Sony's OLED TVs have been among the best you can buy for years, and its first QD-OLED model, the stellar A95L, knocked our socks clean off when it launched in 2023. Its successor, the Bravia 8 II, won an Award last year, too, so clearly Sony still knows how to make a great OLED TV.

It has since turned its hand to RGB Mini LED tech, in the form of the Bravia 9 II. While this nascent tech, which Sony refers to as 'True RGB ', is less proven than the granddaddy that is OLED, Sony has still managed to squeeze some pretty impressive results out of it.

So which TV should you go for: the safe bet of the Bravia 8 II, or the exciting new thing that is the Bravia 9 II? Let's find out.

Sony Bravia 9 II vs Bravia 8 II: price

As the older of the two TVs, the Bravia 8 II is inevitably cheaper. But that's also partly because it comes in a 55-inch variant, whereas the Bravia 9 II starts at 65 inches.

The Bravia 9 II starts at £3499 / $3600 / AU$5999, which is £500 more than the same size Bravia 8 II at launch. Like other sizes, that price has since dropped, in this case by around £600.

The 55-inch Bravia 8 II currently costs around £2000, which is £1500 cheaper than the entry-level Bravia 9 II. A clear win for the older model.

** Winner: Sony Bravia 8 II **

Sony Bravia 9 II vs Bravia 8 II: design

Here you have a choice to make: do you want your TV to sink into its surroundings, or stand out?

The Bravia 8 II is very much the former – its chassis looks very familiar. There's nothing wrong with that – it's smart and premium in equal measures – but it's nothing we haven't seen before.

The blade-style feet can raise to accommodate a soundbar, but have to be positioned at the extremities of the TV's screen, which means you'll need a fairly wide cabinet on which to place it.

The remote is also a step backwards – it takes AAA batteries and doesn't light up. Whereas previous models had rechargeable remotes that were backlit. Disappointing.

The Bravia 9 II, however, is a real step forward in terms of TV design.

Its crowning glory is the Mirage Stand, which makes it look as if the TV is floating above the TV cabinet. It lets you see the wall behind the stand while somehow managing to conceal the cables from view, which is very clever indeed.

But it can't be adjusted. While its sole position will fit a regular-sized soundbar, there's no option to lower the TV if you're using the built-in sound system.

The look is a lot more striking than the Bravia 8 II's and won't appeal to everyone. But we're big fans.

The Bravia 9 II also features a more advanced anti-reflective coating. While effective at minimising distractions, it does make the screen look a little greyer in a well-lit room than the Bravia 8 II, which features a less intense coating.

The remote control that comes with the Bravia 9 II is backlit, too, making it easier to operate in the optimum movie viewing conditions of a dark room.

** Winner: Sony Bravia 9 II **

Sony Bravia 9 II vs Bravia 8 II: features

The main difference between these two TVs is the screen panel technology: the Bravia 8 II uses a QD-OLED panel, while the Bravia 9 II has an RGB Mini LED display.

OLED has been around for years, and Sony certainly knows its way around it. Because it's not backlit, the tech has previously struggled with peak brightness, but great strides have been made in recent years – the Bravia 8 II goes 25 per cent brighter than its predecessor, helped in no small part by its custom heatsink.

OLEDs also have perfect blacks, which help the contrast ratio and add depth and perceived detail.

RGB Mini LED is backlit. But unlike your standard Mini LED TV, which uses a white backlight beamed through a colour filter, Sony's tech uses independently controlled red, green and blue Mini LEDs to generate colour directly. These are controlled by Sony's Backlight Master Drive system.

Sony makes some bold claims for RGB Mini LED, among them that it's akin to watching on one of its own mastering monitors used in professional studios. In other words, your viewing experience should be as the director intended. We'll see if these claims stack up in the next section.

Both TVs are powered by Sony's XR processor, complete with AI modes and Studio Calibrated Modes for the likes of Netflix, Prime Video and, of course, Sony Pictures Core. The Bravia 9 II adds a new My Cinema interface to the mix, but this has also now been added to the Bravia 8 II via a software update.

My Cinema aims to simplify the settings for picture and sound without depriving enthusiasts of control. You get three viewing profiles – Director's Cut, Daytime and Dialogue – each of which limit the available picture adjustments in order to deliver what it thinks is the best quality image.

Dolby Vision and Atmos are supported, and both sets are certified IMAX Enhanced. The HDR10 and HLG formats of HDR are also supported, but not HDR10+ (which is no surprise).

For gamers too, these TVs are tied, with 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM, Dolby Vision Game mode and ‘Perfect for PlayStation 5’ functionality.

But both have just two HDMI 2.1 ports, one of which serves as the eARC port and so will be taken up by a soundbar or surround sound system, should you add one. That will leave you with just one port to get the full experience from your games machine.

Both TVs run Google TV, which is slowly but surely gaining on LG's webOS, and runs all the usual apps (including UK terrestrial catch-up apps, which can be missing from the platform).

** Winner: draw **

Sony Bravia 9 II vs Bravia 8 II: picture quality

And now what we really came here for. Which TV has the better picture quality?

As an Award winner, the Bravia 8 II is the TV to beat in this regard. And it's a doddle to set up to look its best thanks to its excellent presets.

Peak highlights are, well, a highlight, but overall colours have plenty of vibrancy which they maintain even in low light. Shadow detail is excellent, and the image looks convincingly solid and three-dimensional.

In our Sony Bravia 8 II review, we concluded: "The key to the Bravia 8 II’s success is balance. The colours are so vibrant, highlights so bright and edges so sharp, but nothing feels exaggerated or incorrect, which means you never feel as though you’re getting anything other than the very best versions of your movies and TV shows."

As Sony's first foray into RGB Mini LED tech, the Bravia 9 II was very eagerly awaited. And largely, it's a success: for most of our time viewing, we stopped noticing how it was doing what it was doing, and just enjoyed the picture. Speaking as reviewers, that's a very good sign indeed.

A large part of this is down to the colours, which we described in our Sony Bravia 9 II review as "the finest colours we've ever seen from any TV."

We went on: "Richly saturated scenes burst with vibrancy, but never at the expense of authenticity. Sony has combined extraordinary colour volume with its traditional restraint, so even the boldest hues remain beautifully balanced and believable. It's a wonderfully cinematic presentation that constantly impresses without ever shouting for attention."

High praise. Brightness too is exceptional, with the Bravia 9 II proving to be one of the brightest TVs ever to grace our testing rooms. Thanks to its backlight system, whole-screen brightness is possible, whereas an OLED will have to drop it down to focus on highlights.

A perfect example of this comes during the white room scenes in The Matrix. As the bright white light fills the screen, the Bravia 8 II reduces its luminance, whereas the Bravia 9 II maintains its dazzling brightness. It makes it a very versatile TV, that's ideal for viewing in brighter conditions (like daytime viewing).

The local dimming is also excellent, with virtually no blooming around highlights, while skin tones remain natural throughout. It's the best picture we've ever seen from a backlit TV.

There's a 'but' coming.

And that 'but' is the Bravia 8 II's OLED screen, which remains better than RGB Mini LED in certain key areas, such as its pixel-level precision. The Bravia 9 II's picture looks a touch flat by comparison, and it can't reproduce small highlights against very dark backgrounds with the same brightness as the OLED, for fear of creating blooming.

And the Bravia 8 II has practically perfect viewing angles, too – another strength of OLED – whereas the Bravia 9 II, while good in this regard for a backlit TV, loses contrast and vibrancy, and reveals some blooming, when viewed off-axis.

There's also some slight smearing to fast-moving action on the Bravia 9 II – though this is only a significant issue when playing 60Hz games.

The result? A four-star picture to the Bravia 8 II's five. But we can't wait to see what a second-generation Sony RGB Mini LED panel can do.

** Winner: Sony Bravia 8 II **

Sony Bravia 9 II vs Bravia 8 II: sound quality

Sony makes some of the best-sounding TVs around, and these two are no exception. But which sounds better?

The Bravia 8 II houses Sony's Acoustic Surface Audio+ set-up, while the Bravia 9 II features a so-called Acoustic Multi-Audio+ system. The former comprises two actuators that vibrate the screen to produce most of the sound, plus two subwoofers for added bass, while the latter features two full-range drivers, twin subwoofers, two tweeters and a pair of Beam Tweeters built into the rear, top and sides of the chassis.

Because the Bravia 8 II's screen literally makes most of the sound, the audio is tied to the visuals in a way that other TVs (apart from other Sony OLEDs) can't match.

The presentation is nice and direct, but spacious at the same time. Detail is excellent, with enough dynamic nuance to do a scene justice. It copes well with bigger dynamic shifts too, though bass depth is a bit lacking.

The Bravia 9 II has plenty of scale, with those Beam Tweeters really adding a sense of height (these are rare for a TV's built-in sound system). Effects are placed with precision within the soundstage, and there's plenty of subtle detail to get your teeth – and your ears – into.

Its sound has more weight than the Bravia 8 II's, but this extra bass lacks the same tautness of its older sibling.

It also doesn't sound as refined. As we wrote in our Bravia 9 II review: "Dialogue remains consistently clear, but voices aren't projected with quite the same focus or solidity as they are by Sony's flagship OLED. There's also a slight hardness to the presentation that occasionally makes speech sound a touch brash, softening some of the subtle emotional nuances in performances."

Higher frequencies suffer from a similar problem. Which makes it not quite as refined a listen as the Bravia 8 II.

But if you're partnering your TV with a soundbar or surround sound system – which you really should – this round is by the by.

** Winner: Sony Bravia 8 II **

Sony Bravia 9 II vs Bravia 8 II: verdict

While the Bravia 9 II excels in terms of brightness and vibrancy, and delivers the best picture of any backlit TV we've ever tested, it still can't quite match its OLED sibling in certain key areas.

The Bravia 8 II is more consistent, three-dimensional and responsive in its picture delivery, and it boasts more direct and refined sound. It's more affordable, too – that's of course partly down to it having been on sale longer, but the launch pricing suggests the Bravia 9 II may never be discounted to quite the same level.

There are circumstances in which the Bravia 9 II will make more sense, most notably if you want a TV larger than 65 inches, or one for a super-bright room, but for most people and most settings, the Bravia 8 II is the better buy.

We can't wait to see what Sony can achieve with its second-generation RGB Mini LED TVs, though...

** Overall winner: Sony Bravia 8 II **

MORE:

Read our Sony Bravia 9 II review

And our Sony Bravia 8 II review

Sony 2026 TV lineup: everything you need to know about the new Bravia range

Some may remember that for our special Vinyl Week in April, I finally set aside two decades of hesitance and decided to try out a turntable at home.

This wasn't a straightforward experiment, though (as most who know me will tell you, nothing is ever straightforward with me), because my living room is really dedicated to home cinema rather than hi-fi.

Not traditional home cinema, either, but a fairly minimalist, lifestyle-first home cinema featuring Sony's HT-A9 wireless speaker system which, it transpired, has no physical audio inputs.

The solution, much to my concern, was a Bluetooth turntable – the very capable Pro-Ject T1 Evo BT. Why the concern? I simply assumed that the richly layered charm of analogue vinyl would somehow be lost in the calculated ones and zeros of wireless Bluetooth transmission.

It turns out I was wrong about that – at least in a broad, conceptual way. Bluetooth carries across the little pops and crackles that help make the vinyl listening experience unique, and none of the hardness I had expected was evident in the delivery.

There was a problem, though: my Sony system's lack of aptX support meant I was limited to a relatively low 327kbps Bluetooth bitrate.

Given that limitation and the general nature of the speaker system itself, the sound was surprisingly decent; but I was clearly leaving detail, dynamics and texture on the platter.

That simply wouldn't do, particularly as my family and I had been instantly bitten by the vinyl bug.

A capable, compact solution

Rather than return the turntable, then, it was time to source an alternative system to partner the Pro-Ject. I didn't want to replace the Sony HT-A9, which has served me well as a home cinema system, and I didn't want to move the turntable from its approved position at the back of our living room.

In other words, I was going to have to stick with Bluetooth, and whatever I added was going to have to be minimalist enough to fit in with my existing AV kit.

After much research, the solution I settled on was the five-star KEF Coda W speakers.

To my eyes, the angular Coda W aren't quite as pretty as KEF's smoothly sculpted LSX models, which have always appealed to me, but they prioritise Bluetooth over wi-fi streaming and have built-in aptX HD support. A perfect match, then, for the Pro-Ject turntable.

They are also quite a lot larger than the LSX II LT, producing a bigger sound that would potentially work well in my decently sized living room, while still being compact enough to fit into the nooks of my existing bookshelf-cum-TV-stand. No furniture upheaval required.

Sure enough, the unpacking and installation of the new Coda W speakers took all of five minutes, and connecting them to the turntable was simply a matter of putting the KEFs into Bluetooth pairing mode and switching the Pro-Ject on. Bingo-bango, I was ready to rock.

Analogue charm with wireless convenience

As a nascent vinyl collector, I had been listening to more or less the same few records since I first took the turntable home in April, so I was intimately familiar with how they sounded through my Sony speaker system. The upgrade provided by the KEFs was vast and instantly apparent.

Playing my much-spun copy of On Circles by Caspian, the huge improvement to dynamics was what struck me first. The Coda W are capable of creating a large, spacious sound, but within that, they deftly handle dynamic shifts both grand and small-scale.

Detail levels, too, were clearly massively improved, thanks to the combination of the revealing nature of the KEF speakers and the upgrade to aptX HD Bluetooth.

In fact, the sound-quality improvements were across the board, as you might expect with a switch from a lifestyle-oriented home cinema system to a pair of powered hi-fi speakers. Greater punch, rhythmic drive and tonal balance – it was all there, along with those subtle imperfections that for many people represent a big part of vinyl's character.

In other words, I'm hugely impressed – and surprised – by the performance that a minimalist, Bluetooth-based turntable system can clearly offer.

I'm not saying that going wired wouldn't be better – it no doubt would, and I may well look into a switch to cables in the near future. But I am saying that the need to go wireless and generally build a system around your lifestyle no longer precludes you from enjoying an excellent vinyl experience in the way that it would have done just a few short years ago.

Back then, a turntable system simply wasn't an option for me. Now, it is, and I’m loving how much less compromised it is than I was expecting.

MORE:

Here are the best Bluetooth turntables and the best active speakers you can buy right now

When we think of wireless headphones, Sony is the first brand that pops into our heads – and given the stellar reputation of its Bluetooth cans, it makes sense why.

In fact, the brand's six-year-old WH-1000XM4 wireless headphones still top my personal list of the best wireless headphones to this day, and I continue to see countless pairs on the heads of commuters daily.

That said, I and our annual What Hi-Fi? Awards list alike have moved on to the current five-star WH-1000XM6; although it looks like Sony isn't quite ready to let go of the old XM4 model just yet.

A new leak reported by French retail publication Dealabs suggests that Sony is preparing to launch a new version of its beloved wireless headphones, which are expected to be called the WH-1000XM4C.

We're not sure what the "C" stands for yet, but we've theorised "Classic" and "Comeback" as potential solutions.

According to the leak, these "new" Sony cans will be practically identical to the existing pair in terms of design, functionality and driver technology, but with reportedly two very minor changes.

Battery life has reportedly been reduced to 34 hours (down from 38 hours on the original XM4 headphones), and this new "C" variant could come in a new Lavender finish alongside the existing Black and Platinum Silver colours.

While we'll have to take this leak with a pinch of salt (nothing is official until it comes from Sony itself), it's worth noting that Sony has extended the lifespan of a previous pair of headphones from its popular 1000XM-series headphones.

It launched the WH-1000XM5SA variant of its Award-winning WH-1000XM5 headphones back in October 2025 (five months after the launch of the XM6), which featured a new soft case and trimmed-down price tag. The WH-1000XM4C could be a similar affair, with a minor cosmetic change to justify an extended lifespan.

These refreshed XM4 headphones are expected to launch on 7th September, and Dealabs reports that they will be priced at £219.99 / €249.99. Interestingly, this would position the XM4C just £10 below the current widely available price for the XM5SA.

However, with their potentially sturdier and more compact design, the XM4C could be the more alluring choice. They could also be a preferable choice for those who are eyeing up Sony's premium headphone offerings, but don't want to spend big on the XM6 or 1000X The Collexion cans.

We'll bring you the any official news of the rumoured XM4C model if and when details are confirmed.

MORE:

I spent 10 hours on trains listening to the Sony WH-1000XM6 – and it convinced me to upgrade my beloved XM4 headphones

Check out our picks for the best Sony headphones

As well as the best wireless headphones

Big displays have been the focal point of the AV world this decade, and if you’re looking at super-sizing your screen, chances are you’re choosing between either a projector or a 100-inch (or bigger) TV.

The question is this: which one is actually better?

You might be surprised how often the debate as to which of these options is better comes up here at What Hi-Fi?, but this time we decided to take the discussion to YouTube. Our latest video weighs up the pros and cons of each, as I take on Team Projector, while our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, is heading up Team TV.

Your first option is going down the traditional route: a projector. These have been the trusty go-to option for home-cinema purists for a long time, offering screen sizes well north of 100 inches and delivering the “movie magic” we associate with visiting the cinema.

That beam of light hitting your projector screen, with sound coming from a dedicated surround sound package, is almost impossible to beat, but it comes with some impracticalities and, as you can expect, large price tags.

Which is why we are seeing more projectors launch with smaller footprints and bigger feature sets, all at lower prices. They’re not perfect, as it’s usually picture quality that takes a hit to cram in these features, but they are certainly making projectors more approachable.

That said, what if you just don’t want to deal with any of the hassle that comes with a projector?

That’s where the recent phenomenon of XXL TVs comes into play. Popularised by Hisense and TCL, 100-inch TVs are starting to become more common, while the likes of Sony, Samsung and LG have jumped on the bandwagon to deliver TVs reaching 115- and 130-inches.

The benefit here is that everything is built in, including picture, sound and streaming; and prices are dropping surprisingly low. They do take up quite a lot of space, of course, and, as mentioned in our discussion, you won’t find our favourite panel technology at this size.

Ultimately, it’s worth noting that there isn’t a “one size fits all” answer to this debate, and personal preference will play a substantial role in your decision; but whichever one you pick, be sure to consult our best projectors and best TVs lists to choose the right models.

MORE:

Read our full Sony VPL-XW5000ES review

As well as our TCL C7K 98-inch review

And check out our list of the best Mini LED TVs

We've been waiting for a sequel to the outstanding Sony WH-CH720N noise-cancelling wireless headphones for some time, and it looks as though our prayers may finally be answered in the coming months.

According to an often-reliable inside source, thewalkman.blog, recent import filings have revealed that a new pair of headphones is set to replace the Sony WH-CH720N, and will be called the "Sony WH-CH730N".

The filing also reveals the new colours for the upcoming sequel, with 'Black', 'White', 'Pink', 'Blue' and 'Beige' all listed. That's broadly the same as the finishes found on the established WH-CH720N, with 'Beige' representing the only new addition.

We don't have many details regarding the headphones' hardware or specifications. It remains to be seen what drivers they will implement, which chipset they will use, or what their prospective battery life figures will be.

We've had no word on price either, but as the WH-CH720N launched at £99 / $129 / AU$259 back in 2023, we'd hope to see an RRP that didn't rise too much beyond that.

So when could we see these new wireless cans finally arrive? According to thewalkman.blog, the FCC confidentiality end date is on October 20th, so there's a good chance we could see the WH-CH730N arrive at around that time.

The WH-CH720N landed in March 2023, but as we're well beyond that point in 2026, it appears that Sony may be shooting for a release that's somewhere towards the final quarter of the year.

For us, the sooner the better. The more we've had time to listen to and often live with the WH-CH720N, the more we've come to appreciate them as being some of the best sound-per-pound wireless headphones you can get. For sheer value, we're struggling to think of many that do so much for such a modest price.

They're not perfect, and when we speculated as to the four things we'd love to see from the then-speculated WH-CH730N, we hoped for a little less bass and for the new headphones to fold away fully, for a bit of added portability and convenience.

The WH-CH720N are lauded Award-winners, but a few new features, such as on-head wear detection or support for Sony's higher-quality LDAC codec, would be lovely additions for when a sequel materialises.

Whatever the case, the WH-CH730N have big shoes to fill. We dubbed the WH-CH720N as "dependably made, enthusiastic-sounding headphones that...deliver good ANC and a strong feature set to the very affordable end of the wireless headphone market", so any prospective sequel will have its work cut out to improve on such a potent combination of performance and sheer value.

Can Sony manage it? We'll be keeping our ears to the ground for any further rumblings regarding the WH-CH730N, and will keep you updated as and when any new information comes to light.

MORE:

Don't need ANC? Read our review of the cheaper Sony WH-CH520

I thought this simple upgrade would elevate Sony's WF-1000XM6 wireless earbuds – I was wrong

Our pick of the best over-ear headphones

A few weeks ago, Sony announced that it would phase out physical disc production for PlayStation games.

From the start of 2028, all games are set to be digital-only, available either as part of the library of content included across PlayStation’s various membership tiers, or to download and keep digitally via redeemable codes or the online PlayStation Store.

The announcement has not been well received. My dear colleague Lewis Empson reacted to the news at the time, bemoaning the fact that this move away from the good old-fashioned disc represented another nail in the coffin for physical media as a whole.

Not for the first time, it looks as though Lewis is absolutely right.

More nail than coffin at this point

The implications, as Lewis has already touched upon, are profound. The abandonment of physical discs probably means that forthcoming consoles will no longer house a disc slot. So anyone who currently uses their PlayStation to play Blu-rays, for example, would no longer be able to do so on newer consoles.

Lewis also touched on the death of the joy that the humble disc brings. As he wrote at the time: “You can forget lending a game to your friend, or selling it on when you have finished playing it. Likewise, those who prefer to buy games on the second-hand market to save money will be out of luck from 2028 onwards.”

And that, my fellow sufferers, is the crux of why I too am bemoaning the sad, unceremonious death of games in their physical form. It’s only PlayStation for now, but who knows what Microsoft has planned for Xbox? The signs aren’t positive, that’s all I will say.

As someone who has been gaming since the late ’90s, the death of the disc represents the end of an era. From slotting a copy of Age of Empires II into my parents’ creaking Dell desktop to having endless iterations of FIFA put my temperamental Xbox 360 into near-meltdown, those shiny circles have stored more than mere data. For me, they house tangible, precious memories.

This is the real tragedy which the demise of Sony’s physical production is helping to precipitate. I wrote a while back about the joys of tangible media in an audio and hi-fi context, getting all doey-eyed about the joyous ritual inherent in unpacking your favourite vinyl records or even giving a shiny CD a cheeky spin.

As I wrote at the time, so much of the appeal of owning a turntable or CD player “comes from their physical aspects, be that interacting with the product themselves or the ownership of a collection of CDs or records to play on them.

“As CDs hold strong and vinyl sales continue to soar in an age of digital streaming, those aspects of use have clearly become more important than ever with users for whom poking a smartphone to load up Spotify isn’t scratching a very particular itch.”

