Mark your calendars: we have set the date for the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2026. And this year, we will not only crown a fresh set of winners, but we’ll also be celebrating our 50th birthday!

Yes, on 12th November, the crème de la crème of hi-fi and home cinema will don their gladrags and descend on London to celebrate the top products in their categories at an exclusive black-tie event.

But ahead of the big hi-fi and home cinema gala, there are a few dates you should mark in your calendar.

As of now, companies can submit products for consideration on our Awards site. Submissions close on 12th August, at which point our team will get all the products into our viewing and listening rooms and begin testing in earnest.

These, along with any product that is still on sale that we have reviewed and awarded five stars, will then be considered for a Best Buy trophy in their relevant category.

After the AV battle royal plays out and we have decided which products are truly the best of the best in each category, we will then reveal the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2026 Best Buy winners on 13th October.

These brilliant products then form the shortlists for the Product of the Year categories, which will be revealed at the black-tie event on 12th November in London. While the event itself is closed to the public, you can follow along on our social media feeds, where we’ll be posting updates and all this year’s winners.

If you want to get even more involved in the action, we will also be running our special Readers’ Award. This lets you vote on a shortlist of products, created by our reviewers. Voting goes live on 14th September and closes a couple of weeks later on 28th September – so make sure to mark the date if you want to get involved.

On top of all that, as What Hi-Fi? is turning 50 this year, we’ll also have a special category that we have never run before. We’ll reveal details of that closer to the ceremony – so watch this space!

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Check out the full list of What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 winners

Make sure to take a look at our What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame

Rega's Roy Gandy wins What Hi-Fi?'s Outstanding Contribution Award for 2025

As we stagger towards Christmas and the end of the year, it's customary and occasionally advantageous to reflect on the highs (and maybe lows) of the previous 12 months.

The What Hi-Fi? Awards are always front of mind for us – as a high, of course – and since we introduced the Outstanding Contribution Award back in 2017, it tends to be that moment, when the winner comes to the stage and says a few words, that shines brightest in the memory.

In case you're unaware, our annual Awards ceremony has been a black tie dinner in London for several decades now, with all the winners honoured during the ceremony, and the Product of the Year winners revealed for the first time.

Happy and emotional members of the industry are festooned with trophies and the ceremony is brought to a close with a speech from our Outstanding Contribution winner.

And you don't have to take our word for it. Below you can watch this year's winner, Roy Gandy, co-founder of Rega, saying a few words to an enthralled audience.

Gandy co-founded Rega Research in 1973. The company's first product of note was the Planet turntable, with its unusual platter-less design and minimalist appearance.

However, it was the arrival of the Planar 3 record player in 1976, and subsequently the rest of the Planar family, that really set the foundation for Rega as we know it today.

The company is best known for its turntables, of course, with the various Planar decks dominating our Awards for more years than we would care to remember, but we're also big fans of the company's electronics.

Always happy to go against the grain – "I don’t think I’ve ever been interested in hi-fi" – we thought Gandy was a more-than-deserving winner of this year's Award, and the hundreds of people in the room certainly seemed in agreement.

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16 of the best Rega products of all time: turntables, amps and phono stages

Naim Audio's Roy George wins our Outstanding Contribution Award 2024

Take a look through Rega’s website and you’ll find the following quote.

“So, history shows that I could have been a mechanic, a builder, a guitar maker, continued working at the Ford Motor Company or maybe even a restaurant owner, but instead, turntables happened.”

Those are Roy Gandy’s words, and we at What Hi-Fi? are mighty pleased that turntables won out in the end. Gandy co-founded Rega Research in 1973, and since then has been on a mission to deliver high-quality specialist audio equipment to the masses.

His first real product was the Planet turntable, with its unusual platter-less design and minimalist appearance. However, it was the arrival of the Planar 3 record player in 1976, and subsequently the rest of the Planar family, that really set the foundation for Rega as we know it today.

The company is best known for its turntables, of course, with the various Planar decks dominating our Awards for more years than we (or the competition, we suspect) would care to remember.

But the brand’s distinctive electronics have never been far behind, with various phono stages and integrated amplifiers proving to be leading contenders at their price points too. The likes of the Fono, Brio and Elex have long become go-to recommendations for us, and justifiably so. When it comes to the all-important performance-per-pound ratio, they, like the turntables, have proved hard to better.

Roy Gandy’s focused approach to engineering and the strong desire to provide real value to customers can be seen as a strong thread that passes through the multitude of Rega components he has been involved with. These components have tended to be characterful, obviously prioritising the musical experience over flashy casework cosmetics and features that don’t contribute to sound quality.

Given the success of the brand and its prominence in the pantheon of British hi-fi manufacturers, it is important to note that Roy Gandy’s main focus of interest has always been music rather than the equipment that reproduces it. The equipment appears to be merely a means to an end in his view, and the kind of products Rega has become known for reinforces that point.

To quote our interview with him in 2020: “I don’t think I’ve ever been interested in hi-fi as such. The concept of high fidelity seems a bit strange to me, but I am passionate about music.”

If that sounds like an unusual point of view from a man who founded one of the most successful British manufacturers of recent times, we learned even more about his character by his actions at the tail end of 2024.

At that point, Rega announced that Roy Gandy had gifted 100 per cent of his shares in the company to its employees. In making it an Employee Ownership Trust, he has provided long-term protection for the brand’s unique culture, prioritised employee job security and also preserved the decades of hard work.

We can’t think of a more deserving candidate to win What Hi-Fi?’s Outstanding Contribution Award for 2025. Roy Gandy, we salute you.

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16 of the best Rega products of all time: turntables, amps and phono stages

The Gryphon Audio Diablo 333 is one of those products where the numbers tell most of the story. It starts with the base price, which at £24,500 / $24,900 / AU$39,995 sits near the top end of the scale as far as amplifiers go.

This integrated amp is chunky but not oversized by class standards, though the all-in weight of around 50kg gives us pause for thought as we take the unit out of its smart wooden crate. Perhaps most impressive is its claimed power output of 333 watts per channel into an 8-ohm load.

Can we just stop and think about that absurd figure for a second? That amount of power probably makes the Diablo the most powerful domestic amplifier that What Hi-Fi? has tested in its almost 50-year history.

Astonishingly, that figure doubles as impedance halves and almost doubles again to reach 1100 watts per channel into 2 ohms. We doubt there will be many situations where this amplifier comes up short when it comes to volume levels, in a home context at least.

Whatever you think of the Gryphon’s distinctive black on black aesthetic, there is no denying the quality of the build, fit and finish. Every panel lines up perfectly, and the precision in terms of machining is exceptional. Gryphon’s amplifier designs have tended to be distinctive, prioritising wide bandwidth and zero global feedback while being dual mono in nature. This one is no different.

High-end integrated amplifiers don’t tend to be packed to the rafters with features, and this Gryphon hardly bucks that trend. Anyone thinking of buying at this level prioritises performance, and so the manufacturers tend to remove many of the frills to maximise sound quality.

As standard, the Diablo 333 is a relatively simple line-level integrated amplifier, with four inputs (including two balanced XLRs) and both fixed and variable line-level outputs. There is provision, however, to add optional modules – the PS3 phono stage (£4950 / $5600 / AU$9995) and the DAC3 digital-to-analogue converter (£6950 / $7000 / AU$11,995). Neither is cheap, but they are neat ways to add functionality should you need it.

The Diablo 333’s huge power output is central to its sonic presentation. It should come as no surprise that this amplifier is happy to play loudly. We try all our usual bass torture tracks from Massive Attack’s Angel and Nitin Sawhney’s Anthem Without Nation to Time from the Inception OST, and the Gryphon barely breaks a sweat. It delivers some of the most grounded and punchy low frequencies we have heard in our test room, and does it with class-leading composure.

At the same time, large-scale dynamic swings come through with enthusiasm and utter conviction. There is an authority about this amplifier’s performance that is a joy to behold. As we listen to Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring, the Diablo delivers each of the music’s seismic crescendos with an iron fist and class-leading control.

The amplifier’s presentation is breathtakingly physical and set against an astonishingly quiet background. The Gryphon delivers a huge sense of scale too, something helped by its muscular nature and the ability to render a panoramic and utterly stable soundstage.

