireless earbuds are going to do the job you need.

Besides excellent audio quality, do you also need longer-than-average battery life? Does noise-cancelling need to be included? Do they need to be sweatproof for the gym?

Our reviewers will update this page with all the latest savings they’ve spotted on many of our team’s tried and tested recommendations, old and new.

• Browse all of today's best Amazon wireless earbuds deals

Wireless earbuds deals (UK)

Wireless earbuds deals (US)

MORE:

How to choose the right pair of headphones

Our pick of the best wireless earbuds we've tested

I test wireless earbuds for a living and here are 5 pairs I highly recommend

The Amazon Echo Studio promises not only to be the best-sounding Echo speaker yet, but a smart speaker truly fit for audiophiles – bold claims for a product costing just £190 / $200 / AU$329. 

As well as boasting upgraded internals fit for CD-quality and hi-res audio, which are both now available from Amazon Music Unlimited – the latest incarnation of the company's music streaming service – the Echo Studio also supports 3D audio via tracks encoded in Sony's 360 Reality Audio and Dolby Atmos.

So can the Echo Studio make Amazon's smart speakers a realistic proposition for those who value good sound, and give the likes of Sonos and Audio Pro a run for their money?

Build and compatibility

The Echo Studio continues the same design language of previous Echo speakers, being cylindrical in shape and covered with a charcoal-coloured fabric mesh. It’s considerably larger than any previous Echo and manages to dwarf the Sonos One and Apple Home Pod. 

Its beefed-up appearance helps to pack in 330W of power driving two 5cm midrange speakers positioned left and right, a 25mm forward-firing centre tweeter and a 5cm upward-firing midrange speaker. Bass is taken care of by a downward-firing 5.25in bass driver.

There are volume buttons on the top, along with a mic mute and Alexa-wake button. And yes, the blue ring of light remains so you know when Alexa is listening.

The position of the drivers allows the Echo Studio to use a feature of Amazon Music Unlimited, its library of 'hundreds' of songs available in Dolby Atmos Music, which sees the audio format used to mix tracks with greater control over different elements and the positioning of different elements in the soundfield. 

Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group are offering tracks in the Dolby Atmos Music format, while there's also a rival format in the shape of Sony's 360 Reality Audio, which is also supported by the Amazon Echo Studio.

• Amazon Echo vs Dot vs Plus vs Spot vs Show 5: which is best?

Elsewhere, the Studio has all the typical features of Echo devices. You can set timers, reminders and alarms; control smart home devices; play music; get facts and trivia, all by asking questions or barking orders at Alexa.

Fire up the Echo Studio for the first time and Alexa will tune its sound for your room's acoustics by firing out a number of different test tones and reacting to its readings. The whole process doesn't last longer than a few seconds, but you will need to recalibrate the speaker if you move it around.

You can access tone controls through the Alexa app for Android and iOS, plus change volume manually and pair another Echo Studio or manage and group any other Echo speakers you own.

Amazon has also built added flexibility into the Echo Studio. You can wirelessly connect one or two of the speakers with either a Fire TV Cube (1st or 2nd Gen), Fire TV Stick 4K or Fire TV (3rd Gen) to create a Dolby Atmos home theatre set-up. It's not 5.1 surround sound, but hooking up a stereo pair presents a decent opportunity to upgrade the audio coming out of your TV.

• Our pick of the best Alexa speakers

Sound

Producing immersive, directional audio is always going to be difficult, but doing it from a single speaker source is even more challenging. So how does it fare?

We begin with a couple of tracks designed to showcase the Echo Studio’s handling of 3D audio. Ariana Grande’s 7 Rings played through Amazon Music Unlimited is presented with height and space, elevating the lead and background vocals. 

It’s an open, airy presentation that suits the 3D environment well. The speaker sits you in the jaws of a tall soundstage, where there's a good amount of detail to percussion and high frequencies.

The deployment of the track’s bass raises an eyebrow, though. There’s power and weight, but also a tendency to overpower the track. The Echo Studio isn’t the most controlled or subtle when it comes to dropping the tune's big, bold bassline.

We switch to Gregory Porter’s Mona Lisa cover and, again, the speaker is in its element with this particular 3D mix. There’s impressive height to all the various sections of the orchestra, mixed with good dynamics and an impressive sense of scale. There isn’t much in the way of bass to accompany this track, so you’re mainly left with an ensemble of detailed and entertaining mids and highs.

We play The Jackson 5’s I Want You Back, remixed for 3D audio and things are a bit more hit and miss. Michael’s lead vocal sounds a bit lost in the soundstage and the balance feels slightly off. The quality of your 3D experience may vary a bit, depending on the final mix.

Of course, only a fraction of songs are mixed this way, so it's important to note many of the positive attributes transfer over to stereo tracks. Destiny’s Child’s Say My Name delivers a clear vocal cutting through and a good sense of separation between the different percussive elements.

The Studio is also capable of a little processing wizardry to add height to stereo mixes – simply keep the 'upmixing' setting enabled on the Alexa app. But don’t expect the same quality of results you’d get from a well-tuned Atmos mix.

With the Destiny's Child track, the setting sucks some of the drive and impetus from the song. The result is a loss of drive and drama. Similarly, the Manic Street Preachers' Motorcycle Emptiness sounds solid, cohesive and balanced in normal mode. But, enable the ‘Stereo Spatial Enhancement’ in the app and it all sounds a little unbalanced and over-processed.

Amazon recommends keeping this setting on at all times so you can enjoy the effects of the new sound, but we’d be tempted to turn it off.

There's no doubt the Amazon Echo Studio sounds bigger and goes much louder than some rivals, such as the Sonos One. But the Sonos sounds more composed, offering a more cohesive sound and higher quality bass. It can't summon the 3D processing of the Echo Studio, but we prefer its overall balance.

Verdict

Amazon's eagerness to push sound quality and its adoption of hi-res audio has to be a good thing, and the Echo Studio is a capable contender in the crowded smart speaker market. 

It sounds big, goes loud and there's a good level of detail and dynamics. We're not convinced entirely by the way it handles bass, and we wouldn't exactly call it audiophile quality, but for the money, the Echo Studio has a lot going for it.

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Compatibility 5
• Build 5

MORE: 

Here are the best smart speakers 2022: the best voice assistant speakers

High-resolution audio: everything you need to know

Dolby Atmos Music: everything you need to know

Paramount Plus is a streaming service  from US entertainment giant ViacomCBS. It's designed to compete with the likes of Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and Peacock. 

The service launched on 4th March 2021 in the US, and on 22nd June 2022 in the UK. Its biggest draw? A "mountain" of content including some of the biggest Hollywood movie franchises (The Godfather, Missions Impossible), high-quality CBS TV, 24-hour news and live sports.

• Grab your Paramount Plus free trial now

Paramount Plus – or Paramount+, as it's officially titled – also plans to launch 150 international 'originals' by 2025. The current roster includes huge hits such as Halo, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Yellowstone prequel 1883.

In the US, Paramount Plus offers lots of titles in 4K and Dolby Vision HDR (A Quiet Place 1 and 2, the Indiana Jones movies). Last year, Paramount Plus added HDR10+ support.

Details of the Paramount Plus price, release date, originals and free trial are below. Here's everything we know about Paramount Plus... 

Paramount Plus 7-day free trial

Best Paramount Plus deal (US)

• Our pick of the best streaming services for movies and TV

What is Paramount Plus?

US-based streaming service CBS All Access was  launched by CBS Corp back in 2014. It had had a subscriber base of around 8 million, which wasn't bad, but parent company ViacomCBS wanted a bigger slice of the streaming pie. 

So, in 2021, CBS All Access was renamed Paramount Plus and primed for international expansion. The new and improved service provides content from CBS, BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, The Smithsonian Channel and Paramount Pictures. That's in addition to exclusive on-demand originals and live sports such as NFL football and UEFA Champions League soccer.

Is it enough to topple rivals such as Netflix? Not according to our initial review but Paramount Plus isn't far off the mark. If you want access to nostalgia-tinged TV,  huge Paramount movies franchises such as The Godfather and Mission: Impossible, and new originals such as Halo and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Paramount Plus is well worth trying.

• Paramount Plus free trial: how to watch Star Trek and Halo for free!

Paramount Plus launch trailer

Paramount Plus release date

Paramount Plus launched in the United States and parts of Latin America on 4th March 2021. 

In Canada, CBS All Access was rebranded as Paramount Plus on 4th March 2021 but the "expanded" content didn't land until later in the year, and it still doesn't have as much choice as the US version. 

The service launched in Australia in August 2021, and in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway on 25th March 2021 and South Korean on 16th June 2022.

Paramount Plus arrived in the UK and Ireland on 22nd June 2022. The service is available to anyone as a standalone subscription but you can also get Paramount Plus on Sky (it's free to existing Sky Cinema subscribers, including Sky Q customers).

Most recently, Paramount Global has announced the Paramount+ streaming service will launch in Italy in September, followed by Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France in December.

For the rest of Europe, Paramount has partnered with Comcast/Sky for a new service called SkyShowtime. The service will include Paramount+ originals, plus Showtime and Peacock content. SkyShowtime will be available in Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. 

Paramount says it hopes to have launched in 60 markets by the end of 2022, and plans to bring Paramount Plus to Asia and India in 2023.

How to watch Paramount Plus in the UK

Stuck outside the UK, US, Australia, Latin America and the Nordics? You can access your Paramount Plus account from abroad using a VPN (Virtual Private Network). We typically recommend ExpressVPN since it offers a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee. 

With a VPN, you can watch Paramount Plus (or even create a new account) as if you were back home the countries listed above. Good to know, right?

Paramount Plus price

Paramount Plus offers two subscription tiers in most countries. 

USA: the ad-supported Essential plan costs $4.99 per month ($49.99 a year) and includes access to 30,000 TV shows, 2,500 movies, Paramount Plus Originals and selected live sports, including NFL games. 

The Premium tier – $9.99 per month or $99.99 a year – promises "limited" commercials, access to 4K, Dolby Vision and HDR content, and the ability to download and watch 4K videos offline. You also get extra live sports coverage.

Both plans come with a 7-day free trial, so you can try before you buy.

