There are three catchphrases you’ll often hear echoing out of the home cinema test room at What Hi-Fi? towers.

First, “good sound is good sound, regardless of whether it’s home cinema or hi-fi”.

Second, “audio quality is equally as important as picture quality for home cinema”.

Third, “blasted box! To hell with you! Why won’t you fit!?”

OK you can probably ignore the final one – that's just our standard war cry when trying to repackage a product we’ve finished reviewing.

Editor’s note: it’s a very specific problem but most packaging isn’t designed to be used twice and is made of easily breakable, oddly shaped blocks of polystyrene that don’t follow a logical pattern. This is a key reason why, in my humble opinion, whoever invented the specific version of polystyrene every AV firm seems to use deserves to go to the same special hell as Astroturf's creator and people who play music through their phone's speakers on public transport.

But the first two are important, and all too easy to forget, especially if you’re yet to experience proper home cinema sound and have become used to your TV or projector’s built-in speakers.

I was reminded of this last week by an unexpected product: a UST projector.

It happened while I was running a group test of the category for the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2026. This process sees us run the units head-to-head to find out which is the best performer ahead of announcing our Best Buy winners later in the year.

Towards the end of this long process, I admit I had become shamefully jaded, and all too used to the mediocre audio most of the units provided. Check our reviews, and you’ll struggle to find a UST projector with a five-star score for audio.

For the sake of not spoiling our Awards reveal, I’m not going to tell you the UST's name – good things come to those who wait and all that – but I will confirm that everything changed when I plugged in the last unit and began playing the Sinners 4K Blu-ray.

Specifically, the demanding musical medley scene, which sees Sammy perform the blues in the dingy speakeasy. The moment Sammy plucked his first guitar string, my ears pricked up.

Then, as the scene developed and Sammy’s performance morphed into a musical medley exploring the multiple genres of black music across the decades, we suddenly found ourselves unexpectedly nodding our heads to the beat.

The reason why was simple: unlike the other projectors' sound systems, there was a hint of musicality to the audio.

Did it come close to matching a moderately capable soundbar or full-fat 5.1 multi-speaker system? Of course not. But, unlike many of the units we tested, it handled music with some finesse.

A hint of rhythmic drive, pushing us forward through the genre-crossing rooms, bringing the interlinking beats to life; a pleasing, but controlled, swell in volume as the screaming psychedelic guitar arrived, wailing over the other frequencies; just enough bass extension to make the breakdown land with some impact.

Sure, it wasn't perfect, but unlike the other UST projectors, it did just enough right to remind me what a difference good sound, with a sense of musicality, can make to the home cinema experience. Too many integrated speaker systems seem to focus their efforts on dialogue and covering up for an underpowered low end, to the detriment of everything else.

I’ve said as much before. Just a few months ago, when I had the joy of helping test the five-star KEF R Meta 5.1 Speaker System, I felt the need to remind readers why system matching is just as important in home cinema as it is in hi-fi.

Hopefully, I’m teaching you all to suck eggs. But on the off chance I’m not, heed my warning and make sure to give audio quality the importance it deserves when building your home cinema. If you don’t, you’re not going to get the full “as the director intended” experience we all yearn for, no matter how good the picture is.

Do you agree with our audio quality mantra? Let us know in the comments below.

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These are the best projectors money can buy

We rank the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

Our picks of the best surround sound systems

Take a step into our home cinema test room right now and you will be met with the controlled chaos that comes with our annual Awards testing. From Dolby Atmos soundbars to premium UST projectors, there's been a huge range of products coming in and out of our doors.

Those home cinema products need to be challenged by the best films out there for picture and sound. We make sure to keep different movies and TV shows in rotation, but there are always a few classic discs that we turn to.

In our monthly Now Showing column, members of the What Hi-Fi? team select their top watches for testing, and you will find this month's choices below. What do you think we should add to our watchlist? Drop your recommendations in the comments.

The Last Duel (2021)

Words by Harry McKerrell

Ridley Scott has to be one of the most maddeningly unpredictable directors of his age. Over the past 40 or so years, he’s given us the greatest sci-fi horror movie ever in the shape of Alien, the increasingly relevant masterpiece Blade Runner, and the ever-quotable historical epic that is Gladiator.

He’s also no stranger to a dud, as confirmed by the baffling Exodus: Gods And Kings, the laughably erratic Napoleon, and his lukewarmly received recent effort, The Dog Stars. Worse still, every time Scott has a property of which he can be rightfully proud, he fouls the proverbial by adding an unnecessary sequel – or sequels – that no one asked for.

Amid the ever-fluctuating peaks and troughs of Ridley’s varied filmography, The Last Duel stands out proudly as a modest, if not sky-scraping, peak. Returning Scott to his historical roots, The Last Duel uses a triple-perspective narrative to tell the story of Marguerite de Carrouges and her alleged assault at the hands of knight Jacques le Gris in 14th-century France.

Handling of medieval gender politics aside, The Last Duel makes for a handy test disc if you’re keen to see how your TV or projector conveys colours and contrast. Where Gladiator chooses a palette of warm oranges contrasting with imperial greys and silvers, The Last Duel seems to be almost perpetually bathed in a frosty blue-grey filter, giving the entire production – through a competent screen – a chilly, unforgiving bleakness.

That’s the Middle Ages for you.

Buy The Last Duel on 4K Blu-ray at Amazon

Stream The Last Duel on Disney Plus

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

Words by Daniel Furn

Fresh off starring in the other record-breaking smash of summer 2026, Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jon Bernthal reteam for the similarly successful Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Successful is putting it mildly, however – at the time of writing, Brand New Day is sitting on a whopping $2.45 billion worldwide, going so far as to become the highest-grossing film domestically in the US, where it has even surpassed heavyweights such as Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

All of which may seem a bit over-the-top, but it helps that this is arguably the strongest Marvel offering in years. Finally stepping out of the shadows of Iron Man and the Avengers, Brand New Day strips back the high-tech suit and multiverse shenanigans for a broke, overworked and isolated Spider-Man that harks back to the character’s street-level roots. Spider-Man is always at its best when Peter Parker is struggling to balance his two lives, and here we see the consequences when Peter prioritises his superhero identity in an exploration of loneliness, grief and sacrifice.

There’s still plenty of fan service and cameos for Marvel buffs – Spider-Man’s chemistry with the Punisher is a highlight, and honestly, seeing the two together in a movie (alongside the Hulk and Sadie Sink’s mystery character) is rather mind-blowing and seemed an impossible pipe dream just a few years ago.

A new director, Destin Daniel Cretton, also brings a grittier visual palette as well as his combat expertise after previously helming Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings. I’m excited to see how the film’s many set pieces look on 4K Blu-ray, as well as to hear the film’s great soundtrack through a good Atmos system – Loser by Tame Impala and Oh Yeah? by Steve Lacy have been doing the rounds on social media since the film’s release, while Michael Giacchino’s understated score is surprisingly catchy.

Bumblebee (2018)

Words by Robyn Quick

While not all of the Transformers films have been met with critical and audience acclaim, Bumblebee is argued by many to be the best in the franchise. I'm not a huge fan of the sentient robots, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the 2018 entry is a thoroughly charming and entertaining watch.

Set in the 1980s, the film follows the titular Transformer Bumblebee as he lands on Earth and promptly gets his voice box ripped out. In his disguise as a Volkswagen Beetle, he befriends Hailee Steinfeld's plucky teen.

You only need to watch the turbulent opening scene to understand why this film is a go-to for sound testing in our room. When an army training exercise is interrupted by Bumblebee arriving as a fiery comet, it's a great test of your system's bass.

Explosions should be well-placed around the soundfield, and the planes flying overhead will go above the TV screen or projector with the right audio set-up. If you want to test your sound system while watching a teen make friends with a sentient car, then this is the film for you.