Replace ‘CDs’ with ‘physical games’ and ‘Spotify’ with ‘the PlayStation Store’ and the point is just the same.

What sort of collections will any of us have now? Even if you will still be able to download games individually and enjoy full ownership – in contrast to the subscription, Netflix-inspired model the games industry keeps so desperately trying to implement – it’s simply not the same as owning an actual, real-world collection.

You can’t line your office’s shelves with digital copies of all your favourite titles. You can’t enjoy the infinite pleasure of taking the thin layer of cellophane off of a copy of, say, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. You won’t be able to get deluxe physical copies anymore, which often come with real-world goodies such as maps, collectables and exclusive artwork. Maybe they’ll just flog those to us separately – for an inflated fee, of course.

You can’t even sit back and wallow in the soulless raft of digital copies saved to your console in the same way that you might admire the perfectly ordered racks adorning the wall of your musty man cave.

The thing is, I have spent time building up my games collection, in the same way that I’ve spent time building my small arsenal of CDs, DVDs and vinyl. Okay, I have only two vinyl records, one of which was a gift, but that’s part of the collector’s journey. It took time to accumulate all of my precious games, from formative PC classics such as Rome: Total War through to my roster of Xbox 360 releases and my PS4 and PS5 titles. All for nought.

Housed on its own carefully ordered shelving unit, that entire collection isn’t just a bunch of games shoved unceremoniously into a metaphorical pile. It’s a part – in a small, silly way – of my history. It’s my own personal gaming journey, and now it seems as though that journey is coming to an end.

The game’s afoot

The injustice doesn’t stop there. As if this all weren’t bad enough, the pleasure of tangible ownership isn’t the only real-world delight we gamers are now set to lose out on.

Can I be honest with you? I like second-hand stores.

No, they’re not the grooviest spots on God’s green Earth – most have a customer base with an average age somewhere in the 80s and many smell like damp cardboard mixed with Werther’s Originals – but they’re still great places.

If it’s a full-blown charity shop, you get the obvious benefit of helping out worthy causes. Even if they’re not charity-focused, you still have the lovely environmental bonus of reducing the need for further first-hand manufacturing, whether you’re selling or buying. Most importantly, they are often extremely cheap.

In a time when it seems that all the games industry wants to do is take your money, be it through skyrocketing base game prices, ludicrously exploitative microtransactions and even more ludicrously exploitative ‘loot packs’ – essentially a form of legalised gambling often aimed at children and teenagers – it’s nice to level the playing field with a bit of bargain-bin hunting.

Why, for example, would you pay at least £60 for a day-of release when you could wait a while and get the same game for less than half price?

Admittedly, there are certain games that you want to get hold of straight out of the gate – I can’t imagine many are going to wait more than an extra second for GTA VI – but the easiest way to save a monumental chunk of cash is simply to wait a few months and get a second-hand copy.

If you really want to find the best bargains, then pre-owned physical editions are always the way to go. PlayStation (and Xbox, as far as I know) will often offer big digital deals on titles that aren’t doing so well; but those tend to be seasonal and, more importantly, there’s generally a cap on by how much they will be reduced.

There’s no actual stock that needs shifting, so there is less incentive to drop to ridiculous depths, unless the game in question is unspeakably dreadful. (If you see Babylon’s Fall or Forespoken on a 65 per cent discount, just walk away.)

With proper material games, though, you can get some truly mammoth savings. Thanks to charity stores, second-hand retailers such as CEX, and online marketplaces such as Vinted or eBay, you can pick up some awesome bargains for mere pennies. I managed to find an old copy of Far Cry 4 for about £2 the other day, and a PS5 version of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales for less than a tenner.

That’s the joy of the used market. Much like going to old vinyl stores, car boot sales or charity shops for unearthed vinyl gems, snooping around for a gaming bargain holds similar scope for unearthing a diamond deal. You have to put the work in and do some digging, but that’s a huge part of the fun. Who knows? You might dig out a Classic Edition of The Orange Box for 50p. Ah, heaven.

Or, of course, you could just borrow games from one of your mates, and lend them something of yours in return. I think one of my pals still has my copy of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey somewhere. He’s welcome to keep it, to be honest – I’m much more of a Black Flag and AC: II kind of a guy.

Lending doesn’t make as much money for the games industry as everyone buying their own distinct, non-transferable digital copy, though, does it? Makes you think…

Sony’s decision to cull all forms of physical release seems utterly at odds with the wants and needs of its current consumer base.

At a time when both established consumers and younger audiences are discovering, or indeed rediscovering, the joys of physical media and tangible content ownership, Sony/PlayStation has decided to turn its back on this clear desire in favour, one suspects, of tying people further into the models of consumption which suit its needs, rather than those of the end consumer.

In an age when the experience of streaming and purely digital consumption can feel impersonal and even soulless, buyers want something they can discover, interact with, enjoy, collect and own with pride.

Just like listening to music or watching movies, gaming is a pastime that goes far beyond the playing of the actual game. Maybe Sony needs to be reminded of that fact.

MORE:

Read our full Sony PlayStation 5 review

Check out our picks for the best 4K Blu-ray players

Which is the best 4K Blu-ray player, PS5 or Xbox Series X?

We are more than half-way through the year, so it seems like a good time to take a step back, survey the sonic landscape at our backs and take stock of what we’ve heard during 2026.

More specifically, which headphones we have had the privilege and often pleasure of hearing throughout the year. As somebody who works on the audio side of the great hi-fi/AV divide, I spend a lot of my time listening to headphones and earbuds, thanks in part to the fact that so many brands are desperately trying to make this massive market their own.

Whether it has been for reviews, comparisons or my own personal interest, these have been the headphones that have impressed – and occasionally frustrated – me over the past seven months.

A hero’s return: the Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless

At last, the Momentum Wireless have returned. The fifth iteration of Sennheiser’s heralded Momentum over-ear line has been a long time coming, so when they arrived earlier this year, expectations were high.

Happily, Sennheiser has managed to deliver the goods. The Momentum 5 Wireless are excellent premium over-ears, acting as a timely reminder to the likes of Sony, Bose and Apple that Sennheiser is still here, and, crucially, still up for the fight.

They are a little different to their competitors, especially in the sound department, prioritising a rich, smooth and refined presentation that can take a little while to warm up to. Once you click with them, though, you’ll find this to be a deeply rewarding pair of over-ears, especially if you like the sort of expressive, detailed midrange the premium Sennheisers so effortlessly exhibit. Oh, that midrange…

The earcups could feel a little more luxurious, the noise-cancelling isn’t Bose-beating, and having them fold away completely would be nice, but this is a five-star return for a brand that was just slightly in danger of being forgotten by the mainstream market.

Rivals, take heed: Sennheiser is back, and it means business.

The sonic standounts: Sennheiser HDB 630

Technically, technically, we reviewed the Sennheiser HDB 630 last year; but the supremely gifted premium headphones only landed on my desk in 2026, so I think I’m still on relatively firm ground when I say that they are, unequivocally, the best wireless headphones I’ve heard this year.

Scratch that: they might be some of the best wireless cans I have ever heard, full stop. They might not look particularly special, but the sound they produce certainly is.

£400 / $500 / AU$1000 isn’t pocket change, I grant you, but our entire test team is rarely so effusive when it comes to heaping praise upon a product. From top to bottom, we are huge admirers of the HDB 630 – and if you hear them for yourselves, you’ll understand exactly why.

They are fun, dynamically adept and musically expressive – all ingredients that make listening to any set of over-ears a joy – but it’s the amount of textural detail and sonic precision the HDB 630 exhibit that really leaves us feeling bowled over. These are headphones that make the masterful Sony WH-1000XM6 sound almost vague and a bit slipshod by comparison, and that’s really saying something.

Part of that signature comes from Sennheiser’s clever BTD 700 USB-C dongle that you plug into your device’s USB-C port to give it aptX Adaptive powers. This means that any source device, including your iPhone, gains hi-res streaming up to 24bit/96kHz, even if it wouldn’t natively support it. Really clever stuff.

Add in 60 hours of battery life, very solid noise cancelling and a luxurious fit, and the HDB 630 are 2026’s headphones to beat.

The tricky second album: Apple AirPods Max 2

I didn’t end up testing the Apple AirPods Max 2, but I did spend a good deal of time listening to them when making comparisons with the likes of the Sony 1000X The Collexion (below) and similar premium contenders.

And you know what? They’re pretty good. The AirPods Max 2 give you that familiar Apple signature which blends smoothness and refinement with a crisp, sparkling treble that lovers of the original Max will recognise, all boosted by better punch, dynamics and precision than their predecessors.

They are also incredibly easy to use if you have an iPhone, thanks to their native integration within the iOS ecosystem, and they still have that look and feel of a premium product that you would be proud to own. We can see why the Max continue to enjoy such a stellar cultural cachet – they just look the business.

They’re not perfect, admittedly. The Max 2 are better than the originals, but they have fallen behind more recent rivals for dynamic punch, rhythmic precision and overall insight. Plus, we just cannot abide that ridiculous carry case, and rather wish that the battery life had been boosted a bit beyond 20 hours. The Sony WH-1000XM6 give you 30 hours, after all.

The thing is, the AirPods Max 2 feel like six of one and half a dozen of the other. They are certainly some of the best headphones, in objective terms, ever made by Apple, a brand that has only relatively recently started to trouble the class leaders when it comes to pure sonic performance.

On the other hand, the Max 2 had a chance to close the gap on their rivals. Instead, it feels as though that chasm has widened a little. For their failure to properly keep up with the pack, some might see this as a missed opportunity for Apple.

The in-ear kings: Sony WF-1000XM6

I have such a complicated relationship with the Sony WF-1000XM5 and, now that there’s a sequel, it is carried over to the Sony WF-1000XM6.

On the one hand, I really like them. I love how detailed, refined and musical Sony’s flagship buds are. I admire that Sony continues to push the sonic boundaries for its flag-bearing buds, and that it seems to improve their capabilities with every passing generation, both in terms of sonic performance and accompanying features.

The WF-1000XM6 are, in so many ways, the apex of what Sony can do from a form such as this, with a sound so textured and rich it practically glitters inside your ears.

My problem remains that fit. I couldn’t get the WF-1000XM5 to stay inside my ear holes, and I can’t get the WF-1000XM6 to do so either. Sony revamped the design of its sixth-gen buds, offering up a new charging case and dropping the teardrop design of the older model in favour of a more rectangular, boxy configuration; but it kept on with its memory-foam eartips.

It might be a personal thing, but I just cannot get them to stay put, especially if I’m walking, gymming or, heaven forbid, going for a run.

Fit issues aside, the XM6 really are something special. Of all the buds I have heard in my time at What Hi-Fi?, they rank somewhere towards the top, outshining the likes of the Technics EAH-AZ100, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) and the Apple AirPods Pro 3.

If you can get them to fit, breathtaking sound will be your reward.

The missed opportunity: Sony 1000X The Collexion

Ah, what could have been.

Sony billed its super-premium wireless over-ears as being “the best-sounding headphones it had ever made” when it lifted the lid on the 1000X The Collexion (£550 / $650 / AU$900) earlier this year. While there's an extent to which we agree with that statement, there’s also a lot we find hard to endorse fully.

These are some of Sony’s clearest and most spacious-sounding cans – we’ll give The Collexion that. I spent weeks with the premium headphones clamped over my ears, and their clarity, textural refinement and cinematic soundscape impressed me every single time I booted them up for a listen.

For that clean, open ‘hi-fi’ sound, these really are among Sony’s finest, and that’s before even mentioning their admirable noise cancelling and excellent voice calls.

Across all parameters, though, are these Sony’s best-ever wireless headphones? I’m not so sure.

When you can get the Award-winning Sony WH-1000XM6 for less money (£400 / $450 / AU$699), and get a good deal more punch, dynamism and rhythmic spark thrown into the bargain, not to mention a similar battery life and better noise cancelling, it becomes hard to see exactly how to justify buying the more costly Collexion cans.

For the What Hi-Fi? team, The Collexion are a great concept, but we can’t quite square the execution with the elevated price tag. Like England at every major international tournament, we are left wondering what could have been.

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What is home cinema?

It sounds like a simple question, but it’s one that I think is worth considering during our Home Cinema Week, and I suspect you'd get wildly different answers depending on who you asked.

For some, it's impossible without an AV receiver, a projector and at least seven speakers. For others, it's a big TV and a Dolby Atmos soundbar. I'd even argue that, in the right circumstances, it can be a pair of headphones connected to a streaming box.

Perhaps that's controversial, but I genuinely think home cinema is pretty much anything you want it to be.

Now, before anyone thinks I'm trying to rewrite the rules, let me be clear: if your goal is the very best home cinema performance possible, the traditional route is still the right one. A quality AV receiver paired with a carefully matched speaker package and, if your room allows, a projector, remains the pinnacle of what's possible.

I'm fortunate enough to experience setups like that regularly. We evaluate AV receivers, Atmos speaker packages and projectors in a dedicated home cinema test room, and when everything comes together, there's simply nothing else quite like it. I've also owned a traditional 7.1.4-channel system myself, so I know exactly what that experience is capable of delivering.

But here's the thing: somewhere along the way, I think we've started to confuse the best home cinema with the only home cinema.

My own current setup is proof that those aren't the same thing.

When I moved house, I swapped my traditional separates system for Sony's HT-A9 wireless speaker system and a subwoofer. Is it as accomplished as the 7.1.4-channel system I had before? No. But it suits my living room far better, it took minutes rather than days to install, and it still produces a wonderfully immersive Dolby Atmos performance that regularly reminds me why I love this hobby.

And when everyone else has gone to bed, my favourite way to watch a film is with AirPods Max connected to an Apple TV 4K. Is that better than listening through a room full of speakers? Of course not. But it's very immersive in its own right, and it lets me enjoy late-night movies without disturbing the rest of the house.

That's still home cinema to me.

In fact, I'd argue that if you've deliberately chosen a setup because it helps you become more immersed in the films, TV shows or games you love, you're already part of the home cinema community.

Whether that's a flagship projector and a 7.1.4-channel speaker package, a premium Atmos soundbar, a wireless surround system or even a tablet paired with headphones capable of reproducing Dolby Atmos through spatial audio technologies, the goal is the same: to bring the magic of the cinema into your home.

The equipment is simply the means of getting there.

None of this is meant to diminish traditional home cinema. Quite the opposite. If you have the space, budget and enthusiasm to build an AVR-powered surround system, I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so.

But I don't think owning that sort of system should be the entry requirement for calling yourself a home cinema enthusiast.

After all, very few of us started there.

Most enthusiasts build their systems over time, upgrading piece by piece as budgets, homes and family life allow. Others discover that a high-quality soundbar or wireless speaker system gives them the balance of performance and practicality they're looking for. Neither approach is more legitimate than the other – they're simply different stages of the same journey.

One day, I still hope to convert my garage into a dedicated home cinema room featuring an AV receiver, a projector and at least 12 speakers.

Until then, I'll continue enjoying films through my wireless Atmos system. I'll continue watching late-night movies through my AirPods Max, too, and I'll continue recommending traditional separates systems to anyone who wants the very best performance money can buy.

Because I don't think those things are contradictory.

The best home cinema I've experienced has been in dedicated cinema rooms filled with high-end equipment. The home cinema I use most is in my living room. And some of my favourite movie nights have happened when wearing a pair of headphones.

They're all different. One is objectively capable of higher performance than the others. But all of them remind me why I fell in love with home cinema in the first place.

To my mind, that's what really matters.

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There could be some big changes for the social movie platform Letterboxd. The brand is reportedly in talks with potential buyers including Netflix, Sony Pictures and Paramount, according to Puck.

Letterboxd's co-founders Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow will still own 40 per cent, but the fate of the remaining stake in the social network is up in the air as the current holding company, Tiny, seems to be looking to sell.

For those not in the know, the movie cataloguing site allows you to rate and review films. You can follow your friends and to see what they are watching, and tailor your profile to show your top four favourites.

As of July this year, there were a whopping 26 million users worldwide. That includes numerous celebrities, such as Ayo Edebiri, Charli XCX and Ed Sheeran. Even our furry friend Paddington leaves the odd review.

One of the prerequisites for working at What Hi-Fi? is that you have to be a massive movie nerd (joking, kind of). That's because testing out the latest home cinema and AV kit involves watching a variety of films to see how well they perform. We watch the same scenes again and again to compare different models, and that is a lot more fun if you genuinely love watching movies.

I have gushed about Letterboxd before and it's still the first thing I reach for once I have watched a movie. Users can post one-line zingers or thoughtful reviews, and both are equally likely to get hundreds of likes.

But I'm a little worried about the possibility of the platform being owned by streaming services or movie studios such as Netflix or Sony Pictures. It means that they could favour certain releases and push some films onto the homepage more than others, giving smaller movies less of a chance to get noticed.

Clearly, I am not alone, as there is already a crowdfunding effort to "buy it back for the people" that has gained over $54,000 in donations so far.

Nothing is set in stone yet, but it would be a shame to see the fun and passionate Letterboxd community become oversaturated with advertising and led by algorithms instead of film lovers.

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Sony has unveiled its latest pair of wired in-ear headphones, the IER-M500.

Developed in collaboration with monitoring engineers, Sony bills its latest in-ear headphones as being the perfect partner for musicians and performers who require "reliable and accurate in-ear monitoring" for both performance and practice.

The IEMs' fully sealed structure, combined with a large acoustic chamber, offers outstanding sound isolation, even in noisy live environments.

A set of 5mm dynamic drivers are complemented by a large acoustic chamber in pursuit of "deep, controlled bass", while the headphones' optimised internal structure has been designed to give a more refined high-frequency reproduction.

Designed to blend comfort and stability, the IER-M500 feature what Sony calls "fitting supporters".

This is a loop at the top of each earpiece which nestles under the inner ear ridge to anchor the IEMs in place. To further facilitate a better fit, four sizes of noise-isolating ear tips are included, as is a 1.6m detachable cable with a 3.5mm jack.

While they don't carry an official IP certification, Sony pledges that the IER-M500 are capable of handling moisture, such as splashes of water or human sweat, without too much trouble.

The IER-M500 will be available from August in a choice of Clear, Black and Red & Blue finishes, priced at £99 / $120 / €115.

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After more than five years of daily use, my AirPods Max recently stopped working.

I can't really complain. Between commuting, international travel and a house move, they'd spent years being stuffed into backpacks and suitcases before emerging to soundtrack thousands of hours of music and movies. They'd had a pretty hard life.

Rather than rushing to repair them, though, I saw an opportunity.

In the five years since I'd bought the AirPods Max, loads of exciting new headphones had launched. This felt like the perfect excuse to break away from Apple's ecosystem and find out whether anything could finally replace them.

Over the next couple of months, I spent time with headphones from Sony, Bose, Sennheiser and Bowers & Wilkins. Their relative strengths varied, but all of them sounded very accomplished with music. In the case of Sony's superb WH-1000XM6, I'd even argue the overall musical performance is better than that of the AirPods Max.

But this period of headphone flirtation had a surprising effect: my movie-watching almost ground to a halt.

For years now, I've used my AirPods Max at least as much for movies as for music. In fact, they've quietly become an essential part of my home cinema setup.

Once the rest of my family had gone to bed and it was no longer neighbourly to keep my Dolby Atmos system rumbling away, I had a simple routine. Rather than switching on Night mode and flattening every explosion, gunshot and orchestral swell, I'd put on my AirPods Max, tap the pop-up on my Apple TV 4K and carry on watching exactly where I'd left off.

The combination of the AirPods Max and Apple TV 4K remains astonishingly good. Their Dolby Atmos implementation, delivered through Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking, creates an experience that's surprisingly easy to forget is coming from a pair of headphones. It doesn't simply sound spacious; it sounds uncannily natural.

And that's the bit I hadn't appreciated until the AirPods Max disappeared from my life. Every alternative I tried excelled with music, but none recreated that movie experience.

The closest I came was pairing Sony's WH-1000XM6 with the Bravia 8 II TV. It produced an impressively open and fairly cinematic presentation, but because the connection relied on standard Bluetooth, what I was hearing was ultimately a cleverly processed stereo signal rather than the sort of binaural Dolby Atmos experience that Apple's solution provides.

The difference wasn't night and day, but it was enough that I found myself missing the AirPods Max every time I settled down to watch a film, and that had a surprisingly big impact on my viewing habits.

If the family was asleep, I simply wasn't getting the experience I wanted. I wasn't about to hobble my main home cinema system with Night mode, but neither were the alternative headphones convincing enough to tempt me away from it.

Whether it's children, a partner or simply considerate neighbours, I suspect lots of people end up watching films after the house has gone quiet, and losing that window meant the number of films I watched absolutely tanked over the following weeks. I missed loads.

The good news is that I'm now making up for lost time, because I've managed to get hold of another pair of AirPods Max.

The whole experience taught me something I wasn't expecting, though: I'd quietly built my entire late-night movie-watching routine around one Apple feature.

That's not to say Apple has the only solution. Sony, for example, offers the little-known WLA-NS7 wireless transmitter, which promises a similar binaural Dolby Atmos experience with compatible headphones. I'll be testing that very soon.

But until something else can recreate what the AirPods Max and Apple TV 4K achieve together, they'll remain my favourite headphones for movies – even if some rivals have at least matched them when it comes to music.

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When Sony officially unveiled its 2026 TV range, there was plenty of disappointment that it didn’t include a new OLED model – much of it from me.

These days, Sony tends to work on two-year lifecycles for its TVs, so I wasn’t expecting a successor to last year’s Bravia 8 II; but a replacement for 2024’s Bravia 8 seemed a fairly safe bet – as did a successor to the A90K, which is now an incredible four years old.

The omission prompted some (again, mostly me) to theorise that Sony had in fact turned its back on OLED entirely, and that the Bravia 8 II could be the brand’s last OLED model.

Last month, though, we reported on rumours that Sony was bracing to launch a brand-new OLED TV. And now, those rumours have been all but confirmed by the appearance of this new OLED set on several of Sony’s own websites.

The listings, first spotted by High Def News (thanks, The Walkman Blog), confirm that the new OLED is indeed the Bravia 6. And, if the name wasn’t a big enough hint, the TV’s tagline – “OLED essentials, now within reach” – also confirms that this is indeed an entry-level OLED TV.

Naturally, I’m disappointed that Sony isn’t launching a new flagship OLED at this stage, but if the Bravia 6 is indeed Sony’s most affordable OLED TV yet, as the tagline suggests, that’s rather exciting news in its own right.

Full tech specs are currently absent from the live pages (another suggestion that they have gone live earlier than planned), but there are some nuggets of information to be gleaned.

First, the TV is listed in sizes ranging from 48 inches to 83 inches. That’s a broader range than Sony typically offers for its OLED TVs, but it’s also highly suggestive of the Bravia 6 using LG Display’s new OLED SE panel, which is available in exactly those sizes and notably not in 42 inches.

While it’s not confirmed, we believe this is the panel that is already found in the LG B6, a set we will be reviewing very soon.

