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

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

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

Price

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

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

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

Design

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

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

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

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

Features

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Early verdict

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

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

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

MORE:

Here is our review of the Sonos Beam Gen 2

These are the best soundbars

And check out the best Dolby Atmos soundbars on the market

Then we've got you covered. Our expert testers found the Harman Kardon Enchant 900 to be a particularly fun sound experience that delivers a much more immersive soundstage than most TV speakers.

It's seeing a healthy discount now too – the code ENCHANT20 brings the price down to £263 at Peter Tyson, saving you a whopping £167.

A 5.1.4-channel soundbar driven by a total power output of 195W, the Harman Kardon 900 includes two up-firing drivers for true Dolby Atmos support.

MultiBeam technology is on hand to create a more spacious soundstage, and the Harman Kardon One app allows you to adjust the EQ settings and calibrate the soundbar. We highly recommend you do this – our testers found a notable difference in the bar's soundstage after calibration.

Streaming services such as Tidal and Amazon Music can also be played through the app, with Spotify Connect and Bluetooth 5.3 also supported.

Those who already have Harman Kardon products will want to listen up – the soundbar can wirelessly connect to the Enchant Sub and Enchant Speaker, with two Enchant speakers able to function as rear surrounds.

The Enchant 900 alone is more than up to the job, however, as upon booting it up, we are "greeted by an energetic, exciting sound", as our Harman Kardon Enchant 900 review states.

It's an immersive, room-filling sound that's much more spacious than our TV speakers, with remarkably clear vocals and a reasonably clean presentation.

It's not the most subtle soundbar, however, with the treble especially sounding rather coarse when pushed.

But if it's a big sound you're looking for, the Enchant 900 provides that in spades, with plenty of spaciousness and excitement to boot. It's also far easier to recommend in the crowded entry-level Dolby Atmos soundbar market now that it's £167 off at Peter Tyson.

MORE:

Read our review of the Sonos Beam (Gen 2)

Also consider the JBL Bar 300MK2

Read our Hisense AX5125H review

Specifically, the firm lifted the lid on its spiffy new Sonos Beam Ultra at the IFA trade show in Berlin.

Unveiled alongside the new Sonos Ace Ultra wireless headphones, I want to kick off this opinion piece by making clear: I think the Ultra looks impressive and is, in nearly every way, the successor we’ve been waiting for.

In fact, as our reviewer on the ground at IFA, Robyn Quick, rattled off the details about the bar to the team back home, all of us (outside of senior staff writer, Harry McKerrell, who’s always miserable) had a smile growing on our faces.

Upgraded drivers, including the addition of proper up-firing height channels? Yep, it’s got them.

The ability to add Sonos Era 100 or Era 300 satellite wireless speakers as surrounds? Yes, the awesome feature has finally trickled down from the Arc Ultra into the more affordable Beam range.

And as a cherry on top, Robyn then penned a feature detailing how it sounds. The top line is, while it’s too early to give our final verdict, the Ultra left a very strong opening impression – so much so that a game of rock, paper, scissors ensued among the team to decide who would be the primary reviewer (it ended in a stalemate).

All in all, it was huzzahs abound at What Hi-Fi? towers.

But then, one more fact came rumbling in that replaced our smiles with a quizzical expression. Specifically, the Ultra is not a replacement or successor to the Sonos Beam (Gen 2); it’s actually a new step-up model in Sonos’ range.

Yes, we don’t know how the Beam Ultra will perform in our test rooms, but truthfully, given the Beam 2’s age, this was a curveball for us.

Why would the company do that when the Beam 2 is so old? Surely, it’s time to let the old girl retire? These were some of the mutterings that came out of our mouths as we processed the information.

But as I pondered the question, a final bit of information trickled through from the launch event that, at least for me, explained the move.

The Beam Ultra is a lot more expensive, set to retail for £699 (around $946 / AU$1320). The Beam (Gen 2) – outside of big sales events where it’s dropped as low as £349 – usually retails for £429 / $429 in most stores right now.

Cash-rich people may laugh at the idea of going for a soundbar that launched in 2021, when a newer model is out. But truthfully, £160 / $160 is a lot of money for most of us right now.

As a person who has listened to the Beam (Gen 2) alongside newer rivals, I can confirm it is still a very competent unit. That’s why it remains the recommended small option in our best Dolby Atmos soundbars guide.

I cited the cost of living crisis as a key reason I don’t think we’re in a golden age of home cinema during our public debate on the topic earlier this year, and I stand by that sentiment.

So given that it still sounds good, keeping it around and giving normal people an entry point to Sonos’ ecosystem that won’t completely break the bank not only makes sense, but for me is 100 per cent the right thing to do.

It’s also why, even if the Beam Ultra delivers the sonic goods in our review rooms later this year, I can easily envision the Beam (Gen 2) retaining its recommendation. There are very few good, sub-£500 soundbars around and even fewer with the Beam’s compact form factor. So it’s definitely not beyond the realm of possibility…

MORE:

These are the best soundbars we’ve tested

We rank the best surround sound systems

Our picks of the best TVs

And while it may be tempting to wait a few more months, there are some record-low prices to be had already – including a whopping 50 per cent off a pair of multi-Award-winning headphones.

There’s plenty else to consider, though, including our 2025 TV Product of the Year, a new OLED favourite and a saving on Apple’s best AirPods.

Whatever you decide on, every product below has been tried and tested by our expert review team. Each device is compared to the market leaders, and only those with four stars or more get our sought-after recommendation.

So kick back this long weekend and enjoy some of the deals…

The Sony WH-1000XM5 premium noise-canceling headphones are great performers, and this fantastic half-price saving makes them even better value. The newer WH-1000XM6 have taken their place, but the XM5 are still very much recommended.

The LG C6 is one of our favorite TVs of the year so far, with a new processor delivering a brighter, richer and more refined OLED picture than its predecessor. If you’re looking for a mid-range OLED, this is the one to get, and its awesome gaming specs are ideal for GTA 6 in a few months.

If you’re looking to add streaming smarts to your TV or just upgrade its capabilities, then the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Generation) is our video streamer Product of the Year and our top choice at this price range. The stick adds Amazon’s app-packed Fire OS, with a detailed, rich picture and support for all four HDMI formats.

The AirPods Pro 3 have it all, with spacious, powerful and dynamic sound, effective noise-canceling and a comfortable, lightweight design. If you have an iOS device, these are the AirPods we recommend, and you’ll get to enjoy the snappy, seamless synergy between the two.

JBL has been king of the portable Bluetooth speaker game for a while now, and the JBL Flip 7 is no different. With skilful handling of dynamics and rhythms, excellent build quality and a strong feature set that includes Auracast and lossless wired audio, there’s a lot on offer here.

The Sony Bravia 8 II is our current reigning TV champion, scooping the Product of the Year gong in this category thanks to its exceptionally bright, vibrant and three-dimensional picture, excellent shadow detail and cinematically authentic presets. We’ve been singing its praises for some time, so this discount is the perfect time to see what all the fuss is about.

MORE:

These are the best projectors out there

Check out the best TVs we have reviewed

And here are the three best OLED TVs

Below, you’ll find all the clues to our crossword, which packs in multiple TV terms to try and bamboozle you. Give it a go and see if you can record the fastest time and beat our own experts at their own game. Enjoy!

MORE:

Can you name all the types of hi-fi and AV cables from the photos?

How fast can you solve our turntable challenge? Test your wordsearch skills now

Can you name the first audio product from these 12 iconic hi-fi brands?

Can you name the first film in these home cinema formats?

The series consists of two models: the flagship Aura 3 Max and the step-down Aura 3 Pro.

Both projectors will support 4K/120Hz gaming with VRR and ALLM, and they each boast an RGB Triple Laser light engine, a claimed 8000:1 native contrast ratio, and Dynamic Dual Iris Technology for "unprecedented contrast, depth and detail".

Xgimi claims a 200-inch maximum projection size, with a 120-inch image possible from just eight inches away from the wall.

There's also Google TV built in, as well as support for HDR in the HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision formats. The projector is IMAX Enhanced certified as well.

Rather surprisingly, two pairs of 3D glasses are included for any remaining 3D fans out there, while audio is supplied by an 80W Harman Kardon speaker system with Dolby Atmos support.

Xgimi claims the Aura 3 Max can deliver brightness of up to 5700 ISO lumens, while the Aura 3 Pro tops out at 4100 ISO lumens. Prices are $2399 (around £1775 / AU$3335) and $2199 (around £1626 / AU$3057), respectively.

UST projectors have generally had to compromise on refresh rates at 4K, so the Aura 3 series will be particularly appealing to gamers looking for a TV replacement.

The AURA 3 Series will launch on Kickstarter on October 20th in the US, with pre-orders now open from Xgimi directly. Customers can unlock an extra $200 off by placing a $50 deposit.

MORE:

Read our Xgimi Titan review

The best projectors around

Ultra short throw projectors: everything you need to know

Since it burst onto the scene in 2021, the five-star soundbar has blown away the competition with its refined delivery of both movie soundtracks and stereo music.

We have been waiting patiently for a new model for ages now, and the time has finally come.

The Sonos Beam Ultra isn’t a replacement for the Beam Gen 2, but an upgraded model that will sit above it, and the big news is that, unlike its sibling, the Ultra sports dedicated up-firing speakers to aid in its delivery of Dolby Atmos sound.

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

The Ultra is launching on 29th September for £699 / $699 / AU$1099. That price puts it between the Beam Gen 2 (£449 / $449 / AU$649) and the also Award-winning Arc Ultra (£999 / $999 / AU$1799).

As with both of those sibling soundbars, the Beam Ultra can be upgraded through the addition of surrounds and/or a subwoofer, and you can easily jump from out-loud to personal listening if you also have a pair of Sonos’s Ace or new Ace Ultra headphones.

This is all great stuff on paper, but how does the Beam Ultra actually sound? We got a chance to hear it during a demo session in Berlin, and it certainly sounds promising.

Of course, we will save our final verdict until we get the bar into our acoustically treated test room for extensive, comparative testing, but these are our first impressions.

The demo kicked off with a Dolby Atmos mix of Harry Styles’ Ready, Steady, Go!. Harry’s vocals were clear, direct and expressive, immediately drawing us into the track.

The instrumentals were well placed around the soundfield, too, with the guitar plucking featured in the mid-section delivered with a strong sense of precision.

Next, we got a taste of how the soundbar performs with movies. Watching the scene in Sinners when Sammie summons spirits from the past, present and future, the up-firing drivers worked their magic and the sound could be felt well above the TV screen.

When the track I Lied To You reached its crescendo, it created a room-filling experience that was very impressive considering the size of the bar.

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

In terms of design, the bar is impressively lightweight and has a compact footprint. There are perforated grilles at the top of the soundbar for the up-firing drivers, and these look quite stylish. On the lip of the Beam Ultra you will find volume and Bluetooth controls, as well as play and pause 'buttons'.

As mentioned, we will of course wait until we have fully reviewed the new bar in our dedicated test room before we deliver our final verdict, but during this initial listening session, the Beam Ultra made all the right noises.

The big question is whether it's the perfect halfway house between the Beam Gen 2 and Arc Ultra or a soundbar stranded in no man's land between two awesome Award-winners. We should be in a position to answer that question very soon.

MORE:

Here are the 5 Beam Ultra things I’m most excited about – and my 3 disappointments

Here's our review of the Sonos Beam Gen 2

Could Sonos one day support DTS:X? “The door isn’t closed”

Quiz! I made a TV tech crossword to test your knowledge - can you get 100%?

However, rather than just the panel tech, it's the aggressive pricing that has caught our attention.

Prices start at $999 (around £740/ AU$1389) for the 55-inch Pro Series OLED and $1299 (around £962/ AU$180) for the Pro Series LX OLED.

The Roku Pro Series OLED is available in 55- and 65-inch sizes, and comes with a 120Hz panel with support for Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and HLG. Gaming features include ALLM, VRR, and FreeSync Premium, and it also supports Dolby Atmos.

The step-up Roku Pro Series LX OLED TV adds a 144Hz refresh rate, a Roku Voice Remote Pro, an advanced polariser to cut reflections and "a brighter picture and even wider range of colors".

Both TVs will run on the popular Roku platform. We've found the operating system to be simple to use but a little basic, but the use of adverts, such as automatic startup ads, has proved controversial before.

“OLED technology has been locked behind premium price tags, forcing many customers to choose between the display they want or a price that works for them,” said Chris Larson, Vice President, Retail Strategy, Roku. “We see a clear opportunity to change that equation. With the new Roku Pro Series OLED and LX OLED TVs, we’re removing that cost barrier and making a top-tier viewing experience genuinely accessible.”

Cheap, good OLED TVs have long been elusive. The only other 55-inch OLED TV we've tested around this price was the three-star Toshiba XF9F at £799. If the Pro Series OLED can deliver, it could be the closest thing to an "affordable" OLED around at this size – even the aggressively priced LG B6 is sitting at £899 right now.

The Roku Pro Series OLED is available now in the US at Amazon, with the Pro Series LX releasing in October.

We've reached out to Roku about UK availability and will update this page if we hear back.

MORE:

Check out our list of the best streaming devices

As well as the best streaming services for movies and TV

And the best OLED TVs

The UX1 bundles a soundbar, wireless subwoofer, and two wireless satellite speakers for a true surround sound experience, and Hisense claims it can output a staggering 1840W across the whole system.

The ethos behind this premium package is that Hisense wants to up its audio game to bring it in line with its premium TV offerings.

The company now sells made-to-order Micro LED sets and 116-inch RGB Mini LED TVs, so naturally it wants a premium audio offering that reflects its flagship products.

Hence the UX1's title – Hisense already offers the UX range of premium TVs, so this has been conceived as a dedicated audio companion for that range.

Generally speaking, Hisense is really paying attention to audio this year and, from what we've seen, next year, too – the Chinese tech giant's stand in Berlin had a whole section dedicated to soundbars, party boomboxes, and portable wireless speakers, so it looks as though the brand is taking sound seriously.

And the UX1 is clearly the most serious product of this new range, and I've walked away from the Hisense booth with three key thoughts on why it could be a genuine competitor for Samsung's dominant HW-Q990H system.

1. It's packed full of drivers

Hisense proudly touted the driver tech within this system during my stand tour, and I can see why.

This is an 11.2.6-channel system, and Hisense has packed 26 individual drive units into the soundbar, subwoofer, and surround speakers. 14 of those drivers appear to be in the main soundbar unit alone, with the rest embedded within the other components.

That includes side-firing and up-firing speakers within the soundbar and the surround speakers, which means that the UX1 should (in theory) have no issue presenting Dolby Atmos height effects.

We're anticipating the "bubble of sound" effect we look for in all premium soundbar systems here, so we're hoping the UX1 delivers.

2. It's taken some big bass inspiration

The subwoofer bundled with the UX1 uses an almost identical setup to the Samsung system. It sports dual opposing 8-inch woofers, which Hisense says will help to reduce unwanted bass distortion.

While I didn't get a chance to listen to the soundbar outside of some looping branded demo content, I have relatively high hopes for the bass performance, based on the specs.

That said, Hisense has taken a different approach to the design of its sub. Unlike the petite and polite Samsung subwoofer, this Hisense has quite the presence.

I think it wears its heft well, though: it combines sharp lines with smooth edges, and if the design facilitates better bass performance, then it makes sense to me.