Buy Bumblebee on 4K Blu-ray at HMV

Stream Bumblebee on Apple TV

Metal Lords (2022)

Words by Alastair Stevenson

I’ll admit, I am a little late to this one, as it came out all the way back in 2022. But this month, one of the standout films that’s stuck with me long after the credits rolled was Metal Lords, by Peter Sollett.

Telling the story of school kids Hunter and Kevin as they try to recruit classical cellist Emily to the dark side (specifically, to play in their heavy metal band), it’s one of the most heartfelt and funny films I’ve seen in quite some time.

Whether it's Hunter’s perfect on-the-nose portrayal of that kid in every school who makes metal their whole identity, or its classic battle of the bands ending – which will give you Bill and Ted-level goosebumps – any music fan will find something to enjoy.

It's far from a technical masterpiece but, as a hi-fi nerd, I love how it conveys the passion people feel for music, and the steps they take during their formative years finding their groove.

So if you love music, it’s still well worth giving it a watch – especially if you’re a metalhead, as you’ll spot more than a few cameos from the likes of Tom Morello, Scott Ian, Kirk Hammett and Rob Halford.

Slow Horses, Season 6 (2026)

Words by Lewis Empson

“Circle of Life” is a particularly gloomy episode, even by Slow Horses standards. Yes, the Emmy-winning spy drama/comedy series has returned for a sixth season, and its first episode is about as edgy, dry and grey as you’d expect; and if you’ve seen any of the previous seasons, then you’ll know this isn’t a bad thing.

The Apple TV series stars Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, and What Hi-Fi? Team AV’s favourite new Bond frontrunner, Jack Lowden, alongside an ensemble of complex and, quite frankly, barely functioning MI5 rejects that operate out of a safehouse above a Chinese takeaway.

They’ve tackled international terrorist threats and assassination plots, but the motive for this season seems more personal – this time there’s a hit out on all of the Slow Horses, so expect tension, action and some particularly dry humour.

I’ve already mentioned that this episode is especially gloomy; however, I mean that in both a narrative and physical sense. Most of this episode takes place on an overcast and rainy day (standard UK weather, essentially), and colour seems intentionally washed out here to emphasise that drab, drizzly setting.

Furthermore, the spies spend a fair amount of this episode literally sneaking around in the shadows. Therefore, a TV that can handle black depths without crushing shadow detail is essential for this episode, or else you’ll be spending a fair amount of time squinting to figure out who is talking.

And as this is an Apple TV show, you can expect Dolby Atmos; now, this isn’t the cinematic showcase we’d usually highlight to demonstrate these features, but the bustle of London streets feels even more immersive with the 3D sound format enabled.

Stream Slow Horses on Apple TV

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Check out the best TVs

And here are the best streaming devices

In theory, an ultra-short throw (UST) projector offers the simplest and most practical way to watch movies on a big screen at home.

You should be able to position an all-in-one projector right next to your screen (or wall) to deliver as big as a 200-plus-inch rich and detailed image, without having to worry about clutter in the middle of the room.

But achieving all that in practice can be another story.

Even though the initial setup is simpler than a long-throw model, there is still a fair bit of fiddling around that has to go into getting the picture ready for a movie night.

Each brand has its own way of doing things, whether that's manually moving the image to fit the screen correctly or using the accompanying app, it always seems to take longer than you might imagine.

Editor-in-chief Alastair Stevenson certainly found this was the case in his latest UST testing for the upcoming What Hi-Fi? Awards.

Another issue with UST projectors, that we've spotted time and time again, is how they portray black depth.

They can't match the blackness of an OLED or Mini-LED TV screen as they are beaming light onto a surface instead of controlling light with pixels. But I have noticed that UST projectors tend to overcompensate by boosting up the contrast levels, which does not solve the problem at all.

At IFA, however, I got the chance to see the two newest entries to the premium UST category – and it made me hopeful that we could be seeing a change.

Both Xgimi’s Aura 3 Max and AWOL’s LuxVision are 4K UST projectors, and they are each claiming to offer something new.

Xgimi’s entry claims to be the world’s first 4k/120Hz UST. It offers 5700 ISO lumens of peak brightness and a contrast ratio of up to 8,000:1.

The LuxVision model is also claiming its own world record. The brand says it is the first 4K/120Hz UST projector with optical shift.

With both models offering this high resolution and refresh rate, they should make for a smooth experience for hardcore gamers as well as movie fans.

AWOL's optical shift is of particular interest here, as this one-touch feature should let users precisely adjust image positioning without losing that 4K resolution.

I didn't get to see the team set up the projector using the function but, if this is really the case, then it should make for a much-needed upgrade on the majority of UST projector setups.

Both offer a screen size up to 200 inches, and Google TV is on board both models. In terms of sound, AWOL and Xgimi both feature built-in speakers that support Dolby Atmos.

I got to see both of the projectors during demonstrations and, although they were far from ideal testing conditions with background noise and bright lighting, it gave me a taste of what they can offer.

The Aura 3 Max was showing off its picture chops with footage of various animals ambling around their jungle habitat (a much-needed relaxation break in the flurry of IFA). As a red panda clung to a tree, the projector delivered the texture of its fur with impressive detail without looking unnatural.

Even the darker details in the panda’s face were portrayed with clarity and reasonable black depth. That made me hopeful about its performance with blacks, although we will have to get it into the test room to challenge it with more movie scenes.

The AWOL projector’s demonstration featured Blackpink’s Pink Venom music video, displaying the projector’s punchy colours. Despite not watching in a dark room, the LuxVision managed to produce an engaging and bright overall image that immediately caught the eye thanks to its claimed 6000 lumens of peak brightness.

Detail levels were good as well, as the crinkles of the singers’ jackets were clean and sharp.

We have to get both projectors into our test room to properly see how they perform, but this first look has made me excited about the future of the category with Xgimi's promising dark detail and AWOL's fuss-free setup.

MORE:

Check out the best projectors we have tested

Here's our review of the Xgimi Titan

And these are the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

This week was notable, at least in the AV tech world, for the announcement that the next Amazon Prime Day sale is less than a month away.

Yes, another one! But if you just can't wait, there have been plenty of surprisingly good deals this week.

First up is our exclusive saving on a top five-star JBL AVR at Richer Sounds. Signing up for the free VIP programme and using our code WHFJBL500 will get you a massive £3801 in total, so it's not an offer to miss.

Elsewhere, we've seen some rock-bottom prices for several five-star Sony headphones, as well as a new low for LG's OLED flagship with a free soundbar to boot.

The bar has been set for Amazon Prime Day then!

As always, we only recommend products that we've actually tried and tested ourselves. Everything below has actually earned five stars, with several even getting a coveted What Hi-Fi? Award too.

Take a look for yourself:

For those who take home cinema seriously, the JBL Synthesis SDR-38 offers an outstanding sonic performance, a stylish build and an extensive feature set. To get this price, you'll have to sign up for the (free) Richer Sounds VIP club, and then use our exclusive WHFJBL500 to save a whopping £3801 in total.

If you'd rather opt for a more straightforward soundbar, then this LG G6 deal includes one absolutely free. LG's latest flagship boasts fantastic picture quality, excellent app support and flawless gaming specifications, and can be picked up for its lowest price with the code TRADE250. The four-star LG S70TY comes bundled in too.

The Sony WH-CH520 are comfortable, built to last, offer a generous battery life, support Bluetooth Multipoint, and sound great for the price. Their successor, the WH-CH530, is now on the market, but they currently cost double this £25 price.

Award-winning earbuds for £28. The Sony WF-C510 lack some of the more advanced features of pricier models, but they do offer a compact, comfortable design, solid, musical sound and impressive features, now at a new lowest price.