Another encouraging detail is that the Bravia 6 sports four HDMI 2.1 sockets. Gamers (myself included) have long lamented Sony’s models being limited to just two HDMI 2.1 sockets, with that limitation even being true of the new flagship Bravia 9 II, so this is very good news.

The listing also confirms that Dolby Vision is supported on the video side, and that Dolby Atmos and DTS:X are present on the audio side.

Unsurprisingly, like every other modern Bravia TV, the Bravia 6 also features the Google TV platform, which can be operated via voice control (though it’s not clear whether this is via a microphone built into the remote control or the TV itself).

We do know the TV includes ambient sensors, with the listing promising automatic picture adjustments based on room conditions.

None of the leaked listings includes pricing, so we don’t yet have any indication of where the Bravia 6 will sit in Sony’s range.

We don’t even know, in fact, whether the Bravia 6 will even come to the UK. Sony has a recent habit of releasing some models in certain regions but not others.

If it does launch the new model in the UK, there’s no guarantee that it will do so in all sizes: I note that Sony Hong Kong is listing the Bravia 6 in 48-, 55- and 65-inch sizes, while Sony Gabon is listing the 55-, 65-, 77- and 83-inch sizes.

We have approached Sony UK for comment. We don’t expect the company to confirm the Bravia 6 ahead of an official announcement, but with multiple regional Sony websites now listing the TV, that announcement surely can’t be far away.

Stay tuned for more on the Sony Bravia 6 as we get it.

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Fancy something for the weekend? Well Sony has just the thing. Its Award-winning WH-1000XM6 headphones have just gained a new firmware update that enables an ultra-low-latency mode.

The update is also available for Sony’s 1000X The Collexion.

The update adds support for the Bluetooth LE Audio Gaming Audio Profile (GMAP). This reduces latency (the time that a sound takes to reach your ears) to less than 40 milliseconds.

As the name suggests, this will predominantly be of interest to gamers.

GMAP has four signal profiles (A-D) depending on whether speed or stability is the priority. Profile A is the quickest, while D is better suited for areas with lots of interference. GMAP is part of the Bluetooth specification laid down by the Bluetooth SIG, and so can work on other wireless headphones too.

In order to hear the benefit, your audio source also needs to support GMAP.

The new feature is available now via the 3.1.5 firmware update for the XM6 and 1.3.0 for the 1000X The Collexion. You can install the updates for both pairs of headphones using the Sony Sound Connect app.

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Read our Sony WH-1000XM6 review

And our Sony 1000X The Collexion review

I spent 10 hours on trains listening the Sony WH-1000XM6 – here’s what I learned

Well folks, it finally happened.

Sony announced yesterday that all PlayStation games released from January 2028 onwards will be available only as digital downloads; physical disc production will end.

This, unsurprisingly, has rubbed everyone the wrong way. Including more than 6000 angry gamers in the comments section of the PlayStation Blog post that announced the change, as well as on the brand’s various social media pages.

Sony has also been mocked by the likes of Domino’s Pizza. We are even seeing gamers dig up a satirical video made by Sony teaching gamers how to share and resell their games made in 2013 after Microsoft famously tried to implement a system that locked discs to individual users’ Xbox consoles.

We don’t blame them. This decision – which, according to Sony, has been made to “adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs” – is without doubt detrimental not only to gamers, but also to cinephiles who value the 4K Blu-ray format.

I’m willing to bet that the PS5 is the best-selling 4K Blu-ray player on the market currently, and that’s mostly because competition isn’t exactly fierce.

Sony and Panasonic are the only mainstream manufacturers offering 4K disc players at the moment – and, one incredibly minor refresh last year from Sony apart, neither has put out a truly new 4K player in years.

While I’m not betting the house on every PS5 owner tapping into the high-resolution disc format for their films and TV shows, the PS5 has felt like a lifeline for the format for quite some time.

The multipurpose nature of its ability to play games and movie discs has really added to its appeal in the world of home cinema, even if it’s missing some AV-focused features such as Dolby Vision HDR support.

But with this change, I think it’s safe to assume that the next-generation PlayStation console will be a digital-only affair.

Sony soft-launched that concept with the PS5 Pro, when it offered the console only without the disc drive, and required customers to purchase a drive separately as an accessory.

It now seems that the company was laying the foundation for this recent announcement – and we fear that the PS6, which is expected to launch next year, could forgo the optional disc drive entirely.

While this will be a crushing blow to 4K Blu-ray fans such as myself – need I remind everyone that physical PS5 game releases come on 4K Blu-ray discs too – this is also a huge blow to consumers in general.

You can forget lending a game to your friend, or selling it on when you have finished playing it. Likewise, those who prefer to buy games on the second-hand market to save money (gaming isn’t a cheap hobby after all) will be out of luck from 2028 onwards.

Historically, Sony has come under scrutiny for the pricing of games on the PlayStation Store. It has even faced lawsuits for allegedly charging gamers unfair digital fees.

This announcement is especially galling after the recent news that, in September, more than 550 films and TV shows will be removed not only from the PlayStation Store, but also from the libraries of people who bought them.

This is due to a licensing agreement between Sony and Studio Canal ending – and it appears as though refunds will not be issued.

This is where my biggest issue lies. I tend to buy my PS5 games on disc for this very reason; so that I own them outright, and they can’t be taken away from me at a moment’s notice and with no compensation.

From 2028, I won’t have that option, and that certainly doesn’t sit well with me. As someone who is constantly vouching for physical media – especially 4K Blu-ray – I’m really discouraged by Sony’s choice. It certainly means that I won’t be rushing out to buy a PlayStation 6 in the same way I did with the PS5.

Overall, this announcement feels more like a punch to the gut for consumers, and I’m not buying Sony’s reasoning.

If it really wants to “drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games”, I would suggest it changes its viewpoint on physical media.

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Sony has dealt a critical blow to physical media with its latest PlayStation announcement.

Starting in 2028, Sony will end physical disc production for PlayStation games, meaning you will be able to access future titles only digitally. Sony confirms that retailers will carry digital download codes for games from 2028 onwards, with the PlayStation Store as the most convenient place for gamers to access new titles in two years.

The Japanese AV and gaming goliath confirms that this change will affect only new titles, and that “this transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format”.

This news follows the announcement that Grand Theft Auto VI, which is expected to be one of the biggest video game launches of all time, will be available only in digital formats on PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.

The reasoning behind this monumental change, given by Sony, is that it simply follows consumers’ wants and needs. The company had this to say in a PlayStation Blog post made yesterday:

“This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends, as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”

While Sony claims that this decision has been made with consumer interests in mind, the general reaction to the news has been less than positive from gamers. At the time of writing, there were 6256 comments on Sony’s blog post, and the consensus is overwhelmingly negative.

Comments on the blog post from PlayStation users include: “Do not like this, I’ve always preferred physical to digital”, “Shame on you Sony”, “Revert this decision right now”, and “We literally own nothing now but licenses; this is a horrible decision, Sony”.

This also comes in the wake of a digital-media fiasco made by PlayStation a mere three days ago. The company announced that, due to a content licensing agreement with Studio Canal, users will lose access to more than 500 films and TV shows that they have bought from the PlayStation Store here in the UK.

If that’s not already concerning enough, Sony confirmed that the affected content will be removed from users’ video library with no mention of refunds or compensation. This makes Sony’s announcement to ditch physical game releases even more troublesome.

It has been made clear time and time again that access to digital media can be revoked in a heartbeat, so seeing physical media being phased out is leaving gamers feeling understandably insecure.

While it is currently far too early to speculate, it’s presumed that Sony will lift the lid on the PlayStation 6 next year, just in time for this new digital revolution.

Therefore, it’s not out of the question to assume that the PS6 will be a digital-only console, which could deal a critical blow to the 4K Blu-ray format.

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If you have purchased a movie on the PlayStation Store, then you may well be impacted by the brand’s latest announcement.

In September, PlayStation will remove more than 550 films from its catalogue. Which means any affected films will be wiped from your video library, even if you paid for them.

The company is not offering refunds to users, and there’s not even an option to offload them to another device. Sony, which owns PlayStation, says that they will be removed due to content licensing agreements with Studio Canal.

You can read the full list of affected movies on PlayStation’s website but some of the most notable titles include Moonlight, Rambo First Blood, Apocalypse Now, and Pan’s Labyrinth.

At the moment, this affects only customers in the UK, although the brand pulled the same move in Germany and Austria back in 2022.

It’s a rather unpleasant reminder that you can never truly own a piece of media online, as you are always at the whim of licensing battles. We have seen the issue with streaming services before, with Netflix most recently hitting headlines for removing all seven series of Gilmore Girls from its US site.

That’s why physical media is still so important. There is no substitute for holding a copy of your favourite movie or TV show in your hands.

Investing in a 4K Blu-ray is usually the more expensive option, but it gives you proper ownership while also providing the best picture and sound quality you can get at home.

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Check out the best TVs

And these are the best scenes to test your Dolby Atmos sound system

I've been totally open about my love for the Sony Bravia 8 II. Not only is it the current What Hi-Fi? Awards TV of the year, it's also the TV I use at home.

Seeing as I've been reviewing TVs for almost 20 years, that hopefully says a lot.

The Bravia 8 II is also on sale right now, with the 65-inch version available for £2099 at Richer Sounds.

That's not the cheapest it's ever been (that would be £1979), but it's still a good price for what is an absolutely awesome TV.

If I were looking to buy a premium TV right now, though, it's the 65-inch LG C5 I would go for.

It's a step-down OLED rather than a flagship like the Bravia 8 II, but it's still an absolutely cracking all-rounder of a TV, and it's currently available for £1299 at Amazon.

That price difference is just too big to ignore.

In our review, we awarded the C5 five stars, praising it for delivering "excellent all-round performance" that punches well above its price.

It's one of those rare TVs that doesn't have any glaring weaknesses, making it an easy recommendation whether you're a movie buff, sports fan or gamer.

Picture quality is the obvious highlight. The C5 produces rich, vibrant colours without sacrificing authenticity, while its contrast is superb, delivering the deep blacks and bright highlights that OLED TVs are famous for.

It's also wonderfully sharp and detailed, with excellent motion handling that keeps everything from fast-paced football to blockbuster action films looking smooth and natural.

Gaming is another area where the LG excels. All four HDMI sockets support the full HDMI 2.1 specification, including 4K/165Hz, VRR and ALLM, making it one of the most comprehensively equipped gaming TVs around.

Now, let's be clear: the Sony Bravia 8 II is still the better TV. It's brighter, more vibrant and more refined, producing an even more cinematic and authentic picture. Its built-in sound system is also leagues ahead of the LG's, delivering audio that's fuller, weightier and more immersive than almost any other TV.

If money were no object, I'd still tell you to buy the Bravia 8 II.

But money almost always is an object. And when you're looking at an £800 price difference, the LG C5 becomes the smarter buy.

MORE:

Here are all of the best TVs and best TV deals available right now

And here are the best soundbars

A pair of Sony headphones for £100 off? Normally we'd be recommending that you throw caution to the wind, boot up that laptop, stretch your clicking finger and get those cans into your digital basket, because that sounds, on paper, like a Prime Day deal worth taking.

This is one of the rare instances, however, when we'd advise you to look elsewhere. The Sony ULT Wear are a rare misfire from Sony, and while they're down from £180 to just £88 on Amazon, we just don't feel that they're worth your time. Save your cash and pick up a pair of five-star alternatives (listed below, obviously) instead.

Sony ULT Wear deal

Hooray, a pair of heavily discounted Sony headphones! They’ve got noise cancelling, a comfortable design, loads of high-performance Sony features and a majorly knocked down right, so what exactly isn’t there to love?

The problem is that the ULT Wear don’t sound as good as we had hoped. In fact, they are a rare sonic misfire for Sony, with a sound that sounds either too enthusiastic and bass-heavy, or simply too lacking in the basics of dynamics and detail to have us singing their praises. Great Sony headphones abound at the moment, but sadly, the ULT Wear are quite a long way from greatness.

Consider these alternatives instead

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I've handpicked the 12 best-value Prime Day home cinema and audio deals – all under £200

Amazon Prime Day 2026 Live Q&A: personalised hi-fi and home cinema buying advice, direct from our experts

Discounts galore! These are the best Amazon Prime Day Bluetooth speaker deals

We've waited 13 agonising years for GTA VI to finally hit consoles.

After what's felt like a never-ending onslaught of leaks, delays, and speculation, we're officially less than six months away from what could be the biggest gaming launch in history.

While securing a copy is top priority – pre-orders start at midnight tonight – I'm taking the release of this hotly anticipated title as an excuse to level up my gaming setup, and what better time to do it than during Amazon Prime Day?

I've found the ideal gaming TV, a soundbar system that will put you in the centre of the action, and a console that should not only be powerful enough to handle GTA VI but also ensure that the high-resolution, neon-adorned streets of Vice City shine in glorious 4K.

Regarding the console, I recommend the Sony PS5 Pro. We haven't reviewed it yet, but its dedicated upscaling feature leads us to believe that it will offer extra headroom for the expected demanding graphical requirements of GTA VI.

As someone who has gamed on a PS5 since launch (including the superb GTA V remaster), and has also been eyeing up a PS5 Pro since Sony unveiled it back in 2024, seeing it drop in price this close to GTA VI's official pre-order date simply feels like the fates aligning.

As for the TV, I felt as though the LG C5 was a no-brainer. It's our current Award-winner in various categories, including "best gaming TV", and the 55-inch (which is the size we reviewed first and can thoroughly recommend) is currently £1000 off – that's a mind-blowing saving.

It sports four full bandwidth HDMI sockets that support up to 4K/144Hz (or 4K/120Hz with the PS5 Pro), and LG's Game Dashboard feature will be the perfect sidekick during your car chases and shootouts this November.

Finally, the Samsung HW-Q990F (another Award-winner, no less) is also enjoying an unbelievable discount of just over £1000. With Dolby Atmos on board (which the PS5 Pro supports for gaming now), it's bound to get you immersed in GTA VI's sprawling city, especially with planes and helicopters soaring overhead.

And with another HDMI 2.1 socket on board (bringing the total of this system to five), we could even bestow it with the title of "best gaming soundbar".

However, what makes it truly stand out is the incredible subwoofer, which should add some serious low-end punch to gunshots, explosions and car engines.

All of the components listed here work in tandem to also deliver a superb home cinema experience, meaning movies, TV shows and music will also benefit from this do-it-all system too.

And with Prime Day in full swing, you can expect to save a staggering £2080 in total; what's not to like?

MORE:

Find the best Amazon Prime Day home cinema deals here

Check out our picks for the best gaming TVs

As well as the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

There’s a conundrum that many movie fans face. You might be perfectly happy with your TV’s picture performance, but the audio is often another matter entirely. Punchy action scenes might be missing a sense of energy, and it may be difficult to make out dialogue during busy parts of a film.

Luckily, there is a way to fix this common problem. If you don’t have the budget or space for a multi-speaker package to upgrade your sound, then adding a soundbar to the mix is a great way to go.

• View all the Prime Day deals on Amazon

And, for those on the hunt for an even more room-filling experience, there is the option of getting a soundbar with Dolby Atmos support, which can provide a much-desired extra boost of surround sound.

With Amazon Prime Day deals swarming your search like ants to a melting Calippo, it can be hard to find a model that is genuinely right for you. That’s where we come in. We have tested hundreds of soundbars over the years, and have hand-selected four products that provide immersive sound and are at a discounted price right now.

Sonos Beam Gen 2

The Sonos Beam Gen 2 holds the crown as the top entry-level Dolby Atmos bar in our best soundbars guide.

The Beam Gen 2 measures just 7 x 65 x 10cm (hwd) and weighs 2.8kg, making it easy to place in front of your TV without obscuring the picture. Under the hood, you will find four front-facing elliptical mid-woofers and a centre tweeter.

Most importantly, it offers a detailed, rich, and enveloping audio experience, which is particularly impressive considering its compact footprint.

Despite the bar’s lack of up-firing drivers, the soundfield is immersive and we get a good sense of height as well as scale. In fact, we note in our review: “Whether it’s a chirping bird, a car or a voice, there’s remarkable consistency across the complete soundfield, and seamless handover between drivers, which we have to say doesn’t always happen when a Dolby Atmos soundbar has upward drivers to contend with.”

It launched at £449, but this Prime Day deal has seen its price drop to £337 at Amazon. That’s a saving of £112, and is well worth considering if you are looking to add an Atmos soundbar to your system.

Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9

If you are looking for a step-up soundbar to add to your system, then the Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9 is hard to beat. This Sony sounds exceptionally crisp and precise, and the Atmos-ness of its delivery is hugely impressive for a standalone bar.

We find there is a slightly clinical tone in its overall delivery, but its superb detail and punch mean it still achieves five-star success.

In terms of connectivity, gaming fans will be pleased to hear that the Bar 9 has a dedicated HDMI 2.1 input and support for 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM.

You can find it for £999 at Richer Sounds, chopping £400 off its launch price. At this price, it is also worth considering the Award-winning Sonos Arc Ultra. It’s a brilliant-sounding system, offering a rich overall sound with expressive vocals.

It features only a single HDMI eARC port, however, which is not as comprehensive as the Theatre Bar 9’s offerings. The Sonos model is currently available at its launch price of £999 at Smart Home Sounds, but we have our fingers crossed for a reduction before the end of Prime Day.

Hisense AX5125H

All-in-one soundbars work excellently for some people, but you might be craving that extra sense of immersion that can come with a soundbar package. And our top budget soundbar system recommendation is currently available for an absolute steal.

You can pick up the Award-winning Hisense AX5125H for just £199 at Currys, making it easily one of the best-sounding affordable soundbar systems we have heard.

The 5.1.2 system, which supports both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, offers a relatively compact design that is easy to accommodate in most homes. It is made up of two small wireless surround speakers, a wireless subwoofer and the main soundbar. Even though the surround speakers are surprisingly compact (each one measures just 14 x 9 x 11cm), they produce an impressively enveloping soundfield that massively improves upon our experience with the TV’s sound.

We noted in our review when watching Civil War: “Bullets whizz from the front to the back of the room and even behind the listening position, helicopters hover at ceiling height, and distant explosions rumble menacingly.”

Vocals are clear and sound relatively emotive too, although the subwoofer can get a little overzealous and cause them to become muffled in the busiest sections. Still, the Hisense system is a top performer in its class and is even more tempting at this discount.

Samsung HW-Q990F

Finally, we have the Samsung HW-Q990F, an Award-winning 11.1.4 soundbar package. Like the Hisense system, it is made up of a soundbar, a subwoofer, and two surround speakers.

It is a chunkier system in terms of its build, though. The surrounds, for instance, measure 25 x 25 x 25cm and the soundbar comes in at a more hefty 7 x 123 x 14cm (hwd).

With support for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, we were impressed by the soundbar’s ability to create that all-important dome of sound as well as ensuring the sound moves organically between the channels.

When it comes to its bass performance, we say in our review: “There is a much greater sense of tonal variation from this subwoofer [compared with the older Q990D model], which unearths a new layer to the bass. The Q990F’s bass feels more organic, balanced, and seamlessly integrated into the system as a result.”

That all makes it a focused, tonally varied overall sound that immerses us in whatever we listen to. You can find the system for £750 at Amazon, saving you around a whopping £949 off its original price.

We recently reviewed the Q990F’s successor – the Samsung HW-Q990H. This new system managed to build upon our favourite aspects of the older model, resulting in an even more detailed and nuanced performance. That meant the Q990H took the crown when we put them head to head – but the Q990F is without doubt still a brilliant performer in the category.

Plus, the Q990H's price has dropped only a small amount for Prime Day (the cheapest we have seen so far is £1299 at Amazon). That makes the older model all the more tempting.

MORE:

These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

Check out the best budget soundbars

And here are the best TVs right now

I have been happily rocking a pair of the four-star Beyerdynamic Aventho 300 as my go-to pair of wireless headphones for a while now.

For me, they’re great, and I am more than happy with them. But, after a few readers got in touch asking if they should take advantage of Amazon’s current Aventho 300 deal, which lets you grab a pair for £239 (saving £120), my answer is, probably not.

Instead, I would point most people to Amazon’s current deal on the five-star Sony WH-1000XM6, which lets you pick up a pair for £236 (save £164).

That’s not because the Aventho 300 and I have fallen out of love and are on a break. They are fantastic, wonderfully unassuming headphones with a sonic profile that will truly delight any listener who values composure and balance, even if it means they might be a little clinical. That’s why I love them.

For most people, however, there’s a reason we scored the Sony WH-1000XM6 higher and gave them a What Hi-Fi? Award. Their sonic profile is more entertaining and packed with detail, and will please a wider audience of listeners than the Aventho 300.

They also offer better ANC, which again is a big factor that gives them more mass appeal. We said as much in our reviews of the two headphones.

For example, here is our WH-1000XM6 verdict:

“Sony’s wireless headphones deliver a performance more than befitting a flagship pair of wireless headphones. Comfort levels are great, they’re nice to use, ANC is excellent, call quality is class-leading, and sound quality can match anything at this level. Simply sensational.”

Whereas in our Aventho 300 review we reported:

“The Beyerdynamic Aventho 300 won’t be for everyone [...] That said, these are really solid performers for the money, that resist the urge to impose their will on your music and instead step back and allow your tunes room to shine.”

We stand by those statements. Which is why, generally, I recommend that most buyers should opt for the Sony WH-1000XM6, even though I am personally very fond of my Aventho 300.

MORE:

Check out our Prime Day 2026 hi-fi deals live hub

These are the best wireless headphones we have reviewed

Our picks of the best wireless earbuds

This Prime Day is the perfect time to find your latest pair of wireless headphones or wireless earbuds. Prices are dropping faster than Scotland's World Cup chances, and good deals are becoming great ones thanks to ever-plummeting RRPs. There's no time like the present to snap up a bargain.

This Prime Day has seen major discounts on a massive variety of headphones, but we're limiting this rundown to those which fall under £150. Times are tough right not, so the products we've listed below, be they in-ear or over-ear, are all designed to elicit maximum satisfaction from the lowest cost possible. Nice.

Wireless earbuds

Best mid-price: Bowers & Wilkins Pi6

Best noise-cancelling: Sony WF-C710N

Best entry-level: Sony WF-C510

Over-ear headphones

Best entry-level: Sony WH-CH520

Best budget noise-cancelling: Sony WH-CH720N

Best budget wired: Røde NTH-100

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Prime Day 2026 Live: all the top TV, soundbar and projector deals handpicked by our home cinema experts

Discounts galore! These are the best early Amazon Prime Day Bluetooth speaker deals

Amazon Prime Day 2026 Live Q&A: personalised hi-fi and home cinema buying advice, direct from our experts

Giant TVs are cool, but as our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, once said:

“A TV can’t replicate the charm of that beam of light flying over your head, or the little dust fairies that dance about within it. That’s real cinema, isn’t it?”

If that sentiment has tugged on your heart strings, and you have decided it’s finally time to take the plunge and build your own home cinema, I have some good news to share.

