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

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

• View all the Prime Day deals on Amazon

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

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

Sonos Beam Gen 2

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

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

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

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

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

Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9

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

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

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

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

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

Hisense AX5125H

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

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

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

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

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

Samsung HW-Q990F

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE:

These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

Check out the best budget soundbars

And here are the best TVs right now

With Amazon Prime Day in full swing, it can be hard to sift through all the deals thrown your way, and see if they're worth the dent in your budget.

What if your budget is really tight and you can only consider deals under £50, or you simply can't go over a strict £150 limit? Don't worry, we're here to help.

I've been reviewing products at What Hi-Fi? over 14 years, and I love seeing a good discount on a product we've tested and genuinely recommend. So I've combed through the best audio and home cinema Prime Day deals currently live, to narrow down your choices to a select few that are worth your attention.

Every deal below is under £200, with clear price segments to make your choices easier. You'll find more details about the products below, but first, check out these excellent savings on products (many of which are five star-rated!) enjoying a Prime Day deal right now.

Deals under £50

Deals under £100

Deals under £150

Deals under £200

If you're looking for a cheap and cheerful deal under £50, you've got plenty to choose from. Nearly all of Amazon's Fire TV Sticks are enjoying a discount this week, but I've highlighted the HD version as it's the cheapest – just £16.99!

If you want 4K picture and Dolby Atmos, you can spend a little more for the five-star Fire TV Stick 4K Max for £38.

If we're sticking with Amazon, you can't go wrong with this 45% discount on the latest (and best) 5th Generation Echo Dot smart speaker. It's nicely made, Alexa is useful and it sounds decent, too.

Sony's headphones are having a fantastic week of discounts, but I've stuck with the very cheapest options here. The five-star WH-CH520 on-ear headphones are a robust on-ear pair that gets the basics right for just £30 (!); spend a little more and you'll gain the noise-cancelling talents of the What Hi-Fi? Award-winning CH720N model – both offer really enjoyable sound quality for very little money.

If you or your kids have been eyeing up a pair of AirPods, the standard AirPods 4 (without eartips) are the cheapest option yet under £100 – a pretty good bargain considering how expensive Apple products tend to be.

The AirPods with ANC are also on sale, but we would point you two the great alternatives from Bose and Sennheiser here if you're looking to spend between £100-£150. Both offer great sound, high comfort levels and decent battery life – it's simply a matter of preference, but you'll be well served with either option.

JBL's Flip 6 Bluetooth speaker is another great bargain we'd encourage you to snap up – its detailed, dynamic sound and excellent rhythmic ability alongside a rugged, portable build make them great to use outdoors (and indoors).

Don't think you can't get a proper hi-fi deal with such strict budget limits! The iFi Go Blu is a tiny portable DAC that you can put in your pocket to help boost the sound quality from your smartphone or laptop, and you can use wireless and wired headphones with it. For just £129, it's a great little audio gadget.

Spend a little more – but still keeping things under £200 – and you can nab the What Hi-Fi? Award-winning WiiM Pro Plus music streamer that we recommend during every sales period. It will imbue your old hi-fi system with cutting-edge streaming powers, and is so slick and easy to use.

For AV fans, Xgimi's adorable little Vibe One portable projector is fantastic option even at full price. It delivers a detailed, natural picture with good dark levels – ideal for impromptu late-night movies and World Cup watch parties in the garden.

And the most 'expensive' deal here is a corker of a bargain: the Award-winning, five-star Hisense Dolby Atmos wireless system offers impressive weight, scale and a convincing Atmos effect – all for under £200!

Prime Day quick links

• Amazon: browse all of today's best deals
• Richer Sounds: big savings on top-rated hi-fi and TVs
• B&W speakers: save hundreds at Peter Tyson
• Best Prime Day TV deals: LG, Samsung, Sony and more
• Sevenoaks: shop all the latest hi-fi and AV deals

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The "unbelievable" LG OLED TV deal I wrote about two days ago has been beaten – time to buy!

I would swap a week's worth of Tesco meal deals for these cheap £30 Sony headphones

If you want a satisfyingly cinematic or sporting experience at home, there really is no substitute for screen size.

The good news is that a big TV needn't cost big money. These days, 65-inch TVs go for much less money than you might imagine, and if you wait for a big sales event, your cash can go even further.

And it just so happens that we're right in the middle of a big sales event – Amazon Prime Day – and I've sifted through all of the deals to find three super-cheap 65-inch TVs that I can recommend as great buys.

• View all the Prime Day deals on Amazon

What do I know about it? I'm so glad you asked!

I've been testing TVs for almost 20 years now, so I know the good from the bad (and the ugly, for that matter). I've also been personally involved in every What Hi-Fi? TV review in probably the last 10 years – and that includes the reviews of the three models I'm recommending here.

Happy with those credentials? Excellent! Here are my three picks, ranked in order of quality.

1. TCL Q6C

Deal price UK: £529 at Amazon
Deal price US: n/a

If you're looking for the best-value 65-inch TV in the Prime Day sales, this is the one I'd buy.

The TCL Q6C impressed us so much in testing that we awarded it five stars and described it as "an absolute steal". That's high praise for any TV, but it's especially impressive when you're talking about a 65-inch set that's currently selling for well under £600.

What makes the Q6C stand out is that it brings technologies normally associated with much more expensive TVs down into the budget category. It uses a Mini LED backlight with local dimming, alongside Quantum Dot colour technology, and the result is a picture that's far more sophisticated than the price suggests.

In our review, we were particularly impressed by the TV's contrast and black-level performance. Dark scenes look surprisingly deep and convincing, while bright HDR highlights have real punch.

Colours are another strong point, delivering plenty of vibrancy and richness without tipping into the sort of exaggerated look that often plagues cheaper TVs.

It's also an excellent option for sport and gaming. Motion is handled confidently, helping fast-moving action stay clear and composed, while gamers get features such as 4K/144Hz support, VRR and low input lag.

No TV at this price is perfect, of course. The sound is merely decent rather than exceptional (something that can be rectified with one of the best budget soundbars), and you'll get the best results by spending a little time tweaking the picture settings. But those are minor caveats when the overall performance is this strong.

Simply put, if your budget stretches to the TCL Q6C, it's the best cheap 65-inch TV I've seen in the Prime Day sales.

2. Amazon Ember QLED

Deal price UK: £600 at Amazon
Deal price US: $710 at Amazon

The TCL Q6C is my top pick, but the Amazon Ember QLED isn't far behind, given its current Prime Day price.

In fact, one of my colleagues recently described the deal on this TV as "impossible to ignore", and it's easy to see why. Amazon has cut the price dramatically, turning what was already a solid mid-range TV into one of the most tempting bargains in the sales.

The Ember QLED is a significant step forward from Amazon's previous QLED efforts. It features a full-array backlight with 160 dimming zones and a panel that's considerably brighter than its predecessor, resulting in a picture that's sharper, punchier and more three-dimensional than you might expect at this sort of money.

During testing, we were particularly impressed by its detail levels and colour performance. Images look crisp and vibrant, while upscaling of lower-quality content is handled well enough that everyday broadcast TV remains enjoyable.

The TV also supports every major HDR format, including Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ Adaptive, so you're covered regardless of which streaming service you use.

Another advantage over many budget rivals is the sound. Built-in TV audio is rarely worth talking about, but the Ember QLED produces a fuller, clearer and more spacious presentation than most affordable sets manage.

Why isn't it above the TCL? Primarily because the Q6C's Mini LED backlight delivers superior black levels, contrast and gaming performance. The Amazon also tops out at 60Hz, making it less appealing to serious gamers.

Still, if you're heavily invested in the Amazon ecosystem or simply want a big, capable and easy-to-use 65-inch TV for as little money as possible, the Ember QLED is an excellent Prime Day buy.

3. Samsung U8000F

Deal price UK: £367 at Amazon
Deal price US: $400 at Samsung

The Samsung U8000F is the TV I recommend if your budget is as tight as possible.

At £367/$400 during Prime Day, it's substantially cheaper than both the TCL Q6C and Amazon Ember QLED, and that price difference is impossible to ignore. In fact, it's one of the least expensive big-brand 65-inch models you can buy.

Of course, some compromises are inevitable at this sort of money. Unlike the TCL and Amazon models above, the U8000F doesn't have a Mini LED or full-array backlight, and its picture isn't as bright or as impactful when displaying HDR content. Black levels are also less convincing, meaning movie nights won't have quite the same cinematic punch.

That said, Samsung has done a commendable job with the fundamentals. In our testing, we found the U8000F delivered a balanced, natural picture that avoids many of the exaggerated traits often seen on budget TVs. Colours are pleasingly authentic, detail levels are respectable, and standard-definition and HD content are handled particularly well.

Samsung's excellent Tizen smart platform is another big plus. It's packed with streaming apps, easy to navigate and generally feels more polished than many rival smart TV systems.

The biggest reason to choose the U8000F over the TVs above is simple: value. While the TCL Q6C is undoubtedly the better performer and the Ember QLED offers a more advanced specification, both cost considerably more. If spending £500-£600 on a TV still feels like a stretch, the Samsung gives you a huge screen from a trusted brand for comfortably under £400.

No, it's not the best TV in this list. But when price becomes the priority, the U8000F makes a very strong case for itself.

MORE:

Here are all of the best TVs and the best TV deals you can get right now

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Danish hi-fi brand Tangent overhauled its Spectrum speaker range only a few months ago, but now it has a new addition: the Tangent Spectrum II X5 Active BT.

These are active speakers, featuring two 50W Class D amplifiers, so you don't need an external amp. The 130mm cellulose‑pulp mid/bass driver and 25mm soft‑dome tweeter combine to deliver a soundstage that is described as “balanced, dynamic and natural”, with precise bass, expressive vocals and refined, transparent highs.

But that’s not the only improvement. The feature set has been beefed up, offering Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX HD for better-quality wireless playback, and a built-in moving magnet phono input for hooking up a turntable. You can use these speakers for your TV audio too, thanks to the HDMI ARC port, while you also get optical, coaxial and hi-res USB Audio inputs, plus a subwoofer output for adding more bass.

As you would expect from Tangent, the aesthetic is best described as clean and minimalist, i.e. very Scandi. They come in black or white, one of which should, no doubt, match your interior style.

The Spectrum II X5 Active BT are out now for £499 (around $660 / AU$940) per pair.

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The best wireless speakers money can buy

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In 1976, Steve Wozniak demonstrated his Apple 1 prototype computer a few months after he, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne founded the company; Peter Frampton released what would become one of the best-selling live albums in history; and JVC launched (and won) the video cassette format war against Sony’s Betamax with its VHS (Video Home System) player.

It was also a golden year for hi-fi – particularly in Britain – and not only because What Hi-Fi? arrived in newsagents for the first time, the debut (mostly black-and-white) issue claiming to provide the price of every piece of hi-fi equipment on sale in the UK.

Arcam and its debut A60 amplifier were born, KEF launched the first speakers to benefit from computer-aided design (CAD), and Pioneer released a new king in the ‘Watt Wars’ era with its SX-1250 receiver.

At that time, the main concerns of an electronics engineer were, according to Cambridge Audio’s head of engineering, Nick Brown, “analogue performance across a handful of inputs, whether the remote control worked across the room, and whether the packaging survived a drop test.” Amplifier design was, he says, already hard, but today it’s a different discipline entirely.

And the same can be said when it comes to wider hi-fi sources and electronics, loudspeakers, and audio-enhancing accessories that weren’t even necessary way back when. We asked several hi-fi brands to pick the technological groundbreakers that changed it all…

An expanding canvas of features and protocols

For Brown, the technological landscape has gone from balcony garden to sprawling arboretum, now that modern amplifiers must handle an array of analogue and digital connectivity, connect reliably to TVs, PCs, gaming consoles and Bluetooth devices, and sometimes incorporate networked and wireless technologies.

“Control might come via an IR remote, a Bluetooth remote, or a mobile app,” he adds. “Customers want sound profiles they can adjust. Regulators want the whole thing running in under half a watt in standby and waking up in seconds.

“Every one of those connections has to be tuned, verified and tested for consistency. Take eARC, for example: supporting it properly means testing against as many television models as we can get our hands on, because TV manufacturers implement the standard differently, and what works perfectly on one television can behave unexpectedly on another. The specification exists, but the real world doesn't always follow the rules.

“The knock-on effect across the whole development process is significant. Where product development once drew on a relatively small core team, it now pulls in software engineers, network specialists, UX designers, compliance experts and more – all working in parallel, all needing to get it right. Perhaps the most telling sign of where things have landed: our fastest-growing team right now isn’t electronics or software. It’s QA [Quality Assurance].”

Along Brown’s line of reasoning, it’s not one game-changing technology per se, but the nature of the game changing entirely. Not only has the hi-fi world expanded to accommodate the mushrooming features brought by digital and the internet, but it has also had to learn to play ball with the ever-expanding world of household electronics, ordinance and all.

Digital disruption on sound quality

Of course, the arrival and continual maturation of digital audio have played a pivotal role in how hi-fi has transformed not just logistically but also sonically in the past 50 years. QED engineer Jon Jeary highlights the Compact Disc as “the ultimate game changer” for democratising access to high-end hi-fi.

“Suddenly, a system costing only a few hundred pounds could potentially rival vinyl or reel-to-reel setups that had cost thousands just a few years earlier,” he says, recalling an experience he had between 1976 and the earliest years of the CD.

“The year What Hi-Fi? launched, I bought the latest Steve Miller Band album on vinyl,” says Jeary. “On the way home, the record warped slightly in the summer heat. Played on my father’s respectable and relatively expensive system – a Garrard SL75B, Trio KA2002 amplifier and Wharfedale Kit speakers – the first track on each side suffered audible wow, flutter and even a jump.

“Yet we still loved the music and accepted the limitations: pops, clicks, end-of-side distortion and a restricted soundstage. That skip simply became part of the song.

“Nine years later, I heard the same album on a friend’s Philips CD104 [player]. The difference was astonishing: no scratches or jumps, an inaudible noise floor, perfect stereo separation, negligible distortion and a ruler-flat frequency response.

“For the first time, I realised as a student I could realistically own a system capable of challenging my rich uncle’s prized Revox reel-to-reel setup.”

Digital audio formats and technology ushered in a different – and technically ‘better’ – sound, but their watershed innovation – network streaming – introduced problems of its own, and, according to Chord Company’s Patrick Mitchell, the quest to solve them has had a huge impact on the modern audio engineering landscape.

It has allowed hi-fi streaming to be the game changer it has become in the high-end space.

“Optimising a digital system has introduced a whole new set of environmental variables that simply didn't exist when we were spinning isolated discs,” says Mitchell. “When you introduce a network streamer, the audio system becomes physically connected to the broader domestic data network – an environment originally designed for office computers, smart TVs and home appliances; not delicate audio signals.

“Standard home networks are inherently noisy environments, and that hidden electrical noise can heavily mask the subtle details that make recorded music sound real.”

While hi-fi has always grappled with the detrimental effects of external noise, streaming has, Mitchell says, removed the natural isolation of physical media, which more or less has a self-contained playback loop.

He argues that in order to maintain audio quality in digital streaming systems, the network path needs to be treated “with the same care and engineering prestige traditionally reserved for premium analogue playback”.

For a cable company such as Chord, this has blown the windows wide open for creating devices that break that unhealthy electrical path and strive to reduce noise, such as network filters and switches.

Parts progression

While the same types of parts are by and large the same for analogue designs as they were 50 years ago, componentry has improved as techniques, materials and research have, and naturally you now have digital elements in the hardware mix.

“The list of improved parts and techniques is almost endless,” says Cyrus’s managing director, Nick Clarke, whose list of examples includes the use of phase change materials for heatsink bonding and a higher current handling in a given transistor package for an amplifier output stage.

For Jack Oclee-Brown, KEF’s senior vice president and chief technology officer, one specific part-progression stands out as particularly groundbreaking for the hi-fi market: the magnet.

Magnets are crucial elements of loudspeaker, headphone and phono cartridge design; they convert electrical signals into mechanical movement in speakers and headphones, and vice versa in cartridges.

“In 1984, a new type of magnetic material based on the element neodymium was developed, offering far higher strength than previous materials,” says Oclee-Brown, adding that neodymium magnets are still the strongest type commercially available today.

“Toward the late 80s and early 90s, neodymium magnets started to find their way into audio products and brought about a technical revolution. At KEF, we used this new type of magnet to allow us to miniaturise the loudspeaker tweeter, placing it at the centre of the midrange driver to create our famous Uni-Q driver array.

“Headphones could be made smaller, lighter and more portable; products like Apple’s AirPods could not exist without neodymium magnets. Whatever you might think of the sound quality, neodymium magnets allow tiny speakers to be buried inside our phones and tablets.”

Magnets in audio (and other industry) applications are also a ‘watch this space’ solution, says Oclee-Brown, who says that they need more research and innovation. “Neodymium magnet demand is rising year-on-year, and the search for greener and more sustainable alternatives is an important field that some companies, like Niron Magnetics, are already working on,” he adds.

From educated guesses to simulated trials

So we have the quantum leap from analogue to digital in how we consume and perceive sound, the many more features to engineer (and engineer around), advanced and innovative componentry, and the closer relationship to the wider technology of the home to accommodate.

But arguably just as significant are the ‘behind the scenes’ technological advancements that shape how audio design, engineering and manufacture look today.

In his 38 years as an audio engineer, during which time he has designed and built products for the likes of Audiolab, Arcam and Harman International, Nick Clarke calls out the impact of Computer Aided Design (CAD) as the biggest change.

“When I started in this industry [1988], there wasn’t any,” says Clarke. “We laid out circuits manually after sketching the idea on paper using black tape on a sheet of plastic at a 2:1 scale so that you had a chance of producing this by hand. This was then sent away and photo-reduced to a 1:1 master, from which the (usually) single-sided PCB was produced.

“There was no link to the mechanical parts of the product design, so that required a lot of work to ensure the PCB and the mechanics matched, and the components were large through-hole parts that were manually fitted and hand-soldered.

“The whole process was costly, labour-intensive, time-consuming and fraught with opportunities for something to go wrong, with absolutely no error checking other than either peer reviews, or building it, seeing what you had done wrong and going around the loop again.

“Today, you have extremely advanced CAD software for both the PCB and the mechanics, which link together in such a way with a vast amount of automated checks that it is virtually impossible to produce a PCB that has errors that would prevent manufacture or doesn’t fit in the casework.

“It is, too, like American mathematician and computer scientist Richard Hamming said: ‘The purpose of computers is insight, not numbers.’ Not only does the use of computer design allow for more accurate ‘doing’, but also more extensive experimenting.

“We can now use simulation tools for trialling circuit ideas or the thermal efficiency of heatsinks – tasks which in the past would have been very educated guesses at best or total blind alleys at worst,” says Clarke.

“It’s no substitute for clever ideas or innovative design, but they allow you to try a lot more things a lot more quickly and that collectively drives higher performance across products at every level of the market.”

Similarly, Peter Comeau, the IAG Group’s director of acoustic design for brands including Mission, Wharfedale and Quad, singles out the monumental impact of advanced measurement methodology and the arrival of simulation tools on speaker design.

“When I first became interested in loudspeaker design, as a teenager in the late 1960s, measurement typically consisted of hoisting a baffle high above the ground on a crane with a microphone suspended a yard or so from it,” Comeau remembers.

“Then, in the ’70s, anechoic chambers became more prevalent, and we had Bruel & Kjaer sweep [noise] generators and a pen graph response tracer to help view frequency response and harmonic distortion.

“Today, there’s a whole raft of measurement systems and software analysis and simulation to help, stretching from laser scanning of cones and domes to crossover software optimisation.

“Does this actually help us design better loudspeakers? The short answer is ‘yes’; we can make better diaphragms and motor systems, control cabinet vibrations successfully and simulate the power response of loudspeakers in rooms.”

Like Clarke, Comeau commends such technology’s ability to speed up prototyping and trialling, as well as facilitating a greater understanding of the problems involved in achieving good sound.

Despite that, however, he still champions what has, since and prior to 1976, been crucial to obtaining that end goal: using our ears: “The process of hours and hours of fine-tuning, experimentation and tweaking that is as relevant today as it always was.”

It hails back to Clarke’s point that, while technologies are advancing, they only work if, in his words, “you have the knowledge of how to use them and what they can do for you (and sometimes, more importantly, what they can't).”

The technological game has changed significantly in the past five decades, absolutely; but designer and engineer know-how remains at the heart of it all as much today as it was back then.

MORE:

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You never feel the need to upgrade your TV like you do during the FIFA World Cup.

The 2026 tournament features 48 teams for the first time, meaning if you were dedicated (and temporarily nocturnal) you could watch 104 matches of high-quality football.

That's a lot of time to be staring at your TV – but luckily, if you do want to upgrade, you don't have to break the bank.

We've rounded up some of the best TVs under the £1,000 mark, all of which have been reviewed and rated by us and earned at least four stars – or in some cases, five stars and even a What Hi-Fi? Award.

This also clashes rather nicely with early Prime Day deals, so there are particularly good savings available right now on all the models below.

We'll go into more detail on what we like about the TVs below, but for now, have a look at our expert picks.

The LG C5 OLED won multiple gongs at the most recent What Hi-Fi? Awards, thanks to its excellent picture quality and flawless gaming specification. If you’re going for OLED under a grand, this is the model to get – the 42-inch LG C5 and 48-inch LG C5 are just as good and even cheaper.

We only reviewed the Amazon Ember QLED with Fire TV in March, but it has already received a staggering £450 discount for Prime Day. Have no fear, this has nothing to do with the quality; Amazon’s latest QLED offers a sharp and detailed picture with minimal fuss, as well as audio that defies expectations.

The TCL C6KS was already exceptional value for money at full price – we liked it so much we gave it a What Hi-Fi? Award – and now it’s available for even less. A good Mini LED at this price is hard to find, but the C6KS has a rare all-around ability thanks to its 160 dimming zones, support for all four HDR formats and user-friendly Google TV operating system.

Samsung has had a lot of competition in the budget TV market in recent years, but the 65-inch U8000F shows it can still do big-screen on a budget. The Standard mode is enjoyably punchy and bright, and there is a lot of smart TV content available in one great value package.

The TCL C7K is the current Award-winner for the best large-sized budget TV, thanks to more features than you have any right to expect for the money. For less than £720 now, you’ll get a 65-inch Mini LED with Quantum Dot colour and excellent gaming support. That’s before we even mention the 1008 dimming zones and support for all four HDR formats.

Previously known as the Amazon Fire TV Omni Mini-LED, the 65-inch Amazon Ember Mini-LED with Fire TV is a solid entry to the mid-range market with a sharp picture and excellent app support. And with an early Prime Day discount, it’s now quite the bargain.

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And the best TVs for all budgets

Prime Day Predictions: The What Hi-Fi? team’s hopes, fears and dreams for Amazon Prime Day

Light the beacons! Sound the horns! Yes, yet another Prime Day is upon us.

No, you're not imagining things; Amazon's sale event, which is really stretching the definition of 'day', is a month earlier this year, with the deals officially kicking off on 23rd June.

Usually, we'd encourage anyone making a large purchase, such as a TV, to wait until an sales event like Prime Day. Things are a little different this year, thanks to a little thing known as the FIFA World Cup.

So will the Prime Day TV deals be worth the wait? Let's take a look...

Should you buy a new TV now?

It might be quite tempting to jump the gun and buy a TV now, as there are already several excellent deals available.

Retailers and manufacturers have been making the most of the boom in demand for TVs for the World Cup. Highlights include the multi-Award-winning LG C5 hitting half price, the LG C6, our favourite TV of 2026, getting a £400 discount and last year's Product of the Year winner, the Sony Bravia 8 II, receiving a nice £800 saving.

Simply put, this has been the best time of the year so far to buy a new TV. Several TVs, whether they are last year's Award-winners, brand-new 2026 OLEDs, or simply great-value offerings from the likes of TCL, have hit record lows over the last month.

It also helps that Amazon has already started offering TV discounts as early Prime Day deals. The 65-inch Amazon Ember QLED, which we reviewed at £1050, is already down to an incredible £600 for Prime customers.

There is, of course, the matter of the World Cup. Especially when you factor in the time for delivery and set-up, it will likely be a few days after Prime Day before your TV is actually in your living room and match ready. If you're keen to see as much of the tournament as possible on the World Cup on a big, shiny new TV, then there's nothing wrong with getting an order in now.

Should buy a new TV on Prime Day?

While yes, there are some great deals now, the smart money is to wait until Prime Day next week.

It's quite likely that any new drops will be small, and perhaps rare outside of Amazon's own TV range, but if you're after the absolutely best deal possible then it's best to see how things play out next week. After all, it's truly a terrible feeling to buy a new TV and find it £200 cheaper the next week!

A TV is for life, not just for the World Cup, so it's entirely possible that a better TV might fall within your budget and serve you well for several years to come.

Several other retailers, such as Richer Sounds and Currys, will likely be running Prime Day rivalling sales too, increasing the chances of seeing further TV discounts next week.

Our advice? Do your research now, narrow down the models you're interested in and keep an eye on the prices heading into Prime Day. That way, when the big day does arrive, you'll know immediately if you see a discount worth buying.

Our best TV guide has expert recommendations for TVs of every size and budget, or if you're buying especially for the World Cup, then these are the features to look out for. We will be hunting for deals over the entire Prime Day week and sharing them on the site, too, so make sure to keep an eye out for those.

Whenever you decide to buy a TV, though, happy shopping!

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Streaming giant Roku is about to be acquired by Fox. The American media empire, Fox, has announced an acquisition of the company, covering its hardware, software, and services, in a deal worth $22 billion.

That's roughly £16.4 billion or AU$31 billion, using currency conversion, at the time of writing.

Roku currently produces a wide array of streaming devices, as well as affordable TVs manufactured in partnership with the likes of TCL, Sharp and JVC. The company recently launched its first projector, too.

According to the research firm Parks Associates (via BBC News), Roku is the largest smart platform in the US, powering more than a quarter of internet-connected streaming devices. It's closely followed by Samsung's Tizen-powered devices and then devices running Amazon's Fire TV software platform.

Worldwide, it's reported that over 100 million households stream content using Roku devices and services.

While no news regarding Roku's hardware lineup has been announced as part of this deal, it appears Fox plans to capitalise on Roku's existing advertising reach through its The Roku Channel service.

Fox already owns the popular streaming service Tubi, which it could merge with Roku's service in the future.

We've contacted Roku for comment and will update this page when 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 cheap TVs

June is always a tricky time for hi-fi and home cinema fans. For whatever reason, companies seem to think the Summer Solstice period is the perfect time to launch new products.

2026 has proven no different. Over the past seven days, our team has wrapped up its coverage of the High End Vienna show, dealt with some surprise AV announcements at Apple WWDC, all the while continuing its eternal search for the best hi-fi and home cinema products.

Eager to make sure you don’t miss any of the important announcements, we’ve inked a fresh entry for our weekly Rewind column detailing all the salient points.

We had an opening look at Dali’s new premium system

Hi-fi systems are a growing category, even at the premium end of the market. Which is why we were curious to check out Dali’s take on the format at the High End Vienna Show.

The giant new Dali Vega is an instantly eye-catching, eight-channel system designed with flexibility, as well as performance, in mind.

At a platform level, this is due to its use of BluOS, which means it has all the streaming smarts most music fans will need.

But it is also due to its design, with Dali claiming you can position it horizontally on a stand/desk or on a wall in either portrait or landscape without impacting performance.

Read our full Dali Vega hands-on preview

One of our favourite portable DACs is back

The appearance of a new AudioQuest DragonFly Copper portable DAC / headphone amp was a welcome surprise last week. Unveiled at High End, the tiny portable DAC is being pitched as a refinement, rather than a rethinking, of the DragonFly’s offering.

It’s a tiny USB dongle designed to offer hi-fi fans a quick and easy way to improve their laptop, tablet or phone’s audio. Key upgrades on its recently retired predecessor include the use of a new 32-bit ESS Sabre DAC and Microchip Technology Microprocessor.

The ESS Sabre doubles the unit’s power output, while the microprocessor reduces the current draw by 25 per cent. We didn’t get to demo it at the show, but we are hoping to get a DragonFly Copper in for review soon. Watch this space.

Read the full story: The DragonFly Copper hovers into view as AudioQuest's most powerful and efficient DAC yet

We had a chinwag with Ruark about why it loves CDs so much

There’s a lot of hype around CDs right now, with numerous reports suggesting Gen Z is suddenly interested in the format.

But, UK-based firm Ruark has long championed CD, even when it wasn’t in vogue with younger listeners.

Which is why, when the firm launched its new Ruark R710 streaming amplifier with integrated CD player at High End Vienna, our hi-fi and audio editor, Kashfia Kabir, headed straight to its stand to have a chinwag with owner and managing director Alan O’Rourke about it.

Read the full story: "It's the last physical format we'll ever have." How the demand for CDs, tactility and good design led to Ruark's new R710 streaming amplifier

Apple unveiled its new TV software

We’ve wanted to see a new Apple TV 4K streaming box for quite a while now – especially our senior staff writer, Lewis Empson.

While one didn’t appear at the tech giant’s WWDC developer conference, we did at least get a hefty update to the current Apple TV’s software, in the shape of tvOS 27.

The new OS promises to help give the long-in-the-tooth Apple TV 4K, which launched all the way back in 2022, a new lease of life, making it “30 per cent” faster and more responsive.

Read the full story: Apple officially announces tvOS 27 – and it nearly makes up for the missing next-generation Apple TV 4K

Moon’s new hi-fi left us wanting more (in a good way)

Moon’s latest 491 streaming preamplifier (£5950 / $6500) and 461 power amplifier (£4450 / $5000) are the latest additions to the firm’s high-end Compass Collection, which includes the five-star 371 streaming amplifier we reviewed in March.

Designed specifically for high-end hi-fi enthusiasts, both units come armed to the teeth with top-end features and hardware. So much so that after having an opening look and listen to both at the High End Show, our global technical editor, Ketan Bharadia, walked away wanting more, reporting:

“All in all, the Moon 491/461 combination makes a great first impression. We’re due to get the products in for review in the next few months, and we can’t wait to hear what they do in our test room's more familiar surroundings.”

Read the full story: Moon's new 491 streaming preamp and 461 stereo power amp is a formidable combination – our first impressions left us wanting more

MORE:

We rank the best stereo amplifiers for hi-fi fans

Our picks of the best hi-fi systems

The best DACs ranked by our experts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Price

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Features

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Verdict

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

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

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

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 4
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Sony Bravia 8 II

Also consider the LG G6

Read our Philips OLED910 review

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

If you have a smart TV that is getting into old age, you may find that your everyday navigation is becoming slower and slower. Even if the picture still looks great, having to wait for apps to load in order to watch your latest obsession can get quite tedious. You may not want to upgrade to a newer model, whether that's because you are on a budget or simply aren't ready to let go.

But don't worry, because we have a few tricks that will hopefully get your TV running a little faster. Much of this is good practice, even if your TV is spritely and new.

Without further ado, let's get into it.

Get rid of unused apps and clear your cache

This is a great start to get your TV running a little faster, and it takes a matter of minutes.

A cache is a temporary storage area where data is kept for quick access, and it stores information from apps, websites and system processes to help them load faster when you turn the TV on. But if it gets too full, this can delay your system's processing and lead to buffering and lag.

To clear your cache, go to the settings menu and navigate to Apps or Storage. From there, you will be able to select individual apps and clear the cache on each.

You can also remove any unused apps on your TV to help speed up your experience. Still have that streaming platform downloaded that you haven't used in months? Get it out the way to get the most from your system.

Keep the firmware up to date

Getting a notification for an update may seem like a pesky pop-up, but outdated firmware can really slow down your TV. If your model still receives updates, it's best to install them as they fix bugs, add new features and improve overall performance.

You will be able to run these installations by going into the settings menu, and finding the option that says System Updates or something similar. The wording varies by brand, but it should be relatively straightforward to locate.

Give it a few minutes to do its magic, and your TV will hopefully run a little smoother.

If your TV is more than a few years old, it may no longer receive the latest updates. That's where the next option might be the best option.

Add a streaming stick

It costs a bit of extra cash, but adding a streaming stick or box to your set-up is the fastest way to give your old smart TV a facelift. You can simply plug your streaming device into the TV's HDMI port, and it will take over all the streaming functions.

This then gives you access to a range of streaming services that your old TV's platform may no longer offer. That includes Netflix, Disney+ Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video.

There is a wide selection of models to choose from, and we have found the cream of the crop in our best streaming devices guide. Our top recommendation comes with the Award-winning Apple TV 4K, which we rated highly for its excellent picture and expressive sound. You can currently pick it up for about £149 / $149 / AU$219.

If you are looking for a budget option, then our top pick is the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd gen). This five-star streaming stick is available for £70 / $60 / AU$120. The even cheaper Amazon Fire TV Stick HD is also on the cards, costing £35 / $35 (around AU$67). We have not reviewed this model yet but, if it's performance is anything like its more expensive sibling, then it should be a great upgrade.

Connect via Ethernet

Another reason your TV might be running slow is an issue with your wi-fi. If your TV is on the older side, then it may be running outdated wi-fi hardware that cannot reach the highest router speeds. That often leads to slow loading time and buffering which quickly becomes tedious.

Connecting an Ethernet cable from your router to your TV can speed this up, though. While using wi-fi is the more convenient option thanks to its wireless nature, using Ethernet is more reliable because of its direct connectivity.

You might well have a suitable Ethernet cable knocking around in your house already, but they are readily available to buy if you need to add one to your collection.

Re-organise your home screen

If none of that has helped, you can also maximise the efficiency of your home screen by making your most-used apps easier to access. Instead of scrolling through reams of apps and having to put up with buffering, you can pin your favourite ones to the home screen so you can get to them in a few clicks.

The way to do this differs by brand. Some require you to long-hold the app and pin it from there, or you may have to venture into the settings menu.

It can also help make your TV's home screen feel more personalised, creating a more modern overall look.

MORE:

These are the best streaming devices

Here are the best TVs

And check out the best budget soundbars on the market

If you want to watch movies on the big screen without forking out thousands for a TV bigger than 85 inches, a coffee table projector can be a tempting proposition. That’s because they can offer a large screen size paired with an easy-to-carry design that gives added flexibility.

The Soundcore Nebula P1 is the latest model to enter the villa, offering a portable build and boasting promising tech specifications. And there’s an intriguing sound addition that is a unique proposition when it comes to the coffee table projector market.

This audio offering makes this projector stand out from the crowd, but as we’ll see, it is ultimately let down in another key category.

Price

The Soundcore Nebula P1 launched at £700 / $800 / AU$1300, placing it in the mid-range lifestyle projector category. We have already seen some limited deals, which have dropped the price to around £595 in the UK, for example.

At a similar level is the Xgimi MoGo 4, a portable projector that is currently available for about £499 in the UK, although it launched at the slightly higher price of £509 / $499 / AU$1399. We gave this model a solid four stars for its punchy picture and compact design, and it features in our best portable projectors guide.

It’s worth noting that the MoGo 4 is not aiming at the same market as the Nebula model. The Xgimi projector has a built-in battery, unlike the Nebula P1, but it lacks separate speakers.

Design

Those separate speakers really make the P1 stand out from the crowd. The two wireless speakers sit on top of the projector and are secured by a magnetic connection and a cute lock switch on the projector’s body. You can charge the pair from here, or separately via their USB-C ports.

The speakers are lightweight and easy to carry, sporting a sleek grey finish with two rounded corners.

You can place them around your space “wherever you see fit”, as the brand claims when you are prompted to set them up. In our test room, we place the speakers on either side of the projector to achieve a degree of spaciousness and stereo separation, facing towards our seating.

There is no Dolby Atmos support, but they offer Dolby Audio to create 2.0-channel sound.

The projector itself feels practical and sturdy. There is a flexible cloth handle that makes it easy to carry around, especially as the complete package weighs only 2.4kg. You can tilt the body up to 130 degrees towards your screen or wall, and the body acts as a stand, which makes set-up simple.