As we work our way through our music collection, we find that Gryphon Audio’s engineers have managed to combine beauty with the beast. It can speak quietly and wield a big stick at the same time, and that’s a talent worth having. Rarely have we heard such a powerful unit sound so fleet-footed and musically cohesive.

This year, we’ve been fortunate enough to test some world-class integrated amplifiers. We are pleased to say that the Gryphon Audio Diablo 333 shines brightest among them.

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Read the full Gryphon Diablo 333 review

Arcam and Cyrus crash the stereo amplifier category at the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025

The special What Hi-Fi? Awards categories are some of the most interesting each year, and this is especially true of the Readers’ Award.

This is because, unlike our other categories, which are decided by our review team, it is judged by you, our wonderful readers. Your choices usually surprise and delight us. Last year, for example, we were pleased to see you opt for the amazing-value Q Acoustics 5050 floorstanders, which also happened to be our Product of the Year in their category, over something flashier.

This good taste continues into 2025 with your decision to crown the Ruark Audio R610 streaming amplifier as this year’s Readers’ Award winner. The five-star just-add-speakers system stormed the category, edging out 11 big-name rivals to secure the lion’s share of this year’s vote.

The R610 also won the best hi-fi system £1000-£1500 in our music systems category; it may not have received a Product of the Year trophy – that went to NAD’s C 3050 (with MDC2 BluOS-D module) – but we can see why you like it so much.

The Ruark R610 earned a solid five-star rating and this year’s best hi-fi system £1000-1500 Best Buy trophy for a reason. Pleasingly retro-chic and charmingly compact, the unit comes with a number of welcome quality-of-life features. These include a five-inch, full colour TFT display screen and tactile on-unit controls, which make it easy to control the device and see all the information you need on what is playing at any given moment.

For greater flexibility, it also features Ruark’s wireless RotoDial controller. Its palm-sized dimensions and intuitive physical-button interface offer an equally intuitive way to control the amp if you’re not next to it.

At the heart of this beautifully made unit is Class D amplification with 75 watts of power per channel, and a Burr Brown DAC that supports hi-res files up to 32-bit/384kHz.

There is also support for nearly every modern streaming service you might want – as well as DLNA and UPnP compatibility for those of us storing music on NAS drives. It also has HDMI ARC, a moving-magnet phono stage, USB-C input and DAB/FM radio tuners.

Most importantly, it sounds great. We got the best results pairing the R610 with the Ruark Sabre-R, a pair of standmount speakers specifically designed to match the streaming amplifier. But it is easy to get solid results with other price-appropriate speakers, too. The unit delivers an engaging, dynamic sound with a smooth, open and fluid presentation across every genre we throw at it.

Our review’s glowing verdict sums it up: “Proving you can have it all, Ruark’s compact streaming amplifier delivers a wonderfully modern hi-fi performance in every way – gorgeous design, ample features, and excellent sound.”

Once again, What Hi-Fi?’s readers have proved to have incredibly good taste.

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Read the full Ruark Audio R610 review

If you have been following the coverage of the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025, you will probably have spotted that the KEF XIO has taken home the crown for the Best Soundbar Over £1000 category.

For those who are yet to read our review, let us fill you in. The premium 5.1.2 ’bar blew us away during testing with its ability to create an immersive surround-sound experience, as well as its agile bass performance.

There’s plenty of impressive technology here, such KEF’s clever Uni-Q MX drivers, which use a two-part drive-unit diaphragm to emulate the dispersion performance achieved by the company’s trademark Uni-Q driver array.

But there was something else that caught our attention in KEF’s design, and that has ultimately earned the company our Innovation of the Year Award.

Enter KEF’s Velocity Control Technology, or VECO for short, which the company says delivers “deep, best-in-class bass” performance. It aims to reduce distortion and increase accuracy with lower frequencies as much as possible.

How does VECO work?

VECO is, put simply, a form of motional feedback. This idea is far from new, with the first versions of this technology emerging as early as the 1970s. The clever thing here is how the company’s engineers have managed to integrate it into the soundbar’s quartet of P185 bass drivers.

Apologies, as we’re going to get geeky here. The drive unit’s traditional voice-coil former (the cylindrical component that the voice coil is wrapped around) is replaced with a flexible PCB onto which a carefully shaped sensing coil is embedded. This sensor allows the speed of diaphragm movement to be measured.

The clever processor inside the XIO knows what the input signal to the bass unit is, and now that it also knows the speed of movement of the diaphragm, it can identify any distortion in the driver’s output and compensate accordingly, in real time. And that’s not all that is incredibly impressive about KEF’s invention. The sensor and the drive unit’s electromagnetic circuits work separately without influencing each other.

All of this results in a deep and clean bass performance that is among the best we have heard in the premium soundbar category.

When we compare the XIO with the previous Award-winner – the Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Max – we find: “The KEF counters with more clarity, greater precision in the way sounds are rendered and notably more finesse in the way low-level dynamics are delivered.”

We continue: “It’s the more transparent performer, and it ultimately gives us greater insight into the soundtrack being played.”

This is KEF’s first implementation of the VECO technology, so we are especially interested to see what this development could mean for its products later down the line. Bring on the bass!

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Here's our review of the KEF XIO

All the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 winners revealed!

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The Cyrus CDi has an enviable record: this year, it has won an astonishing 12 consecutive What Hi-Fi? Award trophies in a row. That is undoubtedly impressive, but this feat alone isn’t enough to guarantee itself a place in our Hall of Fame of significant hi-fi and home cinema products.

It’s the CDi’s superb sonic performance, coupled with proven reliability of a terrifically built design that has worked without a hitch for the 12 years we have been using our review sample, that cements its everlasting impact in the CD-player category.

It was first reviewed in 2014 and got its first Award win that year, but we couldn’t have predicted just how much of an enduring product this Cyrus would be. In the past dozen years, CD’s popularity has waned and only recently has had a small but clear resurgence alongside vinyl; Cyrus has brought out two new CD players; and the CDi itself has yoyo-ed in price, from £995 to a high of £1495 and back down to £999 again.

Regardless of these fluctuations and new competition (especially from within), the CDi has remained steadfast: a terrific-sounding and reliable disc spinner that has defied trends and continues to do its main job to the highest standard.

Even though the CDi’s design looks rather dated, it’s hard not to be a little charmed and more than impressed by the uncompromising, sturdy build quality of this little beast. It follows the same functional and half-width chassis blueprint laid down by previous Cyrus CD players and amplifiers. The basic black-on-green display looks rather Jurassic compared with slicker, modern OLED screens (as seen on Cyrus’s newer, pricier 40 CD Award-winner), and its slot-loading mechanism makes such a racket when accepting a disc.

But who cares, when it all works so perfectly? The buttons are responsive and reliable, the screen is simple but easy to read, and the build quality could survive a nuclear blast – or at least, any knocks and bumps from multiple office moves. And during playback, the CD player is blissfully quiet.

The CDi has single optical and coaxial outputs, and the focus is purely on performance and reading the data on CDs as accurately as possible. Its clock stability and bespoke Servo Evolution disc-reading engine, which relies on reading data correctly the first time (rather than relying on error correction), all serve to deliver a performance that is beautifully precise, detailed, punctual and brimming with rare rhythmic talent.

Its dynamic agility and neutral balance delivers music as varying as complex Shostakovich compositions to sparse Joni Mitchell recordings to a modern hip-hop track with all melody, expression and integrity intact. Each layer of the composition is precisely unpeeled, there are buckets of detail, and there is articulacy and subtlety here that we would expect to find in more expensive players.

Altogether it delivers a captivating, toe-tapping performance. There’s power and punch when dealing with sub-bass and thumping beats, too. Simply put, the Cyrus doesn’t bat an eyelid with whatever music we throw its way.

We have played such a range of CDs, artists and genres through the CDi over the past 12 years. And each time, the Cyrus CDi ensures the music sounds both revealing and entertaining.