I have trawled the current sales and offers to create a stellar full-fat, wireless Dolby Atmos home theatre, built around a five-star Sony projector we use as a quality benchmark in our AV test room.

The package requires you take advantage of three key deals that are live on Peter Tyson right now. They are listed below.

• Get the Sony VPL-XW5000ES with a free Apple TV 4K for £4399 at Peter Tyson (save £1600)
• Get the Sony Bravia Theatre Quad for £1999 at Peter Tyson (save £500)
• Get the Sony SA-SW3 Wireless Subwoofer at Peter Tyson for £296 (£153)

Total system price: £4894 (save £2252, not including Apple TV)

There’s a lot to like about the Sony VPL-XW5000ES. But the main reason I would pick this five-star beamer – even at full price – over its rivals is its ability to deliver a native 4K image.

Most projectors at this level use pixel shifting to achieve 4K. This is a bit of a cheat, as it means the projector is creating its ‘4K’ image by combining two 1080p images per frame, rather than delivering it natively. Though the technology has improved over the years, the process can lead to motion flicker or haloing – two things you don’t want when watching movies.

The Sony projector’s ability to deliver a native 4K image is a key reason it offers one of the most balanced, authentic and ultimately immersive home-movie experiences you’ll find on a unit at this price. As we say in our review: “Despite being Sony’s cheapest 4K laser projector, the XW5000ES still delivers gorgeously cinematic and detailed pictures.”

One word of warning: it doesn’t have 4K/120Hz, so it’s not great for gamers. I have opted for the Peter Tyson deal here as it also gets you an Apple TV 4K (3rd Gen), which adds a source to the bundle, free of charge. (Like most long-throw projectors at this level, the VPL-XW5000ES doesn’t have a streaming platform built-in.)

Next up we have the Sony Bravia Theatre Quad. I chose Sony’s four-star wireless surround sound system over one of the sea of full fat 5.1 multi speaker setups we have reviewed, because of the simplicity it brings to the table. If you wanted to get a full fat 5.1 (or more) home cinema, you would need to invest in an AV amplifier to power it. You would also then need to connect it all up with cabling snaking around the room.

The Quad doesn’t require you do either of the above. It simply requires you to connect the control box to your source, then place the four wireless speakers (which house 16 channels with a total power output of 504W) sensibly around the room. From there it will deliver a pleasingly clear and spacious sound that should delight most movie fans.

In fact, the Quad’s only real shortcoming is that the system’s low end is a little underpowered. Which is why I recommend picking up the Sony SA-SW3 Wireless Subwoofer to complement it. The SW3 neatly slots into the system with a few button pushes; it improves low-end performance, making the whole experience all the more immersive.

So, a hassle free, wireless home theatre that combines the best of old and new. What’s not to love?

MORE:

These are the best surround sound systems we have reviewed

We rank the best projectors

Check out our Prime Day 2026 Home Cinema Deals Live Hub

On Monday, I wrote about how tempted I was to buy the 42-inch LG C5, which had dropped to a record-low £649.

I already own what I consider to be the best OLED TV available – the awesome Sony Bravia 8 II – but, at that price, the C5 was well worth buying for use in my spare room, where it could perform gaming and work monitor duties, as well as the odd streaming binge.

But yesterday, I updated that story to point out that the price for the 42-inch had dropped to £623. The previous price that I had thought was unbeatable had been beaten.

And now, would you believe, it's been beaten again: the 42-inch LG C5 is down to just £611 at Amazon.

That's a nuts price for a TV this good.

At £611 from Amazon, the 42-inch LG C5 is one of those deals that feels almost too good to be true.

In our five-star review, we praised its wonderfully balanced OLED picture, excellent motion handling, natural colours and superb contrast, all of which combine to deliver a brilliantly engaging and authentic viewing experience.

It's also among the most comprehensively specified gaming TVs available, with four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets supporting 4K/144Hz, VRR, ALLM and Dolby Vision gaming.

The sound is fairly ordinary, but that's a common weakness among TVs at any price and one that's easily fixed with one of the best budget soundbars.

Everything else about the C5 feels premium, making this deal particularly impressive. At £611, you're getting a TV that performs like a flagship for little more than the price of many mid-range rivals.

MORE:

Here are all the best TVs you can buy right now

And here are all of the best Amazon Prime Day TV deals

My favourite headphones are now substantially cheaper than when I bought them – but I’m not bitter. Which, considering how tight I am, is a sign of just how good the Sony WF-C710N are.

They can be yours now for £65 at Amazon, which is £10 less than when I bought them in February. Still, considering the use I have had out of them since then, that extra tenner was money well spent.

Best-ever deal on the Sony WF-C710N earbuds

The C710N take everything we loved about their Award-winning predecessors, the C700N, and crank it up a notch: the battery life is an hour longer; the ANC has been beefed up with the addition of Dual Noise Sensor filters; the on-bud controls are now touch sensitive – and very intuitive to use.

They also have auto pause and wear detection, to help when having to interact with people.

But it’s the sound that’s the real highlight. “There’s a weight, solidity and fullness in the bass which makes the WF-C700N sound lightweight and a little top-heavy,” we note in our Sony WF-C710N review. “The new model fleshes things out better.”

They extract an enormous amount of detail from a track, lending notes plenty of texture. And they have Sony’s trademark musicality in spades.

From a personal point of view, the C710N are a great daily pair of earbuds. Their stacked feature-set makes them very versatile, and they have accompanied me on runs, walks, commutes, Zoom meetings and everything in between. If even a skinflint like me would pay more than their current price of £65 at Amazon, you know it’s a good deal.

MORE:

I’m sick of recommending them, but this cheap Sony wireless headphones deal is a no-brainer this Prime Day

Discover more of the best wireless headphones you can buy

Prime Day 2026 LIVE: the best headphone, speaker and vinyl deals picked by our hi-fi experts

Prime Day 2026 is finally here, and while it’s set to last a whole week, Amazon’s kicked the event off with a bang, offering a solid saving on one of the best Mini LED TVs money can buy.

You can grab the 55-inch Sony Bravia 7 Mini LED TV for £1099 at Amazon right now. That’s a £400 saving on its regular price and the cheapest we’ve ever seen it retail for.

And if, for whatever reason, you are dead against getting an OLED TV as your next set, it is a fantastic saving on a TV we openly describe as “a marvel”.

But, there is one issue, stopping us from wholly recommending it: you can get a Sony Bravia 8 OLED for only £100 more.

There are reasons you may want to pick the Bravia 7 over its OLED sibling – chief of which is its higher peak brightness, which makes it better if you plan to use it in a very bright room.

But for serious movie fans, the Bravia 8’s OLED panel makes it a better option for one key reason: its ability to deliver perfect blacks.

Yes, the Bravia 7 is very good by LCD standards, but it's still a backlit TV, which, as we’ve said many times before, means it can’t match an OLED's perfect black level. Put them head-to-head and the Bravia 8’s perfect blacks are immediately apparent and convey an added depth and level of contrast.

This isn’t a dig against the Bravia 7 specifically; it’s just a constant theme we’ve experienced when comparing Mini LED sets to OLEDs. But it’s especially true with the Bravia 8, which, despite coming out two years ago, remains a top performer in its class.

Highlights include wonderfully accurate colours and a general focus on consistency that helps it deliver a truly immersive home cinema experience. And that’s why, unless you really don’t want an OLED, we’d still recommend it over its Mini LED sibling.

MORE:

Prime Day 2026 Home Cinema Deals Live: all the top discounts our experts have spotted

These are the best TVs we've fully reviewed

Our picks of the best soundbars

"Why can't I hear the dialogue on my TV speakers?"

It's a question we're asked all of the time, and while we're seeing TV manufacturers attempt to fix the issue with built-in dialogue enhancement features, we think there's a clear answer to this problem.

An external sound device, namely a soundbar, is one of the most crucial – and easy – TV upgrades that you can make.

Not only will you get clearer dialogue, but many soundbars also offer deeper bass, improved dynamics, and, if you opt for one that supports it, Dolby Atmos.

With Amazon Prime Day officially less than 24 hours away, we expect to see plenty of discounts on several models featured in our best soundbars list.

However, if you're simply looking for a quick, easy, and reliable recommendation, then you've come to the right place.

I've selected three soundbars – an affordable option, a mid-range choice, and a premium soundbar package – all of which have been thoroughly tested to solve your sonic woes by our expert team of reviewers.

Just be warned, it's early days, so prices may drop further during the Prime Day sales as the week progresses, but these are the top savings I've spotted in the initial round of discounts.

So, if you're tired of muffled voices or you're sick of rewinding to catch a crucial missed line of dialogue, then look no further.

Affordable: Creative Stage Pro

This sub-£100 marvel of a soundbar is also the most versatile option on this list.

Designed to be used with smaller TVs or on a desk with a computer monitor, the Creative Stage Pro is a charming, super-affordable, and effective soundbar.

It ditches a fancy feature set and instead opts for a straightforward approach to improving sound, and we think that was a clever move from Creative.

That simplicity extends to the setup process; a single cable links the soundbar to the included subwoofer, and there are options to connect the soundbar to your TV via an HDMI ARC or optical connection.

We think it's especially talented when it comes to voices, as our full review notes that it outputs "crisp, detailed and emotive dialogue", which is the ideal solution to stave off muffled TV sound.

We reviewed it at £130, but Overclockers UK has it down to just £95.

Mid-range: Sony HT-S2000

Sony's entry-level Dolby Atmos soundbar is my choice at the more affordable end of the market.

This compact, fuss-free soundbar sports an easy plug-and-play setup, and it produces a sound that is guaranteed to be leagues ahead of your TV's built-in speakers. Not only that, but the inclusion of Bluetooth 5.2 ensures that streaming music to the unit is a breeze.

Generally speaking, the HT-S2000 ticks a lot of boxes, especially for the money. It serves up punchy dynamics, impressive directionality, and superb clarity, which results in an impressively cinematic sound despite the soundbar's modest footprint.

When it comes to voices, we stated that the HT-S2000 delivers "crisp and clear dialogue" and praised its ability to dig up an impressive amount of sonic subtleties. This means that voices not only sound clearer, but also more textured, tonally varied, and realistic.

We reviewed it at £349, but it can be found for just £299 at Amazon right now; that's a tidy £50 saving on a five-star soundbar.

Premium: Samsung HW-Q990F

This Award-winning soundbar package has been discounted so deeply that we think it makes a compelling mid-range option for those scouting out a new 'bar to sit below their TV.

This package includes a soundbar, two surround speakers, and a subwoofer, making it a full surround sound package. The trick here is that all components connect wirelessly, making it a neater solution compared to a traditional wired surround sound package.

The system produces a hugely spacious and detailed sound, with the included subwoofer being a particular highlight. It produces a rich, powerful, and tonally varied bass that blows many competitors out of the water.

On top of this, the HW-Q990F is no slouch when it comes to dialogue. We found it presents "natural and detailed voices" in our review, and if you want even more clarity, then Samsung's Active Voice Amplifier Pro feature is on board to grant your wishes.

We reviewed it at a hefty £1699, but it can currently be found on Amazon for just £749 (a staggering £950 saving).

MORE:

Find the best soundbar deals here

As well as our picks for the best budget soundbars

As well as the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

I am a very lucky guy: the best TV I've ever tested (and I've been reviewing TVs for 19 years) is also now the TV I use at home.

That TV is the Sony Bravia 8 II, and it really is as awesome to live with as I had expected.

• View all the Prime Day deals

Why, then, am I eyeing up another TV in the Amazon Prime Day sales?

Two reasons: I'd love to add an OLED to my spare room for gaming, and this deal is just too exceptional to pass up.

£623 at Amazon is just unbelievable for a TV this good, and it takes it from a super-premium option that would have to be your main TV, to a good price to pay for a second room TV.

My plan for this 42-inch OLED is to use it as a gaming TV and a monitor for work.

Its gaming specs are impeccable: four HDMI 2.1 sockets that all fully support 4K/144Hz, 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM; a superbly implemented HGIG mode for super-accurate HDR in games; and a Dolby Vision gaming mode.

It's great as a monitor, too, with neat, user-created software available that enables monitor-style features such as auto-wake.

Even if you've no interest in gaming or productivity, though, the 42-inch C5 is awesome for TV shows and movies, with a really balanced and authentic performance that makes full use of OLED's perfect blacks and pixel-level contrast control.

Other than the limp sound (which I recommend solving with one of the best budget soundbars), this TV is great at everything it does, and I think it's just irresistible at this price.

MORE:

Here are all the best TVs you can buy right now

And here are all of the best Amazon Prime Day TV deals

Ah, the humble soundbar. You might not think from first glance that they are anything special. After all, their unassuming designs are usually built to blend into your living room in front of your TV virtually unnoticed.

But these compact champions can play a crucial part in your home cinema setup. If you have the right model, your TV’s (almost certainly) lacklustre audio can be upgraded to deliver immersive yet detailed sound with clear voices.

As with any piece of home cinema kit, there is a huge variety when it comes to quality and price. If you are looking on the more affordable end of the spectrum (take the Creative Stage Pro, for instance), you will rarely find Dolby Atmos support. For those who have bigger budgets, you will find more premium models with the specifications to match.

So which models are worth your time? We have tested oodles of bars over the years since the category emerged in the 2000s, so we know which soundbars are genuinely good sonic performers.

With Amazon Prime Day almost upon us (it officially runs from the 23rd to the 26th June), we have already spotted some stellar bargains on top-performing soundbars. All the models below have been thoroughly tested by our experts, and have achieved either a four or five-star rating.

MORE:

Here is our review of the Samsung HW-Q990F

Check out the best soundbars

These are the best budget bars on the market

Cassettes are going the way of vinyl, with sales up 53 per cent last year in the UK, hitting 164,000 units. This is not solely a British phenomenon – 446,500 tapes were sold in the US in the same year, an increase of 17.5 per cent year-on-year.

Which got me thinking. Could we see the OG portable cassette player, the Walkman, make a comeback? And not as a Walkman-branded phone or digital music player, but as a proper, bona fide tape player? As the proud owner of at least two Walkmans during my childhood, I certainly hope so.

Here's why the time is right for the Sony Walkman to once again strut its stuff.

1. A big anniversary is coming

It seems like only yesterday that we were celebrating the iconic player's 40th birthday – but its 50th is just three years away.

Mark the date in your diary: 1st July 2029. That's when the grandaddy of portable tape players hits the half century. The world of music on-the-go has changed massively since then, with first compact discs, then MiniDiscs, digital downloads and now streaming all having their time in the sun.

But the backlash against digital is building. As vinyl's sustained resurgence has shown, people are willing to put up with the inconvenience of physical media if it makes for a more rewarding experience. While no one's arguing cassettes are the last word in sound quality, they certainly have their appeal. A special edition Walkman would make the perfect 50th birthday present from Sony.

2. Sony is no stranger to special editions

Sony loves a special edition product. Recently we reviewed the Sony 1000X The Collexion, which was launched to celebrate a decade of Sony's world-conquering 1000X wireless headphones.

Sony deserves credit here. It would've been very easy for it to release the Award-winning WH-1000XM6 with a slightly different finish, but instead, it chose to launch a proper standalone product.

Admittedly they 'only' scored four stars, as opposed to the fives that Sony headphones are accustomed to. But it shows that Sony is not above celebrating its heritage, and in the most appropriate way possible – by releasing something new.

3. The digital backlash continues

No one's arguing with the convenience of streaming, but more and more people are seeing the appeal of physical media. It's tactile, it gives you more of a connection with the artist, and it's easy to display and show which artists you like. You can't put a stream on your shelves.

This cuts across age groups. Yes, there are those of us old enough to remember vinyl and cassettes the first time around, but Gen Z is also discovering the joy of cassettes. (It helps that they're much more affordable than vinyl.) As Sound Records' owner Gareth Simon told us earlier this year: "The kids have figured it all out – they see vinyl as a way to express their interests in a physical form."

I recently used the Gadhouse Miko Bluetooth cassette player, and while I wasn't enamoured with the sound quality (especially over Bluetooth), I did get an undeniable thrill out of feeling the cassette turning inside the player. As I wrote at the time: "Seeing the cassette's spokes revolve, and feeling the player's mechanism at work in your hand, makes it feel alive in a way that a solid-state device never will. It connects you to the medium as a physical thing, rather than a bunch of ones and zeroes flying through the air."

4. The nostalgia element

I'm not alone in feeling this nostalgic thrill. Whenever I told anyone I was trying out a portable cassette player that has Bluetooth, the reaction was the same: "Cool!" Or a slight variation thereon. Now admittedly these were all men of a certain age, but you get my point. Cassettes have made a comeback. And so should the Walkman.

Whether Sony should stuff it with mod cons like Bluetooth... sure, I mean, why not? As long as it sounds good. And if it can implement the mega bass feature of my childhood Sony WM-EX16, then even better.

But really this is about celebrating an iconic product that changed the face of portable music half a century ago. Make it so, Sony, and I'll get my pre-order in now.

MORE:

Sony Walkman turns 40: 6 things you didn't know about the iconic player

Feeling nostalgic? We Are Rewind's limited edition cassette player takes you back to the '80s

Is the cassette tape a viable hi-fi format in today's audio world? Discuss

You know how fancy restaurants have this tendency to deconstruct classic recipes? Well, Sony’s done the same thing to the soundbar, but unlike that deconstructed lasagne, which you rather wish was just a perfectly delicious, fully constructed lasagne, the Bravia Theatre Trio is an almost flawlessly tasty treat.

Sony’s thinking behind the Theatre Trio is that as TVs get ever bigger, soundbars will struggle to create audio on a scale to match the visuals. The obvious solution is to switch to having speakers on either side of the screen, which is what the company’s done previously with the HT-A9 and Bravia Theatre Quad, but that creates its own issue: a lack of central focus, which is particularly important for dialogue.

The solution to the solution, then, is to break the soundbar down into three parts: a centre, a front left and a front right.

In a way, this is the antithesis of the soundbar, which was created, of course, to reduce all of the speakers needed for satisfying home cinema into one, slender unit. What’s next: the return of full home cinema in a box systems?

Let’s not get bogged down in the circular nature of home theatre fashion right now, though. Let’s just enjoy the Sony Bravia Theatre Trio for what it is: one of the finest lifestyle Dolby Atmos systems you can currently buy.

Price

The Sony Bravia Theatre Trio has launched at £1999 / $2000 / AU$2999, making it a very premium proposition indeed.

It’s a highly unusual proposition in today’s market, too, which makes direct comparison rather tricky. Someone considering the Bravia Theatre Trio might also have on their shortlist solo soundbars such as the KEF XIO, Sonos Arc Ultra and Bravia Theatre Bar 9; full soundbar systems such as the Samsung HW-Q990H; and bar-less set-ups such as the Bravia Theatre Quad.

It’s a good job, then, that we have all of these on hand for comparison with the Trio.

Almost inevitably, the Trio system can be expanded through the addition of wireless surround speakers and up to two wireless subwoofers. The new Rear 8, Rear 9, Sub 7, Sub 8 and Sub 9 are all compatible with the Bravia Theatre Trio, and if you buy everything together, the prices of the surrounds and sub(s) are halved.

Several legacy accessories – the SA-SW5 and SA-SW3 subwoofers, and the SA-RS5 and SA-RS3S surrounds – are also compatible with the Trio, should you already own any of those.

We’ve tested the Trio with the Rear 9 surrounds and Sub 8, as well as solo, and you can read our thoughts on the value of expanding the system in the sound quality section.

Design

The Bravia Theatre Trio is a slightly odd thing to behold, especially if you're coming from a soundbar.

The left and right speakers will look familiar to anyone who remembers Sony's HT-A9 system. They share a similar cylindrical shape and fairly substantial dimensions, though the Trio's versions are considerably more stylish, with a black fabric (rather than grey plastic) finish that helps them look modern and discreet despite their size.

They're attractive speakers, too. A metallic ring around the top of each cabinet adds a touch of class, while perforations in the top reveal the up-firing drivers responsible for the system's height effects. Build quality feels reassuringly solid throughout, too.

The centre speaker is a little more divisive.

Essentially a very narrow soundbar that sits beneath the TV, the centre isn’t unattractive exactly, but there is something slightly awkward about its proportions, particularly when it’s positioned beneath the sort of super-sized TV that the Trio is primarily designed to partner.

Thankfully, its low-profile design means it won't obstruct the screen, and Sony includes spacer feet in the box should you need it to straddle your TV’s pedestal stand.

Sony has also done an excellent job of making the Trio as installation-friendly as possible.

The rear of each speaker is flat, allowing for neat wall-mounting, and the left and right speakers require little more than suitably positioned screws. A dedicated wall bracket for the centre speaker is included in the box, too, alongside an HDMI cable and usefully long power leads.

Sony has gone out of its way to ensure that the system isn't overly fussy about speaker placement. It's still worth positioning the speakers as symmetrically as possible, but if real-world constraints mean one speaker ends up slightly higher or further away than another, the calibration system is designed to compensate.

There are compromises to the minimalist approach, though.

Like many modern soundbars, the Trio has no traditional display. Each speaker instead features a small status light that indicates power and connection information. Anyone wanting more detailed feedback will generally need to open the Bravia Connect app, which isn’t always ideal, despite the quality of the app itself.

This is a non-issue for owners of compatible Bravia TVs, at least, as the Trio’s settings and status information appear directly within the television's interface.

Sony also supplies a small but useful remote control that provides quick access to the essentials, including volume, bass level, sound modes, voice enhancement and input selection.

Features

While the Bravia Theatre Trio's three-piece design is its most obvious distinguishing feature, the real cleverness lies in how Sony attempts to make those three speakers sound cohesive, like a soundbar, yet also much bigger, like a more traditional home cinema set-up.

Officially, the Trio is a 3.0.2-channel system comprising dedicated left, centre and right speakers. The centre houses two front-firing woofers and a tweeter, while the left and right speakers each feature a front-firing woofer and tweeter, plus an up-firing driver. Together, Sony claims the three speakers deliver a total power output of 405W.

The system supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks. It’s IMAX Enhanced certified, too, but only once compatible rear speakers and a subwoofer have been added.

Key to the way the Trio handles these 3D audio formats is Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology. Using the physical speakers as a foundation, 360SSM then creates up to 24 'phantom' speakers around the room. These virtual speakers are designed to bolster the real ones and create a larger, more immersive soundstage than would otherwise be possible.

One area in which Sony has clearly put particular effort is set-up and calibration.

Installation is handled via the excellent Bravia Connect app, which guides you through the entire process with clear, well-illustrated instructions. Despite the sophistication of the system, getting everything connected, positioned and configured is refreshingly straightforward.

As part of the set-up process, you're asked to specify the locations of the speakers relative to one another, either approximately or by entering precise measurements. You can also specify their height, allowing the system to compensate for the sort of less-than-perfect real-world placement that often comes with living-room-friendly home cinema set-ups.