The included remote control has a sleek, premium feel. You can use this to control power and volume, access auto-focus and streaming platform shortcuts.

Features

On the back of the projector, you will find an HDMI eARC port that supports up to 4K at 60Hz. You will also find a USB-A port and a 3.5mm aux jack if you want to connect your headphones.

As we mentioned, the P1 doesn’t have a built-in battery, but you can run it from a portable power supply via the USB-C port: Anker, Soundcore's parent company, sells specific chargers in a bundle on its website, or you can use a non-official one as long as it has a minimum power output of 100W.

Anker claims that its official 737 Power Bank delivers “one hour of continuous use” with the speakers attached to the body and the brightness set to full. That is, of course, not long enough for a full movie or even a football match, so we feel it’s best to think of the P1 as a compact mains-based projector, rather than a true portable one.

The P1 can output an image up to 180 inches in size, and it has a 1080p resolution and HDR10 support.

Nebula claims the projector can produce up to 650 ANSI lumens of brightness, which is brighter than its Xgimi MoGo 4 rival, which comes in at 450 ANSI lumens.

It also uses the Google TV operating system, giving you access to streaming apps such as Apple TV, Prime Video, Channel 4 and Netflix. There is no BBC iPlayer, although you can cast it from your phone as a workaround.

There is a range of smart features to help you get your picture looking straight. That includes auto-focus and auto-keystone, but you can also do this manually if you need to fine-tune. Once you have set up your projector, you can save settings into presets if you repeatedly use it in the same location.

You can also employ Nebula’s own “Vision Fit” tech to set up your screen. This is used via the Nebula Connect app, from which you take a photo of the surface where you’d like to project the image, and the projector will use it to optimise the results. It’s a neat idea in theory, but it is rather time-consuming, and we find ourselves sticking with the more traditional settings.

The app gives you much of the same functionality as the remote control, but you can also access more detailed picture and sound settings.

Picture

When we first switch on the P1 in the default 'Nebulamaster' picture setting in our dark test room, we are greeted with an overly vivid and unpleasant image. We kick off with Sinners on Blu-ray as Sammie drives up to his father’s church, where his movements look exaggerated and too smooth, so he bobs around in the car like a giddy child on a seesaw.

Once we change to Movie mode and turn the MEMC (Motion Estimation and Motion Compensation) setting to low, motion looks much more natural and lacks distracting judder. Sammie enters the frame with a little bit of a bounce, but feels more grounded than in the default setting.

We also knock the sharpness and saturation settings down a few notches. With these adjustments, the picture is much more balanced. In Sinners, as the sun peers out from the clouds at the start of an ominous morning, the projector delivers a relatively natural-looking image, but the colours lack the degree of pop required to deliver a genuinely punchy picture. Instead, you get a slightly flat overall look. The shining sun, for instance, lacks the vibrancy to break through the rest of the picture.

Switching to No Time To Die on Blu-ray, as Daniel Craig’s Bond has a near miss with an explosive device, his skin tone also lacks much natural warmth, instead looking a little pale and unnatural. His features look overetched as well (even with the projector’s Sharpness setting dropped down to zero), exaggerating wrinkles and bumps to a clearly unrealistic degree.

This is a wider issue with the P1 – especially when it comes to wide scenery shots. In the sweeping footage of the Italian town, the projector exaggerates the outlines of the trees and bricks in the buildings. This makes the image look too busy, and in fact means the whole picture verges on grainy instead of clean and clear.

Shadow detail is not the strongest, either. In Civil War, as the journalist protagonists recover from a traumatic event, young photographer Jessie sits with her legs hanging out of a parked van. It is hard to distinguish the interior from her dark hair in the shadows. There is a differentiation between the inside and the outside of the van, but it does not go as dark as rivals.

Despite its claimed 650 lumens, the P1's brightness is underwhelming and lacks the punch we expect. When we test the projector in a lit room, the P1 is still usable, but it isn't impressive, and it loses some shadow detail and colour.

We compare the Nebula model with the Xgimi MoGo 4. Both projectors accept movies in HDR, and the P1 is certainly the better performer in this format. It looks less overcooked compared with the MoGo 4, and keeps the image more balanced overall.

When we switch back to SDR content, the MoGo 4 delivers an image with both deeper blacks and punchier highlights, resulting in a more three-dimensional overall picture that immediately grabs the eye.

While the Nebula P1 offers a reasonably balanced picture and performs acceptably in brighter environments, its lack of punch and brightness holds it back, and in picture terms it can't match the cheaper MoGo 4.

Sound

The P1’s speakers, each powered by 10W of amplification, really are the stars of the show. They deliver clean, engaging sound that adds much-needed energy to movies and TV shows.

In Civil War, as an army chopper takes off, each swing of the rotor blade is portrayed with an impactful punch that elevates the tension of the scene. The wide soundfield is impressive, too; the chopper moves from one side of the screen to another, giving a real sense of breadth.

Dialogue is also clear and emotive. Vocals take centre stage, as they should, but not at the expense of the rest of the mix.

The performance of the speakers will depend at least somewhat on where you can put them in your space, especially if you are outside, and they’re certainly not on a par with the best dedicated Bluetooth speakers, but compared with the speaker systems of most portable and lifestyle projectors, they’re a massive improvement.

Verdict

With the best sound we have heard from a coffee table projector at this price, the Soundcore Nebula P1 certainly offers something new. And its clever, compact design makes for a practical and flexible proposition.

It's a shame the picture performance isn't at the same level, but if you don't mind sacrificing some quality there in the name of much better sound, this is a compelling choice.

SCORES

• Picture 3
• Sound 5
• Design 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Xgimi MoGo 4

Also consider the Hisense M2 Pro

Read our Anker Nebula Mars 3 Air review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: price

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

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

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

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

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

WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: features

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WINNER: Hisense UR9

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: picture quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: sound quality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Hisense UR9 vs Sony Bravia 8 II: verdict

The Hisense UR9 is a hugely important TV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OVERALL WINNER: Sony Bravia 8 II

Here at What Hi-Fi?, we're no size snob. We review TVs of all shapes and sizes, operating purely on a performance-per-pound metric.

Usually, we're big proponents of getting the best-quality TV you can, and not getting swayed by big-screen bargains based on the size alone.

However, for an event such as the World Cup there are arguments to use your hard-earned budget to opt for size over quality – especially if you're hosting a watch party.

So where's the line? Can sheer size and spectacle make up for any shortcomings? Is it really worth the upgrade to OLED if it's on a small screen? Let's break down the pros and cons.

Size: the arguments for

Gigantic affordable TVs have been around for quite a while now, but it's only recently that they've actually started to become rather good. Case in point is the 70-inch Sharp GK4245K, which can be picked up for £420 and received four stars, or the monster 98-inch TCL 98C7K, which is now under £2000 and so impressive it won a What Hi-Fi? Award.

The benefits of a big screen are pretty self-explanatory. It brings the big-screen cinematic experience home and can help make your viewing experience more immersive. If you're lucky enough to own a very large living room and your sofa is far away, then an oversized TV becomes almost necessary – see our guide to TV sizes and calculating the right viewing distance.

A larger TV is, of course, preferable if you're having a World Cup viewing party, so everyone can see – as well as for bragging rights, of course.

Size: the arguments against

Giant TVs will, of course, require a giant amount of space, which can make installation and placement difficult, and may very well lead to the TV dominating your living room. If you can't sit far enough away, then eye strain is a very worrying possibility, and you'll also have to contend with higher energy bills.

Unless you're sufficently well off to afford the steep price increase that comes with mega-sized OLEDs, you'll likely have an LCD or Mini LED display taking over your living room instead. Now these panels are capable of producing some amazing pictures, but they do have their drawbacks compared to OLED, such as halo and blooming effects, slower response times and sub-par black levels.

All of these will be magnified on a bigger screen, especially with lower-resolution content.

Quality: the arguments for

If you want the best quality TV possible, you're still going to want an OLED (though there is a looming threat from RGB Mini LED). Our current benchmark TV, for example, is the Sony Bravia 8 II, a Quantum Dot OLED that delivers sizzling brightness, vibrant colours and terrific shadow detail.

Thanks to its pixel-level light control, OLED has several advantages that other panel technologies can't quite recreate – namely, perfect blacks, excellent contrast and thinner designs.

The faster response time will make them a great choice for sports in particular, as motion blur will be reduced, while the wider viewing angles will make them a great choice for viewing parties, especially if guests will be watching from the side.

Quality: the arguments against

The main downside of OLED is that it's currently more expensive than most other display types. So yes, those stretching to OLED might have to settle for a smaller screen size, when they could buy a much bigger LCD or Mini LED with the same budget.

OLEDs also struggle to go as bright as LCDs – though sets such as the LG G5 are bringing the technology to new levels of brightness – so a good Mini LED might be a better choice for a sunlit room. OLEDs also typically have a shorter lifespan than LCD alternatives as the organic materials degrade over time.

Size vs quality: verdict

So, should you go for size or picture quality for your World Cup TV?

The smart money says go for quality – if you can afford an OLED, then it offers a myriad of advantages that other panel technologies just cannot replicate, and will benefit your movies, games and other activities long after the World Cup has finished. OLED prices have also come down quite a bit over the last decade, with some rather reasonable prices for sizes up to 65 inches.

That being said, the best TV will depend on your budget, room size, desired features and several other factors. If you want to go for spectacle and go as big as your budget allows, that's absolutely fine – just make sure that any giant TV is good value, and not just cheap.

MORE:

Here are the ultimate World Cup tech deals

How to watch 2026 FIFA World Cup online from anywhere: free live streams for every match

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

Apple held its annual WWDC press conference last night, and while iOS, MacOS and iPadOS stole the limelight, tvOS was barely acknowledged.

Despite that, Apple has officially confirmed that tvOS 27 will launch this year, and it looks to be a bigger upgrade than we were expecting.

The focus this year is speed, which means your ageing Apple TV box – need we remind you that Apple last refreshed its Award-winning streaming box in 2022 – is about to get more responsive.

Apple claims that app opening speeds are expected to improve by 30 per cent, and animations are set to become smoother too. Control Centre is also becoming more responsive and connecting to other Apple devices, be that streaming content to your TV from an iPhone or outputting TV audio to HomePods, will also be faster.

Two key audio apps are getting upgrades as part of tvOS 27 as well. Apple Music receives a major boost in the form of Hi-Res Lossless (24-bit/192kHz) support and faster playback, and the Podcasts app is getting a full redesign for both audio and video podcasts playback.

General updates come in the form of better Apple HomeKit integration (ideal for smart home users), reduced app file sizes, support for smart downloads, and the ability to view Apple Care coverage in the settings app.

The upcoming tvOS 27 update is expected to launch later this year – Apple tends to launch its updates in September to coincide with the annual hardware launch event – and it will be supported on the second and third generation Apple TV 4K boxes.

This marks the end of support for the Apple TV HD from 2015, as well as the first-generation Apple TV 4K from 2017.

While it's encouraging to see Apple release an update that improves general performance on the current-generation Apple TV 4K, we hope that this new version of tvOS is laying the groundwork for the much-rumoured fourth-generation Apple TV 4K. The update is expected to launch later this year with the new Siri AI features coming with iOS 27.

MORE:

Check out our full Apple TV 4K (2022) review

Here are our picks for the best streaming devices

As well as the best streaming services for TV shows and movies

The World Cup kicks off in less than a week, and we bet that plenty of people are making some last-minute upgrades to their set-ups, including splurging on a new TV.

TV shipments are up six per cent year on year, according to global technology market research firm Omdia, and while we hope that everyone buying a new set is consulting our carefully curated list of the best TVs, the likelihood is that there is a fair amount of impulse purchasing happening.

We don’t judge here, and we understand that many people will walk into a shop and pick the biggest and cheapest 4K TV that you can get, but we urge you to take stock before swiping your card and calling it a day.

The World Cup is running for just over a month, but your TV will last a whole lot longer; maybe not for life, but multiple TV manufacturers tell us that the average person replaces their TV every seven years.

With that in mind, I have devised a simple three-question system that anyone primed to make an impulse purchase this weekend should ask themselves.

Question 1: is this TV good value?

A cheap 4K TV is one thing; a good value 4K TV is something else completely.

Yes, we are seeing the likes of Hisense and TCL line shelves with super-affordable 4K sets, and some of them are truly great TVs – take the Award-winning, sub-£400 TCL C6KS, for example. But some of these super cheap sets can cut corners.

Panel technology becomes more basic at this level. That’s fine for those who want to catch the game, but for cinephiles who appreciate films as much as they do footy, you might want to consider looking up towards the mid-range Mini LED models at least.

Picture processing also tends to be more pared back at this level, too. Motion and upscaling are two processing factors to be mindful of – the former to accommodate fast-moving players springing across the pitch, while the latter can deal with sharpening up standard-resolution feeds from terrestrial broadcast channels.

Gaming specification also takes a hit here, with very few TVs at this level offering HDMI 2.1 support. While they are not entirely barebones, you can expect to miss out on high-framerate console gaming at 4K, and some budget 4K sets sport fewer HDMI sockets overall.

While opting for an affordable 4K set is by no means a bad decision, you also have to remember that you will be using this TV for plenty of years to come, so future-proofing is always advisable.

If you’re looking for TVs that tread the line of cheap and good value, you should check out our list of the best cheap TVs for some inspiration.

Question 2: will it stand the test of time?

Nearly every TV we see these days features a smart platform. Google TV is used by TCL and Philips, Tizen OS is featured on Samsung, webOS is on LG TVs, and Hisense uses its Vidaa platform on its sets.

Not all operating systems are made equal, and updates and app support can vary greatly between brands. While we are seeing decent coverage of the major streaming apps such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, we have seen some worrying gaps.

BBC iPlayer, for example, is missing on Philips’s current suite of TVs, which is quite an issue when we take into account that a considerable number of World Cup matches will be streamed free on BBC iPlayer.

Longevity is also, once again, something to be mindful of. Notably, Samsung and LG have both committed to supporting their respective TVs with seven years of software support.

If you want a TV that lasts, and you rely on built-in streaming apps, then we recommend going for a TV from one of these brands, or instead investing in an external streaming device.

Question 3: am I leaving room in my budget for a soundbar?

Our advice to anyone buying a new TV is to budget for a soundbar to pair with it.

TV sound, unless you’re looking at the upper-echelon of OLED TVs that feature speaker systems tuned by notable hi-fi brands, is almost always a let down.

And if you’re preparing to listen to commentators for hours on end, the last thing you want is a built-in sound system that is thin, tinny, and fatiguing on the ears.

A good soundbar doesn’t have to cost the Earth. Take the Sony HT-SF150, which delivers a solid cinematic sound experience for less than £100; or the Award-winning Hisense AX5125H, which includes Dolby Atmos support, surround speakers and a subwoofer for under £200.

While a good sound system will undoubtedly give you a more authentic experience during the matches (think of audiences chanting and cheering), you will also find a range of benefits, including a better audio experience when it comes to music and movies.

MORE:

Here are the ultimate World Cup tech deals

Check out our picks for the best budget soundbars

As well as the best OLED TVs

It’s unmistakably another Leica: the Cine Compact 1 is marked out by its solid aluminium Bauhaus-style housing, while Leica starts bringing the glass right from the clear frontage and outer lens.

So this is projector number three from the Leica Smart Projection division, again leveraging the camera-maker’s special abilities with glass and lens manufacture. And the new model brings a new affordable entry point to the luxury line.

This is a smaller projector than the award-winning Leica Cine Play 1, and it is also far more affordable than either previous model at AU$2990. The Cine Play 1 is AU$5990, while the ultra-short-throw Cine 1 Cinema TV has recently been price-reduced in Australia from AU$13,990 to $7990.

This new sub-AU$3000 smart mini projector much resembles the larger Cine Play 1, but it is significantly smaller at 209 x 226 x 193mm, while promising output of up to 1700 lumens (the specs note this is in ‘Ultra’ mode, so standard use may be slightly lower) and to support projection sizes of up to 220 inches.

Inside the projector, Leica’s optical system includes a Leica Summicron zoom lens with aspherical elements, optimising the output of a 0.47-inch pico DMD and triple RGB lasers to promise pixel-shifted 4K images which further benefit from the secret sauce of the company’s proprietary LIO (Leica Image Optimization). Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are onboard to display such High Dynamic Range material to its maximum ability.

It has smart set-up features: zoom, autofocus, keystone correction and intelligent screen framing are set up automatically wherever you may choose to throw the image from the projector’s integrated “360° rotation system”, which Leica notes makes the projector a particularly straightforward solution for everyday use.

It has built-in sources as well as connections for external devices; crucially there is the VIDAA operating system onboard to access streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime, while we believe VIDAA now has all Australian catch-up services and Foxtel apps also running (we will check this when we review this projector in upcoming weeks).

The Leica Cine Compact 1 also has one HDMI input, which also has eARC so could be used to take streaming sound to an external audio system, should you wish to expand on the built-in stereo speaker system; there is no optical or analogue audio output available. There’s a USB-A slot, presumably for file replay, along with screen sharing via Wi-Fi, and audio streaming available via Bluetooth or Apple AirPlay.

One inclusion which may attract a particular sub-set of movie fans: there’s a 3D Mode here, compatible with DLP Link active shutter 3D glasses.

And while a screen is always best for best performance, Leica has optimised the Cine Compact 1 for real-world scenarios including projection on walls or ceilings, even in gardens or on terraces.

The mini projector comes with an eco-friendly transport case; there’s an optional Leica stand available, while the integrated tripod thread enables the projector to be mounted on the ceiling.

Leica is, of course, known to consumers primarily as a high-end camera maker, but in fact has multiple arms: it began in the German town of Wetzlar in the 1860s when a talented engineer called Ernst Leitz made initially telescopes and subsequently microscopes, before his son, Ernst Leitz II, famously committed the company to building Oskar Barnack’s revolutionary compact camera, with its idea of using 35mm cinema film, soon to become the standard for still photography.

So right from the offset, it was image quality which drove the company, and older readers may recall how Leitz/Leica home slide projectors were once the gold standard for home projection of still images (Leica’s first projector was released in 1926). So the company’s now three-strong smart projector range is extending their imaging expertise back into home projection after a few decades absence.

The Leica Cine Compact 1 will be available for demonstration in Leica Stores Sydney, Melbourne and Chadstone, and in authorised Leica Cine dealers.

• See all our Australian reviews from Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi magazines

The amplifier is the beating heart of your hi-fi. But, while the turntable (or streamer, or CD player) will take the general plaudits, along with the loudspeakers, as far as ‘front of house’ appeal goes, the amplifier tends to take a back seat, while doing more than its fair share of the actual work.

Without a top amplifier, though, there is absolutely no point in spending big money on anything else in your system. And what we have in our £1000-£1300 amplifiers Group Test this month are four truly top amplifiers. And one serious winner. After which, we suggest a stunning hi-fi system using that winner as the starting point.

Also in this issue we test some standalone soundbars and coffee-table projectors that will do any home cinema proud.

Stereo amplifiers from £1000-£1300

Which amplifier you choose will greatly impact your overall system performance, so you want a best-in-class performer that also offers the physical connections your sources need.

And that, of course, is where we come in. We’ve been testing stereo amplifiers since 1976, and our in-house reviews team have experience with integrated amplifiers of all types and budgets.

Every amp we test is compared to the current class leader at its price point, in our dedicated listening rooms. This thoroughness and wide contextual knowledge allow us to judge the relative talents of each amplifier we test.

Here though, we’re pitting four of our current favourite integrated amplifiers against each other in a Group Test to help identify the amplifier we’d most recommend in this price range of £1000-£1300.

This is a competitive market, with excellent models from hi-fi hard-hitters to choose from: step up Rega, Cambridge Audio, Arcam and Quad.

Rest assured, all these integrateds will work well in a range of systems, and much of your decision will come down to personal preference. However, there can only be one winner here. Find out more in this month's What Hi-Fi?

Premium soundbars

Even the best-sounding TVs have plenty of room for improvement by home-cinema standards.

We don’t all, though, have the space, budget or patience for a full system comprising an AV receiver, a surround (or Atmos) speaker package and the cables required to wire everything up.

In truth, even the super-popular soundbar systems that typically combine a bar, a wireless subwoofer and two wireless surrounds are simply “too many boxes” for many people.

What’s the solution, then, for those who have forked out for a gorgeous, premium TV and want equally gorgeous sound without all of the boxes and/or cabling? The premium solo soundbar, that’s what. In fact, that’s exactly the problem the soundbar was originally designed to solve.

These days, a premium soundbar is a very sophisticated bit of kit that typically combines svelte styling with effective Dolby Atmos processing, plus music streaming, simple operation and the option to add additional speakers further down the line. Here, we’re pitching four such soundbars against one another, from LG, JBL, Sonos and Sony.

Which of these premium soundbars deserves the spot beneath your lovely TV? The Dolby Atmos battle commences, only in this month's mag!

Coffee table projectors

Today’s best ‘lifestyle’ projectors are designed to deliver huge-screen entertainment without requiring you to reorganise your entire home around them.

That makes them particularly appealing for big communal events. With the World Cup kicking off soon, there’s obvious appeal in bringing out a projector and plonking it on your coffee table for a giant match-day picture, before packing it away again afterwards.

The same applies to movie nights, gaming sessions, and TV binge-watch marathons: you get the scale and spectacle that only a projector can provide, but with far less of the inconvenience traditionally associated with it.

We have rounded up four coffee table projectors – with different prices, approaches and even different priorities – but all four prove that going big no longer means having to build a bat cave.

Find out more in July's What Hi-Fi?

First with reviews

As always, our First Tests section is where you'll find What Hi-Fi?'s considered verdicts on the very latest hi-fi and AV gear.

This month's reviews section leads with Cambridge Audio's very first pair of active speakers (yes, you'd think they'd have made a pair by now) – the Cambridge L/RS. Compact, desk-focused and available in some smart colours, they are certainly an enticing proposition. But will they achieve our coveted five stars? Find out in this month's What Hi-Fi?

Elsewhere we have reviews of the Hisense UR9 Mini LED TV, Sonos' latest portable speaker the Sonos Play, a new home cinema projector from Optoma, the UHZ78LV, and a new Sony speaker package, the Bravia Theatre Bar 7 + S.

But that's not all. Our expert reviews team also took their time with Samsung's HW-Q990H speaker package, the Merlin Tarantula speaker cable and the A7.2 floorstanding speakers from Spendor.

Find all these reviews in July's What Hi-Fi? – out now!

Temptations for your delectation

Our Temptations section of the magazine is where you'll find the highest of the high-end of hi-fi and AV products.

First up is a new pre/power amplifier from hi-fi kings, Naim, the NAC 552/NAP 500 DR. Together, this a stunning bit of kit, and we had no hesitation in awarding the pairing five stars, noting its "well-engineered, no-compromise design from decades ago that can still compete at the highest level".

Then we have a pair of mighty standmount speakers from JBL, the Summit Ama. With a lofty price to suit their mountain-themed moniker, they "generate a sense of solidity and authority that is rare among high-end standmounters in our experience", to quote our review.

Find out more in this month's What Hi-Fi?

Finally, don't forget to check out our Buyer’s Guide, featuring a definitive and freshly updated list of all the best home entertainment kit you can buy – including winners of 2025's What Hi-Fi? Awards. If you’re looking to purchase anything from a pair of the best wireless headphones to a home cinema speaker system, this section will tell you where to spend your money wisely.

Whatever you do, don't miss the July 2026 issue of What Hi-Fi?. Grab a copy today, or simply download it onto your tablet or smartphone. Enjoy!

You can subscribe or buy the latest issue here, or buy the digital edition on iPhone, iPad, Android devices or Kindle edition

Chinese brand Haier is launching its latest range of affordable TVs, all boasting 4K resolution.

The new release is being led by the flagship S90 series, which the brand claims will combine “dynamic visuals, immersive audio with ultra-reactive gaming experience”.

This “immersive audio” comes in the form of Dolby Atmos support, delivering “three-dimensional and cinematic audio quality”. The two 10W speakers are employing technology from British hi-fi brand KEF as well.

The S90 uses QLED panel technology with AI picture optimisation, with Haier saying this results in “rich tones and smooth colour transitions”.

In terms of physical connectivity, you will find four HDMI ports, with one supporting eARC. We assume that means the TV can handle 4K/120Hz signals, given its 240Hz DLG feature, but when we asked a Haier representative for confirmation, they couldn’t provide a clear answer.

Haier is also launching the entry-level K85 and the mid-range S80 models. These step-down TVs do not have Dolby Atmos, but they do offer Dolby Audio for “clearer voices and more balanced sound”. The S80 features a QLED panel, like the S90, while the K85 uses a 4K LED backlight.

All of the TVs come with Freely built-in. That gives you access to streaming services such as BBC iPlayer, Channel 4 and ITVX in the UK. Fire TV acts as the smart platform for all the models, offering access to Disney+, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Each range offers slightly different sizing options. The S90 goes from 55- to 85-inches, with the latter being the biggest screen size across all the models. The K85 is available in 43- to 65-inch sizes, and the S80 from 43- to 75-inches.

If you want to get your hands on the 65-inch S90, it will set you back £580. That is certainly aiming at the affordable end of the market, so Haier has TCL firmly in its sights. The S90 is up against the likes of the TCL Q6C, which launched at £649 for the 65-inch model. When we had the TCL set in our test room earlier this year, we praised its excellent picture quality and gaming performance which meant we awarded it a five-star rating.

We are yet to see how the flagship Haier model compares, but its affordable price tag and comprehensive smart platform could spell trouble for the current market leaders.

MORE:

Check out our TCL Q6C review

These are the best budget TVs

And here are the best budget soundbars

The FIFA World Cup is fast approaching on the 11 June, and that means the football fans among you are likely looking for the best way to experience one of the biggest sports events of the year.

If you are hunting for a way to watch the first kick on the big screen, then you may have considered a portable or coffee table projector. Both categories have the advantage of being compact enough to carry from room to room easily, all while boasting a larger screen size than the average TV. The only difference is that a portable projector features a built-in battery, whereas a coffee table model does not.

But which projector is the best choice for you? We have hand-picked three projector models that cater to slightly different needs, so there is something for everyone.

Whether it's portability or picture quality at the forefront of your mind, we have got you covered.

Best cheap

It’s fair to say that when we first had the Wanbo Vali 1 in our test room, we were not expecting greatness from the affordable model. That’s because it launched at a jaw-droppingly low price (£270 / $279 / AU$499) and is available even cheaper right now in the UK at Amazon for £229.

Despite its low cost, the Wanbo model exceeded our expectations. It’s not the perfect projector, but it delivers a natural and enjoyable picture.

We say in our review that, when watching Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes: “During the opening minutes, as our ape protagonists swing through the green undergrowth and out into the open trees, the projector portrays a surprisingly balanced image that neither jumps out as overly vibrant nor dull.”

The built-in speakers are not quite as impressive, but they still deliver clear dialogue. For the World Cup commentary and crowd atmosphere, we recommend using a separate speaker for the best experience.

You can tilt the body up to 200 degrees, so the image can be projected onto a screen, ceiling or the wall (we strongly recommend investing in a screen to get the best picture quality from the hardware). It offers a maximum screen size of 180 inches as well.

There is no built-in battery on board, so you will need to have access to the mains. In terms of streaming, it comes with Android TV built-in (more on that later). The projector itself is easy to carry around, weighing about 2.8kg. It also sports a white, rounded body and large single lens which makes for a practical-looking design.

If you are looking for a projector to deliver a big-screen experience on a budget, the Wanbo Vali 1 is a great option.

Best portable

For those looking to take their viewing experience on the go, the Xgimi MoGo 4 offers a portable design that is also worth your time.

It comes with a built-in battery and claims to offer up to 2.5 hours of battery life. That figure is only applicable for Eco mode, which reduces the picture’s brightness, so it is not ideal for outdoor viewing.

That means it offers a fair bit of wire-free usability without being connected to the mains. You can project an image up to 120 inches without warping the picture, and auto-keystone and auto-focus features make for easy set-up.

In terms of design, the Xgimi projector is incredibly compact. It measures 21 x 10 x 10cm (hwd), which is about the same as a large water bottle. That makes it easy to pop into a bag if you are on the move. Google TV comes built-in, and getting the projector up and running takes a matter of minutes.

There is a small remote that hangs off the body of the projector so that you don’t have to keep track of multiple components. This remote keeps things extremely minimal with just controls for volume, a D-pad to navigate the menu and a back button. You can also use the more comprehensive separate remote which offers more navigation features.

While it is more expensive than the Wanbo model, the MoGo 4 is still a budget-friendly projector, coming in at £509 / $499.

But how does it actually perform? When we had it in our test room, the Xgimi MoGo 4 offered a sharp and punchy picture. While its vibrancy can be a little heavy-handed at times and motion can appear smeary, the overall image is easy to watch and keeps a fairly natural balance.

Best entry-level 4K

If your budget can stretch a bit wider, then there’s an Award-winning 4K projector model that is ideal for your sports needs. Enter the Hisense M2 Pro, which scored a five-star review when we had it in our test room.

It is currently available for £899 / $1299, which is a fair bit more expensive than the above models. But that is justified by its 4K resolution (via pixel shifting) and more premium-feeling design.

The M2 Pro sports a silver box-shaped body with a spherical glass lens at its front and speakers at its sides. A hinged stand is bolted to its bottom, which makes it easy to adjust the angle of the image. There's also a common thread adapter in the base, which opens up the possibility of mounting the projector to the ceiling.

As with the Xgimi model, you will find Google TV built in to give you access to a selection of streaming services. You can push the screen up to 200 inches, and auto-keystone and auto-focus are available.

In terms of its picture performance, we call it "one of the best performers we’ve seen in its class" in our review. That is thanks to its sharp image, warm skin tones and well-handled dark detail.

Its 2.0 in-built speaker system offers enough clarity and separation to keep voices and background noise separate enough for comfortable viewing, but loses composure with more intense, busy audio.

Despite this, the Hisense is a brilliant 4K projector that takes both movies and sports matches to the next level.

The streaming conundrum

While all of the projectors on this list (and the majority of those in the portable or coffee table market) come with a smart platform built-in, there are some extra considerations that must be made when it comes to watching the World Cup.

In the UK, all of the matches will be split between BBC iPlayer and ITVX. If you are looking for 4K coverage, the BBC says it will be selected matches in UHD but we don't know exactly how many that will entail.

If you are based in the US, you can watch platforms such as Fox Sports and YouTube TV.

Each streaming platform has slightly different offerings when it comes to native app support. Google TV, for instance, tends not to include BBC iPlayer, but ITVX is usually available. This differs with individual models, but it has been our experience with the models on this list.

Luckily, there are ways to get around this, such as casting from your phone or laptop. This will let you watch the content on the big screen, but it comes with its own issues, such as high latency. That means you could hear the screams or groans of your neighbours before you see the ball hit the back of the net.

Another option is to use a streaming stick with support for the missing apps. Our best budget recommendation currently goes to the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd Generation), which offers a wide range of streaming support, including ITVX and BBC iPlayer. You can currently snag the streamer for £70 at Argos in the UK.

There is the even cheaper Amazon Fire Stick HD which retails at £40 at Amazon, but we have yet to review this. If its performance is anything like its more premium sibling, however, then it has the potential to be a worthy choice.

MORE:

These are the best projectors on the market

Check out the best streaming devices

Here is our review of the Hisense M2 Pro

It’s Awards time here at Sound+Image! Our Awards have been presented every year since 1989, so this is our 38th collection of winners, representing the stand-out products which have especially thrilled us with their performance over the last year of equipment reviews and tests for all our titles and reviewers across Sound+Image, Australian Hi-Fi, our special editions Audio Esoterica and Best Buys Audio & AV, both their print editions and up on our Australian corners of whathifi.com/au and techradar.

The crystal trophies were handed out at our Award cocktail evening during the recent Australian Hi-Fi Show in Sydney, and now it’s time to go fully public with the 40+ winners, listed in full here, and presented in our Special Awards Issue (available in print and digital) together with all their review-based details of strengths and any foibles to be aware of: sometimes a particular winner may not be for everyone – but it might be perfect for you!

It’s a celebration of the best and best-value consumer audio and AV products available in the Australian market today, and our top recommendations of the year. Let's get into the winners! (Use the side 'jump list' to get to the sections you want to see first!)

VINYL

TURNTABLE OF THE YEAR UNDER A$5000
Audio-Technica AT-LPA2
A$3199
Judges' comment: “An excellent moving-coil cartridge and an external power supply assist the fine performance here, while this turntable’s acrylic beauty is clear for all to see.”
See our full review here

TURNTABLE OF THE YEAR OVER A$5000
E.A.T. F-Dur / F-Note
A$18,999
Judges' comment: “F-Dur is German for F-Major. And this is a major turntable, especially with the full 12-inch F-Note tonearm, making for superb vinyl sound in every respect.”

PHONO STAGE OF THE YEAR
Musical Fidelity M8x Vinyl
A$7200
Judges' comment: “The M8x, dual mono and fully balanced from input to output, takes Musical Fidelity’s phono EQ to new levels of flexibility and performance.

DIGITAL

STREAMER OF THE YEAR
Silent Angel Bremen SL1 Plus
A$1690
Judges' comment: “A straightforward streamer with sound quality at its heart while bringing easy and neat app-based streaming from online sources and UPnP.”

STREAMER/DAC OF THE YEAR
Aurender A1000
A$6495
Judges' comment: "A preamplifier for digital inputs, a streamer for music services, a buffering server for your own music files, all at exceptional audiophile levels of music reproduction.”

RECORDER OF THE YEAR
Zoom H5studio
A$669
Judges' comment: "While we await the full resurgence of cassette tape, might we instead suggest this exceptional 4-track high-res recorder, with volume-free 32-bit floating recording. Zoom’s H5studio represents amazing value."

AMPLIFIERS

AMPLIFIER OF THE YEAR UNDER A$1500
Denon Home Amp
A$1199
Judges' comment: “In our recent group test of smart amps, the Denon Home showed clear value as a first ‘just-add-speakers’ streaming hi-fi, or the start of something bigger.”

AMPLIFIER OF THE YEAR A$1500-A$5000
Musical Fidelity B1xi
A$1600
Judges' comment: “Musical Fidelity’s most affordable hi-fi amp is reborn with modern looks, HDMI ARC and digital inputs, but still very much a classic stereo amp for great music.”

AMPLIFIER OF THE YEAR A$5000-A$10,000
Arcam SA35
A$6495
Judges' comment: “A fantastic streaming amplifier for a central hub role in a system, well-equipped and with 5th-generation Class G delivering a glorious, engaging sound.”

AMPLIFIER OF THE YEAR OVER A$10,000
Accuphase E-800S
A$26,000
Judges' comment: “A no-compromise amplifier, magnificent in every sense of the word: enormously powerful, totally silent when it needs to be, loaded with circuit features and options.”

PREAMPLIFIER OF THE YEAR
Marantz LINK 10n
A$19,000
Judges' comment: “This is pure Marantz, its Reference Standard preamp wildly versatile as a streamer plus DAC plus phono stage plus preamp plus TV audio hub... all in one chassis."

PREAMPLIFIER & POWER AMPLIFIER (COMBO) OF THE YEAR
Sugden Audio LA-4 / SPA-4
A$7495 / A$12,495
Judges' comment: “Both the LA-4 preamplifier and the SPA-4 power amplifier are gorgeously finished, clearly well-built in their UK base, and absolutely magnificent performers.”

SYSTEMS

STREAMING SYSTEM OF THE YEAR UNDER A$1500
Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin Pro
A$1299
Judges' comment: “The Zeppelin is back flying high, the Pro’s sound boosted by new in-house drivers and pricing which these days looks like a bargain against more extravagant competitors.”

STREAMING SYSTEM OF THE YEAR OVER A$1500
Denon CEOL N12
A$1599
Judges' comment: “It looks like a traditional system, but Denon’s N12 is loaded with the latest HEOS streaming, CD player, radio, HDMI & phono inputs. It does the lot, and does it well.”