3. It could be a high end version of a system we already love

Hisense struck gold with the AX5125H budget Dolby Atmos soundbar system, so think what it can do with a proper flagship version of that concept.

While that isn't always the case – sometimes budget products aren't indicative of their premium counterparts and vice versa, even when they come from the same company – I think it's fair to say that expectations are high based on our experience with the Award-winning budget package.

If Hisense can scale up the AX5125H into a flagship sound system, then Samsung could have a problem on its hands.

Pricing is, of course, crucial to figuring that part out, and with this being a 2027 product, we don't have that information right now.

That said, if I were Samsung right now, I'd be nervous. The HW-Q990H is a stellar soundbar system, but with fresh competition coming in 2027, the next version of that package might need to be more than an iterative update.

MORE:

Read our full Samsung HW-Q990H review

As well as our Hisense AX5125H review

And check out our picks for the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

Quiz! I made a TV tech crossword to test your knowledge - can you get 100%?

Four weeks on, the answers have come flooding in (many breaking our PG-13 language rule). But, to our surprise, unlike our team of testers, you are not only united in your belief we are not living in a golden age, you also (generally) agree on the reason why.

It’s all about physical media

The importance of physical media was a central point in all your arguments, which shouldn’t be a surprise given how vocal you (and we) are about the benefits of 4K Blu-ray over streaming.

This was initially expressed by reader “mrj6j”, who argued that, despite having a “proper” set-up that he’s spent years, even decades, honing, the age of streaming is a blemish he can’t ignore, which makes it impossible to call the current world a golden age.

“I have been into home cinema for a long time and agree we are at a point where it is more affordable, but mine has grown into a 4k projector in a dedicated room with a 7.2.4 Atmos set-up. And a 136-inch screen in total darkness. But this has taken a long time to grow into what it is today. But it is exceptional; it often sounds better than the cinema (I had it professionally calibrated), and I can enjoy it whenever,” wrote mrj6j.

“The problem is that the 4k discs are the best format, better than streaming without doubt. But do those with a home cinema set-up utilise this? They should, and more distributors should too.”

Reader Michael Peterson agreed, adding that even if you have a more modest set-up, as he does, the increased price and limited selection of 4K Blu-ray discs and players is an issue that stops the 2020s being a golden age for home cinema.

“I have an entry-level Samsung, my Sony receiver, Elac sub1010 and 8-inch speakers in a 2.1 set-up. I use my Xbox One S for Blu-ray and streaming. Good enough [for] me. 4K Blu-ray would be better if the prices of discs and players were more affordable and discs were more reliable,” he wrote.

But it wasn’t just about 4K Blu-ray; some readers, including Andrew Wood, argued: “Culturally [the golden age was], when you shuffled into town, to a shop, to hire or buy a video/DVD and then watched it on your wide-screen CRT TV with built-in 5.1.”

Our hot take

We agree; there is something undeniably special about physical media. At a technical level, we have long championed 4K Blu-ray. It offers a much higher bitrate, superior HDR and far less data compression than streaming, giving you a sharper, more detailed image in most instances. That’s why we use an ever-evolving library of 4K Blu-ray test discs when reviewing home cinema hardware. We even have a monthly Now Showing column where we detail the new movies we're using.

While none of us would go so far as to want to return to tapes and CRT TVs – read this feature chronicling our editor’s attempts to resurrect his VHS collection last year, and you’ll see why – we also agree there’s something emotionally special about physical media. Having it on a disc you own gives you a more personal, emotional attachment to the film, as rather than just clicking on something an algorithm’s decided you will like, you’ve chosen that film, specifically, at some point.

As Andrew Wood points out, there was also something truly magical about the Blockbuster years, when we had to physically go outside to rent a new movie. Many of the team are old enough to remember the experience, and have fond memories of the family trips (and arguments) we had going out to pick a new film to watch after the final school bell rang on Friday. That makes it hard not to agree that there is some substance to his argument that, "culturally", that was a golden age for film fans – even if the hardware was worse and it wasn’t as easy to find new films to watch.

MORE:

These are the best projectors we’ve reviewed

We rank the best surround sound systems

Our picks of the best Blu-ray players

And, I have to say, I think it broadly looks excellent, delivering pretty much everything that Beam owners like me have been asking for.

But ‘pretty much everything’ and ‘everything’ aren’t the same thing, and we always want more.

So, here are the five features of the Beam Ultra about which I’m most excited, and the three elements that I find slightly disappointing.

Good: up-firing drivers

This is the big one: the thing Sonos Beam owners have been clamouring for since the launch of the original model back in 2018 – dedicated up-firing drivers.

In fairness, the Beam Gen 2 does an excellent job of creating a Dolby Atmos effect with its front-firing drivers and clever virtualisation tech, but the Beam Ultra should be significantly better in this regard. I find that very exciting indeed.

Good: more drivers in general

The Beam Ultra actually features nine drivers, which is four more than the existing Beam Gen 2.

As well as the two up-firers, the new soundbar features a forward-firing driver, two side-firing drivers, and four woofers, arranged into what Sonos says is a 7.1.2-channel configuration.

This should bring improvements to spaciousness and directness as well as Dolby Atmos delivery – assuming Sonos has nailed the tuning, that is.

Good: compact dimensions

It might feature four more drivers than the Beam Gen 2, but the Beam Ultra is still impressively compact, measuring 6.5 x 75 x 10.5cm.

In other words, it’s only 10cm wider than the diminutive Beam Gen 2, which means it will still fit neatly below or in front of most TVs – even smaller models – and it won't visually dominate a typical living room.

Good: upgradability

As with Sonos’s previous soundbars, the Beam Ultra can be upgraded through the addition of a subwoofer and/or wireless surrounds, and the new model’s launch is coinciding neatly with a new feature called ‘Portable Surround’.

This, as the name suggests, will allow you to use two portable speakers – the Play and Move 2 are compatible – as surrounds with one of Sonos’s soundbars.

Why does that matter? If you use a pair of non-portable speakers (Era 300s or Era 100s, for example) as surrounds, that's likely all they’ll ever be. Use portable speakers, though, and they can be picked up and used as music speakers anywhere in or out of the house. That’s much better value for money.

Good: new app

The launch of the Beam Ultra is also coinciding neatly with the launch of the new Sonos app, called Sonos 27.

Sonos is promising fancy features such as integration with any and all AI chatbots, so you can control your system via ChatGPT if you like, but, frankly, I’m just excited for the promised usability overhaul.

I still find the current Sonos app a real pig to operate, so I can’t wait to see how Sonos has (hopefully) improved things.

Disappointing: no HDMI passthrough

Look, I wasn’t expecting Sonos to add HDMI passthrough – I don’t think this is a feature that Sonos will ever support – but that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed that it’s not been added.

I own a TV with just two HDMI 2.1 inputs, and one of those doubles as the eARC port. Once that’s taken up by a soundbar, I have just the one left. Seeing as I have both a PS5 and an Xbox Series X, that’s a bit of a pain in the bum, and it wouldn’t be if the soundbar just had a dedicated HDMI input and 4K/120Hz passthrough.

For Sonos, though, simplicity is key, so I think the single HDMI socket is here to stay.

Disappointing: no DTS:X

Again, this isn’t something I was expecting, and I don’t actually think a lack of DTS:X in the context of a mid-range soundbar is actually that big a deal, but it would still be better to have than not, especially as there are rivals that offer both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

That said, Sonos hasn't completely ruled out adding DTS:X support in the future.

Disappointing: a fairly high price

Whether the Beam Ultra is good value will ultimately depend on how it sounds, but at £699 / $699 / AU$1099, it certainly looks expensive on paper.

There are rivals from the likes of JBL and Harman Kardon that offer up-firing drivers and similar driver configurations for around the same money as the Beam Gen 2. If the Beam Ultra had simply replaced the Beam Gen 2 at its £449 / $449 / AU$649 price, it would be exceptionally tempting.

At £699 / $699 / AU$1099, though, Sonos is asking us to pay a significant premium, and the new soundbar is going to have to deliver some seriously impressive performance to justify it.

In fairness, this is nothing new for Sonos, which typically prioritises performance over specs – let's see if it's got the formula right again when we get the Beam Ultra in for review.

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Sonos Ace Ultra feature all-new drivers, updated ANC, and a "direct connection" to the current Sonos ecosystem

Here are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars you can buy right now

Two versions of the Canvas soundbar are available with this particular TV model – the standard Canvas with 1000W of Class D amplification, or the larger Canvas L with a staggering 1500W.

The Samsung HiFi S99H will make its debut at IFA 2026 in Berlin this week, and will be available in 55-, 65-, 77-, and 83-inch sizes.

Prices start at $7,999 (UK and AU$ are TBC) – we tested the 55in version of this TV at £2499 / $2500 / AU$3999 back in June, so you can see this HiFi version is very much a premium product.

A fixed floor stand or wall mount is included, and there's an optional rotating floor stand available in aluminium or black.

Samsung has described the S99H HiFi as "more than simply the combination of a TV and a sound system.

The ambition is to create a new category in which true HiFi, picture quality and furniture design are developed as one integrated solution — developed for consumers who do not want to choose between performance and interior design."

We've previously tested the Canvas HiFi 65 soundbar and were very impressed by its clear, detailed sound and excellent handling of voices. We're yet to test the Canvas L, which Canvas HiFi has marketed as the "world's first audiophile soundbar".

Both Canvas soundbars are stereo, but include Baach's 3D audio processing to create a wider and more immersive soundstage.

In our Samsung S99H review, we gave the flagship OLED five stars, but noted that the audio lacked volume and bass weight. The HiFi S99H looks to rectify this shortcoming.

The Samsung HiFi S99H will be available in selected Canvas showrooms from October, with the Canvas L version available later this year.

MORE:

Read our Canvas HiFi Canvas 65 review

Our pick of the best TVs you can buy for every budget, from flagship OLEDs to budget Mini LED sets

And here are the best soundbars you can buy with your own money

Thankfully, it looks like my patience has paid off, as Sonos has finally announced a new version of its compact Beam Dolby Atmos soundbar, and upon first impression, it's exactly what I've been waiting for.

The Sonos Beam Ultra takes the concept of the Award-winning Beam Gen 2 and elevates it; and I mean that in a literal sense.

While the Beam Gen 2 sported a five-speaker array with four elliptical mid-range drivers and a single tweeter, the Beam Ultra takes things up a notch with nine drivers in a 7.1.2 arrangement. That includes two upward-firing drivers for the first time on a Sonos Beam.

This upgrade was top of my wish list for a new Sonos Beam. While the Gen 2's advanced psychoacoustic processing delivers a surprisingly convincing Dolby Atmos experience, it's hard to beat dedicated height channels when it comes to delivering a proper "dome of sound" effect.

The addition of up-firing drivers brings the Beam Ultra closer to the Arc Ultra in many ways. Taking Sonos' usually excellent sound tuning into account, I'm really hoping that the Beam Ultra will deliver the height I felt was missing on the Beam Gen 2 after years of waiting.

However, there's one missing upgrade that has tempered my excitement ever so slightly. Specifically, the firm's SoundMotion woofer technology.

As we mentioned in our Sonos Arc Ultra review, this smaller, redesigned bass driver features "four smaller, lightweight motors in opposing corners" which are "able to push the cone to shift far more air and produce far more bass".

As a result, the Arc Ultra delivers "deep, tuneful and expressive bass", and it's a noticeable difference compared to the original Arc soundbar.

A smaller, more efficient bass driver seems like a perfect fit for the Beam, especially given the footprint of the soundbar. The Beam is also starting to see challengers in the market when it comes to bass performance, so a low-end upgrade would have been appreciated.

Despite this, Sonos appears not to have outfitted the Beam Ultra with its SoundMotion bass tech, which feels like a missed opportunity to me.

That's not to say the Beam Ultra won't deliver better bass. We'll only know if it is better in that metric when we run the two head-to-head in our review rooms. I just think the Arc Ultra tech would have been a great fit for the new Beam, considering our positive experience with it.

Nevertheless, the Beam Ultra is shaping up to be the compact Atmos-equipped soundbar that I've been waiting for, and I can't wait to hear it in action.

MORE:

Read our full Sonos Beam Gen 2 review

Here are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

As well as the best cheap soundbars

One of the coolest things about the Beam Ultra is that, unlike the Beam Gen 2, it has dedicated up-firing speakers for a more involving Dolby Atmos delivery.

Dolby Atmos isn't the only 3D audio format in town, though. DTS:X is a serious alternative, and one that's particularly popular with home cinema enthusiasts, yet Sonos has resolutely refused to support it on any of its speakers.

Given the chance to speak with Brandon Holley, Sonos’s Senior Director of Product, ahead of the Beam Ultra’s launch, we asked about that.

“Beam Ultra doesn’t support DTS:X at this time”, he said.

But could it (and other Sonos speakers) do so one day?

“It’s definitely a question that we ask ourselves, and it’s one of the many features, codecs and partnerships that we’re constantly entertaining. The door isn’t closed to any of those particular things”.

I realise that all seems a bit "nothing to see here", but I actually took some encouragement from the way Holley said it, and I genuinely believe this is a discussion that Sonos is having regularly.

It’s always seemed slightly odd to me that Sonos – a brand that has had format and service agnosticism at its core from its inception – would support Dolby Atmos and not DTS:X.

Sure, DTS:X is comparatively niche, but so are a large number of the streaming services that the Sonos ecosystem supports.

I wouldn't be surprised if DTS:X eventually found its way onto Sonos speakers. The more pressing question, though, is whether the Sonos Beam Ultra is any good in its own right.

We intend to answer that question by putting it through our comparative review process just as soon as possible.

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Here are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars you can buy right now

The new Beam Ultra was unveiled at a pre-launch press event today and sits in the same family as the more premium Arc Ultra, which came out in 2024.

The “mid-size soundbar” boasts a 7.1.2-channel configuration. This includes two up-firing drivers.

The up-firing drivers are a key upgrade over the older Beam Gen 2, which didn't feature them.

Despite the upgrade, there is still no DTS:X support. The omission isn't a huge surprise, as none of the company’s soundbars features it, but it is a bit of a shame for those wanting comprehensive surround sound options.

When asked whether Sonos would add DTS:X in the future, Senior Director of Product Development at Sonos, Brandon Holley told us: "The door isn't closed for us, but just in terms of delivering the value that we think our customers are specifically asking for, that's what Beam Ultra has today."

The Beam Ultra also features a redesigned centre channel and four levels of AI Speech Enhancement to help it deliver clearer dialogue.

There’s also a Night Sound setting if you don’t want to disturb the neighbours, which should compress the bar's dynamic range. Once again, the firm's Trueplay calibration is on hand to fine-tune the sound to your space.

You can also link the Beam Ultra with other Sonos products to create a multi-room listening experience, including the newly announced Sonos Ace Ultra over-ear headphones.

Holley added that the firm has worked to ensure the Beam Ultra delivers better audio with music, telling us: "We treat music as important as we do home theatre performance, and so we want it to sound great musically as a soundbar as well."

That's something we found to be true with Sonos' previous models, so we are hopeful it will be the same with the new addition.

The Beam Ultra will be available in two finishes (black and white) and you can mount the bar to your wall or simply place it in front of your TV. We don't have its full dimensions yet, but Holley told us that the Beam Ultra has been intentionally designed not to block the TV screen, even if it is sitting on the surface.