The calibration itself is unusually thorough, too. As well as using microphones built into the speakers, the Trio comes supplied with a dedicated USB-C calibration microphone that you plug into your phone before measurements are taken from the listening position. The result should be a level of consistency and accuracy that's difficult to achieve with systems that rely solely on onboard microphones or a smartphone.

Despite that thoroughness, the process is remarkably quick and painless, and, once complete, Sony's Sound Field Optimisation technology adapts the system’s performance to both your room and speaker placement.

There are plenty of further adjustments available within the app should you wish to experiment. You can choose between Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping processing, Dolby Speaker Virtualiser and DTS Neural:X, adjust the height of the soundfield, create a temporary listening position and access the usual assortment of voice enhancement, bass and night mode settings.

Happily, Sony's default settings are generally spot on, and most users will never feel the need to delve into the Trio’s advanced sound settings.

Connectivity is solid, too. The centre speaker houses an HDMI eARC connection for your TV, plus a dedicated HDMI input with support for 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM passthrough.

Wireless support includes Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect, while Sony's DSEE Ultimate processing can be used to upscale compressed music files.

Owners of compatible Bravia TVs get a few extra perks, including Voice Zoom 3 dialogue enhancement and, as mentioned, the ability to control many of the Trio's functions directly through the television's interface.

Sound quality

The whole point of splitting a soundbar into three separate speakers is to create a larger and more spacious soundstage, and that's exactly what Sony has achieved.

Compared with even the best conventional soundbars, the Trio sounds huge. Effects stretch much further to the left and right, dialogue remains firmly anchored to the screen, and there's a greater sense of sound being projected out into the room rather than simply originating from beneath the TV.

Blade Runner 2049 demonstrates these strengths particularly well. The sounds of the city as K walks towards his apartment spread far beyond the physical locations of the speakers, filling our large listening room with impressive width and scale. More importantly, the system doesn't just sound wider than a soundbar; it sounds taller, too.

In fact, the Trio's Dolby Atmos performance is one of its most impressive achievements. The sounds of passing vehicles, overhead announcements and environmental effects frequently extend above the listening position, creating a genuinely convincing sense of height. Given the size of our test room and the almost three-metre distance between the seating position and speakers, that's no small feat.

The system proves equally adept with the chaotic battle sequences of Civil War and the aerial action of Top Gun: Maverick, maintaining an impressively large and immersive soundfield without losing track of the finer details.

Perhaps even more impressive than the scale, though, is the cohesion. Despite the fact that you're listening to three physically separate speakers, the Trio rarely sounds like three separate speakers. Instead, it creates a single, unified wall of sound that stretches right across the front of the room.

That sense of integration is particularly important because it allows the system to retain one of the key advantages of a traditional soundbar: you never find yourself consciously thinking about which speaker is producing which effect.

Much of the credit for this appears to belong to Sony's Movie Theatre Acoustics processing. Switch it off, and the soundstage immediately shrinks, while the illusion of a single coherent soundfield begins to weaken. Leave it enabled, however, and the Trio sounds significantly larger, more immersive and more convincing.

There is a small trade-off. The processing can occasionally exaggerate echo that's already present within a soundtrack. The interviewer's voice during K's baseline test in Blade Runner 2049 is one example, while Nandez's dialogue during the early autopsy sequence gains a touch more resonance than is strictly correct.

These moments are relatively rare, though, and the benefits broadly outweigh the drawbacks. Some people might prefer the cleaner delivery when Movie Theatre Acoustics is disabled, but most will want to leave it enabled (as it is by default) for the additional scale, weight and cohesion it brings.

In some respects, the Trio highlights the limitations of conventional soundbars.

Using the excellent Sonos Arc Ultra as a reference point, Sony's system delivers substantially greater scale, bass weight and Atmos immersion. This isn't really a criticism of the Sonos, which remains one of the most capable soundbars at its price, but it does neatly demonstrate what can be achieved when you physically separate the front channels: the Trio simply fills the room more effectively.

One small issue to note regarding movie sound is that the centre speaker can buzz slightly when pushed by super-deep bass, such as that at the start of the second chapter of Blade Runner 2049. It's not something that crops up often enough to become a significant issue, but it is one of the few occasions on which the centre speaker draws attention to itself.

For music, meanwhile, the Trio offers something that most soundbars simply cannot: genuine stereo reproduction.

Switch Sound Field processing off and the centre speaker drops out, leaving dedicated left and right channels handled by dedicated left and right speakers. Give those speakers a small amount of toe-in, and the resulting stereo image is impressively focused, while still benefiting from proper separation.

My Curse by Killswitch Engage is delivered with excellent punch, dynamics and drive, while Rosalía's Divinize demonstrates the system's ability to produce serious low-frequency heft. The dense instrumentation of Karnivool's Salva remains composed and controlled, and Alone On A Hill by Silversun Pickups is rendered with convincing scale and strong stereo focus.

Sony's hi-fi heritage shines through here. The Trio sounds weighty, energetic and engaging in a way that most soundbars simply don't.

That doesn't mean it's a replacement for a properly sorted pair of powered hi-fi speakers, of course, but it comes closer than most lifestyle home cinema products.

One similarly priced alternative to the Trio that we’ve not yet mentioned is the excellent KEF XIO.

With both movies and music, the KEF sounds cleaner, crisper and more detailed than the Sony, with excellent organisation and precision. The Trio counters with greater weight, larger scale and the sort of genuine stereo separation that only physically separated speakers can provide.

Neither approach is inherently better than the other, and preferences will inevitably vary, but the comparison reinforces the fact that Sony has created something genuinely distinct rather than simply another premium soundbar.

And, while the Bravia Theatre Trio is a complete and highly capable package on its own, adding Sony's optional speakers and subwoofer takes things to another level.

Testing with the Rear 9 surrounds and Sub 8 dramatically increases immersion, creating a seamless bubble of sound that extends around the entire listening position. Atmos effects become even more precisely placed, and the busy cityscape of Blade Runner 2049 becomes extraordinarily convincing.

Just as importantly, the minor shortcomings of the standalone system largely disappear. The slight buzz from the centre speaker vanishes once deep bass duties are handed over to the subwoofer, while the occasional over-emphasis of echo through Movie Theatre Acoustics is also cured.

There remains a very slight amount of distortion from the Sub 8 itself during the deepest bass moments, and we'd be fascinated to hear whether the larger Sub 9 can eliminate this final remaining niggle. That's a discussion for another review, though.

Judged as an initial package, the Bravia Theatre Trio is a hugely impressive performer that successfully combines the scale and spaciousness of a separate-speaker home cinema system with much of the convenience and cohesion that make soundbars so appealing.

Verdict

Sony's Bravia Theatre Trio could easily have ended up feeling like an awkward compromise: neither as neat as a soundbar nor as capable as a traditional speaker system. Instead, it succeeds in taking many of the strengths of both approaches while avoiding most of their weaknesses.

It's not quite perfect – the centre speaker isn’t quite as capable as the larger speakers flanking it, there's no display, and some rivals can sound a touch cleaner and more detailed – but those shortcomings are minor in the context of what the Trio achieves overall.

Ultimately, Sony's deconstructed soundbar concept proves brilliantly effective. If you're looking for a premium lifestyle Dolby Atmos system and have the budget to stretch this far, the Bravia Theatre Trio is one of the most compelling options in years.

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Design 4
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the KEF XIO

Also consider the Samsung HW-Q990H

Read our Sonos Arc Ultra review

Best Dolby Atmos soundbars: our reviewers' five recommendations

If you are looking for a way to upgrade from your TV’s subpar audio without taking up space in your home, then a soundbar is a great way to go.

There are a range of options on the market, from budget bars to more premium models. The Sonos Arc Ultra is an example of the latter, and it has snagged a What Hi-Fi? Award for its excellent performance.

Since its release in 2024, the Arc Ultra has been relatively unchallenged. But the new Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S has stepped into the ring with its eye on the prize.

Boasting both a subwoofer and a soundbar as opposed to the Arc Ultra’s all-in-one design, they are two different beasts. But who will come out on top when it comes to audio performance? We have put both soundbars head-to-head in our test room, so we can tell you from experience which model is most worth your money.

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S: price

So how much will each soundbar set you back? The Sonos Arc Ultra launched at £999 / $999 / AU$1799 but, since its release, you can get it cheaper. In the UK, the Sonos model has dropped to £799 at most retailers, although we have seen it fluctuate.

The Sony system launched at £799 / $1100 (around AU$1320), and has remained at that price since its release. This combo has not been out as long as the Arc Ultra, so there is still an opportunity for the price to drop as time goes on.

There is the option to buy the Bravia 7 without the subwoofer but, for reasons that will become clear, we recommend spending the extra cash.

Right now, though, it is a tie between the two bars when it comes to cost.

**Winner: draw**

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S: design

The two soundbars offer opposing designs that cater to different sides of the market.

The Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S consists of a soundbar and subwoofer, so there is one extra bit of kit to consider compared to Sonos’ single all-in-one bar.

Offering a versatile design, the accompanying subwoofer is easy to place in our test room and connects to the soundbar quickly. You can use it in two different positions, either with the grille facing the listener or the side of the room.

The Arc Ultra is longer than the Bar 7 soundbar, coming in at 8 x 118 x 11cm (hwd) versus Sony’s 6 x 95 x 13cm (hwd). The Sonos model is also heavier, weighing 5.9kg compared to 4.6kg.

With the Sony bar, you will find a small remote control that puts functionality over style. From here, you can control the power, input, bass levels, volume and turn on Night mode. There’s no such addition with the Sonos, however.

You can find the Sonos bar in either a black or white finish, whereas the Sony system is only available in black. Neither of the bars has a display, and the Sony has no buttons on the top of the bar. The Arc Ultra features touch-sensitive buttons, though these are situated on a ledge at the back. A display with both models would make navigating the settings without relying on the accompanying apps feel more straightforward.

Both designs offer their own benefits. The Sonos offers a slightly simpler set-up with its all-in-one build, but the Sony’s soundbar is more compact and offers versatility with the subwoofer’s placement.

That all depends on what you need from your soundbar, so it’s a draw this time round.

**Winner: draw**

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S: features

In terms of physical connectivity, both bars have an HDMI that supports eARC, but the Sony model has an extra HDMI port.

Dolby Atmos is available with both systems, but the Bravia 7 also offers DTS:X, which provides more options for surround sound.

The Sony bar offers a 5.1.2-channel configuration. Under the hood of the main bar, you will find nine drive units, split between side, centre, up-firing and bass channels. That differs from the Sonos, which is packing a 9.1.4-channel configuration. This is made up of seven tweeters, six midrange woofers, and a 'Sound Motion' woofer.

They both use their company's respective apps. The Bravia Connect and Sonos apps let you fine-tune the settings of the bars. With the Sony’s app, you can also pair the subwoofer (and the surrounds if you have them) from the app, where they recognise the product almost immediately, which makes for an easy set-up.

Both apps are easy to use, but Sony’s user interface is more intuitive and this results in a smoother overall experience.

From both apps, you can calibrate the soundbar to your space (the Arc Ultra employs Sonos Trueplay). Once we have calibrated the bars to our space, we are offered a wider soundstage with both systems. It’s worth noting that the subwoofer is not included in this process with the Sony system, so it must be adjusted by ear using the bass settings with the app or the remote.

There is also the option to expand your set-up with both systems. With the Sony soundbar and subwoofer, you can also add in the Sony Theatre Rear 8 speakers, costing £449 / $500 / AU$599 on their own.

Sonos’ offerings here are more comprehensive, as you can connect other products from the brand, such as the Sonos Sub 4 or the Era 300 speakers. These can be arranged in a multi-room set-up or in one room.

For its more comprehensive HDMI support and better app experience, the Bravia Theatre Bar 7 takes it.

**Winner: Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S**

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S: sound

Sony and Sonos take different approaches when it comes to audio performance here. But both are five-star systems that provide a massive upgrade from the majority of TV speakers.

When we start up the Bravia Theatre Bar 7, we are greeted with a punchy, cohesive sound that is immediately likeable. It offers an immersive experience, which is put to the test with Top Gun: Maverick as Maverick attempts to reach hypersonic speed in a jet, and the soundbar stretches the height effects above the TV screen.

The Arc Ultra also impresses, matching the Sony’s sense of scale and punch. Effects sound like they're coming from all around you, and are placed with precision, while certain sounds (like rain) stretch far beyond the confines of the TV to which the soundbar is connected.

Bass performance is strong with both soundbars, but the Sony’s added subwoofer gives it the edge in terms of agility and precision. We also find that the bass is well-integrated with the main soundbar and performs with the same precision as the rest of the system. That’s not to dismiss the Sonos performance with lower frequencies, as the bass it delivers is "tight, tuneful and expressive in a way that is rare in the soundbar world".

We listen to the Bravia Theatre Bar 7 without the subwoofer, and it still delivers clear vocals and convincing height effects. But the sound is thinner and lacks the sense of scale and authority that we get when the subwoofer is added.

Both soundbars produce clear vocals, but the Sonos model produces richer voices that lend a more emotive and warm feel to the sound.

When playing music, this warm approach carries foward with the Sonos to make it a more emotive performer than the Sony. The soft vocals of Aurora’s Churchyard start with the appropriate low-level dynamics and build to the punchy chorus as the bass kicks in. As with the Sony’s performance with movies, the Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S delivers a more precise and energetic bass than the Arc Ultra.

Both soundbars are excellent sonic performers, but the Sonos bar inches past the Sony system for its warmer overall sound.

**Winner: Sonos Arc Ultra**

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S: verdict

If you are looking to upgrade your TV’s audio and get a more immersive audio experience, then either of these soundbars will deliver. Where the Sonos Arc Ultra offers a warm, spacious sound, the Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S counters with a more agile and well-integrated bass.

One of their designs might suit you more, but the Sonos Arc Ultra just takes the crown for its richer sonic performance.

**Winner: Sonos Arc Ultra**

MORE:

These are the best soundbars on the market

Here's our full review of the Sonos Arc Ultra

Check out the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

Sony has added Direct Connect support to more of its TVs, including multiple Award-winning OLED sets.

The Japanese AV brand originally launched its Direct Connect feature with its duo of new True RGB TVs, the Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II.

The feature lets users connect a pair of the brand's latest Rear 9 or Rear 8 surround speakers and a compatible subwoofer directly to their TV. Compatible subwoofer models include the Sub 7, Sub 8 or Sub 9

The feature uses the TV's speakers as the centre, left and right channels, with the connected speakers providing surround sound and low-end support.

While it launched as an exclusive feature for the 2026 range, Sony has updated a selection of TVs from 2023, 2024 and 2025 to support the wireless surround sound feature. The list of included models is as follows:

• A95L (2023)
• Bravia 9 (2024)
• Bravia 8 II (2025)
• Bravia 8 (2024)
• Bravia 7 (2024)
• Bravia 5 (2025)

We're especially pleased to see the A95L featured here, as while we praised its built-in sound system in our review, we also reported: "we rather wish Sony gave you the option to add a subwoofer directly to the A95L, as that would make it even more formidable".

Job done, thanks to this update. Unfortunately, the Award-winning A80L misses the cut, as do other premium Sony sets from 2023, including the X95L and X90L.

While it may sound similar to LG's new Dolby Atmos Sound Suite range, Sony's system works slightly differently. Direct Connect does not use Dolby Atmos Flex Connect, and a maximum of two speakers and one subwoofer can be connected. LG's system allows for multiple sets of speakers to be paired directly with the TV.

Furthermore, Sony intends for users to place the speakers behind or adjacent to the listening position to create a surround sound effect, rather than using them as dedicated front left and right channels.

The update is rolling out now in Europe and the US, and it brings Sony's My Cinema interface, which collects the picture and sound features into a new-looking user interface, to the models mentioned above.

MORE:

Check out our picks for the best Sony soundbars

As well as the best OLED TVs

And read our full LG Sound Suite System review here

Can you believe that there was a time when Samsung didn’t feature a single OLED TV in its range? That all changed in 2022, when it put its spin on OLED by adding a layer of Quantum Dots and launched the excellent S95B QD-OLED TV.

Five years later, the brand is now reaping the benefits of the self-emissive panel technology. It now makes some of the finest OLED TVs around – take the five-star S95F and S90F duo from last year – and its 2026 lineup features more OLED TVs than ever before.

Of course, Samsung was never going to celebrate half a decade of OLED success without taking things up a notch, which is why it has introduced a new, rather unusual flagship model that takes inspiration from one of the brand's other most successful models.

That new flagship OLED is the S99H, a premium QD-OLED TV that oozes style and sophistication, thanks at least in part to its aesthetic similarities to the wildly successful, design-led The Frame LCD range.

Here, though, those smart good looks have been blended with the core abilities of the excellent S95F – with a generous helping of performance upgrades for good measure.

The result? A showstopping OLED TV that blends style and substance, and one that we think could dethrone the current reigning champion of our best OLED TV list: the Sony Bravia 8 II.

Price

We have the 55-inch Samsung S99H before us today, and it’s officially priced at £2499, though in true Samsung fashion, that launch pricing hasn’t stuck around for long. We’re already seeing a £100 decrease across all sizes, which puts the 65-inch version at £3199, the 77-inch model at £4199, and the 83-inch size at £5999.

Now, we need to clear something up regarding model numbers for different regions.

In the US and Australia, Samsung is calling this model the S95H. Despite the different name, it is an identical TV. In these regions, you’ll find the 55-inch S95H for $2500 / AU$3999, the 65-inch S95H for $3400 / AU$5299, the 77-inch S95H for $4500 / AU$7999, and the 83-inch S95H for $6500 / AU$9995.

That's not the end of the story, though. To confuse things even more, Samsung is selling a model under the S95H name here in the UK, too, but it’s a different TV. From what we gather, it is the same TV as the S99H, but without the metal frame-style design. In fact, it looks identical to last year’s S95F.

So, to reiterate, the S99H we're testing here is known as the S95H in the US and Australia, but that is not the same as the UK's S95H TV. Yes, we have given some constructive feedback to Samsung on all of this.

Got all that? Then let's consider the S99H's competition, which primarily comes in the form of Sony’s awesome, Award-winning Bravia 8 II, the 55-inch version of which, after around a year on sale, now costs around £1799 / $2600 / AU$3995. That makes it significantly cheaper than the S99H in the UK, but there's rough pricing parity between the two TVs in the US and Australia.

There’s also the 55-inch LG G6 to consider, which appears to be widely discounted to £1840 here in the UK, but is so far sticking to its $2500 / AU$3995 launch price in the US and Australia, respectively.

Design

We’re confident in saying that this is one of the most unusual-looking TVs to enter our AV testing room.

Samsung clearly took inspiration from its hugely popular The Frame TV when it came to designing the S99H, and while this television’s looks won’t be to everyone’s taste, we’re just pleased to see a TV company that’s willing to push the boat out when it comes to design.

The S99H features a two-layer design, with an OLED screen section mounted onto a slightly larger metal backplate, with a roughly 2cm gap between. Samsung calls this its “FloatLayer” design.

It’s hard to describe, but the effect it gives is essentially a floating OLED panel surrounded by a premium metal frame. Much like LG’s G-series, this TV is designed to be wall-mounted, and while we can’t do that in our testing room, we have seen it wall-mounted at various hands-on events leading up to launch.

In short, the S99H looks like a work of art when it's fixed to a wall, as the floating design becomes really quite striking and effective. Despite the two-layer design, the overall depth is just 2.8cm, which also helps to sell the futuristic look that Samsung is going for.

Unfortunately, the TV doesn’t look quite as suave when it’s set up in its tabletop configuration. Samsung includes two quite cheap-feeling plastic feet with the TV that feel somewhat at odds with the rest of the premium design, and the metal bezel and floating design look less convincing when it's not attached to a wall.

Samsung also includes two remotes in the box: a “traditional” button-heavy number, and a sleeker “smart” remote. The latter includes both a USB-C socket and a small solar panel on the back for easy recharging, though it’s frustratingly not backlit. Then again, neither are the remotes included with the aforementioned Sony or LG TVs, so we can’t knock Samsung too much here.

Features

Samsung’s penchant for cramming (almost) every imaginable feature into its TVs is, once again, evident with the S99H.

We’ll start with the QD-OLED display, which Samsung has managed to squeeze even more brightness out of since we last saw it on the S95F. It can now reportedly reach a whopping 2700 nits in the Movie picture mode, and as you’ll come to find out in the picture section of this review, there are plenty of instances in which we find ourselves being taken aback by how bright this TV can get.

Samsung has also improved its Glare Free coating this year, making it more effective at combating reflections and glare from ambient light. The matte display also makes artwork from Samsung’s Art Mode feature look more realistic for those who want a TV that blends into its surroundings.

In usual Samsung fashion, HDR support comes in the form of HDR10+ (including the Adaptive and Gaming versions), HDR10 and HLG, but not Dolby Vision.

Samsung's answer to Dolby Vision 2, HDR10+ Advanced, is also supported by the S99H. Unfortunately, no content is available in the new format yet, and we don't have a date for its arrival. Amazon is said to be working on adding it to Prime Video in the not too distant future, though.

Hardcore PC gamers will be pleased to learn that the S99H can handle signals right up to 4K/165Hz, as well as the console-friendly 4K/120Hz format, across all four of its HDMI 2.1 sockets. VRR, ALLM and HDR10+ Gaming are also all supported.

All of the connections are built into a side-facing nook in the rear of the TV, which is a departure from the One Connect box that has come with Samsung’s previous flagship OLED TVs.

One Connect does live on, though, and in a quite remarkable way: Samsung is offering an optional Wireless One Connect accessory, which is set to launch in July for £299 / $350 (AU price TBC).

This features four HDMI sockets, and because it connects to the S99H wirelessly, it takes the total HDMI 2.1 socket count to a staggering eight. That’s enough to support all three of the current-generation consoles, a gaming PC, a 4K Blu-ray player, a soundbar or AVR, and a streaming device, and you’d still have one spare.

The S99H also supports Dolby Atmos, both via HDMI eARC and through its built-in 4.2.2-channel 70W sound system.

Samsung offers two simplistic sound modes, Standard and Amplify, but there is also a range of Samsung-specific sound processing features based on its Vision AI platform, including Object Tracking Sound Plus, Active Voice Amplifier Pro, Adaptive Sound Pro, and AI Sound Controller Pro; all of which are fairly self-explanatory.

Q Symphony also returns. This allows you to use the TV’s speakers in unison with those of a connected Samsung soundbar, but it should be approached with caution – we generally find that a good soundbar performs best when the less capable speakers of a TV don't get involved.

AI also steps in to help with picture processing, as Samsung has implemented its 4K AI Upscaling Pro, AI Motion Enhancer Pro and Auto HDR Remastering Pro features, alongside a Real Depth Enhancer contrast enhancement system and Colour Booster Pro.

On the subject of AI, Samsung has applied its “AI for All” mantra in swathes here, as the S99H is positively dripping in artificial intelligence, right down to the AI button on the remote.

A click of this button brings up Samsung’s Vision AI interface, which can recognise on-screen content and provide extra contextual information. This includes related content, cast information and prompts to find out more detailed information about the show or movie.