No, it may not be the sexiest product; but it is a testament to the solid engineering and dependable design basics laid down by Cyrus’s engineers that means this excellent CD player continues to perform so well, and has continued to delight us for so many years. A worthy, well-deserved entrant to our 2025 Hall of Fame.

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What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025: new faces meet old favourites as five-star CD players keep the humble disc alive and kicking

Compact Disc’s star has faded, but I like it anyway

Looking for the best hi-fi and home cinema hardware money can buy? You’re in luck: we have just unveiled the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 Product of the Year winners.

This year's trophy takers were crowned at our swanky black tie ceremony, where the industry movers and shakers rubbed shoulders with our team of experts.

During the event we revealed the absolute best of the best products we have reviewed across all 24 categories.

The winners were chosen by our team of experts, who ran every shortlisted product in a gruelling battle royale, where each product was run head to head with rivals to ensure we know first-hand it is the absolute best option in its class.

Here, then, are this year’s Product of the Year winners!

What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 Product of the Year winners

• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best TV: Sony Bravia 8 II
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best turntable: Rega Planar 3 RS Edition
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best wireless speaker: JBL Charge 6
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best Blu-ray players: Panasonic DP-UB820EB
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best soundbars: Samsung HW-Q990F
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best standmount speakers: Acoustic Energy AE300 Mk2
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best floorstanding speakers: Fyne Audio F501E
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best music streamers: Bluesound Node Icon
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best CD players: Arcam CD5
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best projectors: Sony VPL-XW5000ES
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best radios: Ruark Audio R1S
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best speaker packages: Bowers & Wilkins 606 & 607 S3 speaker package
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best tablets: Apple iPad Air 13-inch (M3)
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best wireless headphones: Sony WH-1000XM6
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best stereo amplifiers: Arcam A15+
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best home cinema amplifiers: Sony TA-AN1000
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best video streamers: Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best DACs: Chord Mojo 2
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best smartphones: Apple iPhone 17
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best systems: NAD C 3050 (with MDC2 BluOS-D module)
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best portable music players: Astell & Kern A&norma SR35
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best wired headphones: Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro X
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best accessories: Ortofon MC X30
• What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 best streaming services: Tidal

What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 special category winners

At the event we also revealed our special Awards winners.

First, devilishly good looks and awe-inspiring audio performance helped the premium Gryphon Audio Diablo 333 muscle past this year’s competition to secure 2025's Temptations Award.

And then, a strong push from you, our discerning readers, helped the swish looking, wonderfully fun-sounding Ruark R610 secure the popular vote and this year’s Readers’ Award.

Meanwhile, after decades of service since helping found the brand all the way back in 1973, Rega Research’s Roy Gandy was the well-deserving recipient of this year’s Outstanding Achievement Award.

Next up, after 12 back-to-back What Hi-Fi? Award wins, the Cyrus CDi finally earned a place in the What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame.

And finally, we gave 2025’s Innovation of the Year trophy to KEF’s Velocity Control Technology (VECO) after it helped the KEF XIO Dolby Atmos soundbar storm our Best Soundbar category.

And that’s a wrap on this year’s What Hi-Fi Awards winners! But as always, it doesn’t have to be the end of the fun.

If you have any thoughts or questions about this year’s winners, get in touch with us using the comments section below, or on our social media channels and forums! We’ll endeavour to reply ASAP.

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Check out the What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame

It's perhaps unsurprising that of all the product categories we cover, TVs is probably the busiest.

There's just so much ongoing progress in TV land, with loads of brands launching entirely new TV ranges each and every year. Just keeping up can make your head spin.

In total, we've tested almost 50 new TVs in the last year, including several that were sent in specifically for Awards consideration and are yet to have their reviews published.

Whittling down all of those TVs to just seven winners (across eight categories) for the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 was no easy task, but our team of expert reviewers managed to do just that.

Those winners include affordable and premium Mini LED and OLED sets, ranging in size from just 42 inches right up to a truly cinematic 98 inches, so there's pretty much something for everyone.

If you're looking for an 8K TV Award-winner, though, you might be disappointed.

With no visible progress on 8K content and only one brand producing 8K TVs in earnest, having an 8K TV Award was beginning to feel a bit odd. Perhaps the next 12 months will change things and this Award will be reinstated next year.

We would have liked to have had a budget 43-inch Award-winner as well, and perhaps even a 32-inch TV Award, but try as we might, we just couldn't find any TVs of either type that were worthy.

But, less about the unworthy TVs, and on with the very worthy winners of the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025.

Three Awards for the LG C5

Since 2018, LG's C-series OLED TVs have won at least one What Hi-Fi? Award every year except 2020. This year, it's taking home a highly impressive three Awards.

The first goes to the 42-inch LG C5, which, despite not being a huge upgrade on the C4 that went before it, remains the very best TV we've tested at its size.

42-inch OLEDs are hugely popular among those who really care about picture quality but have a smaller room, and the C5 is the best of the bunch, with perfect blacks, excellent colour balance, impressive motion handling and oodles of detail. A worthy winner indeed.

The C5 also takes the win for the best mid-range TV in the 55- to 77-inch category. The C-series has always excelled in balancing performance, features and price, and no previous generation has typified this more than the C5.

And, once again, the C-series takes the win as the best gaming TV. Whether it's the bijou 42 incher, the mid-sized 55-inch version or the 77-inch beast, the C5 cannot be beaten for gaming features and performance.

And three Awards for TCL

TCL has been the surprise TV brand of 2025.

After several years of showing glimmers of greatness while struggling for consistency, the brand's 2025 range has proven to be genuinely exceptional.

The core of the success appears to be a new backlighting system that combines vast numbers of super-bright Mini LEDs with a new level of control. The super-aggressive pricing is a big factor, too – when you can get a better TV for less money, why look elsewhere?

The 50-inch C6KS is perhaps the best example of this. Despite costing significantly less than £500, it romped to victory against several much more premium TVs on pure performance.

We feel that the C7K is the real pick of TCL's 2025 TV range, though, which is why it wins the Awards for the best budget TV in the 55- to 77-inch category, and the best super-sized TV.

Not only did the C7K have to defeat rivals from Samsung, Sony and Hisense, it also got the better of its more premium sibling, the C8K. Yes, the C8K is better in some ways, but the C7K is more balanced overall and a near-perfect representation of our performance-per-pound mantra.

An Award each for Panasonic and Sony

The flagship OLED market has been more competitive than ever this year, with new Primary RGB Tandem OLED TVs battling with the latest-gen QD-OLED models for super-bright, super-contrasty dominance.

This Award turned into a fight between the LG G5, Panasonic Z95B, Samsung S95F and Sony Bravia 8 II, and it's the Sony model that has emerged victorious, with the Samsung coming a close second.

The Bravia 8 II pushes brightness a little less than those rivals, but it combines cinematic authenticity with amazing processing that results in an incredibly rich, detailed and three-dimensional picture.

Panasonic may have missed out in that flagship OLED battle, but it's still a TV Award-winner, with the Z90B OLED taking the prize for the best premium TV in the 48- to 50-inch category.

Competition was fierce here, too, with the LG C5 and Samsung S90F both also proving to be five-star sets. Ultimately, though, the Panasonic Z90B's as-the-director-intended approach to picture quality saw it take a deserved win.

So, that's seven winning TVs across eight categories. But which will take home the even more coveted Product of the Year Award at this year's glitzy What Hi-Fi? Awards ceremony?

That will be revealed on whathifi.com on the evening of 13th November, so stay tuned.

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As music streaming dominates the way we listen to our favourite tunes more than ever before, far surpassing vinyl's resurgence, it is perhaps no surprise that the music streamer – or network audio player – category at the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 has seen such an upheaval.

Three out of the five winners are brand-new entrants, showing just how competitive and strong the market is in this ever-growing category. That these new winners are all on the premium side also shows just how serious – and seriously good – brands are getting in terms of delivering great usability, a wide array of features and great hi-res sound quality.

All the winning streamers here tick the boxes when it comes to supporting the popular music streaming services (Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, internet radio), playing hi-res music over a wi-fi or wired network, along with a varying array of physical connectivity. Each model has its own particulars – and some provide more features than others – but overall, each model's streaming platform is strong, covers the most popular streaming methods, and is easy to use.