HEADPHONES

OPEN CABLED HEADPHONES OF THE YEAR UNDER A$250
Audio-Technica ATH-R30x
A$219
Judges' comment: “Full down low, airy up top, balanced overall, and light as a feather to wear – the R30x’s performance amazed us given their price of just $219.”

OPEN CABLED HEADPHONES OF THE YEAR A$250-A$1000
Audio-Technica ATH-R70xa
A$499
Judges' comment: “Forget the buttons, apps and Bluetooth, here’s a range-topping open-back headphone where you just plug in the cable and enjoy the magic.”
Read our full review

OPEN CABLED HEADPHONES OF THE YEAR OVER A$1000
Meze Poet
A$3550
Judges' comment: “Thrilling planar magnetics from Romania, the Poets deliver endless hours of delight and revelation.”

TV HEADPHONES OF THE YEAR
Sennheiser RS 275 TV Headphones bundle
A$549
Judges' comment: “The first practical Auracast product we’ve reviewed, extending Sennheiser’s successful TV headphones into a new era.”

TRUE WIRELESS EARBUDS OF THE YEAR
Nothing Ear (3)
A$299
Judges' comment: “They look unlike any pair of in-ear headphones on the market, but they also deliver an audio performance summed up in one word: fun.”

WIRELESS HEADPHONES OF THE YEAR UNDER A$500
Beyerdynamic Aventho 100
A$349
Judges' comment: “Beyerdynamic shows that on-ear noise-cancelling is not only a valid concept but can deliver a powerful-sounding pair of headphones at a nice price.”

WIRELESS HEADPHONES OF THE YEAR A$500-A$1000
Apple AirPod Max 2
A$999
Judges' comment: “The Mk2 of the new Apple overears are not so much different to the originals – but are still brilliant...”

WIRELESS HEADPHONES OF THE YEAR OVER A$1000
Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2
A$1299
Judges' comment: “Physical perfection in design, and performance that makes these headphones sound like the company’s legendary speakers.”

AUDIOVISUAL

AV PROJECTOR OF THE YEAR
BenQ W2720i
A$3299
Judges' comment: “Smart Android streaming in a full-size home cinema projector with a super long-life light source and very reasonable pricing…”
See our full review

MINI PROJECTOR OF THE YEAR
Leica Cine Play 1
$5990
Judges' comment: “Leica’s expertise in glass and design raises the Cine Play 1 above other mini projectors. Its imaging results are excellent, even from an off-axis position…”
See our full review

ULTRA-SHORT-THROW PROJECTOR UNDER A$5000
Epson EH-LS670B
A$4199
Judges' comment: “Epson offers a full ‘TV replacement’ ultra-short-throw projection, built-in streaming and sound, all backed by its projection expertise.”

ULTRA-SHORT-THROW PROJECTOR OVER A$5000
Leica Cine 1 ‘Cinema TV’
A$7999 (A$9999 with 120-inch ALR screen)
Judges' comment: “A previous winner at double the price, this gorgeous ultra-short-throw deserves repeat recognition now it has become such a high-value proposition.”

AV SOURCE OF THE YEAR
Kaleidescape Strato E
A$5299
Judges' comment: “With Kaleidescape now fully Australianised, this more affordable 4K player is the perfect introduction to this mega movie delivery system.”

AV AUDIO

AV RECEIVER OF THE YEAR
Marantz AV 20 / AMP 20
A$10,000 each
Judges' comment: “The channel counts don’t match, but the processing and performance are top-notch across both units, resulting in thrilling immersion.”

SOUNDBAR OF THE YEAR
Samsung HW-QS700F
A$999
Judges comment: "A high-performance bar and subwoofer for those seeking a simple Atmos-compatible solution. It benefits from key design input from Samsung’s California lab.”
See our full review

SOUNDBAR SYSTEM OF THE YEAR UNDER A$2500
JBL Bar 1300Mk2
A$2299.99
Judges' comment: “With lift-off ends to work as rears or separate Bluetooth speakers, JBL’s soundbar system gets key updates while maintaining the magic.”
Read our full review

SOUNDBAR SYSTEM OF THE YEAR UNDER A$2500
Yamaha True X Surround 90A package
A$4499
Judges' comment: “Yamaha brings back the beam-forming for this high-performance package with Atmos bar, subwoofer and versatile wireless rears.”
Read our full review

INSTALLATION 'GOLD'

These Gold awards recognise exceptional skills in custom installation, as demonstrated through the home cinemas and smart homes we feature in Sound+Image magazine.

INSTALLATION 'GOLD' AWARD
Hifi Hunter
Judges' comment: “This room shows the merits of Hifi Hunter’s planning
processes and the careful consideration of acoustic
priorities within a fully-immersive family movie space.”
Hifi Hunter is based in Perth.

INSTALLATION 'GOLD' AWARD
The Digital Picture
Judges' comment: “One key takeaway here is that this room was already a movie space, so it demonstrates how transformative things can become once you call in the experts.”
The Digital Picture is based in Brisbane & the Gold Coast.

INSTALLATION 'GOLD' AWARD
Wavetrain Cinemas
Judges' comment: “A well-engineered room is a given with Wavetrain’s thorough design processes. This cinema also shows their style, integrating the technology within a beautiful space.”
Wavetrain Cinemas is based in Sydney.

LOUDSPEAKERS

SUBWOOFER OF THE YEAR
Paradigm Defiance S12
A$2999
Judges' comment: “A well-priced and powerful subwoofer for both cinema and hi-fi, making it all easy with the dedicated and foolproof Paradigm app.”

STANDMOUNT SPEAKERS OF THE YEAR UNDER A$5000
VAF Research DC-2S
A$1699
Judges' comment: “Huge bang for your buck from VAF’s latest DC standmounts; it’s great to see Australian-made speakers competing on a global level.”
Read our full review

STANDMOUNT SPEAKERS OF THE YEAR A$5000-A$10,000
MoFi Electronics SourcePoint 8
A$5499 (joint winner)
Judges' comment: “Andrew Jones returns to ‘point source’ design with the MoFi SourcePoint range, and these large standmounters just knock it out of the park.”

STANDMOUNT SPEAKERS OF THE YEAR A$5000-A$10,000
Pylon Audio Jade 10
A$5999 (joint winner)
Judges' comment: “From Poland, the Jades combine classic looks with compression drivers in Tractrix horns, to hit impressive scale and dynamics.”

STANDMOUNT SPEAKERS OF THE YEAR OVER A$10,000
SpectraFlora Celata 88
$35,000
Judges comment: “The entry-price isn’t cheap for these large standmounts from Inverleigh in Victoria, but their jaw-dropping precision made them fully award-worthy.”

FLOORSTANDING SPEAKERS OF THE YEAR UNDER A$10,000
Richter Dragon S7 Special Edition
A$7999
Judges' comment: “The redesign and return of Richter’s famous Dragon has been delighting all who hear them; this first award for the S7SE shows great promise for the ongoing series.”

FLOORSTANDING SPEAKERS OF THE YEAR OVER A$10,000
Microphase Audio Design Tower 3 Signature
A$15,400
Judges' comment: “Superb driver integration with fantastic build quality, forgiving placement, and genuine musical engagement: French design, made in Australia.”

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Leon Suter & Lee Gray, Kyron Audio

Our Lifetime Achievement Award this year goes to not one but two people, joined in audio greatness by their creation of Kyron Audio. There are some quite deep ties between the Australian Hi-Fi Show and Kyron: the company’s first public launch was at Next Media’s 2011 Melbourne Hi-Fi Show, where they made quite the sensation, awarded Best Sound of Show, their first of several.

But it began at least eight years before that, when they were both serving musicians in the Royal Australian Air Force Band.

“Kyron did not begin as a business plan…” as they explained to us; rather, as with so many classic hi-fi companies, it began with the desire to build better speakers. On an Air Force flight, Leon was reading a loudspeaker design book, as you do, and announced he’d like to build a set of speakers, but didn’t have the practical skills. Lee said he would help… and by the time they landed, other band members had asked for a pair as well.

They built five pairs, and came up with the name Kyron not because they were launching a company, just so they could buy parts in bulk cheaper. But it stuck, and as a mythological figure associated with music and science, it proved their first strategic decision, even if largely accidental.

They kept going through the early 2000s, building systems for friends, mostly at cost, and in fact losing money fairly consistently, which they claim is “how you know someone’s taking it seriously”.

And they were now taking it seriously, deciding to see how far they could push it, to build the best loudspeaker system they could design. It was their background as musicians that led them. Rather than following hi-fi trends, they worked from their experience of playing and hearing music in real spaces. Leon focused on the electronics and system design, Lee on industrial design and construction. And all of it done while still in full-time service with the Australian Air Force.

They pioneered active hi-fi loudspeakers using Hypex Class D, and using Australia’s DEQX FIR technology in dipole designs.They came up with their famous no-enclosure ‘nude baffle’. They were among the first in the world to use aluminium and steel for main construction in a commercial home audio product.

And finally, that original Gaia system, their Best Sound of Show win in 2011, and even a rave notice from a visiting Michael Fremer then of Stereophile, boosting their ability to secure US dealer presence. Kyron has indeed now gained international recognition, through their releases of multiple reference systems – the Gaia, Kronos, the Phoenix, the Pythos Network Music Player, the Mercury Subwoofer, the new baby Palleon Micro.

All of these have been designed and built in Australia, maintaining their focus on engineering-led design, and becoming a key and collaborative part of the Adelaide high-end audio cluster. They even found time to upgrade the audio system of the Australian Army’s Air Defence Simulator.

For all this, and all still to come (for they are still so very young), and for being such excellent blokes, we are delighted to present our Lifetime Achievement Awards to Mr Leon Suter, and Mr Lee Gray, of Kyron Audio.

If you're looking for versatile desktop speakers that sound great as well as offering useful connectivity in an ultra-compact form, our advice for many years has been Ruark Audio's MR1 range of dinky, powered speakers.

The Ruark MR1 Mk3 is our current reigning champ in this field, but nipping at its heels is the Cambridge Audio L/R S, the first active speakers from the brand, offering a similarly compact form for the same price as the Ruarks.

For those who can't accommodate a full hi-fi system in their small spaces, or want to upgrade from a budget Bluetooth speaker for their home audio, these small-but-talented desktop speakers are an ideal solution. We've recently tested the new Cambridge L/R S and compared them with the Award-winning Ruarks to balance their strengths and weaknesses – let's find out which is the best pair for you.

Cambridge L/R S vs Ruark MR1 Mk3: price

In the UK, it's a dead heat with the Cambridge L/R S and Ruark MR1 Mk3 both costing £399. There's a bit more variation if you're in the US or Australia, as the Cambridge speakers will cost you $549 / AU$949, while the Ruark pair is yours for $579 / AU$899.

The Ruarks are available in two finishes: the rich walnut veneer of our review sample, or a more modern charcoal lacquer, with no difference in cost.

Cambridge Audio offers more colourful options with six finishes in total: black, white, green, orange and blue, which all cost the same amount. But if you opt for the walnut veneer finish of our review sample, you'll have to cough up a little extra as they cost £449 / $599 / AU$1049 per pair.

**Winner: Ruark Audio MR1 Mk3**

Cambridge L/R S vs Ruark MR1 Mk3: Build & design

Both speakers are pleasingly compact, making them ideal for small spaces, such as placing on your desktop and on either side of your computer.

The Ruark MR1 Mk3 are smaller than the Cambridge L/R S – they're certainly shorter, with the L/R S barely 2cm deeper. They're the same width, though, which makes both of them very appealing for fitting into spaces where traditional hi-fi or bigger speakers simply won't get a look in.

We love the build quality of both speakers, which is of a high quality for this price. Which style you prefer is a matter of taste: the beautifully curved cabinet of the Ruark or the crisp, clean edges of the Cambridge? Do you prefer the woven fabric grille (which isn't removable) on the Ruark, or the stark, no-grille, minimal aesthetic of Cambridge?

We like the walnut veneer's texture and finer details on the Ruarks, and equally like the way the logo is printed on top of the Cambridge speaker. Both are smart-looking and offer a lifestyle-friendly aesthetic compared with traditional designs.

Apart from the looks, there are practical considerations when making your choice. There are no on-unit controls for input selection or volume on the Cambridge speakers at all, in keeping with its pared back design. A colour-changing LED underneath the primary speaker indicates the input chosen and status, but that's all the feedback you'll get when facing the speakers.

Ruark, conversely, has its trademark RotoDial controller on top of the primary speaker, which lets you select the input and change volume with ease. It's a more tactile interaction with your speaker, and especially handy if the speakers are within reach on your desk.

If your speakers are placed further away or are being used as TV speakers, then you'll be glad to hear both sets come with a slim remote control. It's particularly crucial for the Cambridge, so don't lose it.

These are two-way speakers, with the Cambridge L/R S featuring a 21mm aluminium tweeter and 7.6cm mid/bass driver, with a bass reflex slot situated at the back.

The Ruark MR1 Mk3 features a 20mm silk dome tweeter with a bigger 8.5cm mid/bass driver, with a downward-firing bass reflex port.

Both use Class D amplification for greater efficiency and control, with the Cambridge claiming the more powerful 50W per channel, while Ruark goes for half that figure at 25W per channel. Numbers, of course, only tell half the story.

Both units house the main power, amplifiers and connections in one "primary" unit, which then feeds signal to the secondary unit with an interlinking cable.

The supplied 2m cable for the Cambridge speakers features bespoke 4-pin conductors at either end, with a neat locking mechanism that keeps the connection secure.

The 3m cable connecting the Ruark speakers (3.5mm connectors at either end) is a nicely braided affair that's sturdy and looks good, too. We found the supplied cables long enough for desktop use, but both brands offer optional longer leads (5m) if required, at extra cost.

**Winner: Draw**

Cambridge L/R S vs Ruark MR1 Mk3: connectivity

Titchy as they are, the Ruark MR1 MK3 is loaded with a variety of connections. The big news is the inclusion of a built-in moving magnet phono stage, which makes it easier to plug in turntables – such as the Rega Planar 1 or Pro-Ject Primary E – for a neat, affordable vinyl system. You also get a USB-C input for plugging in your laptop, and a combined optical/3.5mm aux input for other sources, with the adapter for the digital optical socket included in the box.

Ruark says that its customers have been perfectly happy with the optical input when using the MR1 speakers with a TV, and adding an HDMI input would increase the cost beyond its asking price, which the brand didn't want to do.

Cambridge's speakers similarly omit the HDMI input and feature a USB-C input and separate optical input, and opt for a pair of RCA line level analogue inputs for connecting a variety of sources to the L/R S. There's no built-in phono stage here, which we feel is a bit of a miss, but you can plug in a turntable with an integrated phono preamp, such as the Sony PS-LX3BT, via RCA.

For easy streaming from your phone or laptop, both speakers offer Bluetooth, with up to the aptX HD codec supported. Pairing is swift and easy in both cases, and streaming music from Tidal or Apple Music is fuss free.

Ruark says its internal DAC can handle up to 24-bit/192kHz hi-res audio files, although the USB-C input’s limit is capped at 96kHz. With Cambridge, the optical and USB-C both support hi-res files up to 24-bit/96kHz, but the speakers’ DSP will automatically downsample all files to 48kHz.

At this level, we find that such differences in file resolution aren't particularly obvious, with CD quality sounding more than good enough for these speakers. Considering the intended audience for these affordable, desktop speakers – and with no networked streaming on board – we imagine not being able to play full-fat hi-res downloaded tracks won't be a high priority for most listeners.

And finally, you get a single subwoofer output with both speakers, should you require more bass oomph.

**Winner: Ruark Audio MR1 MK3**

Cambridge L/R S vs Ruark MR1 Mk3: features

Ruark keeps things simple with the MR1 Mk3's plug-and-play, accessible nature, and around the back of the main speaker you'll find the ability to change the gain level for each input (and reset them). That's it.

Cambridge offers a fair bit more customisation, with the engineers taking into consideration any adverse sonic effects that might happen depending on your listening position and where you'll be placing the L/R S speakers.

You have three toggle switches at the back of the main unit: one to tell the speakers if they're placed on a desktop or not; one to tell the speakers if they are placed close to a back wall or in free space; and one to indicate whether the primary speaker (with the power cable) is the left or right channel.

These modes help to mitigate any booming you might get in the mid/bass when the speakers are backed up against a wall, reduce any unwanted reflections from the desk they are placed on, and to help with time alignment when your listening positioning is higher than the drivers' output when they're placed on a desk.

Cambridge also offers optional desk stands (£49 per pair) to help angle the speakers towards your listening position – we would recommend this for the clearest, most solid sound.

We would try all the different toggle modes to find out the best-balanced sound for your tastes and listening position, as some combinations might work better than you might initially think.

Did you remember to hold on to that remote control? Cambridge also offers three EQ modes – Normal, Voice and Movie – that you can choose using the remote. These are subtle effects worth experimenting with, although we preferred the balanced Normal mode overall with all kinds of media we played.

**Winner: Cambridge Audio L/R S**

Cambridge L/R S vs Ruark MR1 Mk3: sound

The Cambridge L/R S speakers offer a pleasing performance with their even-handed tone and refined way with detail.

Their smooth balance makes them easy to listen to for long hours, with no peakiness or hardness in the treble, nor any untoward flabbiness in the bass. Yes, we'd like to hear the lower frequencies plunge deeper and have more muscle, but they are otherwise taut and nimble.

There is a sense of orderliness to the way the L/R S delivers music, and we found during our review that there is "a good amount of detail on offer, thanks also in part to a clean, low-distortion background". Voices are nicely focused too.

That evenly balanced presentation is impressive, although it does mean some songs end up sounding quite cultured and reserved when they should be more gritty and brazen.

"On some tracks – such as on Eminem’s The Way I Am and Forget About Dre – we find ourselves willing the speakers on, to tackle the propulsive rhythm with more punch and panache," we said in our review.

These Cambridge speakers do spark into life with the volume turned up, and they can certainly go louder than you'd expect from their small stature. Just be aware that, as with most speakers, that lovely balance suffers at much higher volumes.

The Ruark MR1 Mk3 offer a more boisterous and more exciting presentation, with a more powerful, muscular bass that we wish was just a little more tuneful, but does dig impressively deep for such dinky speakers.

Even more impressive is how much bigger and more open they sound; they project sound into the room with greater power than the L/R S, and there is more space surrounding the instruments and voices.

Dynamic shifts are handled with greater authority and punch, and it's a more involving listen overall. "The speakers’ rhythmic drive remains excellent for such compact speakers," we said in the review. "They are full of propulsive momentum, grabbing us by the lapels with Eminem’s fierce delivery in Forget About Dre and delivering tracks from Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and Macklemore with oodles of energy."

The Ruarks are still subtle and insightful enough when it comes to more delicate pieces of music, and voices are full of texture, nuance and personality. The MR1 Mk3 have traded a touch of their previous midrange sweetness for greater power in this third-generation model, but the mids are also clearer, more detailed and more expressive than the Cambridge L/R S.

Compared with the Ruarks, the Cambridge speakers sound a little muted when it comes to expressive voices, rhythmic punctuality and dynamic subtlety. There is what sounds like a "cloudy veil" over the midrange, whereas the Ruarks sound much freer, more confident and allow songs to luxuriate in a more layered soundstage.

The Ruarks' built-in phono stage is of a high quality too, and both sets of speakers have a consistent sonic character no matter which input you use.

**Winner: Ruark Audio MR1 Mk3**

Cambridge L/R S vs Ruark MR1 Mk3: verdict

There is plenty to like about the compact Cambridge L/R S speakers, from their crisp, clean aesthetic to the various modes that make them customisable to where you place them in the room. Their sound quality is easy to get along with, with a smooth, even tone across the frequencies.

But the Ruark speakers beat them for outright clarity, subtler insight and better dynamics. They offer a bigger scale of sound and simply sound more fun, even if the deeper low frequencies could be reined in a little. That built-in phono stage is a boon for first-time vinyl users, and using the MR1 Mk3 is just a little bit more convenient thanks to the handy, tactile on-unit controls.

For the same price, the petite Ruark speakers are the more entertaining and versatile pair. Our Award-winners keep their crown for another round.

**Overall winner: Ruark Audio MR1 Mk3**

MORE:

Our guide to the best desktop speakers we've tested

10 of the best Mogwai tracks to test your hi-fi system

1976 vs today: veteran audio experts discuss the biggest shifts in music and hi-fi during What Hi-Fi?'s 50-year lifetime

The UK’s latest hot spell might be coming to an end, but the sun is still shining on several top deals which our experts have found over the past seven days.

Given that it’s pay day for many of us, it could be the perfect time to take advantage of that discounted piece of kit you’ve had your eye on in recent months.

This week, there’s more of an AV slant to the bargain products we have seen. There’s big money off Dolby Atmos Soundbars and both Mini LED and OLED flat-screen TVs. Pair them together, and you could have the perfect combination of picture and sound, all for a very reasonable price.

We haven’t forgotten about hi-fi, though. We have tracked down top discounts on two five-star pairs of headphones.

Only products we have tested appear in this list, and they have to have received at least four stars to receive our coveted recommendation here.

We’ll go a bit more in-depth on why we like these products so much below, but for now, happy shopping!

At 42 inches, the LG OLED42C5 is a fantastic five-star OLED TV from LG at a size that is becoming increasingly rare to find. If you want a premium performer without the price tag, this could be the TV for you.

Alternatively, we also picked a 65-inch Samsung TV, the QE65QN90F, which uses Mini LED TV technology and boasts excellent gaming specification, a punchy, detailed picture and a dazzling better-than-half-price discount.

On the soundbar front, we have a firm What Hi-Fi? favourite from Sonos in the shape of the Award-winning Arc Ultra, complete with awesome Dolby Atmos sound and all manner of streaming smarts.

We also highlighted a talented bar from JBL, the Bar 1000 MK2, which boasts a very neat party trick: its detachable surround speakers can also be used as normal wireless speakers and can be dotted around the house when not in use.

Hi-fi hasn’t been completely left out this week: the five-star Grado RS1x are a classy pair of wired headphones with a big discount.

Fancy going wireless instead of wired? There’s a solid saving on a long-term favourite of ours, the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e. These classy-looking cans sound full of life and boast solid specifications.

MORE:

Our pick of the best wireless headphones you can buy

And the best TVs for all budgets

Interested in the bigger picture? Here are the best projectors we have tested

The World Cup is the perfect time to upgrade your TV – especially if you’re thinking about making the jump to OLED.

If you’re on a budget but still want to make sure you get a decent OLED, the 42-inch LG C5 is pretty much your best bet right now – especially now that it has crashed to £656 at Amazon.

This C5 model won the What Hi-Fi? Award for Best 40-43in TV at our most recent Awards. At well under £700, it’s also one of the cheapest OLEDs on the market right now.

The listed price on Amazon is currently £729, but a 10% discount is applied at checkout to bring the price down to £656.

While 42 inches is on the smaller size for a TV nowadays, this LG C5 set would be perfect for modest living rooms, bedrooms or even as a (rather imposing) desktop monitor.

And, as we discovered during testing, you don’t need a giant screen to get a stunning TV experience.

For just £656, you’ll get access to all the OLED magic, including perfect inky blacks and pixel-level contrast control – absolutely ideal for making World Cup player kits and stadium lights stand out.

Motion control is confident and controlled, too, so the C5 will be more than adept when it comes to fast-paced action.

We recommend switching to Filmmaker mode and turning off unnecessary processing for movies, though. We tested with a viewing of Dune: Part Two, and found the kind of cinematic image you would normally associate with far larger and more expensive sets.

“The picture looks fantastic, with the Fremen and Harkonnen fighters looking wonderfully sharp and three-dimensional,” reads our LG C5 review. “The TV’s slightly warm colours and solid peak-brightness levels create a truly immersive experience despite the screen’s small size.”

What really sets the C5 apart from the pack, however, is the feature set. Gamers are truly spoiled at this price, with four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, supporting VRR, ALLM and refresh rates up to 4K/144Hz, plus a Dolby Vision game mode and excellent HGiG implementation.

The slick webOS smart TV platform also offers all the major streaming apps, including Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV, BBC iPlayer, ITVX and more.

The audio can’t quite match the brilliance of the picture, though. The 2.0-channel, 20W sound system sounds clear and reasonably balanced, but it lacks weight and scale. We certainly recommend a soundbar if you truly want to hear the roar of the crowds.

It is also worth noting that the LG C6 is now available with improved processing – but that will set you back £1299 for the 42-inch model.

If you’re looking for a 42-inch TV or looking to upgrade to OLED on a budget, then this LG C5 is your best all-around option right now – it’s incredible value at this price. Get one now with 40 per cent off at Amazon.

MORE:

Read our full 42-inch LG C5 review

Check out the best TVs: flagship OLEDs and budget Mini LED sets tried and tested

And the best OLED TV: five incredible sets for serious movie fans reviewed by our experts

If you want to level up your home cinema set-up for movies, TV shows, or the upcoming FIFA World Cup, then you may be looking at investing in one of the best projectors. If you're working on a budget though, I've just found a sneaky deal that will save you some serious money.

Right now, Samsung's The Freestyle 2nd Gen can be yours for just £297 at Richer Sounds, a whopping £600 saving and the lowest price we've ever seen it drop to. But, there are a couple of things you need to do.

Firstly, you'll need to enter code 'RSTV50' at checkout to secure a discount. Then, as this is a cashback deal, you'll have to pay the £349 before claiming 15 per cent (£52.35) back directly from Samsung. Full T&Cs can be found here.

We're yet to get Samsung's The Freestyle 2nd Gen into our testing rooms, but we were lucky enough to get hands-on at its launch event. And what we enjoyed in the four-star original Samsung The Freestyle, we found to be present again, along with a couple of new surprises.

And while we haven't made a definitive verdict, we still had plenty to say from our time with the newest model. Firstly, the 2nd Gen is pretty much identical in design, with its compact build, cylindrical body and podium-style base helping it stand out from rivals.

The spec sheet offers more of the same, with a 1920 x 1080 resolution, alongside support for HDR10+ and HLG. It uses an LED light source, with a claimed 30,000-hour life span, and a claimed peak brightness of 230 ANSI lumens. The built-in speaker capable of 360-degree sound that featured in the original is back, as well as Samsung’s extremely clever auto keystone feature.

While physical connectivity options are limited to micro HDMI (although the connector does support HDMI ARC), The Freestyle excels in what it offers in terms of simplicity and portability with smart features and gaming abilities all built-in.

One of those new abilities is access to Samsung's Gaming Hub, meaning you can play Xbox games using an Xbox Game Pass subscription directly through it.

Plus, you've got access to Samsung's Tizen OS, which can be found on its TVs, giving you multiple streaming services including Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+, all of which are reached via dedicated hot keys on the remote control.

Visually, it was hard to get a clear impression of the 2nd Gen in the bright exhibition space we saw it in, but our expert tester said: "There appeared to be decent detail to the picture, with solid enough colours and good definition and detail on faces and clothing. One of the areas we criticised the original for was the below-par black levels, but it was impossible to really get an idea of this in an exhibition environment."

If you're looking for an entertaining projector that'll suit your movie watching and World Cup needs, the Samsung The Freestyle 2nd Gen is an incredibly entertaining option, especially at this knockdown price, just £297 at Richer Sounds.

MORE

Read our hands on with Samsung The Freestyle 2nd Gen

Or, check out our full Samsung The Freestyle review

And here's the best projectors: budget, 4K and ultra-short-throw

With a bank holiday weekend coming up, there is now plenty of time to decide on that all-important World Cup TV.

Luckily, this week has seen some stellar deals on all sorts of great TVs. Whether you’re after a new-release OLED or a budget LCD, we’ve got those and everything in between.

Hi-fi hasn’t been left out either: the Award-winning Cyrus 40 ST music streamer is on offer again; and Sonos is running a sale that includes its five-star spatial-audio Era 300 speaker.

As always, these are products that we have tested ourselves. And they have to have received at least four stars to receive our coveted recommendation here.

We’ll go a bit more in-depth on why we like these products so much below, but for now, happy shopping!

The LG C6 is the latest in LG’s hugely popular OLED C-series, and has the brightest, richest and most refined picture quality yet. We only reviewed it in March, but you can get 20% off with the code ‘LG20TV’ – you have to be a My John Lewis member, but it’s free to sign up.

The Cyrus 40 ST may not be cheap even with this discount, but it’s worth every single penny. The What Hi-Fi? Award Winner is the top dog out of the high-end music streamers and an incredible piece of kit.

We reviewed the TCL Q6C just two days ago, and we call it “ridiculously good value for money”. Well, the 65-inch version of this Mini LED set is already on sale – and it offers far more than a TV at this price has any right to.

If you want to go big-screen on a budget for the World Cup, then the 65-inch Samsung U8000F is an excellent choice. The Standard mode is enjoyably punchy and bright, with lots of smart TV content available in one great value package.

The Sonos Era 300 is a former What Hi-Fi? Award winner, and offers an immensely immersive experience thanks to its engaging sound and convincing spatial-audio effects. And now it can be yours with a rare £90 discount.

The 48-inch Samsung S90F made headlines for its low prices over Black Friday, but now it’s available for even less. The five-star OLED can be yours for only £764, but first you’ll have to use the code ‘RSTV100’ at checkout and then claim 10 per cent back directly from Samsung. Full T&Cs can be found here.

MORE:

Our pick of the best wireless earbuds you can buy

And the best OLED TVs for all budgets

Interested in vinyl? Here are the best turntables we have tested

Want a great World Cup TV but still want to make sure you get great value?

Then you may well want a TCL TV. The electronics firm has spent the past few years delivering good picture and sound quality at unbelievably low prices – and the trend continues with the release of the new TCL Q6C.

We gave the Mini LED five stars in our glowing review just two days ago, declaring the TV to be “ridiculously good value for money” – and now it’s even cheaper! The TCL Q6C is now yours for £559 at Amazon.

That’s already more than £90 off the test price, and it would be a good price for a 65-inch TV in pretty much any circumstance. But it’s remarkably rare to get a 65-inch TV at this price that’s just this good. The Q6C could cost twice as much and we would still be impressed.

The headline here is that you get a 65-inch TV with features such as 4K/144Hz gaming support, Quantum Dot colours and even a sophisticated Mini-LED backlight system with local dimming for only £559.

Now, specifications aren’t everything, but during our testing we found that, here, it does all add up to something pretty special.

The most impressive part of the Q6C is the black-level performance. We’ve seen 65-inch LCD TVs costing thousands more in some cases that fail to deliver black tones so effectively.

As our TCL Q6C review says: “Colours impress, too. There’s more vibrancy and lustre on tap than we usually see with such affordable TVs, yet at the same time, in most presets, the impressive vibrancy doesn’t look forced or unnatural.

“Skin tones look believable, there’s practically zero HDR colour striping, and subtle shading differences are rendered with enough finesse to ensure that even the most colourful images feel three-dimensional and realistic.”

As with all TCL TVs, sophisticated Google TV streaming smarts are on board. All the main global streaming services and key terrestrial UK broadcaster catch-up apps, including the oft-missed BBC iPlayer, are available (though Freeview Play and Freely are missing).

Gamers are well catered for too, with the refresh rate reaching 4K/144Hz (and the console-friendly 4K/120Hz) on its two HDMI 2.1 sockets. You can even increase the frame rate all the way up to a huge 288Hz if you’re prepared to accept a drop to Full HD resolution. VRR is supported, too, including the AMD FreeSync Premium Pro format, and there’s even support for Superwide aspect ratios if you’re playing a PC game that supports them.

The TCL Q6C’s sound is better than that of most, if not all, other TVs in its price class, too. DTS:X and Dolby Atmos mixes especially result in ambient effects and off-screen details appear well beyond the TV’s left, right and even top edges without the staging becoming incoherent or thin.

If you’re looking for a TV in this price range, you’re going to struggle to get better value than the TCL Q6C. It’s a formidable all-rounder with features that similarly priced rivals could only dream of, and now it’s got this generous discount, with £90 off at Amazon.

MORE:

Read our review of the TCL C7K

Also consider the Samsung U8000F

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

Look, not everyone has enough money to spend $1099 on the Sonos Arc Ultra. But don't let that stop you buying another one of our best Dolby Atmos soundbars.

Right now, the five-star, What Hi-Fi? Award-winning Sonos Beam (Gen 2) has had its price slashed down to just $369 at Amazon. That’s a saving of $80 on the launch price and almost a third of the price of the Arc Ultra.

If the idea of warm, refined sound, streaming smarts and effective handling of Dolby Atmos is getting your audio juices flowing, take a look at this deal.

The Sonos Beam (Gen 2) has been around for a while now (since October 2021, to be exact) so it’s not surprising to see a discount. But what you should know is that it’s still a wildly impressive soundbar, despite its age.

When the Gen 2 first launched, it impressed us by taking everything the original Beam had to offer, then adding genuinely convincing Dolby Atmos without changing the overall design or adding dedicated upward-firing drivers.

And it has continued to impress us, taking a What Hi-Fi? Award in 2025 as the best Dolby Atmos soundbar in its size and price categories.

The Gen 2 uses clever processing using psychoacoustic HRTF (head-related transfer function) technology to deliver a sense of height using two of the unit's five front-facing drivers.

So, if space and budget are limited, this is an affordable, all-in-one device of rare ability.

While Sonos has released the Sonos Ray and the Sonos Arc Ultra since, the Ray doesn't support Dolby Atmos, meaning the Beam Gen 2 is still the entry-level option if you want a Sonos with immersive 3D audio.

The Dolby Atmos is really the headline feature for the Beam Gen 2. It handles the format better than any similarly priced soundbar, producing spacious sound with good tracking of audio objects.

This being a Sonos product, you also get the ability to build a wireless multi-room system. You’ll need the (free) Sonos S2 app to get the most out of your purchase, and this also comes with access to Trueplay room calibration technology and a two-band EQ.

There is Wi-Fi onboard, though, which means you can also stream to the Beam Gen 2 from a handheld device using Apple AirPlay 2; Spotify Connect is built-in too.

Support for Amazon Music Ultra HD audio (for both the Beam Gen 2 and other Sonos models) is also now available and gives access to lossless 24-bit/48kHz tracks as well as Dolby Atmos Music.

For audio formats, the Beam Gen 2 supports stereo PCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos (both the Digital+ and TrueHD versions), multichannel PCM and Dolby Multichannel PCM.

Decoding for DTS digital surround has now been added to this and other Sonos products, although this doesn't extend to DTS:X.

In terms of sound, during testing, we paired the Beam Gen 2 with TVs ranging from 43 inches to 65 inches and confirmed that “it enhances the cinematic scale and viewing experience”.

As we say in our review verdict: “The Beam Gen 2 not only lives up to the high bar set by its predecessor but exceeds it by a margin that more than justifies its new feature set and higher cost.”

And it’s a higher cost no more, thanks to a whopping $80 off at Amazon.

MORE:

Read our full Sonos Beam Gen 2 review

And check out the best budget soundbars

As well as our list of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

TCL has achieved phenomenal critical and commercial success over the past couple of years thanks to an (almost) unerring ability to deliver good picture and sound quality at prices so aggressive they’ve had rival brands quaking in their boots. And, on paper at least, the Q6C looks to keep the winning streak going.

After all, features such as Mini LED backlighting, local dimming and a Quantum Dot colour system all sound surprisingly close to the specs found in TCL’s What Hi-Fi? Award-winning C7K series – yet the Q6C costs significantly less.

We guess there must be a catch somewhere, but on TCL’s current form we wouldn’t be at all surprised if whatever catch we find really isn’t that big a deal.

Price

Normally, if you spend £650 on a 65-inch TV, you would expect to get… not very much. Not for the first time in recent years, though, TCL is here to rewrite the TV value rulebook.

The set in question this time is the Q6C, the 65-inch version of which usually only costs £649 yet manages to carry such features as 4K/144Hz gaming support, Google TV smarts, Quantum Dot colours and even a sophisticated Mini-LED backlight system with local dimming.