Scrolling from this page brings us to a more generalised AI interface, from which Samsung allows you to pick your preferred system. Here you can ask for recipes, generate AI wallpapers, or ask general questions. The sky is, hypothetically, the limit.

This is all made possible by the same NQ4 AI Gen3 Processor found in last year’s S95F, as well as Samsung’s Tizen OS platform. The operating system has had a fairly comprehensive refresh for 2026, with a new content bar at the top that splits your apps into categories including entertainment, gaming and art, and the operation feels generally slicker.

App coverage is mostly excellent, with a wide range of international and domestic streaming applications. Currently, the only missing app is BBC iPlayer; we’ve reached out to Samsung, which says that it expects to add iPlayer support soon.

Samsung TV Plus, which features hundreds of free over-the-internet streaming channels, is also included, and gamers are well looked after thanks to the presence of apps for services such as Xbox, Amazon Luna, and Nvidia GeForce Now.

Picture quality

It’s clear that Samsung has been working to tweak and adjust its picture processing over the years in the pursuit of achieving that final pinch of picture quality excellence, and the S99H is evidence that its work has paid off. This is Samsung’s most mature TV yet, and it’s all the better for that.

We opt for Filmmaker Mode as our preferred picture preset, albeit with a couple of tweaks to get the best performance possible: we switch Colour Temperature from its Warm 2 default to Warm 1, and turn the judder and blur reduction settings up to 1.

The resulting picture is extraordinary, and it makes any content we throw at it – from Blade Runner 2049, Civil War, Pan and Drive, to No Time To Die and The Batman – shine. We have the S99F set up next to the Award-winning Sony Bravia 8 II, and despite the tough competition, the Samsung delivers an unflinching visual feast.

Starting with the opening scene of Blade Runner 2049, we find that the S99H serves up oodles of contrast, which results in a deeply three-dimensional picture with superb highlights.

The overhead shot of the solar farm instantly draws us in, thanks to the superb detail levels mixed with the excellent sense of depth. We also approve of how the S99H handles the gloomy, bluish-grey sky, as well as the skin tones of Officer K and Sapper Morton.

In fact, the S99H makes the Sony Bravia 8 II look a bit green in our head-to-head comparison, and skin tones start to look a bit pasty, too. Sony TVs have traditionally leaned towards the cooler side when it comes to colour reproduction, even in Filmmaker Mode, but it’s interesting to see these TVs take a different approach, particularly as they use the same panel technology.

This is most evident in the scene from Pan in which the floating pirate ship enters a cavern; the Samsung runs rings around the Sony when it comes to maintaining low-light colour volume. Skin tones are noticeably warmer and more vibrant on the Samsung in this instance. That being said, the Sony is evidently better at maintaining shadow detail.

In fact, some shadow detail is lost entirely on the S99H, especially during dark sequences in moodier flicks such as Drive and The Batman. In both films, we find facial features and clothing textures occasionally succumb to darkness, while the Sony has no trouble keeping them visible.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Samsung takes the crown when it comes to delivering dazzlingly bright highlights; in fact, we’re adding the S99H to the list of TVs that we’ve had to shield our eyes from physically.

Reverting to the exceptionally bright (and critically dismal) Pan, we find the mix of punchy, concentrated highlights and rich colours stealing our attention away from the Sony entirely.

However, the more conventional-looking Civil War is the perfect test disc to highlight exactly what this TV does well. Everything from the night-time forest fire sequence to a helicopter gliding over a lake and the Charlottesville military camp looks fantastic.

There’s a real sense of nuance here that previous Samsung TVs haven’t always been able to capture. Foliage, for example, is wonderfully textured and detailed without looking over-etched, and while the colours do seem a smidge over-saturated compared with those from the Bravia 8 II, it's not to an extent that looks instinctively wrong.

The sequence that shows the journalists driving through a forest fire seals the deal here. The mix of detail, depth and contrast served up by the S99H is remarkable – the striking, bright flames contrast wonderfully with the dark background, and there is a real sense of intensity and warmth derived from how Samsung's OLED handles highlights.

We fire up the standard Blu-ray of Logan to assess the S99H’s upscaling capabilities, and it's a similar story here, too. Detail levels are superb, and if we weren’t so eagle-eyed, the S99H could almost have fooled us into thinking we were watching a 4K disc.

Colours are also nicely balanced, and motion remains solid, too. This TV excels regardless of what you throw at it.

Sound

It’s not just the picture performance that Samsung has improved. Sound has also been upgraded, which is a good sign after the S95F’s middling delivery.

We stick with Civil War, which highlights everything from dialogue to explosions, and even Dolby Atmos height effects. The rhythmic swooping of helicopter blades is delivered with a strong leading edge, underpinned by a pleasingly controlled dose of bass.

Moving on to the scene in which Lee and Jessie have a heart-to-heart conversation in a wooded area, we approve of how the S99H captures the subtle characteristics of their voices well, and overall, the dialogue is crisp and well-defined. The atmospheric effects, including birds chirping and leaves rustling in the wind, sound pleasingly spacious, too.

There is plenty of height and width to the sound, which is also evident in Blade Runner 2049. The sequence in which Officer K returns to his home from the police precinct is another example of how the S99H captures atmospheric sounds to great effect.

The booming audio adverts are placed with impressive precision and plenty of height, while the S99H somehow manages to beam the sound of the bustling street in a way that creates a fairly convincing sense of immersion.

While we’re on the subject of Blade Runner, we put the S99H through our usual chapter two stress test and find that Samsung has changed its approach. Where many of the brand's previous models have been quite bassy but a little prone to distortion, the S99H digs less deep but proves to be almost entirely distortion-free.

Sony takes a similar approach with the Bravia 8 II (and many other of its TVs), and we ultimately find it to be a sensible compromise. We would of course like more bass weight, but if that has to be sacrificed somewhat to reduce distracting distortion, then so be it.

It’s not all good news on the sonic front, though: like the S95F, the S99H simply doesn't go very loud. Even close to its maximum volume levels, this is an easy TV to talk over. The Amplify setting helps to negate this somewhat, but it does result in some dynamic compression.

The Sony Bravia 8 II also does a better job of organising the sound during scenes with lots of competing effects. The ending battle of Civil War is a perfect example, as the Sony balances dialogue, explosions, and vehicle sounds with care to create a more impactful and immersive soundscape.

With all that said, the S99H is still a big improvement over the S95F where sound is concerned, and it's ultimately a very usable (and even enjoyable) built-in sound system.

Verdict

There’s no other way of putting it; Samsung has knocked it out of the park with the S99H.

With a refined approach to picture tuning, a feature set that (with one key caveat) many TVs can only dream of, and a greatly improved sound system compared with last year’s model, the company’s latest flagship OLED TV takes the title from the S95F as the best TV the company has made to date.

The bold new design might not suit all tastes, and die-hard Dolby Vision fans may be disappointed, but we’re struggling to find reasons not to recommend the Samsung S99H to anyone considering splashing some serious cash on a flagship OLED TV.

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 4
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Sony Bravia 8 II

Also consider the LG G6

Read our Philips OLED910 review

Best TVs: flagship OLEDs and budget Mini LED sets tried and tested

Footballers love their headphones, or at least they seem to. Barely a weekend goes by when we aren't greeted by a pre-match image of our favourite players getting off the team bus, inspecting the turf or psyching themselves up pitch-side, all with a pair of their favourite headphones jammed into their ears or hanging around their neck.

It makes sense. You need those tunes to get you pumped up before a big game, and blasting out a bit of heavy metal in the changing room via a Bluetooth speaker might not make you popular with a roster of teammates who prefer a nice bit of drill or EDM. We're not professional athletes, but it seems obvious that locker rooms are like public buses; it's best to keep your music listening private.

With the FIFA World Cup set to kick off this month, the necessity to get hyped has never been so potent for some of our favourite 'soccer' stars as they head to America. From Beats to Bowers & Wilkins, these are the headphones some of the most famous faces in football are taking to the biggest stage of all.

Kylian Mbappe – Loewe

The greatest players need the finest headphones to match. There's no question that Kylian Mbappé is one of the premier players on the planet, so it was unlikely that he would be heading to the World Cup with a tatty pair of wireless earbuds he found for £20 on Amazon.

Instead, we imagine that Kylian might have a pair of £1500 Loewe Leo wireless over-ears stashed in his hold-all instead. France's talisman is Loewe's big-name brand ambassador, modelling not only the aforementioned Leo but the chunky We. Hear Pro portable Bluetooth speaker.

Maybe the latter will emerge in the changing rooms as and when France start winning their group games.

Lionel Messi – Beats

Beats has a remarkable history of celebrity endorsements, especially from athletes.

The brand's marketing strategy throughout the 2000s and 2010s was centred on inserting itself into the public consciousness by having Beats products appear constantly in music videos, at major sporting events, in TV shows and more.

In fact, you couldn't consider yourself a big-name celebrity or top-level athlete if Beats wasn't courting your attention, with the likes of LeBron James, Shohei Ohtani, Tom Brady, Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka all enjoying sponsorship deals at some time or another.

Beats has repeated the trick by nabbing Lionel Messi as a brand ambassador, so expect to see the GOAT with a pair of cans with a big bold 'B' emblazoned on the side when you tune in to watch Argentina.

Virgil Van Dijk and Declan Rice – JBL

It makes sense for JBL to collaborate with the biggest names in the world of football.

The US company has always been pretty good at knowing its target audience and then catering to it in both the way it makes products and how it sells them to its core demographics.

JBL has snagged the services of quite a few high-profile leather-kickers in recent times, with Liverpool centre back Virgil Van Dijk and Arsenal stalwart Declan Rice being two of its major supporters.

Both will feature heavily for their respective nations, the Netherlands and England, during the World Cup, though we'd be surprised if either actually wears a pair of JBL headphones while on the pitch. They'd fall off when you went in for a header...

David Beckham – Bowers & Wilkins

In case you hadn't noticed, David Beckham is no shrinking violet. The England icon lends his visage to Stella Artois beer, Hugo Boss clothing, Pepsi soda and the Shark Ninja air fryer, to name but a few. Slip him £100 and he'll probably turn up at your child's birthday party.

He appears so frequently in the public eye that we wouldn't be surprised if he's cloned himself in a bid to get to as many high-profile events as he possibly can in a single calendar year.

Air fryers and draft beer aside, he is also the handsome face of Bowers & Wilkins' range of premium headphones, including the five-star Px7 S3 wireless over-ears and the Award-winning Pi8 true wireless earbuds, so he's certainly got taste when it comes to audio.

Whether it's by the pitch, at the stadiums or in the mid-match adverts, you're going to be seeing quite a lot of Golden Balls at the 2026 World Cup. Not bad for a man who retired over ten years ago.

Mika Bireth and Falorin Balogun – Bang & Olufsen

Ok, this might be the coolest partnership in all of sport. AS Monaco have always been one of the most glamorous sides in the French Ligue 1. B&Os' reputation for blending high-end audio with luxury design is legendary. Talk about a match made in heaven.

The team houses four big-name B&O ambassadors. Denmark's Mika Bireth and the USA's Folarin Balogun are two of AS Monaco's representatives playing at the biggest international tournament football has to offer. Meanwhile, their Monaco teammates, Paul Pogba and Eric Dier, won't be representing their respective nations this time around, but they are major names who will also be wearing B&O cans, albeit on the sidelines.

Harry Kane – Our Pure Planet

Bless Harry Kane, he really does seem like one of the good guys. He's also pretty handy at football, in case you hadn't noticed.

The English icon has been banging in goals for Bayern Munich at a near-unprecedented rate over the last couple of seasons. Between matches, he's managed to find some time out of his busy net-ripping schedule to partner with eco-audio brand Our Pure Planet, becoming both a company co-owner and big-name global ambassador.

We don't know how Harry's headphones sound or how comfortable they are, but that's not exactly the point. Our Pure Plant's aim is to, according to its website, "reduce plastic, offset carbon, and minimise paper waste "by using up to 80% recycled plastics and metals in its products."

Eschewing massive audio brands in favour of endorsing an environmentally sustainable newbie? He's a good lad, our Harry.

MORE:

We've picked a local artist from every World Cup 2026 host city to get your system ready in time for kick off

What's better for a World Cup TV – size or quality?

Want the headphones of champions? Read our list of the best wireless headphones

There’s a war going on for your living room. The premium TV technology of choice of the last few years – OLED – is under attack from a new, stunningly bright and vibrant foe – RGB Mini LED.

Every major brand has either launched its first RGB Mini LED TVs or is about to. Hisense launched its first RGB Mini LED models last year, in fact, but those were gigantic, 100+ inch sets, so a long way from a serious proposition for most people.

Hisense is also the first brand to submit to us a proper, mainstream RGB Mini LED TV to review, though – the UR9.

RGB Mini LED TVs are pitched at different levels by different brands, but Hisense is absolutely pitching the UR9 as a rival to flagship OLEDs. The price confirms as much.

So, what better way to benchmark it than against our current favourite flagship OLED, the Sony Bravia 8 II.

That, then, is what we’ve done. Over several days, we’ve tested the Hisense UR9 and Sony Bravia 8 II side by side, feeding all of our favourite discs and streams into both simultaneously, and judging them on picture quality, sound quality, features, usability, design and price.

This might not be a full RGB Mini LED vs OLED battle – the Hisense UR9 doesn’t represent all RGB Mini LED TVs, after all – but it is the opening skirmish in the broader TV tech war. And it's an eye-opening one at that.

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: price

The Hisense UR9’s pricing is interesting to say the least. In the UK, the 65-inch model we tested is priced at £2999, which places it in the same price category as brand-new flagship OLEDs.

In Australia, meanwhile, the UR9’s price of AU$3999 makes it slightly more affordable by local standards.

In the US, though, the pre-launch price of $3500 had dropped vastly to just $2000 by the time the TV actually hit stores.

Things are much more straightforward with the Sony Bravia 8 II, the 65-inch version of which launched at £2999 / $4000 / AU$5295, but can now be bought for £2299 / $2798 / AU$4995.

The inconsistent international pricing of the Hisense UR9 makes it a little tricky to judge this round, but seeing as we’re a primarily UK publication, and that we reviewed a UK sample, we’re going to prioritise the UK pricing and call this it in favour of the Bravia 8 II.

WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: design

The Sony Bravia 8 II and Hisense UR9 are both smart-looking TVs, but they take rather different approaches to design.

Sony has essentially carried over the styling of the A95L, resulting in a TV that looks purposeful, premium and monolithic. While it lacks the ultra-thin glamour of some rival OLEDs, the Bravia 8 II still feels like a flagship product, with its clean lines and understated aesthetic giving it a suitably high-end appearance.

The feet can be installed in either a low-profile position that leaves the bottom edge of the screen sitting just millimetres above your furniture, or a raised position that creates space for a soundbar. The downside is that those feet can only be positioned at the furthest extremes of the chassis, meaning you'll need furniture that's at least as wide as the TV itself.

The Hisense UR9 is a more practical proposition. At 4.5cm thick, it's chunkier than the Sony and doesn't have quite the same premium flair, but it is solidly built and neatly finished, with slim bezels and a restrained dark metallic finish.

Hisense has also made a couple of sensible usability-focused decisions. The centrally mounted pedestal stand occupies a footprint of only around 42cm, making the TV much easier to place on narrower furniture, and it too offers two height positions so that a soundbar can be accommodated beneath the screen.

The UR9's integrated Devialet sound system is more visually obvious than Sony's Acoustic Surface Audio+ setup, with perforations running down the sides of the chassis and across the top edge to house the side- and up-firing speakers. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does contribute to the TV's more functional, engineering-led appearance.

Ultimately, neither of these TVs is likely to be bought primarily for its styling, but the Bravia 8 II's cleaner, more premium design gives it the edge. The UR9 is practical and perfectly attractive in its own right, but it lacks the sense of sophistication that Sony's flagship delivers.

WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: features

The biggest difference between these two TVs is, of course, their panel technologies.

The Sony Bravia 8 II uses Samsung Display's latest QD-OLED panel, paired with Sony's XR processor and a custom heatsink. Because OLED technology is self-emissive, every pixel can be controlled independently, with no need for local dimming zones.

Sony doesn't publish specific brightness figures for its TVs, but the Bravia 8 II is estimated to hit around 1900 nits in small highlights, making it one of the brightest OLED TVs currently available.

The Hisense UR9, meanwhile, uses an RGB Mini LED backlight with 980 local dimming zones. Rather than relying on a conventional white backlight shining through colour filters, it uses separate red, green and blue Mini LEDs to generate colour directly. Hisense claims a peak brightness of up to 3500 nits for the 65-inch model we tested.

On paper, then, these TVs take radically different approaches to creating their images. We're not going to award points for one technology over the other here, though, because what ultimately matters is how those technologies perform in practice. We'll get to that in the picture quality section.

There are other differences in the feature sets of the two TVs worth highlighting, though.

Hardcore gamers are generally better served by the Hisense. All three of its HDMI sockets are full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, with support for 4K/170Hz, 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM. It also features a DisplayPort connection, which remains extremely rare on TVs and could prove useful for committed PC gamers.

The Sony supports 4K/120Hz, VRR and ALLM, too, but still offers only two HDMI 2.1 sockets, one of which doubles as the eARC connection. That limitation remains one of our biggest frustrations with Sony's flagship TVs.

That said, we'd probably take the Sony's two HDMI 2.1 sockets and two additional standard HDMI inputs over the Hisense's three HDMI sockets and DisplayPort arrangement. The latter will be useful to a niche audience, but many buyers are more likely to benefit from having an extra ‘standard’ HDMI connection available.

HDR support favours the Hisense, though. The UR9 supports every major HDR format currently in use, including HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. The Bravia 8 II supports Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG, but, as is customary for Sony TVs, HDR10+ is absent.

The Bravia 8 II fights back with Google TV, which remains one of the stronger smart TV platforms available and features excellent app support. The UR9's VIDAA operating system is fast and responsive, but there are some notable omissions.

Most significantly, while the Apple TV app is present, it lacks access to the Apple TV Store and users' purchased libraries. That's a genuine disappointment, as Apple's movie store remains the best pay-as-you-go film streaming service available, particularly for 4K HDR movies.

Sony also offers IMAX Enhanced certification, its Studio Calibrated Modes for services such as Netflix and Prime Video, and Sony Pictures Core integration.

Ultimately, neither TV completely dominates on features, but the Hisense's broader HDR support, extra HDMI 2.1 socket and more advanced gaming specification give it the edge overall.

WINNER: Hisense UR9

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: picture quality

This is, of course, the section that really matters.

The Hisense UR9 makes an immediately strong impression. Once switched into either Filmmaker Mode or IMAX Cinema, it produces a rich, vibrant and remarkably composed image that rarely behaves like a traditional backlit TV.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the UR9 is how well controlled its RGB Mini LED backlight is. Throughout our testing, blooming is kept impressively in check, black levels are consistently strong and the TV almost entirely avoids the brightness pumping, flickering and shifting backlight behaviour that often gives Mini LED technology away.

Extra-bright HDR content is a particular strength. Movies such as Pan look spectacular on the UR9, with dazzling highlights and bold colours that comfortably outgun the Bravia 8 II for outright brightness. Sunlight bursting through clouds and glinting off fantasy scenery is delivered with real punch and intensity.

The UR9 is also a very accomplished motion performer, and it combines its brightness with rich colours, excellent shadow detail and a pleasingly cinematic warmth that stops the image from ever becoming gaudy or overblown.

In isolation, it's one of the best backlit TVs we have ever tested.

Direct comparison with the Bravia 8 II reveals why OLED remains the reference technology, though – at least for now.

Despite its impressive brightness and excellent local dimming, the Hisense simply can't match the Sony's pixel-level contrast control. Counterintuitively, some of the brightest highlights against the darkest backgrounds actually appear more impactful on the Bravia 8 II than on the much brighter Hisense, because the OLED can render them without any concern about blooming.

More significantly, the Sony produces a more solid and perceptually three-dimensional image. Objects and characters stand out from their surroundings with greater depth and dynamism, while subtle gradations within shadows, clouds and highlights appear more convincing and refined.

We've observed this extra solidity from OLED many times before, but the side-by-side comparison between these two TVs demonstrates it particularly clearly. Next to the Bravia 8 II, the UR9 simply looks a little flatter and less immersive.

The Sony also has the advantage when it comes to viewing angles. While the Hisense holds up better than many LCD-based rivals, the sweet spot in which it performs at its very best is still relatively narrow. Thanks to its OLED panel, the Bravia 8 II performs consistently from almost any angle.

And while blooming is rare on the UR9, it isn't entirely absent. Difficult scenes such as the bomb-test sequence in Oppenheimer or the opening starfield of Alien: Romulus reveal imperfections that even this highly accomplished RGB Mini LED set cannot completely escape.

The Bravia 8 II, meanwhile, is simply sensational. Its combination of dazzling brightness by OLED standards, vibrant colours, exceptional shadow detail and razor-sharp definition creates an image of astonishing depth and realism.

What impresses most isn't any single strength, but how naturally all of its strengths come together. The Bravia 8 II consistently delivers a picture that feels balanced, authentic and effortlessly cinematic, whether you're watching a pristine 4K Dolby Vision disc or a much more humble SDR stream.

The Hisense UR9 proves that RGB Mini LED can get surprisingly close to flagship OLED performance, and many viewers will adore its combination of brightness, richness and stability. But when viewed side by side, the Bravia 8 II remains the more complete and convincing picture performer.

WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: sound quality

Both the Sony Bravia 8 II and Hisense UR9 are unusually sonically accomplished by modern TV standards.

That's important, because while we always recommend pairing a premium TV with a dedicated sound system, for many buyers that’s either impractical or unpalatable.

The Hisense UR9 certainly doesn't disappoint. Its Devialet-tuned 4.1.2-channel sound system delivers a presentation that is impressively spacious and full-bodied, with particularly convincing width and height effects.

Dolby Atmos soundtracks benefit from a strong sense of scale, while bass is deeper and more substantial than most flatscreen TVs can manage. The overall character is smooth, rich and easy to listen to over extended viewing sessions.

The UR9's audio system isn't flawless, though. Dynamics can feel a little restrained during big action sequences, and dialogue doesn't always have the clarity and expressiveness we'd ideally like.

We also found ourselves preferring the Standard sound mode over the more expansive Theatre setting. While Theatre mode undoubtedly sounds bigger, it can introduce a slightly diffuse and faintly echoey quality to voices that makes dialogue seem less natural than it should.

The Sony Bravia 8 II takes a very different approach. Rather than relying on conventional speaker placement, its Acoustic Surface Audio+ system uses actuators to vibrate the screen itself, effectively turning the display into a speaker.

The result is one of the most cohesive and convincing audio performances we've heard from a TV.

Dialogue and effects are tied directly to the action on screen in a way that traditional TV speaker systems struggle to replicate, creating a stronger sense that sound is genuinely coming from the people and objects you're watching.