The Hisense AX5125H soundbar system is amazing value for money even at full price, with exceptional weight, scale and spaciousness. The Award-winner offers a lot of kit with great specs for a rather low price, making it one of the biggest Dolby Atmos bargains around.

The Cyrus 40 CD is no doubt a premium CD player, but it has the performance to match. Offering subtle detail, rhythmic precision, punch and power but also superb control, the 40 CD is a brilliantly engaging premium player for anyone with the budget.

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

2026 has been one of the most interesting and, if we're being brutally honest, exhausting years for TVs on record.

From the mainstream adoption of RGB Mini LED to cheaper OLED SE panels hitting the market, and the news of TCL essentially buying a majority stake in Sony's Bravia TV division, it's been a whirlwind.

And yet, there's been one manufacturer which has remained concerningly quiet up until now: Panasonic.

Rewind all the way to February (which feels like both a lifetime ago and strangely recent), when I flew to Munich to attend the Panasonic Experience 2026. At the event, the renowned Japanese consumer technology brand was showing off everything from air fryers, cameras and toothbrushes to Technics turntables, rice cookers and hair dryers.

TVs were also on show, and Panasonic made a huge announcement; just not the one I was expecting.

Now, it's an open secret that Panasonic's TV division has been struggling. At the lower end, it has struggled to keep up in a market now dominated by affordable 4K sets produced by the likes of Hisense and TCL. At the top, its prestigious OLED sets have seen tough competition from the likes of Sony, Samsung and LG: look at our recent lists of TV Award-winners, and it doesn't paint a pretty picture for the brand.

To rectify this, Panasonic announced that it was entering a strategic partnership with Shenzhen Skyworth, under its parent company Chuángwéi RGB, which would secure the future of its OLED, Mini LED and QLED sets in Europe.

The partnership was set to take effect on the 1st of April, and since the date came and went, Panasonic has been unnervingly quiet. Broadly speaking, its TVs have been out of stock at most retailers, and the one OLED TV it did announce, the Z86C, hasn't materialised.

Fast forward to IFA 2026, which took place earlier this month, and I was invited to the Panasonic TV booth to meet with Toshihiro Takagi (Product Planning, TV Business Division), Haruka Kono (TV Business Division) and Paul Williams (Press Relations) from Panasonic Corporation, as well as Paul Darch (CEO and Managing Director) and Sebastian Wegielski (General Manager Europe and Managing Director) from the newly formed SWMEU GmbH.

Reassurance, reorganising, and rebuilding

My discussion with representatives from Panasonic's new TV business centred mostly on what's happened over the past six months, and the short answer is that Panasonic has been incredibly busy behind the scenes.

It acknowledged that the April date originally planned was well behind us, but it wanted to get this partnership right, hence why it's been working hard to lay a strong foundation and hasn't rushed any TVs out to market.

The overall goal is to restore the brand's position within the European marketplace, with Panasonic eyeing up the number five spot within the pan-European market; hence why it needs to hit the ground running.

Development of the business has centred around four main pillars (which it originally shared during the Munich event): "The reference stays the reference", "Continuity you can trust", "Scaling Up" and "Innovation Pipeline". These are "the cornerstones of our strategy as we move forward", according to CEO Paul Darch.

They all seem fairly self-explanatory, but they are also key indicators as to what we can expect from Panasonic in the coming years.

The notion that Panasonic is eager to retain its position as a reference TV manufacturer is the first promising sign, and it recognises that OLED is the way to secure this legacy. It hasn't been shy in proudly proclaiming that its high-end OLED sets have been used by Hollywood editors and colourists, and it wants to keep that keep that status.

"What we mean by that is that what was once a Panasonic TV is still a Panasonic TV. The same guiding principles that govern picture, sound, design and OS continue", Darch said, which was reassuring to hear.

Doubling down on that, Darch also affirmed that "one of the key pieces of feedback that we receive is: will these Panasonic TVs really be Panasonic TVs? The answer is yes". Ultimately, based on what I've been told, the notion that future TVs will be any old set with a Panasonic badge slapped onto it can be dispelled.

Continuity is another major focus for this new partnership, hence why SWMEU GmbH has opened its head office in Wiesbaden, Germany, which is the city where Panasonic's European headquarters is located.

The innovation pipeline and scaling-up initiatives are where Panasonic really hopes to make up some ground, though. Broadening the product portfolio and bringing its TVs to market more quickly are two major priorities for the brand moving forward.

This already seems to be paying off, as Darch notes that "feedback, overwhelmingly, has been extremely positive; the market is requesting Panasonic to come back stronger as an evangelist of premium picture quality".

"OLED remains our leadership flagship"

Retaining that title means keeping the technology that Panasonic is renowned for alive. Panasonic recognises this, and that's why it's keeping OLED as a "key focus" in its lineup.

Panasonic consciously didn't replace its Z95B and Z90B OLED TVs this year, and these five-star models will continue until Panasonic launches its 2027 lineup. That said, it also recognises the importance of QD Mini LED within the current TV market, but Darch affirms that Panasonic won't be "bringing it for the sake of bringing it".

Panasonic is relying on its glare-free technology and picture processing to differentiate it from the likes of Hisense and TCL in this market, but whether it will be enough to win back market share from rival powerhouse TV manufacturers is another matter.

I quizzed Panasonic on what to expect from its 2027 TV range, but it remained tight-lipped for now, telling me it will "probably around CES time is when you'll really see the strength and the power of this new organisation".

"The objective is to ensure that both the Japanese and the overseas lineup reflect a consistent Panasonic TV identity"

What was most apparent is that Panasonic wants to remind us that this isn't a buyout, but rather a collaboration that will ensure a future for Panasonic TVs in the UK and Europe.

"This is no short-term gimmick, no short-term collaboration. We are working strongly with the partnership for 2027 and onwards," Darch affirmed, continuing "I want you to leave the room having confidence in this collaboration".

He then handed over to Mr Toshihiro Takagi to discuss how this partnership works from Panasonic Japan's perspective.

"The objective is to ensure that both the Japanese and the overseas lineup reflect a consistent Panasonic TV identity", Takagi affirmed, and he continued to explain how each component of the business will work in tandem going forward.

Particularly with the brand's premium TVs, Panasonic's established engineers will continue to take responsibility for picture tuning and the integration work required for certification programmes (Panasonic has an established partnership with the picture calibration company Calman, for example).

"As a result, Panasonic's distinctive picture quality and modes continue to be incorporated into our TVs", Takagi confirmed.

This sentiment continues with sound, as I was assured that Panasonic's microphone-assisted audio calibration system will remain, and Takagi confirmed that the team is working on a new DSP algorithm for the 2027 models, which he mentioned in relation to a new speaker configuration.

Behind the scenes, Panasonic Japan has audited the manufacturing operations against the brand's approved criteria, which essentially means that Panasonic has ensured that the scaled-up manufacturing process meets its quality standards and expectations.

Panasonic Japan is still very much involved, by the looks of things, although it seems like Panasonic's engineers will have a much more direct involvement with the brand's future premium TVs, such as the theoretical follow-ups to the Z95B and Z90B.

A few questions remain...

While I did my best to eke out some information about next year's lineup, Takagi explicitly told me that "we cannot discuss future lineups or specifications today; we look forward to sharing more when the time is right".

Therefore, my questions relating to whether we can expect to keep seeing Technics-tuned sound systems in future flagship OLED sets, or if we can expect an RGB Mini LED from the brand in the future, were shelved for now.

That said, Darch rounded out our conversation with a simple yet powerful sentiment: "Panasonic TV is back. What does back mean? Back means a stronger product offering, stronger commercial and robust distribution strategy, a stronger team and backed with real resources for what really comes next".

Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding, and we'll need to see Panasonic's 2027 TV lineup in action to see if this partnership has achieved what it set out to create; but in the short term, I get the sense that Panasonic is alive and kicking.