We’ve been around the block enough times to know that such specifications aren’t automatically a guarantee of great picture quality – but at the risk of showing our hand too early, in the Q6C’s case they really do add up to something pretty special for the money.

TCL also sells 55-, 75-, 85- and 98-inch Q6C models for £409, £819, £949 and £1499 respectively. These are all pretty remarkable prices for screens built on the same key specs as the 65-inch model, where the only major difference is the number of dimming zones (more for the bigger screens).

The Q6C’s main competition, really, is TCL’s own C7K step-up model, which costs £200 more at the time of writing.

TCL also sells a C6K model which, it says, is identical to the Q6C. However, further up the range, TCL's ‘C’ variants often have a different panel coating to their “identical” ‘Q’ counterparts. The fact that matte vs glossy coatings can make a significant difference to picture quality, and that we haven’t specifically tested the C6K, this review only applies 100 per cent to the Q6C.

Design

At first glance, the TCL Q6C looks like a chip off the old TCL block. A narrow black frame runs around the screen, boasting a reasonably premium finish, and the screen sits on a pair of simple arched blade-style feet. These angle out slightly, bringing more attention to themselves than they would otherwise, but this stance also helps the set feel pretty sturdy and wobble-free.

As you go about screwing on the feet in either of the provided wide or close position options, though, you can’t help but notice first that the set sticks out around the back quite a long way by today’s TV standards, and also that the screen is significantly lighter than TCL’s more premium sets.

Most folk don’t spend their lives looking at the back of their TV, though, and the rather lightweight and plasticky nature of its build quality isn’t something you really feel aware of once the TCL has been set in place.

The Q6C’s remote control apes the TV it partners by quite effectively disguising an essentially rather lightweight and plasticky build behind a cute brushed finish, a sleek, long, thin shape, and an ergonomic button layout. That button layout includes direct access buttons for Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Disney+ and TCL’s own collection of live-streaming ‘channels’.

Features

Despite its aggressive price, the Q6C is built around a native 4K screen with Mini LED backlighting and a local dimming system that works, in the case of the 65-inch model we’re testing, across 242 independently controlled zones. At this price, local dimming of any kind is a rarity, so getting 242 dimming zones is a real treat. That said, the not vastly more expensive C7K features more than a thousand dimming zones.

The Q6C produces its colours using Quantum Dots, with which TCL claims to cover 93 per cent of the DCI-P3 colour spectrum used for most HDR mastering. The HDR support extends to both the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ premium formats, with their extra scene-by-scene image information, as well as the core HDR10 and HLG formats.

The set is also IMAX Enhanced certified, meaning it’s been judged capable of doing justice to the special noise-limiting IMAX Enhanced mastering system used on a few 4K Blu-rays and a fair number of films (especially Marvel releases) on Disney+.

Impressively for its money, the Q6C also gets one of TCL’s new HVA panels. These introduce a variety of innovations, including a faster transient response for enhanced clarity; a new light-emitting chip claimed to deliver 50 per cent brightness and 10 per cent efficiency boosts over its predecessor; and a new condensed micro lens system over the LEDs, that apparently focuses light better for greater backlight uniformity, optical stability and halo control.

Smart features on the Q6C, as with most of TCL’s current TVs, are provided by the Google TV platform. Unlike most other brands that use Google TV, though, TCL has managed to get BBC iPlayer on board alongside the other key terrestrial UK broadcaster catch-up apps, and all of the main global streaming services. The only things you don’t get that some rival smart systems offer are Freeview Play and Freely.

Gamers are exceptionally well catered for by the Q6C. It supports 4K/144Hz (and the console-friendly 4K/120Hz) gaming, and can even increase the frame rate to 288Hz if you’re prepared to accept a drop from 4K to Full HD resolution. VRR is supported, too, including in the AMD FreeSync Premium Pro format, and there’s even support for Superwide aspect ratios if you’re playing a PC game that supports them.

A special gaming menu becomes available when the TV knows you’re gaming, too, offering information on the incoming gaming signal as well as easy access to a selection of gaming aids that include a superimposed crosshair, the option to magnify part of the image to give, say, a mini-map more prominence, a couple of genre-specific picture presets, and an option to enhance shadow details in dark game sequences to make it easier to spot lurking enemies.

In a perfect world, all four of the Q6C’s HDMIs would support the full gamut of today’s gaming features rather than just two of them, but you don’t get perfect worlds on 65-inch TVs that cost this sort of money.

The Q6C’s sound system, finally, isn’t one of the Bang & Olufsen-designed systems found higher up TCL’s range. It’s still designed with another acclaimed audio industry brand, though, Onkyo, and still includes a couple of dedicated bass woofers on its rear panel to underpin the sound from its main stereo speakers. This sound system is capable of playing both Dolby Atmos and DTS Virtual:X sound formats.

Picture

While the Q6C doesn’t quite hit the giddy picture-quality heights of TCL’s C7K, it gets closer than the price gap would lead you to expect. This means that it also comfortably outguns pretty much every other 65-inch TV around at the same sort of price point – including Samsung’s recently reviewed U8000F.

The single most impressive thing about the Q6C's supposedly budget pictures is their black level performance. Once again, TCL’s particular combination of an HVA panel, local dimming, Mini LED lighting and local dimming processing results in excellent blacks in both dark scenes or dark picture areas and the black bars of widescreen content.

Hardly a hint of greyness slips into dark scenes, and backlight haloing around stand-out bright objects during dark shots is also remarkably well controlled for a 65-inch TV at the Q6C’s price point. We’ve seen 65-inch LCD TVs costing hundreds, even thousands, of pounds more than this TCL fail to deliver black tones so effectively.

As well as instantly giving the Q6C an outstanding foundation for the rest of its images to build on, its excellent black levels are also achieved without causing shadow details to become crushed out of the darkest areas. Dark scenes thus look as three-dimensional and immersive as bright ones, creating a sense of consistency that makes it easy to remain fully immersed in what you’re watching.

The Q6C’s remarkable freedom from the sort of hardware and/or processing issues that almost always to some extent plague the picture quality of other similarly affordable TVs continues across pretty much every other aspect of its picture performance, too. Images look crisp, clean and detailed enough to leave you in no doubt that you’re watching a native 4K screen, for starters – especially if you leave the set’s Precision Detail feature on (which you might as well, as it doesn’t seem to cause any negative side effects) and turn the Digital and regular Noise Reduction features off (at least when watching native 4K sources). Even the Q6C’s upscaling of HD sources is well above par for its level of the market.

Colours impress, too. There’s more vibrancy and lustre on tap than we usually see with such affordable TVs, yet at the same time, in most presets, the impressive vibrancy doesn’t look forced or unnatural. Skin tones look believable, there’s practically zero HDR colour striping, and subtle shading differences are rendered with enough finesse to ensure that even the most colourful images feel three-dimensional and realistic rather than cartoonish and flat. The nuance in the Q6C’s colours contributes in no small measure to the image's impressive sharpness, too.

The Q6C is not as bright as TCL’s step-up C7K model. It’s bright enough, though, to do arguably better justice to HDR images than any other similarly affordable 65-inch TV we’ve seen, combining good full-screen brightness with strong brightness peaks. All delivered alongside those excellent black levels we described earlier.

There are signs beyond its lower brightness that remind you that the Q6C is a step down from the C7K. While it’s faint, where backlight haloing does occasionally become noticeable, it spreads further beyond the bright highlight that’s causing it than it does with the C7K. That includes spreading very occasionally into the black bars of a movie if a really intensely bright object appears right next to them.

The very brightest highlights of bold HDR masters can also cause clipping, where subtle shading and colour details are lost in a sort of ‘white out’ effect, and skin tones can occasionally teeter on the edge of coarseness where they happen to catch bright sunlight, too – though they seldom if ever actually tip over into a distracting level of roughness.

Motion, once you’ve either turned the set’s motion processing off or left it on its low setting (to avoid unwanted over-smoothing or processing side effects), is marginally more prone to judder and blur with 24p movie sources than the C7K’s images are. But again, compared with the vast majority of rivals at its price point, the Q6C’s motion performance is actually pretty easy on the eye.

Colours can desaturate quite noticeably if you watch the screen from a steep angle of around 45 degrees or more, and blooming becomes slightly more noticeable. These problems are usually much more noticeable with budget VA LCD TVs, though, and from narrower angles.

To finish on the high note the Q6C’s pictures deserve, it’s a pretty stellar big-screen gaming display for its money. Graphics look crisp, bright and colourful, while the high frame rate support ensures gaming also feels fluid, smooth and responsive. The responsiveness is further bolstered by a measured input lag of just 13.1ms at 60Hz.

Sound

The Q6C’s Onkyo-designed sound system isn’t as ‘hi-fi’ in tone or as well-rounded as the B&O systems found higher up TCL’s current range. It’s not bad at all, though, for such an affordable TV.

Particularly surprising is the size of the soundstage it produces with DTS:X and, especially, Dolby Atmos mixes. Ambient effects and off-screen details appear well beyond the TV’s left, right and even top edges without the staging becoming incoherent or thin.

Dialogue seems to be coming from the screen rather than somewhere beneath or behind it, helping it sound impressively clear and clean. It still sounds contextualised enough, though, rather than bright or sharp.

Movie scores exist outside the scope of the main in-scene sound, just as they (usually) should, and sound effect detail levels are high enough to point to more quality in the speakers than you’ve any right to expect for this sort of money. Specific location details aren’t, to be clear, placed with the sort of accuracy you get with premium TV sound systems from the likes of Samsung, Philips and Sony, but the Q6C certainly does more with them than most similarly priced rivals.

There’s plenty of volume available, too, and while the sound density and power tend to level off during escalating action or horror scenes rather than continually expanding right to a scene’s climax, at least the sound doesn’t actively collapse under pressure.

Bass levels aren’t quite as rich and deep as we might have hoped, given the presence of two subwoofers on the set’s rear, which occasionally causes some high-pitched ambient effects to sound a little too dominant. Even the epic bass drops of Blade Runner 2049, though, don’t cause the bass speakers to seriously distort or drop out. In fact, the only distortion during Blade Runner 2049’s famous opening soundtrack dynamics comes from the treble, which causes a slight ‘buzzing fly’ effect when the speakers are under their greatest pressure.

The bottom line, though, is that, as with its pictures, the TCL Q6C’s sound is better than that of most, if not all, other TVs in its price class.

Verdict

If the Q6C cost twice as much as it does, we’d still class it as good. In fact, for a 65-inch TV at its price, it’s nothing short of ridiculous. If this is how TCL signs off its current range, we seriously can’t wait to see what the brand brings to the table next.

SCORES

• Picture 5
• Sound 4
• Features 4

Read our review of the TCL C7K

Also consider the Samsung U8000F

Read our Mitchell & Brown QLED1811 review

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

“What took you so long?”

It’s a fair question we might aim at Cambridge Audio, which, over its near-60-year history, has dabbled in almost every audio category: amplifiers, CD players, music streamers, turntables, subwoofers, wireless speakers… even a Blu-ray player.

The fact that it has taken the British audio brand 58 years to launch its first-ever active speakers is perhaps surprising, but we’ll allow them to be fashionably late. The brand’s new L/R range of active speakers comes in three sizes, and we’ve got the baby of the bunch on test here, the Cambridge Audio L/R S. Is this petite desktop speaker the beginning of a hit series? It certainly looks promising.

Price

The L/R S is the smallest and cheapest model of Cambridge’s L/R speakers, and costs £399 / $549 / AU$949 per pair. This puts it squarely in the crosshairs of the Award-winning Ruark MR1 Mk3 (£399 / $579 / AU$899) powered desktop speakers, while Onkyo’s five-star GX-30ARC can be yours for a little less at £299 / $349 / AU$649.

The L/R S are available in six finishes that include the standard black and white, as well as more colourful green, blue and orange finishes. If you opt for the walnut veneer finish of our review sample, you’ll have to pay a little more at £449 / $599 / AU$1049 per pair.

If you’ll be placing the L/R S speakers on your desk, it’s worth checking out the optional angled desk stands (£49) that tilt the speakers up so the sound is more directed towards you.

Build & design

If you’re working with limited space – small rooms, student digs, not a lot of surface real estate – then these active speakers will work a treat. Each cabinet is just under 23cm tall and about 13cm wide – no wider than your average paperback book – which means they’ll fit onto most desktops and even shelves, ideally perched on either side of a laptop or your TV.

The speakers themselves look neat and stylish, and we can imagine the minimal cabinet design fitting into most interiors, whether you want them to blend into a spartan layout or add a splash of colour with the punchier hues.

Build quality is of a high standard, with clean, crisp edges and a smooth finish. We particularly like how the Cambridge logo is etched into the finish at the top of the cabinet. It looks classy.

Each speaker is furnished with a 21mm aluminium tweeter and a long-throw 76mm mid/bass driver, with a bass reflex slot positioned at the rear of each cabinet. All drivers are powered by Class D amplification, and altogether, the L/R S claim to offer a mighty 100W of total output, split evenly between the two channels.

The tweeter has a large waveguide that, along with the mid/bass driver, occupies the majority of the ultra-minimal fascia, with the metallic orange colour of the dome peeking through to offer some visual interest. The speakers don’t come with a grille, but the tweeter’s phase cap doubles up as a guard to protect it from poking fingers.

This is a fully active design with all the amplification and electronics housed in the primary speaker. The supplied 2m connecting cable has a bespoke 4-pin conductor that carries the signal to the secondary speaker. This cable has a pleasingly secure locking mechanism at either end, too. If you need a longer lead between the speakers, a 5m cable is also available to buy separately.

Keeping things simple seems to be the main aim with these petite active speakers. There are no controls or dials on the speaker for choosing inputs or changing volume – which might irk some users who like having such controls within easy reach – but there is a colour-coded LED under the primary speaker which clearly indicates the input chosen.

A remote control is supplied, which takes care of input choosing, volume and power. It’s a slim unit made of light plastic, but it works well, and we would take pains not to mislay this remote.

You can place these small speakers pretty much anywhere, and, knowing this, Cambridge has taken steps to ensure the L/R S are able to sound their best wherever you place them. At the back, you’ll find a pair of toggle switches: one to indicate whether the speakers are placed on a desk or not, and another to indicate if they are positioned close to a wall (“near wall”) or out in “free space”. The “near wall” mode is straightforward. It reduces the mid-bass around 100Hz to account for any boominess that might occur when placing the speakers very close to a back wall.

The “desk top on” mode, meanwhile, deals with two issues at once – time alignment and desk reflection – and shows how much thought Cambridge’s engineers have put into this design. When the small speakers are placed on a desk, the drivers will naturally be physically lower than your listening height. This desk mode compensates for this effect, delaying the tweeter output and readjusting the top and mid frequencies so that music sounds “right” from your listening position.

Additionally, this mode also notches down the mid frequencies (around 700Hz, says Cambridge) to balance out the unwanted energy coming from the speakers’ sound being reflected from the desk.

We would try out the various combinations to see what works best for your speaker placement. We quite liked the combination of "free space" and keeping ‘desk top’ mode off for a richer and more solid sound overall, but the effect will vary depending on your room and the surface the speakers are placed on.

And finally, there is a third and very useful toggle switch that lets you assign the primary speaker as the left or right channel, giving you greater flexibility for placement.

Features

Whereas the bigger siblings – the L/R X and L/R M – boast full network streaming smarts, the baby of the family is once again keeping things pared down and uncomplicated by offering Bluetooth for streaming. Physical inputs on the L/R S include a pair of RCA line level, optical and USB-C, and there is a subwoofer output.

It’s worth noting that while the optical and USB-C both support hi-res audio files up to 96kHz, the speakers’ DSP will automatically resample/downsample all files to 24-bit/48kHz.

Perhaps surprisingly in this enduring age of vinyl popularity, there’s no built-in phono stage here, as you’ll find in the Ruark and Onkyo rivals. There’s no HDMI ARC input here either, which you will find on the cheaper Onkyo speakers.

Regardless, you can still connect a variety of products to these speakers, including a CD player, a TV, a smartphone/laptop, and even a phono stage-equipped turntable, such as the Sony PS-LX3BT. Bluetooth has the higher-quality aptX and aptX HD codecs on board, and pairing with our smartphone takes seconds.

Using these speakers is a cinch. Once connected, they’re easy to control using the supplied remote or with your paired phone when streaming from Tidal or Spotify.

Along with the toggles for adjusting the speakers’ sound depending on their position, there are also three sound modes to choose from: Normal (the default one), Voice (accentuates mids/voice) and Movie (increases in bass and treble frequency for more impact, and mids for clearer dialogue).

We appreciate that the EQ modes are rather subtle in action. Voices are a tad clearer and more prominent when deploying the Voice mode during podcasts, and the Movie mode doesn’t overdo the peaks in frequencies, but we prefer the more balanced, solid sound of the Normal mode for all kinds of audio.

Sound

We set up the L/R S speakers on the desk in one of our listening rooms, flanking our laptop, connected to Bluetooth, and leave them running in while we do some work. This allows us not only to run the speakers in, but also to gauge how they behave when used exactly the way we imagine most people will. Will the speakers sound too boomy on the desk? Will they sound too powerful and distracting, or will they fade into the background? Is there any peakiness in the treble to annoy us?

As we listen to Rosalia, Eminem, Waxahatchee, Geese, Rachmaninoff and more, we find ourselves living rather harmoniously with these compact Cambridge speakers. What’s impressive is just how nice and even they are throughout the frequencies – it allows for a very easy-going listen, and one you could listen to for hours without getting fatigued.

There is no discernible peakiness in the treble, which sounds rather civilised and cultured even when hitting the brash, brazen highs of Fontaines D.C.’s Starburster. The bass is rather taut and nimble but not overpowering, which is welcome if you’ll be listening to the speakers up close and on resonant surfaces. There is less bass weight on the L/R S compared with the more exuberant Ruark MR1 Mk3 rival, and it doesn’t sound as muscular when faced with the brooding bassline in Massive Attack’s Angel. But it nips along at a good pace.

There is a good amount of detail on offer, thanks also in part to a clean, low-distortion background. Whether we listen to these speakers using Tidal via Bluetooth or USB, or CDs on a connected Cyrus CDi disc spinner, the presentation is consistent. From Waxahatchee’s honeyed vocals to Geese’s more discordant and laconic tones, we find the speakers create a rather lovely solid sweet-spot for voices, too.

Listening at low volume doesn’t quite give us a full picture of the speakers’ abilities; turn up the volume, and you’ll find them spark into life. If you reach your smartphone device’s maximum Bluetooth volume limit and wonder if that’s all they can do, reach for the remote control and turn it up some more. These speakers can go pretty loud. Just be wary of going too high, as things do start to get unwieldy and shouty.

Even as we admire their evenness and orderliness, we find the L/R S speakers can be a touch reserved at times. On some tracks – such as on Eminem’s The Way I Am and Forget About Dre – we find ourselves willing the speakers on, to tackle the propulsive rhythm with more punch and panache. The piano notes in Game Of Thrones’ Light Of The Seven glide along smoothly, but they could do with a greater degree of precision and urgency to better impart the ratcheting-up of tension in the piece.

In comparison, the rival Ruark MR1 Mk3 speakers have the upper hand when it comes to rhythmic impetus and dynamic expression. They are able to deliver a bigger and more open sound too, with a greater amount of space in between the instruments and voices.

We find that the Ruark speakers sound clearer throughout the midrange, too, which reveals a greater degree of subtlety and insight. In comparison, the Cambridge sounds as though there is a cloudy veil over the mids, which we would love to hear scrubbed clean so that textures and subtleties can be unleashed. Bon Iver's voice on Exile is layered with rich textures and full of personality and emotion through the Ruarks – this effect is a little muted through the L/R S.

We would recommend investing in the optional desk stands for the L/R S, as physically tilting the speakers towards your listening position results in a clearer, more solid sound. Listening significantly off-axis changes the balance somewhat, so we would take some care when positioning the speakers and experiment with the various toggle modes to find the ideal sound for you.

Verdict

As Cambridge Audio’s first-ever active stereo speakers, the L/R S are off to a great start. It’s a confident design with thoughtful consideration for how people will use them in the real world. And they look stylish, too.

That even-toned, refined and easy-to-listen-to sound is impressive for a product of this type and price, and we think a sprinkle of energy, precision and insight could well catapult these compact Cambridge speakers to stardom. The Ruarks and Onkyos of this world might rest easy for now, but they’ll certainly be keeping an eye on this new contender.

Review published: 15th May 2026

SCORES

• Sound 4
• Build 5
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Ruark Audio MR1 Mk3

Also consider the Onkyo GX-30ARC

Our guide to the best desktop speakers for hi-fi fans, tested by our experts

Google has just made a handful of announcements regarding the future of Android at its "Android Show I/O Edition 2026" event, and while the redesigned emojis and smarter AI news are fun, there was surprisingly little in the way of AV announcements.

Google TV, in fact, didn't get so much as a shoutout, but another offshoot of Google's software ecosystem did get some unexpected picture and sound upgrades.

Android Auto, Google's smart automotive software experience, will soon support a more immersive audio experience, and for the first time, video too.

Dolby Atmos is the big news here, as Android Auto will finally deliver the immersive audio format in a forthcoming update, though there are some stipulations to be aware of. This comes a couple of years after Apple CarPlay began rolling out Dolby Atmos support in 2024.

Google's current list of automotive manufacturers that will support Dolby Atmos includes BMW, Genesis, Mahindra, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Škoda, Tata and Volvo, so you'll need a supported vehicle from one of these brands to access the 3D audio format via the Android software system. We expect this list to expand in due course.

You'll also need a streaming app that supports Dolby Atmos playback, which currently rules out the likes of Spotify and YouTube Music. Ironically, Google highlights that these two apps in particular have been freshly redesigned for Android Auto to accommodate better ease of use.

Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon Music Unlimited should all deliver Dolby Atmos playback, but we're clarifying with Google to confirm if all of these services are supported.

And it's not just audio that's getting souped up on Android Auto. For the first time, users will be able to watch videos in full HD up to 60fps on their car's infotainment display through "apps like YouTube".

We presume that this means other video apps will be supported when this feature launches later this year, but we've reached out to Google to confirm which streaming apps will and won't be supported.

Videos on Android Auto will be supported in vehicles from BMW, Ford, Genesis, Hyundai, Kia, Mahindra, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Škoda, Tata and Volvo.

Watching videos while driving is, of course, a no-go, but Google has thankfully thought ahead. Video apps that support background audio will seamlessly transition into a podcast-style audio experience when you begin driving, meaning you can continue listening to what you were watching while you were parked.

These updates are both expected to roll out later this year, alongside a more customisable user interface and improved Google Maps experience.

With more in-car audio systems now supporting Dolby Atmos – Dolby itself made a big push for immersive in-car audio at CES 2026 earlier this year – it's encouraging to see Google make the necessary steps to upgrade Android Auto to support the latest in-car entertainment features.

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Read our full Sonos Premium Sound System (2026 Audi A3) review

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Here it is, folks: our first full review of an RGB Mini LED TV.

We have previously run extensive hands-on tests of a couple of RGB Mini LED TVs – most notably the huge Hisense 116UX – but, due to their astonishing sizes and prices, we’ve had to do the testing outside our own facilities. In our world, that’s not a full review, so those TVs haven’t received star ratings.

The 65-inch Hisense UR9 we have before us today is designed to address the size and price issues that have until now prevented more people from hopping on the RGB Mini LED bandwagon.

This set, then, is leading the mainstream RGB Mini LED charge. And, while it’s a fair way short of perfect, particularly next to a flagship OLED TV, the UR9 is an impressive TV in its own right and a tantalising glimpse at the technology’s long-term potential.

Price

Price is always a hugely important factor whenever we test a product, but it’s particularly crucial to how the Hisense UR9 will be viewed.

In the UK, the launch price of £2999 places the 65-inch UR9 in the same category as flagship OLED TVs such as the new LG G6 and last year’s Award-winning Sony Bravia 8 II.

In Australia, though, the AU$3999 price puts the Hisense UR9 up against step-down OLEDs such as the LG C6.

Most interestingly (and confusingly), while the announced launch price in the US was a super high-end $3500, when the TV actually arrived in shops, the tag was a vastly cheaper $2000, placing the UR9 in an entirely different category, below even step-down OLED models.

Essentially, then, this Hisense is a rather different proposition in each of those three regions. Seeing as we are UK-based and it’s a UK sample we’re reviewing, though, it’s the UK price that we are primarily working with here. And that means the UR9 is going to have to face off against the mighty Bravia 8 II QD-OLED.

Design

The Hisense UR9 is not one of those modern flagship TVs that disappears into your living room.

At 4.5cm thick, it’s decidedly chunky by current premium TV standards, particularly next to the impossibly slim OLED models with which it competes on price.

The rear panel is completely flat, though, which makes the UR9 fairly tidy for wall-mounting, and the overall build feels solid and substantial.

The TV’s general styling is perfectly pleasant, too, though it stops short of being genuinely luxurious. Bezels are slim enough, the dark metallic finish is smart, and the overall aesthetic is clean and restrained, but the UR9 lacks the slick elegance and premium flair of rivals such as the Sony Bravia 8 II and Samsung S99H/S95H.

Hisense has made some nice, practical decisions, though.

The centrally mounted pedestal stand has a relatively narrow footprint of around 42cm, making the UR9 easier to place on narrower furniture than many similarly sized rivals. It also offers two height positions, allowing you either to keep the screen sitting low and tidy or raise it slightly to create extra clearance for a soundbar.

Rows of tiny perforations run down both sides of the set, while larger openings line the top edge. These house the UR9’s side- and up-firing speakers, which form part of its integrated Devialet sound system.

Overall, then, the UR9 is more functional than fashionable – a practical, purposeful TV rather than a particularly glamorous one.

Features and specs

The headline feature here is, of course, the UR9’s RGB Mini LED backlight.

Unlike a conventional Mini LED TV, which uses a white backlight shining through a colour filter layer, the UR9 instead uses separate red, green and blue Mini LEDs to generate colour directly. In theory, this approach allows for both greater brightness and more precise colour reproduction.

Hisense claims peak brightness of up to 3500 nits for the 65-inch model we’re testing here, alongside 980 local dimming zones and a native 170Hz panel, all driven by the company’s Hi-View AI Engine RGB processor.

Gamers are generally very well served – with one unusual caveat. Unlike most premium TVs, which have four HDMI sockets, the UR9 has just three. These are accompanied by a PC-gaming-friendly DisplayPort connection – something that remains extremely rare on TVs.

Is a DisplayPort connection more valuable than a fourth HDMI socket? We have our doubts, but to a small number of very committed PC gamers, it may be very useful.

All three of the HDMI sockets are 2.1-specified, though, with support for 4K/170Hz (and the console-friendly 4K/120Hz), VRR and ALLM. Some brands, including Sony, still offer just two HDMI 2.1 sockets on their TVs.

The UR9’s input lag is decent rather than exceptional. We measured 32.5ms at 60Hz in the standard Game mode, though enabling the Refresh Rate setting reduces that figure to a more respectable, though far from groundbreaking, 24.6ms.

The UR9 supports every significant HDR format currently in use – HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision – plus the intelligent Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ Adaptive variants that respond to ambient room lighting conditions.

It is also IMAX Enhanced certified, and the UK version of the TV features an anti-reflective, anti-glare screen coating that proves fairly effective at combating bright-room reflections.

Audio specifications are unusually ambitious by TV standards, too. The UR9 features a Devialet-tuned 4.1.2-channel speaker system with dedicated up-firing drivers, plus support for both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks.

In the UK and Australia, the UR9 runs Hisense’s own VIDAA smart platform, while the US version instead uses Google TV.

VIDAA still isn’t the prettiest smart system around, but it’s fast, responsive and logically laid out. App support is broadly very good, too, with all of the major streaming services and UK catch-up apps present and correctly supporting the relevant picture and sound formats.

There are, however, a few frustrating omissions. Most notably, the Apple TV app lacks access to the Apple TV store and users’ purchased libraries, so it can’t be used for movie purchases and rentals. That’s a real disappointment, as Apple’s pay-as-you-go store is the best around.

While far less important for a TV, it’s worth noting that music streaming support is sparse, too, with Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music and Qobuz all absent. There are no cloud gaming apps, either.

The inclusion of Freely is welcome, though, as it allows live TV channels to be streamed over the internet without an aerial connection.

Picture quality

The Hisense UR9 makes a superb first impression. In fact, perhaps the most impressive thing about it is just how rarely it behaves like a traditional backlit TV.

Before getting into that, though, some setup advice is required, because the TV’s default HDR settings do it few favours.

When first fed HDR10 content, the UR9 automatically switches into its HDR Energy Saving mode which, despite its name, is surprisingly aggressive. Colours skew cool and bluish, motion processing is overly intrusive, and the overall image looks unnatural and overcooked.

HDR Standard and HDR Dynamic are similarly best avoided, both pushing sharpness, brightness and processing much too hard.

Thankfully, Filmmaker Mode proves far more successful. It delivers the most accurate and balanced picture of the available presets, and it quickly becomes our preferred overall option.

Interestingly, though, IMAX Cinema is also unusually compelling. While its underlying settings appear almost identical to those of Filmmaker Mode, it consistently produces a noticeably brighter and punchier image without obviously compromising balance or naturalism.

As a result, we would stick with Filmmaker Mode for dark-room and purist viewing, but happily switch to IMAX Cinema during the daytime or whenever we fancy a little extra visual intensity.

Once properly configured, the UR9 is an extremely accomplished performer.

Play 1917 on 4K Blu-ray, and the opening logos immediately demonstrate just how well controlled the TV’s backlight system is. Blooming around the bright white text is minimal, black depth is strong, and colours look rich, warm and nicely cinematic.

More importantly, the local-dimming system generally goes about its business without drawing attention to itself. Throughout our testing, the UR9 almost never exhibits the flickering, brightness pumping or visibly shifting backlight behaviour that can make many Mini LED TVs distracting.

That consistency quickly emerges as the UR9’s defining strength. While many bright Mini LED TVs constantly remind you that they are dynamically manipulating a backlight behind the scenes, the Hisense instead achieves a broadly very composed, stable and natural delivery that often feels surprisingly OLED-like.

Blade Runner 2049 showcases this particularly well. Black depth is consistently strong, shadow detail is excellent and subtle blooming is tightly controlled. There’s also impressive richness and stability to colours, especially reds, which look wonderfully pure and saturated without drifting into pink or magenta tones.

Extra-bright HDR material suits the UR9 especially well, too. Pan looks spectacular here, with dazzling highlights and bold, vibrant colours that comfortably outgun the Sony Bravia 8 II for outright brightness in many scenes. Sunlight bursting through clouds and glinting off the fantasy scenery of Neverland is delivered with real punch and intensity.

Crucially, though, the UR9 generally achieves this brightness without sacrificing balance. Skin tones remain natural, and there’s a pleasing cinematic warmth to the image – and it doesn’t drift into gaudiness.

Motion handling is strong, too. The default Film setting is decent enough, but switching Motion Enhancement to Clear results in noticeably smoother pans without introducing the distracting soap-opera effect or processing artefacts that such systems often create.

The notoriously difficult Matera cemetery and chase sequence from No Time To Die is handled particularly well, with impressively little judder to the panning shots and clean rendering of drifting smoke and rapid camera movement.

Dropping down to standard-def and SDR, our Kiss Kiss Bang Bang DVD is reproduced with pleasing warmth, strong detail and impressively clean upscaling. Colours are arguably pushed a touch too hard at times, but the overall presentation remains highly enjoyable and consistently cinematic.

For all of the UR9’s strengths, though, direct comparisons with a top-tier OLED TV still reveal the limitations of even this undeniably refined RGB Mini LED model. Despite its impressive local-dimming system, the Hisense simply cannot match the pixel-level contrast control of the Sony Bravia 8 II.

Extremely bright highlights against deep black backgrounds are sometimes handled slightly conservatively, presumably to avoid blooming. Perhaps counterintuitively, those bright white logos against pitch-black backgrounds appear more intense and impactful on the Sony OLED than on the much brighter, on paper, Hisense.

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

This isn’t a new phenomenon: we have documented that extra solidity you get from OLED plenty of times previously, most notably when we used the Sony Bravia 8 OLED as a comparison in our Bravia 9 Mini LED review. But it bears repeating for those who are choosing between an OLED and a backlit TV.

Viewing angles are another clear OLED advantage. While the UR9’s picture performance doesn’t entirely fall off a cliff when you move off-axis, the sweet spot in which it performs at its very best is surprisingly narrow.

And while the UR9 usually keeps blooming impressively well controlled, especially for a backlit TV, particularly torturous scenes can still expose its limitations.

The bomb-test sequence in Oppenheimer is a great example. From the UR9, there’s a slight general greying to the image, plus some visible glow around isolated spotlights in the darkness. The opening starfield of Alien: Romulus, meanwhile, reveals that the UR9 cannot simultaneously maintain truly inky blacks and perfectly intense star highlights in the way an OLED can.

To be clear, the Hisense performs well in these scenes by LCD standards, and many owners may never notice such shortcomings during normal viewing. But they do prevent the UR9 from truly matching the effortless contrast precision and dimensionality of the best OLED TVs.

Sound quality

Developed in partnership with Devialet, the UR9’s 4.1.2-channel speaker system delivers a surprisingly expansive and full-bodied presentation by TV standards, with particularly impressive width and height effects.

The Theatre sound mode is the most immediately striking of the available presets, producing a presentation that extends well beyond the physical boundaries of the TV and creating a convincing sense of spaciousness with Dolby Atmos soundtracks.

There’s decent bass depth, too, and the UR9 maintains good composure at high volumes, avoiding the harshness and distortion that can afflict many flatscreen TVs when pushed hard.

The overall presentation is smooth and rich in character, which makes the UR9 an easy and enjoyable listen over long viewing sessions.

It isn’t perfect, though. Dynamics are a little stunted, and action scenes lack some of the punch and excitement they deserve, while dialogue could be projected with greater clarity and emotional expression.

The Theatre mode also slightly overplays its hand at times. While its extra spaciousness is undeniably appealing, it introduces a faintly diffuse and echoey quality to voices, along with a slight sense of delay that makes speech sound less natural than it should.

As a result, we find ourselves preferring the Standard sound mode for most content. It still sounds pleasantly spacious and open, but delivers dialogue with greater focus and cohesion while maintaining good weight and scale.

Ultimately, while even a modest dedicated soundbar will comfortably outperform it, the UR9’s audio system is better than that of most TVs, even at this lofty level.

Verdict

In several ways, the Hisense UR9 is one of the best backlit TVs we have ever tested.

Most of the time, you’re not even made aware that it is a backlit TV, so good are its black levels, its control of blooming and its consistent, flicker-free contrast.

While it is possible to trip up the backlight, it’s quite hard to do so, and many buyers may never see an unsightly bloom in their period of UR9 ownership.

But while this first mainstream RGB Mini LED TV is broadly mercifully free of the flaws that generally afflict backlit TVs, it still can’t match the overall picture quality of the best OLED models.

The pixel-level contrast control of OLED brings benefits in several areas. There are the notably brighter highlights on very dark backgrounds that even accomplished backlit sets, such as the UR9, are too cautious to go all guns blazing with for fear of blooming. There are the almost flawless viewing angles, too, which the UR9 is a long way from matching.

The biggest thing, though, is the generally more solid, more perceptually three-dimensional image that OLED provides. Next to the Bravia 8 II, the Hisense UR9 simply looks flatter, less dynamic and less impactful.

Ultimately, as enjoyable and technically impressive as the UR9 is, we can’t think of a good reason you would buy it over a flagship-grade OLED, and that’s the level at which Hisense is pitching it – at least in the UK.

Of course, if you are someone who has a flagship-level budget for their next TV and a general aversion to OLED, the Hisense UR9 should be right around the top of your list.