Like the Hisense, the Sony also sounds surprisingly spacious, with effects extending well beyond the edges of the screen. Detail levels are excellent, too, and the Bravia 8 II combines subtle dynamic nuance with enough punch to make action scenes engaging and exciting.

Bass depth isn't as generous as it is from the Hisense, but it's impressively controlled, and the overall tonal balance is exceptionally well judged.

Ultimately, these are two of the best-sounding TVs you can currently buy. The Hisense delivers scale, warmth and impressive Atmos effects, but the Sony's superior detail, greater dynamic expression and uniquely direct delivery give it the edge.

WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: verdict

The Hisense UR9 is a hugely important TV.

Not only is it the first mainstream RGB Mini LED TV we've fully reviewed, it's also the first serious attempt to take on flagship OLEDs with a fundamentally different display technology.

And the good news for RGB Mini LED fans is that, in some ways at least, it succeeds.

The UR9 is bright, vibrant and impressively refined. More importantly, it avoids many of the traditional pitfalls of backlit TVs, with excellent black levels, impressively restrained blooming and a consistency that often feels surprisingly OLED-like.

In several respects, it's one of the best backlit TVs we've ever tested.

But while the UR9 proves that RGB Mini LED is a genuinely exciting technology with enormous potential, it also demonstrates just how high the bar currently is at the top end of the OLED market.

Ultimately, picture quality remains the most important factor in any TV buying decision, and it's here that the Sony Bravia 8 II retains a clear advantage. The Hisense has the stronger gaming specification, broader HDR support and spectacular brightness, but the Sony's superior contrast control, greater three-dimensionality and more natural, cinematic image make it the more accomplished performer overall.

This isn't a verdict on RGB Mini LED versus OLED as technologies, and it certainly isn't the last battle in what is shaping up to be one of the most interesting periods in TV tech for years.

Instead, it’s the verdict on the very best OLED TV currently available versus the first mainstream RGB Mini LED model. And while the Hisense UR9 proves that RGB Mini LED is ready to compete with the very best, the Sony Bravia 8 II remains the TV to beat.

OVERALL WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Since news broke that TCL is taking a stake in Sony’s home entertainment business, there have been a lot of questions about the Japanese giant’s plans for OLED.

After all, TCL has famously championed Mini LED as a superior technology, even at the top end of the market, so it may not be keen on Sony continuing to push its rival format.

The Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II, which Sony unveiled mere weeks ago, are both set to use new True RGB panel technology, not OLED.

So there is some evidence that Sony may partially agree with TCL and doesn’t see OLED as its future.

We, however, don’t fully agree that Mini LED is always the better option. For us, OLED is still the top dog – at least when it comes to picture quality – based on our testing.

There is something about OLED’s pixel-level light control and the resulting perfect blacks that no LED set, Mini, RGB, or otherwise, has been able to beat.

Sony is a key reason we continue to push OLED sets in our recommendations, with our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, openly describing our current Product of the Year, the Sony Bravia 8 II OLED, as the best TV he has ever tested, period.

Which is why the team and I were delighted when FlatPanelsHD spotted a new leak, suggesting Sony is not only about to unveil new sets with the panel tech, but that they will also serve a currently underserved part of the market: small, affordable OLEDs.

The leak occurred when a (now removed) listing on Sony’s website for a new Bravia 6 OLED TV appeared.

This hasn’t been confirmed yet, so we are still firmly in rumour territory (we have contacted Sony for comment), but the details in the listing paint a pretty picture.

First, because the listing shows the range will feature a 48-inch size option.

Second, because the alleged use of MediaTek's Pentonic 800 chipset means it will have four HDMI 2.1 ports. That’s great news for people with multiple current-generation consoles and a Dolby Atmos soundbar, all of which require the advanced HDMI connectivity to run at full speed.

Third and finally, because the report suggests the Bravia 6 will feature one of LG’s new OLED SE panels, which are designed for cheaper OLEDs.

We haven’t yet reviewed any TVs sporting that particular panel technology, so we can’t speculate on screen quality, but the potential is certainly exciting.

Regular readers know that we have long lamented the ongoing lack of good, cheap, smaller OLED TVs on the market.

Only a select few companies offer 48- and 42-inch OLED sets. And those we have reviewed and recommend tend to sit in the mid-tier, so can’t really be described as cheap. Even on sale, you’re looking at around £850 / $850.

Right now, with Panasonic’s Award-winning 48-inch Z90B out of stock, there are only two real options to choose from: the 48-inch LG C5 and the 48-inch Samsung S90F.

Editor's note: There are 48- and 42-inch options in the cheaper LG B-series and Samsung S85-series, but we haven’t been able to review them, so we can't recommend them.

Having another contender appear from a known OLED maker, then – and one that offers all three of the things we want – is undeniably positive.

If it does appear and delivers the Award-winning, balanced performance for which Sony OLEDs have become famous in recent years, it could well be the cheap OLED we’ve been waiting for.

So, here’s hoping it’s true, and we get a 48-inch Bravia 6 into our review rooms in the not too distant future.

MORE:

These are the best OLED TVs we have tested

We rank the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

Our picks of the best Mini LED TVs

If you thought Sony was done revealing new TVs after its latest Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II announcements, then think again.

After an OLED-less lineup left us wondering if we'll ever see a new OLED from the company again, there is a glimmer of hope thanks to a leaked listing that mentions a new model – but it's not what we were expecting.

According to a post on AVS Forum (via FlatPanelsHD), Sony will launch the Bravia 6 later this year, and it is a step-down OLED that's set to compete with the LG B6 and Samsung S85H.

The Award-winning duo of OLEDs in Sony's current TV lineup, the Bravia 8 and Bravia 8 II, will remain on sale for the foreseeable future, with the Bravia 6 expected to sit lower in the lineup. In fact, it is looking like Sony will position this below its new Bravia 7 II and Bravia 9 II RGB Mini LED models.

Screen sizes are rumoured to range from 48 to 83 inches. Sony is also expected to use the A60 model number for this set.

Specific model numbers have leaked with corresponding screen size indicators, such as K-48A60 for the 48-inch model.

The post on AVS Forum also claims that Sony will use MediaTek Pentonic 800 chipset, which is the same one found on the new Bravia 3 II.

This should delight gaming fans, as the Bravia 6 will reportedly be the first Sony OLED TV to feature four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets.

The mid-range chipset and the name of this TV suggest the TV will sit in the middle of Sony's current range, which gives us a hint towards the panel technology it could use.

We expect it to feature LG Display's OLED SE panel, which has been specifically designed and tailored to entry-level OLED TVs, such as the Samsung and LG we've mentioned above.

The launch of a new "small" OLED TV could also signal the end for one of the longest-running TVs on the market.

The Sony A90K, which launched in 42-inch and 48-inch screen size options back in 2022, might finally be replaced by this supposed Bravia 6. Is this the end of an era?

For those wondering where this leak originated, we'll have to direct you to Sony itself. The Bravia 6 was explicitly mentioned on a wall-mounting compatibility page from Sony's very own website; you can find the webpage here, but all traces of the Bravia 6 have been completely scrubbed from existence.

Ultimately, we have to take all leaks with a pinch of salt, and nothing is set in stone until Sony confirms the Bravia 6's existence.

We've reached out to Sony for official comment...

MORE:

Read our full Sony Bravia 8 review

As well as our LG C6 review

And check out our picks for the best OLED TVs

It's one thing to make a film sound good in the cinema, but it is a whole other task to take that experience to your home.

Much of that process relies on sound editors and engineers, who have their work cut out adapting the sound to home cinema products.

During the launch of Sony’s latest soundbar system, the Sony Bravia Theatre Trio, we heard Academy Award-nominated sound editor Andrew De Cristofaro speak about the different ways sound must be engineered.

He has worked on films such as The Housemaid, Green Book and Venom: The Last Dance, and collaborated with Sony during the development of the new Bravia Dolby Atmos sound system.

De Cristofaro says: “Sound is doing way more than you think. You can close your eyes and still follow the story but if you mute it, the experience falls apart.” He adds that instead of purely making a film sound good, his job is about making “sound tell the story”.

We watch a scene from Venom: The Last Dance to demonstrate, in which Eddie and Venom come face to face with the monstrous Xenophage. First, we listen with the raw audio that comes to the sound department after filming. As you would expect, it feels far less exciting than the final cut. Footsteps sound more like shuffling, the cracking flame of a lit car has no impact, and the reveal of the Xenophage is as casual as someone getting on the bus.

Venom’s voice is not audible either, as Tom Hardy (who plays both Eddie and the aforementioned alien symbiote) records his lines offset right before he shoots. The crew then pitch the vocals down and feed them back to him so that he can interact with the character live.

Next, De Cristofaro demonstrates how sound effects start to make the scene feel more dramatic. Layer upon layer of crackling, humming and spitting is added to create the sound of the fire. The footsteps of Hardy’s character as he walks the street become precise, which creates more of a three-dimensional sound, and vocals are brought to the fore.

The stomps of the Xenophage are also given a low squelching sound that immediately makes you feel the weight and monstrous nature of the character. The final touch comes with some dramatic bass stabs, and the end result is a tense and atmospheric scene.

But how do you adapt that sound to home cinema kit? De Cristofaro admits that it is a different kettle of fish compared to the cinema audio. The impact can disappear, vocals get lost and the sense of space collapses.

De Cristofaro says that “you have to rebuild a three-dimensional soundfield” adding that “sound isn’t tied to the speakers necessarily; it is mapped into a 360 space”.

He uses the Bravia Trio as an example of this, as the sound engineers at Sony are employing the brand’s proprietary 360 Spatial Tone Mapping which “analyses your room and reconstructs that environment so you maintain the scale”. As its name suggests, the Trio system comprises three speakers: a tiny central channel soundbar and two left and right channels.

We are yet to hear the Trio soundbar system in our test room to confirm whether this is the case, but we have heard other soundbars such as the KEF XIO and the Samsung HW-Q990F come very close to the desired full dome of sound.

De Cristofaro adds: “When everything is working right, when the dialogue is clear, when the space feels real, when the dynamics land the way they should, you don’t hear the system. You feel the film.”

MORE:

Here are the best soundbars we have reviewed

Check out our review of the KEF XIO

These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

Renowned for high-end in-ear headphones such as the Kronos, Noble Audio is bringing its boutique approach to a more widely accessible price point with the new Osprey wireless earbuds.

Despite not being as costly as the premium Fokus Amadeus, the Osprey has had no detail spared in its design. It sports a striking marbled aesthetic finish, keeping it in line with the glamour of other Noble offerings. The charging case, which is made of aluminium, further enhances the premium feel.

At the heart of the earbuds’ design is a hybrid dual-driver configuration, which pairs a 10mm dynamic driver with a custom balanced armature to achieve, says Noble, “confident, controlled bass, a natural and expressive midrange, and clean, extended highs”.

Supporting Bluetooth 5.4, featuring the high-quality LDAC alongside standard SBC and AAC codecs, the earbuds also offer multipoint connectivity and TrueWireless Mirroring to allow easy switching between connected devices. They can also be used in conjunction with the Noble Audio app, which offers EQ modes and firmware updates.

The earbuds come with Active Noise Cancellation to block out external sounds, while Hearing Through mode acts as an ambient or transparency mode to let outside sounds in. Integrated clear voice capture technology and dual microphones are used to ensure clearer voice calls.

The Osprey’s battery life is somewhat shorter than its premium counterparts’, offering seven hours of reliable playback with active noise cancellation disabled, and five with ANC on. The charging case extends this total listening time, allowing four additional full charges for 35 hours of playback. A 10-minute quick charge via USB-C will also provide two extra hours of playback.

The Noble Osprey will cost you £199 / €225 / $199, just shy of the five star Sony WF-1000XM6, which is our most highly recommended premium wireless earbuds.

If the Osprey’s ambitious design is enough to tempt you, pre-orders open on 4th June, with shipping expected by the end of the month. The earbuds will also be available to try at the High End Vienna 2026 showcase.

MORE

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With a whopping 13 drivers, Noble's luxury IEMs have enough firepower to make a samurai tremble

What are the best Bluetooth codecs? aptX, AAC, LDAC and more explained

We’re tempted to call Sennheiser the ‘dark horse’ of wireless headphones.

After all, our best buys have, in more recent times, been stacked to the brim with offerings from the likes of Apple, Bose and, more than any other, Sony, so it has been easy to forget the many qualities that Sennheiser brings to this particular slice of the audio terrain.

Let’s not forget, however, that this is a brand that has been around since 1945, a brand that, when not making the occasional microphone or soundbar, has built its reputation at the sharp end of both wired and wireless headphone production.

Perhaps ‘sleeping giant’ would have been a more apt moniker.

Admittedly, Sennheiser hasn’t quite been as prolific as its esteemed rivals when it comes to the actual volume of products sent to market. And the company’s ongoing search for a buyer since Swiss owner Sonova put its headphone division up for sale has naturally made waters all the choppier. From what we have seen of Sennheiser recently, though, it is still more than capable of taking the fight to the very best in the business.

The sound of success

We wonder if the release of the five-star HDB 630 will end up becoming something of a defining moment for Sennheiser.

Released just a few months before the announcement that the company’s headphone division was going up for sale – with some doom-mongers rather rashly predicting the death of entire brand – the audiophile-tuned HDB 630 now look like a major signal of intent.

We’ve always known that this is a brand capable of excellence in the wired space, though it had been a while since Sennheiser had properly flexed its wireless muscles. The soon to be phased out mid-priced Accentum line, including the Accentum Wireless and Accentum Wireless Plus over-ears, had failed to set the world alight, and it had been almost four years since we’d heard a hint of any addition to the premium Momentum Wireless range.

Rival standards were high, too. The Sony WH-1000XM6 looked unassailable at their £400 / $450 / AU$699 price, while the likes of Bowers & Wilkins, Bose, Apple and Dali were all also vying for the crown. Competition was, is, and probably always will be, incredibly fierce.

Yet the HDB 630 really pulled it out of the bag. Sennheiser’s outstanding cans set a new standard of wireless sound at this level, thanks in part to their clever bundled Bluetooth dongle, with a sonic performance that blew most of their competitors out of the water. Including Sony.

As we say in our review: “Here, precision and analysis go hand in hand with drive and vigour, making for the most informative and entertaining sound we’ve heard from wireless headphones at this price, with or without the use of the dongle.”

The Momentum 5 Wireless have repeated a similar trick, and while they’re not as boundary-pushing as the HDB 630, their aggressive price tag (£330 / $400 / AU$749) and rich, smooth sound make them a very fine alternative to the Sonys and B&Ws of this world.

Two five-star pairs with a strong focus on stellar sound and plenty of features in tow. If that isn't a warning to rivals to sit up and take notice, we don't know what is.

Take a chance on me

God loves a trier, but He also favours those who take a few risks.

It feels as though Sennheiser has recognised a need to innovate in order to get ahead of a crowded pack, and while the temptation to go in for zippy gimmicks and check-box features must have pulled hard, resisting such inclinations has paid dividends.

As has putting efforts into genuinely constructive innovation. We gave significant attention to the bundled Bluetooth dongle when reviewing the Sennheiser HDB 630 last year, and not without reason: it turned out to be the premium over-ears’ small-but-mighty secret weapon.

Essentially, it’s a clever little USB accessory that gives your phone or other audio source the same high-quality Bluetooth codec the headphones themselves support, meaning you have improved codec-support from devices which might not normally (we’re looking at you, iPhone) have supported them.

That’s a big deal, and as we wrote at the time, the “dongle proves a valuable accessory. When connected to an iPhone 16 and old Samsung Galaxy S21, upgrading their respective AAC and aptX connectivity with the headphones to aptX Adaptive, the presentation gains in clarity and solidity.”

The Momentum 5 Wireless have kept up with the times, too. There’s no dongle to be found, but with extensive codec support, wired listening via USB-C and 3.5mm, Dolby Atmos all on board, Sennheiser’s flagships have kept up admirably with the likes of the Sony WH-1000XM6 and the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3. 57 hours of battery life with ANC on doesn’t exactly hurt, either.

The new Momentum 5 Wireless don’t necessarily have the most features of any premium pair, but in terms of quality, they’re up there with the best.

A case of re-taken identity

Perhaps ironically, and certainly impressively, Sennheiser seems to have re-found and re-established its identity at a time of not-inconsiderable uncertainty.

While the likes of the Accentum line and the disappointing Sennheiser Momentum Sport earbuds seemed to play it safe with a flat, tonally grey sound, the premium Momentum 5 Wireless and HDB 630 feel like Sennheiser returning to a place where it is the most confident and comfortable.

In fact, when we spoke recently to the German manufacturer about where it saw its future, there was a clear statement that the Momentum Wireless line would be a prospective listeners’ “entry point” into the world of Sennheiser sound.

From there, they could progress to the HDB 630 and beyond into even more premium and high-end wired options. But the message was clear: Sennheiser would be providing audiophile-type performance to proper enthusiasts.

It appears to be a sensible move. Sennheiser does great work when it targets this more audiophile-centric side of the landscape – just see the wired Sennheiser HD 820 for proof – and with so many brands already targeting mass production of cheaper, spec-heavy wireless earbuds and headphones, it make sense to stick to more rarefied territory.

And, from what we’ve heard, it’s what the company seems to rather good at.

Sennheiser’s resurgence feels like a good thing for the wireless headphones industry.

It’s good for customers to have a healthy number of options when picking out a potential product; it’s good for the market not to be strangled for a monopoly; and it’s good for rival companies to compete with one another for supremacy in order to push the needle of quality ever forward.

When working as it’s supposed to, that’s sort of the point of a free market, isn’t it?

Producing two or three excellent pairs of headphones doesn’t suddenly make you the king, especially with the likes of Sony putting out five-star headphones across the cost spectrum, over many successive years. What they do indicate, though, is that Sennheiser feels like a company finding its groove again, and, in the midst of a potentially turbulent time, re-establishing its identity amid a sea of change and challengers.

If a worthy successor to the Momentum True Wireless 4 earbuds also ends up landing later this year, we might end up looking back at 2026 as being the year of Sennheiser.

MORE:

Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless vs Sony WH-1000XM6: which premium wireless headphones are better?

"Sound comes first" – we speak to Sennheiser about German engineering, changing ownership, and 80 years of making music

Best noise-cancelling headphones tested by our in-house review experts

Sony has just announced its two new “True RGB” TVs for 2026, and it should come as no surprise that I am rather excited to test them out.

The Japanese giant has delivered a slew of superb TVs since its most recent Bravia relaunch in 2024. The Bravia 8 and Bravia 8 II are two OLED TVs that I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone looking for a premium, cinematic TV; and the Bravia 7 and Bravia 5 are both superb mid-range options that don’t compromise on picture quality.

While the Bravia 9 wasn’t perfect, it hinted towards Sony’s future ambitions, and in many ways it showed some serious promise. With its successor, the Bravia 9 II (and its step-down sibling, the Bravia 7 II) now official, things are all clicking into place.

Well, almost everything…

While I haven’t seen these TVs in action yet – my fellow What Hi-Fi? Team AV members have been lucky enough to, and you can check out their Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II hands-on reviews here – there is one hiccup on the spec sheets for both TVs. And it’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow.

Once again, there is only a limited number of HDMI 2.1 sockets. Both the Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II sport just two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets, and one of these has to double as the eARC socket.

This means that if you have a Dolby Atmos soundbar without HDMI 2.1 passthrough (such as the Award-winning Sonos Arc Ultra) and more than one of the latest gaming consoles (and/or a gaming PC), then you’re going to need to make some performance sacrifices with at least one of them; namely, 4K/120Hz support with VRR.

Sony hopes that you’ll be using one of its home theatre sound systems with your Bravia TV, most of which (but not all) feature HDMI 2.1 passthrough support, which does negate this issue.

But with LG and Samsung offering four full-bandwidth sockets for nearly seven years, and now Philips and Hisense offering an equal number on their premium 2026 TVs, it’s becoming harder to justify Sony’s exclusion.

Especially when we remember that this is one of the biggest names in gaming. Sony’s own PlayStation 5 continues to dominate this generation of console gaming, and while there are some Sony TV-specific features you can unlock by connecting the PS5 with a Bravia TV, we still think it is best paired with an LG C-series OLED.

To give Sony some credit, the Bravia 9 II and 7 II have clearly been in development for quite some time; our TV and AV Editor, Tom Parsons, first saw an early prototype of Sony’s True RGB TVs back in early 2025, and I followed up with a behind-closed-doors demo at IFA 2025.

Sony told us that it was already too far into development using the existing flagship MediaTek chipset (we presume this to mean the Pentonic 1000 or 900) to switch to the newer Pentonic 800, which Philips and Hisense are using on their respective flagship TVs this year, to achieve the full suite of HDMI 2.1 sockets.

That being said, Sony has been outfitting its TVs with just two HDMI 2.1 sockets for quite some time now; the A80L sitting in my living room, which is more than three years old, only has two full-bandwidth ports.

Ironically, if you want a Sony TV with four HDMI 2.1 sockets, you’ll have to look far past the new True RGB range and opt for the Bravia 3 II, which leans towards the budget end of things with its direct-lit, global dimming LED display.

While it’s not a dealbreaker – certainly for most consumers – and I’m still very keen to see how these new True RGB TVs will perform, Sony’s gaming stumble is hard to ignore.

We’ll be sure to test how the Bravia 9 II and 7 II interact with a PS5 during our testing, so keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming reviews coming soon.

MORE:

Read our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on review

As well as our LG C6 65-inch review

And check out our picks for the best TVs

Sony has just unveiled its new flagship home theatre system, and it’s a bit of an odd one.

Neither a soundbar nor a four-speaker surround system in the vein of the Bravia Theatre Quad, the Bravia Theatre Trio is, as the name suggests, a system comprising three speakers: a centre, a left, and a right.

The centre looks like a particularly stumpy soundbar and is designed to sit in front of or below your TV, while the other two speakers are tall, spherical towers intended to go to the left and right of your TV.

The Trio’s raison d’être is the growing popularity of super-sized TVs. Sony has itself just announced the Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II TVs, both of which are available in sizes larger than 85 inches.

Sony says that most soundbars can’t create a wide enough soundstage to match the scale of the imagery, and that while a system such as the Bravia Theatre Quad can supply the width, the lack of a dedicated centre speaker can compromise focus and dialogue solidity.

Now that the company is (thankfully) doing away with Acoustic Centre Sync, in which the TV serves as the centre speaker, another solution was required – hence the Bravia Theatre Trio.

As you would expect of a modern home cinema system, the Bravia Theatre Trio supports Dolby Atmos (and DTS:X), with the left and right speakers each featuring an up-firing driver for genuine height effects.

A new version of Sony’s Spatial Sound Mapping is also on hand to create an aural bubble featuring phantom speakers for an authentic 3D audio experience.

On top of that, Sony Electronics says it has worked with its colleagues at Sony Pictures on the tuning of the Bravia Theatre Trio, with the intention of delivering a sound that’s as true to the cinema experience as possible.