So, how much will the new soundbar set you back? In the UK, the Beam Ultra will launch at £699 (around $946 / AU$1320). That means it sits between the Sonos Arc Ultra and the Sonos Beam Gen 2, which launched at £999 / $999 / AU$1799 and £449 / $449 / AU$649, respectively. The base Beam Gen 2 will remain on sale, sitting below the Ultra in Sonos' range.

We haven't managed to get the Beam Ultra into our test room yet, but we should have a chance to get up close with it very soon at the IFA trade show in Berlin. Watch this space.

MORE:

Check out our review of the Sonos Beam Gen 2

These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

And here are the best soundbars we recommend

Not only does it focus on convenience and is incredibly easy to set up, but it also delivers a bright, punchy 4K picture and outstanding built-in sound.

And now you can get all of that with a solid discount, too. The C2 Ultra is down to £1599 at Sevenoaks, a £200 drop from the £1799 price we tested it at only last week.

And there's more. You even get an Xbox Design Lab Controller and 1 month of Game Pass thrown in for free, so you can take advantage of the projector's many gaming features.

The Hisense C2 Ultra clearly has portability in mind, and this is reflected in the design. It's compact at 29 x 25 x 25cm (hwd), and even comes with a neat cloth carry bag.

Constantly moving a projector around can involve constant set-up adjustments, but Hisense makes this as smooth as possible. The C2 Ultra can rotate a full 360 degrees on its circular base, for starters, and its cradle design supports a generous 135 degrees of vertical tilt.

The Auto Magic AI Adjusting 2.0 system is also one of the most straightforward AI set-up systems we've seen, with a genuine plug-and-play experience that seldom needs any manual intervention.

The triple-laser DLP projector is rated to deliver up to 3000 lumens of brightness and claims to support huge image sizes of up to 300 inches. The larger you go, the more brightness you lose, though, and we found 100-150 inches to be the sweet spot.

The built-in Vidaa smart platform isn't quite as sophisticated as Google TV, but it does boast all the major domestic and international streaming services as well as Freely.

There's also support for all four HDR formats – including HDR10+ and Dolby Vision – a rarity for a projector, as well as an IMAX Enhanced picture preset.

Gaming features include ALLM, 240Hz refresh rate support, and a measured 34.4ms of input lag in Game mode with a 60Hz signal. Ideal for that bundled Xbox controller, then.

And it's not all features over performance – the picture the Hisense produces is still effortlessly watchable.

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

Our only issue was a cloak of greyness in some uniformly dark scenes, and a moderate level of rainbow effect in bright highlights.

It's the sound that really impresses for a projector, however – the unusually powerful, 40W JBL sound system delivers a remarkable amount of bass, as well as a palpable sense of three-dimensionality for Dolby Atmos.

The Hisense C2 Ultra is absolutely stacked with features as well as being extremely user-friendly. Given how much you get for the price, this really is a bargain – and even more so with £200 at Sevenoaks.

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Read our BenQ W2720i review

Also read our BenQ TK705i review

Our pick of the best projectors across a range of prices

How to set up your projector and get the best picture

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

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

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

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

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

Price

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

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

Design

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

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

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

Features

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 4

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Also consider the BenQ W2720i

Read our Hisense PL2 review

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

And I couldn't be happier; that's what home cinema is all about in my opinion, and I'm always keen to host so that I can preach (and more importantly show off) the benefits of OLED to my not-so-AV-savvy mates.

While I usually get met with raised eyebrows when I mention the price of OLED TVs, after demonstrating the inherent benefits of OLED, the unanimous sentiment amongst my friends is along the lines of "yeah... I need one of these".

While I have convinced a couple of friends to splurge on an OLED TV already, at the end of the day that price factor is the hardest sell, especially to a group of twenty-somethings living in cramped London house shares.

That said, I usually end up getting a message shortly after they return home to their LCD TV complaining that I've ruined every other TV for them; and no, I am not sorry.

That's why I'm almost always urging them to save up and treat themselves to an upgrade, and I now have a secret weapon to tempt my mates into joining me on team OLED.

My friends and I are all keen gamers, and there's this little game launching in November that we're all quite excited for; it's called Grand Theft Auto VI, you might have heard of it.

As such, the current buzz in our group chats is upgrading our gear to experience the game at its best, including its stunning visuals. This conversation has ramped up since Thursday night's Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, which premiered on Netflix and gave us a glimpse at the vibrant visuals of Rockstar Games' latest flagship title.

Frame rates and fidelity have now become major talking points, and the few friends of mine that don't already own a PS5 are now locked into purchasing one ahead of the 19th of November.

My advice to friends who already own a PS5 but want to upgrade a key component for GTA VI is to upgrade their TV or monitor; and of course, I'm pushing them towards OLED.

The perfect blacks, pixel-level contrast control, and superb response time of OLED make it a perfect panel technology for gaming, and I think the most anticipated game of the decade is a good excuse to take the plunge.

I've also touted the benefits of upgrading to a newer HDMI 2.1-equipped TV, too; most of my friends didn't know what VRR and ALLM were, let alone that their consoles had these features. And, of course, I've already assured them that these sets will exceed expectations when it comes to movies and sports too.

My recommendations are currently down to these three models, all of which are perfectly suited to all content:

The LG C6 is my current top pick; it comes in a range of sizes including a desktop-friendly 42-inch version, and it's one of the best-equipped TVs on the gaming market.

However, a stellar budget alternative is the Philips OLED760, which sports an impressive set of gaming specs and Ambilight, and it's under £1000 for the 55-inch model currently.

And the Samsung S99H is probably the most impressive TV I've seen this year. It happens to support up to eight full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets if you purchase the wireless One Connect system, and the picture performance is simply stunning. That said, the price will put many (my friends included) off.

If you're eyeing up a home cinema upgrade in preparation for GTA VI later this year, then my advice remains: you'd be hard-pressed to go wrong with any of the OLEDs I've mentioned above.

Now, my next task is to talk them into getting Dolby Atmos sound systems, but that's a discussion for another day...

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Read our full LG C6 65-inch review

Check out our picks for the best OLED TVs

Find the best OLED TV deals here

Whether you've owned them all or have only just started, we've put together a little quiz about the films that were notable firsts in home cinema.

They could be the first on a particular format, the first to have notable surround sound technology, or experimental releases that were pioneers in terms of 3D or frame rates.

It's multiple choice, so there's no need to worry about knowing exact answers – you have a one in four chance either way.

So what are you waiting for? Put your home cinema history knowledge to the test...

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Quiz! Can you name all the types of hi-fi and AV cables from the photos?

Quiz! Can you remember when these pioneering AV products first came out?

Quiz! How fast can you solve our turntable challenge? Test your wordsearch

Our main issue was the price, with the Sony Bravia 7 II model competing with new mid-range OLEDs at its £1999 launch price. Now, however, the price is much more palatable thanks to a beefy £721 discount, which sees the TV now available for £1279 at Argos.

Use the code RED20 to get this price, and you'll be rewarded with a bright, vibrant picture with excellent depth. You can also claim triple Nectar points on this purchase, too!

RGB Mini LED, for the uninitiated, is next-gen TV panel technology that uses independent red, green and blue LEDs rather than filtering a blue LCD layer.

And after extensive testing of the Sony, the benefits over traditional Mini LED were clear.

"When this TV is in its element, it becomes possible to forget that this is a backlit TV, as the RGB Mini LED system doesn’t distract or detract from the experience," our Sony Bravia 7 II review reads,

"This extends to general blooming control, which is extremely impressive by prevailing standards.

In a shot from Oppenheimer in which the nuclear bomb testing site is lit up at night by a series of spotlights, we find that the halos of light that we’ve seen time and time again on other backlit TVs have been strictly confined."

Sony's typically excellent picture tuning is also on display here, with balance and subtlety applied to the punchy colours so they don't appear overblown.

Motion handling is also particularly impressive, but it's the solidity and depth that really blew us away. Sony's Bravia XR Processor is renowned for its ability to capture three-dimensional depth, with a screening of No Time To Die giving a tangible sense of solidity that we rarely see.

The Bravia 7 II is stacked with features too – fittingly from the makers of the PlayStation, there's plenty for gamers to enjoy. Four HDMI sockets with ALLM are on offer, two of which have full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets with 4K/120Hz gameplay and VRR support.

The built-in Google TV operating system has all the major domestic and international streaming services, while the Bravia 7 II supports the HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision HDR formats, with only HDR10+ missing.

Sony's usually impressive built-in audio has faltered slightly here, however. There's a good sense of clarity and detail, but the system struggles dynamically. Once again, we'd recommend a good soundbar or sound system if you want to make the most of this package.

While the Bravia 7 II is a fair bit cheaper now, you can still get a good OLED for a similar price. We'd recommend looking at the LG C5 for better contrast, black levels and viewing angles.

But, if you are happy with a high-tech backlit set, then the Sony Bravia 7 II is one of the best we've tested. It gets plenty right on the picture front, and is as appealing as ever now it's £721 off at Argos.

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If you're a fan of home cinema, then there's a good chance that a movie has (hopefully) touched you in some way or stuck with you over the years.

But how many films have actually changed home cinema?

There are many great reference discs out there which have surely opened some people's eyes to the possibilities of truly immersive home cinema, but only a handful of film titles can lay claim to have impacted the industry.

We're going to go through some of the most notable firsts in home cinema below, as well as a few pioneering titles which single-handedly changed the industry.

It's an interesting mix of absolute classics, smaller innovators and a few films you probably wouldn't expect. See how many you own...

1976: The first-ever VHS is... disputed

So what was the first film to kickstart the home media revolution? Well, no one's really sure. A long-standing rumour suggests that South Korean drama The Young Teacher came out on tape in 1976, shortly after JVC released the technology, but this claim has been widely contested.

The first Western releases are a bit more certain – Magnetic Video released the first 50 titles in a wave in 1977, which included classics such as M*A*S*H, Patton and Hello, Dolly!

1995: Batman and Jack Ryan bring surround sound home

Okay, bear with us here – surround sound technically entered our living rooms in the 1980s, when Dolby Surround and Dolby Pro Logic used a matrix to decode stereo into multi-channel sound. But surround sound as we know it today, with completely separate, discrete channels, came a bit later.

Batman Returns made history in 1992 as the first film to be released in cinemas in what is now Dolby Digital, making digital sound and 5.1 the new standard. However, it wasn't until the 1995 release of Clear And Present Danger on LaserDisc that a discrete Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound track was available on home media.

Dolby Digital would then, of course, become the audio specification for DVD, and is still in use today, even if it has been superseded by the object-based Dolby Atmos.

1996: DVD arrives with a Harrison Ford double bill

DVD premiered in Japan with four titles in December 1996: Eraser, The Fugitive, Assassins and the fittingly futuristic Blade Runner: The Final Cut.

The format reached the US a few months later in March 1997, with 32 titles on launch day, including Twister, which became the top-selling DVD of the year and a notable early demo disc for the format.

DVD arrived in the UK in June 1997, when former What Hi-Fi? staff members were distinctly unimpressed with the Thomson DTH-1000U in our first-ever DVD player review. We were limited to region 2 imports from Japan at the time, however – DVDs didn't hit UK shops until 1998, when Mars Attacks! topped the first UK DVD chart.

Sony would later add a DVD drive to the PlayStation 2 in 2000, which would launch a DVD boom – with veteran AV experts contending that home cinema really took off when the disc-based format arrived. While DVD (and most physical media) is undoubtedly facing some challenges, they're still being made and released 30 years later – a lifetime in AV terms.

1997: DTS roars into home cinemas with Jurassic Park

We're sure many home cinema fans are familiar with DTS. But did you know the dinosaur mega-hit Jurassic Park played a key role in its development? Not content with revolutionising digital effects, director Steven Spielberg did the same for digital sound too, investing in the creation of DTS to showcase the film's sound design and various dinosaur roars.

This resulted in Jurassic Park becoming the first film to debut in cinemas with DTS surround sound in 1993, and also claiming the title of the first DTS home video release when it debuted on LaserDisc in 1997.

Dolby Digital and DTS have had a heated rivalry ever since, with DTS also creating several more advanced versions – including their own object-based codec, DTS: X.

2006: Adam Sandler and Arnie bring us Blu-ray

With Sony set to kit out the then-upcoming PlayStation 3 with a Blu-ray disc drive, it's no surprise that the Japanese tech giant also led the charge when it came to the discs themselves in June 2006.

50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, Underworld: Evolution and xXx were the very first Blu offerings courtesy of Sony, along with MGM's The Terminator.

A real mixed bag then (was anyone who purchased a ludicrously expensive early Blu-ray player reaching for an Adam Sandler rom-com?), and HD-DVD arguably had a stronger launch line-up with The Last Samurai, Million Dollar Baby, The Phantom Of The Opera and Serenity earlier that year.

However, we all know how that one went – HD-DVD waved the white flag in February 2008, and Blu-ray continues to be sold to this day, though it's of course competing with its successor...

2010: Avatar leads the 3D charge

Avatar was not, in fact, the first 3D Blu-ray – that honour goes to Monsters Vs Aliens in 2010, which was initially only available with Samsung 3D TVs or Blu-ray players.

However, almost anyone who invested in 3D home theatre technology at the time (which wasn't many, let's be honest) did so because of the Avatar effect, hoping to recreate the visual splendour of James Cameron's blockbuster at home. Avatar would have its 3D home premiere on Sky on Christmas Eve 2010, with a 3D Blu-ray release two years later.

Studios had mostly abandoned 3D Blu-ray by 2018, though certain regions worldwide still receive new releases. The most notable recent worldwide release has fittingly been a remaster of Avatar, as well as its two sequels – Avatar: Fire And Ash was released on 3D Blu-ray as recently as May 2026.

2014: Dolby Atmos arrives with a Michael Bay bang

Brave was the first feature-length Dolby Atmos film after a special installation at the El Capitan Theatre for its premiere in 2012.

However, it wasn't the first use of Dolby Atmos on disc – that honour goes to, um, Transformers: Age Of Extinction on regular old Blu-ray in 2014. Whatever you think of the film, it is a technical showcase, and it coincided with the announcement of the first Dolby Atmos technology for home theatres.

2016: X-Men, Hitman and Kingsman are the first 4K discs

As What Hi-Fi? reported at the time, the first 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs came to the UK in a wave in early 2016, meaning it was a photo finish with no definitive winner.

The eight discs in total were all 20th Century Fox titles: Fantastic Four, Maze Runner: Chapter II - The Scorch Trials, Kingsman : The Secret Service, The Maze Runner, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Life Of Pi, Hitman: Agent 47 and Exodus: Gods And Kings.

While you might call the quality of these films, well, mixed, there's no denying the excitement in the air when this new format was announced, and 4K Blu-rays can now often be found strewn across our test room after a lengthy review session.

It's been a rocky road for 4K Blu-ray since, with some of our favourite 4K Blu-ray players disappearing, key manufacturers leaving the market and Sony seemingly hinting that the next PlayStation won't support any disc-based home media at all. Will we even get another home cinema format? Time will tell...

2017: Billy Lynn's Long, High Frame-rate Walk

Ang Lee's experimental war drama Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was not the first high frame-rate movie release (that was The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which was released in cinemas in 2012 at a divisive 48fps), but it was the first to take its high frame-rate to home media in 2017.