If you’re a UK buyer, it’s probably a good idea to wait and see if we get a massive US-style discount before placing an order, though.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 4

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If you are looking for a soundbar system, one of the names you will keep seeing in your search is Samsung. And that's for good reason, as it has delivered plenty of strong contenders to our test room over the years.

And one of the top-performing models comes in the form of the Samsung HW-Q990F, which holds a place on our best soundbars guide. The soundbar system consists of a main soundbar, wireless subwoofer and two surround speakers.

But the newest version of the bar, the Samsung HW-Q990H has now leaped onto the scene. We put the two systems head to head in our test room, so we know how they compare. Let's see which model is the overall winner…

Samsung HW-Q990F vs HW-Q990H: price

The Samsung Q990H launched at £1599 / $2000 / AU$1999, placing it in the high-end soundbar category. It’s still a new addition to the market so we don’t expect any notable discounts just yet, but these are likely to come later down the line.

We can say that with a reasonable certainty, as that’s what happened with the Samsung Q990F. It launched at £1699 / $1999 / AU$1999, which is slightly more pricey in the UK and the US than its successor.

Since its release, the system has seen significant discounts and is regularly available for around £999 in the UK.

That means that, although the Q990H launched at a lower price initially, the Q990F’s cheaper price tag now makes it the winner in this category.

**Winner: Samsung HW-Q990F**

Samsung HW-Q990F vs HW-Q990H: design

Side by side, you would be hard-pressed to tell the two soundbar systems apart. Both of the main soundbars measure 7 x 123 x 14cm (hwd) and weigh in at 7.3kg.

You’ll find a selection of buttons on top to change source, mute the onboard microphones and adjust the volume, with a dot-matrix display on the front displaying corresponding information.

The subwoofer with both models is a cube measuring 25 x 25 x 25cm and weighing 8.3kg. Finally, the surround speakers are also the same, featuring a boxy, angular design that includes a handy cable channel on the bottom edge. They also carry identical dimensions, measuring 20 x 13 x 14cm.

Both are well-built and feel premium with everything constructed from aluminium or a sturdy, high-quality plastic. But overall the design is starting to get a little tired, especially considering the previous Q990D and Q990C models look practically identical.

The brand bundles a remote with functions to change the input, sound mode and EQ for the system, as well as adjusting the subwoofer level.

There’s not much to compare here as they are basically twins, so it has to be a tie.

**Winner: draw**

Samsung HW-Q990F vs HW-Q990H: features

It’s a familiar story when it comes to the features. Both Samsung systems offer an 11.1.4 channel configuration, with an impressive total of 23 individual drivers on board. This includes 15 drivers in the main soundbar, three in each of the wireless surround speakers, and two 8-inch woofers (in a push/pull configuration) in the wireless subwoofer.

Both the soundbars and surround speakers feature upward-firing drivers, which brings us neatly onto the immersive sound formats that the systems support.

They both support three immersive-audio formats: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Samsung’s Eclipsa Audio. The last of those hasn’t been adopted by any other services aside from YouTube so far, but it’s nice to be future-proofed in case that changes.

To adjust settings for both systems, the Samsung SmartThings app is on hand to help. With both bars, we find this is the preferred way of interacting with the settings menus, thanks to the snappy connection and easy-to-understand menus.

You can also control your source from this app, including music streamed wirelessly to the system. Both the Q990F and Q990H support Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, Tidal Connect and Bluetooth; they are even Roon-compatible.

But what about physical connectivity? The soundbar has three HDMI sockets in total. This includes an HDMI eARC for connecting to your TV, alongside two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 passthrough sockets, which support up to 4K/120Hz signals with VRR and ALLM, as well as HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision (a nice touch, as Samsung TVs don't support Dolby Vision).

Samsung’s SpaceFit Sound Pro feature, which is essentially this soundbar’s calibration system, is also present in both bars. The optional feature utilises the built-in microphones to constantly monitor and adjust the soundbar and subwoofer to accommodate your viewing space.

There are four sound modes with each bar: Standard, Surround, Game and AI Adaptive. With both soundbars, Surround mode is the best for movies and TV shows, as the wider sound field means all components hang together in a more sonically cohesive way. Standard is our preferred preset for music, as it features minimal processing and a more focused sound.

One of the few differences here between the two bars is the Q990H’s inclusion of Samsung’s new Sound Elevation feature. This is designed to raise the audio upwards to match the position of your screen.

Samsung hasn’t given a clear indication of how it determines where to place the audio, and for us it seems to overshoot slightly, placing the sound towards the top edge of our reference TV. This setting may appeal more to those who wall-mount their TV and leave a gap between it and their soundbar.

On top of that, Q Symphony – in which your Samsung TV’s speakers work in tandem with the system – is also supported.

Although the Q990H offers the new Sound Elevation feature, it is not impactful enough to sway the result, so we are once again looking at a tie.

**Winner: draw**

Samsung HW-Q990F vs HW-Q990H: sound

Both soundbar systems are five-star performers, delivering a rich and engaging sound that is a huge improvement on the vast majority of TV speakers.

Vocals sound natural and detailed while carrying plenty of subtle inflexion. With the Samsung Q990H, this system manages to unearth subtler sonic nuances, which results in a slightly more natural sound than the Q990F. It’s not a night-and-day difference, but the newest model is the slightly better performer in this area.

The Q990H continues just to get the edge on its predecessor when it comes to height effects. When watching Chapter 2 of Blade Runner 2049 with the two models, both place the sound of the holographic announcements near Officer K’s apartment with excellent precision. But the newer model takes this even further than the Q990F, offering a greater sense of accuracy and spaciousness.

Continuing with Bladerunner 2049, both soundbars show off their excellent bass performance. With the famously tricky chapter two sequence, both systems deliver rich and powerful bass sounds that are controlled and dynamic, as we gain a sense of mounting tension as K approaches the police precinct.

But how do the two bars perform with music? With both systems, most, if not all, of the positive attributes from our movie testing are present and correct for music. We play a range of tracks, and the Q990F and Q990H both offer a clear-cut sense of timing and rhythmic drive. Vocals continue to sound clear and emotive, while instruments have depth and texture.

While they are both excellent-sounding systems, Samsung’s subtle upgrades to the HW-Q990H make it the better of the two soundbars.

**Winner: Samsung HW-Q990H**

Samsung HW-Q990F vs HW-Q990H: verdict

Each Samsung system is very well matched in design and features, offering ample surround sound options and a sturdy build.

The Samsung Q990F is a top-performing system when it comes to audio, but the Q990H takes everything we love about the previous generation and delivers it with even more nuance, detail and scale.

The Q990H is the more expensive option right now, but we expect the price to drop soon, as we have seen with its predecessor. If your budget cannot stretch to the newest model, however, the Q990F is still an excellent-sounding alternative.

**Overall winner: Samsung HW-Q990H**

MORE:

Check out our full review of the Samsung HW-Q990H

And here is our Samsung HW-Q990F review

These are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

The FIFA World Cup is fast approaching, which means the countdown is on to get a shiny new TV before Mexico takes on South Africa on 11th June.

With 48 teams competing, it's set to be the biggest World Cup yet – which surely demands to be seen on the biggest TV possible.

Luckily, big sporting events tend to generate great deals on TVs, and it's coinciding with last year's models starting to see some significant discounts.

This means there are plenty of decent-sized TVs available without breaking the bank, all of which would be great for a World Cup watch, either for their motion processing, explosive colours, wide viewing angles or sheer size.

Take a look below, and we'll explain why we're such big fans of these TVs underneath.

The TCL C6KS is our favourite budget TV, offering Mini LED lighting, 160 dimming zones, and universal HDR support for a single low price. It was already a bargain at its £419 launch price – the code CLEARANCE10 can now get you the even lower price of £314.

The Sharp GK4245K is a 70-inch TV for £440. If that wasn't enough to convince you, the GK4245K is also a good TV despite its low price, with an excellent Tivo smart system and picture quality that has no business appearing on such an affordable home cinema-sized TV.

The Amazon Ember QLED is a somewhat confusing rebrand of the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED, which we gave a glowing review to recently. Whatever the name, the e-commerce giant has delivered another compelling, affordable sound system, with a crisp, detailed picture on offer with minimal fuss.

If you can up your budget a little, the TCL C7K is our favourite budget large TV – so much so that we gave it a What Hi-Fi? Award. With the 65-inch model boasting 1008 dimming zones, Quantum Dot colours, and a claimed peak brightness of 2600 nits, these are flagship specs at budget prices. A great choice to watch nail-biting matches in explosive brightness, contrast and colour.

The 55-inch LG C5 is a tad more expensive than the others on this list, but it is also an OLED to give your World Cup matches incredible contrast and wider viewing angles. The LG C5 offers a rich, solid and engaging picture that balances vibrancy and authenticity, and is now available with some heavy discounts now that the LG C6 is available.

If you want to go really big, the 85-inch TCL C805K is a great option if your budget can stretch. It's bright, great with HDR and has very good gaming specs. Oh, and did we mention it's huge? It's ridiculously good value for cinematic scale.

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Fancy a big screen? Check out the best 65-inch TVs

Discover the benefits of Dolby Vision

Classy OLED TVs that won't break the bank

As we hurtle past spring and into the early days of summer, our test rooms are overflowing with new products from the world of hi-fi, headphones and home cinema.

We have the very first RGB Mini LED TV from Hisense in for testing and ready to take on OLED; Anker’s mid-priced, feature-packed wireless ANC headphones vie for a place in a hugely competitive market; Dali’s new slimline floorstanders aim to make a big impact from a small footprint; and Naim’s flagship, four-box amplifier combination want to showcase the very best of hi-fi separates.

If you have any questions about the products we have in for testing, drop us a comment below or send us an email to whathifi@futurenet.com, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you with an answer.

Naim NAC 552/NAP 500DR pre/power amplifier

The pinnacle of Naim’s separates hi-fi is the Statement amplifier, which will cost you just shy of £235,000. The next step down from that is the brand’s flagship 500 series pre/power amplifier combination that consists of four – yes, four – imposing black boxes.

We’ve got the NAC 552 preamplifier and the hefty NAP 500DR power amplifier, each with its own power supply, which combine to serve as “a remarkable showcase of Naim Audio amplifier technology” and aims to deliver the very best sonic performance at this high-end level (just over £50,000). We can’t wait to hear how it sounds, especially when paired with our reference ND 555 music streamer.

JBL Xtreme 5 Bluetooth speaker

JBL’s line of portable Bluetooth speakers are on enviable form, with one of its beefiest – the Xtreme 4 – nabbing a What Hi-Fi? Award win two years in a row.

Its successor, the JBL Xtreme 5, doesn’t rest on its laurels. There are upgrades to make the burly speaker even more drop-proof and rugged, refined cosmetics to make it more user-friendly, while the acoustics have been overhauled for a deeper, louder and clearer sound. If that wasn’t enough, it now has customisable ambient lights, a real-time smart EQ Mode, lossless audio playback via wired USB-C, and you can use it as a powerbank for your phone. That’s a lot of speaker for £330.

Dali Sonik 5 floorstanders

Dali’s new Sonik range effectively replaces the much-loved Oberon speakers, and we have the smallest of the three floorstanders – the Sonik 5 – in for review.

Promising “a significant leap in detail, dynamics and musicality”, the Sonik 5 features an ultra-light 29mm soft-dome tweeter and two 13.3cm mid/bass drivers that use Dali’s Clarity Cone structure with patented SMC Essential Magnet System – a technology originally seen in the more premium Epicon speaker range.

Standing just 82.6cm tall (under three feet), this slimline floorstander is yours for £899 / $1800 per pair, which puts it up against ferocious competition from the Award-winning Fyne F501E.

Soundcore Space 2 wireless headphones

Anker’s range of wireless headphones has caused quite a stir with their blend of good features and sensible pricing, so we’re keen to find out how well the new Soundcore Space 2 over-ear cans perform.

They feature active noise-cancellation, hi-res LDAC codec support over Bluetooth, a massive 70 hours of battery life (50 with ANC on), and customisable audio tuning based on your hearing. All for just £130 / $130? That seems quite exciting, and we hope its audio claims live up to the competition, especially from the likes of five-star Sony and Austrian Audio rivals.

Hisense UR9 RGB Mini LED TV

The first RGB Mini LED TV to hit our test room, the Hisense UR9 is out to prove that a backlit TV can beat a flagship OLED. The £3000 launch price for the 65-inch model puts it in direct competition with OLEDs such as the LG G6 and Sony Bravia 8 II – and, indeed, we will be comparing it side by side with precisely those models.

Can its RGB LEDs and extreme brightness trump the pixel-level contrast of its OLED rivals? We’ll know soon enough.

Hisense XR10 projector

If an RGB Mini LED TV isn’t quite cinematic enough for you, this alternative Hisense product might be right up your street.

The XR10 is what we like to refer to as a ‘coffee table projector’, but its £5000 launch price and 6000 ANSI lumens of claimed brightness mark it out as a very different beast to other models in that category.

Q Acoustics 3050C 5.1 speaker package

Q Acoustics has an enviable track record where it comes to wallet-friendly speakers and speaker packages, so we are excited to start listening to the 3050C 5.1 system.

As the name suggests, the system is built around 3050C floorstanders, which perform front-left and front-right duties. A pair of 3010C bookshelf speakers work as surrounds, and you also get a 3090C centre and 10-inch Q SUB100 subwoofer.

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Now Playing: check out the five blockbuster test tracks we’re using this May

“They fully deserve their legendary status” – listening to Wilson Audio’s The WATT/Puppy speakers, a resurrection with a modern twist

This premium CD player has caught my eye – is this what my beloved disc collection has been waiting for?

BenQ is one of the busiest projector brands around, producing models of all shapes, sizes and prices.

The TK705i successfully finds another little twist to add to the current projector range by combining a solid picture performance with an aggressive price, built-in smarts and arguably BenQ’s cutest design to date.

Though as we’ll see, offering so much for its price tag hasn’t been a completely compromise-free process.

Price

At £1199 / $1799 / AU$2199, the TK705i sits towards the lower end of the lifestyle projector market – yet it has some promising specifications and features to its name. These include built-in Google smarts, 3000 lumens of claimed peak brightness, 4K HDR playback and an integrated sound system.

Key rivals in this space are the Award-winning Hisense M2 Pro, and the super-stylish Epson EF-72.

Design

The TK705i is the latest example of a rapidly expanding trend for roughly cubic projectors. Its take on this trend, though, is actually one of the most attractive to date.

Apparently inspired by dappled sunlight filtering through layered leaves (yes, really), the TK705i features a bluish-grey fabric front and sides finished in a nicely contrasting hard plastic grille with some interesting spots of solid smooth grey finish over clusters of the grille holes.

Rounded corners soften the projector’s presence to complete the living room-friendly feel, and you can attach its strikingly compact form to a mounting foot if you want to add rotating and tilting flexibility to its design charms. It’s even possible to use the projector inverted and tilted on a shelf if such positioning suits your room layout.

At which point we’re feeling pretty confident that our inadequate words really aren’t doing the TK705i’s prettiness justice, and refer you to the photographs accompanying this review.

The TK705i ships with a full-sized remote control featuring large, clearly labelled buttons in a sensible layout that makes its key mic, home screen, auto picture adaptation, YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video and Live TV buttons suitably prominent with an eye-catching white backing.

Features

The TK705i’s eye-catching design is built around a DLP optical system illuminated by LED lighting. It can play 4K sources and high dynamic range in the HDR10, HLG and HDR10+ formats, but not Dolby Vision. The 3000 lumens of claimed peak light output is reckoned to be capable of driving screens as big as 120 inches across.

The 4K support is achieved using Texas Instruments’ XPR pixel shifting technology rather than the sort of native 4K pixel counts you get with much more expensive projectors from Sony and JVC, but unlike other pixel-shift technologies, DLP’s approach has been deemed ‘true 4K’ by the Consumer Technology Association group in the US.

Connections on the TK705i comprise two HDMIs (one with eARC support for passing audio out to a soundbar or AVR), two USB-C ports, a 12V trigger port for powering up or down a motorised screen or curtains system, and a 3.5mm audio output. Plus, there’s wi-fi, of course, to support the projector’s built-in smart features.

The TK705i’s HDMIs don’t support 4K resolution at 120Hz. The best we could get was 4K/60Hz, in fact, complete with HDR resolution. No higher frame rates were showing as available, even if we lowered the resolution output from our Xbox Series X.

The projector does have a few helpful gaming features up its sleeve, though, including dedicated HDR RPG and FPS gaming modes designed to give the best experience for those sorts of games, and an impressively low standard input lag time in its Gaming mode of just 12.2ms.

While we didn’t find a way to achieve the 5ms of lag quoted as possible for the projector by BenQ, we did get it down to an extremely low 9.3ms by activating Gaming Boost mode. Note that this mode, however, turns off all of the image placement corrections you likely made during set-up – even the manual zoom function. So, unless you’re very lucky and the TK705i delivers a perfect image at just the right size and in just the right place in your living room with no corrective measures required, you’ll probably prefer to live with the extra 3ms of lag required to keep image set-up corrections intact.

Talking of set-up, the TK705i features a sophisticated Smart Image Adaptation system to help you get images appearing with the correct geometry and proportions with the minimum of manual intervention. This includes automatic 2D keystone adjustment, auto focus, automatic screen fit (provided your screen has a clearly defined border), auto obstacle avoidance that can shift pictures around objects that might sit between the projector and your screen, and automatic eye protection that turns the brightness down if you get your head too close to the lens.

There’s even an Auto Cinema Mode that can adapt the image’s tone and brightness based on analysis of both your wall colour and ambient light levels.

In the unlikely event that you still feel you need to fine-tune the image after the auto set-up features have done their thing, optical zoom, manual focus and digital image shift features are all provided in motorised form via the remote control.

The TK705i’s menus and smart features are delivered, as usual for BenQ, by the Google TV system. Which is mostly fine, except that the BBC iPlayer still refuses to play ball with it. Just about every other app is there, though, including the other key UK terrestrial broadcaster catch-up apps.

BenQ’s CinematicColor system for delivering ‘true to life’ colours is present and correct on the TK705i, and claims to be capable of covering 98 per cent of the Rec 709 standard dynamic range colour spectrum.

One final positive feature of note is the projector’s ability to run very quietly – as little as 24dB – for such a compact 3000-lumen-capable projector, even when showing HDR video.

Picture

While the TK705i’s pictures are unsurprisingly (given its price) not quite up there with the very best projectors in BenQ’s current range, they’re still enjoyable enough to make it look pretty good value.

The first thing that strikes us about the TK705i’s pictures is how bright they are. That 3000 lumens brightness claim feels slightly pessimistic, in fact, as the projector both punches through quite high levels of ambient light without its pictures feeling flat or washed out, and delivers intense, luminous-looking pictures in dark-room conditions.

The high brightness helps it deliver compelling HDR pictures by such affordable 4K projector standards, as well as allowing BenQ to provide a reasonable amount of flexibility over your preferred HDR ‘look’; in particular, how much the presentation favours brightness vs detail in bright areas.

Initially, we felt that the TK705i’s brightness seemed to be running slightly ahead of its colour performance, leaving tones feeling a little faded. A Dynamic Colour feature, though, does an excellent job of injecting more vibrancy into proceedings, resulting in a punchy, potent image with both SDR and HDR sources. This extra colour punch is delivered while retaining impressive levels of blend and tone subtlety, too.

No colour – not even skin tones – looks flat or plasticky under the Dynamic Colour regime, and while tones don’t look quite as uniformly natural and accurate as they do with BenQ’s finest projectors, no particular tones stand out too starkly from the rest.

In fact, it’s ultimately the balance and nuance the TK705i’s pictures retain despite their high brightness and Dynamic Colour vibrancy boost that most stands out against much of the competition at this level.

Motion looks clean and natural on the TK705i, even with 24p films, without any need to engage the motion processing options, and DLP projection’s rainbow effect issue, where red, green and blue stripes can flit over bright highlights, is controlled well enough not to become a serious distraction even to What Hi-Fi? team members who are particularly susceptible to seeing it.

There are a couple of areas, though, where the TK705i’s relative affordability shows through. First, its pictures aren’t quite as pin-sharp and detailed-looking as some of the best sub-£1500 projectors around. Pictures still look 4K, to be fair, regardless of whether you’re watching native 4K or HD sources, but they lack a little of that snap and crispness that we know DLP projectors are capable of (despite not using truly native 4K optical systems).

The biggest limitation of the TK705i, though, is its handling of dark scenes. While dark areas of mostly bright pictures look reasonably convincing and create a decent sense of contrast and depth, fully dark sequences look rather grey and flat as the projector struggles to resolve the sort of black levels movie fans love – and which BenQ is usually so good at producing.

Setting an Adaptive Luma feature to its Medium setting enhances the projector’s dynamic range and gives the image a bit more punch, which at least helps to hide the black level shortcomings – but it doesn’t completely solve the problem, and can cause some shadow detailing to go missing in the darkest corners.

To be fair, the TK705i’s black colour limitations are much less noticeable if you’re watching the projector in a non-blacked-out room – and relatively ‘lifestyle’ projectors such as the TK705i are much more likely to find themselves operating in ambient light than dedicated home cinema models. So, if your likely use case for a TK705i is going to be almost constant regular living room viewing, where removing all ambient light is pretty much impossible, its pictures could seriously work for you.

For a projector to bag that elusive fifth star, though, it needs to be able to adapt to serious movie nights a little better than the TK705i can.

Sound

Given that the TK705i’s cubic design is down at least in part to a desire to include decent integrated speakers, its sound performance comes as quite a disappointment.

Particularly troublesome is how bright and harsh high-pitched sound effects and voices are, especially at the sort of relatively high volumes many home cinema fans will want to push towards for movie nights.

Dense soundtrack moments also sound thin and sibilant at any sort of volume, and the tendency to exaggerate treble isn’t helped by the integrated 2 x 8W sound system’s bass limitations. The movie world’s deepest rumbles lack potency and presence relative to the rest of the sound presentation, can succumb to sort of whistling distortion at times, and can even just drop out of the sound presentation entirely when the going gets really deep.

The pity is that aside from the one-sided nature of the sound, there are signs of promise in the TK705i’s audio. Despite not being one of BenQ’s most powerful projector sound systems, for instance, it still manages to project elements of the sound beyond its bodywork, getting some value out of Dolby Atmos soundtracks and reducing the common projector sound sensation that what you’re hearing isn’t connected with the pictures across the room.

The harshness reduces substantially if you’re in a small enough room not to need the volume to be cranked high, too.

In the end, though, while the TK705i can get pretty loud and detailed for such a compact projector, that loudness just isn’t fun to listen to.

Verdict

The TK705i’s uniquely cute, living room-friendly design and bright, vibrant images will deservedly win it plenty of fans.

Rather lacklustre black levels for dark room viewing and a surprisingly bass-light and brittle sound system, though, mean that the TK705i ultimately falls short of becoming another five-star BenQ projector masterclass.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 2
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Epson EF-72

Also consider the Hisense M2 Pro

Read our BenQ W2700 review

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

Building a family of great-sounding home audio products that can be used in isolation or together as a system is a tricky task. Bose will be hoping its new Lifestyle Collection can succeed where many have tried and failed.

Consisting of a Dolby Atmos soundbar, wireless subwoofer and wireless speaker, the new range was demonstrated at a special press preview where we could see and hear what it has to offer.

During the event, we got some hands-on time with the flagship Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar. We were able to hear it both in isolation and with the rest of the family in a full-blown Dolby Atmos surround sound system. Here are our initial thoughts.

Price

The Bose Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar is priced at £1000 / €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 a little 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 online.

Design

It’s fair to say that soundbars don’t tend to be the most attractive pieces of tech. Credit to Bose, though – it has done a good job trying to elevate the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar’s appearance above the long plastic rectangles we tend to see dominating the category.

The ’bar is covered in a textured-knit fabric (available in either black or the white smoke finish, above), which feels relatively premium and is nice to the touch.

Stretching out across the ’bar is an attractive, sleek glass top, built into which is a circular touch-sensitive control panel. This allows you to control music playback and volume via a combination of tapping and sliding your finger around the inner edge clockwise (volume up) ot anti-clockwise (volume down).

That glass top stops short of the edges of the Lifestyle Ultra Soundbar because it needs to leave room for its full-range up-firing drivers to do their work.

There’s one of these at either end of the bar, firing 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 ‘racetrack’ drivers (the far left and right ones are full-range) and two of Bose’s PhaseGuide drivers, which use special processing to spread sound to areas where there aren’t actually any speakers.

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) to deliver low frequencies in a deep, controlled way with minimal distortion.

The soundbar’s dimensions are 6.7 x 111 x 12.5cm (hwd), and it tips the scales at just less than 7kg. For comparison, the Sonos Arc Ultra is a little bigger, measuring 7.5 x 118 x 11cm although it’s also a little lighter at 6kg.

For our demonstration, the Bose was used with a 75-inch flatscreen TV, but it would look equally at home with a 65-inch or 55-inch model. It can be wall-mounted, although the mount itself is optional and costs £34 / €39 / $49 / AU$69.

Features

Physical connections are limited to ethernet and a single, eARC-compatible HDMI socket. It’s a shame Bose hasn’t seen fit to include any additional HDMI 2.1 inputs – the Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9 includes one, although the Sonos Arc Ultra doesn’t.

Wi-fi is onboard, and streaming comes via Google Cast, Apple AirPlay or Spotify Connect. The soundbar also supports Bluetooth 5.3. Tidal Connect isn’t supported by the soundbar (or Lifestyle Ultra Speaker) at launch, but we have been assured that it’s in the pipeline.

To set the bar up, you’ll need to head into the Bose app, which has been given an overhaul to make things more intuitive, with fewer button presses required to get up and running.

As mentioned previously, Dolby Atmos is supported, but DTS isn’t. This doesn’t come as a huge surprise – the Sonos Arc Ultra is in the same boat – but it’s worth noting that Sony did find room to include it on its Bravia Theatre Bar 9, and Disney+ does now offer a DTS:X audio option for some of its content.

To calibrate the soundbar for your particular room layout, Bose’s CustomTune technology works with the microphone in your smartphone (iOS or Android) and analyses your room dimensions, surfaces and furniture placement.

In the app, you can also dive in and alter sound levels manually if you think they require a bit of extra tweaking. You are likely to find yourself in the app quite a bit, as you don’t get a physical remote control supplied with the soundbar.

Sound

As with any product listened to only briefly at a press event, it’s tricky to nail down exactly how the unit performs – especially in a room that is completely new to you.

Our demo took place in a space that should really play to the strengths of the Bose: a relatively simple square room, with bare walls and little in the way of soft furnishings to stop reflections and the spread of sound.

We start with a clip from the epic sci-fi movie Dune, and the Bose gets to work immersing us in the middle of a violent sandstorm. As the soundbar starts whipping up particles above and around our seating position, it seems to do a good job of spreading the effects across the soundfield.

We are listening at quite a high volume, and the soundbar seems to handle the pressure of the scene and the drama without showing too many signs of stress. As the on-screen action goes from all-out chaos to relative calm, the bar seems to communicate the switch in dynamics relatively well.

We switch to a scene from Ray to showcase the Bose’s Speech Clarity mode, which claims to be able to boost dialogue but not any other effects. Without the mode on, as Ray Charles crosses the road deep in conversation with his manager, it sounds more like a mumble.

Then, with Speech Clarity mode switched onto its highest setting, the dialogue does seem to be lifted out of the hustle and bustle of the effects around it, with the edges of words a little clearer and better defined. This could come in handy during late-night viewing, where you don’t want the surround effects boosting but need a bit of a dialogue boost.

To showcase the Lifestyle Ultra Subwoofer and its impact on music, Bose plays Mi Corazon by Jacob Collier in stereo. There’s a decent spread of percussion, and when the sub kicks in, there's an injection of extra weight, and those low-frequency bass kicks are reinforced with a greater sense of solidity. Adding the soundbar, they immediately hit harder with more heft and body behind them.

Bose then adds a pair of Lifestyle Ultra Speakers as surrounds, so we are listening to a 7.1.4 Atmos system, and plays a clip from 6 Underground by Michael Bay.

As Ryan Reynolds is chased through Florence by the mafia and Italian police, effects are flying in all directions, with screeching tyres, gunshots, and a deep, pulsing heartbeat, all vying for your attention. And the system seems to do a good job of immersing you in the action. Detail levels seem ok, but we need to spend more time testing the bar to hear the true extent of its abilities.

The last scene we are shown is Queen’s Live Aid performance from Bohemian Rhapsody, which sounds relatively punchy and powerful through the soundbar. It’s hard not to hear the impact of the roar from the crowd as they explode into life when the band appears and they eagerly lap up Freddie’s direction. There seems to be a good, expansive spread of sound as they sing along with the frontman while he shows off his impressive vocal range.

When Hammer To Fall kicks in, there seems to be a decent amount of energy and life to the guitars and drums – but again, we really need more time with the soundbar to hear just how musical it is and how well it sticks with the tempo and rhythm of a range of different tracks.

Initial verdict

In a market still dominated by Sonos, it's good to see the arrival of a potential new rival from Bose, and we are being promised a big overhaul in terms of design and technology in an attempt to position itself as a serious rival.

Bose’s previous flagship, the Smart Ultra Soundbar, struggled to impress our review team, so we hope this new model is much more competitive when it arrives in our test room for a thorough evaluation.

MORE:

Read our Bose Smart Ultra Soundbar review

Our pick of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars for all budgets

Sonos Arc Ultra vs Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9: which flagship Dolby Atmos soundbar is better?

Sydney turned up the sunshine and the sound quality for a spectacular Australian Hi‑Fi Show 2026, held in the heart of the city, near Central Station and Chinatown. The boutique Sydney Central Hotel opened up four floors to the Show’s systems and sounds over three days, from official firing-up time at 2pm on Friday 1st May, until the volume pots dipped their last at 4pm on Sunday 3rd May.

Rooms and suites were filled with hi-fi systems combining sculptural speakers and high-end stacks with streaming simplicity and intuitive phone-based control. Especially welcome was a new ‘Homegrown Hi-Fi’ area for the Corridor of Sound up on the ninth floor, showcasing a serious selection of Australian-made audio – which proved to include several of the Show’s top attractions.

There was also a strong home cinema contingent this year, covering both the affordable and the aspirational, with a pair of full big-screen projection rooms offering action on Level 1, plus immersive soundbar demonstrations up in the Corridor of Sound, and a special basement theatre showcasing Leica’s award-winning projection skills. We’ll start our coverage down there at the bottom of the Sydney Central, working our way through the four floors to the top.

Lower Ground

Leica Camera Australia

Leica’s bright, colourful and comfortable lower ground cinema room was packed when we entered, with three different demonstrations running. Two of these used the ultra-short-throw Cine 1 ‘Cinema TV’, a gorgeous object in itself, while gaining from Leica’s skills in glass making to deliver edge-to-edge sharp imaging, less aberrated than rival lenses. The Cine 1 has been in the market for a few years now, but has recently been slashed in price almost by half, making it far more competitive against rivals (and prompting us to ‘renew’ a Sound+Image award originally presented at the higher original price).

Leica had one Cine 1 projecting onto the 120-inch Leica ambient-light-rejecting screen which can be purchased for an extra $1000 with the Cine 1.

To the right, projecting onto a bare white wall, was the Leica Cine Play 1 mini projector, which was deliberately set up off-axis to show how it can nevertheless use its built-in smarts to deliver a bright and colourful large-screen image.

One clever demonstration trick invoked by Leica’s Shaun McMahon was to pop on a few spotlights to mimic ambient daylight. While this caused significant wash-out on the two projectors that directly illuminated the walls, it had almost no discernable effect on the ALJ screen image – showing how valuable such a screen can be when considering these systems as replacements for TVs, including use in daytime environments.

Mcleans Smarter Home Entertainment

The distributing retailer, now based back in Long Jetty between Tuggerah Lake and the Pacific Ocean, provided another oasis of calm in the Lower Ground, with tall Magnepan MG2.7X planar-magnetic loudspeakers rolling out what are always top tunes under the control of Bill and Margaret Mclean, on this visit including Dr. John’s 2022 kick-arse I Walk On Guilded Splinters and Mary Gaultier’s Falling Out Of Love. Both served to highlight the delicious delicacy of the Magnepan full-range dipole speakers, which are a three-way design with 101cm true ribbon tweeters supported by foil bass and midrange. Yet as both the Dr John and later billie eilish’s My Strange Addiction proved, they could also grab a bassline and run tight and strong with it. Impressive stuff at $16,990 a pair.

In support of the speakers were an Innuos Pulsar music streamer streaming Qobuz and Tidal via via Roon, into Audio Research’s REF6SE preamplifier via a massive $55k LampizatOr Pacific 2 valve-based high-res DAC, and on to Pass Labs’ X350.8 stereo power amplifier, with FoilFlex cables and IsoTek power conditioning.

Ground Floor

Bowers & Wilkins / Marantz

In one of the big ground floor suites, the ex-Masimo now-Harman brands put on a grand display around the main system of Marantz 10 series electronics driving the Turbine-Headed Bowers & Wilkins 802 D4 from the current B&W 800 Series Diamond.

While Marantz’s Model 10 amplifier can operate as a standard integrated amplifier, this system had the Link 10n preamplifier driving two separate Model 10s in what the company now calls a “leader and member” arrangement, which can address up to four Model 10s switched into mono mode.

The fourth box on the Atacama rack was the system source, Marantz’s SACD 10 flagship SACD/CD player and DAC, which the company says was “designed to be the best disc player in the company’s history”. This combination was playing some right doof-doof when we entered but soon settled into a glorious delivery of Anders Gaardmand’s saxophone and Bruce Katz’s close-miked piano on Ronnie Earl’s Kansas City Monarch, sounding great in a well-treated room, with power conditioners secreted behind the system.

Around the sides of the room were some spectacular extras. To the right was a history of classic B&W speakers, featuring the DM3 (1968), DM6 (1975), the 802 Series 80 (1980s), the DM100 (1986) and the 803 D2 (2010).

To the left were two of Bowers & Wilkins’ most spectacular ever designs. First was the current ‘Abbey Road x Bowers & Wilkins 801 D4 Limited Edition’ speakers, featuring a specialised Vintage Walnut finish and red Connolly leather on top, referencing Abbey Road and their 45-year partnership with Bowers. These were limited to 140 pairs worldwide, and this single speaker comes from the last pair available in Australia, we gather (hasten to Len Wallis Audio if you’re interested).

Even more spectacular was a rare showing of the Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus, $165,000 of flagship snail curves in bright red, quite the sight!

Synergy AudioVisual – Sonus faber, McIntosh, REL, Rega, ATC

As ever, Synergy’s room was constantly packed: seats full, standing at the rear. And there was a lot going on, with multiple systems available for demonstration.

The main attraction was the central system (total value around $716,000), with Sonus faber Amati Supreme speakers in ‘Terra Rossa’ red (the only pair currently in the Southern Hemisphere, according to the team), supported by no fewer than six REL S/550 subwoofers configured as two three-high line arrays at the back of the room, receiving their signals at speaker level chained through them all, as is REL’s way: so no crossover reducing the bass to the Sonus fabers, which continue to run full-range.

Four McIntosh power amps were driving the Sonus fabers in an interesting biamping arrangement selected by Synergy guru Jack Sarkissian. Each channel had an all-valve MC3500 monoblock driving the highs and mids, while the bass drivers were driven by solid-state MC1.25KW monoblocks (1200W into any impedance, THD 0.005%). So solid-state grip for the bass, a certain valve sweetness for the ‘voice of Sonus faber’ mids and tweeter, though Sonus faber is famously pretty sweet up top anyway (and Mr Sarkissian admits his personal choice might be for solid state all over).

These four giant monoblocks, together with the McIntosh MCD1200 DAC/SACD player and C12000 preamp and controller, created a wondrous wall of McIntosh blue-teal to keep the visitors visually delighted while being audibly thrilled by the music selected by Synergy MD Philip Sawyer. Responding to audience requests, he showed the effect of the RELs by taking them out of circuit while playing Steely Dan’s I.G.Y. It was an effective dem, but we were informed later that we had visited rather too early, on the first day of the Show: the RELs were still being tuned perfectly to integrate perfectly with the Amati Supremes.

