The end of the year is in sight, which means it's time to pause and reflect. Who's had a good year, and whose 12 months have been... not so good?
We've compiled a list of winners and losers for 2025. Some firms have launched stellar products, kept at the top of their game, or come up with breakthrough technologies that genuinely elevate the viewing or listening experience. And some have dropped a clanger or two.
Winners of 2025
TCL
While TCL has previously shown some flashes of brilliance, no one (myself included) expected what we got from the brand in 2025. It’s really no exaggeration to say that it has redefined expectations in the mid-range and budget areas of the TV market.
The eye-opening specs and surprisingly low prices that have long been TCL’s bread and butter now go hand in hand with more considered and more cinematically accurate tuning, plus new ‘Halo Control Technology’ that allows the TVs to go brighter while retaining deeper contrasting blacks.
Of the six 2025 TCL TVs we’ve tested, four have received five-star ratings, and three of those – the 50C6KS, 65C7K and 85C7K – have gone on to win What Hi-Fi? Awards. I know for a fact that all of this has made several other TV brands rather worried. And, frankly, I think they should be.
Words by Tom Parsons
JBL
Yes, JBL does make other devices, like soundbars, turntables and headphones. And some of them are very good, like the five-star JBL Bar 300MK2 and four-star JBL Tour One M3 Smart Tx. But the brand doesn't dominate any product category like it does Bluetooth speakers.
It picked up three of our five Awards in the wireless speaker category this year, and won every 'portable' speaker Award going. This isn't a one-off – last year it won both portable speaker Awards. That it's continued this superb run of form is deeply impressive.
The Flip continues to be the best budget Bluetooth speaker around, with the Flip 7 adding real improvements to the sound quality, build and feature set. The Charge 6 is ideal for anyone with a bit more to spend, proving "infectiously energetic" in our review, while the Xtreme 4 should be your go-to if you have a somewhat looser definition of 'portable'.
Just a few years ago, it was a much more crowded market, with KEF, Ultimate Ears and Dali all picking up Awards for their portable efforts. JBL's continued dominance shows it has had a very good year indeed.
Words by Joe Svetlik
KEF
Entering a new product category can't be easy. Just ask Sonos. Its debut in the fiercely competitive wireless headphones space last year was not only poorly received – earning a disappointing three stars from us – it also necessitated a disastrous app redesign for which the company is still paying the price.
KEF, on the other hand, had considerably more success with the XIO, its first ever soundbar.
Not only did this monster model win our 'Best soundbar over £1000' Award, it also picked up 'Innovation of the Year' for its Velocity Control Technology. This sees a flexible PCB printed with a sensing coil in place of a traditional former (the component that the main coil wraps around) to measure the speed of movement. This allows the soundbar’s 'brain' to compensate for any errors detected, and correct the sound.
It certainly works. In our review, we described the soundstage as "impressively wide and immersive," with more clarity and precision than the Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Max and more finesse in the low-level dynamics.
For a first effort, it's a doozy. Well done KEF.
Words by Joe Svetlik
Sony
Getting to the top is easy, it's the staying there that's the hard part. This saying might be beloved of sports people, but it could easily apply to the world of consumer AV. Sony has excelled in recent years in both its wireless headphones and TVs, and this year saw it continue its winning streak.
True, it might not utterly dominate the wireless headphones space like it did a couple of years ago, when it performed a clean sweep of the category in our Awards. But it's still there, and in some ways that's even more impressive.
The WH-1000XM6 are another proud entry in the stellar flagship XM family, and – true to form – they're another fantastic pair of all-rounders. That's why they won Product of the Year. The WF-C510 and C710N are still respectively the best budget and mid-range wireless earbuds you can buy, while the CH720N are again the best over-ear experience you can have on a budget.
The same goes for its TVs. The Bravia 8 II is the premium TV right now, following on from the also excellent A95L. And while LG might have dominated the lower price categories in our Awards, the Bravia 7 still earned five stars.
With these ranges, Sony is still at the top of its game, years after they first debuted. And as any sports person will tell you, that's the mark of a true champion.
Words by Joe Svetlik
Losers of 2025
Recent OLED TV buyers
Calling an OLED TV owner a loser may sound a little weird – especially in 2025, where we’ve seen several excellent new sets hit the market, including the Product of the Year-winning Sony Bravia 8 II, which our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, openly describes as the finest OLED he’s ever reviewed.
But, for me, there are two big flies in the ointment. The first is the existence of Dolby Vision 2 and its Max tier. The new standard is set to launch next year and comes with a variety of technical benefits over Dolby’s current HDR standard. These include improved bi-directional tone mapping as well as the ability for directors to adjust the picture's frame rate.
Technicalities aside, all of these aim to let compatible displays offer a much more authentic, “as the director intended” experience. The issue is that it has specific hardware requirements at a local level to run – so, if you want to experience any of the benefits of Dolby Vision 2, your TV needs to have compatible hardware, which no existing set, including flagship OLEDs, does.