Taking it from the top, our most premium winner (over £2000+) is the Cyrus 40 ST. We were impressed with its sleek, modern design – that still stayed true to Cyrus's iconic half-width chassis blueprint – and were further enamoured with its terrific sound quality. We said in our review: "Dynamically, it is impressively expressive, rendering low-level shifts in intensity elegantly, and delivering large-scale orchestral crescendos with real conviction." No matter what genre of music we play through it, the Cyrus sounds composed, organised, insightful and, crucially, heaps of fun.

We concluded that the Cyrus 40 ST has a "blend of detail, dynamics and rhythmic security that’s hard to better at the money" – it's an outstanding performer.

Arcam's new ST25 is our favourite music streamer in the £1000-£2000 price range. It's actually the only traditional full-width streamer in this category, with most other winners favouring compact forms. The ST25 naturally works a treat with its partnering A5+ and A15+ stereo amplifiers (both 2025 Award winners, too), and delivers an effortless, crystal clear sound quality.

"It sets an eerily quiet backdrop for the music, which allows all the instruments space to breathe," we said in our review. "There’s a real sense of pace, agility and power to the bassline as it pounds along, laying a robust foundation for all the electronica poured on top." There is ample subtlety and dynamics as you hear the intent and intensity changing behind each piano strike, while a bountiful soundstage allows every layer of a composition to be delivered in a cohesive, insightful manner.

And the last of our fresh new trio of winners is perhaps the one with the most features packed into a small box: the Bluesound Node Icon. We've seen Bluesound pick up Award trophies in the more affordable price ranges in previous years, but it's the brand's most premium model yet that delivers a brilliantly musical, dynamic and subtle sound that works a treat for all genres of music.

We said in our review: "It’s a lively, engaging and dynamic performer that grabs our interest at the beginning and only continues to impress us the more we listen." There is a spark to the Node Icon's sound, coupled with composure, good balance and agile rhythmic ability, that means we simply have a great time listening to it.

Taking the trophy in the £750-£1000 price bracket, the Bluesound boasts plenty of additional features that the more traditional hi-fi brands/models don't – such as an HDMI eARC input, support for Dirac Live room correction technology, and two 6.3mm headphone sockets.

The two returning winners in this category are brilliant budget gems that we are delighted to give flowers to for another year: the WiiM Pro Plus and the Cambridge Audio MXN10. Both remain superb value products at their more affordable price points, and we wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone looking to gain a wealth of hi-res streaming features without spending big bucks.

Cambridge's MXN10 is a delightful compact streamer whose dynamic expression and rhythmic coherence are really rather impressive at its more budget price point, is packed with energy and detail, and is a great stepping stone into the world of separates hi-fi.

Of course, if your budget can't stretch even to the MXN10's £350 price tag, the WiiM Pro Plus remains one of the best bargains of the year, costing under £300 and delivering a detailed, organised and likeable sound for very little relative outlay.

We liked its rather natural midrange talents, "where the vocal is brimming with character and attitude", while it sounds best with hi-res tracks but is still forgiving with poor sources. It also has a well-executed app that we find is particularly user-friendly for beginners, which is always a bonus.

The well-deserved 2025 winners in our music streamers category cover a broad price spectrum, sonic tastes and specific connectivity, and no matter your budget, we think there's something for everyone here to enjoy.

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See all our What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 winners

Rega and Pro-Ject lead the turntable winners at the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025, while Technics reclaims a trophy

Streaming hi-fi systems from Arcam, NAD, and Ruark make their mark at the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025

It's been an unfortunately quiet year for home cinema amplifiers. The key players in the market, namely Denon, Marantz, Sony, Yamaha, JBL and Arcam, have all been suspiciously quiet, leaving us to choose from an existing cohort of five-star AVRs when it comes to appointing this year's Award-winners.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that we settled on the exact same winners as last year, and for good reason, too.

Kicking off with the previous Product of the Year-winner, the Sony TA-AN1000. This (frustratingly) remains the only home cinema amplifier in Sony's lineup here in the UK, so we're thankful that it performs exceptionally when it comes to delivering cinematic audio.

We first reviewed the TA-AN1000 back in 2022, when it dethroned the Denon AVR-X2800H as our pick for the best-value AVR, though both now live harmoniously on our best AV receivers list.

The Sony made an incredibly strong first impression with its sleek design and easy set-up, and it happened to sound exceptional too. We complimented its punchy, agile sound that was bursting with life and detail, and it happened to be an absolute champion when it came to dynamics, too.

While a couple more HDMI 2.1 sockets wouldn't have gone amiss, the Sony TA-AN1000 is a practically flawless home cinema amplifier, and that's why we continue to use it in our reference home cinema set-up to this very day.

However, we think it's always best to have two AVRs on hand, and that's where the Award-winning Marantz Cinema 30 comes in...

The Marantz Cinema 30 looks as good as it sounds

The devilishly handsome Marantz Cinema 30 defends its title for another year, making it the "Best home cinema amplifier over £1500". This suave AVR serves up a rich, powerful and engaging surround sound experience, all in a price that undercuts its more expensive peers, such as the Arcam AVR31 and JBL Synthesis SDR-38.

It also happens to support more amplification channels than its rivals, with 11 channels supporting up to a 7.4.4 system, thanks to its four subwoofer outputs. There are seven HDMI 2.1 inputs, all of which support up to 4K/120Hz or 8K/60Hz signals with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ included. Add to all that the Audyssey set-up system, which calibrates this AVR with minimal effort required, and it's hard to argue that this AVR is anything but feature-packed.

It’s all wrapped up in a stunningly designed chassis, embellished with a textured metal faceplate, an adorable port-hole display, and a touch of tasteful ambient lighting that allows the AVR to shine in dark home cinema rooms.

And it impresses where sound is concerned, too. Punchy, powerful and dynamic, yet totally controlled and capable of digging up subtle detail, the Marantz Cinema 30 will appease even the pickiest audiophiles when it comes to delivering cinematic audio.

It's no wonder that we continue to use it in our reference set-up as our go-to AVR for testing home cinema speaker packages, and it happens to match the Award-winning KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 system rather nicely.

It's a two-horse race here, but you'll have to wait until the 14th of November to find out which AVR takes home the coveted Product of the Year title.

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We have to admit, we didn’t see this coming. If at the start of 2025 you had told us that stereo amplifiers was going to be one of the most vibrant categories at this year’s What Hi-Fi? Awards, we wouldn’t have believed you. But here we are, with three new winners and only a solitary survivor from last year’s list.

Arcam’s revised Radia amplifiers dominate the core of this category with both the new A5+ and A15+ setting sky-high standards for their price.

The company’s engineers haven’t tried to reinvent the wheel here. Instead, they’ve mostly done the electronic equivalent of a bit of housekeeping, tweaking the power supply arrangement on both products and tidying up certain parts of the audio circuitry to reduce noise levels and improve transparency.

These aren’t massive changes by any reckoning, but they do notably lift the performance of these units. We can talk about both these ‘+’ amplifiers together because the sonic improvements over previous models are consistent.

Simply put, the new generation sounds cleaner, crisper and more precise. Their dynamic expression is improved too, and it is all done without diluting the balance and unfussy nature that made the originals so easy to recommend.

Both the A5+ and A15+ remain well equipped, with good-sounding digital inputs, a capable phono stage and handy two-way Bluetooth connectivity. If you are looking for truly complete middle-market integrated amplifiers, this pair take some beating.

Move up the price points, and our premium winner is a welcome return to form for the Cyrus Audio brand. It’s been quite some while since we could wholeheartedly recommend a Cyrus product over all comers, so the excellence of the new 40 AMP was something of a surprise when we reviewed it earlier in the year.

This compact integrated design embodies everything we want from a modern Cyrus product. It is beautifully made, lovely to use and sounds great. While it retains the company’s trademark half-width proportions, the 40 Series casework is all new and looks fresh.

Cyrus hasn’t skimped on the features either, including a talented phono stage, impressive digital circuitry and a ready-made upgrade path. When it comes to performance, the 40 AMP has nothing to fear from its rivals thanks to a blend of clarity, agility and resolution few alternatives come close to.