So we returned the next day to hear the RELs working with more subtlety. Without them the speakers alone sounded, well, more speaker-like, less real, less depth of soundstaging. With the RELs in circuit the room was fully excited, the delivery larger, and rather smoother-sounding and real all over. Since some of these characteristics require more than the bass spectrum, the exercise is interesting in showing how bass frequencies may affect our perception across the rest of the spectrum.

The entire demo was also a spectacular advertisement for the source, which was vinyl, being played on Rega’s range-topping $22,000 Naiad turntable; we have rarely heard vinyl so immaculately rendered through a system not exactly short on resolving power.

A second system in this room was also demonstrated, using loudspeakers by ATC, renowned in both pro and hi-fi circles for making everything from drivers to cabinets at its base in Gloucestershire, UK. Their speakers come in somewhat bewildering combinations: these were the three-way SCM50 ASLT from the company’s Tower series. ATC’s late founder Billy Woodman was always keen on perfecting piano tone, we were told, and a demonstration using a Prague Piano Duet of Chopin’s Polonaise in E Flat Major proved his success nicely.

Yamaha Music Australia

Next door Yamaha, which also had a room up on the ninth floor, was running a relaxing and well-treated room, doused in the company colours. A guitar display at the back reminded visitors of Yamaha’s musical heritage (complete with Wayne’s World signs saying ‘No Stairway to Heaven’), while Pink Floyd’s Us & Them drifted effortlessly from the NS-2000A speakers under the control of the company’s R-N2000A network hi-fi receiver. New Order’s Blue Monday later showed how the system could punch as well as roll out the relaxant.

The source here was a streaming laptop playing into the USB-B input of the R-N2000A, but you could equally stream using the amplifier’s own MusicCast platform, so that this system also represented excellence value – $9999 speakers, $5299 amplifier, plus cables, all done.

Level 1 Mezzanine

Wavetrain Cinemas / Elementi

You don’t win CEDIA Global Home Cinema of the Year just by putting a few speakers and a projector in a room, as Wavetrain’s David Moseley clearly demonstrated with his uber-powerful display in one of the First Floor Mezzanine ballroom suites.

On speaker duties was Moseley’s own Elementi Audio, with the Air series being used this year, notable for its use of ribbon tweeters. David says this design is more “relaxed” compared to some of his other systems that use compression tweeters, which are more “in your face”.

Two 18-inch and two 24-inch subs (the latter two receiving 10,000W each!) were on bass duties, although his front and rear LR speakers were also on the LFE channel.

A Christie Digital RGB laser projector served up scintillating visuals, with a full Kaleidescape system providing the source material.

And what a joy it was to admire. Iconic scenes from Sinners and Top Gun: Maverick delivered detail in spades, and a whole lot more power to boot. Meanwhile scenes from Planet Earth revealed the Elementi system could be delicate when required.

We always expect big things from the Wavetrain room, and as ever David didn’t disappoint. We heard countless exclaims of “amazing” and “wow” during our rounds at the Show.

BenQ + Oceanic

Oceanic Distribution also ran a full cinema demonstration on Level 1, leading with the projection prowess of the BenQ 5850W home cinema front projector with its usefully short-throw abilities, 2600 lumens output, and the claimed ability to deliver 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut for its DLP 4K images created by the CTA-approved version of DLP pixel-shifting. Its high dynamic range includes HDR10+ dynamic tone mapping alongside standard HDR10 and HLG.

The sound in the room was produced via the new AudioControl Hyperion APR-16 immersive surround processor, a 16-channel platform which incorporates ESS Sabre digital-to-analogue conversion and supports high-resolution audio formats up to 24-bit/192kHz.

Craig Hicks, manning the room, told us they are particularly excited about the imminent Dante models from AudioControl: Dante sends audio over IP cables (Cat 6 Ethernet-style), which allows signals to remain digital all the way. With no analogue stage or DACs required, the processor is expected to be more affordable, while also making great savings in cables, of course, with Cat-6 used instead of potentially pricey audio signal cables.

Also in the room was a display of Stealth speakers, installed invisibly within dry wall, and some super-comfy and colourful Manhattan cinema seating.

Meridian / Cogworks

Notably and bravely providing a buffer space between the two home cinemas on Level 1 was Cogworks, demonstrating the marvellous minimalism of Meridian’s $138,000 DSP9 Digital Active Speakers, performing in front of the rather smaller Meridian Ellipse wireless speaker. At one point we wondered if they were doing a 'Bose', ready to whip away large cardboard DSP9s to reveal that we had been listening to the little wireless speaker all along.

But no, a beautifully-rendered version of Shine on You Crazy Diamond by Christy Moore, and an impressively dynamic delivery of Phil Collins’ chestnut I Don’t Care Anymore showed the quality of the large white and very solid DSP9s. These were the second speakers to emerge from the company’s ‘Extreme Engineering Programme’, gifted ellipse-based design curves and endless proprietary technologies… such as (brace yourself) the Atlas Software Core and R1 Electronics Platform, Force-balanced bass configuration, Digital Precision, Q-Sync, True Link, True Time, E3 Bass, Image Focus… and we're just getting started.

The irony is that operation is simplicity itself, with just a Meridian 218 Zone Controller providing the streaming tunes and control over this zone of high-resolution audio playback.

beyerdynamic

The German headphonemeisters were back with a strong line of latest headwear and current classics, including the award-winning Aventho 100 wireless noise-cancellers, along with the Aventho 200 ($449).

Of particular interest were two new awareness-based wireless earbuds, the Amiron 200 Sport ($299) and the Amiron Zero ($199). The Zeros clip either side of the outer lobe and sit far off the actual ear canal (see ear picture) whereas the 200 Sport has a much larger driver and is rather closer.

Syntec’s Wayne Farran, manning the stand, promises that this is an ‘awareness’ product which sounds good – “one of the first open-earbuds that doesn’t treat 'open as a built-in excuse for mediocre sound!” as the company’s website says. We’ll tell you more in the magazine when we’ve played with a pair!

RokBox / Top Shelf Records

The racks of vinyl this year were brought by Top Shelf Records based out of Balmain; check their Facebook page for their ongoing events across the Sydney area.

Alongside the vinyl was RokBox, a brand-new offshoot of Melbourne-based groovinandgrain.com.au focusing on cardboard boxes and packaging for your precious vinyl records. Owners Lorinda and Michael talked us through the ranges which include large sturdy boxes for transporting vinyl – a key focus for these might be sellers who attend record fairs, suggests Lorinda. But they also plan a series of stylish consumer boxes to “recreate what our parents did,” says Lorinda, “visiting friends and taking not only food to share but a box of records to play.”

The greater 'Groovin' and Grain' operation also deals in furniture for vinyl records and music media, as well as vintage radiograms which have been been restored and modernised, something made possible by Michael’s dual skills as upholsterer and electronics boffin.

Secret Chord Analogue

Along with his signature product, the Record Restore cleaning system, SCA’s founder Stephen Price was showing a collection of Canadian-designed/made archival record sleeves, including handy dual-pocket and gatefold covers, as well as inner and outer sleeves in a variety of sealable, foldable or lipped options.

Our eyes were drawn to a black unit on the stand which was the Flat Duo from AFI, described as a groundbreaking innovation in the world of record care. It is a record flattener/relaxer, using heat to remove either warps or more serious disc distortions; it can treat two LPs at once, and the flattening technique uses a high temperature for a short time, while the relaxer takes longer (three hours, says Stephen) at a lower temperature.

This also has the effect of ‘tempering’ the vinyl, he says; during vinyl pressing LPs are rapidly and often unevenly cooled after high-temperature pressing, with material stresses frozen in the material – and audible. Tempering apparently allows the molecules to align themselves naturally, making the material harder, more robust and providing more accurate playback. It’s the vinyl tool you never knew you needed…

Sydney Audio Club

The Sydney Audio Club hosts monthly listening sessions and tech talks for members and guests alike; it’s a great way to keep up on new developments and to hear new equipment from around the world as well as Australia.

Talking to the SAC’s coordinator John McEvoy, he expressed a desire that in our coverage we might include a picture of their banner thanking those who have presented to the club in recent times, and we are happy to here (above) oblige.

Corridor of Sound!

Pantheone Audio

The Sydney company returned to the Show with its uniquely-crafted high-end wireless speakers – 'part sculpture, all sound!', as the company says.

Pantheon’s egg-like Pantheone I active speakers can operate alone or paired in stereo, either way aiming to create an individual room-filling 360° experience from four silk-dome tweeters in each unit, with twin 4-inch midrangers, two 6.5-inch high-excursion bass drivers, and a total of 400W of Class-D power. They can stream with AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, high-res Wi-Fi streaming or can play via a minijack input.

There are also smaller active speakers, the Obsidian (inspired by volcanic stone), also streaming via WiFi or Bluetooth with these models able to operate on battery power (15-hour life is quoted). These were playing as a pair when we visited the room.

These very different speakers continue to generate great word of mouth; we saw them last year at the UK Hi-Fi Show Live, displaying their proudly Australian philosophy of ART + FORM + SOUND.

Microphase Audio Design (M.A.D.)

Jean-Marie Lière’s speakers are “handcrafted in Australia with French flair”, their cabinets made from inert marine-grade birch plywood handcrafted in Australia and fitted with bespoke drivers, including bass units often hidden away to face sideways or rearwards, making for highly slim towers with surprising performance.

The newly award-winning 120cm-high Tower 3 Signatures present as slim frontages displaying an AMT ribbon from Mundorf, and midrange made specially for M.A.D. by Audax in France, but firing from the side of each speaker is a 31cm bass driver from SBA Acoustics.

We don’t recall ever hearing any of M.A.D’s speakers sounding as outstandingly good as the Microphase Tower 3 Signatures on demo in the room this year, powered by Holton Audio amplification and playing from WiiM sources. They sounded entirely clear, pure and balanced from top to bottom, and our listening session was only enhanced by Jean-Marie introducing us to Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin and the 2017 Melbourne Symphony Orchestra recording under Benjamin Northey for her piece Golden Kitch – Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra.

But there was more, with a static display of a new design intended for professional use, though Jean-Marie confirmed to us that he’s happy to sell to consumers also. This is an active sealed monitor, the Pro 1 (with a smaller Pro 2 also planned): the Pro 1 is a 3-way design with again an AMT tweeter, 13cm bespoke midrange and a 21cm carbon-fibre bass driver, powered by a pair of 100W MOSFET amplifier modules.

While M.A.D.’s birch plywood is the consumer finish of choice, such pro gear for studio use is necessarily black!

Lenehan Brothers

A brand-new design from a new Australian company which is building on the legacy of Mike Lenehan’s 'Lenehan Audio' operating since 1995, with the company now undergoing a rebirth as Lenehan Brothers under the auspices of brothers Russell and Martin.

Russell had long been involved with Mike’s designs, and with the brothers now taking over from Mike there is the brand-new System One (a system courtesy of their matched dedicated stands and isolation pods), which was playing at the Show. Handbuilt on the Gold Coast using local hardwood timbers including spotted gum and Merbau, these speakers were sounding excellent in this ninth-floor hotel room, all very natural up top and with some substantial bass down low.

We enjoyed a couple of quality covers: Christy Moore’s Shine On again, and a most unusual take on Hey Joe by markusphilippe, streaming from a Bluesound Node into a Gustard preamp. The power amplification in our Friday visit was a Monarchy SM 70 Pro, a highly regarded 25-year-old zero-feedback 70W Class-A amplifier, but on Saturday we gather they were switching to the Purifi Eigentakt-based power amplifiers from March Audio.

The speakers sell at $14,500 complete with the isolation stands, the speakers only at $13,150. A great Sydney debut for this ‘new’ Australian brand.

March Audio

Always a show highlight, March Audio’s room this year presented the latest version of the Western Australian company's Kuoro floorstanding speakers, continuing the company’s line of dynamite boxes incorporating drivers from Purifi, which are becoming widely renowned for their meticulous approach to eliminating traditional distortions through patented innovations like constant Sd surround and low magnetic hysteresis motors.

March Audio shows what these can achieve in a carefully-designed system, the Kuoro (Finnish for “choir”) incorporating twin Purifi 6.5-inch aluminium cones and an aluminium dome tweeter in a 90cm-high cabinet – smaller, then, than March’s 105cm-high Ukkonen floorstanders, which use a single 8-inch bass driver and the extra cabinet volume to push just slightly deeper., though Alan March rates the Kuoros as achieving lower distortion through the use of the dual woofers.

The Kuoros have been recently amended with a new larger waveguide following collaboration between Alan March and Purifi in Denmark, improving the sound dispersion into the room and potentially slightly improving sensitivity as well. Powered by March’s stereo P482 power amp, they were certainly on song when playing Doug McLeod’s Too Many Misses For Me, delivering an incredible soundstage, including remarkable depth, the drums playing from the back of a triangle extending behind the speakers. Magic stuff.

Richter

A huge moment for Richter, bringing to the show two of the Sydney-based company’s brand-new Series 7 SE range – the standmounting Aurora S7SE ($3999), and the floorstanding Richter Dragon S7SE ($7999).

The development of the new series saw Richter’s long-time acoustic engineer Dr Martin Gosnell working closely with industrial designer Adam Hobbs to create a softer, more contemporary form – Richter’s Brian Rodgers says this new Series was conceived “to bridge aesthetic sophistication and acoustic performance”. It’s a clear success visually, with less black (anthracite-grey baffles with optional mottled-grey cloth grilles), a lovely non-gloss Natural Walnut veneer finish, and cabinets which gracefully curve to the rear: “quality furniture pieces”, as Brian describes them.

But for the visitors it was the sound of the new speakers that was knocking them out: “the best speakers we’ve ever heard under $10,000” was the comment of one experienced hi-fi listener who had already heard them at a recent meeting of the Sydney Audio Club. The new Dragons in particular just did everything right, from delicacy and detail to scale and punch. We were thrilled by their rendition of Mark Knopfler’s Sailing To Philadelphia, on which he trades vocals and shares guitar with James Taylor; this was in-the-room presence with not a frequency out of place. Power was from a Musical Fidelity M6si, fed by a Bluesound Node Icon streamer.

Among the secrets of the new speakers, whispered Mr Rodgers, are far better damped cabinets, which he says improved performance even before the latest drivers were installed: these are a massively constructed 165mm high-excursion bass cone, twin 165mm midranges and perhaps the most obvious addition – the ‘teardrop’ module with a dome tweeter and dome upper midrange. Brian was sharing response charts showing how this dome mid fills the crossover gap that can occur between conventional tweeters and mids. Of course this requires a 4-way design, with commensurate complex crossovers, but the proof is in the pudding, and the Dragons certainly sounded good enough to eat.

Dana Electro Acoustics

Dana (Dan A. Digital) is a New South Wales-based manufacturer specialising in active valve loudspeakers, isolation platforms, and interconnects; last year we had enjoyed a pair of the company's 'act:eve' speakers, which have valve amplifiers built into the speakers.

But this year we sat before tall thin ‘infinite baffle’ rectangles of a rigid composite material, screen-printed with Earth-from-space images, and apparently presenting just a single 54mm driver. Designer Goran Velimirovic was on hand to show us around the back of the speakers, where a 12-inch driver fires up and to the rear, but again without any large enclosure to support it.

As is Dana’s preference, these Omnis are active speakers with Class-D power inside, while equally remarkable is their price: $4200, plus just $200 to have your own choice of picture on the front panel.

There will also be a Class-A power version with an external amp, raising the price to $8500. No mention yet of these new speakers on the company's website yet, so apply directly for more information.

SpectraFlora

SpectraFlora had its award-winning Celata 88 standmounts on static display in its room (among the Homegrown Hi-Fi section of the Corridor of Sound), making room for this year’s main attraction of the new ‘Pendula 8 TL’, the first of a new architectural series of in-wall/on-wall designs.

Company founder Dr Steve Van Sluyter was on hand to demonstrate the remarkably slim new towers, which are two-way models using the eight-inch graphene-coated-magnesium woofer from SpectraFlora’s Aphelia 8 model, and a compression-driver tweeter here with a new inhouse-designed constant-directivity waveguide, fitted in a slim transmission-line cabinet which is sized to fit within 450mm or greater stud spacing.

The Pendula 8s looked luscious in their customisable timber detailing with SpectraFlora’s signature floral laser etching (grilles are available), and we liked how the central equipment rack was softened by flanking bouquets of Heliconia parakeetflowers (we think). Nice.

The Pendula were also sounding beautifully open and airy, playing Swedish saxophonist Arne Domnérus’ Antiphone Blue and Livingstone Taylor’s take on Isn’t She Lovely, being driven from a Gustard digital front-end through an Audio Research Reference One preamp and an Aurora Audio S2 power amplifier (by Damian Ware, president of the Melbourne Audio Club). Though sounding light on the very low-end, it was a slow roll-off, and the Pendula were far out into the room’s free space. As Dr Steve confirmed, wall-positioning will raise the bass response; there are also differently tuned Pendula variants for free space use, if required. They will sell at around $12k per pair.

Serhan Swift

A great reveal from Morris Swift and Brad Serhan on the ninth floor of the Show: a new active version of the universally-acclaimed mμ2 standmount.

This has been a long time coming; Morris reminded us that he had originally joined forces with Brad intending to develop active speakers, but they had decided the market preferred passive. But this latest creation was prompted by a specific request and deadline for a standalone active studio monitor; it goaded them into action.

Since it was a big call to cram all the required electronics inside the cabinet of the mμ2, the new active versions have a module clamped to the back, with only the toroidal transformer inside the cabinet – which, says Morris, conveniently took up precisely the same volume as the no-longer-required passive crossover. The module has a single XLR input, with an XLR chain out.

But there’s more to this new ‘Analogue Active mμ2’ than a two-way active standmount. The back active section actually has three Class-AB amplifiers within, one of which can power an extension cabinet (the ‘mμ2 Ex’) to go under the standmount, connected from a SpeakON output socket on the power module, thereby creating a three-way floorstander – which is then pretty much an active version of the Serhan Swift mμ3 floorstander. Were they just chopping up mu3s to make these, we asked? Not at all, replied Morris, as the mμ3 is already built as two separate enclosures.

This was a prototype, then, sometimes playing on the mμ2 Ex box (first picture), sometimes alone on stands (third picture). And we gather that they completed this only days before the Show, doubting whether they should reveal it yet.

And yet this was undeniably one of the best sounds in the Show, a presentation of outstanding realism, thrilling us with the bass line and sax on Peter Weniger’s Half-Life, among others. Production and pricing is a way off, but is expected to be between $10,000 and $12,000.

Avantgarde, Scheu, Fezz, MaxMedia

MaxMedia had two systems in one: during our visit we enjoyed the Scheu Diamond Maxi and Muarah turntable package playing through a COS Engineering D10v4 SE preamp, having its first-ever world reveal at the show; it sells at $9990 with DAC on board, with optional streaming and phono stage modules available at $1990 each.

COS Engineering’s S6 with LPS1 high‐performance HiFi Ethernet switch was also in the system for streaming but we listened analogue. The Scheu Diamond turntable is huge: there is a choice of base heights and platter heights (50mm weighing 4.5kg or 80mm weighing 7.5kg); this package version maxes out on both, at $13,000 including the Polish-made Muarah 9-inch tonearm and a Benz Micro cartridge, with the turntable’s base finishes in a choice of clear, black or granite.

Receiving the signal from the preamp were the stars of the room: tall and white-horned Avantgarde Acoustic Opus 1 fully active speakers, active two-way designs priced at $23,990, and the most compact horn system Avantegarde has ever built. It uses 13.8-inch wide-band spherical horns to cover midrange and treble (700Hz–20,000Hz) backed by a low-mid 10-inch driver with an inverse natural-fibre cone, along with 250W of built-in dedicated bass amplification.

Through all this MaxMedia’s Cameron Keating played New Order and Kraftwerk on vinyl, to the general delight of room visitors.

The second system played through the award-winning Pylon Jade 10 speakers and Arylic LP100 preamp/DAC/streamer, with power through another debut: Fezz Audio’s magnificent-looking Titania Mk2 valve amplifier, a new design from the Polish company which they hope will democratise valve amplifiers by making them more robust and easier to use — we have a review coming up, so will confirm this later!

Yamaha Music Australia

Yamaha (see also Ground Floor) had a second room up on the ninth floor with a triple demonstration under way.

At the front of the room a comfy couch was the perfect position to enjoy the Atmos-capable and Sound+Image award-winning True X Surround 90A soundbar package, complete with versatile wireless rears, rolling out an immersive presentation of the final Mission: Impossible movie.

The company’s high-end headphone collection was at the rear, an opportunity to compare the YH-4000 open Orthodynamic (planar magnetic) headphones with the YH-C3000 closed-back dynamics, along with the HA-L7A headphone amplifier.

But the big news was a world-first appearance of Yamaha’s new active standmount speakers, which will make their European debut at the new Vienna High End show in June.

Although their information cards were partially redacted for secrecy (!), our spies established that these may or may not be called the NX-70A, and that they use the same Zylon-spruce-based material for their ‘Harmonious Diaphragm’ 3cm tweeter and 13cm mid-woofer as do the company’s premium and hi-fi speakers right up to the top NS-5000 speakers.

But these are active streaming standmounts, with Class-D amplification, MusicCast streaming and multiroom built in, and inputs which include HDMI from your TV, optical and 3.5mm minijack analogue. The communication between speakers is wireless, but a cable can be used for higher-resolution linking.

All this with sexy copper highlights and a small display screen at the bottom for instant feedback. Pricing? That’ll have to wait…

Krispy Audio

A late but pleasing addition to the Show was this system from Berowra-based Krispy Audio, which brought together EgglestoneWorks Kiva 2 speakers ($47,000) with Bricasti’s M25 stereo power amp ($25,000) and the Esoteric N-05XE streamer/DAC/preamp ($17,000), connected with colourful Vermouth Cables from Bali, about which Krispy’s owner Cameron Pope was quite effusive, saying he used to make his own cables before finding he couldn’t do it cheaper or better than Vermouth were already doing.

The Kiva 2 speakers are equipped with new carbon-fibre tweeters, a switch for the company from beryllium, which is notoriously toxic to work with, and so limited to a very few suppliers globally. The new Kivas also now put the tweeter at the top, more traditionally, with two 6.5-inch mid/woofers and two 7.5-inch woofers below in a three-way system.

The system delivered a finely-etched and deep soundstage with a classical music demonstration, before showing their chops with the bouncy blues of St Paul & The Broken Bones playing Sanctify.

Vivid Audio – Avation

We visited Vivid’s room just as they had switched the standmount little Vivid Audio Kaya 12s for the larger floorstanding Kaya 90s – “I haven’t even fully positioned them,” warned Avation’s Mark Hamilton, yet the curvy South African speakers were sounding better to our ears than they had last year in a rather larger room: we loved the way they presented Bob Dylan growling through Man in the Long Black Coat.

The Kaya 90 is the top-of-the-range Kaya model, and carries much of the DNA from Vivid's higher Giya range – the tapered tube loading pioneered by Vivid’s Laurence Dickie (also on show in the Bowers Nautilus on the ground floor, an early Dickie design), as well as the company’s patented reaction-cancelling drivers, here a 26mm alloy tweeter dome, 100mm alloy midrange dome, and four side-facing force-cancelling 125mm alloy-coned woofers.

Perhaps contributing to the magic were a new pre and power amp combo from Ultrafide, a company based in Worcestershire’s Stourport, UK, with its factory down in Devon – the Class-A Ultrafide U4PRE preamplifier, and the U500DC power amplifier, offering 250W into 8 ohms (or 500W into the Kaya 90’s minimum 4 ohms). Together at $8000 a piece, these form Ultrafide’s ‘Ultra Sigma’ combo, something we think worth investigating further.

Stax - Audio Marketing

Audio Marketing went all Stax in their room this year, with a rare opportunity to hear every Stax earspeaker and every Stax driver (except the portable one), so you could hear exactly how the sound progresses and refines as you move from the SRM-D50 ($2200, the only earspeaker with non-Stax drivers, made by parent company Edifier) up to the SR-X9000 flagship ($10,750) with Stax’s own cutting-edge MILER-3 four-layer fixed electrodes, under the high-voltage excitation of the SRM-T8000 driver ($10,500).

Comparisons were easy thanks to a common source being fed to all the different models and drivers, from what must qualify as one of the most upmarket headphone source stacks seen at a show. It offered digital streaming via a Musical Fidelity MX-Stream and M8xDAC, or analogue sound from the award-winning M8xVinyl phono stage receiving its signal from the clear acrylic Musical Fidelity M8xTT turntable, itself benefitting from a new power supply, the X-Power TT, in one of MF’s gorgeous ‘X’-style tube chassis, which the company is in the process of reviving.

Also attracting attention were reference vinyl recordings from cable company inakustic, plus a range of cool Stax t-shirts!

Denon / Polk / Marantz

In the second and smaller room for the newly Harmanised ex-Masimo brands, Adam Prangell again excelled in his goal of demonstrating far more affordable systems which can deliver great entry to mid level hi-fi.

In this the Marantz or Denon / Polk combination is powerful: pairing the slimline 75W-per-channel Marantz Stereo 70s (HEOS streaming onboard) with the excellent Polk R200 speakers (award-winners from back in 2022) makes a fine $3000 system. On the other side of the room a Denon Home Amp and Polk R100 speakers hit a perfect small-room system price of $2300.

The other trick under the control of Adam’s smartphone was to use HEOS to send the sound to whichever speakers you might like. A Denon Bluetooth turntable, the DP-500BT, could Bluetooth its vinyl playback to one of the new Denon Home speakers on display; Adam could then pair up two Denon Home 600s (or 400s or 200s, all playing in the room), or to either of the Polk-ended systems, or to everything at once, with no noticeable latency between all the systems. What’s more, it worked nearly every time he did it, which gets you kudos in a hotel show situation where the Wi-Fi may not be 100% reliable.

A smorgasbord of kit in this small room, then, but all integrated under HEOS control, showing how a whole home could be similarly connected using the wide array of HEOS products. A great dem.

Best sound of the Show?

With pretty much every room on song this year, the decision for 'Best Sound of the Show' will not be an easy one! We had favourites among our team, with some variation of opinion but some definite common ground. Thankfully the final decision is made by the public through the voting and competition cards distributed at the Show. Counting will take place soon – watch this space!

• See all our Australian reviews from Sound+Image and Australian Hi-Fi magazines

• Keep an eye on all the developments for the Australian Hi-Fi Show 2027 here!

It may be a Bank Holiday in our native land, but that hasn’t stopped our ardent team of hi-fi and home cinema experts from bringing you a fresh entry into our weekly news digest, Rewind.

Despite our heartfelt pleas to the audio-visual gods, it was another busy week for the team. Over the past seven days, we have covered everything from new CD spinners to Big Tech attacks on lossless audio.

If you have struggled to keep on top of it all, don’t panic, you’re definitely not alone. Here’s everything you need to know.

Apple thinks lossless audio is kind of pointless for most people

Lossless audio, like speaker cables, seems to be a hot topic. In one camp, you have people such as veteran rocker Neil Young, who famously called for “real” fans to listen to his music on services that support it, so they can hear “everything” he recorded.

Others are convinced it doesn’t make a difference. We have heard arguments from both sides for years, but last week, we were surprised to hear Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music, throw shade at lossless audio. Specifically, while on the Billboard's On The Record podcast, he suggested that most people can’t hear the difference between standard and lossless streams.

The statement is a little odd, given Apple Music offers tiers with hi-res streaming, and the firm makes a robust library of HomePod smart speakers, Apple TV streamers and iPhones that support the technology. But hey, each to their own, we guess. As we’ve said before, if you really can’t hear the difference, fair enough. You have probably just saved a lot of money in the long run…

Read the full story: Apple Music exec: “Most people can’t hear the difference with lossless audio”

NAD’s got a new “precision-engineered” CD player

If you’re a fan of CDs, have cash to spare and want a “life-like” sound from your shiny discs, then NAD’s new C 589 may be the player you’ve been waiting for.

NAD unveiled the new CD player last week, promising its use of high-end parts and a clever Qrono D2a filtering technology, developed by reader favourite MQA Labs, will let it offer unparalleled levels of performance and a holistically more natural, life-like sound.

Considering our experience with the filtering technology on the Award-winning Bluesound Node Icon last year, the pairing piqued our interest. Here’s hoping we get the new player in for testing soon, to hear how it performs in the real world.

Read the full story: NAD’s “precision engineered” CD player uses advanced digital filtering to deliver a lifelike and precise sound

We reviewed a Product of the Year winner’s floorstander sibling

The Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2 are the floorstander sibling of the AE300 Mk2 standmounts we reviewed last year, which gives them some pretty big shoes to fill. Not only did the AE300 Mk2 earn a five-star rating, they also went on to win a Product of the Year accolade at the 2025 What Hi-Fi? Awards.

The AE309 Mk2 share a lot of common DNA with their standmount siblings, using the same drivers and having a similar (albeit larger), understated look. They also deliver the goods sonically.

Matched with price-appropriate hardware, such as the Arcam A15+ we used during testing, the speakers deliver a wonderfully natural, balanced sound that’s full of detail and insight. So much so that our reviewers didn’t find themselves pining for our current recommendation at this level, the Award-winning Fyne Audio F501E.

As we say in our Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2 review: “Credit to Acoustic Energy, we now have another member of its 300 Series that comes highly recommended by our test team. The compact AE309 Mk2 stand tall in a tough sector of the loudspeaker market, but their superbly balanced and musical sound is a match for any rival. These are speakers that definitely deserve your time and, potentially, money.”

Read our full Acoustic Energy AE309 Mk2 review

Our senior staff writer saw Samsung’s next-gen TV

There’s been a lot of chat about RGB Mini LED TVs recently – including from us – we have our first set with the tech, the Hisense UR9, in for testing right now.

This is a new panel technology being pitched by numerous companies, including Hisense, Samsung, Sony, TCL and more, as the future of premium TVs. Philips is also using it in some sets, but was more reserved with its performance claims when we spoke to the brand last month.

While we are too early in our reviewing journey with the tech to confirm if it is the “OLED-killer” that companies are promising, based on our senior staff writer Lewis Empson’s latest hands-on experience with Samsung’s R95H, which uses its RGB Micro LED version of the tech, it’s certainly interesting.

Seeing the set next to Samsung’s latest OLEDs at a press demo, including the Samsung S95H, it was the R95H his eye kept coming back to. So much so, that he reported:

“Using a medley of reference clips we often use for testing, from films including Oppenheimer, Blade Runner 2049 and Pan, I got a flavour of what this TV can do. It’s safe to say that I walked away rather impressed.”

Read the full story: I’ve seen Samsung’s 2026 lineup early: there’s one TV I can’t stop thinking about – and it’s not an OLED

Our other senior staff writer went to a Dolby Atmos music mixing studio

While Lewis was having fun with Samsung, our other senior staff writer, Harry McKerrell, was jetting off to LA.

As well as taking some personal time to try to sell his screenplay, Harry also managed to visit Larrabee Sound Studios, to find out how Dolby Atmos music is mixed and why so many new artists are obsessed with it.

Featuring Studio 4, a specially designed room, the tour gave him a fly-on-the-wall look at how mixing maestros leverage Atmos’s ability to create a dome of sound to help make music “more immersive”. And it’s not as simple a process as you might think.

Read the full story: I heard a Dolby Atmos mix in a professional recording studio – and it has changed my view of spatial audio

MORE:

These are the best TVs we have reviewed

We rank the best floorstanding speakers

Our picks of the best stereo amplifiers

If you’re researching portable projectors, it’s very likely that you will have come upon offerings from the brand Xgimi.

The China-based company offers a range of products, from premium 4K projectors to the smaller portable models we are looking at here.

The Xgimi MoGo 4 is a small cylindrical model that has featured on our best portable projectors and best outdoor projectors guides since we reviewed it last year.

The Xgimi Vibe One, on the other hand, is the first product from Xgimi’s new budget-focused ‘Vibe’ sub-brand, which targets budget buyers even more than the MoGo 4.

We have pitted the pair head-to-head in our test room to see which is the best one for you to spend your money on.

Xgimi Vibe One vs Xgimi MoGo 4: price

Both of these Xgimis target the budget end of the projector market, of course, with affordability and portability their USPs.

The Vibe One is the cheaper option of the two, having launched at £219 / $269 / AU$599. It hit the shelves only late last year, but discounts are already available at various retailers, making it even more affordable.

Going for a slightly more premium audience, the MoGo 4 also boasts a slightly more premium price tag. It has an official price of £509 / $499 / AU$1399, but you can find it cheaper in the UK if you look around. We have often seen it drop to £399.

Despite this discount, the Vibe One still comes out on top in terms of pricing.

** Winner: Xgimi Vibe One **

Xgimi Vibe One vs Xgimi MoGo 4: build

Both projectors are compact and easy to carry, and you shouldn’t have an issue putting either in a bag to take it on the go.

They each weigh about the same, too, with the Vibe One coming in at 1.4kg and the MoGo 4 at 1.3kg. So there’s no need to worry about lugging around a bulky projector for a garden movie night.

The MoGo 4 is slightly more petite than the Vibe One, measuring 21 x 10 x 10 cm (hwd), which is about the same size as a large water bottle. The cheaper model is a little larger (31 x 12 x 14 cm), but it’s still easily portable – indeed, the Vibe One has a useful handle at the top which makes it even easier to carry around.

Both projectors are activated in the same way: you tilt the body up from the bottom to face your screen or wall (a screen is highly recommended for a better picture). The MoGo 4 offers an extra feature as the hard plastic on the side transforms into a nifty stand.

The Vibe One comes in two colour options: blue spark or cloud ash. You can also personalise your model with the included stickers, which should please kids or whimsical adults. The MoGo 4 is available in just one finish: silver with orange trimmings.

The projectors offer almost identical remote controls, which let you control volume, output, auto-focus, and the settings menu. There are also shortcuts for a few streaming services to speed up menu navigation.

The Vibe One’s remote does not have a backlight, but the MoGo 4’s does.

With the MoGo 4, there is an additional mini-remote that hangs from a rope on the side of the body. This remote keeps things extremely minimal with just controls for volume, a D-pad to navigate the menu and a back button.

While both models offer a solid and compact build, the MoGo 4 takes the prize here for its sturdy stand and more premium overall feel.

** Winner: Xgimi MoGo 4 **

Xgimi Vibe One vs Xgimi MoGo 4: features

Both the Vibe One and the MoGo 4 have a built-in battery, but this good news comes with a caveat: the models offer a claimed 1.2 hours and 2.5 hours of battery life, respectively.

And that is when they are in Eco mode, which dims the brightness in order to preserve energy. In our preferred Standard mode, that estimated figure reduces a fair bit. This is less of an issue for the MoGo 4, as it can be plugged into a power bank using the USB-C connection, but there is no such feature with the Vibe One.

On each model, you will find one HDMI port, although ARC is supported only with the MoGo 4. Bluetooth 5.1 is available with both Xgimi projectors.

Both models deliver a 1080p Full HD image. The Vibe One is claimed to offer up to a 150-inch picture, while the MoGo 4 offers slightly less at a claimed 120 inches. Xgimi says you can take the screen size up to 200 inches with the MoGo 4, but you won't be getting the best display quality available.

The MoGo 4 can go half as bright again as the Vibe One, with the projectors producing a claimed maximum brightness of 450 and 300 ISO Lumens, respectively. The MoGo 4, then, has a better chance at delivering a punchy picture in well-lit settings.

You also get access to the Google TV smart platform through both models. This includes the usual streaming suspects such as Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV. There is, however, no BBC iPlayer on the cards. There is the option to use Google Cast from a smart device, but it would be nice to have native app support.

From the remote control or settings menu, you can access the auto-focus and auto-keystone correction. This works pretty well in our test room to adjust to the space, although we find ourselves using the manual features to fine-tune.