UK: Paramount Plus offers one plan at £6.99 monthly / £69.99 annually. The service is available to anyone as a standalone subscription. You can also get Paramount Plus on Sky where it's free to existing Sky Cinema subscribers, including Sky Q customers. Again, everyone gets a 7-day free trial to use before deciding to sign-up.

Australia: Aussies pay $8.99 monthly or $89.99 annual for Paramount Plus. But only after they've enjoyed a 7-day free trial to test it out.

Canada: Membership costs from $5.99 CAD a month (with ads) after the free 7-day trial.

How can I watch Paramount Plus?

Most users opt for the dedicated Paramount Plus app, which is available through Apple TV, iPhone and iPad, Android TV, Android phone and tablet, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, Portal TV, PlayStation 4, Samsung TV, Vizio TV, LG TV, Roku, Xbox One and Series X, and Xfinity Flex. 

However, you also get the option to watch through your favourite web browser at ParamountPlus.com.

You can watch on up to three devices simultaneously and create up to six separate profiles for family members. Those with a Premium subscription can download up to 25 shows or movies and watch them offline (in 4K where available) on a mobile device. 

Paramount Plus shows

Last year, ViacomCBS confirmed that over 50 original series will premiere on Paramount Plus in the next two years. Since them, its promised to release 150 international originals by 2025, including new docuseries Murder of God's Banker. 

The most high-profile upcoming original is likely to be the Frasier revival (expected 2022), starring Kelsey Grammer as the beloved radio psychologist. According to Paramount, the reboot will be "more exactly the same than ever". 

We'll also be treated to a TV adaptation of The Italian Job movie at some point, plus a new CIA spy drama created by Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone), about a young Marine undercover in a terrorist organisation. Lioness wil star Laysla De Oliveira  and Zoe Saldaña.

Don't want to wait? The TV adaptation of the Halo Xbox franchise has proven hugely popular, as has The Offer, a 10-part drama series based on producer Al Ruddy’s experiences helming Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 epic The Godfather. 

Paramount Plus is also the home of the Star Trek universe. It's the place to watch season two of Star Trek: Picard, the ever-popular Star Trek: Discovery and highly-rated Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

More sci-fi action is on the way courtesy of Oscar winner Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), who is set to star in a new version of the The Man Who Fell to Earth. The show will be based on the 1963 American sci-fi novel that was famously made into a 1972 sci-fi flick starring David Bowie. 

Fan of the true crime genre? The Real Criminal Minds, a docu-series based on the hit CBS investigative drama Criminal Minds, might arouse your curiosity.

• Looking for a good boxset? The best shows on Netflix

Paramount Plus movies

Paramount Plus is expected to be the home of huge movies in 2022, including Mission: Impossible 7 and the blockbusting Top Gun: Maverick. Prefer horror? Paramount Plus is the place to stream hit horror sequel A Quiet Place II.

Other upcoming exclusives include a Pet Sematary prequel and a Beavis & Butthead movie (expected 2022). The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run premiered on Paramount Plus last year The cartoon extravaganza was joined by a 13-episode spinoff series called Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years.

In total, Paramount Plus promises a library of over 2,500 movies, from recent blockbusters such as The Avengers to classics from the Paramount Picture vault. Plenty to enjoy.

Paramount Plus sport

Paramount Plus offers a healthy portfolio of live sport including NFL football, college football, PGA Tour and PGA Championship golf, The Masters golf, NCAA Division Men’s Basketball, and much more, courtesy of your local CBS affiliate. 

Paramount Plus also claims to be "the only place in the US where soccer fans can find exclusive English-language coverage of every UEFA club competition match, every season." That's the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League.

Paramount Plus is also home to a number of sports documentaries, including Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In – the story of the legendary manager of Manchester United – and Stories from the Beautiful Game.

Paramount Plus might not be available where you are right now. But remember, you can access your Paramount Plus account from anywhere when travelling abroad using a VPN. We typically recommend ExpressVPN since it offers a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

• Champions League live stream: how to watch every game in 4K

Paramount Plus shows in 4K HDR 

Paramount Plus offers some original shows in 4K Dolby Vision HDR, including Stephen King's The Good Fight (season four onwards) and The Twilight Zone (season two onwards). There are also a few shows available in HD with Dolby Vision HDR.

In April 2021, Paramount Plus added support for HDR10+, Samsung's answer to Dolby Vision. Paramount is now streaming originals such as The Stand to certified devices in HDR10+. 

As for sound, Paramount supports Dolby Atmos but only on iPhone, iPad or Apple TV devices. Look out for a mention of Dolby Atmos in the description box of your movie or show.

MORE:

Gear up for Paramount Plus with today's best TV deals 

In need of entertainment? The 40 best shows to watch on Netflix right now 

Our pick of the best streaming services for TV and movies

Netflix is the streaming service. It may not have been the first site ever to offer that kind of functionality, but it was the first one ever to go mainstream, and it remains a juggernaut in the streaming world. Chances are you have probably got a Netflix account or access to one through a friend, partner, or family member.

Netflix has by far the best catalog of original movies and shows, and the service comes with lovely quality-of-life features such as 4K streaming, Dolby Atmos support, downloads, and much more. But it can be easy to get lost in Netflix's many features.

Most people just flip on whatever it is they want to watch and try to spend as little time as possible lost in Netflix's UI. But that can lead to them missing stuff, making Netflix harder and less efficient to use than it can be. 

Not to worry; we at What Hi-Fi? are here to outline the most common mistakes people make with Netflix so you can avoid them in future.

Read on to learn what not to do for a night in...

Mistake 1:  Not adjusting streaming/download settings

Ever finish up a month and wonder how in the world your cell phone bill got so expensive? Well, it's probably because you used too much data and didn't splurge on the unlimited plan. The easiest way to overextend yourself in terms of data is through streaming, especially video content – and most especially high-quality video content. Luckily, whatever device you are on, you can change your Netflix streaming and download settings easily from within the app (see above).

Netflix notes that for Low video quality, an hour will run you about 300 megabytes; for Medium video quality, that'll be 700 megabytes for an hour; and High video quality will take anywhere from 1GB to 7GB for an hour. Standard definition high video quality is 1GB; HD high video quality is 3GB an hour; and 4K high video quality is 7GB an hour. Naturally, these are all averages.

For downloads, you can choose between Standard and High, if you pay for the Standard or Premium Netflix plans which offer HD and Ultra HD content, otherwise you will be downloading at Standard quality. Standard will be a standard definition download at around 480p, while High will be an HD download between 720p and 1080p. Sizes will vary, but for Standard quality an episode of a TV show will be a few hundred megabytes, while movies will be closer to a gigabyte, and naturally, High quality content will take up more space.

• How to watch Netflix with friends with Teleparty

Mistake 2: Not checking what region your content is in

Streaming services have been around for a long time, and most people know by now that the stuff on offer in a particular country is not going to be the same as stuff offered in another country. This comes down to the licensing deals that keep streaming sites like Netflix afloat, often being specific to certain regions of the world. However, this can make finding out if a particular piece of content is actually watchable in your region difficult

Even if you do a search to see if your show is on the site you are subscribed to and find that it is available in principle, it might not be accessible in your region. If you want to be sure something is actually watchable where you are in the world, consider using a service such as JustWatch that allows you to check streaming services on a region-by-region basis. 

But you can also access geo-restricted features of websites such as Netflix with a VPN, which allows you to browse the internet without your ISP (or anyone else) knowing who you are or where you're from. Check out our list of the best cheap VPN deals around to find a good VPN for you at an even better price, if you're interested.

• The best music documentaries on Netflix

Mistake 3: Not using Netflix on a computer 

Many of us appreciate the convenience of accessing our favourite streaming services anywhere we go, while few love the struggle of spending all your time searching for something to watch and not actually watching something. On a computer, desktop Netflix has a lot of cool features you can take advantage of to make browsing for content easier and more efficient – but you wouldn’t know that if you only use Netflix on other devices.

First off, on a computer, Netflix has a variety of keyboard shortcuts. Then, you can also access a huge number of hidden genres and categories, including using a Chrome extension that makes all these hidden categories browsable. In fact, there are a huge variety of browser extensions that let you tweak and customise your Netflix experience when you’re on a computer, far outstripping the features Netflix itself offers.

Suffice it to say that if using a computer to access Netflix is something you can do comfortably, give it a go, especially if you often find yourself stuck searching for something to watch and not actually watching things.

• The best documentaries on Netflix UK

Mistake 4: Not opting out of test participation

Ever hop on Netflix to find out something’s different and realise you have to figure out how a new system works? Outside the routine updates and changes to its platform, Netflix also continuously beta tests changes with users, pushing out new features to some and seeing how users feel about the changes. Sometimes, this is really cool – you get the first shot at playing with the next big thing – but on other occasions you can be frustrated using a glitchy new system.

By default, Netflix opts you in to test participation, so if you don’t want that, you will have to turn it off. Luckily, that’s not a hard fix, but of course, you need to know about the possibility in the first place.

• Our official Netflix review

Mistake 5: Not doing your research before subscribing 

This may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s actually more complicated than you might think. Research goes beyond simply checking out the price of a certain service and seeing if your favourite show or movie (or just the one you want to watch right now) is up on the site. There are actually a ton more considerations to make and things to think about when signing up for a streaming service, whether you’re a new or returning customer.

With Netflix, the Basic $9.99 a month tier doesn't offer HD or Ultra HD streaming (or downloads). Frequently, Netflix content moves off Netflix, often to Hulu, so you should get into the habit of checking if your favourite Netflix show is still on Netflix if it's not a Netflix Original. And Netflix has some weird quirks where it will censor and remove certain episodes of certain shows, such as 30 Rock and Community.

There are many different things to consider before signing up for a streaming service, so you should do some research and check out what problems other people have before you pull the trigger. It may sound a little boring, but better that you spend the time up front rather than get frustrated and surprised later on.

• 3 great sports documentaries to watch on Netflix

Mistake 6: Not turning off autoplay 

Basically, all streaming services automatically play clips, previews, or even full-on videos as you are scrolling to give you a taste of the content on offer. Sometimes, this can be a nice little trailer; sometimes, it can just be extremely annoying; and sometimes, you can get inadvertently spoiled on something you actually really want to watch. Luckily, Netflix has an autoplay setting you can adjust. 