Our budget winner, the Rotel A8, is the only amplifier to survive from last year’s winners list. It remains an excellent product for the money, sacrificing frills for a sensible feature list and solid build.

Obviously, it sounds great too, delivering plenty of insight and drive for the money. If you are looking for a no-nonsense but sonically capable budget integrated amp, this is the one we recommend.

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Who would have thought that the turntable category would be going from strength to strength in the 21st century? For the 2025 What Hi-Fi? Awards, the number of winners in the best turntables category has increased from five to seven, such is the quality of performance and value available across a spectrum of prices.

Let's start off with Rega, which leads the pack with three wins. When we tested the excellent Planar 3 RS Edition at the very start of the year, we knew immediately it would be knocking the standard Planar 3/Nd3 – which had just won the Product of the Year for turntables at the 2024 Awards – off its perch.

The RS Edition borrows material technology from its higher-end siblings, includes a step-up cartridge and the Neo Mk2 power supply as standard, and improves upon its iconic sibling in every way when it comes to sound quality to become our new winner in the £750-£1000 price range.

We say in our review: “There is a confidence and effortless quality to the way this turntable sounds compared with the standard Planar 3; the RS Edition locks every detail, every instrument, every vocal into place in an assured way that is admirable and wholly enjoyable.”

Sitting just under it in the best turntable £500-£750 bracket, is the Pro-Ject Debut Evo 2 – but with some very specific upgrades. The Debut Evo 2 on its own is a lovely turntable, available in 10 very appealing finishes, and delivering a sweet, smooth and refined sound with a fluid way with music.

But switch its basic sub-platter for the Alu Sub-Platter, and add the High Power it 2 power supply upgrade, and we get significant gains in authority, weight, dynamic punch and greater subtlety throughout. You can absolutely buy the Evo 2 on its own and get a good performance; add the upgrades, though, and you get a great performance at its price.

Pro-Ject and Rega both have a turntable-win apiece at more affordable prices: the Planar 1 is once again the winner in the £300-£500 bracket, while the long-running, budget Primary E is still managing to fend off newer, affordable rivals (even from within Pro-Ject) at under £300 simply by delivering the basics so well.

We need to highlight another accomplishment here: this is the Primary E's eighth win in a row since we first reviewed it in 2018. As a starter turntable, it remains unbeaten.

Rega's step-up Planar 6 may have won a What Hi-Fi? Award before, but this year it takes its trophy with the new Nd7 moving-magnet cartridge. This new package wins the £1000-£2000 bracket.

Heading into the more premium price ranges, we have two spectacular new winners. After an absence from our turntable winners list last year, Technics returns with a splash – the superb SL-1300G turntable may take build and design cues from the legendary SL-1200 model, but it is stripped of any DJ trappings and instead this direct-drive record player is designed for pure hi-fi performance.

It's a dynamic and incredibly stable turntable, whose performance is “full-bodied, nicely layered and delivered with class-leading slam”.

And finally, if you have big bucks to spend and are looking for ultimate vinyl replay (before heading into five-figure territory), our winner in the best turntable over £3000 category is the Vertere DG-X. This is the third generation of Vertere Acoustics’ “entry-level” turntable, and all three generations have won a What Hi-Fi? Award.

This latest DG-X model is the brand's most sophisticated and powerful performer yet, without losing any of the energy and pizzazz that we love so much. Its stunning, eye-catching design is complemented by innovative engineering, while its hugely entertaining performance delivers on rhythm, dynamics and insight like no other. In terms of sheer enjoyment and musical cohesion, the DG-X is a stunning record player.

All seven turntables are winners in their own right, and no matter your budget and whether you are a die-hard vinyl fan or a complete novice, we think you will be delighted with any of these turntables in your home music system.

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See all our What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 winners

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Streaming hi-fi systems from Arcam, NAD, and Ruark make their mark at the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025

Hi-fi systems come in all shapes and sizes, and the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 has a spread of multi-talented options which will suit a wide range of demands.

As is traditionally the case, not all of our winners are new entries – there are a few familiar faces in there, but some stunning new all-in-ones have left their mark on the test team this year too.

Five winners return from 2024, but there’s a trio of new arrivals, all with one thing in common. They combine streaming and amplification in one box, so all you need to do is add speakers.

The first of those is the Ruark Audio R610 (above), a compact, beautifully made streaming amplifier which we said, in our review, “delivers a wonderfully modern hi-fi performance”. It does all the basics extremely well and performs superbly whether you’re using it for vinyl, streaming, CD or radio.

Next up on the price ladder is the NAD C 3050 (with MDC2 BluOS-D module) (above). Another system that gives off strong retro vibes, the NAD impressed us with a charming performance across the board. It's a mighty fine amplifier, but the presence of the MDC2-BluOS-D’s streaming module catapults it to the top of the class.

Arcam continues its assault on the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 with the SA35 (below). The British hi-fi brand has won gongs this year for its A5+ and A15+ stereo amplifiers and its ST25 music streamer, so its ability to build an Award-winning streaming amplifier perhaps shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. The Arcam is so good that it sees one of our previous winners, the Naim Uniti Atom, exit stage left.

Moving on from that trio of debutants, KEF continues to have a significant presence in the hi-fi systems category with two winners in the shape of the flexible, fun-sounding KEF LSX II LT speaker system, which returns for the second year in a row, while its pricier, more capable sibling, the LS50 Wireless II remains undefeated at its price point for yet another year.

Slotting in beneath the KEF LSX II LT is another pair of stereo streaming speakers, the Triangle AIO Twin (below), which deliver all the streaming skills you would want at its price point.

The Technics SA-C600 makes a return as our “Best hi-fi system £500-£1000” and slots just beneath the Ruark set-up. It too has streaming smarts and a CD drive built in for those of us who have stacks of the shiny discs at home.

Last, but by no means least, is arguably the great-grandfather of this category. The Denon D-M41DAB micro system has become part of the furniture over the years as our main entry-level recommendation.

For anyone who wants a more traditional CD-playing all-in-one with speakers and is happy with just Bluetooth streaming, you really can’t go wrong.

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In case you missed it, we published our What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 Best Buy winners earlier this week.

This is a big deal as it means, after months of comparative testing, our reviewers have finally crowned the best of the best hi-fi and AV hardware in each of the 29 categories we cover.

And, in that sea of products, there were more than a few upsets where upstart products de-throned long-standing winners. Three of the biggest came from Hisense – here’s what you need to know about them.

The best UST just got better

The Hisense PL2 is the successor to last year’s Hisense PL1, which was 2024’s best UST projector under £2000.

Despite it looking nearly identical to its predecessor, once we plugged it in, we found that the PL2 is a significant step forward when it comes to picture quality.

Though it goes brighter and can display a larger picture than the PL1, when we ran the two units head to head in our viewing rooms, the PL2’s handling of dark scenes is what really helped it shine.

Whether it was the creeping, eerie basement and sewers in IT or a heated nighttime battle scene in Civil War, the PL2 offered surprising levels of dark detail and inkier (albeit still not quite perfect) blacks than the PL1.

This makes it an easy recommendation and this year’s best UST projector for movie fans.

As we said in our review:

“Hisense’s focus on delivering a balanced picture that accepts the shortcomings inherent to a UST lets the PL2 offer a consistent, controlled picture that never distracts from what’s playing on screen.

“This, plus its competitive price and advanced features, helps the PL2 punch well above its weight and make it an easy recommendation for any movie fan on the hunt for a UST projector.”

The only downside is that, unlike the Hisense PX3 Pro, the PL2 can’t run games in 4K/120Hz, but that’s standard for a unit at its price.

A tiny projector that packs a lot of punch

The Hisense M2 Pro was a bigger surprise than the PL2. There are two main reasons for this.

The first is down to its tiny size, with it being one of the smallest projectors in its class. So much so that you may mistake it for a 1080p portable unit, rather than a 4K home cinema in a box.

Second, because it’s surprisingly affordable compared to most of its rivals, retailing for as little as £999 / $999 at the time of writing. That makes its only real rival at the moment the four-star Epson EF-72, which costs £1150 / $1000.