There is a range of picture modes, but for each unit, we settle on Movie mode with a bit of further adjustment in the settings menu.

Thanks to its better battery life, the MoGo 4 takes this round as well.

** Winner: Xgimi MoGo 4 **

Xgimi Vibe One vs Xgimi MoGo 4: picture

Despite their small statures and budget price tags, both models are surprisingly cinematic performers with plenty to like.

The Xgimi MoGo 4 provides a punchy yet detailed picture. When watching Knives Out: A Glass Onion Mystery on Netflix, for example, we say in our review: “It, of course, does not have the detail of bigger, more expensive projectors such as the Nebula X1, but for such a small piece of kit, the MoGo 4 manages to portray a nicely balanced picture, with the branches of trees in the background appearing crisp.”

Colours are incredibly punchy as well, to the extent they sometimes verge towards being overexuberant. This is probably a decision Xgimi has made to compensate for when users are watching films outdoors, but it's certainly noticeable when viewing in a dark room.

When we switch to the Xgimi Vibe One, we don't find the colours to be too vivid. They are, rather, better balanced – which results in a surprisingly cinematic picture.

Projecting Alien: Romulus, the Vibe One shows off its abilities with dark scenes. As a ship floats through the depths of space, the projector presents the dark abyss with an impressively deep black by budget projector standards. Still, the MoGo 4 goes a fair bit darker and manages to dig out more subtlety in the levels of black during the same scene.

Motion handling is better done with the Vibe One. It makes movement feel more natural compared with the MoGo 4, which can smear slightly during fast-paced action.

The MoGo 4, as you would expect considering its higher lumen count, looks brighter and more vibrant than the Vibe One. The latter will be fine for a spot of sunny sport viewing, but expect to lose a fair bit of detail, especially when compared with its more expensive cousin, when watching in a well-lit environment.

While the Xgimi Vibe One nails the basics in terms of motion handling and natural colours, the MoGo 4 is the better performer overall with its brighter picture and deeper blacks.

** Winner: Xgimi MoGo 4 **

Xgimi Vibe One vs Xgimi MoGo 4: sound

Neither projector manages to blow us away in the audio department. The MoGo 4 features two 6W speakers, while the Vibe One offers two 3W speakers, with both built into their small bodies.

They struggle to push sound far enough to create an immersive audio experience, which results in a rather localised performance.

The MoGo 4 offers voices that are clear and reasonably crisp. It also delivers the upbeat soundtrack to Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, for example, with the right level of expression.

The Vibe One, on the other hand, has a harder time making voices audible. Continuing with Alien: Romulus, we say in our review: “As the android Andy and his human sister Rain rush through the bustling mining colony, their conversation gets muddled with radio chatter in the background, which makes it hard to decipher at points.”

And that’s in a quiet test room – it will be harder to hear during an outdoor viewing with a few guests.

With each model, we recommend investing in a Bluetooth speaker to get a clearer, louder audio experience. Still, the MoGo 4 is the more expressive and clear option, so it is the winner here.

** Winner: Xgimi MoGo 4 **

Xgimi Vibe One vs Xgimi MoGo 4: verdict

The Vibe One is the more affordable of the two projectors here, and its balanced yet detailed picture means it is the winner on a picture-performance-per-pound basis.

But the MoGo 4 delivers a more cinematic image with greater brightness and contrast, making it better suited to use in a bright room – or even outside.

On top of that, the Vibe One's disappointing battery life and inexplicable lack of support for USB-C battery packs mean it's much less practically portable than its more expensive sibling.

So, while the Vibe One's picture performance is very impressive for its low price, the MoGo 4 is worth stretching to for the even better picture quality and much greater practicality.

**Overall winner: Xgimi MoGo 4**

LG’s C-series OLED TVs have long been among the easiest recommendations when it comes to the best OLED TVs.

They combine excellent picture quality, comprehensive gaming support and a slick smart platform, all while costing much less than flagship OLED models.

The LG C5 was already a benchmark at this level, delivering outstanding picture performance and a feature set that many rivals struggle to match. Now, the newer LG C6 has arrived, promising improved processing, higher brightness and better sound.

Both TVs earned five stars in their respective reviews, and you’re likely wondering if it’s worth spending more on the newer C6 or saving some cash and sticking with its predecessor.

Below, we break down the differences across all areas to help make your decision easier.

LG C6 vs LG C5: price

The 65-inch C6 launched with a price tag of £2500 / $2699 / AU$3999, making it cheaper in the UK and Australia than the equivalent C5 was at launch (£2700 / $2699 / AU$4299), and the same price in the US.

But that's not the whole story. Because (at the time of writing) the C6 is still brand-new, you will still have to pay that launch price. But because the C5 has now been available for over a year, it's available for vastly less.

The C6 will come down in price, too, but for now, this round simply has to go to the super-discounted C5.

** Winner: LG C5 **

LG C6 vs LG C5: design

If you were hoping for a dramatic redesign between generations, you might be disappointed. The C6 looks extremely similar to the C5, and it’s hard to distinguish the two at a glance.

Both sets feature LG’s familiar C-series design – a very thin OLED panel across most of the screen, with a thicker rectangular housing at the lower rear that contains the electronics, connections and speakers. This allows the edges of the display to remain strikingly slim, making for a more minimalist, immersive setup.

The effect is particularly appealing when wall-mounted, where the thin panel appears to hover slightly away from the wall thanks to the deeper central housing behind it.

Screen size options are also the same across both models, ranging from 42 inches to 83 inches. Their stand design is the same, too, with the central pedestal making soundbar placement a little awkward due to its forward angle.

In other words, if you liked the look of the C5, you’ll feel right at home with the C6. It remains one of the most attractive OLED TVs around – even if the design is now very familiar.

** Winner: Draw **

LG C6 vs LG C5: features

Both TVs offer a comprehensive feature set, but the C6 introduces a few upgrades under the hood.

The biggest change is the new Alpha 11 Gen 3 processor inside the C6, replacing the Alpha 9 Gen 8 chip used in the C5. LG says the newer processor enables a 12-bit processing pipeline for more precise tone and colour management.

It also enables Dual AI Super Resolution, which performs two separate AI passes when upscaling lower-resolution content – one focusing on sharpening edges and the other on refining textures and detail.

Another addition is AI HDR Remastering, which analyses each frame to enhance contrast, sharpness and colour. It can also attempt to make SDR material appear more HDR-like, though results can vary.

At 55- and 65-inch sizes, both TVs use LG Display’s established WOLED panel technology, though the larger 77- and 83-inch versions of the C6 switch to LG Display’s newer Primary RGB Tandem OLED panels.

The smart platform has also been updated. The C5 runs webOS 25, while the C6 moves to webOS 26 with tweaks including the Home Hub shortcut, a personalised My Page area and a Continue Watching row.

Gaming features are excellent on both models. Each TV offers four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports that support VRR, ALLM and Dolby Vision gaming.

The C6 gains a slight edge for PC gamers with support for refresh rates up to 4K/165Hz, while the C5 tops out at 4K/144Hz. Console players using a PS5 or Xbox Series X will effectively see the same 4K/120Hz experience on either model.

HDR support is identical across both TVs – Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG are supported, while HDR10+ remains absent.

** Winner: LG C6 **

LG C6 vs LG C5: picture

The LG C5 already impressed us with its rich colours, strong contrast and cinematic presentation. In our testing, it proved to be a consistently engaging performer, with punchy yet natural colours and particularly strong low-light colour volume.

Watching Blade Runner 2049, for instance, the C5 delivers atmospherically rich images, with convincing shadow detail and impressively nuanced colour in darker scenes. Skin tones are warm and lifelike, and there’s a pleasing sense of depth, with subjects standing out clearly against the background.

Brightness is also a strength for the C5 by traditional OLED standards. Scenes from Pan show strong highlight intensity, with sunlight shimmering through sails and vivid colours throughout the image, even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of more advanced OLED panel types.

However, the LG C6 manages to squeeze noticeably more performance from a similar panel thanks to its new processing platform.

The most obvious improvement is brightness. Highlights appear more intense, colours carry slightly greater richness, and the overall image has a stronger sense of depth and dimensionality.

In scenes from Pan, reflections on water appear brighter and more vivid on the C6, while sunsets display smoother colour gradations and richer tones in the surrounding clouds.

Colour reproduction also sees subtle refinement. Reds and oranges appear slightly richer and more lifelike, helping skin tones look warmer and more convincing without drifting into artificial territory.

Upscaling is improved, too. Lower-resolution sources such as standard-definition content appear slightly smoother and cleaner, while HD material benefits from more refined detail handling. While the difference is subtle with higher-quality sources, it is noticeable with lower-resolution content.

The C5 remains a superb performer and still earns a five-star picture rating. But the C6 pushes things further with greater brightness, richer colours and more refined processing.

** Winner: LG C6 **

LG C6 vs LG C5: sound

Built-in audio has never been the C-series’ strongest suit, but this is another area where the C6 improves on its predecessor.

Both TVs use the same speaker hardware, but LG appears to have refined the processing and tuning on the newer model.

As a result, the C6 sounds cleaner and more controlled than the C5. Bass isn’t dramatically deeper, but it is tighter and less prone to distortion at higher volumes.

Dialogue also comes through with more warmth and character, and the soundstage feels slightly more spacious. Dolby Atmos effects project further away from the screen when required, giving the presentation a greater sense of scale.

The C5’s audio is perfectly serviceable for everyday viewing, but it lacks low-end weight and overall scale. That difference is reflected in the review scores – the C6 earns four stars for sound, while the C5 managed just three.

Neither TV replaces a proper sound system, of course, and pairing either model with one of the best soundbars remains highly recommended.

** Winner: LG C6 **

LG C6 vs LG C5: verdict

The LG C5 was already one of the best TVs for most people, delivering superb picture quality, excellent gaming features and a polished smart platform.

The LG C6 builds on that foundation with brighter images, richer colours, improved processing and better sound. It’s not a radical reinvention, but it is a clear step forward – enough to make it the new benchmark in this class.

That said, the C5 still makes a compelling case for itself. With discounts now widely available, it’s likely to remain the better value option for buyers who want a premium OLED experience without paying for the newest model.

Given our performance-per-pound (or bang-for-buck, if you prefer) mantra, we're therefore giving the C5 the win here – at least for now.

Once the C6's price has dropped to within about 20 per cent of the C5's, our buying advice will likely change – it is undoubtedly the better TV, after all – but at this moment, the value offered by the heavily discounted C5 simply can't be ignored.

** Overall winner: LG C5 **

TCL has announced its latest answer to the art TV craze, and it's packing an upgrade that could see it produce a better quality picture than most of its rivals.

The A4000 Pro NXTVISION blends style and substance, with a frame-like chassis that challenges Samsung's super popular The Frame and Hisense's Canvas TV.

It's designed to blend seamlessly into your living room environment, and when paired with the Art Gallery mode (which features curated artwork and AI-generated content) and included walnut woodgrain frame, it doubles as a versatile piece of wall art when not in use.

Sounds familiar so far, right? Well, TCL hopes to set its offering apart by bringing the picture quality up to standard, as some of the frame TVs on the market sacrifice panel tech for the sake of design.

Not TCL, though, as it has included its precise QD-Mini LED backlight on this TV, and paired it with a matte HVA panel, which should improve viewing angles. That's quite a step up over Hisense's edge-lit QLED Canvas TV.

TCL claims to have included up to 488 dimming zones (presumably this refers to the largest 75-inch screen size), and the A4000 Pro also supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

Furthermore, this TV can support gaming signals up to 4K/144Hz over HDMI 2.1, with VRR and ALLM supported, making this a solid choice for gamers and home decor aficionados alike.

TCL has also included the Google TV smart platform and an Onkyo-tuned 2.0 channel sound system, which supports Dolby Atmos and DTS Audio. It says that "dialogue is clear and immersive without requiring an external audio set-up" on the A4000 Pro NXTVISION, which will appeal to minimalists who don't want trailing cables.

This TV comes in four sizes, starting at 43 inches, and it undercuts both of the rivals we've mentioned above. The 55-inch model starts at £899, which seems like a bargain compared to the equivalent Hisense, which we reviewed at £1099.

Samsung's 2026 Frame Pro (which is also billed as a Mini LED art TV), comes in at a staggering £1699 for the 55-inch model, which makes the TCL also look like a steal by comparison.

The TCL A4000 Pro NXTVISION is set to launch later this year, and you can see pricing for all sizes below:

• 75A400 PRO-UK – £1,399
• 65A400 PRO-UK – £1,099
• 55A400 PRO-UK – £899
• 43A400 PRO-UK – £599
  

MORE:

Read our full Hisense Canvas review

Check out our picks for the best Mini LED TVs

And read our full TCL C7K review

On the hunt for one of the best OLED TVs? Then models such as the LG C6 and Sony Bravia 8 should be on your shortlist.

The LG C6 is the latest evolution of LG’s hugely popular C-series – a step-down OLED that promises improved brightness, better processing and stronger sound than its predecessor.

The Sony Bravia 8, meanwhile, is a What Hi-Fi? Award winner that builds on the legacy of the superb Sony A80L, focusing on natural colour reproduction, excellent motion handling, and a more refined audio experience.

We’ve fully reviewed both TVs and compared them in detail below to help make your choice that little bit easier.

LG C6 vs Sony Bravia 8: price

The 65-inch LG C6's launch price is £2500 / $2699/ AU$3999, and because (at the time of writing) it's brand-new, you'll be lucky to get any kind of discount on it.

The Sony Bravia 8 launched at £2699 / $2800 / AU$4495 for the 65-inch version, but that was over a year ago, and you can now get it with some massive discounts.

For now, then this round goes to the Sony model, but do keep an eye on prices – LG tends to go pretty early and pretty big on the discounts, and it might not be too long before the two TVs cost similar money.

** Winner: Sony Bravia 8 **

LG C6 vs Sony Bravia 8: design

The LG C6 sticks with a familiar formula. It features an ultra-thin OLED panel across most of its surface, paired with a central rear housing that contains the electronics and connections.

It’s lightweight, easy to manoeuvre, and works well both on a stand or mounted on a wall.

The Sony Bravia 8 takes a slightly different approach. It uses a twin-foot stand design rather than a central pedestal, with adjustable positions that make it easier to accommodate a soundbar. It can also sit very low to the surface or be raised for extra clearance.

The main practical advantage for Sony is its stand flexibility, while the LG arguably looks more striking thanks to its extremely thin panel.

** Winner: Draw **

LG C6 vs Sony Bravia 8: features

Both TVs are well equipped, but the LG C6 has a clear edge when it comes to gaming and connectivity.

It features four full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports, for a start, all supporting 4K/165Hz (and 4K/120Hz), VRR, ALLM and Dolby Vision gaming. This makes it one of the most versatile OLED TVs available for gamers.

In contrast, the Sony Bravia 8 offers four HDMI ports, but only two of those HDMI 2.1 spec, and one of those doubles as the eARC connection.

That can be limiting if you’re connecting multiple current-generation consoles alongside a soundbar – a surprising omission given Sony’s PlayStation heritage.

The Bravia 8 also caps out at 4K/120Hz rather than the higher refresh rates supported by the LG, though this is only likely to matter for PC gamers with powerful rigs capable of pushing higher framerates.

Elsewhere, LG uses webOS 26 on the C6, while Sony runs Google TV. Both platforms are strong on app support, though Discovery+ is absent on the LG, and BBC iPlayer failed to launch on our early review sample.

As for HDR support, it’s identical – both TVs support Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG, while HDR10+ is absent.

Under the hood, the C6 uses LG’s Alpha 11 Gen 3 processor with a 12-bit processing pipeline and AI-driven upscaling improvements. The Bravia 8, meanwhile, uses Sony’s Bravia XR processor, which focuses on delivering a more natural, cinematic image.

This is a fairly close round overall, but thanks to its additional gaming chops (most notably the extra HDMI 2.1 sockets) and slicker smart platform, we're giving the win to the C6.

** Winner: LG C6 **

LG C6 vs Sony Bravia 8: picture quality

The LG C6 delivers a brighter, richer image than previous C-series models. Highlights are more intense, colours are more vibrant, and the overall image has a stronger sense of depth and dimensionality.

Watching Pan, for example, the C6 shows clear improvements in highlight intensity and colour gradation. Reflections on water appear brighter and more vivid, while sunsets display smoother tonal transitions and richer hues in the surrounding clouds. The result is a more dynamic and three-dimensional image without sacrificing naturalism.

Upscaling is improved too, particularly with lower-resolution sources, which appear slightly cleaner and more refined, with subtle gains in edge definition and texture compared with previous C-series models.

The Sony Bravia 8, however, takes a slightly different approach. Rather than chasing maximum impact, it focuses on accuracy and naturalism.

Skin tones are a particular strength. Watching Dune Part Two, characters’ complexions appear warm and lifelike, with more realistic colour balance than many rivals. Subtle tonal shifts in skin and clothing are handled with care, helping the image feel more authentic.

Motion handling is another standout area. In Blade Runner 2049, fast-moving shots of vehicles crossing dusty landscapes are handled beautifully, with no obvious artefacts and excellent clarity throughout.

The Bravia 8 also delivers impressive contrast and depth. In darker scenes from Blade Runner 2049, fine details – such as textures in furniture and shadowy backgrounds – remain clearly visible, contributing to a strong sense of three-dimensionality.

Brightness is strong for a standard WOLED panel, and in challenging material such as Pan, the Bravia 8 produces punchy highlights with good detail retention, though it doesn’t quite match the added intensity and punch delivered by the LG C6.

Ultimately, though, while the Bravia 8 is a lovely, cinematically consistent performer in its own right, the newer C6 offers an extra bit of sparkle without deviating meaningfully from creative intent, and that's why it takes this round.

** Winner: LG C6 **

LG C6 vs Sony Bravia 8: sound quality

The LG C6 improves on previous C-series models with cleaner, more controlled audio, tighter bass and clearer dialogue. It’s a solid performance by TV standards, but it will still be comfortably beaten by a dedicated sound system, such as one of the best soundbars.

The Sony Bravia 8, however, is one of the best-sounding OLED TVs we’ve tested – and the clear leader in this step-down OLED class.

Its Acoustic Surface Audio+ system uses actuators behind the screen to produce sound, which helps audio feel more directly tied to the on-screen action. Dialogue is well placed, effects track movement convincingly, and the overall presentation feels more spacious and precise.

It does lack some low-end weight, but its control and cohesion are excellent, and it avoids the distortion that can affect many TV speaker systems.

While we still recommend a soundbar for the best experience, the Bravia 8 clearly offers a more capable and immersive built-in audio experience.

** Winner: Sony Bravia 8 **

LG C6 vs Sony Bravia 8: verdict

The LG C6 and Sony Bravia 8 are both excellent OLED TVs, but they cater to slightly different priorities.

The LG C6 is the more versatile all-rounder. It offers stronger brightness, more impactful visuals and class-leading gaming features, making it a great choice for a wide range of users.

The Sony Bravia 8, meanwhile, is the option for purists. It delivers a wonderfully natural and cinematic picture, exceptional motion handling, and some of the best built-in sound you’ll find on a TV.

All of that said, if the two TVs were the same price, we would confidently point you towards the newer LG C6.

The thing is, they're not the same price, and the fact that you can currently get the Sony for hundreds of pounds/dollars less than the LG rather complicates things.

For that reason, we're calling this one a draw for now, but should the C6 be discounted to similar levels as the Bravia 8, that's the model we recommend.

** Overall winner: Draw **

As the large-screen trend continues, many people are looking at investing in a projector, rather than the 100-inch-plus TVs on offer from the likes of Hisense, TCL and Samsung. And, to furnish that desire, we are seeing more ultra-short throw (UST) projectors hit the market than ever before.

Acer is the latest brand to jump on the trend with the catchily named PD1520Us projector. It boasts an affordable price tag and the capability to project a huge image without taking up much space.

Weighing just 740g, this UST projector seems to join Samsung’s The Premiere 5 and Optoma’s Photon Go projectors in this quirky new category of compact UST projectors.

It features an LED light source, with a claimed 2000 LED lumens of brightness, and a reported lifespan of 30,000 hours. Setup should also be easy, thanks to the auto focus and an auto 2D keystone feature for an easy setup.

Acer also touts wi-fi, Bluetooth, and screen-mirroring functionality built in, allowing users to beam content from a phone or tablet. There is also a smart platform built in, which supports Netflix and YouTube, although it appears to be a proprietary operating system rather than Google TV or Android TV.

Despite its small footprint, this projector can beam a 100-inch Full HD image onto your wall, and it needs to sit only a few centimetres from your wall, to do so according to Acer.

The company says that it has specifically designed this UST projector to be “light enough to move from the lounge to the bedroom”, and “for UK homes where space is at a premium”. The built-in battery, which Acer says is rated to last around two hours on a single charge, means it can even be used outside.

Acer also says that this projector has “4K support”, which we presume means that it can accept 4K signals, but outputs them in 1080p. We have reached out to Acer for confirmation.

Much as with the Samsung Premiere 5, you can change the orientation by standing the projector in an upright position to beam a 23-inch interactive surface onto a table, worktop, or even the floor.

Acer even has a variant that includes the same touch-screen-style interface, although that is being sold only through commercial channels currently.

Priced at £550/€650 (or £650/€700 for the Touch variant), the Acer PD1520Us sits below the Samsung and Optoma rivals mentioned above, making it a tempting choice for those looking for a UST on a budget.

MORE:

Read our full Optoma Photon Go review

As well as our Samsung The Premiere 5 review

And check out our picks for the best portable projectors

We get the impression that Samsung’s audio division might be one of the hardest-working teams in the AV industry. Delivering a new soundbar lineup every year is no mean feat – especially when they’re this good.

While the likes of Sonos, Sony and JBL tend to refresh their models every few years, Samsung somehow always manages to have a fresh set of soundbars ready every year, though that can lead to some generations having quite subtle differences from their predecessors; case in point, the HW-Q990H.

Last year’s HW-Q990F wowed us with an impressive new subwoofer that was built from the ground up to deliver punchy, musical and controlled bass from a surprisingly small package.

The HW-Q990H, which we have before us in our home cinema testing room, seems like a much more modest upgrade on paper – but when we take a listen, it turns out that there are a few more changes under the hood.

Price

Samsung has decided to launch the HW-Q990H at roughly the same £1599 / $2000 / AU$1999 price as its predecessor (that's actually £100 cheaper than last year here in the UK).

While that might sound like a lot to pay for a soundbar system now, we need to keep in mind that, traditionally speaking, Samsung's annual system tends to tumble in price fairly quickly and consistently throughout the year.

Last year’s HW-Q990F, for example, has dropped well below the £800 mark at various points since its launch – and especially during the major sales events such as Black Friday.

In fact, there is still plenty of Q990F stock around with huge discounts, and that is going to make it hard for the new Q990H to justify its high launch price.

Some more affordable all-in-one soundbar options have scored highly in our test room recently, including the Sonos Arc Ultra (£999 / $999 / AU$1799) and Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9 (£1399 / $1400 / AU$1795), which may appeal to those wanting a neater solution.

However, none of these come with dedicated surround speakers or a subwoofer in the way that the Samsung does. You’ll have to cough up some extra cash to create an HW-Q990H adjacent system with these bars.

Design

If you were to put the soundbar portion of the HW-Q990H system in a lineup next to the Q990F, Q990D and Q990C, we’d seriously struggle to pick it out as the latest model. Looks-wise, this soundbar is practically identical to its predecessor, which is both good and bad news.

This is a very well-built and premium-feeling system. Everything is constructed from aluminium or a sturdy, high-quality plastic.

The main soundbar measures 7 x 123 x 14cm (hwd) and weighs 7.3kg, whereas the surround speakers are 20 x 13 x 14cm and weigh 3.4kg each.

The subwoofer, on the other hand, is a cube measuring 25 x 25 x 25cm and weighing 8.3kg. Those measurements are absolutely identical to the HW-Q990F’s.

This design is starting to look quite tired. The sharp, elongated hexagonal design is a touch brutalist (especially compared to Samsung’s sleek OLED TVs), and while the metallic grey finish is sleek, we think that the edgy soundbar and rounded cuboid subwoofer are at odds with one another aesthetically.

We prefer LG’s handsome (but sonically flawed) Sound Suite H7, or the smooth curves of the Sonos Arc Ultra. That being said, this isn’t a beauty contest, so we’re more interested in its features and sound performance – though we also need to remember that this bar will constantly be in your eyeline, and the surround speakers will be permanent fixtures in your living room.

Features

As with every Samsung product we test these days, from TVs to mobile phones, the HW-Q990F is feature-packed. There is, of course, a healthy dose of AI inclusions, but we’ll start with the hardware configuration.

This is an 11.1.4 system, with an impressive total of 23 individual drivers on board. This includes 15 drivers in the main soundbar unit, three in each of the wireless surround speakers, and two 8-inch woofers (in a push/pull configuration) in the wireless subwoofer.

Both the soundbar and surround speakers feature upward-firing drivers, which brings us neatly onto the immersive sound formats that this system supports.

The Q990H features support for three immersive audio formats: Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Samsung’s Eclipsa Audio. Having full coverage of the available formats is a bonus, and while Eclipsa hasn’t been adopted by any other services aside from YouTube so far, it’s nice to be future-proofed in case that changes at some point.

In order to achieve the best surround sound experience, Samsung recommends placing the rear surround speakers at a 135-150-degree angle behind the listening position. Thankfully, Samsung’s SpaceFit Sound Pro feature, which is essentially this soundbar’s calibration system, can accommodate if your space doesn’t allow for this placement.

Interestingly, unlike most soundbars we test, which tend to take one set of measurements to map your room and adapt the sound, Samsung’s version is a clever, constantly running system that monitors your listening space at all times to make adjustments in real time.

On top of this, Samsung supports four sound modes: Standard, Surround, Game and AI Adaptive.

Standard takes a straightforward approach in which signals are directly reproduced (two-channel recordings are presented in stereo, for example), whereas Surround broadens the soundfield by introducing audio upscaling processing.

The Game setting reduces latency, and the AI Adaptive mode will, as the name suggests, employ artificial intelligence to analyse your content and adjust the sound to suit.

Another layer of processing is Samsung’s new Sound Elevation feature, which is new for this model. It’s designed to raise the audio upwards to match the position of your screen.

Samsung hasn’t really given a clear indication of how it determines where to place the audio, and for us, it seems to overshoot slightly and place the sound towards the top edge of our reference TV. This setting may appeal more to those who wall-mount their TV and leave a gap between it and their soundbar.

There is also a new Auto Volume feature that controls sudden loud spikes in volume when switching between different channels, applications or sources.

All of these sound settings can be applied via the included remote, and the dot-matrix display on the front of the soundbar is fairly useful for telling you which setting you're adjusting.

However, the Samsung SmartThings app is the preferred way of interacting with the settings menus, thanks to its snappy connection and set-up time, easy-to-understand menus, and generally solid stability.

You can also control your source from this app, including music streamed wirelessly to the system. The HW-Q990H supports Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, Tidal Connect and Bluetooth, and it’s even Roon Ready.

Samsung also allows you to connect the Q990H wirelessly to many of its compatible TVs, and Dolby Atmos is even supported here – though for the sake of getting the best audio quality and reduced latency, we recommend sticking with a wired connection.

While we’re on the topic of the Samsung ecosystem, Q Symphony – in which your Samsung TV’s speakers work in tandem with the system – is also supported here. It's worth trying, but don't assume that using Q Symphony will produce better sound than using the Q990H's speakers alone. Many TVs will bring down the overall sound quality rather than improve it.

Wired connectivity is equally impressive, as the soundbar has three HDMI sockets in total. This includes an HDMI eARC for connecting to your TV, alongside two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 passthrough sockets, which support up to 4K/120Hz signals with VRR and ALLM, as well as HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision (the last of which is especially nice as Samsung’s own TVs don’t support Dolby Vision).

Sound

We’ll be the first to admit that we weren’t expecting much of a change from last year’s Q990F, and yet the HW-Q990H has a few surprises up its sleeve.

We’ve hooked the soundbar package up to our reference TV (the Sony Bravia 8 II) and 4K Blu-ray player (the sadly discontinued Oppo UDP-203), and raided our library of reference discs to assess the system’s sound performance.

As with the previous model, the Surround mode proves to be the best for movies and TV shows, as the wider sound field means that all components hang together in a more sonically cohesive way. The Standard preset, meanwhile, is better for music, and those who prefer minimal processing, or perhaps want a more focused sound, may prefer it for movies and TV shows.

Overall, the improvements to this generation from the HW-Q990F (which we have on hand for direct comparisons) can be distilled into this: the Q990H takes everything we love about the last generation, and delivers it with even more nuance, detail and scale.

Starting with Civil War, we watch the section leading up to the climactic final battle, and we find that this soundbar package excels in practically every aspect. As Lee goes to comfort Jessie in a serene woodland area, we’re totally immersed in the environment thanks to the soundbar’s excellent placement of cinematic effects.

Birds chirping in trees overhead and the subtle crackling of twigs and leaves breaking underfoot are realised with superb accuracy, and the river trickling in the background is packed with sonic nuance; it all sounds genuinely alive.

As the two characters have a heart-to-heart conversation, we find that the tonality and emotions of their voices are captured thanks to the Q990H's rich sonic characteristics and deft handling of low-level dynamics. Vocal clarity is also excellent, as the system has no problem delivering crisp and detailed, yet full-bodied, dialogue, and we find little in the way of sharpness or sibilance in any of the characters’ voices.

As the Western Forces prepare to deploy, the thunderous rumble of helicopter blades is delivered with a crisp leading edge to each swoop, and is rounded out with a thickness, weight and richness that gives a genuine impression of heavy-duty metal blades chopping through the air.

It should come as no surprise that bass is handled very well, considering how much of a step up the HW-Q990F was with its redesigned subwoofer. The HW-Q990H seems to carry across the same, or at least a very similar, subwoofer, which brings an equally impressive dose of low-end weight.

We switch to Blade Runner 2049’s infamously tricky chapter two, and find that the bass builds nicely, peppering tension throughout. It refuses to distort or warble, and yet it reaches plenty deep, and there is a sense of tonal variation within the bass, which makes it sound tuneful and dynamic.

We find that the system’s previously established strengths are also on show. The way it projects height effects and places them – especially the announcements of the holographic advertisements near Officer K’s apartment – is impressive indeed. While this was a strength of the HW-Q990F, the Q990H takes this even further, with a greater sense of accuracy and spaciousness.

This system captures the bustle of the dystopian street and the buzz of K’s crowded apartment complex with a level of finesse and detail that seriously sells the atmosphere of each scene. It cleverly picks up background sounds and weaves them into the soundfield without making them sound forced or intentionally singled out.

Rounding out our film testing with Thunderbolts, we start the scene in which the team of anti-heroes makes a daring escape from a compound surrounded by military personnel. The tapping percussion featured throughout this sequence feels agile and snappy, conveying excitement and energy while easily keeping pace.

Dialogue is once again a highlight here; Yelena Belova’s dry wit is captured differently from John Walker’s stoic inflexion, thanks to the system’s ability to capture finer details. It’s not a night-and-day difference compared with its predecessor, but once we notice it, it becomes clear that the Q990H is the better of the two at unearthing subtler sonic nuances.

Moving on to music, we try a range of tracks, including Harry Styles’ Carla’s Song, Heavy by The Marias, and tracks from Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar OST in the system’s Standard mode. This sound mode removes the rear speakers from the equation and lets the main soundbar unit and subwoofer shine for stereo music reproduction.

The good news is that most, if not all, of the positive attributes from our movie testing are present and correct for music, too. Vocals are warm and detailed, bass is taut, deep and keeps pace, and there is a general sense of naturalism and balance to the sound.

While the Sonos Arc Ultra is our preferred soundbar for music, thanks to its richer, more rounded and smoother sound, the HW-Q990H is still a seriously talented performer.

Verdict

While it may look like a subtle upgrade on paper, and it even looks borderline identical to its predecessor when we unbox it, Samsung has made some worthwhile under-the-hood refinements with this soundbar package.

Its ability to capture a touch more detail and nuance, and place spatial sound effects with even greater precision, makes this system another step up in a lineage of soundbars that have improved year-on-year.

SCORES

• Sound 5
• Features 5
• Build 4

MORE:

Read our review of the Samsung HW-Q990F

Also consider the Sonos Arc Ultra

Read our Sony Bravia Theatre Bar 9 review

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

Looking for a superb 'small' TV for your home? Our guide to the best 42-inch TVs on the market right now will tell you that we're pretty big fans of the LG C5, that proves it's now possible to buy a properly impressive TV in this size bracket.

And here's the really good news. The LG C5 has been enjoying discounts with its successor, the LG C6, due for release soon – and we've just found the best price yet.

For just £699 at Richer Sounds, the 42-inch LG C5 can be yours for its lowest-ever price. All you have to do is enter 'RSTV200' at the checkout. It's really as easy as that!

Right now, the LG C5 is the best 42-inch OLED we've ever tested. Yes, the LG C6 is on the way, but we've only tested the 65-inch model so far (though its preorder price is £1299 at Richer Sounds).

For just under £700 though, you can pick up the LG C5 with all the OLED magic – including truly inky blacks and pixel-level contrast control.

We'd recommend tweaking the image settings, opting for Filmmaker Mode with judder reduction off and tone mapping on to achieve a beautifully balanced picture.

Our expert testers said when running our 4K Blu-ray of Dune: Part 2: "Once done, the picture looks fantastic, with the Fremen and Harkonnen fighters looking wonderfully sharp and three-dimensional. The TV’s slightly warm colours and solid peak brightness levels create a truly immersive experience despite the screen’s small size."

On smart TV features, the C5 achieves close to top marks. The latest webOS offers the full suite of streaming apps, including Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV, and even BBC iPlayer, ITVX and many more.

And if you're thinking about gaming on this TV, well, the offering is abundant. With four HDMI 2.1 ports that support up to 4K/144Hz signals, VRR, ALLM and Dolby Vision Game Mode, there's a full suite of gaming features to enjoy.

But, no TV is perfect, and there are some small flaws our expert testers picked up on during their review. Notably, colour volume takes a slight hit in very dark scenes and the built-in speakers aren't the best.

The 2.0-channel, 20W sound system is serviceable for TV and casual viewing, but we'd recommend investing in a soundbar to improve the audio.

These caveats aside, the 42-inch LG C5 is a mighty impressive TV, boasting a compact size while still achieving cinematic results. Hitting just £699 at Richer Sounds is the best saving we've ever seen, and all you have to do is type 'RSTV200' in at the checkout. Simple!

MORE:

Read our full 42-inch LG C5 review

Check out the best TVs: flagship OLEDs and budget Mini LED sets tried and tested

And the best OLED TV: 5 incredible sets for serious movie fans reviewed by our experts

Soundbars and soundbar systems are improving all the time, bringing true cinema sound closer and closer to the home environment. But, as the old rugby adage goes, “a good big ’un will always beat a good little ’un”; and so it is with home cinema.

To get what is often better than the sound you get in your local multiplex, you need to have a full-on home cinema system, complete with a dedicated multi-channel amplifier and, of course, some serious speakers.

In this month’s issue of What Hi-Fi?, we have a hard-fought Group Test of speaker packages at around two and a half grand, between a trio of the UK’s finest: Bowers & Wilkins, Fyne Audio and KEF.

To complement that titanic tussle, we also have our pick of some top AV amplifiers at a range of prices, and a stunning home cinema system that takes the best of the above and combines them with other top kit, to bring you a movie set-up that will stand you in really good stead for your stereo-music listening as well.

Surround sound speaker packages

There’s nothing quite like proper home cinema surround sound. Dotting speakers around your living room or home cinema has some practical drawbacks, but cinephiles know that the payoff is always worth it. The real question is this: if you’re going to share your space with five speakers and a subwoofer, which speaker package should you invest in?

