Five-star hi-fi headphones, a CD playing turntable, Dolby Atmos musings and more

We’ve hit the final week of September, and to celebrate we’ve penned a fresh entry into our regular Rewind hi-fi and home cinema news digest.

In it, our team of experts contended with everything from a Philips launch event in Amsterdam to a fresh batch of AV hardware in need of the What Hi-Fi? review treatment.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Apple TV+ is smashing it right now

Testing home cinema hardware means nearly all of the What Hi-Fi? team frequently watch a lot of TV shows and films.

Our stringent comparative testing process requires us to always have a wealth of current 4K Blu-rays to hand, with scenes appropriate for testing things like dark detail, peak brightness, colour volume, audio quality and more.

We also have to see how devices with streaming smarts handle the most-used services, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Apple TV+ and more.

And in doing so, over the past few months we’ve found ourselves using one service in particular more and more frequently, so much so that our senior staff writer, Lewis Empson, felt the need to pen an article celebrating it.

Read the full story: I'm a home cinema expert and if you care about 4K HDR or Dolby Atmos, one streaming service is a clear winner

Philips launched a new CD playing turntable

We know you, our wonderful readers, love physical media. Which is why we were excited to be there in person to see Philips launch a new turntable with a built-in CD player at an event in Eindhoven last week.

Yes, you read that right, the new Philips Fidelio FT1 is a belt-drive, two speed, Bluetooth turntable with a CD player built into its chassis, making it a rare piece of affordable hardware that will cover the needs of most physical media fans.

We didn’t get a chance to listen to the Fidelio FT1, but from what we’ve seen it could be a great entry-level option, or ideal choice for those on a strict budget, with Philips indicating it will retail for around €299 (roughly £260 / $350).

Read the full story: Philips' versatile new Bluetooth turntable features a built-in CD player

Our editor explained, again, why small TVs are cut from a different cloth

One of the most common mistakes we see TV buyers make is assuming that every set in a series performs the same, regardless of its size.

And being fair, there’s a good reason for that. Many sites and companies present them as being identical. Most reviewers even present their assessments as being for an entire family of TVs, like the LG C5, or Samsung S90F, rather than refer to the specific size they tested.

This is a problem, as there are always differences between certain sizes, especially if you’re comparing a 65-inch set to a 48-inch, or 42-inch model.

We know this as we review the different sizes in each family whenever we can – hence why you’ll find reviews of the 55-inch LG C5, 48-inch LG C5 on the site right now, with one of the 42-inch LG C5 soon to follow.

Eager to make sure buyers don’t fall victim to this easy pitfall while picking their next TV, last week our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, penned a fresh feature explaining why this is the case.

Read the full story: Small OLED TVs do not perform as well as big ones – and it's not just about brightness

Beyerdynamic's latest open-backs are great

German audio powerhouse Beyerdynamic is one of the first brands that comes to mind if you ask any hi-fi fan about open-back, wired headphones.

Which is why our team of headphone experts were excited to get its latest DT 990 Pro X pair into our listening rooms for review.

The headphones are a follow up to the brand’s five-star DT 900 Pro X, which launched in 2021. At first glance they look very similar to their predecessors, having a near identical design and using the same Stellar.45 drive units as most recent Beyerdynamic headphones.

But the tuning and general refinements it has made work to great effect, with the 990 Pro X delivering a clean, revealing sound that’s packed with detail regardless of what test track we threw at it – even when using a basic laptop streaming from Tidal as our source.

Read our full Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro X review

We took a moment to appreciate what filmmakers are doing with Dolby Atmos

We talk a lot about Dolby Atmos hardware at What Hi-Fi?. That’s especially true this year where we’ve seen a wealth of top-end Dolby Atmos soundbars and systems launched. These include the incredible, five-star KEF XIO – the first every Dolby Atmos soundbar from the hi-fi heavyweight – and Samsung Q990F. The latter being a five-star follow-up to last year’s Award-winning Samsung Q990D.

But, we don’t always make much noise about improvements to the content using the tech. Which is why last week we took the time to pen a fresh feature celebrating the increasingly innovative ways filmmakers are using Dolby Atmos to deliver truly breath-taking films that utterly immerse you with their clever audio wizardry.

Read the full story: Dolby Atmos is getting better – and awesome new home cinema kit is only partly to thank

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