So, if you don’t like autoplay, here’s your reminder to turn it off! Beyond turning it off, though, you can always simply mute whichever app as you scroll through if you find autoplay annoying only sometimes. It’s also good to remember that autoplay usually works based on time, meaning that if you keep a piece of content selected for a long enough period of time, a clip will begin playing. You can counteract this as well by scrolling more quickly.

MORE:

Our list of the best streaming services for movies and TV shows 2022

And our list of the best music streaming services 2022

As well as the best media streamers 2022

After two years away due to you know what, the beloved Munich High End show is back to finally reunite hi-fi enthusiasts and industry folk alike after what has been a long, gruelling absence from in-person demonstrations and large-scale events. And team What Hi-Fi? is ecstatic to be back amongst it all.

This week the MOC München is playing host to the high-end hi-fi show, with the first two days solely reserved for trade visitors and the weekend days opening up to the general public.

• 11 of the best products at High End Munich 2022

Naturally, plenty of familiar names are present, including Arcam, Burmester, Chord Electronics, Copland, Dali, Dan D’Agostino, Focal, Fyne Audio, iFi, Mark Levinson, Monitor Audio, Naim, PMC, Sonus Faber, Wilson Benesch and Wharfedale. Make no mistake, they are all armed with their latest and greatest products, new and old, showcasing and demonstrating their kit alongside hundreds of smaller high-end hi-fi manufacturers from around the globe.

Here are all the news and product announcements so far from High End Munich 2022. We will of course be updating this page with all our news and features from the show...

High End Munich 2022: the news so far

Dyanudio unveils Focus range of active wireless stereo speakers – If you want a mix of modern and traditional for your next hi-fi system, then you might want to consider a pair of active streaming speakers, like the new Dynaudio Focus. Read the full Dynaudio Focus story.

Triangle Borea Active speakers bring wireless convenience to five-star design – The passive BR03 and BR02 speakers now have active siblings with aptX HD Bluetooth support. Read the full Triangle Borea Active story.

Monitor Audio strives for speaker perfection – The Concept 50 prototype is already pretty astonishing and it isn't even finished yet. Read the full Monitor Audio Concept 50 story.

Fyne Vintage speakers promise retro looks and cutting-edge technology – Do you want classic looks and bang-up-to-date speaker design? Fyne Audio has just the thing. Read the full Fyne Vintage story.

Dali has a new flagship speaker – The Kore promises a "design, electroacoustic, engineering, manufacturing and musical rebirth". But it'll cost ya... Read the full Dali Kore story.

Limited edition Metallica turntable – Pro-Ject rides the lighting with this firebolt of a record player in celebration of the biggest hard rock band in the world. Read the full Metallica turntable story.

Pro-Ject is backing balanced turntables – The Pro-Ject X1 B and X2 B promise to remove picked up noise and interference by using a balanced connection. Read the full Pro-Ject balanced turntables story.

Monitor Audio is marking its 50th anniversary with the Silver 100 Limited Edition speakers – The five-star speakers now have a classic 'Heritage Green' finish but you'll have to move fast if you want a pair. Read the full Monitor Audio story. 

Focal and Naim have teamed up for a special edition streaming system – the Focal Aria K2 926 & Naim Uniti Star Ash Grey. The name may be a bit of a mouthful but it does at least deliver a list of features to match, incorporating a Uniti Star streamer and the Aria 926 floorstanding speakers. Read the full Naim and Focal story. 

Denon's well-equipped PMA-1700NE integrated amp doesn't discriminate on source – A beast of an amplifier with connections galore, support for high-resolution audio via USB and a built-in phono stage. Read the full Denon PMA-1700NE story.

Denon reveals PMA-900HNE HEOS streaming amplifier and matching CD player – Denon's new 'best of both' pairing blends physical CDs with high-quality digital streams. It's affordably priced, too. Read the full Denon PMA-900HNE story.

CD sales are on the rise and the new Marantz CD 60 player is here for it – The Marantz CD 60 player combines CD playback with hi-res USB support in the hope of keeping the format alive in hi-fi component systems. Read the full Marantz CD 60 story.

iFi Go Bar aims to be the gold standard of portable DACs (and not just in colour) – The pocket-sized DAC/headphone amp is designed to be the audio-enhancing filling between a USB source and wired headphones sandwich. Read the full iFi Go Bar story.

Revitalised Epos resurrects legendary ES14 speakers with a modern twist – The new ES14N echo the famous originals but are thoroughly modern speakers at heart with a totally new design at their core. Read the full Epos ES14N story.

Yamaha introduces Hi-Fi 2000 Series – meet the R-N2000A streaming amp and NS-2000A floorstanders – The 2000 Series comes in below the company’s existing Hi-Fi 5000 and 3000 offerings with the aim of bringing its advanced technologies to what we can only imagine is more affordable prices. Read the full Yamaha Hi-Fi 2000 Series story.

T+A Solitaire T aim to set new standards for both wired and wireless headphones – The German brand is aiming to serve up not just excellent sound quality at home but anywhere you go. Read the full T+A Solitaire T story.

High End Munich 2022: what we expect from the rest

Astell & Kern
The US portable music player purveyor has just announced three products that will be on show at Munich, no doubt alongside more models from its line-up. The Kann Alpha Max is essentially an upgraded version of the five-star Kann Alpha that features four DACs and packs more power (15V RMS) into a smaller, lighter body. Then there's the latest collaboration between Astell & Kern and US headphone maker – the Pathfinder, a pair of in-ear monitors with Dual-Chamber Balanced Armature (BA) Driver technology. Last but not least is the Astell & Kern AK HC2 Dual DAC Cable, a tiny little device that promises to boost the on-the-go sound from portable Apple and Android devices – something the original variant did very well.
Where? Room D02/E03a, Hall 1

Cambridge Audio
Cambridge Audio will be showing off its upgraded Alva turntables – first announced at CES and newly on sale. The Alva TT V2 is a Bluetooth aptX HD direct-drive turntable, while the Alva ST is a more affordable (albeit still aptX HD-supporting) belt-drive model. This will be the first time media and show visitors will be able to get hands-on with the two decks in Europe.
Where? Room F114, Atrium 4.1

Dali
The Danish brand has invited What Hi-Fi? to the world premiere of its Kore (spelled as such in typical Dali fashion) flagship speaker on the first day of the show. Dali is understandably keeping tight-lipped on details of its range-topper until the official unveiling, but the teaser it has released is suitably teasing, stating that this "powerhouse" of a speaker "incorporates new Dali technologies and sets new standards for loudspeaker design, high fidelity and performance". While the spotlight will undoubtedly be shining brightest on the Kore model(s), Dali will also be using Munich to demonstrate the BluOS-powered Equi active wireless surround system it announced late last year.
Where? Room C112 & D108, Atrium 3.1

dCS
Quite literally, the apex of dCS’s offering will be on display at this year’s show – the new-and-improved Apex editions of its Vivaldi DAC, Rossini DAC and Rossini Player, not to mention the just-announced Vivaldi One Apex, which combines a DAC, Upsampler, CD/SACD Transport and Master Clock in a single chassis. 

If you were wondering what the significance of these Apex editions is, know that they feature a new ‘Apex’ version of the company’s bespoke, built-from-the-ground-up digital signal processing engine that we believe to be one of the best British innovations in audio of all time. The Ring DAC Apex hardware is the result of dCS’s engineers reconfiguring the Ring DAC circuit board, modifying the reference supply and developing a new analogue output stage to achieve both measure and sonic improvements. Needless to say, our hopes for these Apex iterations are very high indeed.
Where? Room F209, Atrium 4.2 & Room E06, Hall 1

Fyne Audio
Scotland's Fyne Audio will be using Munich to showcase several new products that span two ranges and £4000 - £30,000 price brackets – so there really will be plenty to see in its exhibition space this year. And if the teaser image below is anything to go by, one or more of those products will be of the 'vintage' ilk. Fyne has held off producing a retro-modern design in the past but now feels this is the time it could really produce something with a totally appropriate appearance and style that embraces all of its current and patented F1 technology with IsoFlare, FyneFlute and BassTrax. We, for one, cannot wait to see what the Scottish speaker brand has come up with.
Where? Room E116, Atrium 4.1

Harman Luxury
Never short on an exciting output from its high-calibre assortment of high-end brands, Harman spaces are always must-visits at shows, and this Munich show will be no exception – not least as the group's Mark Levinson brand turns 50 this year.

There will be two full-fat demonstration areas for visitors to treat their ears. One will centre around a Mark Levinson system that includes the 50th anniversary-celebrating ML-50 monoblocs, No. 526 preamp, No. 519 digital streaming audio player and No. 5105 turntable, headed up by the mega-money beast of speakers that are the JBL Everest DD67000. While the other will be a dedicated headphones area focusing on the new Mark Levinson No. 5909 over-ears.

Visitors will also be able to spy a vast number of products on display, such as the JBL 4305P powered speakers and the high-spec'd Arcam AVR11, 21 and 31 AVRs and processors.
Where? Room F106/F120, Atrium 4.1

iFi
iFi has been one of the success stories of the past decade, especially in the budget electronics market. As it reaches double digits in age this year, the British brand will not only be about quality this Munich but also quantity as it gets ready to showcase the Zen One Signature and Zen Air series together with a yet-to-be-announced product that joins the five-star GO blu in iFi’s GO Series of uber-portable DAC/headphone amps. What's more, there will also be a special anniversary edition of this new GO Series device! No, not all iFi products scream 'high-end' exactly, but who is to say we can't enjoy some real-world kit at the show too?
Where? Room E109, Atrium 4.1

Mission
Expect to hear some noise around the ‘Made in the UK’ creations from IAG, the parent company of such brands as Mission, Wharfedale, Leak and Castle. The group recently launched a ‘Made in the UK’ initiative that introduced a new ‘heritage’ series of specially selected products from different brands all designed, engineered and manufactured in the UK, following the company’s recent expansion of their facilities in Huntingdon. The Mission 770 standmounters were the first in the series, so they will undoubtedly make their presence known in Munich. And who knows, we might even be fortunate enough to get a preview of another ‘heritage’ speaker from the IAG family coming down the line, too…

Monitor Audio, Roksan
It seems Monitor Audio will be turning 50 in style this year. For its first public show in over two years, the British brand will be "revealing a truly exceptional product concept, which [their] team has been working hard on behind the scenes for the past 24 months". Our guess is as good as yours, but this new concept is bound to turn heads in Munich. Then, there will be a demo of Roksan's Xerxes 20 Plus turntable, while the new Roksan Attessa entry-level hi-fi range is also set to be displayed for the first time at a show.