During testing, we found it ticks nearly all the right boxes for a unit its price and is an ideal option for people on the hunt for an easy-to-set-up home cinema in a box that can be discreetly stored in a cupboard when it’s not needed.

As we said in our full review:

“The Hisense M2 Pro isn’t perfect. But by focusing on making all the right compromises and delivering a consistent, balanced home movie experience, it gets more right than it does wrong.

“This adds up to make it one of the best coffee table projectors on the market. Offering solid picture quality, excellent app support and a wonderfully easy set-up process, it ticks all the right boxes for its target market. Unless you’re willing to spend a lot more, you’ll struggle to find a better projector.”

The only downside is that it has very limited connectivity, featuring a single HDMI and USB input on its back. So if you want to connect a Blu-ray player, games console or separate sound system to it, you will have limited options and have to contend with a lot of cable swapping.

A Dolby Atmos soundbar system for how much!?

Speaking of sound systems, finishing off this list is the catchily named Hisense AX5125H, which nabbed our best soundbar system under £500 trophy and is one of the biggest surprises we’ve encountered this year.

Why? Because it’s the first “good” and cheap Dolby Atmos sound system we’ve ever tested. Honestly, if you had told us a few months ago you could get a decent sounding, Dolby Atmos soundbar that comes bundled with a wireless subwoofer and satellite speakers for £249 / $350, we’d have called you a liar. And for good reason.

We’re constantly hunting for great value, affordable AV hardware to recommend, but as with TVs, there’s currently a shortage. That’s why the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) is still the reigning champ at the affordable end of the market in our best soundbars buying guide and a repeat Award-winner despite being multiple years old.

So, finding a good, cheap soundbar with this much additional hardware is like watching pigs fly from an AV reviewer's perspective. We said as much in our review, where we reported:

“The Hisense AX5125H caught us completely off guard. Most solo soundbars that cost this sort of money are seriously deficient in terms of audio quality, so surely sound must have been compromised even further for Hisense to have delivered a complete system with these specs.

“That’s simply not the case, though. This remarkably affordable system delivers Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks with room-filling, sofa-shaking exuberance, and while it of course has its limitations, it’s a vast upgrade on the sound of any TV we’ve tested. If you thought convincing, exciting Dolby Atmos sound was out of your budget, it’s time to think again.”

We don’t dish out praise like that often.

But we’d like one more thing next year

"What about Hisense’s TVs?", I hear you ask.

Sadly, the majority of our reviews for Hisense’s 2025 range are yet to go live. But what we can confirm, based on our published review of the Hisense U8Q and upcoming review of the U7Q, is that while the brand is making progress with its TVs, that progress is not as palpable as what we’ve seen from its soundbars and projectors this year.

Our experience so far suggests that Hisense's current TV focus is on pushing the spec boundaries, particularly where brightness and dimming zone figures are concerned, but perhaps hasn't quite figured out how to harness these specs to deliver truly consistent picture quality. That's something we noted in our hands-on of the next-gen Hisense 116UX, too.

We're not done with Hisense's 2025 TV range, of course, and there's every chance there are gems in there that we've not yet discovered, but on the evidence so far, this is an area that the brand could do with working on next year.

Especially given the great year arch-rival TCL is having with its Mini LED TVs…

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While some What Hi-Fi? Awards categories can become as static and unmoving as a professional human statue, others chop and change more frequently than a fresh-faced K-Pop ensemble.

That, as you’ll probably already be aware, is the case when it comes to the ever-fluctuating world of wireless headphones and earbuds.

There might not be another category that we cover – be it Bluetooth speakers, turntables or stereo amplifiers – that sees quite as much competition, with so many brands vying for wire-free supremacy that it can be hard to keep track.

In fact, the list of challengers trying to cut out a slice of the industry’s most competitive cake seems to grow every year.

Apple, Bose, B&W, Sony, Denon, Beats, Technics, Audio-Technica, Focal, JBL, Earfun, Noble, Dali, LG, Sennheiser – it just never ends. That might make it tricky to know where to buy from, but it does mean that fierce competition has created a red-hot crucible in which only the best of the best are worthy of praise.

Sony leads the way for entry-level excellence

If you have made it into 2025’s pantheon of greats, you’ve done something right. If you happen to be the cheap and cheerful Sony WF-C510, you have actually done far more right than we could possibly have hoped for.

Succeeding their C500 predecessors in real style, the WF-C510 prioritise performance and usability over aesthetics, making them our pick as the best buds for entry-level listening. By nailing the musical basics with purpose and power, they’re in a league of one at the entry-point to this year’s wireless Awards rundown.

That said, if you seek noise cancelling and that Sony sonic prowess but you’re still keen on keeping costs low, the Sony WF-C710N are the logical next step.

We are heartily impressed by how much the C710N can do. While many affordable buds talk a big game features-wise, only to let you down with compromised performance across the board, the C710N just get everything right. From noise cancelling to their punchy, full delivery, they are outstandingly good value.

We’re conscious that some users will want a step up in noise-cancelling and sonic performance from the WF-C710N but don’t want to go straight to the flagship models; which is why we have decided that the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds are also worthy of applause.

They have dropped dramatically in price since they arrived last year, making them the ideal candidates to fill the £150-£250 gap on our 2025 Awards rundown. Their solid, musical sound makes them a pleasure to listen to, while Bose’s outstanding ANC is the star of the show, making the QC Earbuds a great choice for users who don’t want to stretch to their more premium QC Ultra Earbuds (2nd gen) (£299 / $299 / AU$450) counterparts.

Technics’ premium performers shine

The new entries don’t stop coming. We have singled out the Technics EAH-AZ100 as our favourite premium wireless earbuds of 2025; while Technics had always been knocking on the door of sonic excellence, we always felt that the Japanese brand just needed to infuse its buds with a bit more punch and dynamism to go with all those lovely helpings of sparkle and clarity.

That’s exactly what the EAH-AZ100 manage. These are the buds we had always been hoping Technics would produce, blending superb detail and clarity with the sort of expressive, engaging sound that we could enjoy for hours.

Plus, their noise cancelling is great and their design is comfortable, meaning they are easy to get along with on a day-to-day basis.

Wireless over-ears just keep getting better

Right, that’s enough about buds, how about wireless over-ear headphones?

It seems as though every pair of wireless headphones has to sport noise cancelling as a matter of priority, but that’s a trend that Austrian Audio has bucked with its aggressively priced (around £129 / $179 / AU$269) Hi-X25BT Bluetooth cans.

Instead, all the effort has been put into making the snazzy over-ears sound as good as they possible can for this price, with Austrian Audio – a brand we more readily associate with pristine-sounding wired sets – bringing their considerable know-how to the wireless space. That clean, crisp signature remains, as do heaps of detail and vivacity, making it hard to care that you're not getting the luxury of ANC.

Of course, lots of users do crave noise cancelling, and quite a lot else besides. If that sounds like you, the Sony WH-1000XM6 are our pick as the best wireless headphones between £250-£500. While they’re not super-cheap, we predict they will be the best cans for most people most of the time.

Across almost any metric – sound, comfort, reliability, usability, features – they are simply outstanding, showcasing very few blind spots and excelling in every area that matters. We didn’t think the WH-1000XM5 could be improved that much, but the XM6, with their better sound, nicer fit and complete foldability, have proved us dead wrong.

Focal pushes the boundaries of wireless sound

For properly boundary-pushing performance, the Focal Bathys Mg are our “money no object” pick. £999 / $1299 / AU$2300 is by no means cheap for a set of wireless cans, but we are confident in saying that the Bathys Mg really are some of the finest Bluetooth headphones we have heard, well, ever.

To steal from our original review, the fancy Focals “take wireless noise-cancelling headphones performance to a whole new level”. They are stunningly detailed operators, but what sees the Bathys Mg pull away from the pack (apart from their price) is their peerless sense of musicality and sonic engagement.

Get hold of a pair if you want a pair of headphones that make you feel truly spoiled.

What a year it has been for wireless earbuds and headphones. Once again, our list of winners is stacked with new entries at both ends of the cost spectrum, reinforcing this as arguably the most dynamic and fast-evolving area in all of audio.