MORE:

Read our full Panasonic Z95B review

As well as our Panasonic Z90B 48-inch review

And check out our picks for the best OLED TVs

If I had to pick an era for simply being the happiest of my career, I would pick 2008-2012, when I held the roles of deputy editor and brand editor of What Hi-Fi?.

I've been obsessed with music and sound for my whole life, so on the day I became the editor of What Hi-Fi? Sound And Vision, I felt as if I was both reaching a summit and arriving home.

But our association didn't begin there. I had spent the previous 18 months as deputy editor for both the magazine and its newly launched website, whathifi.com, working with the wonderful team of Clare Newsome and (the sadly missed) Andy Clough, to create the first real incarnation of the website.

I will never forget Clare telling me: "We're finally going to have a proper website, so we need branded video. Sort it out, would you?" Never one to object to an ungainly splash around the deep end, I duly began the test-and-learn process of 'creating content'.

That led to much that was completely new to the brand: video reviews, How To's and unboxings, extended video show reports and interviews with industry luminaries (IAG's Peter Comeau and Ken Ishiwata of Marantz were personal highlights), as well as videos such as 'How We Test' (above), which laid out in detail the method and process on which the brand was determined to stake its reputation.

I had, in fact, worked for the magazine even earlier, as both a freelance sub-editor and, before that (2000-2001), as a staff writer and reviewer. That staff writer gig was my first 'proper' job in journalism – the first six months of which consisted almost entirely of listening to music on a ludicrously good reference system with still-technical editor, Ketan Bharadia.

I had begun my career as a journalist later than most (I was pushing 30), having enjoyed a mis-spent youth as a sessions-and-weddings guitar player – one time playing a gig to just two people listening to us in rapt attention, who turned out to be Womack and Womack!

But while the pursuit of great music, unrepeatable musical moments and exquisite sound has led me to all sorts of weird and wonderful, odd and unexpected places and situations, nothing in my career has ever matched such a solid and sustained period of consistent professional enjoyment as the time I occupied senior editorial positions at What Hi-Fi?.

Pivoting in many directions

Those years were a period of huge transition – for the What Hi-Fi? brand, for the technology and music industries, and for the world at large. At a time when traditional hi-fi sales were at an all-time low, the brand had to pivot, and in many directions at once.

Partly it was about content, as we moved, with our brand-new website, to digital, to video, to forums, to blog content and all the rest. But it was also the subject matter and the brand's fundamental mission, which moved first to TV and home cinema, then to headphones and to portable audio, and then to wireless and, above all, to streaming in all its myriad forms.

My main memory of this is that it gave the whole What Hi-Fi? team a renewed sense of purpose. We doubled down, dedicating ourselves to the exploration, discussion and evaluation of literally anything and everything that the consumer might use to enjoy music or movies. That was the core principle – our baseline.

Technological change, by this point, was already moving at high speed. Plasma TV had just given up the ghost, handing the TV field – for a short while – to LCD. Hi-fi streamers arrived and began to change the audio market, with the Naim Uniti winning our Readers' Award in its first year of existence, just as I became editor of the magazine.

3D TV came, floated around for a bit, and disappeared. But not before comedian Tim Minchin had written and performed – as I giggled into my champagne glass – a specially composed song entitled Three Is One Dimension Too Many to the industry at our What Hi-Fi? Awards ceremony. Fun times.

Within months of my becoming editor, we had seen the launch of the Sonos ZonePlayer S5, the iPad and the iPhone 3GS – effectively replacing the iPod – as well as the arrival of AirPlay, and the streamers and DACs market going mainstream.

As 2011 got underway, the tectonic plates of the TV industry were beginning to shift irrevocably away from Japan and toward the Korean companies. Later that year, Spotify Premium won our Readers' Award – signifying further shifts in perception among the public and our readers.

Renewed innovation in home audio continued, with highlights such as the launch of KEF's Concept Blade speaker, which I reported on from that years' Bristol Hi-Fi Show. We didn't know it at the time, but fairly soon, in Autumn 2012, I would leave to take on the role of KEF's UK PR representation, which I would continue through a six-year, multi-Award-winning period.

That the world was changing fast, we at What Hi-Fi? did not dispute. But what wasn't changing, as we always liked to remind people, was our (and your) love of music and movies. As the 2010s began to take shape, that simple idea drove the evolution of the What Hi-Fi? brand.

And it seems to me, happily, that this core value has not changed much in the intervening years. What Hi-Fi? still does the thing it has always done better than anyone else: 1) assemble a group of capable and intelligent reviewers; 2) have them honestly debate and argue about the products until a consensus is arrived at; 3) give the world that honest opinion until a new product comes along which changes the calculus; 4) rinse and repeat.

As a method of delivering useful and reliable information to the public about music and movie tech, I continue to think that's pretty hard to beat.

So Happy Birthday, What Hi-Fi?. And to the whole team, many happy returns!

MORE:

I edited What Hi-Fi? through the era of plasma TV, SACD and the iPod – and an infamous cover catastrophe

“I have never been happier” – 4K Blu-ray, OLED TVs, Dolby Atmos, and six unforgettable years as editor of What Hi-Fi?

Read all of our 50th anniversary features

Bose's Ultra Open Earbuds may go down as some of the most important wireless earbuds of their time.

They're not the best-sounding buds you can buy for £299 / $299 /AU$449, nor are they the most feature-laden, but given the market's trajectory over the past few years, it's hard to ignore their substatantial influence.

Since the Ultra Open Earbuds launched in early 2024, various brands, including Huawei, JBL, Shokz and Sennheiser, have tried to emulate their off-ear design, all to varying degrees of success and acclaim.

Bose wasn't the first brand to make an open pair of earbuds, but it was one of the first to show that the concept could really have legs, with the US brand's original effort standing tall as one of the best of its type we've ever tested.

With their blend of unobtrusive comfort and surprisingly satisfying sound quality, Bose's trailblazers remain the finest exemplar of what the rapidly expanding open market can be. Having lived with the Bose Ultra Open, I know just what they're capable of.

Bose has recently announced a sequel, the Ultra Open Earbuds (2nd Gen), and in my book, that's cause for celebration. Despite their imperfections, I've always been in the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds' corner, with a second-gen sequel representing the ideal opportunity to rectify the quirks and missteps of the fantastic yet flawed first-gen buds.

Second time's a charm

Before we get to that, we need to understand what makes Bose's original open effort so impressive, and to do that, we must understand what they were designed to do in the first place.

The thing is, not everyone likes the feel of a traditional pair of wireless earbuds, especially when it comes to having a foam or silicone tip burrowing into their ear canal.

For some users, they can become uncomfortable over time, while for others, they can fall out or cause discomfort during exercise. In-ears also tend to isolate you from the outside world, so for those of us who spend time running on busy roads, dodging traffic and pedestrians as we go, the idea of a more aware alternative is appealing.

Just the other day, I stepped out into what I thought was a quiet country lane during a quick 5K, only to jump like a stabbed rat back onto the verge upon realising that a pick-up truck the size of a tank had been there the entire time. With open buds, such risks are negated by virtue of having more environmental noise filtering into your ears, keeping you more attuned to your surroundings as a result.

For runners, gymgoers and ordinary wearers with sore ears, the Ultra Open Earbuds solved most of their problems, providing a comfortable 'clip-on' fit that rarely became wearing or unstable no matter where we went or what we were doing.

They sounded good, too, with a far meatier and more detailed signature than almost any open pair before or since. They were, in essence, the most viable alternative to the established in-ear configuration that we'd yet heard.

Open to improvements

Despite their clear virtues, the Ultra Open Earbuds were not, and indeed are not, without their quirks and quibbles.

For starters, they're still a sonically compromised pair of earbuds. Despite Bose's best efforts, sound quality is always going to suffer if you don't have a sealed fit, and while the Ultra Open Earbuds exhibit a musical, entertaining sound with a good sense of timing and decent cohesion, they're not the clearest or most insightful performers you'll find at this kind of money.