The 4K Blu-ray was presented in 60fps rather than the 120fps seen in cinemas, but it was still a first for the format. We found both the film and the high frame-rate experience to be a bit hit and miss in our Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk review, noting a hyper-real sense of depth at the cost of a cinematic feel.

It's not a trend that would catch on, however – Ang Lee would return to high frame-rate for his next film Gemini Man, but otherwise home video has stuck with good old regular 24fps.

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

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

Price

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

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

Design

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

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

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

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

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

Features

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 5
• Features 5

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Seeing this as an opportunity to one-up its arch-nemesis, which has dominated the home console market for years now, Xbox has announced a new feature that will give physical discs a lifeline – for now, at least...

Announced at Gamescom 2026, Xbox's new "disc to digital" initiative will let gamers acquire digital licenses for the physical games they own, essentially bundling the best aspects of physical and digital media into one.

Inserting a supported Xbox Series X/S or Xbox One game (Xbox says that thousands of titles are supported and more will be added over time) will prompt users to "claim a digital entitlement", essentially adding a digital version of their game to their library.

This allows them to fire up the game even when the disc isn't in the console, and it unlocks the ability to play the game practically anywhere, whether that's a friend's console that you're logged into, Xbox's Play Anywhere feature, or even the Xbox Cloud Gaming service.

Crucially, though, users will still benefit from owning a physical copy of the game: Xbox says that this is an "important step toward a future where players can have greater confidence that the games they buy remain with them for years to come".

In other words, if you own a physical copy, your purchased titles can't suddenly disappear from your library – which is what happened when Sony removed hundreds of purchased films from PlayStation users' libraries recently.

Furthermore, you can still sell your disc or lend it to a friend without worry, as the digital license is transferable.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, in an interview with BBC News, stated that it will allow users to experience a best of both worlds approach, and claimed that "it's really a breakthrough in how we think about physical and digital media".

The feature will come to Xbox Insiders (the gaming firm's Beta software testers) on 31st August, with a wider rollout to all users expected down the line.

While this looks like a positive change on paper, it also suggests Xbox may follow Sony's lead and opt for an all-digital approach for its next consoles, though that remains speculation for now.

Xbox could be preparing its users by allowing them to digitise their existing physical library in readiness for a discless Xbox launching in the coming years, but only time will tell if that is the outcome.

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Quiz! Can you name the first film in these home cinema formats?

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

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

Price

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

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

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

Design

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

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

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

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

Features

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound quality

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 4

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Also consider the Epson EH-LS9000

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

However, Samsung's latest entry-level model makes a solid case. The S85H is a neat entry point to the world of OLED, and is also one of the cheapest new options – especially now the 55-inch model is down to £1199 at Richer Sounds.

This is the lowest price we've seen so far, dropping from the previous low of £1259 we spotted only three weeks ago.

Make sure to use the code TRADE100, and you can save an extra £100 on one of the brightest entry-level OLEDs available.

The S85H sits in the same family as the S99H, which we declared to be the best OLED Samsung has ever produced. A very fine pedigree indeed.

However, with the S99H costing over a £1000 more at the time of writing, the S85H has a much more palatable price and is a good entry point if you're upgrading to OLED for the first time.

Brightness is particularly good for an entry-level OLED, which will be a boon if you're watching in a room with lots of ambient light.

"Switching to Pan, our standard peak brightness stress test due to its atypical 4000 nits mastering, it’s immediately clear that the S85H burns brighter than previous entry-level OLEDs we’ve tested and its main rival, the LG B6," our Samsung S85H review reads. "The setting sun offers a wider range of reds and oranges that show up as pure white on its rival."

Upon further comparison with the B6, we found that the colours of the S85H were a tad bombastic, but it was the TV we were drawn to during a screening of F1: The Movie thanks to the picture’s solidity and three-dimensionality.

The specification is also impressive for the price, with Samsung's ever-reliable Tizen platform packed with apps including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV and more. The latest-gen version is easy to navigate too, with a content bar that automatically curates based on your watching habits.

There's plenty of gaming features too, with four full-spec HDMI 2.1 inputs (even some OLED flagships only have two), each capable of carrying a 4K/120Hz signal, as well as VRR and ALLM.

HDR10+, HDR10 and HLG are all supported on the HDR front, with only Dolby Vision missing. That's hardly surprising, however – the format is absent from all Samsung TVs, including pricier flagships such as the S99H.

The audio, however, lets the S85H down. The 2.0 channel, 20W, Dolby Atmos system offers a reasonable sense of direction and separation, but the lack of bass is immediately apparent. You'll want to invest in a soundbar or sound system for movie watching, but for normal daytime viewing the Samsung should suffice on its own.

If you've got a bit more of a budget, we'd recommend looking at mid-range OLED options such as the LG C6 and Samsung S90F for a little more nuance, extra finesse, and a more natural picture overall.

But if you're very much looking at entry-level, the Samsung S85H is one of the top options right now. It's a brand-new 2026 OLED that's a cut above most similarly-priced rivals, and is now 20 per cent off at Richer Sounds.

MORE:

Read our full Sony Bravia 7 II review

And our full Samsung S90F review

Our pick of the best TVs for every budget, including awesome OLED models

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

Price

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

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

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

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

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

Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Features

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

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

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

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

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

Sound

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Design 4
• Features 3

MORE:

Read our review of the Sonos Arc Ultra

Also consider the Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9

Read our Samsung HW-Q990F

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

And not just any Award-winning TV, but our Product of the Year and go-to reference TV, the Sony Bravia 8 II, is now £1949 at Richer Sounds (for the 65-inch model).

So what's not to like? Well, a recent Bravia TV software update has caused problems on several Sony TV models, including our very own TV & AV Editor's Bravia 8 II.

If you purchase the Bravia 8 II, we recommend not updating the system software until the issues are resolved, especially if you plan to use external sources and a sound system connected via eARC. Issues range from audio dropout to lip-sync to Dolby Vision content refusing to play.

However, if you're not planning on connecting any HDMI-equipped sources or you're fine with holding fire on that update, you'll have a wonderfully cinematic TV on your hands.

Use the code TRADE250 to save £250 and get this new low price.

The Bravia 8 II is one of the best TVs money can buy, and delivers an epic cinematic picture, backed up by great sound quality.

"A truly exceptional TV" is how we describe it in our Sony Bravia 8 II review. "Its combination of sizzling brightness, vibrant colours through all degrees of light, terrific shadow detail and razor-like sharpness combine to produce an image with regularly astonishing dynamism, depth and realism."

The Sony Bravia 8 II has been our reference TV since its release for several reasons.

Thanks to its QD-OLED panel, Sony's processing and a custom heatsink, its brightness is a real highlight and makes colourful content such as the Spider-Verse movies dazzle, while still delivering a supremely authentic picture.

The Bravia 8 II also looks stunningly cinematic straight out of the box, as Sony's presets are just that good and don't require any tinkering – we recommend Dolby Vision Dark for Dolby Vision content, or Professional for everything else.

All of these elements also work well with Sony's new AI processing helping to make the image exceptionally three-dimensional.

The Bravia 8 II is also one of the best TVs we've ever heard, thanks to Sony's Acoustic Surface Audio+ setup.

It's balanced, weighty, dynamic, and even manages to sound impressively spacious too.

We'd still recommend a dedicated audio system if possible to do that amazing picture justice, but by flatscreen TV standards, the Sony is very impressive.

As a flagship OLED, the Bravia 8 II is also packed out feature-wise. There's support for Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG HDR formats, as well as Dolby Atmos and IMAX Enhanced certification.

For gamers, there's support for 4K/20Hz, VRR and ALLM, as well as a Dolby Vision Game mode. There are only two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets, however, one of which doubles as an eARC port, so you may have to switch cables if you have several high-speed gaming consoles.

The Sony Bravia 8 II is a phenomenal TV now at a phenomenal price of £1949 at Richer Sounds. We'd just caution against updating your software for the time being.

MORE:

Read our full 55-inch Sony Bravia 8 II review

Also consider reading our Samsung S99H review

We rate the best gaming TVs available right now for all budgets

These days, I very rarely get to go to football matches.

I'm an avid Spurs fan (yes, still), but between the costs involved and family life obligations, I make it to the glorious Tottenham Hotspur Stadium just once or twice a season at best.

I therefore do the vast majority of my football watching at home, and I'm lucky enough to do so with a system capable of taking advantage of the excellent picture and sound formats now available.

Pretty much every match that Sky broadcasts is available in 4K with HDR, and the crispness and vibrancy are generally lovely to behold. But while 4K and HDR undoubtedly make a match look better, they don't fundamentally change the feeling of watching one. No degree of sharpness or punch gets around the fact that you're still viewing the game through a screen.

The accompanying Dolby Atmos sound, though, is a different story.

With Dolby Atmos, I can turn the volume up and be transported to the stadium. I can hear the crowd all around me, audibly pick out individuals yelling abuse at the ref, and the theatrical yells of pain as yet another player takes a dive come through with a realistic sense of distance.

If I could turn off the commentary (something Sky doesn't currently offer) and find a candle with a stale beer and body odour scent, I could well forget I was in my living room.

The impact of Atmos is far more pronounced with football than with my other sporting passion, Formula 1.

Don't get me wrong, noise is a big part of the F1 experience, from the neeeeeee-OW of the cars racing down the straight to the fizzing whirr of the wheel guns. But F1 broadcasts aren't designed to put you in the stands in the way that football broadcasts are, so the addition of Atmos adds relatively little compared with the 5.1 and even stereo delivery.

For me, with F1, the joy of the UHD broadcast comes in the form of the extra definition and detail in the cars, the gorgeous vibrancy of the gleaming paintwork and the searing brightness of the sunlight sparkling off the surface of the yacht-packed Monaco marina. It's a real feast for the eyes and ears, but I never feel like I'm there.

With football, though, Atmos can make me feel like I'm in the crowd at the stadium, and that's a far bigger change to the viewing experience than simply making the picture sharper or brighter.

Now, if only Sky would let us turn off the commentary. Especially when Spurs are playing badly.

Not that that's going to happen so often this season, you understand...

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As a fan of both football and F1, I'm nerdily excited about this new Sky feature

Here are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars and the best surround sound systems you can buy right now

A few of my favourites have made it into our AV room as test discs for the latest home cinema kit, including Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and the motion capture extravaganza Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes.

And there’s one brilliant animated film that has just celebrated a special milestone, and I decided to revisit it to mark the occasion.

Kubo And The Two Strings is the fourth feature from Laika Studios, best known for its adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, and it just turned 10 this year.

Apart from having a spunky teen as its titular character, the two films could not be more different. Set in Ancient Japan, Kubo is searching for his late father’s mystical suit of armour. With the help of his companions Monkey and Beetle and his magical musical powers, he must vanquish evil spirits hell-bent on foiling his plans.

Like all of Laika’s films, Kubo is created using stop-motion animation, where the filmmakers incrementally change the position of physical objects between frames.

This hard work certainly pays off, as every frame is packed with creativity and beauty. Its colourful aesthetic makes for a great test of brightness and vibrancy for your TV or projector.

It’s not afraid to go dark, either. When the evil twin spirits catch up with Kubo in a spooky forest, the atmospheric shadows of the trees and the swooping of their black capes challenge your system’s ability to portray dark detail. Without the right handling, the spine-tingling scene can be tinged with a black crush or disappointing greys.

The score is also an excellent test of your sound system. Dario Marianelli’s soundtrack incorporates instruments from Japan such as the stringed shamisen, which Kubo plays in the film, as well as more traditional Western instruments. Kubo shows off to the townspeople his talents for controlling the world around him with his shamisen, and the score calls for careful handling of dynamics to capture the energy of the scene.

After re-watching the film for the first time in a while, I will now be reaching for it more often when in the test room. It might not offer the same realism as live-action movies, but the stunning colours and expressive soundtrack still mean it holds its own among our test discs.

Laika’s much-anticipated new release, Wildwood, is coming to cinemas at the end of the year, and I will certainly be watching to see if it can reach the same glorious heights as Kubo.

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Check out the best scenes to test your Dolby Atmos system

Here are the best TVs

And these are the best soundbars we recommend

As staff writer Robyn Quick noted in her latest opinion piece on the topic, they encompass a constantly evolving library of films that we use to gauge everything from a projector’s ability to retain dark detail to a surround sound system's handling of dynamics.

Each disc is handpicked, usually for a specific scene that is particularly challenging in at least one of the performance metrics we care about while testing.

The evolving nature of film means that most discs only have a short shelf life, as we always look for modern titles to use, so our reviews feel fresh and relevant to what people are actually watching. But now and then, a scene is so challenging the disc hangs around for a while.

For example, Pan is a horrible movie we continue to use because it’s mastered at an atypically high 4000 nits – making one specific scene a particularly great way to test any TV or projector’s peak brightness.

Then there's Blade Runner 2049. The booming synth soundtrack during scene two has challenged many a speaker system and soundbar, turning them into a distorted, spluttering mess over the four-ish years we’ve used it.

Forced to watch and listen to these scenes over and over and over again in our windowless viewing rooms, the films are etched into our psyche.

Why am I bringing this up now?

Because one such film, and by extension test disc, that I have used more times than I care to count, is turning 10 years old. And glutton for punishment that I am, I felt the need to revisit it and see if it’s still as accomplished as I remember.

The film in question is Don’t Breathe, which launched in theatres on 26th August, 2016.

Editor’s Note: There are some spoilers ahead.

Directed by Fede Álvarez, the film flips the home invasion dynamic, seeing delinquents break into a blind Gulf War veteran’s house, hoping to rob him, only to suddenly find themselves trapped and the ones being hunted.

The film is relatively famous in horror circles, as evidenced by its 87 per cent Rotten Tomatoes score. But recently it has largely been overshadowed by newer horror movies and lost to the mists of time.

That year, 2016, was an awkward one. The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format only officially launched in February 2016 and, although Dolby Atmos existed, it wasn’t widespread on streaming or physical media by any stretch of the imagination.

So, unsurprisingly, Don't Breathe is not available on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray and, even on modern services, it is usually in 1080p and limited to 5.1 surround sound, not Dolby Atmos.

So, I went in with managed expectations after buying it in HD on Amazon Prime Video (the 4K Netflix stream is only available outside the UK right now).

But blow me down if I wasn’t impressed as the film played, and it reminded me why I watched it so much, many moons ago: its stellar audio.

Horror is a genre that naturally lends itself to sound. But with Don't Breathe, the sound team did something truly special, creating an encompassing, immersive sense of dread that uses every trick in the book to make you feel like you are in the house with the delinquents, being stalked by the blind killer – especially if you have a good enough home cinema speaker system to do it justice.

Just be warned, I mean it when I say “good” sound system, as even now the film’s intense mix, which uses massive shifts between dead silence and sudden loud noises with laser precision, requires a speaker with excellent dynamics and audio imaging. A decade on, it’s still beyond basic TV speakers. I know that because I checked using my LG C2.

And one scene in particular drilled this point home as I watched.

I’m talking about the “don’t make a sound” scene featured in the above clip. The intruders break cover, thinking they’re safe, only to be confronted by the veteran. The tension jumps to a Spinal Tap 11 as they freeze in place, doing everything they can to stay quiet and not alert him to their presence.