Naim, Focal
2022 is a year of great celebration for Naim and Focal, who are commemorating the 10th anniversary year of their union. At Munich, the two brands will together showcase the best of ‘Focal Powered by Naim’. Details are under wraps for now, but the companies tell us there will be a range of great systems on demo to suit a range of different budgets and room styles… including something special making its debut in Munich. Consider our appetites whetted. 

Headphone fanatics will be able to get ears-on with the five-star Uniti Atom Headphone Edition system, too, with a range of Focal headphones (including the reference closed-back Stellia) at their demo disposal.
Where? Room F105, Atrium 4.1

PMC
The British brand will be sharing a space with AVM (its distributor in Germany) to demonstrate its flagship speakers, Fact Fenestria, and showcase its twenty5i and ci series models. The Fenestra are the result of PMC aiming to make the best passive loudspeaker it could and thus represent the pinnacle of the company’s speaker design. Considering we called them “without doubt one of the finest speakers we’ve heard” in our recent Fact Fenestria review, the Munich show is the perfect place to test out this truly world-class piece of hi-fi kit.
Where? Room D107, Atrium 3

Pro-Ject
Pro-Ject’s latest turntable, the X8, could well be one of the more interesting tables on display at the more modest end of Munich's ‘high-end’ spectrum. Its got balanced XLR connectivity and a moving coil cartridge that will hopefully show off the benefits of balanced circuitry at this level. We wouldn’t be surprised if the company’s also new, also affordable and also balanced Phono Box DS3 B and Phono Box S3 B MM/MC phono stages make an appearance as well. We hear there also may be a surprise on top of all that, too.
Where? Room M02, Hall 3

Wilson Benesch
Launched in February, Wilson Benesch’s second in command in the brand's catalogue will enjoy its first exhibition outing in Munich. The Omnium sits below the flagship Eminence from which it borrows many features, including the A.C.T. 3Zero Monocoque enclosure and the company's proprietary Tactic 3.0 drivers and Fibonacci tweeters.

Interestingly, Omnium (from the Latin 'of all') is what Wilson Benesch is calling the world’s first ‘green loudspeaker’: a speaker that uses next-generation materials and technologies (as opposed to oil-based non-recyclables) developed through a collaborative project of nearly five years – SSUCHY (a welcome abbreviation of 'Sustainable Structural & Multifunctional Biocomposites from Hybrid Natural Fibres and bio-based Polymers').
Where? Room C114, Atrium 3.1

More to follow...

Shrewsbury Town travel to Liverpool today in the Third Round of the 2021/22 FA Cup. The Reds are expected to field a team of youngsters after covid outbreaks and the start of the African Cup of Nations, left Jurgen Klopp with a depleted first XI. Liverpool vs Shrewsbury Town will not be televised in the UK, but Aussie football fans can watch FA Cup games free on 10play. Make sure you know how to watch a Liverpool vs Shrewsbury Town live stream from anywhere with a VPN.

The team news is in and Virgil van Dijk leads a Liverpool blend of youth and experience with starts for Max Woltman, Tyler Morton, Elijah Dixon-Bonner, Kadie Gordon and Curtis Jones.

With Mo Salah, Sadio Mane and Naby Keita all participating in the 2022 African Cup of Nations, Liverpool's team selection is anyone's guess. What we do know is that Sunday's game will go ahead, despite Liverpool having to postpone their recent Carabao Cup semi-final match against Arsenal due to covid absences.

Plucky Shrewsbury Town will be hoping to make the classic cup upset in what will be the fourth time that these two sides have met. As you might have guessed, Shrewsbury Town are yet to beat Liverpool FC in any competition but they took the Reds to replay a couple of seasons ago. There might be no better time to make the next step...

Kick-off for Liverpool vs Shrewsbury Town is on Sunday, 9th January, at 2pm GMT. The match isn't televised in the UK, but Aussies can stream it free on 10play. Read on to find out how to watch a Liverpool vs Shrewsbury free live stream from anywhere – without being blocked.

Liverpool vs Shrewsbury Town free live stream

Network 10 recently picked up the rights to the FA Cup in Australia. So although Liverpool vs Shrewsbury Town isn't televised in the UK, Aussie viewers can watch live on 10play.

The  streaming service is only available within Australia. But if you're an Aussie stuck in the UK or elsewhere outside your home country, you can access 10play from anywhere – and stream the match free – using a VPN.

Here's how to use a VPN...

Watch a Liverpool vs Shrewsbury live stream online using a VPN

Even if you have subscribed to the relevant FA Cup rights holders, you won't be able to use them when outside your own country. The service will know your location based on your IP address, and will automatically block your access.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) helps you get around this obstacle. A VPN creates a private connection between your device and the internet, and saves you money. What's not to like?

How to use a VPN

Using a VPN is incredibly simple.

1. Install the VPN of your choice. ExpressVPN is the one we recommend.

2. Open up the VPN app and choose the location of the service you wish to access. For the FA Cup, you may wish to choose 'Australia' to access 10play.

3. Then head over to 10play on your browser or device and enjoy a Liverpool vs Shrewsbury live stream.

If, for whatever reason, you can't get it working, then do remember that you have the comfort of a 30-day money back guarantee with ExpressVPN. You could also try NordVPN, which also comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, and Surfshark which offers 24 hour assistance.

• Our pick of the the best VPN deals 

Watch a Liverpool vs Shrewsbury live stream in USA

ESPN and ESPN+ have the rights to show the FA Cup in the US, as well as a host of other premium sport. All matches will be available in English and Spanish.

You can sign up to ESPN+, the channel's online streaming service, for just $6.99 a month (or $13.99 a month if you bundle it with Disney+ and Hulu).

Alternatively, you can watch games free on 10play with a VPN, such as ExpressVPN. Liverpool vs Shrewsbury starts kicks off at 9am ET / 6am PT on Sunday 9th January 2022.

There's also the option to watch ESPN through Sling, the cable replacement service. Subscription to Sling costs $35 a month but new subscribers get a free 3-day trial.

Watch a Liverpool vs Shrewsbury live stream in USA

Some FA Cup games – including Liverpool vs Shrewsbury – are not televised in the UK.

But remember: you can watch FA Cup games free on 10play with a VPN, such as ExpressVPN, if you're an Australian citizen in the UK.

Worth knowing, right? Full details above.

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The co-founder back in 1982 of Canadian brand Paradigm, Scott Bagby, took 100% ownership of Paradigm, Anthem and MartinLogan Loudspeakers in 2019, removing from the equation the private-equity involvement of America’s Shoreview Industries – although Bagby and his Paradigm co-founder Jerry VanderMarel had originally acquired the Anthem brand way back in 1998. 

The operational freedom thus gained seems not to have been in the least restrained by the Covid disruptions of the last 18 months. In December last year Anthem announced an entirely new suite of AV products – nine new models of processors, power amps and integrated AV receivers, rebuilt and redesigned to update the full Anthem range for all the latest technologies. 

This MRX 540 is the junior of the three new AV receivers, its siblings rising to the MRX 1140 with its 11 channels of amplification and processing for up to 15.2 channels. The MRX 540 reviewed here offers five channels of amplification, rated at 100W per channel with all channels driven, though again it can process more, up to seven channels. 

Its power is proper Class-AB; this is not a company which has yet been seduced by the efficiencies of Class-D modules. And on that foundation Anthem presents something remarkable here, as this receiver is loaded with secret weaponry, and we found both the style and substance on offer from this receiver to be particularly impressive.

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New look, new interface

So Paradigm, Anthem, and MartinLogan are all based in Mississauga, Ontario, where among other delights they have access to the research and facilities of the legendary National Research Council of Canada. 

Here in Australia, Anthem doesn’t have quite the brand recognition of some competitors; in Connected magazine’s ‘Most Popular’ survey for 2020 the leaders in AV receivers ran from Yamaha, Denon and Integra to Marantz, Pioneer and Onkyo. 

But across the Pacific, this position is reversed, with Anthem vying for the top spots in both brand recognition and market share. The MRX 540 demonstrates why – indeed, it’s hard to know quite where to start. But let’s begin with two relatively superficial aspects that impressed us initially – its physical design, and its network access to settings menus.

Compare Anthem’s previous AV receivers with the new range and it’s like they’ve moved forward into a different century, from twin knobs either side of an LCD display in the middle (yawn), to this new stylishly-fonted modern graphic display dominating the entire left half of the fascia, with a single large knob to the right, flanked by a trio of small buttons on each side. 

This new look has come straight from the recent STR amplifier series, and it’s an unmitigated success here. We gather it’s not only the outsides which have gained from the STR amplifiers;  new circuit ideas have also been applied to the new receivers. All this development goes on at the Paradigm/Anthem Advanced Research Center in Gloucester, Ottawa. This receiver is actually built in Vietnam.

The new fascia layout and display make it easy to use the supplied remote control to shuttle through the options and settings available, but that is very much not the way you will want to interact with your Anthem receiver once you discover the Anthem Web User Interface. 

As soon as the receiver is networked, you check its network menu to get its IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.14), then type that into any browser on your network – on your computer, your iPad, even your phone. Up pops a super-friendly and frankly addictive interface with which you can do all the key set-up for everything you’d otherwise be doing on your knees with the remote control. 

Many other receivers, of course, offer similar access to settings through their on-screen menus; the Anthem also does this if you adjust settings using the remote control. 

That’s handy, but it interrupts and overlays what’s showing on your big screen; we’ve seen some overlays that even cause resolution changes that kick off a sequence of fresh HDMI handshakes. By moving this to a web interface, you can have the Anthem playing away while you adjust stuff on your phone or tablet. Second-screening your settings in this way is a great advance.

Inputs and virtual inputs

The MRX 540 is pretty well-equipped with inputs for a receiver at this level. There are seven HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs, one of them with eARC. There are five sets of analogue inputs on RCA sockets, three optical digital inputs, two coaxial digital inputs, plus three trigger sockets, an IR extender input and an RS-232 connection.