Speaking of money, Bose's trailblazers were simply far too expensive at launch. When they arrived in 2024, the buds would set you back £299 / $299 / AU$449, meaning that they were essentially going up against not only Bose's own QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (£300 / $299 / AU$450) but Sony's flagship WF-1000XM5 (£259 / $299 / AU$419) and the staggeringly popular AirPods Pro 2 (£249 / $249 / AU$399). That's a premium price tag for earbuds without noise cancelling or class-leading sound.

Thankfully, it looks as though at least one of my rather specific prayers has been answered. While writing about my experiences with Bose's open hopefuls at the time, I wrote that, "While I still support the open concept, I don't think its comfort benefits make up for the inevitable sonic sacrifices it incurs. Drop it down by £100 / $100 / AU$150? That's a different story."

And wouldn't you know it? That's exactly what Bose has done. The Ultra Open Earbuds are set to launch at a far more reasonable £180 / $199 / AU$350, with discounts that are almost exactly in keeping with my own requests. Does Bose religiously read my articles? Do I influence corporate policy? If so, can we get a sequel to the SoundLink Max Bluetooth speaker, please, and maybe a branded T-shirt while you're at it?

Money aside, any sonic improvements to the second-gen open buds are always gladly received. Lower-end frequencies are always going to be compromised when you don't have a proper seal, but any improvements to the quality of the bass from the sequel would be more than welcome.

There's power and weight to the original Ultra Open Earbuds, but as I wrote at the time, there's a hollowness that put me in mind of a "bucket being hit at the bottom of a well". Filling in those textures with more richness and authenticity would really complement the excellent sonic foundation Bose has already built.

Bose has teased “improved sound and call quality" for its sophomore effort, with the second-generation earbuds also using newly engineered drivers to deliver “deeper bass and higher volume” than their predecessors. Someone at Bose has definitely been reading my letters to Santa...

Great sound and a comfortable, easygoing fit, all for a much lower price? I'm listening.

Do you know why I like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds so much? Competent innovation. Bose tried to do something different with its trailblazing buds, but rather than simply relying on the open gimmick to shift units, they doubled down on a decidedly premium product that, while somewhat overpriced, had the quality to back up its innovation.

It isn't just the fact that the Ultra Open Earbuds are different – it's that they're genuinely good at what they do. Not perfect, but a very admirable first effort.

While many rivals have tried to emulate its success, Bose's effort remains the best of its type that we've heard over the past five-or-so years. The Ultra Open Earbuds are the most viable alternative to traditional in-ear alternatives, and now that Bose has dropped the price and is teasing serious sonic upgrades, the sequel could well prove to be a five-star success.

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It might seem odd to describe something that has just won 14 Emmy awards as a hidden gem, but it’s not the strangest thing about Widow’s Bay.

Apple TV’s 10-part series stars Welsh actor Matthew Rhys as Tom Loftis – the perennially exasperated mayor of the titular island town. Situated 40 miles off the New England coast, Widow’s Bay is so isolated it has no internet access or mobile phone signal, but outdated telecommunications are the least of its problems, because the natives believe the place to be cursed.

That doesn’t stop Tom from embarking on a campaign to attract tourists and turn Widow’s Bay into “the next Martha’s Vineyard”, but on the eve of a visit from a high-profile travel writer, strange things start to happen that have the locals warning of another impending “haunt”.

As is so often the case on cursed islands, most of the weirdness in Widow’s Bay takes place at night, which means there are plenty of scenes that will really put your TV to the test.

In the opening minutes of episode one, Tom is shaken awake by a nocturnal earthquake, the only light in the room coming from the moon outside his window. A sub-standard screen will render this scene with almost zero nuance and hide all the details under a blanket of blackness, but you should be able to see the silhouettes of the alarm clock and lamp on Tom’s nightstand just before he jumps out of bed.

Towards the end of the episode, he’s having dinner with the visiting journalist in the town’s only restaurant when the power mysteriously goes out, leaving the place in darkness except for the candles on each table. Here you should get a nice level of contrast between the intense individual flames and the shadowy spaces between the diners, while the panic on Tom’s face should be evident in the close-ups.

Widow’s Bay is a show that relies on mystery, so I won’t reveal too much about later episodes, but the sixth part, which is set in 1702, is full of naturally lit scenes that will look particularly authentic if you own one of the best OLED TVs.

By day, Widow’s Bay is a beautiful place. The series has been shot with slightly subdued colours and a touch of grain, which gives it a vintage feel that matches the sense of a place partly lost in time.

The town itself looks like somewhere you’d genuinely want to visit – all oceanic blues, lush greenery and quaint sandy coves. As long as you ignore the history of human sacrifice, mass murder, and cannibalism, it's positively idyllic.

But New England will always have those slightly creepy connotations. In the real world, it’s the home of the Salem witch trials and the birthplace of writers Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, plus it’s a favourite of horror directors looking for somewhere spooky for their next flick.

Robert Eggers set both The Witch and The Lighthouse in the area; Derry, the home of Stephen King’s It, is a fictional town in Maine; and parts of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island were shot at an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts.

The area’s traditional Colonial-era buildings are big, old, and often made of wood, which means they’re full of creaky floorboards and things that go bump in the night – and with Dolby Atmos audio available, that makes Widow’s Bay a great advert for owning one of the best surround sound systems.

The show’s not particularly big on jump scares (although there are a couple of real humdingers), but when Tom spends the night in the island’s supposedly haunted hotel, what you hear is what really enhances the feeling of apprehension.

It’s the creaking of the stairs as he descends into the creepy basement; the ticking of the old clock in the communal lounge; and the footsteps in the hallway outside his room when there’s not supposed to be anyone else in the building.

Of course, all those Emmy wins mean that Widow’s Bay won’t remain a hidden gem for long, but if you like your horror mixed with a dollop of comedy (or vice versa), get on board before you miss the boat.

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Eager to have your say on which product deserves to win a hallowed What Hi-Fi? Readers' Award this year?

And – new for this year – is there a hi-fi or home cinema product from days of yore that you feel deserves a fresh shoutout?

If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then we have two bits of good news.

Firstly, we’ve just opened voting for the 2026 What Hi-Fi? Readers’ Award.

And secondly, as part of our 50th birthday celebrations, we’re running a second reader-voted award. Specifically, and for one year only, our Golden Anniversary Readers' Award.

What Hi-Fi? Readers’ Award 2026

Voting is live now and will run until the 28th September. All you have to do is tell us which product in the poll below is most worthy of a What Hi-Fi? Award.

The top-voted product will then be crowned this year’s Readers’ Award winner at the What Hi-Fi? Awards 2026 ceremony on 12th November, and join an elite pantheon of past winners.

Over the past three years, these have been the 2025's reader favourite, the Ruark Audio R610, 2024’s winner, the Q Acoustics 5050 and 2023’s top dog, the Cambridge Audio MXN10.

This year’s shortlist is populated by the most popular reviews we’ve published over the past year and includes everything from cutting-edge new RGB Mini LED TVs to stereo amplifiers from hi-fi heavyweights.

Golden Anniversary Readers' Award

Next up is our Golden Anniversary Readers' Award.

As the name suggests, this is a special Award we’re only running this year that lets you vote on your favourite product from all of our Readers' Award winners.

The list includes every product that’s won the trophy, all the way back to our first winner in 2008, which, believe it or not, was the Sony PlayStation 3 games console.

To vote, all you have to do is pick your favourite in the poll.

If you’re feeling particularly passionate, drop a comment on this page and let us know your choice and why you think it deserves to win. We're eager to hear your rationale!