Yes, it doesn’t have height channels, due to the lack of Atmos, but the sonic image the film creates is truly terrifying. Incredible localisation and character-centric panning make you feel like he’s walking around you as the sound moves from left to right, following his movements.

The intense mix, which includes subtle tells (the quiet shuffle of a step, muted breaths and grunts from the killer as he goes about his business, unaware they’re there), is all delivered with a finesse and accuracy you don’t often experience; so much so that I urge any AV nerd to watch it a second time with their eyes closed.

On a good system, you won’t need the image on screen. The audio alone will put you there, in the intruder's shoes. You'll hear every movement as he walks past, then behind you. Your pulse will rise as you then hear the sound of his breath and feet, and the terrifying ruffle of plastic as he starts to wrap and drag a body on the floor across the room.

Then the payoff as it all goes quiet, the director and audio team creating an intentional vacuum, leaving you alone in uncomfortable silence just before a floorboard creaks directly underneath you, as one of the intruders takes a step backwards, catching his attention.

As each sound lands, it tells you exactly where he is and what he's doing.

Yes, other movies have done this – I recently penned a similar piece celebrating a particularly excellent example of a similar use of sound in Hokum – but Don’t Breathe is still worth celebrating, especially considering how long ago it was made.

For me, it shows, as we’ve said many times before, that technology is only one part of the film experience. Atmos and other tech like it can deliver improved experiences; ones that were not possible 10 years ago. But it's not a silver bullet: it still requires a good mix and clever execution to shine.

And films with good audio don't necessarily need an upmix or remaster to still be fun to watch. If it's well done, a 5.1 experience can still be truly breathtaking (see what I did there?).

Don’t Breathe is a great example of that, and one I’d strongly recommend to any horror or home cinema fan, even now.

Even on my home system, which features a four-star Hisense PX3 UST projector and JBL Bar 1300 soundbar system, it was a blast – so much so that I’m now trying to persuade the team to watch it in our viewing rooms, with the KEF R Meta 5.1 Speaker System and Denon AVC-A1H AVR we recently reviewed handling the audio, for our next team movie night.

Trust me, you won’t regret giving it a watch – unless you’re a scaredy-cat, like my partner, who told me fairly bluntly they “did not care for it” after seeing the infamous turkey baster scene (watch it and you’ll see why).

MORE:

These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars we’ve reviewed

We rank the best surround sound systems

Our picks of the best projectors for serious movie fans

Choosing between the best projectors isn’t always as simple as picking the model with the highest star rating. Your room, viewing habits and preferred content can all determine which projector will ultimately give you the better experience. We mention all this, because it’s particularly true of the Sony VPL-XW5000ES and Optoma UHZ78LV – two fine projectors worthy of your attention.

The Sony is a native 4K projector built primarily for serious movie watching in a darkened home cinema, while the Optoma combines much greater claimed brightness with broader HDR support, 4K/120Hz gaming and more accommodating installation features.

We’ve thoroughly reviewed both projectors in our dedicated testing rooms, assessing their design, features and picture performance using our established testing process. As a result, you can rest assured that by the time you’ve read everything below, you’ll know precisely which one deserves that coveted spot at the heart of your home entertainment setup.

Sony VPL-XW5000ES vs Optoma UHZ78LV tech specs comparison

Sony VPL-XW5000ES vs Optoma UHZ78LV: price

The Sony VPL-XW5000ES launched in 2022 at £5999 / $5998 / AU$9990, while the newer Optoma UHZ78LV landed in the UK at the same £5999 price (it’s not due to be sold in the US and hasn’t yet made it to Australia).

The Sony has, at the time of writing, reached a price as low as £4249 in the UK. The Optoma, in contrast, currently costs full price. That gives the Sony a clear value advantage at the time of writing – though it’s only one part of the puzzle…

** Winner: Sony VPL-XW5000ES **

Sony VPL-XW5000ES vs Optoma UHZ78LV: design

Neither projector is compact, but the Optoma packages its considerable brightness into a surprisingly manageable chassis. It’s lower and shallower than the Sony, although it’s also a little wider. The Optoma weighs 11.5kg, so is lighter than the Sony too, which should make handling it during installation somewhat easier.

Its design is functional rather than beautiful. The blocky black chassis looks serious and suitably premium, but lacks the Sony’s more distinctive sculpting. That might not matter once the projector has been ceiling-mounted or otherwise placed out of sight, but a little more ambition in the design would still be great to see.

As if to prove that point, the Sony has a much more characterful design, with a pronounced, angled, roof-like top and a choice of black or white finishes. It also runs impressively quietly, even when working hard with HDR material, thanks to its effective cooling system.

The Optoma is similarly unintrusive in operation. Optoma claims a maximum noise level of 28dB, and we found that it remained impressively quiet even in its brightest modes.

Overall, both feel like substantial, purpose-built home cinema projectors. For us, the Sony is more visually distinctive, but design is subjective, and far from the most important factor of a projector to consider…

** Winner: Draw **

Sony VPL-XW5000ES vs Optoma UHZ78LV: features

The Optoma’s headline feature is its claimed peak brightness of 5000 lumens. That comfortably trounces the Sony’s 2000-lumen rating and helps the UHZ78LV produce a punchy, colourful picture even when there is a significant amount of ambient light in the room.

Its triple RGB laser system is also claimed to cover 98 per cent of the DCI-P3 colour space and 96 per cent of BT.2020 without requiring a brightness-reducing colour filter. Sony’s Triluminos Pro colour engine, meanwhile, is claimed to cover 95 per cent of DCI-P3.

The Sony counters with its native 3840 x 2160 SXRD imaging chips. The Optoma uses pixel shifting to produce the 8.3 million pixels required for a 4K image and meets the Consumer Technology Association’s definition of 4K, but it can’t match the innate crispness and solidity of a genuine native 4K system.

Sony’s X1 Ultimate processor, meanwhile, further strengthens its picture credentials. Its features include Reality Creation, object-based resolution enhancement, object-based HDR remastering and the Dynamic HDR Enhancer, which identifies bright highlights and boosts their intensity without adversely affecting other elements of the picture.

Having said that, the Optoma offers substantially broader format support. It handles HDR10, HLG, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, while the Sony is limited to HDR10 and HLG. Dolby Vision is still rare among projectors and proves to be a meaningful advantage for the Optoma, rather than merely another logo on its specification sheet.

Optoma’s projector is also better equipped for gaming. Its three HDMI inputs comprise two HDMI 2.0 sockets and one HDMI 2.1 connection, with the latter supporting 4K signals at 120Hz. We measured input lag at 34.9ms in Low Latency mode and 18.1ms in Ultra Low Latency mode using a 60Hz signal.

The Sony’s two 18Gbps HDMI 2.0 inputs top out at 4K/60Hz, although it can accept 1080p at 120Hz. Its input lag was measured at 21ms with a 4K/60Hz signal and 13ms at 1080p/120Hz with its fast-response feature engaged.

Installation is another significant advantage for the Optoma. It offers motorised focus, zoom and lens shift, alongside a 1.6x zoom and a throw ratio of 1.25:1 to 2:1. The Sony’s zoom, focus and lens-shift controls are all manual, and we found its lens-shift wheels particularly loose and imprecise. Its lack of motorisation also means there is no lens-memory function.

Overall, Sony’s native 4K system and exceptional processing are hugely important, but the Optoma is brighter, supports more HDR formats, is easier to install, and offers 4K/120Hz gaming. Unsurprisingly, it wins this round fairly convincingly.

** Winner: Optoma UHZ78LV **

Sony VPL-XW5000ES vs Optoma UHZ78LV: picture quality

The Optoma’s brightness isn’t merely impressive on paper. In rooms with ambient light, it produces a bold, vibrant picture that retains far more colour and impact than most dedicated home cinema projectors.

Bright highlights have terrific intensity, while the combination of strong colours and deep shadows gives large-scale images a tangible sense of depth. During the battle for Washington DC in Civil War, blazing light sources and darker areas combine to create an arresting, cinematic image. It’s impressively crisp, too. Fine facial textures, environmental details and subtle lighting effects are reproduced cleanly, without the picture immediately appearing over-sharpened.

The Optoma also offers HDR, Filmmaker Mode and IMAX Enhanced presets for standard HDR material. We prefer IMAX Enhanced for viewing in a dark room, despite its initially darker and softer appearance, but the projector never entirely abandons its taste for spectacle.

Colours can look slightly more saturated and skin tones warmer than they should, while the overall picture sometimes feels as though it is pushing for impact rather than settling into complete neutrality.

Dolby Vision improves matters considerably. Dolby Vision Dark introduces a more restrained balance, while Dolby Vision Bright combines extra punch with impressive control and is our preferred mode overall, even in a darkened room. Dolby Vision Cinema works well in ambient light, although we recommend disabling its default motion processing.

The Optoma’s compromises become more apparent with SDR. Its Cinema mode is too bright and vivid for authentic dark-room viewing, while Reference looks somewhat cool and green. Careful adjustment produces a much better picture, but there remains a slight sheen and vivaciousness that doesn’t always suit the material.

Its single-chip DLP design can also produce occasional rainbow artefacts, particularly when bright objects appear against dark backgrounds. Motion is generally handled well, but there are rare traces of unwanted smoothing even with motion processing disabled.

In contrast, Sony’s offering delivers a fundamentally different kind of picture. It lacks the Optoma’s searing brightness, but in a dark room, its images are more natural, nuanced and authentically cinematic.

Black levels are excellent, with dark scenes appearing deep and neutrally toned. Sony’s Dynamic HDR Enhancer also gives bright highlights impressive impact without compromising the rest of the image, although its High setting can clip detail and is best avoided. We found the Middle setting offered the most satisfying balance.

Native 4K material looks exceptionally detailed, dense and three-dimensional as well. The combination of Sony’s SXRD panels, Reality Creation processing and Digital Focus Optimiser produces a solidity and natural crispness that the pixel-shifting Optoma can’t quite match. Upscaled HD material is excellent, too.

Motion is another major strength. Sony’s True Cinema setting gently reduces the distracting judder associated with 24fps content without introducing the excessively smooth appearance or processing artefacts found on many rivals.

Colours are beautifully balanced, controlled and nuanced, too, giving the Sony a sense of authenticity that the Optoma achieves only intermittently. There are rare occasions when the Sony struggles with very dark scenes containing extremely bright highlights, but these moments are uncommon and don’t significantly undermine its performance.

Overall, the Optoma is the stronger performer in a room with ambient light and can look superb with Dolby Vision material. For critical movie viewing in a dark room, however, the Sony offers superior sharpness, motion, colour accuracy and overall authenticity.

** Winner: Sony VPL-XW5000ES **

Sony VPL-XW5000ES vs Optoma UHZ78LV: verdict

This comparison is closer and more nuanced than the projectors’ respective five-star and four-star ratings might initially suggest.

The Optoma UHZ78LV has some significant advantages. It is vastly brighter, supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+, accepts 4K/120Hz signals and is considerably easier to install thanks to its motorised lens controls. In a room that can’t be fully darkened, it’s likely to be the more satisfying projector.

It’s also a hugely entertaining performer. Its pictures are bold, vibrant and packed with impact, while Dolby Vision helps it achieve a more controlled and authentic balance than it generally manages with HDR10 or SDR.

For a traditional dedicated home cinema setup, though, the Sony VPL-XW5000ES remains the better projector. Its native 4K system produces sharper and more solid images, while its superior motion handling, balanced colours and greater subtlety create a more convincing representation of the filmmaker’s intent.

At the time of this comparison, the Sony is also significantly cheaper in the UK. It’s officially available in the US, where the Optoma isn’t due to be sold, while Australian pricing for the Optoma has yet to be confirmed. Yes, Sony’s manual lens controls, limited HDR support and lack of 4K/120Hz are frustrating, but once it is installed and a film begins, its picture quality outweighs those shortcomings.

So choose the Optoma if you regularly watch with bright ambient light, need Dolby Vision, or want 4K/120Hz gaming. For the most authentic and accomplished movie performance in a dark room, though, the Sony retains its well-deserved crown.

** Overall winner: Sony VPL-XW5000ES **

The offending software is 114.602.080.1, which was released to various Sony TV models towards the end of June.

The issues reported range from audio dropout (which is what I’m experiencing) and lip-sync issues to Dolby Vision content refusing to play, and it appears to be related to the way the TVs handle HDMI sources and passthrough.

Needless to say, affected owners are pretty frustrated, but I do have some good news – at least for some of them.

Sony has just released a new update, 114.602.170.1, and, according to some owners, including reader David Simmonds, who alerted me to the release of the new software, the Dolby Vision issue, which caused some users to see a black screen instead of their content, has seemingly been fixed.

[Edit to add: I've since been informed that a secondary Dolby Vision issue, which involves scan lines being visible in content, has not been resolved]

I wasn’t experiencing this problem, so I only have the reports of others to go on regarding the fix.

However, having now installed and done some testing of the new software, I can confirm that it unfortunately doesn’t fix the audio dropout issues for me, and David has confirmed it’s the same for him.

In fairness, this latest software update specifically mentions that it “resolves an issue where a black screen could be observed when starting playback of specific content from external HDMI devices”, but makes no mention of fixing any audio issues – it seems it was always intended to fix one problem but not the other.

I have contacted Sony with these findings and a request for information on a fix for the audio issues, and will report back with any information I get.

MORE:

Even brighter OLED TVs could be on the way thanks to a new “dream” panel technology – and super-large models might get cheaper

Here are all of the best TVs you can buy right now

LG Display, which produces the OLED panels used in all OLED TVs sold by LG Electronics and in many TVs sold by brands such as Samsung, Sony and Panasonic, has just announced a new “dream” panel technology called ‘FLiPP’.

That funky name stands for the decidedly less funky ‘FMM-Less innovative Pixel Patterning’, which actually explains how this new technology works.

For the past decade or so, OLEDs have been manufactured using fine metal masks (FMMs). These are essentially sheets covered with microscopic holes, through which the red, green and blue OLED materials are placed.

The problem with these FMMs is that they add cost and they are hard to manufacture, particularly at very large screen sizes.

Now, “after a year of concentrated R&D”, LG Display says it has managed to develop a manufacturing method that eradicates the need for these FMMs.

More affordable super-sized OLED TVs?

Why should you care? First up, LG Display claims that because FLiPP improves the aperture ratio of OLED, it can “increase display brightness by 1.6 times, extend lifespan by 2.4 times, and reduce power consumption by 13 per cent”.

But I think there is potentially a more interesting point here. FLiPP apparently reduces material costs and significantly improves the efficiency of using large OLED sheets to produce panels for different products, and that means that manufacturing costs should decrease, potentially resulting in cheaper OLED TVs.

This could be particularly beneficial where very large OLED TVs are concerned. Big OLED panels are difficult and expensive to produce, so very large OLED TVs tend to be disproportionately expensive. FLiPP could change that.

LG Display flags that FLiPP is “free from panel size and resolution constraints”, and can be used for producing panels from 1-inch in size (for AR/VR headsets, for example) right up to 100 inches.

But when will we start to see FLiPP-based OLED TVs in shops? Not for a while, it seems: the tech is being officially unveiled at the International Meeting on Information Display (IMID) this week, and LG Display says it will first be used in “IT applications such as tablets and monitors”.

Rollout for “ultra-large TVs” is explicitly promised in the press release, though.

We have contacted LG Display for more information, and have reached out to TV manufacturers for their thoughts on the announcement.