The second issue is the looming threat of RGB Mini LED. This is a new technology we first saw at the CES 2025 trade show in January, which is being pitched by big-name players – including Samsung, Sony, TCL and Hisense – as the successor to OLED in the top-end market.
Yes, we’ve heard these claims before; the difference here is that two of our team have been lucky enough to attend demos of the tech this year, and they walked away incredibly impressed. So there may be some truth the the pre-release marketing.
Which is why, if I’d just bought a new OLED, spending a pretty penny into the bargain, I’d be a smidgeon annoyed that I could miss out on the benefits of two new potentially game-changing home cinema technologies. This might not be the happy ending we were promised.
Words by Alastair Stevenson
Spotify
Finally. After eight long years of waiting, we eventually got Spotify's hi-res offering this year. And it was... underwhelming? Disappointing? That's maybe inevitable after such a long wait, but it didn't make it any easier to stomach.
Because while Spotify Lossless streams tracks in 24-bit/44.1kHz – which is better than CD quality and Spotify's previous 320kbps limit – that's lower than most rival streaming services. Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Qobuz all offer hi-res streams at up to 24-bit/192kHz, though admittedly most of their tracks have bitrates between 24-bit/44.1kHz and 96kHz.
Not only that, Spotify Premium is more expensive than most rivals too. It's now £13 a month, compared to £11 for Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Qobuz. (There are some caveats – Amazon Music is the same price as Spotify if you don't have Prime, and Qobuz is only £11 if you pay annually, otherwise it's £13 a month.)
At least Spotify hi-res doesn't have an extra cost, as was rumoured.
Now admittedly most of this won't matter to most people. Spotify is an unashamedly mainstream service, and most people will just appreciate the boost in sound quality. The typical Spotify listener probably doesn't own equipment sophisticated enough to reveal the extra hi-res quality that the rival services offer.
But we're not most people, and for us, the addition of Lossless wasn't enough to earn Spotify its fifth star back when we updated our review.
Words by Joe Svetlik
Amazon
It wasn't a great year for Amazon on the hardware front. While we did see the new Fire TV Stick Select launch at the tail end of 2025, we're still waiting for a new 'proper' streaming stick from the e-tail giant. The second-generation Fire TV Stick 4K and 4K Max launched in 2023, and now we likely won't see new models until towards the end of 2026 at the earliest, making it three years between full-fat iterations.
Now admittedly the last generation of Apple TV – the device, not the streaming service of the same name – launched even longer ago, in 2022. But the previous version to that launched just a year earlier, so we can forgive it. Whereas the first-gen Fire TV Stick 4K arrived all the way back in 2018.
Adding to Amazon's woes was its newest smart speaker, the Echo Dot Max. While we're generally fans of Amazon's low-cost, high-value smart speakers, this model was deeply unimpressive. Its uninspiring, muddled sound led it to a two-star review, and a recommendation to avoid. Must do better, Amazon.
Words by Joe Svetlik
Bose
Now we should say that in general, Bose has had a good year. It launched 2nd Gen variants of its QuietComfort Ultra Headphones and Ultra Earbuds, and both reviewed very well, earning four and five stars, respectively. Its non-Ultra QuietComfort Earbuds from last year won an Award, while its SoundLink Plus portable speaker earned a decent four out of five in our review. But there was one development which was unforgivable.
The firm announced that it's retiring all the smart functionality from its SoundTouch speakers without offering customers any compensation.
From February 2026, speakers in the range will lose their wireless functionality, effectively turning them into very expensive Bluetooth speakers. Not only will they no longer work as multi-room speakers, they will also lose the ability to stream direct from services like Spotify and TuneIn.
SoundTouch launched in 2013, and Bose says it's "no longer able to sustain the development and support of the cloud infrastructure that powers this older generation of products."
Fair enough. But with no trade-in scheme or compensation of any kind, customers are justifiably feeling thoroughly hacked off. If we had just spent £2000 on a SoundTouch system – as one reader who contacted us had – we would be fuming.
Naughty list doesn't begin to cover it.
Words by Joe Svetlik
4K Blu-ray
Like Bose, 4K Blu-ray hasn't had a terrible year. It's just not been a particularly good one, either. There has been no one criminally bad incident like Bose's decision to make its smart speakers dumb. Rather it's been a case of – to coin a phrase – a tepid bath of managed decline.
Recent events have conspired so that we've lost count of the number of nails in Blu-ray's coffin. Netflix's plan to buy Warner Bros. could see a rapid winding down of the studio's disc releases. Sony launched its first Blu-ray player in five years, only to remove the network streaming compatibility and hike the price into the process. And this was the year that Pioneer bade farewell to the optical disc market for good.
The malaise is real. Here's hoping 2026 proves more fruitful for the format.
Words by Joe Svetlik
MORE:
The best smart speakers to buy instead of that two-star Amazon one
The Sony Bravia 8 II made our list of best TVs
Check out the best soundbars to rival the KEF XIO
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