The outputs are also unusually prolific for this level, with five sets of speaker binding posts, but also a full set of RCA line-level pre-outs for all five channels plus two extra (because of the seven-channel processing), plus a pair of stereo line outputs and two undifferentiated subwoofer outputs. There’s even an optical output. And there’s a full-size headphone output on the front panel.

What’s not included? There’s no USB-B for direct computer playback, and there’s no phono stage. Nor is there much in the way of built-in streaming services, though there is AirPlay 2 and Chromecast and Bluetooth for point-to-point streaming (see below). 

All inputs are easily selected and ready to go out of the box, but we can again almost guarantee that once you’ve cottoned on to Anthem’s system of virtual inputs, you won’t be using those any more. 

For each designated input, you can reallocate everything (see screengrab below) – the choice of video socket, the audio socket, the speaker profile, the use of Anthem Room Correction, lip-sync delay and volume trim, whether to apply additional Dolby post-processing for Music, Movie or Night settings, or a ‘listening mode’ which can upscale mono or stereo signals to a wider set of speakers. And not only can you make changes to the standard inputs, you can create entirely new ones, up to 30 virtual inputs in total. 

We quickly made stereo variants for 2.0 and 2.1 so we could listen to music with or without the subwoofer in circuit. Better still we could still tweak the subwoofer’s settings on the fly using our iPad while listening to music, hearing and tweaking the result.

And you can rename each of these virtual inputs, with the rewritten names immediately reflected on the front-panel display. Custom installers must love this, as it looks so professional (and intuitive) to have the inputs clearly named, instead of having to select HDMI 3 for Blu-ray, Optical 2 for your CD player, etc. We loved this; it looks so good.

Other brands do offer similar systems – Yamaha, for example, has its ‘Scenes’ increasingly to the fore on its receivers. But that’s nothing like as intuitive as the system here. You can also easily switch the front panel from showing dB settings for volume, which can confuse some users, to show instead a percentage volume scale from 0 to 100. 

Under the web interface you can also define the four available Speaker Profiles. We were doing so when we noticed that the manual advises it’s much easier to do so using the Anthem Room Correction software.

We confess that normally we save room correction for the closing stages of our reviews. But given this advice, we moved things forward, and headed back to the Anthem packaging to retrieve the microphone system required to set ARC under way.

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Anthem room correction

Anthem Room Correction is the end result of the Athena project developed by Canada’s National Research Council. Which gave us more hope than usual. 

We’ve always doubted the microphones in room correction systems especially, clearly critical to success but rarely of any real quality – how much of a receiver’s budget would a company spend here given it’s a one-off setting which a good many users may never even employ? Anthem has invested in better microphones (pictured) for the latest range, in addition to software improvements.

You head to anthemarc.com to download the required software; the online manual indicated the MRX units require the beta version, but the website itself supersedes this advice, pointing you to the new ARC Genesis. 

We used a MacBook Pro laptop to allow freedom of movement, since you attach the microphone to the computer, not the receiver. The software installed easily, even cleaning up nicely after itself, and we selected the ‘Auto Mode’, though there’s also a Pro Mode if you desire, supporting a “granular level of customisation”. 

On the microphone, a dot with a sticker indicates this should face the front of the room. How do you get it into the perfect position? Anthem includes a large dual-pivoting microphone stand in the box! 

Compare this to most such systems which come with a curious puck microphone and at best a piece of folding cardboard to support it (“use milk crates!” one instruction manual volunteers for this lack of provision). Here the microphone is light but high quality, a USB-C connector in its base. 

You have to measure from at least five positions, these being where your head would normally be, then the front left and right of your couch, finally a little behind the left and right of your couch.

 We selected to calibrate in 5.1, in 2.0 and in 2.1, so we had to move the microphone fourteen times (possibly the software might be designed to do all three calibrations from the first position, then the second, which would reduce this to four moves…). 

Also the software says to point the microphone at the ceiling, which may confuse those who have pointed the dot to the front as requested. Also do you keep the dot facing forwards when in the side positions, or toed in a little to point at the centre of the screen? This we do not know. 

However, we have never been so confident that the system was getting a high-quality input with which to perform its calibration process, whatever one’s view of room correction in general may be.

Process completed, you upload the results to the receiver, and you can save a PDF of the results, or view them on screen. For each calibration and each speaker this shows you the measured curve, the desired curve and the corrected curve. It announced that we had a room gain of nearly 4dB centred on 200Hz, which matches what we’ve previously established, and no deep bass boost that needed correction.

An unusual feature of Anthem’s ARC is that it recognises the value of room effect and doesn’t try to wipe it out entirely, thereby removing the warmth we’re all used to. Canadian brands are big on room effect – compare this to Paul Barton’s RoomFeel, also developed with the NRC.

And perhaps this is why, when we tried out the results, we liked them. We very very rarely do, or we can’t hear a difference at all, but here it was obvious, and positive. We listened first in stereo (we had calibrated for stereo also), and with Walk on the Wild Side the ARC added warmth to Lou Reed’s vocal, not reducing its cut-through in any way, but changing it from something just slightly clinical to something more real and round. 

There was a similar reality boost for Leonard Cohen’s difficult wide-band vocal on the ‘Live on London’ version of Tower of Song, while Joni Mitchell’s latter version of Both Sides Now just came to life under the ARC’s amended curve; it hollowed out without it. 

Only when we had this track’s climax up and pumping did the corrected version sound a little strained, slightly pushed compared with the uncorrected version, as if the boosted frequencies were over-boosted. 

But this is not only the most successful room correction we’ve ever used for stereo, it’s the only one we’ve ever chosen to leave engaged. Besides, with the web interface up on the iPad, or the MacBook at this point, we could choose to flick it on or off as the particular case deserved. 

Unlike some systems, the Anthem ARC does not set your speaker distances automatically; you need to do those in advance, or afterwards. Requiring only a tape measure to achieve, this should not prove a challenge even for technophobes.

Multichannel sound

With surround soundtracks, the ARC proved even more effective, improving tone, steering and in particular the bass management. We ran the Atmos-TrueHD opening of the first Hobbit movie from UHD Blu-ray, and with ARC the centre-channel narration by Bilbo was cured of a slight over-rounding, and the whole sound seemed clarified and more focused. 

Without ARC the arrival of Smaug was huge and blustery; with ARC engaged it was huge and exciting, the realm between subwoofer and midrange notably cleared out so that individual effects were more easily discerned and the full soundstage simply better defined and more integrated.

This all adds to what had already been a solid surround performance, now raised to an alarmingly addictive level. We would run a test scene – the Nile opening of X-Men: Apocalypse, for example – and were kept spellbound by subsequent scenes, with some spectacular steering of Scott’s toilet banging scene, and the cage-fight. We’ve seen all this  before, but it was repeatably entertaining when delivered with a marvellously impressive soundfield, and wodges of power.

That power is quoted at 100 watts per channel continuous power into eight ohms, or 130W into six ohms, though these figures are measured allowing 1% THD, far higher than for hi-fi equipment. All five channels on this receiver are identical, though on the higher Anthem receivers some channels have reduced power available. 

Anthem comments that when driving all channels the power drop on each is less than 1dB, when it’s not unusual for all-channel power to drop by 30% or more compared with single-channel power. With everything we played through the Anthem, we had no sense of limitation; quite the opposite, indeed: the power was palpable. 

We were running with sizeable speakers in a small to medium space, so larger rooms may benefit from the increased power of higher models; it seemed simply unrequired in our space.

The higher two Anthem receivers do, however, have the benefit of what the company calls ‘Amp Matrixing’, which adds the further versatility of allocating the amp channels to different purposes. In those models you could use an external amplifier for the L, R channels (via the preout sockets) and allocate the unused amplifiers for height or back surrounds. 

The MRX 540 is less flexible. It offers preouts for all channels, including a bonus pair which can be allocated to height or back surround. But if you want to use those, for 7.1 or 5.1.2, you’ll need to bring your own amp; you can’t reallocate the other channels to them. Which is a pity, but you could still use preferred external amps for L/R and just leave the Anthem L/R ones unused.

We ended up trying that, so that we could restore our reference power amps to their rightful role when playing stereo. With all those preouts available for everything, there is still great flexibility.

The Anthem can decode both Atmos and DTS:X in addition to lesser surround formats. It also passes HDR including Dolby Vision from HDMI inputs to its output, and has eARC so it can play surround formats received by your TV down the HDMI cable connection. It is also compatible with IMAX Enhanced (the purpose and utility of which we’ve yet to grasp). 

The current run of MRX 540s, including our unit, has HDMI 2.0b silicon, but will be hardware upgradeable to 8K-compatible HDMI 2.1, primarily for gamers seeking 4K/120 support for the latest consoles; the Australian distributor Audio Active tells us the switch to the replacement board will cost AU$99. Another running change during production may be to replace the 32-bit 768kHz DAC, which is from AKM, whose supplies are now restricted not by Covid but by a factory fire in Japan.

• How to combine stereo and surround sound in one AV system

Streaming smarts

Of course receivers today generally contain a whole lot more than just amplifiers. They’re expected to stream music and often a whole lot more. The Anthems are rather less endowed in this way than Yamaha with its MusicCast platform, or Denon and Marantz with HEOS. 

Rather than have a streaming and multiroom module onboard, the Anthem instead hosts Chromecast, AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth, which should cover music streaming from any device of choice, and is certainly a great step forward from the previously supported DTS PlayFi. 

These are all point-to-point streaming, however, so that the Anthems don’t offer internet radio, let alone FM or DAB+ which some rivals have; there’s no DLNA/UPnP network streaming, and indeed the receiver cannot itself stream music direct from the internet in any way, except for Spotify Connect, which is listed as ‘coming soon’. 

So is Roon compatibility, which will then enable direct Tidal and or Qobuz streaming under Roon control, though requiring ongoing subscriptions to both Roon and your service of choice. That option aside, there’s a fair argument here for getting a separate streamer and plugging it in. And why not. 

More impressive, and another recommendation for custom installers, is the easy integration with multiple control systems – Control4, RTi, Savant, Elan, Crestron and URC all have drivers available. And while previous Anthems required laborious manual software updates from a USB stick, this can now be done over the internet. 

We had networked the Anthem with an Ethernet cable; there is also Wi-Fi onboard, though this requires adding the longest antennas we can ever recall seeing, more than 19cm long, almost doubling the effective height of the MRX 540. 