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There is no singular perfect album for testing a pair of headphones. Of course, certain recordings have earned a legendary reputation among hi-fi enthusiasts – Steely Dan’s Aja or Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, for instance – but it would hardly be appropriate, nor particularly enjoyable, to listen to the same tracks, time and time again, with each new product that enters the What Hi-Fi? test rooms.

A perk of the perpetual hunt for stimulating and effective test tracks is that you sometimes stumble upon pieces of music that leave a lasting impression. A recent personal example involves the avant-garde compositions of Ivan Wyschnegradsky.

Before we delve into Wyschnegradsky’s work, a bit of background on the man himself, who was almost as peculiar as his music.

Born in Saint Petersburg in 1893, Wyschnegradsky studied harmony, composition and orchestration as a young man, before entering law school. But before he would complete his law studies, at the age of 23, Wyschnegradsky experienced a ‘spiritual vision’, which is said to have inspired most of his later work.

Composition alone, however, would prove insufficient to convey his mystical experience.

Alongside music, Wyschnegradsky wrote theoretical articles. One of which, titled La Loi de la Pansonorité (The Law of Pansonority), outlined his belief that music represented a separation of sounds from a continuous fabric of the universe. This separation, the composer believed, rendered musical art "artificial and anti-continuous”.

In his efforts to rectify the situation, and draw closer to a “pansonorous” music, he adopted some interesting tactics, including tuning two pianos a quarter-tone apart – half the size of the smallest traditional step between piano keys.

And that is exactly what you can expect to hear throughout Étude Sur Les Mouvements Rotatoires, 24 Préludes.

So, why does this strange product of divine afflatus make such a good test for a pair of headphones? I think it has something to do with unfamiliarity.

In the midst of unusual scales, chords that sound almost, but not quite, out of tune, and occasionally violent staccato rhythms, one's ear (at least for those accustomed to the western musical tradition) is drawn out of its comfort zone and into a state of heightened alertness.

Suddenly, properties of the music beyond the melody, such as rhythm, dynamics and the spatial qualities of the recording, become auditory anchors. Holding on to them for dear life, you are likely to notice certain crucial, but all-too-often overlooked features of your headphones’ performance.

In the first of the 24 Préludes Dans L'Échelle Chromatique Diatonisée À 13 Sons, Op. 22, En Quarts De Ton Pour Deux Pianos, the swelling glissandos ought to convey a pulse-like rhythm, if your headphones’ dynamic response is up to scratch. Similarly, busy parts in the bass and abrupt discordant stabs will test how your cans keep up with rhythms and fast transients across the frequency spectrum.

In the third Prélude, weighty, somber chords should drag you along with their galumphing rhythm. The main melody of this piece, which draws somewhat closer to conventional harmony, but with a jazzy slant, should let the headphones’ midrange sing, as rich piano notes interact, warbling and beating while their pitches converge.

The fourth Prélude provides an altogether more energetic test than the third, with a defined beat and booming low-frequencies. While the two pianos veer occasionally into more chaotic rhythms, there should be a clear sense of pulse here. If your toes are tapping, as they will surely be relieved to do after a sombre start, that’s a good sign that your headphones are providing a low frequency kick with plenty of rhythmic acuity.

Further on in the album, the 16th Prélude begins with a sparse, melancholic melody. Thanks to the conservative use of chords at the start of this piece, the reverberation surrounding each note is clear and provides a palpable sense of the space in which it was recorded. Dynamically sensitive and texturally detailed headphones will shine with this track, offering a moment of tranquil immersion.

It must be said that this is not exactly a workout album (besides the fourth Prélude, which could probably work quite well for those intent on pumping iron to 20th century classical music).

But for anyone looking to explore a particularly strange corner of avant-garde classical composition, or hoping to put a new pair of cans to the test with something more than a little bit different, Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s Étude Sur Les Mouvements Rotatoires, 24 Préludes could be just the ticket.

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Another week, another quiz and this time we’re going back to a trusty old wordsearch where you’re on the hunt for thirteen hi-fi brands.

This one we’d consider suitable for beginners. We don’t think it’s too taxing, and hopefully you’ll find them easy to track down so you can get a quck enough time to feature on our leaderboard.

Don’t get complacent if you find it too easy – we’ll be ramping up the difficulty level for our next one! Have fun!

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Even casual music fans are aware of the great vinyl revival – but not all will know that there has been a similar resurgence for their smaller successor.

CDs, the last major audio format before the digital and streaming era, are among the physical media seeing a surge in demand. The discs are seeing steady sales growth, with internet searches for “CD players” seeing a five-year high last December.

And here at What Hi-Fi?, we couldn't be more delighted. We’ve been banging the CD drum for years, and continue to review the players still being released and making sure our collections still get some love.

We saw fit, then, to highlight some of the best CD players we have reviewed and recommend, as well as some of our favourite discs to test them with. So whether you’re getting back into CDs and your old micro system doesn’t cut it any longer, or you’re a young Gen Z whippersnapper trying the format for the first time, there’s a little something for everyone.

All of the CD players below have been tried and tested by our expert reviewers, and all have earned at least four stars and are among our top recommendations.

We haven’t reviewed the CDs themselves, but all have made appearances in our test rooms over the years. We’d love to hear what your favourite test CDs are in the comments below (but keep heated music debates civil, please!).

The Marantz CD 70 was released only a month or so ago, but it has already established itself as our go-to recommendation at this level. With clear, insightful sound, solid, tight bass and a solid build, this Marantz is doing an excellent job of keeping the humble CD going strong.

Our CD player Product of the Year – and not for the first time – the Arcam CD5 is a tremendously entertaining mid-price offering with an engaging, muscular sound. It continues to impress our review team, and will no doubt be in the running again for this year’s Awards.

The Cyrus 40 CD is undoubtedly premium in price, but it has the performance to match. Offering subtle detail, rhythmic precision, punch and power but also superb control, the 40 CD is a brilliantly engaging premium player for anyone with the budget.

If you already own a DAC, the Cambridge Audio CXC makes perfect sense. Despite being released more than 10 years ago, this CD transport is still in production and still very much recommended. It offers a smooth, open and enjoyable sound as well as good rhythm and musicality.

The Marantz CD6007 may have been succeeded by the recently released CD 70, but there’s still stock available and at a lower price. And, as a six-time What Hi-Fi? Award winner, this is no sonic slouch – it offers high levels of insight as well as an excellent build and finish.

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On 13 September 1996, Tupac Shakur died after being shot four times during a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Gangsta rap took the music world by storm in the early ’90s and one of the genre’s biggest stars had paid the ultimate price for the violence that had spilled out of the songs and into the streets.

Just three days later, as the long search for 2Pac’s killer began, DJ Shadow – or Josh Davis as he’s known to his mum – released a record that showed a very different side to hip-hop.

While most other producers at the time were looping snippets of old records and turning them into beats for rappers to rhyme over, DJ Shadow used an Akai MPC60 MKII sampler to assemble the sprawling sonic collages that would become Endtroducing.

The result is both a landmark moment in contemporary music – it’s included in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first album to be composed entirely of sampled sounds – and one that contains some great tracks for testing your hi-fi system.

The vinyl record is very much the raw material that makes up Endtroducing so it’s only fitting that its opening track Best Foot Forward is a blur of scratches and vocal samples that introduce DJ Shadow to the world – this is, after all, his debut album.

Shadow’s collection of records is said to exceed 60,000, although considering that number has been kicking around for nearly 20 years it’s probably much more by now. Most of the samples you hear on Endtroducing come from albums he found trawling through the racks at Rare Records – the Sacramento shop seen on the album’s front cover.

Some of them are household names. Shadow’s crate-digging results in appearances on the album from Metallica (Orion from Master of Puppets), Pink Floyd’s On the Run (taken from studio footage featured in the theatrical cut of their Live at Pompeii concert film), and Bjork (Possibly Maybe from the Icelandic singer’s second album Post). But Shadow weaves them into his compositions so seamlessly that every track sounds like a completely original piece of work.