Yes, wires are still king for audio fidelity; but wireless performance? Clearly, it’s never been better. Just as Messi and Ronaldo pushed each other to higher footballing heights, the multitudes of manufacturers trying to make a name in the wireless space has only led to finer and finer offerings. Long may it continue.

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Digital equipment with a range of tweaking options may seem like a good idea, but I'm not convinced

We've just announced the latest batch of What Hi-Fi? Award-winners, and out of the four years I've helped to review and judge the finest AV products the industry has to offer, I think that 2025 has been hands-down the most exciting to date for TVs – and it's possibly not for the reason you think.

While there have been specific models that rightfully earned their five-stars this year, I'm looking at the TV market as a whole, as this year has seen the most definitive divide between the entry-level, mid-tier, and flagship categories.

Why do I think that? Well, this is the first year that we've bestowed a flagship OLED TV with a What Hi-Fi? Award, with the Sony Bravia 8 II taking home the title of "Best premium 55-77in TV".

And it was a tough call, as LG, Panasonic and Samsung all had worthy adversaries. You can read a previous entry of Adventures in AV here to find out more about how hard that judging process was.

Previously, we've refrained from giving the flagship models these accolades, as the mid-range OLEDs (think the LG C-series or Sony's Bravia 8) have traditionally provided very similar picture quality at a considerably lower price.

That changed this year, as the latest crop of flagships has truly wowed us, with impressive next-generation OLED displays that are a true step above their WOLED counterparts.

We're at the point now that we think people really should consider stepping up to the flagships if their budget allows, as the price-to-performance ratio now makes a lot more sense at this level.

That's not to say that the mid-range categories haven't impressed, though. The LG C5 is a sensational TV for the money, offering a crisp, contrast-rich picture and excellent gaming features, all at a price that's significantly lower than the premium Sony, or its G5 counterpart.

And I can't talk about the mid-range category without celebrating TCL's triumphant year. The C7K has truly wowed us, as it has fended off competition from the likes of Samsung and Hisense in order to claim the "Best budget 55-77in TV" Award.

TCL scoops up a second award with its C6KS, which is our "Best budget 48-50in TV", which is both a great TV in its own right, and a more definitive step down compared to the C7K.

Panasonic's 48-inch Z90B, on the other hand, is a fantastic alternative for those who want top-notch picture quality, impressive sound and a full-featured smart system in a TV that can suit smaller living rooms.

The best part about this list is, as I've said before, how defined each level is. There are no blurred lines between the OLEDs, as the flagships and mid-range models can shine in their own right, while the TCLs are positioned for those who want great picture quality without spending OLED money.

Selfishly, it makes recommending TVs a whole lot easier for me. I'm often quizzed by readers, friends and family about what they should buy, and with our latest Awards list offering a clear-cut best option for each price category and use case.

This is all thanks to these TVs being better than ever before. TCL had a slightly rocky 2024 thanks to the underwhelming C855K not living up to its Award-winning predecessor, and while we felt that the likes of the LG G4 and Samsung S95D were good TVs, they perhaps weren't enough of a step up over the likes of the Bravia 8 to take the crown.

With improvements across the board this year, it only feels right to celebrate all of these TVs at their respective levels, though my hopes and expectations for 2026 are now sky high.

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2025's What Hi-Fi? Awards winners have been revealed and it has been an explosive year with multiple new entries in most of our home cinema categories.

There are 17 new Award-winners across the TV, soundbar, speaker package, and projector categories (I've counted them myself), and they are all very well-deserved.

KEF has scored big with the exceptional XIO Dolby Atmos soundbar and the fantastic Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System, while Hisense snags another projector Award with the M2 Pro. A surprisingly potent budget wireless Dolby Atmos system, the AX5125H, also scores Hisense its first-ever win in the soundbar category.

Other big winners include Sony, Panasonic, LG and TCL, all of which scooped up Awards in the TV category. So there's cause for celebration all around, right?

Generally yes, but two major home cinema categories haven't had anywhere near the same amount of love – and they happen to be two that I care about a lot.

2025 has been something of a drought for new AV receivers and Blu-ray players. In fact, we reviewed only one new AVR this year, that being the three-star JBL MA7100HP. And that, unfortunately, could not rival the likes of the Award-winning Sony TA-AN1000 or any of the currently available Denon amplifiers – all of which are a few years old now.

Denon and Marantz didn't really announce much in the way of new home cinema amplifiers. Though, being fair, this is understandable considering they have both been scooped up by Harman International, so they are probably letting the dust settle before launching anything new.

Elsewhere, Arcam has been focusing on its hi-fi components, Yamaha has retained its existing lineup for at least another year, and Pioneer hasn't made a return to our AV testing room since we reviewed the VSA-LX805 towards the beginning of last year.

That has left the AVR Awards category with the same two winners as last year: the Sony TA-AN1000 and the Marantz Cinema 30. Both are excellent in their own ways, but I wouldn't have been opposed to a new contender this year.

In the world of physical media, alas, things are equally grim. Our Blu-ray player category features a singular winner that has held its spot for seven years in a row. And, while the DP-UB820EB is a superb 4K disc player which delivers a crisp picture and dynamic sound at a reasonable price, there's hardly any competition for it out there.

Sony did launch a new version of its previously Award-winning UBP-X700 Blu-ray player; however, it appears to be the same as its predecessor, just without any of the network functionality, such as screen mirroring or streaming apps.

When asked, the company confirmed that the performance was the same as the existing model – not exactly the grand return to 4K Blu-ray players we were hoping for.

Panasonic hasn't budged on its lineup either. The only major updates we saw this year came from Magnetar, which announced MKII variants of its two 4K players. Both of those are currently only up for pre-order; perhaps we have some contenders for the 2026 What Hi-Fi? Awards.

So, with 2025 coming to a close, my biggest wish for 2026 is to see these two categories bounce back – wishful thinking perhaps, but I hold out hope.

MORE:

Read our full Marantz Cinema 30 review

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

As well as the best AV receivers

The What Hi-Fi? team has been through many awards cycles – 43 to be exact – and every single one is memorable.

Whether it’s your first or fortieth, the process is always gruelling, requiring our team of hi-fi and home cinema experts to forsake daylight for weeks and take up residence in our dedicated viewing and listening rooms.

From those rooms we then run a hardware battle royale. Every five-star product we have already reviewed, as well as new products submitted for consideration, are put through a rigorous comparative testing process where we directly ascertain which is the top dog in its specific category.

It’s a trial you don’t forget, no matter how many times you might have been through it before. Me? I remember the Samsung vs LG TV wars of 2023 like they were yesterday. I was there man, it got real.

But the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 testing process has been particularly turbulent.

Why? Because, honestly, I’ve never seen so much awesome new hardware flood our test rooms at once, to the point that plenty of our categories are mainly new products and first-time winners.

There are some categories where this happens every year, of course. The TV market, for example, has a particularly rapid release cycle, with most of the big players launching new sets every year, or at least every other year.

What makes 2025 feel particularly chaotic, though, is what has happened in a number of the usually more stable categories.

Let’s take projectors on the home cinema side and speakers on the hi-fi side as examples.

I was one of the home cinema team with a ball and chain around my ankle helping to shortlist the projectors category.

And while my nearing 40-year-old back is definitely not made for the schlep involved in moving multiple projectors around a room as we ran each head-to-head, the effort was definitely worth it: we identified not one, but five new Award winners. That means five out of six of this year's Best Buy winners are totally new products – with the Sony VPL-XW5000ES being our only repeat winner.

I cannot remember a year with such sweeping changes to the category. And the reason is positive. It isn’t that a load of products suddenly went off sale; it’s that we found something better to recommend.

Take our new recommended premium projector, the Sony Bravia Projector 8. During testing, the projector impressed our reviewers so much that we had multiple team members playing rock paper scissors to “borrow” it for the weekend. Which is why it dethroned last year’s winner in its category, the JVC DLA-NZ800 – a projector that remains an amazing performer in its own right despite losing its trophy.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we found our first small, but good, coffee table projector, the Hisense M2 Pro. Despite its dinky dimensions and sub-£1500 price tag, this easy to set-up little unit punched well above its weight during our testing process. As one of the main reviewers, this was undeniably one of the biggest surprises of 2025 for me.