We’ll follow up with more on FLiPP as we get it. In the meantime, those who want more of an explanation of how it works should check out LG Display’s own video explainer:

MORE:

Here are the best OLED TVs you can buy right now

Check out our LG C6 review and LG G6 review

Leaving home does indeed mean ensuring you have the essentials, which, at least in our eyes, includes a TV.

We're well aware that a student budget and lifestyle don't quite align with a premium OLED, but we can recommend a model at a fraction of the price that still delivers a surprisingly capable 4K picture: the Samsung U8000F.

The 43-inch model will be big enough to satisfy a student living room or dorm but still small enough to slot into a family car, and is a great value all-rounder for nights off and move nights.

The Samsung U8000F is one of the most affordable TVs we currently recommend, but that doesn't mean it skimps on any of the key areas.

The 4K LCD panel boasts three forms of HDR, with HDR10, HLG and HDR10+ all supported. Dolby Vision is missing, but not even the premium Samsung sets support this format.

All the usual streaming and catch-up TV apps are included on Samsung's Tizen smart platform, so there'll be no shortage of options for downtime from studying.

For gamers, there's Samsung's dedicated Gaming Hub screen, as well as support for ALLM and VRR.

There's also a nice matte-black bezel design, and while the set is a bit chunky at the back, the U8000F has an overall understated and modern look.

And the all-important picture quality? Impressive, considering the low price.

"Pictures enjoy a relatively balanced look, where colours all seem to exist in exactly the same tonal universe for whatever movie or TV show you’re watching," our Samsung U8000F review reads.

"In other words, no tones look either unduly exaggerated or relatively washed out versus the rest. This sort of consistency is crucial to delivering an immersive and compelling picture – and, happily, it holds up well across all three of the main picture presets we recommend: Standard, Movie and Filmmaker Mode."

Motion handling is impressive at this level too, with panning shots, action and general motion looking as good as we’ve ever seen from a budget TV.

However, as a budget LCD set, there's the occasional backlight clouding in and a lack of three-dimensional "pop" compared to pricier, more advanced sets. The picture is far more balanced and immersive than that of your average budget TV, though, and more than up to the task as a university dorm-room companion.

The 43-inch Samsung U8000F isn’t the most dynamic picture performer, but it's a top choice and great value at this price of £229 at AO.com. It's an impressive all-rounder that punches above its weight and likely the right price level if you're after a TV that will have to withstand a student house.

MORE:

Read our review of the TCL 43P7K

Also consider the Sharp 43GM6345K

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

Perhaps you’re watching something on your handset and want to transfer it to the bigger screen in your living room; maybe you want a big display to show off the snaps from your latest holiday; or you might want to play some music via your TV.

Whatever you’re trying to achieve, there’s generally a way to do it. Allow us to show you how.

Cast video from your phone

If you want to watch a video from your phone on the big screen, casting is usually the easiest and best way to do it.

Rather than sending everything on your phone's screen to the TV, casting tells the TV to play the content itself, with your phone essentially acting like a remote control. That means you can usually carry on using your phone without interrupting playback, and in many cases you can even turn its screen off while the video continues playing.

Google's technology is now called Google Cast, although you might still see it referred to as Chromecast.

Google Cast is built into Chromecast devices, the Google TV Streamer and TVs running Google TV or Android TV. In the UK, that includes compatible TVs from brands such as Sony, Philips and TCL.

Other manufacturers have also added Google Cast to some models: newer LG TVs support it, for example, while compatible Panasonic Android TVs do, too.

But don't assume that every TV from a particular brand supports Google Cast: Samsung’s Tizen TVs, Hisense's VIDAA TVs and Panasonic's Fire TV models, for example, use different systems.

If your TV doesn't support Google Cast, don't worry: you may still be able to send content to it using AirPlay or the manufacturer's own casting/mirroring system.

How to cast a video

First, make sure your phone and TV are connected to the same wi-fi network. Then open the app containing the video you want to watch and look for the Cast icon – it's a little rectangle with three curved lines in the corner.

Tap it, select your TV from the list of available devices, and the video should start playing on the TV.

Once you're connected, your phone becomes a convenient remote control: you can pause, skip and adjust playback from the app, while the TV does the actual streaming.

The catch is that the app needs to support casting. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, YouTube, BBC iPlayer and many other popular streaming services do, but you won't necessarily find a Cast button in every app.

If there isn't one, you might be able to use screen mirroring instead, but some apps restrict this, too. Sky Go, for example, doesn't support casting of any kind, so you can't simply send its live football or other content from your phone to a Cast-equipped TV.

What about iPhone?

iPhone users can also use Google Cast with compatible apps and TVs, but Apple's own AirPlay system is also an option if you have an AirPlay-compatible TV or an Apple TV 4K streamer.

The principle is much the same: start playing a video, tap the AirPlay button (a rectangle with a triangle pointing into it) and select your TV. Your iPhone and TV generally need to be on the same wi-fi network.

So, as a rule of thumb: if the app has a Cast or AirPlay button, use it. It's generally a better option for watching video on your TV than mirroring your entire phone screen.

Mirror your phone screen

If the app you want to use doesn't support casting, or you simply want to show something that's on your phone rather than stream a particular video, screen mirroring is the next option.

As the name suggests, mirroring shows what's happening on your phone's screen on your TV. Open a website, look through your photos or start an app on your phone, and you'll see the same thing on the big screen. It's particularly useful for things that don't have a dedicated TV app or don't offer a Cast button.

The exact method depends on your phone and TV. iPhone uses Apple's AirPlay system, while Android phones can use different systems depending on the manufacturer. Samsung calls its version Smart View, for example, while LG uses Screen Share on compatible models.

How to mirror your phone

On an iPhone, make sure your phone and TV are connected to the same wi-fi network, then open Control Centre, tap Screen Mirroring (the icon with two rectangles, one in front of the other) and select your AirPlay-compatible TV or Apple TV 4K. If a passcode appears on the TV, enter it on your phone.

On Android, look for a screen-mirroring option in your phone's quick settings. The name varies: Samsung phones use Smart View, while other manufacturers may call it Screen Share, Cast, Wireless Display or something similar. Select your TV from the list of available devices and accept the connection on the TV if prompted.

You'll generally need the phone and TV to be connected to the same wi-fi network, although the exact requirements vary between devices.

Mirroring generally isn't the best option for video

There's a reason we recommend casting where possible. With mirroring, everything on your phone is replicated on the TV, so a notification, incoming call or change of app can appear on the big screen.

And some streaming services restrict mirroring of protected video content, so don't assume that an app without a Cast button will necessarily work when mirrored.

For watching Netflix, YouTube, iPlayer and other supported services, casting or using the app directly on your TV is generally the better solution. Use mirroring when you want to show something that's actually on your phone, such as your photos or a presentation.

Play music through your TV

If you're listening to music, you're generally better off sending it directly to a wireless speaker, soundbar or AV system than using your TV. But there can be good reasons to put your music on the big screen, particularly when you're listening with other people.

The simplest option is to use your music service's TV app, if it has one.

Spotify, for example, has apps for many smart TVs, and you can use Spotify Connect on your phone to control what's playing. The TV can then display album artwork, track information and the playback queue, while everyone can see what's playing and take part in choosing the music.

But you don't necessarily need a TV app. Services including Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz can send music from their phone apps to compatible TVs using Google Cast, while AirPlay provides a similar option for iPhone users with a compatible TV.

So if your TV doesn't have a native app for the music service you use, check whether its phone app supports Google Cast or AirPlay before assuming you're out of luck. You may still be able to get your music onto the big screen.

Connect your phone with a cable

If a wireless connection isn’t an option, you can always connect your phone to your TV with a cable.

It's not as convenient as casting or mirroring, but a wired connection can be useful if you want a direct connection between your phone and TV, particularly if low latency is important – for example, when playing games.

Most modern phones use USB-C, so you'll generally need a USB-C-to-HDMI adaptor or cable, with the HDMI end connected to an HDMI input on your TV. Older iPhones with a Lightning connector require a suitable Lightning-to-HDMI adaptor instead.

Just bear in mind that not every USB-C phone supports video output, so check your phone's specifications before buying an adaptor.

Once connected, your phone will usually mirror its display on the TV, although the exact behaviour depends on the phone and adaptor.

And while a cable removes some of the potential complications of a wireless connection, it doesn't necessarily get around content restrictions: some streaming services can still block video output, or require the adaptor and TV to support the appropriate copy-protection standards (which they often don’t).

MORE:

Here are the best TVs you can buy right now

How far away should you sit from your TV?

It already looks likely that the US brand will unveil its sequel to the Sonos Ace over-ears, the Ace Ultra, next month, but those premium cans could be joined by a brand new soundbar.

According to Bloomberg, Sonos is working on a new soundbar currently dubbed the 'S56' and codenamed 'Gambit'. A new filing with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) shows a product resembling the second-generation Beam from 2021, implying that a new iteration of Sonos' 'middle-child' soundbar could be arriving next month.

Sonos had already confirmed that a new product would be coming in September during a recent earnings call, with CEO Tom Conrad hinting that AI would play a large part in the company's plans going forward. Now, it seems, this new 'product' may in fact be a pair of releases designed to satisfy wearable audio fans and home cinema enthusiasts alike.

Given that the most recent Beam launched in 2021, it certainly feels like it's time for an upgrade. All we have to go on is Sonos' filing to the FCC, so details for the upcoming soundbar remain sketchy at best, but we'd expect the usual Sonos boxes to be ticked as and when a third-gen Beam sequel arrives.

Dolby Atmos support, seamless ecosystem integration, and some form of voice control via baked-in smart assistant are all taken as read, though we wonder how Conrad's hinted 'AI integration' might find its way into the third-generation Beam.

The big question on our minds is whether the new Beam (assuming that's what Gambit turns out to be) will feature up-firing drivers, or stick to delivering Atmos via clever virtualisation, as with the Gen 2 model. And might HDMI passthrough be added? We doubt it, as Sonos tends to favour simplicity over extra cabling, but we can hope.

If nothing else, we hope that prices stay stable. The Beam 2 launched at £449 / $449 / AU$699, so that's the sort of RRP we'd hope the new model would tend to sit at, but given that the Beam 2 was itself a good deal more than the original model, which cost £399 / $399 / AU$599 at launch, there's little guarantee of things staying as they are. Costs are only going one way in tech, and it isn't downwards.

For now, though, all eyes look to September to discover exactly what Sonos has in store. We'll keep you updated as soon as we discover any new information about its future plans.

MORE:

Sonos Beam Gen 3 preview: the things we want from the next budget Dolby Atmos soundbar

See our Sonos Arc Ultra and Sonos Ray reviews

Best soundbars: the best TV speakers you can buy

Luckily, the Sony Bravia Projector 8 is indeed good. Not just good, but brilliant – its exceptional contrast, sharp details and two HDMI 2.1 sockets earned it not just five stars but a What Hi-Fi? Award too.

There's also a huge price drop to match the huge price. You can get the Projector 8 for £11,499 at Richer Sounds, saving you a whopping £4500 from our test price.

Is that still gut-wrenchingly expensive? Yes, but if you have pockets deep enough, it's a projector that's absolutely worth the money. Bear in mind you'll have to be a Richer Sounds VIP member to get this deal, but it's absolutely free to sign up.

The Sony Bravia Projector 8 is not the most expensive projector we've reviewed – the Sony Bravia Projector 9 costs twice as much – but it was our high-end projector choice at the most recent What Hi-Fi? Awards.

The Projector 8 is more compact and lighter than its main competitors, such as the JVC DLA-NZ800, weighing just 14kg (as opposed to JVC's 23kg) and measuring 21 x 46 x 52cm.

It also comes with an incredibly functional remote, featuring shortcut buttons to access crucial settings such as lens adjustments and picture modes, as well as a backlight for operating the projector in dark home cinema rooms.

One of the big draws of the Bravia Projector 8 is the Bravia XR processor. It comes with a whole host of clever technology, including XR Dynamic Tone Mapping, XR Deep Black, XR Triluminous Pro, XR Clear Image and Motionflow, which together help expand colour volume and enhance the accuracy of the laser output.

Its two HDMI 2.1 sockets also support 4K/120Hz signals with Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), which will please PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and gaming PC owners. Sony also claims an input lag of 12ms with 4K/120Hz sources too, making it ideal for fast-paced multiplayer games.

And the all-important picture quality? Mesmerising, with excellent black levels for a projector and expert contrast handling.

"Firing up Oppenheimer, we’re immediately struck by how crisp and detailed the picture appears," our Sony Bravia Projector 8 review reads. "Sony’s penchant for delivering effective three-dimensional-looking images is clearly on show, with a panning shot of a watchtower in the New Mexico desert looking particularly striking."

The Sony Bravia Projector 8 certainly isn't cheap, but it is a blockbuster projector that will make an excellent centrepiece of any home cinema. Now available with a £4500 saving at Richer Sounds.

MORE:

Read our review of the JVC DLA-NZ800

Also consider the Sony VPL-XW7000ES

Best projectors: budget, 4K and ultra-short-throw

In many ways, software updates are a blessing of modern technology.

They can add features, fix bugs and even improve the performance of a product that's weeks, months or even years old. At their best, they can breathe new life into a device that you've owned for ages.

But they can also go wrong.

It's why many TV owners, particularly those who've been stung by unwanted changes or problems after previous updates, have long promoted a 'turn off automatic updates' mantra.

I wish I had listened.

My philosophy has always been that software updates do far more good than harm, and that the frequency with which they create problems is overblown. Honestly, that's probably still the case. But now that I've been stung by a dodgy update myself, I'm feeling far less philosophical about the whole thing.

For the last few weeks, I've been experiencing audio dropouts from my Sony system. After hours of research and experimentation with different settings and cables, I've finally established that the blame lies with the most recent update to my Bravia 8 II OLED TV.

The problem is frustratingly specific. When I'm watching something through an external source connected to the TV, such as my Apple TV 4K or Sky Stream puck, I can no longer use my external sound system without suffering audio dropouts.

The TV's internal apps work perfectly, but that has only reminded me how much higher the quality is from the Apple TV 4K than from Google TV.

Sony is aware of the issue, and my contacts assure me that a fix is in the works. There's no date for it yet, though, and it's already been almost two months since the problematic software was released.

That's a long time to have a significant part of an expensive home cinema system effectively out of action.

And this is where I've changed my mind about automatic updates.

I've now turned them off on my TV and several of my other devices. From now on, when one tells me that a software update is available, unless it's flagged as a critical security update, I'm going to wait a week or so before installing it.

I'll then search for the release number online, see whether other owners have reported problems, and only if all looks safe will I then download and apply it manually.

I'm not saying that software updates are bad. They're not. I've benefited from plenty of them over the years, and I'd still much rather have a TV that receives regular updates than one that's abandoned by its manufacturer.

But there's very little downside to waiting a few days before installing one. If an update is working perfectly for everyone else, I'll happily install it. If it turns out to be causing problems, I'll be very glad that I wasn't one of the first to find out.

So I'm now firmly in the 'turn automatic updates off' camp. Not because I'm suddenly convinced that every software update is a ticking time bomb, but because I've learned the hard way that there's no need to be an early adopter of firmware.

A few days of caution could save you weeks of frustration.