Allow us to introduce this month’s Group Test contestants. We have the Bowers & Wilkins 606 & 607 S3 speaker package, a three-time Product of the Year winning system combines the talents of two pairs of five-star speakers – the 606 S3s and 607 S3s.

KEF Q Concerto 5.1 package includes the handsomeQ Concerto Meta standmounters and Q1 Meta bookshelf surrounds, featuring Metamaterial Absorption Technology (MAT), which can reportedly “absorb 99 per cent of the unwanted noise from the rear of the driver for pure and natural sound”, as well as KEF's iconic Uni-Q driver array.

Rounding out the trio is the Fyne Audio F500E AV Pack 2, which features the exceptionally talented (and Award-winning) F501E floorstanding speakers with Fyne’s unique IsoFlare point source driver array that places the tweeter in the throat of the mid/bass driver for improved stereo imaging and ultimately a more cohesive experience.

All three of these systems come from esteemed British hi-fi manufacturers, and the stereo speakers that they are based on have proved to be seriously impressive in our hi-fi listening rooms. But which one will supply the best cinematic sound?

AV amplifier round-up

If you want to enter the rewarding realms of genuine surround sound, there is no substitute for a full home cinema set-up, complete with appropriate speaker package. Having helped you with the latter, we turn our attention to that set-up’s other key ingredient – the AV amplifier.

Our round-up this month covers our favoured premium AV amps, so even the least expensive – which will set you back £629 – can power a full 7.1 system. At the other end of the scale, the two priciest models have 11 channels of amplification, allowing for a 7.1.4 system (the ‘4’ denoting four Atmos height speakers).

Desktop speakers group test

But, we're not neglecting stereo sound this month. We also have a Group Test of desktop speakers for you. This relatively unassuming corner of the audio world has come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, with many manufacturers now bringing potent performance and up-to-the-minute features.

As a result, there are currently a healthy number of powered desktop speakers to suit your need, especially if you’re not keen on spending a huge amount to get hold of a pair.

The Ruark MR1 Mk3 (£399) are our established Award-winners at this budget end of the market, with the Onkyo GX-30ARC (£339) providing stern competition at a similar price and with a more comprehensive range of features and functions.

Then finally we have the Philips Fidelio FA3 which at £349 cost around the same money as their competitors but employ an active design – where each drive unit has a dedicated power amplifier.

While these may ostensibly be a trio of ‘desktop’ speakers, their capabilities stretch far beyond the realms of dutifully flanking your laptop to give your daily YouTube scrolling a bit more pep.

All are bolstered by Bluetooth streaming powers, and all – to a varying degree – offer a raft of physical connections to stretch their capabilities far beyond that of mere deskbound sound.

So which pair will triumph? Find out in this month's What Hi-Fi?

First with reviews

As always, our First Tests section is filled to the brim with in-depth, impartial and expert verdicts on the very latest hi-fi and AV gear.

A new entry into LG's C series OLED range is always a big deal for us. Consistently great, step-down OLEDs that boast a wealth of gaming features and a superb picture for the money, the C series is for many the sweet spot at this price.

We had the latest model, the C6, on our test benches this month. Does it continue the series' legacy of five-star performance and Award-winning specs? Find out more in this month's mag!

We also have reviews of the potentially Apple HomePod-rivalling Wiim Sound speaker, an impressive soundbar system from Sony in the shape of the Bravia Theatre System 6, and Rotel's smart new headphone amp/DAC, the DX-3.

But that's not all. The Sky Glass Air proved to be a great TV, despite its amazing affordability, and elsewhere we had iFi's Go Link 2, Huawei's FreeClip 2 open-style buds, FiiO's M21 portable music player and LG's Immersive Suite 7 Pro soundbar system all on test this month.

See what our review team thought of all these products in May's What Hi-Fi?

May we offer you temptation?

Our Temptations section of the magazine is where you'll find the highest of the high-end of hi-fi and AV products.

Moon's 371 streaming amplifier isn't cheap, but it ticks all the boxes for us. Our review team noted that, "Moon's sonic DNA is based around refinement and fluidity, with a clean, smooth balance that's hard to dislike." That should tell you a little about how impressed we were by its performance in our testing room. Find out more in this month's mag!

We also listened for many hours through Acoustic Energy's AE1 40th Anniversary standmount speakers, and were mightily impressed, noting that their sound "is unfeasibly big, particularly when we turn the volume up, and it is delivered with impressive confidence". Sounded good to us, then, do these premium standmounters sound good to you?

Read more about these products in this month's What Hi-Fi?

Finally, don't forget to check out our Buyer’s Guide, featuring a definitive and freshly updated list of all the best home entertainment kit you can buy – including winners of 2025's What Hi-Fi? Awards. If you’re looking to purchase anything from a pair of the best wireless headphones to a home cinema speaker system, this section will tell you where to spend your money wisely.

Whatever you do, don't miss the May 2026 issue of What Hi-Fi?. Grab a copy today, or simply download it onto your tablet or smartphone. Enjoy!

You can subscribe or buy the latest issue here, or buy the digital edition on iPhone, iPad, Android devices or Kindle edition

In the same way we'd float the idea of buying a soundbar to boost your TV's audio, we'd also suggest a pair of external speakers (or a wireless speaker) to boost the audio coming out of your laptop or desktop PC, especially if you use it as your main music source.

A pair of speakers that are hugely capable and won't break the bank are the impressive Onkyo GX-30ARC. We've tested them and given them a glowing five-star rating thanks to their impressive sonic skills, excellent flexibility and attractive pricing.

We originally tested them at £339, and right now, you can buy a pair for £299 at Peter Tyson.

That's a very solid £40 saving, and one that our review team thinks deserves serious thought. After all, five-star options at this level are few and far between.

You can't accuse the Onkyo speakers of being short on features. They include a moving magnet phono stage, HDMI ARC connectivity, an audio-friendly USB-C socket, an analogue audio input and Bluetooth connectivity.

In our Onkyo GX-30ARC review, we praised their "crisp, measured delivery" using a Bluetooth connection, following it up with, "it’s hard to ignore the considerable talents the GX-30ARC speakers deliver, with their poise and cohesion lending tracks a wholly balanced feel."

We also enjoyed music played over USB-C and took time to praise the phono stage, concluding, "We are deeply impressed by how clear, punchy, and dynamically engaging the Onkyo speakers sound for the price".

While they might not be quite up to the super-high standards of the Award-winning Ruark MR1 Mk3 pairing, the Ruarks are much more expensive, and the Onkyos still deliver a very balanced and pleasing performance for the money

The only thing they're really missing is wi-fi connectivity, but you tend to have to pay significantly more for that privilege.

Finally, the Onkyo pair look the part, too, thanks to their clean, utilitarian aesthetic and smart-looking magnetic grilles.

They even come with a pair of upward-angled stands, which help with positioning if they're being used as a desktop system and you want the audio firing more up towards your ears.

As a desktop package, there's a lot going for the Onkyo G-30ARC, and they deliver a seriously good performance for what we'd consider a relatively budget price, especially now they're down from £339 to £299 over at Peter Tyson.

MORE:

Read our full Onkyo GX-30ARC review

Check out the best computer speakers: the top desktop options for hi-fi fans tested by our experts

Also check out our Elac Debut ConneX DCB41 review

Xgimi’s latest bid to turn the world’s living rooms into cinemas is its most all-round spectacular projector yet.

The Horizon 20 Max’s eye-catching design is out to make light of the often complicated job of projector set-up.

Its retina-challenging claimed brightness of 5700 ISO lumens is out to cut through ambient light like a knife through butter.

Its claimed 20,000:1 contrast ratio is out to suggest the projector might actually be able to turn itself into a proper home cinema machine for movie nights.

And its claimed 110 per cent coverage of the AV world’s most extreme BT.2020 colour gamut is out to make it look locked and loaded for whatever video challenges the future might bring.

Exciting stuff indeed. Unless it’s all just hype, of course.

Price

The Horizon 20 Max’s price puts it in arguably the single most competitive projector space right now.

Around its level can be found all manner of weird and more or less wonderful serious home entertainment projectors, all keen to combine lifestyle convenience with genuine performance skills.

Key rivals, for instance, would be BenQ’s X3100i and the recently reviewed Valerion VisionMaster Pro 2, both of which back up their on-paper appeal with the real five-star performance deal.

Despite still being relatively new to the projector scene, though, Xgimi has already proved capable of staking a strong claim to even the most competitive projection turf, so we can’t see any reason why the Horizon 20 Max can’t also at least keep up with the Joneses. Especially given the sort of on-paper features and specifications it boasts.

Design

While projectors that join the Horizon 20 Max in adopting a roughly cubic shape are pretty common these days, Xgimi’s model still manages to stand out from the crowd for two main reasons.

First, it hangs its cubic form in a distinctive cradle stand, within which the projector can be effortlessly tilted up and down to get its pictures in the right place on your wall or, ideally, screen.

The hinge mechanism that makes this possible is outstanding, supporting the meaty projector body as if it’s no heavier than a handful of candy floss, while at the same time allowing you to adjust the projector’s angle of attack over clearly defined and well-calibrated steps.

The whole cradle rig can be rotated left or right on the unit’s circular base, too, with the rotating movement again impressing with how smooth and clean it is.

The other unusual feature of the Horizon 20 Max’s design is the leather-like texture of its ‘elephant grey’ finish. This soft finish creates an unusual combination of tactile warmth and premium quality that’s unique in even the Horizon 20 Max’s relatively design-led part of the projector market.

The Horizon 20 Max is joined by a crisp, button-lite remote control that combines a smooth metallic finish element for its bottom half and side/rear elements with a matte black-backed button section offset by a gleaming black metallic-looking navigation circle at its heart. The key buttons on the remote are helpfully backlit, too.

Features

While the Horizon 20 Max’s design is flexible and innovative enough to be classed as a feature in itself, its attractions run much more than skin deep.

For starters, its triple-laser 4K DLP optical engine is claimed to be capable of blasting out a monumental 5700 ISO lumens of peak brightness. That’s one of the highest brightness figures we’ve seen from any projector, and it seems like it should be impossible from a projector as compact and affordable as the Horizon 20 Max.

Other big Horizon 20 Max numbers include a claimed 20,000:1 contrast ratio courtesy of the projector’s dynamic light control systems, claimed coverage of 110 per cent of the extreme BT.2020 colour spectrum (most HDR content is mastered in the much narrower DCI-P3 spectrum), and the claimed ability to satisfy a screen as big as 300 inches.

Gamers will be pleased to learn that the Horizon 20 Max can handle refresh rates all the way up to 240Hz. Those refresh rates can be variable, too, and unlike some rivals, the Horizon 20 Max can retain 4K and HDR when you’re gaming at 120Hz.

The Horizon 20 Max’s operating system is built around Google TV. This brings with it most of the world’s most popular streaming services, including Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV, as well as most of the UK’s main terrestrial broadcaster catch-up services.

The only things missing are the BBC iPlayer, which hardly ever appears on Google-based products, and both the Freeview Play and Freely services.

It becomes apparent while exploring the Horizon 20 Max’s smart features that it impressively supports both the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ premium HDR formats. After years of projectors not supporting either of these formats, with their extra scene-by-scene HDR image information, we’ve now tested two in a row.

The Horizon 20 Max’s connections include a pair of HDMIs (one of which supports eARC for shipping sound through to a connected AVR or soundbar), two USB ports, an optical digital audio output, a 3.5mm audio line out, as well as the now pretty much obligatory Bluetooth and wi-fi streaming options.

The Horizon 20 Max’s attempts to make itself easy to set up and adapt to different room arrangements don’t stop at its unusual cradled design. It also offers motorised horizontal and vertical optical image shifting, and motorised zoom. All of which are delivered via outstandingly refined and smooth mechanisms. Plus, there’s auto keystone correction, intelligent obstacle avoidance and screen alignment systems, an autofocus system, and even the facility to adjust the projector’s colour to compensate for different wall colours.

The words 'Sound By Harman Kardon’ at the bottom right of a grilled area over the bottom half of the Horizon 20 Max’s fascia alert you to the presence of a potentially unusually powerful sound system by projector standards. This turns out to comprise a 2 x 12W speaker arrangement with DTS Virtual:X and Dolby Audio decoding – with the cubic design providing more room for sound to breathe than regular projector designs do.

Picture

The Horizon 20 Max is capable of being a seriously enjoyable watch across a surprisingly wide range of room conditions.

It’s great to discover, for starters, that Xgimi seems to have taken on board past criticisms that its projectors can be a little too interested in aggressive spectacle over the naturalism and balance that more serious AV fans desire. Basically, the Horizon 20 Max not only now provides easy-access presets that cater sensibly for both bright and dark room set-ups, but it’s clearly worked hard to make sure that its newly diverse range of preset options are actually quite thoughtfully calibrated.

There’s even a Filmmaker Mode on the Horizon 20 Max, in fact, designed to produce pictures that get as close as the projector can manage to the look of industry video mastering standards.

Unusually, though, the Horizon 20 Max only seems to let you access Filmmaker Mode if it’s triggered by a flag in the content you’re watching. There’s no manually selectable Filmmaker Mode in the list of different presets the projector lets you choose between. Which means, essentially, that while Filmmaker Mode may trigger with some streamed content, you can’t apply it to 4K Blu-rays given that no 4K Blu-rays, so far as we’re aware, have been mastered with the Filmmaker Mode flag embedded.

It’s fortunate, then, that the Movie preset that the Horizon 20 Max does provide is very effective, injecting a level of warmth, subtlety and balance into the image that old Xgimi would not have done so well.

Colours – even skin tones – look believable and balanced, and there’s enough subtlety in the rendering of the image’s colour tones to ensure that nothing looks plasticky, flat, garish or cartoonish. Nor is there any significant evidence of colour striping over colour blends.

This welcome new interest from Xgimi in creating a picture that’s built around immersion, balance and refinement is joined by outstanding sharpness, too. Truly native 4K projection still isn’t yet an option at the Horizon 20 Max’s price level, but the crispness and sense of detail and texture in this Xgimi’s pictures look at least 4K adjacent. Without, crucially, anything feeling over-sharpened.

While the Movie preset is an overall great option for watching movies and premium TV shows in a relatively dark or fully blacked-out room, viewing in such conditions does reveal slightly raised black tones during dark scenes. This issue is nothing like as bad as we might have expected from a projector with 5700 ISO lumens of claimed brightness in its locker, but there’s certainly a slightly greyer look to dark areas than we experienced with a well-set-up Valerion VisionMaster Pro 2 – though that Valerion model doesn’t look quite as bright and punchy as the Horizon 20 Max.

The Xgimi’s brightness really is impressive. As well as helping images retain enjoyable punch and dynamism even in quite high levels of ambient light, this brightness is also put to excellent use by Xgimi’s dynamic tone mapping system in creating a genuine HDR ‘feel’ to the presentation of HDR sources. This includes some proper intensity in bright peaks, such as sunlight reflecting on metal or glass.

Having said all that, you shouldn’t expect to get anything like the Horizon 20 Max’s full claimed light output while still watching enjoyable pictures. This is because you can only access the projector’s full light output by switching the projector to a High Brightness picture preset which, while undoubtedly almost unbelievably bright, also does some very strange things to the image’s colours, leaving them looking washed out and excessively ‘cool’ in tone, to a degree that still looks off even in the relatively high levels of ambient light this setting is presumably designed to fight against.

Happily, though, the Standard or even Vivid presets are both fantastically punchy by projector standards if that’s the look you’re after, or you’re wanting to use the projector in ambient light without suffering such blue-dominated colour shifts. In fact, these two modes actually look extremely vibrant, giving you easy access to Xgimi’s fun, if occasionally OTT, vibrant side.

Xgimi’s new willingness to cater for a wide variety of image tastes is further expanded by the Horizon 20 Max’s ability to play Dolby Vision and HDR10+ content, and the addition of an IMAX Enhanced mode as another very watchable, if slightly more muted, film enthusiast’s alternative to the Movie mode.

Bright Dolby Vision scenes look particularly gorgeous in the Dolby Vision Dark setting – though even with Dolby’s extra help, dark scenes still look a little washed out.

While the Horizon 20 Max makes its biggest mark against the competition with HDR content, it is able to adapt its output very successfully to the much milder demands of SDR, retaining the necessary colour balance and refinement that AV fans look for with SDR playback.

The Xgimi’s brightness and vibrancy contribute to a seriously fun gaming performance that does substantially more justice than most projectors to the HDR graphics that pretty much all AAA games now deploy. No other projectors in the Horizon 20 Max’s class look crisper, brighter or more vibrant in their game modes, in fact. The projector’s 4K 120Hz HDR gaming support delivers a really responsive experience, too, backed up by input lag that measures just 11.1ms with 1080p/60Hz feeds.

Figuring out what gaming features the Horizon 20 Max supports does bring up our toughest battle with its bizarrely over-complicated picture set-up menus, though.

These menus contain an impressive number of tweaks and options, but some are confusingly named, and worse, there appear to be some seriously complex and typically unexplained inter-relationships between some of them. Choosing one option can cause another to become greyed out and inaccessible, for example, and you’re not even always clear about whether a particular feature is actually working or not.

When it comes to gaming, there’s a Game setting in the basic presets section – but this doesn’t introduce any sort of low-latency features. In fact, the lag if you just choose this option is well over 100ms – far too high for a responsive gaming experience.

It turns out that you need to manually select a separate Game option buried deep in the All Settings/Display Settings sub menu, and then additionally select a Boost option within that Game submenu before lag gets down to the 11.1ms figure noted above.

Even weirder, if you turn the Boost mode on, but then turn the ‘secondary’ Game mode off, the Boost mode remains active, even if you’re no longer playing a game. Thankfully, the projector does tend to remind you that Boost mode is active, but then you have to remember how to navigate the tortuous route back to the option that switches it off.

Another issue is that some of the Horizon 20 Max’s picture adjustments are very unrefined, only making coarse, extreme changes to the image when much finer levels of adjustment are needed.

So complex and ‘raw’ are the Horizon 20 Max’s settings, in fact, that we suggest you pretty much just stick with the two or three picture presets you like the most for different light levels rather than getting involved with much fine-tuning. The only exception to this 'leave well alone’ advice, aside from the low lag situation for gamers, concerns the projector’s motion processing. The default setting of this MEMC feature turns films into over-smooth soap operas in its default setting with most picture presets, so you should switch it into its relatively gentle Real Cinema mode, or just turn motion processing off entirely.

Aside from its slightly grey black levels and brain-bending picture set-up options, the one other issue we have with the Horizon 20 Max’s pictures is the rainbow effect. The distracting tell-tale stripes of red, green and blue flit over the image consistently enough to become at least a low-level distraction to most viewers – never mind those people who are particularly prone to seeing this common DLP issue.

Sound

The Horizon 20 Max’s built-in sound system is impressive in many ways. Bass, in particular, is much more present, deep and free of distortions than it is on the vast majority of integrated projector sound systems. The sound also projects forward from the projector very handily, and spreads out rapidly in the process, achieving that very rare projector sound system feat of making its sound appear at least vaguely connected to its pictures.

The integrated speakers are powerful enough to get pretty loud without starting to distort, too, and consistently manage to shift smoothly through a good few gears when playing action scenes without starting to sound muddy or constrained. Especially with low-end sounds kicking in so enthusiastically.

The speakers are sensitive enough to portray plenty of subtle details from busy film soundtracks, too, while the projector’s sound processing manages to place location effects with likeable accuracy. Dialogue remains locked at the heart of the soundstage, though, as it should. In fact, dialogue can go a little far in this respect at times, to the point where it can start to sound a little trapped inside the projector’s belly, especially with male voices.

The only other issue with the Horizon 20 Max’s sound is that the very deepest extended bass rumbles can sound a bit coarse and unrefined compared with the rest of the audio profile. Though the speakers seldom if ever lose their integrity to such an extent that they flat out distort or crackle.

Verdict

There’s a ton of stuff to like about the Horizon 20 Max. Its design is cool, tactile and user-friendly; its feature count for movie fans and gamers is long and useful, and its pictures are fundamentally strong and adapt well to a much wider range of room set-ups than the vast majority of other projectors can.

Dark scenes can look a touch grey if you fancy a serious dark room movie night, though, and the rainbow effect can be hard to ignore. Its set-up menus are bizarrely inscrutable at times, too.

With some impressive sonics to keep its generally good pictures company, though, in the end, the Horizon 20 Max is impossible not to like.

SCORES

• Picture 4
• Sound 4
• Features 4

MORE:

Read our review of the BenQ x3100i

Also consider the Valerion VisionMaster Pro 2

Read our Hisense C1 review

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

I am a huge fan of Dolby Atmos music. I play it every day and I often carve out a few hours specifically to enjoy myself immersed in this spatial format which can place music elements both behind me and above.

But not on headphones. I play my Atmos music on what might be described as an upper midrange speaker system, delivering 5.1.2 channels – that’s five speakers on the floor, including surrounds out wide behind me and a subwoofer up the front, plus two speakers in forward height positions in order to deliver Atmos’ famous hemisphere of sound. (Yes, just a hemisphere; I’m still waiting for someone to realise they’re missing a trick with not yet embedding speakers in the floor to create a real sphere of sound. But perhaps I shouldn’t encourage them.)

Atmos on a full system

My sources for playing Atmos music are two-fold. My subscription to Apple Music allows access to a great many tracks mixed in Atmos, or Spatial Audio as Apple sensibly prefers to de-brand it. This can be served from an AppleTV 4K into my AV receiver. Tidal and apparently Amazon Prime Music (though not the free version) can also serve Atmos, but Apple is usually my server of choice for streaming Atmos.

My main source, however, and particularly at the moment, is Atmos music on Blu-ray – discs with no video on them, but multiple mixes of an album, usually in Dolby Atmos, with some form of 5.1 or 7.1 surround as well, and high-res stereo. Sometimes instrumental Atmos mixes are also included as a bonus.

In fact over the last year I have developed a hair-trigger form of 'new-formatitis', an addiction to buying Atmos music discs which is costing me, well, not a huge amount of money, but has certainly upped my casual expenditure on music significantly. And mainly buying albums that I already have either on vinyl, CD or digitally. Doesn’t matter: when the latest Atmos Blu-ray release is announced, I’m clicking that email link and slapping my money down without a second thought.

It began with Morten Lindberg (38 Grammy nominations and counting) and his work for Norway’s 2L label; my early Atmos disc collection was dominated by his extraordinary in-the-moment Atmos recordings, and I’ve twice raved about them here on What Hi-Fi? (this one partly because of heartstopping performances by the wildly magnificent Catalina Vicens, and this one as being the most gorgeous of Christmas albums; there are plenty of others).

But of course surround discs had been around for a good while before Atmos arrived. For video discs, a surprising number of old music DVDs have excellent surround soundtracks, sometimes in 24-bit/96kHz – 'Best of Bowie', 'Queen's Greatest Hits', etc; I pick them out of boxes left on the street these days, or grab them for $2 a pop in charity shops. Like secondhand CDs, they can be a very cheap way to gather good music.

Early pop and rock surround music was also possible on the SACD format, while the emergence of audio Blu-rays was notably led by ‘Pure Audio’ discs, developed by msm-studios in Munich in 2009, beginning with lossless high-res LPCM stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, then later adding Dolby TrueHD and Atmos.

Lossless Atmos music

An important word there is ‘lossless’. Why do I buy the Blu-rays, when I can usually listen to the same Atmos mixes on subscription via Apple Music?

Because Atmos streaming is heavily data compressed, arriving at bit-rates ranging perhaps from 384kbps to 768kbps. Compare those bit-rates with disc-based Atmos audio, which are typically from 3000kbps upwards. Morten Lindberg at 2L recently told Stereophile's erudite Jim Austin that their discs average 6000kbps and peak far higher, which confirms what Lindberg told me some time ago: that Atmos streaming is compressed by a factor of perhaps 11 to 1. That's a similar compression ratio to ye olde 128k MP3s when compared to CD, or to AC3 Dolby Digital soundtracks as used on movie DVDs.

So it's remarkable that it sounds as good as it does, streaming through the speakers from the AppleTV 4K. But the disparity provides mathematical support for what the ears confirm: the lack of compression is immediately evident in the thrilling clarity of the best Atmos music Blu-rays.

Not all – some Atmos mixes can be awful, or just boring, with little more than atmospheric extension of the front soundstage into the rears. There’s no point in paying for that; the stereo will likely serve better.

But when you do get a good ’un – oh wow.

Apple Music, then, is very useful both for listening enjoyably to large numbers of Atmos releases, and for checking whether a particular new Atmos mix of a favourite album is bland or brilliant before putting down your money on the Blu-ray release.

In a little Catch 22, however: by the time you can hear it, you may not be able to buy it. The company getting most of the money from my present addiction is SDE, and their releases are largely limited editions that become unavailable all too quickly; scroll through their ‘sold out’ back catalogue to confirm this. In fact I gather their model is to print not many more than were hard-ordered in the pre-release window, to avoid having “an attic full of unsold discs”. So if you miss that pre-sale window, you just ain’t going to get one. And if you wait to hear the mix on Apple after release, you might be too late to get in on the Blu-ray pre-release.

Hence my trigger finger on all three most recent pre-sales: Alan Parsons' 'Eye in The Sky'; Chris Squire 'Fish out of Water'; Roxy Music's 'Flesh & Blood', that's the tour I saw them on. It's like they're going through my record collection! This is music I can't miss: limited edition access to the best possible versions of my formative albums. Hence I don't know if I was more a-quiver about the long-delayed Atmos mix of ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ last year (I had to buy a whole box-set to get that one, but it’s a magnificent package) or the holy grail release of an Atmos version of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s 1984 sonic orgasm ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’. Take my money!

Other Blu-rays are more widely and permanently marketed – the wham-bam brilliant Atmos mix of Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust’ by the original engineer Ken Scott, or Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’; these are less likely to go out of print quickly. ‘Animals’ came out in Atmos about 18 months after I bought it in 5.1 24/96 DTS-HD MA. Even I didn't pay again for 16/48 Atmos!

There’s one useful benchmark to confirm instantly that the Atmos mix certainly won’t be bland, and that’s if it’s by Steven Wilson, former Porcupine Tree frontman and absolute ruler of the modern Atmos remix. The new Frankie mix is his, and it was worth every cent of the extra postage from the UK. Loving his instrumental Pleasuredome mixes. I bought Wilson's own 2025 album ‘The Overview’ as an Atmos disc just because I like all his other Atmos mixes (and earlier surround mixes). He is wildly prolific, especially among prog artists: Yes, Black Sabbath, Rush, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, XTC, Pink Floyd (Pompeii), Roxy Music, also The Who (I’ve just received ‘Who Are You’), and gasp, Robert Fripp’s ‘Exposure’ (for which I could only get the 5.1 DVD). Wilson has opened an Atmos download site called Headphone Dust which may eventually overcome some of those limited availability disc issues, if/once it grows beyond his own material. Others, including 2L, also offer Atmos and surround and high-res as file downloads. Direct file replay has obvious advantages over Blu-ray playback, assuming you have an easy replay chain for the files, which is by no means straightforward in a consumer system. (Meaning I haven't done it yet.)

The Atmos curve should credit Giles Martin as well, for doing so many Beatles Atmos mixes which helped the format gain popular traction; I’ve just been enjoying the SDE Blu-ray of his new Wings mixes, all in utterly uncompressed Atmos, and including even some neglected songs from ‘Back To The Egg’ and ‘London Town’. Joy! Then Mull of Kintyre – skkiip! Bagpipes in Atmos, can you imagine.

Classic after classic in Dolby Atmos. And I’ve been listening on disc only, not on your ‘immersive’ headphones. From my trusty Oppo Blu-ray player my Atmos Blu-rays play into my Yamaha AV receiver, with left and right channels upgraded via stereo power amps, and often I dial my Atmos configuration down to 4.1.2, keeping my large left-right speakers in charge of the front soundstage. This makes for a tight sweet spot, but that’s just fine. I hold my Atmos speaker system close, almost like headphones.

And yet I never listen to Dolby Atmos on headphones. I have tried it many times, and the rear cues have never worked for me. Objects which should be at rear left or rear right have instead sounded merely very widely panned around the sides, so that there’s no real immersion, just a messed-up stereo presentation, some of which sounds notably soft compared to the same track presented in stereo. The occasional Ambisonic recording has worked for me with remarkable 'behind you' voices and effects via headphones, but I've never heard music gain the complete channel separation that is obvious with real speakers. And to my ears the attempt at delivering this effect on headphones causes an overall softness, against which the clarity of stereo can be so superior that I've often been surprised by those who profess to pick the Atmos option by preference.

Until now, anyway.

Apple AirPod Max 2 arrives

So along come Apple’s new AirPod Max 2 headphones. I was very excited about these for a number of reasons. Firstly I am an everyday user of the original AirPod Max; when work is done and I go sit on my sunny deck, I wear the Apples, partly because they make everything sound fantastic, and partly because their ‘Transparency’ mode is brilliantly realistic, so that I can still pinpoint where to look in our big but famously toxic white cedar tree for a chirruping lorikeet or a calling currawong.

This feature is important to me (both to enjoy the birds and to avoid being shat on), but perhaps not for you, which is why there are thousands of headphones available for thousands of different preferences. I must have reviewed 20+ rivals to the Apples since their arrival. But while I've referred to Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 as a piece of perfection in design terms, and while I needed tissues after packing up and returning the divine but costly open-backed Meze Poets after a review last year, still nothing has made me shell out for shells that beat the Apples for my deck-dozing purposes. Which is why they look so filthy in the comparison picture below. (My wife did clean the headband recently.)

Secondly I was excited by Apple’s announcement of Instant Translation through the new AirPod Max 2s. Say wha - Instant Translation? I wrote about this as a dream scenario for smart headphones not so long back – imagine visiting someone in Italy, say, sitting round a table with all their friends, and instead of everybody kindly switching to English so you can join in, you just wear headphones which translate everything instantly. Mamma mia, you might say.

It blows my mind that this kind of AI-augmented ‘Headphone 3.0’ functionality is already possible – you have to wonder if Apple has had access to alien technology. Sadly I've yet to try it. Our household's collection of two MacBooks, a Mac Mini, an iPad and two iPhones proves as a group to be too slanted towards obsolence, with nothing quite up-to-date enough to power the new 'Apple Intelligence' behind Instant Translation – iPhones 15 Pro or up required, or certain newish iPads. This exciting new future is processor-hungry. Upgrade required.

Same same but better Atmos?

But for music, then (which is what I care about, really), how much more amazing can the new Maxes 2 be than the original Maxes? The answer is, to be honest, not much. Just as they look identical to the old Maxes, and come in the same peculiar non-protective case which looks like a bra from the front and a butt from behind, they also sound extremely similar. I would agree with the review from my UK WHF colleagues that it’s a tad disappointing overall that the new Apple headphones simply aren’t more different from the old Apple headphones.

But then it’s kinda hard to complain too much about that, since the originals still sound as good or better to me than anything else in the market near the price, especially via Bluetooth. I would be amazed if they had sounded any better. If it ain't broke, etc.

That sensible sonic stability was for their stereo sound, however. When I tried some Atmos music, suddenly it worked as never before. The trigger was The Flaming Lips’ ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’, surely the most inspired of Atmos music mixes (as was their DVD 'Void' in 5.1), and the track All We Have Is Now, which begins with electric piano in the back right channel, spacey main vocal in the back left, and nothing at the front at all. That’s precisely what the Apple AirPod Max 2s delivered. Track after track came through with the elements in the same places as I had heard through the speaker system. Headphone Atmos that works! I am delighted.

I have a notion that part of this success is precisely because I had heard these tracks on the speaker system, so I knew exactly what to expect, in terms of what should be where. I am now well acquainted with the details of many Atmos albums heard on speakers, and that likely helps my brain accept positional cues even if they come less distinctly from the headphones.

But I did go back to my original Apple headphones to check, and the Atmos there was not as effective; things sounded softer, potentially through age and use, but potentially through the better chip in the new model. Soft signals in Atmos would especially degrade positional cues, I’d guess.

One other difference was that I let Apple use my phone to image my ears, presumably to personalise the head-related transfer function used in Atmos decoding. Heaven knows how they'll use this biometric information against me when the bots take over, but at least the positional cues in Atmos music may now be more personally and specifically curated. Maybe.

One sure and significant upgrade is that on the new model I can play to the headphones in Atmos via USB-C. My original Apple headphones were the Lightning-socketed type so I’ve never experienced the cabled listening option that came with the USB-C updated version of the originals. Via USB-C it proved a little hard to stop the MacBook using the Bluetooth path (turning off Bluetooth entirely was quicker than trying to persuade the sound settings to switch and stick). But the clarity of lossless stereo music via USB-C was thrilling, and the Atmos imaging was still further improved. It’s possible, therefore, that the previous USB-C version of the AirPods Max might perform equally well as the new Max 2s in this regard.

Two interesting numbers

Mind you, Atmos even via the cable is far from lossless. As noted, Blu-ray disc-based Atmos can use bit-rates of 6000kbps and above.

There are two numbers I’d dearly love to know (I will ask Apple, and will add the answers here if they or anyone else can confirm).

Firstly, what is the maximum bit-rate at which Apple streams Atmos spatial audio? So the rate I'd get if I put my iPhone or MacBook on its maximum quality and Atmos settings and then play to the headphones via the USB-C cable?

I’m guessing this would be the usual ~768kbps at which Atmos streams. Yet the USB-C connection to the headphones could now deliver higher than that. It can do lossless 24-bit/48kHz stereo , which requires native 2304kbps, so perhaps 1200kbps when losslessly encoded. If there’s room through the USB-C cable for that, then there's room for much better Atmos than 768kbps.

Secondly, what bit-rate is used when listening to Atmos on the AirPod Max 2 headphones via Bluetooth, rather than the cable?

I fear it may still be bottle-necked through the 256k AAC Bluetooth codec to which Apple restricts its headphones (and even more incomprehensibly much of its AirPlay ecosystem delivery).

And if Bluetooth Atmos is still going through the pipe at 256kbps AAC to the AirPod Max 2, the compression factor rises to a whacking 20-to-1 or thereabouts. So no wonder that Atmos music via Bluetooth has sounded so soft.

It’s all the more remarkable, then, that the new Apple headphones do a better job, despite what may be the same limitations. I am now genuinely converted to Atmos headphone listening on the new Apple AirPod Max 2, at least via USB-C. In fact I fully recommended it, though perhaps still as an alternative to lossless stereo listening, rather than a permanent replacement.

I’m still working out if I can get the genuine lossless Atmos data from my Blu-rays through to the new headphones via USB-C somehow. I think I'll have to connect an external BD disc drive to my MacBook somehow. More on that if and when it works.

Meanwhile if Apple would only enlarge its Bluetooth pipe to encompass the full 768k Atmos stream, then we could enjoy it all wirelessly as best as possible. Better still, they could raise the Atmos stream quality from the servers to reduce compression and improve every way to play it. That’s the dream, and Apple might one day achieve some of it via a simple firmware update to allow better Bluetooth.

I hope they do. It would save me a fortune in shipping all these Atmos Blu-rays over from the UK.

[ADDENDUM 2nd June 2026: I'm delighted to have discovered overnight that Apple has indeed been working on this in the background. The APAC (Apple Positional Audio Codec) container/codec is already operational in Naim's new Mu-so Hekla (which has been rather rudely branded to Vervent sister company Focal, but it'll always be a Naim to me, and I also doubt Naim would have called it Hekla, realising the homonymical jests possible from the audience).

APAC is apparently scalable right up to lossless Dolby Atmos, but initially we can expect bit-rates to flow from the current 700kbps up to 1Mbps, according to Naim's Steve Harris, who was not uninvolved in the linkages required between the technologies of Apple and Naim. The codec also achieves better (less destructive) compression, he says, so that the bit-rates are not even directly comparable: 700kbps APAC will sound better than current 768kbps Atmos as DD+ (E-AC-3).

He also seems optimistic about the possibility of Apple unleashing something rather better for stereo under AirPlay 2. Sing hallelujah!]

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