And, in order to ensure consistency in living rooms of all shapes and sizes, Sony has even developed a bespoke USB-C microphone that you plug into your phone for use during the calibration process.

In other words, this feels like a real belt-and-braces approach to home cinema and, when I heard the Bravia Theatre Trio in Tokyo in March, it absolutely knocked my socks off.

There is, though, a massive caveat that explains why I was so impressed.

You see, the Bravia Theatre Trio’s three speakers can be enhanced through the addition of surround speakers and up to two subwoofers, and that’s how I heard it.

In fact, I heard it with a pair of Rear 8 speakers as surrounds and two of the awesomely monolithic new Sub 9 subwoofers on bass duties.

Seeing how the Bravia Theatre Trio is £2000, a pair of Surround 8s is £449, and a single Sub 9 is £900, that means what I listened to was a £4249 home theatre system, so you’d flipping well hope it sounded good.

Honestly, though, even within that pricey context, the expanded Theatre Trio system really rocked me.

Sony started by playing the spice harvester scene from Dune, and the first thing that struck me was the bass. The quantity and depth of it was close to breathtaking, but it was also brilliantly integrated with the rest of the tonal range.

Dialogue clarity was deeply impressive, too, especially during the heavy action and compared with the Bravia Theatre Bar 9 system that was used as a comparison.

There’s a fair amount of sparkly treble in the Dune soundtrack, and the Trio system delivered this without drifting into brightness or sibilance in a way that’s rare for a ‘lifestyle’ product. Detail levels across all frequencies were sky high, too.

Sony then played me the opening of Top Gun: Maverick, which brilliantly illustrated the dynamic range of the system. The shifts from quiet, subtle dialogue to bombastic, thumping effects – the launch of the hypersonic jet, for example – were handled with the sort of energy and flexibility I would usually associate with a traditional AVR and speaker package.

The weight provided by those subs was striking, too, underpinning the whole presentation with deep, tight and tuneful bass that integrated seamlessly with the midrange delivery of the main speakers.

Despite the very different form factors of the centre and left/right speakers, I found the sound to be seamless across the front of the soundfield, and the connection between the fronts and the surrounds was perfectly natural, too – though that’s less surprising given the hardware similarities between the Trio’s left and right speakers and the Surround 8s.

In short, the Dolby Atmos presentation was exemplary, with the 24 phantom speakers of the extended package assisting in passing effects around the room in a brilliantly natural, immersive way.

I hope you can understand, though, that while the system I heard sounded utterly brilliant, I can’t even begin to deliver a verdict on the Bravia Theatre Trio.

A couple of clips is never enough for firm conclusions to be drawn, and I heard the Trio with accessories that, combined, cost more than the core system itself.

My instinct is that the Bravia Theatre Trio will be very good on its own, but I worry slightly that it could sound a little feeble without at least one sub thrown into the mix.

We’ll be testing that theory just as soon as we can get the core system – and its accessories – into our dedicated test rooms for a comprehensive review.

MORE:

Read our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on and Sony Bravia 7 II hands-on

Here are all of the best soundbars and best surround systems you can buy right now

It might surprise you to learn that, expensive though they can be, there’s not a lot of profit in TVs. That’s why manufacturers have increasingly been trying to sell add-ons alongside them – most notably soundbars.

Of course, any soundbar will work with any TV via the universal HDMI eARC connection, so brands have had to find ways to incentivise buyers to stay loyal to a single ecosystem.

Partly, that’s been through bundle deals – “buy one of our TVs and get money off one of our soundbars”, that sort of thing – but manufacturers have also introduced synergistic features such as integrated controls, wireless TV-to-soundbar audio connections and, most controversially, systems that synchronise the speakers in both devices.

Why is that controversial? Because, broadly speaking, these features are usually worse than simply using the soundbar on its own – yet buyers are often led to believe they are missing out if they don’t enable them.

Thankfully, Sony is discontinuing its version of the feature, Acoustic Centre Sync, in future TVs and home cinema products. Now I’d like Samsung and LG to do the same with Q-Symphony and WOW Orchestra.

To be fair, the concept behind these features does make a certain amount of sense. Why buy a soundbar only to completely disable the speakers built into your TV? Isn’t that just wasting audio hardware you have already paid for?

There are also genuine theoretical benefits. The TV’s speakers can be used to anchor effects and dialogue more directly to the screen, particularly when the soundbar sits low beneath the display.

That’s especially true of Sony’s OLED TVs, which use actuators to vibrate the panel itself in order to create sound. The audio quite literally comes from the screen. If any company was going to make this concept work convincingly, it was probably Sony.

The problem, though, is that even very good TV speakers are generally nowhere near as capable as the speakers in a decent soundbar. In fact, most TV speakers are deeply compromised by the physical limitations of modern ultra-thin TVs.

So when a manufacturer asks the TV and soundbar to work together, you’re often shifting part of the audio workload from the better speaker system to the worse one.

Brands use clever digital signal processing and calibration to create spatial and tonal cohesion between the two systems, and the technical achievement can actually be pretty impressive. But TV speakers and soundbar drivers are so fundamentally different that the result rarely sounds entirely natural or convincing.

To be absolutely clear, there are exceptions. Some specific TV and soundbar combinations can sound pretty good with these features enabled, usually because the manufacturer has spent time properly tuning that exact pairing.

The problem is that most combinations won’t have received that level of optimisation – yet the feature is still there, still heavily marketed and usually switched on by default.

Most people will naturally assume that a feature promoted so heavily by the manufacturer must improve performance, so will leave it enabled without a second thought. Even enthusiasts who are sceptical enough to question it often need to spend a frustrating amount of time A/B testing lots of different content before deciding whether it actually sounds better or worse.

The result is that plenty of people who buy a TV and soundbar from the same brand are unknowingly getting a diluted audio experience rather than an upgraded one.

Whether Sony would phrase it this way or not, discontinuing Acoustic Centre Sync feels like an acknowledgement that the compromises often outweigh the benefits. The company doesn’t want you buying one of its broadly excellent soundbars only to undermine its performance by involving the often inferior speakers in your TV.

I think that’s the right decision.

In most cases, people who spend good money on a soundbar deserve to hear that soundbar operating at its full potential. Sony appears to have recognised that, and I hope Samsung and LG eventually do the same.

MORE:

Here are the best TVs and best soundbars you can buy right now

Read our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on review

And our Sony Bravia 7 II hands-on review

Sony has finally announced its full 2026 TV range, and guess what’s missing? That’s right – OLED.

It was long suspected that the brand’s new flagship model would be an RGB Mini LED set to replace the Bravia 9 ‘standard’ LED model. And, sure enough, that’s precisely what we’ve got, in the form of the technically formidable Bravia 9 II.

What I wasn’t expecting, though, was no new OLED in the range at all.

No replacement for the Bravia 8 II is no surprise: Sony works on two-year lifecycles for most of its models, and the company’s awesome QD-OLED set is only a year old.

And I’m beyond expecting a replacement to the A90K, which launched way back in 2022 but appears to have been sentenced to lifetime imprisonment in the warehouses of Amazon, Currys and John Lewis.

I was, though, expecting the Bravia 8 to get a replacement. Now two years old, Sony’s W-OLED model is struggling to justify itself against last year’s LG C5 and the newer C6. Surely a nip-and-tuck upgrade would be worth it, both for Sony and consumers who want meaningful choice when buying a step-down/mainstream OLED TV.

Alas, though, there’s not a single new OLED in Sony’s new range, with all three of its existing models expected to run for at least another year.

And that’s prompted in me a dreadful thought: what if Sony plans never to launch another OLED TV? Sadly, the more I think about it, the more I feel that’s a very realistic possibility.

It’s all about profit, of course, which is understandable; it’s saddening nonetheless.

You see, Sony buys all of the panels for its OLED TVs from its rivals: it buys the W-OLED panels for the A90K and Bravia 8 from LG, and the QD-OLED panels for the Bravia 8 II from Samsung.

This, inevitably, eats into the money the brand can make from these OLED TVs, especially while it tries to compete on price with those brands that both make the panels and sell the TVs.

Meanwhile, Sony’s Home Entertainment division, which is responsible for the design, development and manufacture of its TVs (and home theatre products), is about to become a joint venture between Sony itself and TCL, the latter of which will hold a 51 per cent share.

TCL is, of course, the biggest manufacturer of LCD TV panels in the world. It’s famously uninterested in OLED where TVs are concerned, and while it is in the process of building a huge factory where it will produce OLED panels via inkjet printing, these will be for smartphones, tablets and laptops, at least in the first place.

So, once the Sony/TCL joint venture begins operations at the start of 2027, will it have any interest in buying expensive OLED panels from its rivals so that it can produce Sony OLED TVs from which it receives very little profit? Or will it entirely focus on producing TVs using the in-house panel technology supplied by the TCL side of the merger?

Sadly, it’s not hard to imagine the answer to that one.

Of course, Sony says it is very much not done with OLED, and I sincerely hope that’s true, as I’m yet to test a backlit TV that beats an OLED overall. But Sony also needs to operate as a business, which means making profits. And that, I suspect, means saying goodbye to OLED.

With any luck, I’m wrong, but if the Bravia 8 II really does turn out to be Sony’s last OLED TV, at least it’s an awesome one.

MORE:

Check out our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on and Sony Bravia 8 II review

Here are all of the best TVs you can buy right now

Soundbars, particularly those designed to deliver immersive 3D audio formats such as Dolby Atmos, live and die by calibration.

Their effectiveness depends heavily on being able to bounce sound around your room in a way that properly matches your seating position, while also taking into account the shape of the space, the placement of furniture and the amount of soft furnishing that might absorb or diffuse sound.

Without effective calibration, even an excellent soundbar can sound surprisingly underwhelming.

In the early days of soundbars, most notably with Yamaha’s pioneering YSP range, calibration was handled using a dedicated wired microphone included in the box. You would plug the microphone into the soundbar, position it where you normally sit, activate the test tones and let the system do the rest.

Manufacturers eventually concluded that this process was too cumbersome for mainstream buyers, though, so more advanced and convenient systems were developed.

The best-known of those is probably Sonos Trueplay, which uses the microphones built into your iPhone. Generally, you first take a measurement while sitting in your listening position, before walking around the room slowly wafting your phone through the air in a manner vaguely akin to vacuuming your walls.

It feels faintly ridiculous going through the process, but Trueplay is genuinely effective.

The problem is that its accuracy depends heavily on the quality and consistency of your phone’s microphones. That’s why Trueplay is still limited to iOS devices. Android owners either have to borrow an iPhone from a friend to calibrate their system properly or simply live with an uncalibrated soundbar.

Sony’s own Sound Field Optimisation system has historically been far more open, supporting both iOS and Android devices, but has it always produced entirely consistent results? The company’s latest solution rather suggests otherwise.

Said solution is simple: a bespoke USB-C microphone designed specifically for calibrating its new Bravia Theatre Trio home theatre system.

The microphone plugs directly into your smartphone during setup, allowing the Bravia Connect app to handle all of the clever room-analysis processing while ensuring that the recordings themselves are captured using consistent, purpose-built hardware rather than the wildly variable microphones built into phones.

In other words, Sony has effectively separated the software processing from the recording hardware.

That strikes me as a genuinely smart solution to a longstanding problem.

Yes, it means keeping track of an extra accessory, but that feels like a very small price to pay for more reliable and consistent calibration results – particularly for a premium Dolby Atmos system that is designed to create convincing spatial audio effects.

Accurate calibration alone doesn’t guarantee great sound, of course, but it does provide the foundation on which great spatial audio depends.

And, based on my brief hands-on experience with the Bravia Theatre Trio, Sony’s approach appears to work remarkably well. It’s one of the smartest soundbar innovations I have seen in quite some time – and one that rivals such as Sonos should probably be paying close attention to.

MORE:

Here are my initial thoughts on the Sony Bravia Theatre Trio

These are all of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars you can buy right now

Sony has unveiled a new Bravia Theatre Trio Dolby Atmos system, promising that the premium unit will let movie fans hear films the way their directors “meant [them] to be experienced”.

The new system was unveiled today, alongside Sony’s latest Bravia 9 II and Bravia 7 II TVs. It targets the upper end of the market currently dominated by the five-star Samsung HW-Q990H soundbar system, which we reviewed recently.

As its name suggests, the Trio system comprises three speakers: a tiny central channel soundbar and two left and right channels.

Unlike most other wireless Dolby Atmos systems however, including the Q990H, the satellites are not rear-channel speakers. Instead, they are front-facing and aim to deliver a wider, clearer and generally more accurate soundstage. This, then, is more like a soundbar chopped into three parts than a traditional wireless system.

Sony is marketing the package as a top choice for people looking for an “authentic” home cinema experience.

It claims to have achieved this by designing the Trio “in close collaboration” with Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE).

“When we design sound for film, every choice is about guiding what the audience feels in a moment,” said Andrew DeCristofaro, sound designer at Sony Pictures Entertainment.

“The Bravia Theatre Trio brings that same intention into the home, letting people hear the detail, movement and balance the way we meant it to be experienced.”

The unit comes with a USB-C microphone, which Sony claims will let the Trio offer significantly more accurate room-calibration than most rivals.

Most soundbar calibration solutions, including Sonos Trueplay, use a connected smartphone’s mics. This, though, based on our experience, can produce varying results, which are heavily informed by the phone you’re using.

Under the hood, the system’s 3.0.2 Atmos configuration combines a total of nine speaker units. There are two cone woofers and a soft-dome tweeter in the central bar. Backing them up, each satellite has an upfiring Atmos height channel, soft-dome tweeter and bass-reflex unit.

Each part offers 135W of muscle, adding up to a 405W total power output for the combined package.

Despite the driver count, Sony claims that thanks to the inclusion of its 360 Spatial Sound Mapping (360SSM) tech, the Trio can generate a “24 phantom speaker” (we’re guessing that means virtual) surround sound experience.

The unit supports Dolby Atmos, DTS: X, and IMAX Enhanced formats and comes with Bluetooth and wi-fi connectivity baked in. Chromecast is not supported, but there's good news for Apple fans as AirPlay 2 is available.

For people looking to grow the system over time, Sony has confirmed the Trio is upgradable and can be expanded to include rear speakers and up to two wireless subwoofers. However, doing so will of course add to its already unashamedly premium price.

The base Sony Bravia Theatre Trio package will set you back £2000 (roughly $2700). Adding the Rear 9 satellites will then add £700 (roughly $950) to the bill.

There is a range of compatible subwoofer options: the Sub 7, Sub 8, Sub 9, SA-SW3, and SA-SW5. The top-end Sub 9 costs £900 (roughly $1215). The cheaper Sub 7 retails for £249 (roughly $335), and the Sub 8 comes in at £650 (around $875).

That makes it noticeably more expensive than the five-star Samsung Q990H, which cost £1599 ($2000) at launch. It also puts the Trio in direct competition with the Award-winning KEF XIO, which is the premium option we currently recommend in our best Dolby Atmos Soundbars guide.

We haven’t reviewed the Trio yet. But our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, has had an opening listen with it at Sony’s launch event in Japan. He walked away impressed, succinctly describing the experience as “awesome”.

We hope to get a review unit of the Trio in for testing soon, so watch this space. If you have any questions about the unit, drop them in the comments section below, and we’ll get you an answer as soon as possible.

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The Sony Bravia 9 II is perhaps the most impressive backlit TV I’ve ever seen. And yet, after spending time with it in Tokyo a couple of months ago (here’s my Bravia 9 II hands-on), I still don’t think I would swap my OLED for it.

That might sound odd, considering the Bravia 9 II is in many ways exactly what the TV industry has been promising us for years. It’s dazzlingly bright, remarkably controlled, deeply cinematic and, in terms of colour reproduction, genuinely closer to a studio mastering monitor than maybe any other TV I have tested.

In lots of ways, Sony’s new RGB Mini LED flagship feels like a glimpse of the future.

But my time testing it also reinforced something I have long suspected: no matter how sophisticated backlight technology becomes, there may still be certain image qualities that only self-emissive pixels can truly deliver.

To be clear, I’m not writing off RGB Mini LED. Far from it. In fact, I think the Bravia 9 II has every chance of proving to be the best LCD-based TV ever made once we get a final production sample in for a full review.

Nor am I claiming that OLED is objectively ‘better’ in every regard. The Bravia 9 II can hit 4000 nits in its most accurate mode, which is an astonishing achievement, and Sony’s new RGB backlight system appears capable of delivering exceptionally rich, accurate colours at brightness levels that OLED simply can’t currently match.

But the more impressive RGB Mini LED becomes technically, the more I find myself frustrated by the ways in which it still can’t match OLED.

The big one, for me, is solidity.

OLED TVs tend to produce images with a density and three-dimensionality that’s difficult to quantify but immediately obvious when you see it. Objects appear more tangible and more firmly placed within the image. Dark scenes, in particular, have a kind of depth and stability that even the best backlit TVs rarely fully replicate.

My theory – and it is just a theory – is that this comes from OLED’s pixel-level contrast control. Every pixel is independently and precisely responsible for its own luminance, with no need for a backlight system working behind the scenes to decide how bright different areas of the screen should be.

Even the most advanced Mini LED TVs are still, ultimately, trying to approximate that behaviour using clusters of controllable lights behind an LCD layer. Sony’s latest system is probably the closest I’ve seen any manufacturer get, but I’m not yet convinced that any amount of dimming-zone sophistication can entirely reproduce the same perceptual solidity as self-emissive pixels.

Even the most intelligent of backlighting systems can also be caught out in a way that an OLED doesn’t have to worry about, too.

During my testing of the Bravia 9 II, I used the opening text sequence from Blade Runner 2049, which is notoriously difficult for backlit TVs. Here, the Bravia 9 II’s otherwise superb backlight controls visibly faltered, introducing uneven colouring and reducing the intensity of text that should have appeared vividly red.

Now, this was a pre-production sample, and Sony may well improve this before launch. I certainly wouldn’t judge the TV too harshly based on one particularly brutal torture test, anyway.

But the moment still felt telling.

One of OLED’s greatest strengths is consistency. There is very little sense of the TV ‘working’ to create the image. Highlights, shadows and colours simply appear exactly where they should, without drawing attention to the mechanicals behind the picture.

With even the very best backlit TVs, there are still moments when you become aware of the processing and dimming systems juggling competing priorities in real time. And once you notice that, even briefly, you are no longer completely immersed in what you’re watching.

That’s not to say OLED is flawless, of course. OLED TVs are dimmer than the very brightest Mini LED models, and RGB Mini LED’s advocates are absolutely right that the technology can produce more saturated colours at extremely high brightness levels.

I’m just not yet convinced how transformative that advantage is with real-world content.

Most movies and TV shows still aren’t mastered anywhere near 4000 nits, and while extra brightness headroom is undeniably useful in bright viewing environments, the best modern OLEDs are already more than bright enough for most people’s living rooms.

Similarly, greater colour volume is technically impressive, but much of that benefit stems from the ability to maintain colour saturation at very high luminance levels. If content rarely reaches those levels in the first place, the practical gains can feel somewhat pointless outside of demos.

That may change over time, of course. TV manufacturers clearly believe brighter HDR content is coming, and perhaps it eventually will.

But there’s another reason why I think RGB Mini LED matters, and this one is more immediate and convincing to me: screen size.

At 65 and 77 inches, OLED has become relatively attainable. But once you move into truly enormous sizes – 83 inches, 97 inches – OLED remains prohibitively expensive; and models larger than 100 inches don’t even exist.

RGB Mini LED could be the answer to that.

Sony is launching the Bravia 9 II in sizes up to 115 inches, and other brands are going similarly massive with their RGB Mini LED sets (that’s the Hisense 116UX in the photo above). I suspect technologies such as this will eventually make truly gigantic premium TVs far more accessible than OLED ever can. In that sense, RGB Mini LED may end up becoming the spiritual successor to projectors.

And maybe that’s where this all ends up.

For years, the TV industry has searched for a single technology that combines OLED’s contrast and pixel precision with LCD’s brightness and scalability. RGB Mini LED is clearly the closest anyone has yet come to achieving that.

But after seeing Sony’s awesome-looking Bravia 9 II, I’m not sure I believe there will ever be one universal winner.

Perhaps the future of premium TVs isn’t about one technology replacing another entirely. Perhaps it’s about different technologies excelling in different ways, for different people, at different sizes.

At least for now, OLED still feels like the most complete and convincing option for me personally – but I can see why RGB Mini LED might be the better option for others.

MORE:

Read our Sony Bravia 9 II hands-on

Here’s our Hisense UR9 RGB Mini LED TV review

These are all of the best TVs you can buy right now

After months of teasers and snippets of information, Sony’s first line of RGB Mini LED TVs is finally here.

The Sony Bravia 9 II and the step-down Sony Bravia 7 II use ‘True RGB’ technology, which the company claims can offer “up to four times the colour volume of OLED” – and outdo the brightness of Mini LED.

Sony follows a host of other brands that have thrown their hat into the RGB Mini LED ring, with Hisense, Samsung and TCL all delivering their own take on the technology.

Some brands use two-diode LEDs for their RGB models. These employ green and blue diodes that shine light through a phosphor layer to generate colours.

But Sony is using independently controlled red, green and blue diodes, which the brand claims will deliver a more accurate image.

The TVs are also powered by Sony’s proprietary RGB Backlight Master Drive Pro, which the company says, “drives each LED with high precision, improving brightness, reducing blooming, and producing purer colour than conventional Mini LED displays”.

The Sony Bravia 9 II is the brand’s flagship ‘True RGB’ model.

It claims to reach the same peak brightness levels as the BVM-HX3110 mastering monitor, which goes up to 4000 nits. No official figure has been given for either new TV model, but if it goes as high as the monitor, we could be in for a very bright picture.

The flagship model is also powered by "RGB Triluminos Max and Luminance Booster Pro", which Sony claims delivers "smoother gradation, and accurate hues at higher brightness levels".

You can see the pricing of both the Bravia 7 II and Bravia 9 II below.

The TVs should launch in late spring with pre-orders available now. And we should have US and Australian pricing soon.

Both TVs offer Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support, which gives a comprehensive set of surround sound options.

While Sony says both models offer a three-dimensional audio experience, the Bravia 9 II has the edge with the inclusion of up-firing beam tweeters. The company says this delivers more cinematic surround sound with "powerful depth and true immersion".

You will find Dolby Vision support with both models but, like all Sony TVs, there is no HDR10+ on the cards.

They both also employ X-Wide Angle Pro technology, which Sony says means “colours stay consistent even at wide viewing angles”.

Only available with the Bravia 9 II is the Immersive Black Screen Pro feature, which aims to reduce screen reflections.

Both TVs have a central ‘mirage stand’ which uses a layer of clever transparent material to conceal wires under the base of your screen. This isn't available with the biggest screen sizes, however.

RGB LED TVs have already been dubbed as a possible “OLED killer” by many because of the higher colour volume and brightness claims.

We’ll have to wait until we get both models into our test room to see if the proof is in the pudding – but you can read our first impressions in our Bravia 7 II and Bravia 9 II hands-on reviews.

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