MORE:

Here are the best TVs you can buy right now

Partly coming off the back of Sony's controversial decision to announce an all-digital future for PlayStation games, there's been a resurgence in support for the good old optical disc from gamers, movie fans and the general public alike.

We've already extolled the virtues of physical media several times, but to show our support further, we've rounded up some of the best 4K Blu-ray players that our dedicated home cinema experts recommend, as well as some of our favourite 4K Blu-rays, whether that's for testing TVs and sound systems or just to enjoy a good film.

All of the 4K Blu-ray players have been tried and tested by our home cinema reviews team, and have earned the full five-stars and our expert recommendation. Be aware that the prices for several of these models have increased since we reviewed them – as has a lot of tech over the last few years – but they still remain highly recommended.

We no longer review 4K Blu-rays, but several of the selection below make regular appearances in our test room. Let us know in the comments if you have any 4K Blu-rays you recommend!

The Sony UBP-X700K is our mid-range 4K Blu-ray player pick, offering a subtler, more lifelike 4K picture than even some of its more expensive rivals. Detail and colours are excellent too – we just wish the sound was a tad punchier.

If you can stretch your budget a little further, our favourite 4K Blu-ray player overall is the Panasonic DP-UB820. It delivers on multiple fronts, including support for all major HDR formats, a hugely immersive and impactful picture and a strong audio performance.

But if you've really got the money to treat yourself, then the Panasonic DP-UB9000 is the best high-end option. It's a focused, high-performance home cinema powerhouse for the enthusiasts out there, offering an entertaining and attention-grabbing image that will make you sit up and take notice. Soundtracks too are delivered with plenty of weight and power if you have a surround system that can make the most of its talents.

When it comes to the 4K Blu-rays themselves, there's more than a few testing regulars on there. Blade Runner 2049 is rather infamous among the hallowed halls of What Hi-Fi?, with chapter two being a go-to scene for testing bass for several years now. Pan is another review favourite thanks to its mastering at an atypically high 4000 nits, while Sinners is a more recent test room staple thanks to the iconic scene where Preacher Boy Sammie plays the blues.

MORE:

The very best films to showcase Dolby Vision performance

22 of the best film scenes to test Dolby Atmos

And the best TVs for all budgets

This emerged from an interview that TechRadar conducted with top bods from Dolby Laboratories.

Once Dolby revealed that its next-gen HDR tech can work on existing players, TechRadar contacted some manufacturers to see if they would be bringing the tech to their players. So far only Sony responded, and that was to say that it wouldn't play ball.

A statement from the company reads: "We do not plan to provide a software/firmware update to support Dolby Vision 2 on the current Blu-ray player lineup."

Given that Sony hasn't put out a bona fide new Blu-ray player in years (bar a minor update to an existing model last year), and that it's all but confirmed that the PS6 will lack a 4K Blu-ray drive, effectively killing the 4K Blu-ray format, this doesn't bode well.

Panasonic and Magnetar hadn't responded to TechRadar's questions.

Dolby Vision 2 only runs on select TVs because it requires certain processors only found in more recent models. But given that a 4K Blu-ray player just has to pass on the encoded data to the TV (which then does the heavy lifting), most players can be made compatible via a firmware update that tells them how to pass the data on. But that's only if the player's maker works with Dolby to release said firmware update.

The Dolby Vision 2 data would also have to be encoded on the 4K Blu-ray disc itself, so would only come on new releases. So even if all 4K Blu-ray player manufacturers released firmware updates today, your existing discs wouldn't suddenly feel the full benefit.

However, providing you're watching on a Dolby Vision 2-compatible TV, you should still see some improvements from the newer HDR tech, even if your Blu-ray player doesn't have a firmware update. So Dolby says, anyway.

Dolby Vision 2 brings a new image engine which promises to enhance visual content, a new content recognition system that promises a more authentic image closer to the creator's intent, and an intensity slider which compensates for contrast lost to viewing angles and reflections.

At the moment, only select Hisense TVs are compatible with the tech, but we would expect it to become more widespread soon. Samsung's rival tech, HDR10+ Advanced, is also set to land this month, but only through select Samsung TVs streaming Amazon Prime Video.

MORE:

Dolby Vision 2 vs Dolby Vision 2 Max: what you need to know about Dolby’s next-gen HDR format

Hisense TV owners, listen up! You're about to get a major Dolby Vision upgrade

HDR10+ Advanced lands this month – here's how to watch the next-gen HDR standard

The tech was unveiled roughly a year ago and is the latest iteration of Dolby's dynamic HDR format. After a long wait, it is now finally rolling out across Europe, America and Asia-Pacific.

You'll need a supported TV from launch partner Hisense to access Dolby Vision 2, however – and we know just the one. Our TV experts put the Hisense UR9 through its paces earlier this year, and were highly impressed by the controlled backlight performance and rich cinematic HDR picture on the RGB Mini LED TV.

But we were even more impressed by the recent price cut – you can now pick up the 65-inch UR9 for £2099 at Sevenoaks with the code GDTV200, saving you a whopping £900 off the price we tested it at only three months ago.

Dolby Vision 2 comes with several perks over its predecessor, including a new image engine to enhance new and existing content, a new content recognition system for a more authentic image, and an intensity slider. We haven't tested the new format yet, but our TV experts will be looking at it soon.

The Hisense UR9 will even support the premium Dolby Vision 2 Max, which adds an extra layer of picture enhancements for home cinema enthusiasts. Be aware that iQIYI is the only current Dolby Vision 2 content partner operating in the UK, though we expect more services to join as the format grows.

The other big draw of the Hisense UR9 is its RGB Mini LED display, new technology which uses red, green and blue Mini LEDs in the backlight for greater brightness and more precise colour reproduction.

While we felt it fell short of OLED in several categories, the result was one of the best backlight TVs we have tested, with none of the flickering or shifting that we sometimes see in Mini LED sets.

“Black depth is consistently strong, shadow detail is excellent and subtle blooming is tightly controlled,” our Hisense UR9 review reads. “There’s also impressive richness and stability to colours, especially reds, which look wonderfully pure and saturated without drifting into pink or magenta tones.”

The panel is far from the only impressive feature, however, with three gaming-friendly HDMI 2.1 ports that support a whopping 4K/170Hz (including 4K/120Hz for consoles), VRR and ALLM. There is also a DisplayPort connection for PC gamers, a rarity in modern TVs.

All four current HDR formats are supported too, namely HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG.

All the major apps are included on Hisense's fast and responsive VIDAA platform, though do note that the Apple TV app lacks access to the Apple TV store.

There's also a lot to enjoy about the Devialet-tuned 4.1.2-channel speaker system, with a surprisingly expansive and full-bodied presentation. There are built-in up-firing drivers too, with support for both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

If you're keen to see some of the latest developments in home cinema, the Hisense UR9 may well be the TV for you. With a remarkably watchable RGB Mini LED display, incoming Dolby Vision 2 support and now a £900 discount at Sevenoaks, there's a lot going for the Hisense UR9.

MORE:

Also consider the Sony Bravia 8 II, LG G6 and Sony Bravia 9

Here are all of the best TVs you can buy right now

The company has launched its own answer to the issue – a five-piece Dolby Atmos system in a box that connects to your projector via a single dongle. And, while this wireless solution is primarily designed to hook up to a projector, it can also be used with your TV.

So, can the Thunderbeat live up to its name and deliver a room-filling, emotion-inducing audio performance?

Price

The Valerion Thunderbeat 4.1.2 is available for £639 / $799 / AU$1799, placing it around the mid-range in the sound system category. For that price, you get four satellite speakers (two fronts and two rears) and a subwoofer.

There is also the option to add a wireless central speaker, taking the whole package up to £899 / $1098 / AU$1949. For reasons that will become clear soon, we recommend sticking to the cheaper option and leaving out the central speaker.

At this price, the system is up against soundbar-based Atmos systems such as the Sony Bravia Theatre System 6 (£499 / $798 / AU$1199) and last year’s Samsung HW-Q990F (which you can consistently find for around £749 / $873 / AU$1395).

Design

As mentioned, the system is all connected via a compact dongle that fits into the palm of your hand. You can plug it into your TV or projector via HDMI eARC, making for an easy-to-connect system that doesn’t require a confusing jumble of wires to snake around your home. All you need to worry about is the power supply for each speaker.

The design of the speakers doesn’t feel particularly premium, instead taking a more basic approach. The black plastic boxes don’t feel as well-made as those of the Sony Theatre System 6, nor do they sport the more interesting angular build of the Samsung Q990F.

Inside each surround speaker is one 10cm full-range front-firing driver, an upfiring 50mm full-range driver, and a 38mm tweeter. Each speaker measures a reasonably large 23 x 14 x 13cm (hwd), and weighs 2kg.

The speakers can be wall-mounted or placed on floor stands, and we opt for the latter. The front speakers are best positioned either side of the TV, and we find that putting them as close to our TV screen as possible achieves the best combination of focus and openness.

The surrounds sit behind or to the sides of the listener, and angling them slightly towards us in our test room delivers the best performance.

Also included in the package is the subwoofer, which is relatively small and narrow. That means it can be placed fairly discreetly next to a wall if you are short on space. There is a single 16.5cm woofer inside, and it’s powered by 120W of amplification. As a package, Valerion claims the system delivers a total power output of 840W.

Features

The speakers are designed to automatically pair with the dongle, but we needed to manually pair one of the speakers to get the system working smoothly. Doing this is a fairly simple matter of temporarily connecting the speaker to the dongle via the USB cable.

Each piece of kit has a light to indicate if the system is fully connected. If you don’t want said lights to bother you while you’re watching movies, there is the option to dim them via the remote.

The system doesn’t feature wi-fi streaming, but you can connect to it via Bluetooth, which of course allows you to send any music you fancy from your phone and hear it through the Valerion speakers.

There is no companion app to control the system, so you must rely on the physical remote control, but this features a useful built-in screen on top to show your current selections. From here, you can control power and volume, EQ modes, and input.

There's no automatic, mic-based calibration, and manual adjustments are limited. You can adjust the system's bass and treble, and the volume of the surrounds in comparison with the fronts, but you can't adjust each speaker individually, and there’s no test tone for accurate manual calibration.

When most rivals offer generally pretty precise, automatic calibration, the lack of it here feels like an oversight.

In terms of surround sound support, the Valerion offers both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

Sound

Once we start listening to the Valerion Thunderbeat 4.1.2 system, we are met with a pleasant movie experience. There is a selection of sound modes to choose from, but after a good amount of testing, we opt for Movie mode, which delivers the best balance between openness and precision.

The sound is big and meaty. In Blade Runner 2049, as Officer K drives through the dystopian cityscape, the Valerion delivers the weight of the epic soundtrack, and there’s good tonal balance and integration.

But there’s not the big punch at the start of each note that we hear with rival systems, and the intricate details in the score are missing. The broad strokes are there, but the subtleties are not.

Later in the film when Ryan Gosling’s protagonist is interrogated, there is enough distinctive character to differentiate Officer K and the interviewer, but we have heard these voices delivered with greater subtlety by rival systems.

Other systems in the category such as the Bravia System 6 and the Q990F use their speakers to create a seamless, enveloping dome of sound around the listener. The Valerion system, on the other hand, feels more like four speakers that produce a much more localised performance.

When watching Top Gun: Maverick, as the titular pilot’s jet zooms from one side of the screen to the other, the sound fails to pan seamlessly. Surround effects aren't passed smoothly from one speaker to the next, and it does not deliver the immersive experience we are hoping for.

The speakers do render height effects fairly well when the plane heads to higher ground, but each channel produces something more akin to a pillar of sound than a section of a dome that fully encompasses the listener, which is what the best in this class can achieve.

We test out the system’s Mapping setting. This spreads the sound across the four speakers more evenly, delivering a wider soundfield but also sacrificing too much of the system’s sonic precision for our tastes.

When watching the genre-melding medley in Sinners, for example, the Mapping feature delivers a greater sense of scale as the camera swoops around the room, but the exactness of individual voices and instruments is less clear compared to when the feature is switched off.

The best rivals are able to combine scale and accuracy, but the Valerion forces you to choose one or the other, and we ultimately choose the latter and switch Mapping off. It’s simply too vague.

Big leaps in dynamics are handled well, though. Continuing with Sinners, as a snake appears suddenly in front of the Smoke and Stack twins, the jump from ominously quiet to a loud screech is portrayed effectively.

But more subtle or gradual dynamic changes are handled with less skill. When the villainous vampire Remmick sings Rocky Road To Dublin with his new troupe, the build-up in dynamics is not delivered with much tension and so does not feel as exciting as it should.

When playing music, we recommend, perhaps predictably, the Valerion’s Music preset. This narrows the sound and makes it more direct, and the mix shifts to all-channel stereo.

The bass is not as prevalent here as it is with movies, but it remains well balanced with the rest of the frequencies. There still isn't enough punchiness with each beat, though, and it is not the most rhythmic system we have heard.

When playing Sign Of The Times by Harry Styles, the start of the track is portrayed with a pleasing delicacy, but the build to the chorus does not have the soft subtlety we are listening for. Styles’ vocals are clear in the mix, but there’s also a bit of sibilance that makes for a slightly distracting performance.

It’s worth noting that there is the option to upgrade the Valerion system to a 5.1.2-channel configuration with a centre speaker. This seems appealing on paper, but this centre speaker is a significant sonic mismatch with the system’s other speakers. There’s a noticeable shift in both character and quality as audio moves from one of the front satellites to the centre, which is harsher, less dynamic and less detailed.

Considering how much of a movie’s sound is mixed for the centre channel, including most of the all-important dialogue, it’s clear that adding this extra speaker is a net negative. We therefore chose to review the centre-less 4.1.2-channel system. It may not be perfect, but it is the Valerion at its best.

Verdict

The Valerion Thunderbeat 4.1.2 is an improvement on the majority of TV speakers and a pleasant performer overall. But there are more immersive, integrated Dolby Atmos sound systems on the market that you can get for the same (if not less) money.

In 2026, this ultimately feels like quite a basic solution in terms of both features and sound quality. It’s decent, but you can do better if you spend your money elsewhere.

SCORES

• Sound 3
• Features 4
• Design 4

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Read our review of the Sonos Arc Ultra

Also consider the Sony Bravia Theatre System 6

Read our Samsung HW-Q990F review

Best surround sound systems: home cinema speakers and soundbars put to the test

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

The panel technology promises better colour accuracy, improved brightness and better contrast than a regular Mini LED display – and now one of the more affordable RGB Mini LED options, the Sony Bravia 7 II, just got another price cut.

The 55-inch model is now down to £1699 at Smart Home Sounds with the code SONYRGB15.

We put Sony's spin on RGB Mini LED to the test only last month and found the Bravia 7 II to be indeed one of the best backlit TVs we've ever tested, with excellent depth and vibrant natural colours.

RGB Mini LED, or True RGB as Sony markets it, is next-gen panel technology that uses independent red, green and blue LEDs rather than filtering a blue LCD layer, to try to counteract some of the shortcomings of backlit TVs.

And after some rigorous testing, our TV experts did find the Bravia 7 II rectified many of the weaknesses that come with traditional Mini LED.

"The general sense of nuance and sophistication extends to how the Bravia 7 II manages its backlight, our Sony Bravia 7 II review reads. "When this TV is in its element, it becomes possible to forget that this is a backlit TV, as the RGB Mini LED system doesn’t distract or detract from the experience.