A lot of the other samples are more obscure. Building Steam With a Grain of Salt includes piano parts taken from I Feel a New Shadow by Jeremy Storch, who released a couple of albums in the early ’70s but doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page. Shadow transforms it into the basis for a slightly ominous-sounding track featuring a ghostly choir-like vocal and a stuttering drum breakdown that will test your system’s ability to stay composed when things get frantic.

There should be real depth and texture to the drone that permeates The Number Song before the rich, lively brass kicks in around halfway through, while Changeling is all spacey synths and a muscular bassline that will give the low-end something to think about.

Gently insistent cymbals should cut through the bassline on What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 4, with layers of mournful brass, subtle piano and twinkling percussion creating a dense soundscape that’ll just sound like a jumble of noise on sub-par equipment.

There should be a real sense of drama on Stem/Long Stem, which is one of many tracks on Endtroducing that wouldn’t sound out of place on a film score. Check out Shadow’s own Cops ’n’ Robbers remix of the song, which includes dialogue samples taken from Michael Mann’s Heat, to hear just how well the two go together.

Mutual Slump features a noise that sounds a bit like Chewbacca stubbing one of his big furry toes, so it’s quite apt that it also includes a vocal sample of a female voice asking if “you feel like Darth Vader”. Listen carefully and you should also be able to pick up some pretty skronky sax behind the spaced-out synths, while Organ Donor takes a Giorgio Moroder deep cut called Tears and almost turns it inside out. There should be real groove and momentum to that one when the drums kick in.

The album’s emotional epicentre is Midnight in a Perfect World. It extracts a piano part from David Axelrod’s The Human Abstract that manages to sound both melancholy and hopeful at the same time, combines it with more woozy synths, another obscure female vocal from the 1970s, and some big-beat drums to create another slice of atmospheric hip-hop that could hardly sound more different to what Biggie, 2Pac and co had spent the past few years making.

DJ Shadow called the album Endtroducing because he said it felt like he was signing off on a particular chapter in his early career, but really it was just the start of something much bigger.

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Home appliance brand Haier is known for its glossy fridge-freezers, washing machines, and dishwashers, and more widely for producing medical equipment, gaming peripherals, and industrial robotics; but now it’s entering one of the trickiest markets of all.

That’s right, after years of testing the waters elsewhere, Haier is hoping to break into the TV market in the UK and Europe. It may be the newest player in a crowded and competitive market, but the brand has both huge aspirations and a plan to carve out an identity among its fellow super successful Chinese technology giants.

I sat down with Haier’s TV Business Director, Steve Macdonald, at IFA 2026 in Berlin to discuss where the brand wants to go next after launching its first QLED TV range in the UK earlier this year.

Competing with TCL and Hisense, or aiming higher?

The biggest takeaway from our conversation is that Haier knows it needs something special to differentiate itself from TCL and Hisense, which are currently dominating the market.

Haier is also well aware it is launching into a tough market, which is why it’s setting its sights on the premium segment. It is testing the waters with a fairly affordable QLED range at the moment, but I was reliably informed that this is just the first step for the brand.

Macdonald confirmed that Haier is open to adopting more advanced panel technology. Mini LED TVs are apparently already in the works, and I spotted an RGB Mini LED model on the show floor at Haier’s humongous stand at the Berlin Messe.

OLED is also on the table according to Macdonald. And that’s an interesting distinction, considering TCL and Hisense are both almost completely OLED-avoidant.

In fact, Macdonald says that Haier isn’t looking to tussle with the kings of budget TVs. Instead, it is looking to build a more premium reputation akin to those of Samsung and LG.

“I think the mindset we have is that what we would like to be is a more premium brand – and that will take time – but more akin to what the Korean brands are doing than some of the other brands,” says Macdonald.

He then clarifies that Haier isn’t looking to “become the new TCL or Hisense” when pressed on the matter.

Macdonald follows this by conceding this is a big aspiration and that the brand needs to have “an edge, otherwise we’re not going to survive in that area”.

Premium panels, KEF sound systems and accessibility upgrades…

To sharpen that edge, Haier is working hard to establish its own premium features, including a more powerful chipset to appeal to gamers, adding more potent accessibility features through its partnership with Amazon’s Fire TV platform (including visual and audio enhancement modes and easier navigation settings), and enhancing its anti-glare display coating.

Haier also wants to win over the hearts of serious AV fans (such as ourselves). And what better way to do that than to partner with one of the biggest names in audio?

For Haier’s latest TV range sports speakers tuned by legendary British hi-fi manufacturer KEF, a fact that inevitably piqued our interest almost immediately.

There was a pretty big emphasis on this partnership at IFA, with Haier hosting a dedicated sound-room experience with a KEF-branded TV and soundbar system, but Haier isn’t the first brand to get a big name in hi-fi on board for its TV sound systems.

Hisense has recently partnered with Devialet, TCL TVs sport Bang & Olufsen sound systems, Philips has a Bowers & Wilkins-equipped TV in its lineup, and Panasonic continues to leverage its Technics division for premium sound systems. So Haier can’t rely on this partnership alone to make its TVs appeal to home cinema enthusiasts.

But, unlike Hisense and TCL, Haier is open to exploring OLED panel technologies. Given What Hi-Fi?’s experience with even the most premium of backlit TVs, including the new RGB Mini LED variants, this could be a unique selling point for the brand.

An OLED TV with a KEF sound system sounds pretty good, after all. Especially if it has a similar sonic character to the five-star KEF XIO.

Making big strides, but also taking things one step at a time…

Haier’s wider strategy to gain some ground in the UK also involves a huge sports partnership with the Champions League and appealing to UK retailers by taking a specialised approach.

Macdonald notes that the KEF partnership will be a vital tool in appealing to home cinema retailers such as Richer Sounds, whereas Haier will take a different approach to its broader retail partners.

Most importantly, Macdonald confirms that Haier is constantly re-evaluating its position and direction, and it won’t be going all guns blazing quite yet. He says that “every couple of months, we have to reset what we’re doing and understand, and it’s not going to be an easy journey.”

Haier is unquestionably launching into the UK TV market at a turbulent time. But with its sights set high and a major audio partnership already in place, it could be the next brand to challenge the likes of Samsung, LG and TCL.

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In a somewhat surprising move, telecommunications giant Vodafone has announced its first UK set-top streaming box.

In a similar vein to Sky Stream, Vodafone TV will be a subscription-based device aiming to bring together Freely live TV, streaming and even gaming under a single hub.

With Netflix and HBO Max included, as well as support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, it certainly has some home cinema credentials and has piqued the interest of the What Hi-Fi? team, in theory at least.

But how does the streaming box work in practice?

I have been lucky enough to try the all-in-one video streamer/set-top box/gaming machine over the past week (rather good timing, as my ageing smart TV now refuses to connect to the internet) and have a few first impressions ready to share below.

As the worlds of mobile and home entertainment become far more linked, what can Vodafone offer our living rooms? Let’s have a look...

Like: a slick, responsive and personalised UI

Vodafone TV is a rather late entrant to the world of streaming interfaces, which have been evolving and improving for more than a decade now. The Android OS on the Vodafone TV doesn’t reinvent the wheel here, but it excels at what it’s supposed to do: make it as easy as possible to find the content and services you want to watch.

Freely live TV, domestic catch-up services, international streamers and digital purchases are all integrated nicely into the homepage, allowing the user to browse everything on offer at once. There was no need for me to jump between various services to decide what to watch, and there are several categories at the top that let me filter by shows, movies, sports and more.

There is also an AI-powered search service complete with Google Assistant, which lets me search by whatever niche genre or mood I like (‘scare me’ and ‘mind-blowing storylines’ are two of the suggestions) and the Vodafone TV promptly spits out some suggestions.