And it was a similar story for our intrepid team of speaker testers. This year, four out of the six standmount speaker winners, and three out of the five floorstander trophy takers are new products. Again, it’s not that old winners went to the big hi-fi farm in the sky; once again, we just found a load of awesome new products to recommend.

The Acoustic Energy AE300 Mk2 is one of my personal highlights. As I say in a previous feature, this is an awesome new pair of hi-fi speakers that feel like they were designed just for me. They offer a natural, understated, neutral sonic profile at a price tag a professional magpie can actually afford.

There’s also the Dali Kupid which, as well as having an adorable name, truly delivers on our consistent call for more small, affordable, but great sounding hi-fi. Hence the five-star rating and Award.

And these are just the examples I personally have added to my Awards 2025 battle royale highlights reel. Ask any other member of the What Hi-Fi? team, and they will agree that this has been a particularly interesting and competitive Awards, before regaling you with their own highlights.

We still have our Product of the Year winners to pick and announce on the 13th of November, but I’m already confident in saying that this has been the most interesting What Hi-Fi? Awards I’ve been a part of in quite some time.

All of which made us think that you, our readers, might have some questions to ask about the Awards testing process and the excellent products that won the trophies.

We will, therefore, be running a live Q&A session on Friday the 17th of October between 2.00-3.00pm GMT, where our global technical editor, Ketan Bharadia, TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, and I will be on hand to answer all of your What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 questions.

MORE:

These are the best speakers we have reviewed

We rate the best TVs money can buy

Our picks of the best projectors

Editor's Note: This Q&A has since ended, but you can still read the questions and answers from it at the bottom of this page. We're hoping to do a lot more of these in the not too distant future. If you have a topic or idea for one, make sure to let us know using our shared whathifi@futurenet.com email address.

After days of waiting, the hour is finally upon us and What Hi-Fi?’s first ever Live Q&A is up and running!

Over the next hour our global technical, Ketan Bharadia and TV and AV editor Tom Parsons are here, ready and willing to answer any questions you have about this year’s What Hi-Fi? Awards Best Buy winners.

Whether it’s a question about how we chose this year’s winners, specifics about our rigorous comparative testing process, or something about one of the actual products to pick up a trophy, we’ll do our best to answer!

All you have to do is jump to the comments section at the bottom of this page and post your question. From there we’ll run through all of them in chronological order over the next hour, before logging off at 3.00pm (GMT+1).

But, before you do, we have a few words of housekeeping…

Just remember, like our monthly Ask The Reader question and our forums, this is a safe space, so make sure to avoid any nasty language and treat everyone (especially us) with the respect we deserve. Christmas is around the corner and we should all be doing everything we can to be on Santa’s nice list, after all.

Questions should also refer to our Award-winners only, please. If there's something else you want to talk about, you can get in touch directly using our shared whathifi@futurenet email address and we'll do our best to reply. Otherwise let's try to keep it on topic!

On top of that, remember that the products announced are our Best Buy winners. We’ll be revealing our Product of the Year winners – chosen from the Best Buy shortlist – at our exclusive black tie ceremony on the 13th of November.

During the 43rd What Hi-Fi? Awards evening, we will also reveal this year’s Outstanding Contribution, Readers’ Award, Temptation and Innovation Award winners as well as revealing which former winner will be inducted into our hallowed Hall of Fame.

So make sure to keep checking back with What Hi-Fi? regularly!

We have announced the first winners of the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025.

The Awards are now in their 43rd year, and are brought to you in association with Richer Sounds. Once again, they celebrate the best hi-fi and home cinema products and beyond, acknowledging class-leading kit across 24 categories, from awe-inspiring amplifiers and stunning stereo speakers to terrific TVs and superb soundbars.

• View all the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 winners

Our reviews team has been busy over the past 12 months putting all kinds of audio and video products through their paces, ranging from entry-level to the highest of the high end.

We have whittled these down to 110 winners – with a further five special Awards yet to be announced. It has been a long process, but worth it to bring you expert recommendations you can trust. Buy one of the products below, and you can rest assured you're getting the best in its class.

As ever, there are some familiar faces – but there are plenty of newcomers too.

Let's see which products feature.

Our TVs category features all-new winners, including the LG C5 (pictured) for the Best 40-43-inch TV, Best Mid-range 55-77-inch TV and Best Gaming TV gongs. LG's C-series has long represented fantastic value, but it has faced fierce competition in the past couple of years from the likes of Sony. So it's good to see LG back on form.

Speaking of Sony, the Bravia 8 II impressed us massively this year, and takes the Best Premium 55-77-inch TV Award. TCL picks up three of the remaining four Awards, and Panasonic the Best Premium 48-50-inch TV. Deserved winners all.

The soundbar category again features lots of new products, including the KEF XIO, which is the brand's first soundbar. To make a competitive product on your first effort is no mean feat, but to make an Award-winner first time out is phenomenal. Congrats to all at KEF on a job well done.

Sonos again fares well, winning for its Beam Gen 2 (for the fifth straight year!) and Arc Ultra, while Hisense and Samsung win the other two soundbar gongs.

Our standmount speaker category sees the return of models by PMC and Epos, plus new speakers from Acoustic Energy, Ruark and PMC. The Dali Kupid are a particular highlight, adding a pop of colour and some much-needed accessibility to a product category that has been in danger of becoming staid.

Floorstanders? We've got you covered. The Wharfedale Diamond 12.3 and PMC Prodigy 5 make welcome returns, alongside three newcomers. And Rega continues to dominate the turntable category with three of the seven winners. JBL’s new Charge 6 and Flip 7 continue the brand's winning streak in the field of wireless speakers, and are joined by its Xtreme 4 and the reigning champ Apple HomePod 2, plus the new Audio Pro C20 W.

The only new entry in the wired headphones category is the Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro X (pictured), but the wireless headphones sector has plenty of new winners, including many from Sony (to no one's surprise). But Sony doesn't dominate the world of wireless earbuds quite like it used to, with Technics and Bose picking up gongs here.

Elsewhere, there's plenty of change. Five of the six winners in our projectors category are new models, as are three of the four victors in the stereo amplifier category. There some great new models in the music streamers category, and there's even a new winner in the world of CD players. Who said CDs were dead?

Radios and speaker packages see some returning winners from the likes of Roberts, Ruark, Wharfedale and B&W, and there are some familiar faces in the DACs and home cinema amplifier categories.

That's just a taster of the full list of winners. And to see which products are bestowed Product of the Year – marking them out as the best of the best – you'll have to wait until the Awards ceremony on Thursday 13th November. We'll also announce our special Awards that night: Temptation, Readers' Award, Outstanding Contribution, Hall of Fame and Innovation of the Year.

We'll post these results on the night, so stay tuned to What Hi-Fi? to see them all then.

The What Hi-Fi? Awards issue of the magazine will also go on sale in both print and digital editions the following day (Friday 14th November).

We thank all the manufacturers who have gone above and beyond to deliver new products to our test rooms in time for the What Hi-Fi? Awards judging process, and offer a hearty congratulations to all the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 winners.

Until the ceremony itself...

• View all the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2025 winners

• We rank the best Blu-ray players money can buy

• Our experts rate the best TVs we've tested

• We rank the best soundbars money can buy

• These are the best standmount speakers our reviewers have tested

• These are the best floorstanding speakers we've reviewed

• We rate the best turntables money can buy

• These are the best wireless speakers we've full reviewed

• Our experts rank the best music streamers

• We rate the best CD players

• Our reviewers rank the best projectors money can buy

• These are the best DAB radios money can buy

• Check out our picks of the best surround sound systems

• We rank the best tablets for movie and music fans

• The best stereo amps tried and tested

• We rank the best home cinema amplifiers

• Our picks of the best wireless headphones

• We rank the best TV streamers

• We rank the best DACs

• The best smartphones for film and music fans ranked

• We rank the best hi-fi systems money can buy

• These are the best portable music players we've reviewed

• We rate the best wired headphones money can buy