Anything we didn’t like? Well the remote control is not a highlight of the system, feeling a little cheap and spongy, with some weird choices – the second set of rockers might be better giving prominence to something other than ‘PG/PR (DTS:X Dialog Level Control)’; there’s a whole block of Zone 2 controls which don’t apply to this receiver, and having separate buttons for power off and power on might be handy for integrators organising remote commands, but left us invariably pressing the wrong one. 

The binding posts for speaker connections are also disappointingly average – budget plastic posts, a little wobbly under the pressure of large speaker cables. 

More seriously we experienced a distracting level of noise coming from the receiver on regular occasions; a chattery noise we first thought to be the machinations of a nearby NAS drive, but no, it was from a fan blowing hot air up from the back right of the Anthem. 

This might be just our sample, or the result of us electing to leave the MRX 540 permanently on, which Anthem describes as “not recommended… it needs very little time, especially if actually playing something, to reach operating temperature and sound its best.” 

Vinyl fans have no phono stage here, so will require an external phono stage, or a turntable with one built-in. We noted here a nice suggestion from Anthem in its online FAQs, that “an old receiver can be substituted for a phono preamp – connect the turntable to the receiver’s phono input, and connect the receiver’s tape output to the preamplifier input”. 

This was how we connected our own turntable, using our resident Musical Fidelity preamp blessed with a fine phono stage. In our final listening sequence we did have our resident power amps running left and right channels, and when listening to the turntable in stereo, we had no inkling that the Anthem was digitally sampling the analogue inputs (at 24-bit/96kHz); it had no apparent destructive effect; our system had exactly the performance we usually enjoy, plus the Anthem’s surround sound when required. 

It’s a happy thought for stereo purists who want surround sound for home entertainment without compromising their purist stereo performance in the process. 

Those FAQs on Anthem’s website are a nice read; they’re so very lacking in marketing drivel. Here’s another: “Question: Are they better suited for music or for movies? Answer: Sound reproduction equipment doesn’t know the difference between a music signal and a movie signal, or for that matter the musical score within a movie soundtrack. Accurate for one means accurate for the other.”

Quite right. We sometimes say a unit works well with movies, less so with music. But what we really mean is that inaccuracies are self-evident with music, but more acceptable when masked by the complexities of a movie soundtrack. Inaccurate is just inaccurate, as Anthem rightly says.

Final verdict

So we ended up not only enjoying the entertainment flowing from Anthem’s MRX 540 very much indeed, but also simultaneously warming to the company which made it. 

We love their thinking, their implementations, the new aesthetic, the versatility here – and underlying it all, the performance. It’s an unreserved recommendation from us.

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Move over anime, J-pop and arcade games because the 2021 Tokyo Olympics have proven a sporting spectacular. Having handed out 339 gold medals, the games finish with a closing ceremony today at 12pm BST. Follow our guide below to get blanket streaming coverage of Tokyo 2020. UK viewers can watch the Olympics free on BBC iPlayer. Read on to find out how to get a Tokyo Olympics free live stream from anywhere in the world.

Sunday, 8th August: Brazil vs USA women's volleyball gold medal match at 12.30am ET  / 5.30am BST. Men's super heavyweight final bout at 2.15am ET / 7.15am BST. Closing ceremony at 7am ET / 12pm BST.

Despite the opening ceremony attracting just 17 million viewers – the lowest number since 1988 – The Games of the XXXII Olympiad are go. With foreign spectators banned, Tokyo 2020 athletes will complete for 339 gold medals behind closed doors. 

Some 11,000 athletes will take part in over 400 events covering 35 different sports and 53 disciplines. Usain Bolt may have retired but plenty of stars will be going for gold, including footballer Megan Rapinoe, tennis champ Naomi Osaka, basketball great Kevin Durant, gymnast Simone Biles, sprinter Dina Asher-Smith, cyclist Laura Kenny, freestyle swimmer Caeleb Dressel, 13-year-old skateboarder Sky Brown and Kenyan long-distance superstar Eliud Kipchoge (full athlete list).

The International Olympic Committee has introduced a number of new events this year, including freestyle BMX, 3x3 basketball and madison cycling. Japan's organising committee has also added a few sports including karate, surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing. Baseball and softball also return to the Olympics for the first time since 2008.

The closing ceremony is today, 8th August, at 8pm Japanese Standard Time (12pm BST / 7am ET).

Ready for two weeks of high emotions and manic medalling? UK viewers can watch free on BBC iPlayer. Make sure you know how to watch a Tokyo Olympics free live stream from wherever you are in the world.

Tokyo Olympics free live streams

With over 400 events in two weeks, knowing where to find best free live streams is vital if you want to catch all the action.

Gold: Aussie free streaming platform 7Plus takes gold with its comprehensive free coverage, across computer, tablet and mobile. 7Plus offers up to 16 live feeds, all free and in HD.

Stuck outside Australia during the Olympics? Aussies trying to access 7Plus from abroad can use a VPN to watch from anywhere, without being geo-blocked. We recommend ExpressVPN as it comes with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

Silver: BBC iPlayer takes silver thanks with an impressive 350 hours of coverage and two live streams in HD. Again, you'll need to use a VPN when away from the UK.

Bronze: Canada's CBC and New Zealand's TVNZ take joint bronze. Both websites offer decent free streaming coverage of Tokyo 2020. Use a VPN to access whenever you're abroad.

Tokyo Olympics: watch every single event

Discovery+ has the bulk of the rights and is showing (almost) every event live – it even has a multi-camera mode! 

You can stream all the action through Discovery+ or Eurosport Player. Both cost £6.99 a month or £29.99 for a whole year and new users get a three-day trial. Outside the UK? Simply use a VPN to watch from anywhere.

• F1 live stream: how to watch every 2021 grand prix from anywhere

Watch the Tokyo Olympics free from abroad using a VPN

Even if you have subscribed to the relevant Tokyo 2020 rights holders, you won't be able to access them when outside your own country. The service will know your location based on your IP address, and will automatically block your access.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) helps you get around this obstacle. A VPN creates a private connection between your device and the internet, such that the servers and services you’re accessing aren’t aware of what you’re doing. All the information passing back and forth is entirely encrypted.

There are lots of VPN providers but some are more reliable and safe than others. As a rule, we suggest a paid-for service such as ExpressVPN which offers a 100 per cent risk-free money back guarantee. If you're not happy with the service any time within the first 30-days, then you can cancel with no penalties at all.

Watch a Tokyo Olympics live stream in the UK

If you live in the UK and want the best possible coverage of the Tokyo Olympics, try Eurosport via the Discovery+ streaming service for £6.99 a month or £29.99 a year. Discovery has the rights to almost every event and in-depth shows featuring top former Olympians Sir Bradley Wiggins and Greg Rutherford MBE. 

New Discovery+ users get a free 3-day trial. You can also subscribe to Amazon Prime and sign up for a free 7-day Eurosport trial. After the trial ends, you can subscribe at the usual £6.99 per month.

Away from the UK during the Olympics? Simply use a VPN to watch Discovery+ from anywhere in the world. We recommend ExpressVPN as it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The BBC is another good option. BBC One and BBC Two will broadcast over 350 hours of action live from Tokyo, while a live stream available on BBC iPlayer will ensure fans can catch all the unmissable moments online (up to 24 hours a day). It's all free provided you have a TV licence.

In addition to daily event coverage, JJ Chalmers hosts from midnight to 5am, followed by Dan Walker and Sam Quek co-hosting a special edition of BBC Breakfast from 5am - 9am with the best overnight action. Olympics Extra, a daily in-depth highlights show on BBC Two at 9pm, replays the key moments of the day.

Watch a Tokyo Olympics live stream in the USA

NBC is the official US broadcaster for Tokyo 2020. Don't have cable? You can watch the games online using cable replacement service Sling TV. Pick the Blue package, which includes NBC Sports Network, and get the first month for just $10. It's $35 per month thereafter but with no contract. Cancel at any time.

Away from the States? Simply use a VPN to access Peacock from anywhere in the world, without being blocked. We recommend ExpressVPN as it comes with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

Peacock TV, NBC's streaming platform, is another decent option for cord cutters. Coverage is limited and some events are streamed the day after, due to rights issues, but it's a great way to watch the men's basketball gold medal match. 

Peacock costs just $4.99 a month (or $9.99 with limited ads) and includes thousands of movies, TV shows, kids content and other live sport. New users get a free 7-day trial.

Watch a Tokyo Olympics live stream in Australia

With Tokyo in (almost) the same time zone as Australia, Channel 7 has gone big and secured the rights to a truckload of Olympic action. The station's has 45 dedicated Olympic channels, including up to 16 live streams across the 7Plus streaming platform. 

Going to be away from Oz? Simply use a VPN to stream 7Plus from anywhere in the world. We recommend ExpressVPN as it comes with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.

Olympic sprinter Matt Shirvington and Edwina Bartholomew host the afternoon show, while Hamish McLachlan and Abbey Gelmi will offer up prime-time highlights at 6pm AEST every evening.

Sally Fitzgibbons is hot favourite to take gold in the surfing finals on Wednesday 28th July.

Watch a Tokyo Olympics live stream in Canada

The rights to stream the Tokyo Olympics are split between Sportsnet, TSN and CBC. Already a subscriber? Log in with your password and you should be good to go.

CBC holds the rights to the Olympics in Canada until 2024. You can watch a free stream of many events on the CBC.ca website and via the CBC Olympics app.

Alternatively, sign up to Sportsnet Now for CAD$20 a month and TSN for either CAD$5 a day or CAD$20 a month. That should cover you for most Olympic events.

Meanwhile, sports fans in Australia can watch almost every minute of Tokyo 2020 free on 7Plus. Remember to use a VPN if you're going to be outside Oz during the games.

Can I watch the Olympics in 4K in the UK?

UK sports fans with Sky Q can watch 200 hours of Olympics action in 4K HDR. It's all on the dedicated 'Eurosport 4K' channel, which is accessible via the red button on the remote. Check out today's best Sky TV deals.

If you have Sky Q but don't have an Ultra HD subscription, you can sign up for a three month trial through the Sky VIP app. Sky will also be showing more than 100 live Premier League games in 4K HDR this year, starting with Brentford vs Arsenal on 13th August.

The BBC will not be showing any of the Olympics in 4K, only HD

Can I watch the Olympics in 4K in the USA?