"This extends to general blooming control, which is extremely impressive by prevailing standards. In a shot from Oppenheimer in which the nuclear bomb testing site is lit up at night by a series of spotlights, we find that the halos of light that we’ve seen time and time again on other backlit TVs have been strictly confined. There is still a very faint amount of blooming, but this is leagues ahead of other LCD TVs that we’ve recently tested."

Colours are presented with punch and saturation without veering into overblown territory, while Sony's usual excellent picture processing results in impressive motion handling and a tangible sense of three-dimensional solidity.

However, the Bravia 7 II is still a backlit TV, and still falls behind OLED when it comes to contrast, black levels and viewing angles. So we'd also recommend looking at similarly-priced OLED rivals such as the LG C6 or Sony's own excellent Bravia 8 II.

The Bravia 7 II can go toe-to-toe when it comes to features, however. Gamers can enjoy four HDMI sockets with ALLM, two of which have full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 sockets with 4K/120Hz gameplay and VRR.

The Bravia 7 II also supports HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision – though HDR10+ is missing – and the built-in Google TV has all the major domestic and international streaming services.

Sony's usually impressive built-in audio is also lacking this time around – there's a good sense of clarity and detail, but the sound system seems to struggle dynamically. Nothing a good soundbar can't fix, however.

We'd still recommend considering an OLED TV, but if you're after a backlit set, then the Sony Bravia 7 II is one of the best we've tested. It's also one of the more affordable ways to get your hands on brand new RGB Mini LED technology, especially with 15 per cent off at Smart Home Sounds.

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Read our review of the LG C6

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

Then we have a solution. Traditionally, brightness is an area where OLEDs struggle, but not the LG G5.

Thanks to a Primary RGB Tandem panel, the G5 offers a truly striking brightness that was a generational leap forward for OLEDs on release.

And it's now available with a rather hefty discount – the code LG200JL brings the price down to £1799 at John Lewis. You can then claim a further 10 per cent cashback from LG, which brings the final total to £1619. Full Ts&Cs can be found here.

The reason for the LG G5's incredible brightness is a Primary RGB Tandem OLED panel, which stacks four OLED layers to boost brightness and colour volume.

And after testing with Top Gun: Maverick, the difference is pretty much night and day.

"What is immediately striking is how bright the new Primary RGB Tandem TV looks next to a conventional OLED," our LG G5 review reads. "We’re talking levels that, in cases where peak-brightness highlights are on show, such as when Maverick engages the scramjet of the Darkstar hypersonic aircraft, we are compelled to shield our eyes from the blazing brightness.

"Feed it some content that is specifically mastered to target a higher brightness, such as the 4K Blu-ray release of The Matrix or Pan, and it becomes apparent that the new Primary RGB Tandem OLED is truly a technical marvel."

Brightness isn't the only strength of the G5, however. Colour volume is indeed impressive, with stunning colour graduations during a viewing of Pan, while the LG set refused to stutter or judder during Top Gun dogfights.

As is customary with most LG OLEDs, the G5 features a pretty much flawless gaming specification. Four HDMI 2.1 sockets are on board, all with ALLM, VRR and Dolby Vision Gaming. Refresh rates even go all the way up to 4K/165Hz if you have a powerful enough PC, while the more console-friendly 4K/120Hz is also supported.

Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, BBC iPlayer, ITVX and Channel 4 are just some of the services available on the rather all-encompassing WebOS, while game streaming is also possible over the Xbox app.

We preferred the Cinema audio preset over the Standard setting due to its wider, louder and punchier sound. However, you'll want a good soundbar or sound system to truly do your movies justice.

It's worth noting that the G5's successor, the aptly named LG G6, is now available and can go even brighter. We'd also recommend considering the Sony Bravia 8 II, which offers a more considered and cinematically authentic picture. Both TVs are hanging around the £2400 mark for the 65-inch models at the time of writing, however, so the G5 offers the best value right now.

If you want spectacle and dazzling brightness, the LG G5 may well be the flagship OLED for you. It's got a stacked feature set and is now available with quite the discount for £1619 at John Lewis.

MORE:

Also consider the Samsung S95F

And the best TVs for any budget

Or why not splash out on the best OLED TVs?

As much as we love a good soundbar, sometimes they won’t always cut it, especially for all-encompassing, cinema-style surround sound.

That’s where a 5.1 speaker system comes in. And we’ve got two premium speaker systems going up against each other – the Award-winning KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System, and the Fyne Audio F500e AV Pack 2.

The names may both be a mouthful, but that’s not all they have in common – both offer cinematic sound at similar price levels, and both are fronted by five-star stereo speakers that made waves in our hi-fi testing room: namely, the KEF Q Concerto Meta standmounts and the Award-winning Fyne Audio 501E floorstanding speakers.

But which speaker system comes out on top? There’s only one way to find out…

Fyne Audio F500E AV Pack 2 vs KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System: price

At the time of our review, KEF did not offer the Q Concerto Meta 5.1 as an all-in-one package, meaning you had to buy all the components separately at a total cost of £3146 / $4050 / AU$5650. This has since changed in the UK, and at the time of writing, the complete speaker system can be purchased for £2549 / $3,428.72 / AU$4,873.28.

However, as the KEF package uses standmount speakers for the front and rear, you’ll have to factor in the cost of speaker stands. KEF does offer the SQ1 stands at £275 / $400 / AU$450 per pair if you want a perfect match, which does drive up the cost substantially.

The Fyne Audio F500E AV Pack 2 comes in at £2500 when bought separately, but is also available as a package at Peter Tyson for £2249 (though somewhat confusingly, it’s listed as ‘Fyne Audio F501E 5.1 Speaker Package’). Note that there are only UK prices here, as certain components – namely the centre channel and subwoofer – don’t seem to be available in the US and Australia.

That puts the Fyne Audio AV Pack 2 as £300 (13 per cent) cheaper, and that’s before factoring in stand prices. We’ll have to see if the KEF’s performance justifies the higher cost, but it’s the Fyne Audio package that takes this round.

**Winner: Fyne Audio AV Pack 2**

Fyne Audio F500E AV Pack 2 vs KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System: build

We start with the KEF system, which is made up of the Q Concerto Meta standmounts, a pair of Q1 Meta bookshelf speakers, the Q6 centre channel and the Kube 12 MIE subwoofer. Looks can be subjective, but we found this to be a swooningly handsome system with a cohesive design language that matches nicely.

We reviewed the satin black finish, but the system is also available in satin white or walnut (the subwoofer is only available in black, however).

A slightly glossy surround to the Uni-Q driver array adds a nice sense of contrast, while the KEF tab at the top of each standmount speaker is a classy touch. A beautiful system all round.

The Fyne Audio system is made up of the F501E floorstanders, the F5E surround speakers, the F502E LCR centre speaker and the F3.10 subwoofer, and is what we’d describe as far more “functional”. The floorstanding speakers in particular look neat, and the black ash vinyl finish feels high-quality to the touch, but they don’t have the same allure as the trendy KEF speakers.

There’s only one finish, black ash vinyl, which looks smart enough, but doesn’t exude a luxurious feel like the KEF package.

You’ll also need to ensure you have ample space if you go for the Fyne set. The floorstanders measure in at a substantial 98 x 25 x 29cm (hwd). The Q Concerto Metas are 56cm shorter at 42 x 21 x 32cm, though once on a stand the two will likely be of a comparable height. The bookshelf speakers are a more similar size - the Fyne Audio F5E come in at 27 x 17 x 23cm, comparable to the KEF Q1 Meta speakers at 30 x 18 x 28cm.

Both have rather bulky centre channels – the Fyne F502E LCR centre speaker measures in at 25 x 68 x 25cm, while the KEF Q6 Meta comes in at a similar 21 x 63 x 30cm. The Fyne F502E is designed to be wall-mounted with screw hooks in the back and no attachable rubber feet, but this may lead to your TV or projector having to be placed quite high up to accommodate the speaker size.

When it comes to subwoofers, it’s the KEF model that starts to look a bit unwieldy – the Kube 12 MIE subwoofer measures in at 41 x 39 x 41cm, a tad larger than the F3.10 subwoofer at 34 x 41 x 39cm.

Overall, the exposed screws, basic styling and mismatch of speaker sizes can make the Fyne system look somewhat slapdash, unlike the sleeker and more uniform KEF speakers.

**Winner: KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System**

Fyne Audio F500E AV Pack 2 vs KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System: features

We’ll get into the details below, but the long and short of it is that these are two 5.1 systems, both with unique, impressive driver technology.

Fyne Audio’s IsoFlare point source driver array is front and centre in their F500 AV Pack 2 system, literally, but is also found in the surround speakers too. This proprietary driver, in which the tweeter sits in the throat of the mid/bass unit, has trickled down from Fyne’s higher-end models to this more affordable speaker range.

The F501E floorstanders sport a 2.5-way design, with a downward-firing port that utilises the company’s BassTrax Tractrix diffuser technology to deliver more uniform bass dispersion around your listening space. Each sports a 15cm multi-fibre mid/bass driver with a 25mm titanium dome compression tweeter, paired with a 15cm multi-fibre bass driver.

The Q Concerto Meta standmount speakers, on the other hand, are packed with KEF’s proprietary driver technology to maximise sound quality and minimise unwanted distortion.

They feature a three-way bass reflex design, and each unit features KEF’s 12th Generation Uni-Q driver array, which combines a 10cm aluminium midrange driver, a 19mm vented aluminium dome tweeter and the company’s Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT).

The Uni-Q arrangement is backed up by a 16.5cm hybrid cone bass driver, and a rear-firing port is used to tune the lower frequencies. The bass driver cones are constructed with an aluminium skin layered over paper and feature a shallow concave design, which enhances rigidity and dampening, resulting in “improved punch and definition” as we found in our KEF Q Concerto Meta review.

The Fyne Audio F5E surround speakers feature a two-way design, with a 125mm IsoFlare, multi-fibre mid/bass driver and a 19mm titanium dome compression tweeter. Like their floorstanding counterparts, these bookshelf speakers also have a downward-firing port with Fyne Audio’s BassTrax Tractix diffuser.

To compare, KEF’s surround speakers, the Q1 Meta, could be considered the baby brothers of the Q Concertos. They drop the bass driver and feature a two-way bass reflex design, but also feature a slightly larger 12th Generation Uni-Q array comprising a 25mm vented aluminium dome tweeter with MAT, and a 130mm aluminium cone for mid/bass purposes.

The F502E LCR, the centre channel of the Fyne Audio package, sports a 2.5-way design with a 200mm IsoFlare multi-fibre mid/bass driver with a 25mm titanium dome compression tweeter, flanked by electromagnetically damped 20cm bass and 20cm ABR drivers.

KEF’s centre channel, the Q6 Meta, features the same Uni-Q array as the Q Concerto speakers, though it’s sandwiched between two of the same bass drivers from the front speakers.

Rounding things out with the subwoofers, the Fyne Audio F3.10 subwoofer pairs a 25cm woofer with 450W of amplification and a down-firing low-turbulence port. The KEF Kube 12 MIE powered subwoofer, on the other hand, is a 12-inch front-firing subwoofer powered by 300W of Class D amplification.

The Kube 12 is also housed in a sealed cabinet design for greater placement flexibility and includes a room position EQ switch on the rear to change the sound depending on whether you have the subwoofer placed in the corner, out in the room, or in a cabinet.

**Winner: Draw**

Fyne Audio F500e AV Pack 2 vs KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System: sound

With both systems fronted by five-star hi-fi speakers – namely the Fyne Audio F501E and the KEF Q Concerto Meta – our hopes were rather high.

We tested both systems with the same scene from Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts, and both rewarded us with a serious dose of punch.

The Fyne speaker system soon proved itself to be a big proponent of immense cinematic scale, reinforcing the punch with bold and dramatic dynamic shifts. Detail isn’t sacrificed as a result, however, with the F501E floorstanders in particular offering plenty of crispness and clarity.

Not to be outdone, the KEF system also offers plenty of muscle, with an explosion at the start of the scene delivering a gut-punch of low end from the subwoofer. The system is agile, however, remaining fully in control while delivering a powerful and dynamic low-end kick.

The scene also reveals just how talented the KEF system’s centre channel is. A hushed conversation between Yelena and Bob results in a supremely natural and realistic representation of voices with excellent projection, which is aided by how forthright and crisp this centre channel sounds.

Despite this, the centre channel remains well integrated into the system as a whole. The left, right and centre speakers mesh seamlessly, and these in turn gel with the surrounds, leaving no noticeable gaps in between the channels.

Moving to the Matera chase scene in No Time To Die, and the Fyne system nails the “surround” aspect of “surround sound”. We’re immediately placed into the centre of the action as Bond evades henchmen in 4x4s and on motorcycles, with effects passing around our seating position and towards the surround speakers with solid accuracy and fluidity.

The KEF system too delivers an impressively coherent display of surround sound, again placing us in the centre of the action as bullets clatter against the bulletproof glass of the Aston Martin DB5. The metallic clinking of bullet casings hitting the ground and the sparkle of fragmenting glass are layered, dynamic and detailed in all of the ways we’d hope, which helps to raise tension and excitement within this sequence.

What’s particularly impressive about the KEF system, however, is how integrated the system is as a whole, with all the speakers meshing together seamlessly and leaving no noticeable gaps in between channels. Despite the Q1 Meta rear speakers being smaller than the Q Concerto Metas at the front of this system, there’s no noticeable tonal dissonance or any sacrifice in scale between the front section and the surrounds.

Which is more than can be said for the Fyne system. As impressive as the surround effect is, it also reveals the biggest drawback of the system: a lack of cohesion when it comes to the sonic character of each component.

This is felt most by the centre speaker – the F502E LCR can sound soft and less defined in comparison with the clean, clear and engaging sound of the F501E floorstanders. The centre speaker does sound better when placed against a wall, but even then voices lack purity and can sound somewhat recessed.

To top it all off, the cohesion problems don’t end there – there’s a slight sonic mismatch with the F5E surround speakers too.

This is more evident when we listen to the KEF and Fyne systems back-to-back, which only serves to highlight the KEF’s stellar sonic cohesion across its respective components. It also reveals how much more agile and precise the sound from the KEF speakers is too, whereas the Fyne package prioritises scale and cinematic punch at the expense of some dexterity.

The Fyne F500E package will have its fans, as it proved to be an exciting and engaging surround sound system with a sheer magnitude that we can’t help but admire. But its disappointing centre channel holds it back, and the KEF Q Concerto Meta system offers a bit more cinematic subtlety.

**Winner: KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System**

Fyne Audio F500e AV Pack 2 vs KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System: verdict

What we have here are two talented 5.1 systems, both fronted by five-star stereo speakers that went down very well in our hi-fi test room. The difference is that the other speakers drag the package down in the case of the Fyne – the F501E front speakers are detailed, crisp and revealing, but there’s a slight sonic mismatch with the F5E surrounds and even more so with the bulky, soft centre channel.

There’s still plenty to like in the Fyne package’s bold delivery, however, and anyone who favours big, punchy and broad cinematic sound will find themselves right at home – it just falls short of true greatness.

The KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1, however, has no such problems when it comes to sonic cohesion. To put it bluntly, the system reminds us why we love proper surround-sound systems so much, and it looks good while doing so.

**Overall winner: KEF Q Concerto Meta 5.1 Speaker System**

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