Over in the USA, Comcast Xfinity X1 customers can get access to extensive Olympics coverage in Dolby Vision HDR accompanied by Dolby Atmos sound. The live 4K broadcasts will be available in 38 markets (here's NBC's full list).

US viewers can also watch a gymnastics, track and field, swimming, diving and beach volleyball in 4K on the Olympic Channel – the International Olympic Committee's very own 24/7 TV channel, available via AT&T/DirecTV, Comcast/Xfinity, Cox, DISH, fuboTV, Verizon Fios, and YouTube TV.

Tokyo Olympics competition schedule

Olympics Opening Ceremony - July 23 

3x3 Basketball - July 24-28 

Archery - July 23-31

Artistic Gymnastics - July 24 - August 3

Artistic Swimming - August 2-7

Athletics - July 30 - August 8

Badminton - July 24 - August 2

Baseball/Softball - July 21 - August 7

Basketball - July 25 - August 8

Beach Volleyball - July 24 - August 7

Boxing - July 24 - August 8

Canoe Slalom - July 25-30

Canoe Sprint - August 2-7

Cycling BMX Freestyle - July 31 - August 1

Cycling BMX Racing - July 29-30 

Cycling Mountain Bike - July 26-27

Cycling Road - July 24-28 

Cycling Track - August 2-8

Diving - July 25 - August 7

Equestrian - July 24 - August 7

Fencing - July 24 - August 1

Football - July 21 - August 7

Golf - July 29 - August 7

Handball - July 24 - August 8

Hockey - July 24 - August 6

Judo - July 24-31

Karate - August 5-7

Marathon Swimming - August 4-5

Modern Pentathlon - August 5-7

Rhythm Gymnastics - August 6-8

Rowing - July 23-30

Rugby Sevens - July 26-31

Sailing - July 25 - August 4

Shooting - July 24 - August 2

Skateboarding - July 25-26, August 4-5

Sport Climbing - August 3-6

Surfing - July 25 - August 1

Swimming - July 24 - August 1

Table Tennis - July 24 - August 6

Taekwondo - July 24-27

Tennis - July 24 - August 1

Trampoline Gymnastics - July 30-31

Triathlon - July 26-31

Volleyball - July 24 - August 8

Water Polo - July 24 - August 8

Weightlifting - July 24 - August 4

Wrestling - August 1-7

Olympics Closing Ceremony - August 8

• Feast your eyes on the best TVs for every budget 
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OLED may have been riding high as the top TV type for quite a few years now, but backlit TVs are making a comeback. The new tech on everyone's lips is Mini LED, with more and more manufacturers creating TVs that use it. Sony even chose it over OLED for its flagship 2024 TV, the Bravia 9. So what's so good about it?

Don't confuse Mini LED with MicroLED. Mini LED is an OLED rival for the here and now, while MicroLED is a very intricate – and currently very expensive – proposition that promises to one day be the gold standard of TV. But that day's a way off yet.

Here we'll explain what Mini LED is, how it compares to LCD, OLED and MicroLED, and whether you should buy a Mini LED TV.

• Best Mini LED TVs: which ones should you consider?

What is Mini LED?

Like OLED, Mini LED is a premium technology that doesn't feature on cheaper TVs. It's an evolution of classic LED tech that delivers better contrast control and deeper blacks.

All LCD TVs use a backlight to provide the light source for your TV viewing. In recent times that backlighting has come in the form of LEDs, numbering in the hundreds. Mini LED takes that a step further by using LEDs which are are much, much smaller. About one-fortieth of the size of regular LED backlights, they resemble tiny particles of glitter.

The big advantage is that it's possible to have many more of them for each TV. It's about a ten-fold increase, with them numbering the thousands and arranged into more dimming zones than before.

More subtle light control means better contrast, both in terms of absolute dynamics but also, usually, it means an increased and more complex array of simultaneous lighting levels. That makes for more precise shading and a better sense of depth to the picture, and more realistic and nuanced colour reproduction than your average LCD TV.

Mini LED TVs can reach a higher peak brightness than an OLED TV – Sony's Bravia 9 claims to hit 4000 nits, which is 1000 more than the top OLED models from Samsung, Philips and LG. Because Mini LED gives greater control over what portions of the screen are dark, it's easier to achieve deep blacks too. Theoretically, as the LED backlights do not control every single pixel individually, Mini LED TVs shouldn't be able to produce quite the same depth of lights-off blacks that OLEDs can. That said, we've been very, very impressed with the black depth of the Mini LED TVs we've tested so far.

Mini LED vs MicroLED: what's the difference?

MicroLED technology is more similar to OLED than LCD in that it is also a self-emissive technology – meaning each diode can individually turn on and off the light of each pixel, and the colour and intensity displayed by one can be different to the colour displayed on the one directly next to it. 

MicroLED sets, such as Samsung’s The Wall and Sony’s Crystal LED TVs, are similar to OLEDs in their self-emissive properties, then, but instead of using organic light emitting diodes they use tiny, non-organic LEDs – three (red, green and blue) per pixel. The fact they're not organic means they should have a long lifespan and not succumb to fading, they should be capable of much higher brightness, and they're power-efficient because they don't need to shine through a colour filter.

Each pixel requiring three LEDs does, however, mean a 4K set requires 25 million of the tiny things, and mass producing these in perfect alignment and with no variation in brightness is a serious challenge. Because of this, and the benchmark quality these TVs should produce, be prepared for the first MicroLEDs to be super expensive (think five figures), as Samsung's The Wall installation is.

Mini LED is a much less intricate technology than MicroLED, then, and can be seen as a transitional technology between traditional LCD and MicroLED – and as a (relatively) affordable alternative to OLED.

• TCL's first MicroLED TV is pricey, but could hint at the future of next-gen TVs

What Mini LED TVs are available?

As you would expect, marquee brands like Samsung and Sony were among the first to launch Mini LED TVs. But the tech is no longer just for the big hitters – even budget manufacturer Roku has a model, though at time of writing it's only available in the US.

Sony's Bravia 9 is significant because it's the first time for some years that Sony's flagship TV is not an OLED (whether this heralds the beginning of the end for OLED, or Sony is just testing the waters with Mini LED is open to debate). In our hands-on we found it to be astonishingly bright and punchy, with a really impressive level of cinematic authenticity. But on the downside, it couldn't match the best OLED TVs for black levels or viewing angles, so there is still work to be done. The backlighting tech also means there's no room for Sony's excellent actuator-based sound system (which creates audio by vibrating the screen) – we'll see how its sound fares once we've given it the full review treatment.

It's also telling that Sony isn't launching the 65-inch model of Bravia 9 in the UK. Brits are limited to 75- and 85-inch models. Which marks it out as a rather niche proposition. The 65-inch model starts at £3300 in the US, while the 75-incher is £4499 / $4000 (Australian pricing is still to be announced).

Sony's Bravia 7 is also new. This Mini LED TV promises to be 30 per cent brighter than the X90L that it replaces (which was a 'standard' LCD model), with eight times as many dimming zones. The X90L was a five-star TV, so we're excited what Sony can do with a mid-range Mini LED model. It starts at £1899 / $1900 for the 55-inch model (Australian pricing is TBC).

Samsung's flagship Mini LED TV for 2024 is the QN95D. At £3699 for the 65-incher (US and Australian pricing is TBC), it's priced slightly above the S95D QD-OLED model. Samsung is hoping its wide-angle tech can help overcome the rather limited viewing angles inherent to Mini LED tech and the VA LCD panel this uses. Even the buggy sample we went hands-on with managed to impress us, with excellent black depth, a brilliantly bright picture and intense yet subtle colours. All of which bode well.

LG has a new Mini LED model as part of its 2024 QNED TV range. The QNED99T is LG's 8K model for 2024, with 120Hz gaming functionality, QNED Colour Pro and Precision Local Dimming, which LG says will deliver "vivid contrast and exceptional brightness". It's LG's first update to its 8K LED model since 2021. It's a big TV for big rooms – it only comes in 75- and 86-inch flavours.

Want something smaller? LG's QNED90T has similar specs to the QNED99T, but with a slightly older processor. It comes in a 65-inch size to go with the 75- and 86-inchers.

At the cheaper end of the market comes TCL's C855, which replaces the Award-winning C845 . It offers more dimming zones, a brighter picture (TCL quotes 3500 nits) and the same core specs. The C845 remains on sale for the time being.

These are some of the latest Mini LED TVs to launch, but older models are still on sale. The Samsung QE75QN900A earned five stars in our review – but be warned, just because it's a few years old doesn't mean it comes cheap.

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First launched in 2010, Yamaha’s Aventage series of AV receivers sit at the top of the company’s range and benefits from the very latest features and highest quality components that Yamaha has to offer. Born from rethinking every element of the company’s traditional receiver designs, Aventage gained instant success and has been refined every generation by iterative improvements. For example, we've seen Dolby Atmos height channels and Yamaha’s MusicCast streaming multiroom platform added in recent years to broaden their appeal.

After unveiling the RX-A2A AV receiver at the end of 2020, Yamaha announced three further models would make up the rest of the Aventage home cinema amplifier range. These amps are due to launch in August 2021.

The Yamaha Aventage RX-A8A, RX-A6A and RX-A4A are all set to offer seven HDMI 2.1 inputs and three outputs supporting 8K@60Hz/4K@120Hz, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Auro 3D audio (A8A and A6A only), plus plenty of tech including AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect and built-in Amazon Alexa voice assistant compatibility. The trio of home cinema amplifiers will also feature Yamaha's 'Surround: AI' tech, which uses algorithms to automatically select the best digital processing mode depending on the type of content being played.

Want to know everything about Yamaha's 2021 Aventage range? Allow us to run through all of the highlights and break down the details of the models in the line-up to find out which is the one that suits your needs.

Design

There has been a distinct restyling for the Aventage 10 range that echo's last year's entry-level RX-V series. Out goes the wide central display with small lights and logos, and in comes a larger main volume knob positioned dead centre with a brand new, high-resolution LCD display on the right.

Also gone is the big flap hiding front inputs and controls. The only front-panel sockets remaining are a full-size headphone jack, a USB-A port with 5V charging, and a mini-jack into which the microphone plugs for Yamaha’s YPAO auto-calibration. The change in layout hasn't just been aesthetic; removing front inputs has allowed Yamaha to create a more solid metal structure beneath the front panel to help improve stability and resistance to vibrations.

The new build includes a revamped internal circuit design and upgrades to the mechanical structure and audio parts, including Premier Audio DACs from SABRE.

The amplifier layout has been made more symmetrical to optimise signal paths and improve sound clarity while reducing signal noise and interference. A new internal H-frame structure claims to add to chassis rigidity.

In addition, Yamaha's signature Anti-Resonance Technology wedge (A.R.T), known as the Aventage’s ‘fifth foot’, has been shifted further forward and modified for more efficient dispersion of chassis vibration in the top three new models. All these improvements, Yamaha says will help in “providing dynamic sound and focused accurate reproduction”.

Qualcomm chipset

Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Dolby Atmos with Height Virtualization in the top three Aventage models will be powered by a new Qualcomm 64-bit chipset that Yamaha says will offer improved sound quality.

In the A8A, A6A and A4A, this also means that there is the capacity to support Surround: AI, Yamaha's own immersive sound technology that analyses the type of content being watched – such as dialogue, ambience, action – five times every second and then auto-applies the most suitable audio mode, from a selection of more than 24 DSP (digital soundfield processing) programs.

The top two models will also offer the Auro 3D surround format, which uses height channels that are not directly overhead, and the Auromatic upmixing algorithm after a software update due in the autumn.

The extra processing power of the new chipset will allow for more accurate 64-bit measurements when using Yamaha's own Parametric room Acoustic Optimizer (YPAO) calibration with R.S.C (Reflective Sound Control) and multi-point measurement, precision EQ and a new low-frequency mode. This new mode extends the range to which YPAO can optimise bass frequencies to 16Hz-200Hz (from 32Hz previously) and can be found in the top three models.

Yamaha says that Qualcomm has surplus capacity and a field-programmable gate array, meaning it can provide significant future upgrades via software updates and long term value for money. This brings us to...

HDMI 2.1 ...but not out of the box

First, a bit of backstory on the HDMI 2.1 AVR saga.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Yamaha's 2020 flagship AV receivers were blighted by a faulty HDMI 2.1 chip that meant some units couldn't support 4K gaming at 120Hz. Unfortunately, the same HDMI 2.1 glitch also affected Denon and Marantz's 2020 8K AV receivers; however, while those models received a slightly awkward hardware fix in April, Yamaha users have not yet been offered a solution.

Along with retrograde software and hardware updates to its affected 2020 models (including the A2A), Yamaha has confirmed that the new A8A, A6A and A4A will all offer full HDMI 2.1 compatibility via a series of firmware updates due after the products launch.

The A8A, A6A, A4A and A2A will all receive support for uncompressed 4K@120Hz and HDR10+ during the autumn of 2021. In addition, the top three models will also gain uncompressed 8K@60Hz functionality and HDMI upscaling up to 8K at around the same time. Given that the release date for the three new models is loosely set at late August, the wait for these full-fat HDMI 2.1 features should only be a couple of months.

Meanwhile, upgrades for enhanced gaming features such as 4K and 8K Display Screen Compression modes, Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), Quick Media Switching (QMS) and Quick Frame Transport (QFT) are also forthcoming but crucially do not yet have a release date as Yamaha is awaiting test specifications from HDMI.org.

Yamaha RX-A8A (£3299/$3000/AU$6299)

The Aventage 10 flagship AV receiver is the Yamaha RX-A8A, with 11.2 amplified channels, a claimed power rating of 150 watts per channel in stereo, and like the rest of the range, it uses new high-slew amplification technology that offers twice the accuracy of previous amps, according to Yamaha.

Unlike the rest of the range, the A8A features extra structural and circuitry tweaks such as complete separation of the transformer and power amplifiers, extra-large block capacitors and four power amp-support for vibration control. Its iron feet have been borrowed from the premium 5200 series and, for this model, the stabilising A.R.C wedge is made of sturdy brass.

Along with all of the 2021 Aventage AVRs, it offers a host of streaming options via MusicCast including wifi, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, built-in music streaming services (Amazon Music HD, Deezer, Napster, Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz), internet radio and multi-room audio as well as Bluetooth and an FM/AM/DAB Tuner.

The Yamaha RX-A8A is tentatively scheduled for release at the end of August with planned firmware updates due in autumn 2021.

• Channels: 11.2ch 
• Power output in stereo conditions: 150W (8 ohm)
• High Slew Rate Amplifier: Yes
• Zones: 3
• HDMI: 7-in / 3-out with HDMI 2.1* / HDCP2.3  
• HDMI Pass-through: 8K@60Hz*, 4K@120Hz*
• HDMI Up-scaling: Yes up to 8K*
• HDMI eARC: Yes
• HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR 10+*
• HDMI 2.1 features: VRR**/ALLM**/QMS**/QFT**
• Surround Sound Processing: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization, Surround: AI, Auro 3D*
• DAC: 384 kHz / 32-bit ESS Hyperstream DAC ES9026PRO x2
• Room Calibration: YPAO R.S.C. automatic room calibration with multi-point measurement, precision EQ and low-frequency mode
• Voice control: Amazon Alexa, Siri (via AirPlay 2) and Google Assistant
• Dimensions (hwd):  19 x 44 x 48cm
• Weight: 21.4 kg

Yamaha RX-A6A (£2299/$2200/AU$3699)

On the spec sheet, there's very little to distinguish the Yamaha A6A from the A8A other than its 9.2 channels. Most of the differences are internal: the A6A doesn't have the same separation between the transformer and power stages, extra-large custom block capacitors or the same level of structural damping as the A8A.

Additionally, while the A8A has dual 32-bit/384kHz ESS Hyperstream ES9026PRO DACs, the A6A only has one to handle the main channels while an ES9007S DAC takes care of the ambient channels. 

Yamaha's RX-A6A is expected to be available from the end of August with planned firmware updates due in autumn 2021.

• Channels: 9.2ch 
• Power output in stereo conditions: 150W (8 ohm)
• High Slew Rate Amplifier: Yes
• Zones: 2
• HDMI: 7-in / 3-out with HDMI 2.1* / HDCP2.3 
• HDMI Pass-through: 8K@60Hz*, 4K@120Hz*
• HDMI Up-scaling: Yes up to 8K*
• HDMI eARC: Yes
• HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR 10+*
• HDMI 2.1 features: VRR**/ALLM**/QMS**/QFT**
• Surround Sound Processing: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization, Surround: AI, Auro 3D*
• DAC: 384 kHz / 32-bit ESS Hyperstream DAC ES9026PRO x1; ES9007S x1
• Room Calibration: YPAO R.S.C. automatic room calibration with multi-point measurement, precision EQ and low-frequency mode
• Voice control: Amazon Alexa, Siri (via AirPlay 2) and Google Assistant
• Dimensions (hwd): 19 x 44 x 44cm
• Weight: 20.3 kg

Yamaha RX-A4A (£1299/$1300/AU$2399)

In addition to a step down in channels and power, the main departure to the Yamaha A4A involves the connectivity at the rear. It drops both an optical and a coaxial input compared to its big siblings, as well as two analogue inputs, and loses the pro-grade XLR sockets. 

It maintains 7-in / 3-out with HDMI 2.1 ports and supports all the same audio formats as the more premium models, except Auro 3D, while video-wise there's no component or composite i/o.

The Yamaha RX-A4A is provisionally scheduled for release towards the end of August with planned firmware updates due in autumn 2021.

• Channels: 7.2ch
• Power output in stereo conditions: 110W (8 ohm)
• High Slew Rate Amplifier: Yes
• Zones: 2
• HDMI: 7-in / 3-out with HDMI 2.1* / HDCP2.3 
• HDMI Pass-through: 8K@60Hz*, 4K@120Hz*
• HDMI Up-scaling :Yes up to 8K*
• HDMI eARC: Yes
• HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR 10+*
• HDMI 2.1 features: VRR**/ALLM**/QMS**/QFT**
• Surround Sound Processing: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization, Surround: AI
• DAC: 384 kHz / 32-bit ESS Hyperstream DAC ES9007S
• Room Calibration: YPAO R.S.C. automatic room calibration with multi-point measurement, precision EQ and low-frequency mode
• Voice control: Amazon Alexa, Siri (via AirPlay 2) and Google Assistant
• Dimensions (hwd): 19 x 44 x 44cm
• Weight: 16.2 kg

 Yamaha RX-A2A (£899/$799/AU$1599)

The entry-level Yamaha A2A is already available but stylistically it's still very much part of the Aventage 10 range, with the corresponding streamlining of the front panel and many of the improvements to the structural rigidity.

The most distinguishing feature between it and the more recent addition to the line is the loss of full 8K support. While the rest of the Aventage AVRs will eventually offer 8K support on all seven HDMI inputs, the A2A only stretches to 8K@60Hz on the first three ports when in Display Screen Compression modes. This feature, along with ALLM, VRR, QMS and QFT, will be available after an update that is yet to be scheduled.

Uncompressed 4K video at 120Hz and HDR10+ will be possible via a free hardware update programme that will start in the autumn and last two years, while newer manufactured models will come with the new hardware already installed.

Elsewhere the A2A uses the same DACs as last years Cinema range and while it doesn't have the Qualcomm chipset of its siblings – losing precision EQ and low-frequency mode from YPAO – it still offers the core immersive sound formats of Dolby Atmos, Dolby Atmos Height Virtualizer and DTS:X.

Yamaha's RX-A2A is in the shops now with planned hardware and firmware updates in the autumn.

• Channels: 7.2 ch
• Power output in stereo conditions: 100W (8 ohm)
• High Slew Rate Amplifier: Yes
• Zones: 2
• HDMI: 7-in / 1-out with HDMI 2.1* / HDCP2.3 and eARC 
• HDMI Pass-through: 8K@60Hz* (compressed only), 4K@120Hz*on HDMI socket 1-3
• HDMI Up-scaling: Yes up to 4K*
• Surround Sound Processing: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization*
• DAC: 384 kHz / 32-bit BB PCM5102A
• Room Calibration: YPAO R.S.C. automatic room calibration with multi-point measurement
• Voice control: Amazon Alexa, Siri (via AirPlay 2) and Google Assistant
• Dimensions (hwd): 17 x 44 x 37cm
• Weight: 10.2 kg

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