The homepage and suggestions also get more personalised the more I watch, with recommendations slowly getting more aligned to my taste over the week.

Ads are also far less prevalent than on services such as Fire OS, and the 3GB of RAM makes browsing silky smooth (and far faster than my sluggish budget TV UI).

So, will all this put an end to Friday nights spent searching for a film, only to run out of time and go to bed? Well, it’s not a miracle worker, but the Vodafone TV is at least intuitive in providing options from across the increasingly broad spectrum of streaming services. You’ll at least get several options before deciding to rewatch Back to the Future for the hundredth time.

Like: promising picture and sound

We have yet to perform a full test of the Vodafone TV or pit it against its rivals, but early impressions have been promising. Freely presents a bright, sharp HD picture even when channel hopping, with only a few channels requiring a bit of buffering before reaching full quality.

The impressive array of streaming and catch-up also apps all work as they should, presenting in 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos where applicable and loading snappily.

A challenging one-shot fight scene in a dingy warehouse in Daredevil: Born Again performs well, showing impressive contrast where light breaks through the darkness and providing plenty of detail despite the shadowy scene. We are interested to see how this performs against its rivals.

Like: unexpected gaming support

Unlike key rivals such as Sky Stream, Vodafone TV is betting big on gaming and comes with several video games available over the cloud – at no extra cost. 302 fully fledged cloud games are included, to be precise, with the Google Play Store offering access to more games and apps.

As with other video game streaming services, it’s a quick and painless process. All you have to do is pair a Bluetooth controller, click on the game, and it is loading in less than 30 seconds.

The game library won’t convince any hardcore gamers to give up their consoles – it’s largely a mix of older titles and smaller indie games – but there is at least a good mix of genres, age ratings and multiplayer titles that will appeal to children, casual gamers and those on a budget.

Your experience may well depend on the strength of your internet, however. Mafia: Definitive Edition, probably one of the more challenging titles in the Vodafone TV gaming catalogue, was rather stuttery and borderline unplayable on my (admittedly unreliable) home broadband.

However, I had no such issue using the office wi-fi in What Hi-Fi? Towers, where gameplay was smooth and responsive, though the graphics took a hit in fast-paced scenes.

Dislike: the price remains a mystery

Vodafone has been open with most aspects of its set-top streaming box, but the price has remained a closely guarded secret.

We imagine this could get complicated, as there will be all sorts of offers available depending on any existing Vodafone plans you have as well as any extra streaming services you add; still, it’s a really crucial piece of the puzzle that’s missing here. With the cost of streaming services forever rising, a chance to bundle several together is tempting, but the price could really make or break this.

Sky Stream is arguably its closest rival; users can opt for the Essential package, which includes Sky and Netflix for £15 per month, or the Ultimate tier adds HBO Max, Disney+ and Hayu for £24 per month.

Vodafone TV comes with a similar offering of Netflix and HBO Max, which are £7.99 and £5.99 respectively for their cheapest tiers, which at least gives us a baseline. Will Vodafone follow Sky’s lead with an up-front cost? Will it also cost more for a rolling contract than a fixed one? Time will tell…

Dislike: it might struggle to stand out from the tough competition

If you are already on a Vodafone contract for broadband, a mobile phone or a SIM, we can see how it would be convenient to add TV and streaming into one centralised monthly bill.

However, if you're starting from scratch, there are already several other five-star options available: Sky Stream and its convenient access to Sky channels, the budget and subscription-free Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd generation) or the premium Apple TV 4K with its top-notch AV performance.

Will Vodafone TV be able to carve out a niche of its own? Will cloud gaming or a Vodafone ecosystem be enough of a draw? We’ll find out when Vodafone TV launches in October...

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Read our full Sky Stream review

Here are our picks for the best streaming devices

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We’re in Awards season. That means one thing: a gruelling hi-fi and home cinema battle royale, which runs until we have crowned a champion in each of our Best Buy categories.

While we always review as a team, each Awards category has one lead tester; and this year, once again, one of my categories is ultra-short-throw (UST) projectors.

Did I get a pang of jealousy as our senior staff writer, Lewis Empson, pulled the surround sound packages card out of the hat we use to sort our testing plan (joking)? A bit, but truthfully I was also quite happy to take this category.

I have reviewed, or at least been one of the team testing, most of the recent USTs to pass through our test rooms, and I understand their appeal at a personal and professional level.

An ultra-short-throw projector is an impressive piece of equipment: a single-box beamer, usually with an inbuilt sound system, it can throw a giant home cinema picture while sitting right next to the screen or wall it’s projecting onto.

So in theory, you have a home cinema in a box that can stream an 80- or even 200-plus-inch screen into even the smallest of living spaces as long as the projection area is big enough.

Done right, it can be a very compelling option for people like me, who are forced to use their narrow home office or a spare bedroom as their hobby/home cinema room. I have a Hisense PX3 connected to a JBL Bar 1300 in my attic AV cave/office for this reason.

I chose this specific combination, because the PX3 supports high-refresh-rate gaming. And, despite my best efforts, my room can’t accommodate the proper 5.2 system I yearn for, so the JBL Bar 1300 soundbar system is a nice middle ground between a full system and a basic soundbar.

Back to this year’s UST shootout, and as I descended into the darkness and began running the contenders head to head, from the moment I plugged the first UST in, I had a sense of déjà vu, as two old issues immediately reared their ugly heads.

The first is that, despite the marketing suggesting that these are a plug-and-play, simple option for home cinema fans, there is nothing simple about setting up a UST projector.

For yet another year, the process, regardless of manufacturer, remains the same: place the unit on a stand by your intended projection surface; turn it on and then adjust the feet and distance to make the projected guide image fit roughly on it; then run the autocorrection process, or manually make the necessary tweaks.

Neither option is good for your zen.

The ‘autocorrection’ process asks you to take a photo of a projected grid, then upload it to a site owned by the company. From there, it’s meant to tweak the settings to perfect the image. Except it doesn’t.

I make a point to always try the autocorrection at least half a dozen times before giving up. That remained the case this year, and I still have a batting average of zero successful runs. At least some things in life are consistent…

That would be fine, were it not for the fact that the manual correction process is outright painful too. You have to try to optimise the angle and height of the UST using the adjustable feet first: it’s a process that is the home cinema equivalent of trying to get a three-seater, L-shaped sofa up a spiral staircase.

Then, to add insult to injury, you have to adjust the projection area using manual corner controls. And these, inevitably, seem hell-bent on never quite being finessed enough to make the image perfectly square.

As a final annoyance, even minor movements can undo all your hard work. So if you have playful pets or a curious toddler, guard the UST with your life, or be prepared to start the process all over again.

Ask any of the team, and they would, I hope, tell you that I am normally an even-tempered sort of fella – the type you’d probably see chilling at a Grateful Dead concert. But during this year’s testing, the combination of frustrations meant that, once again, Lewis was subjected to a tirade of grumbles that would make a sailor blush during the set-up process.

The second issue, thankfully, isn’t as infuriating. If anything, to be fair, it is actually less pronounced this year.

Still, as I moved to the picture-testing part of our shootout, the moment I put our first 4K Blu-ray into our reference player, I spotted some issues with the USTs’ black levels.

Of course, no projector can match the perfect blacks of an OLED TV and its pixel-level light control. A UST, like any projector, produces images by projecting light onto a surface. And, unless a clever new technology comes out that somehow miraculously changes this, it won’t ever be able to create perfect blacks.

But as I went through the list of this year’s contenders, they still seem to fall into two camps in their attempts to overcome this inherent weakness.

On one side, we have what I like to call the grey beards.

These are the USTs that have decided not to hide the weakness and accept they can’t deliver perfect blacks. This can be a blessing, or a curse depending on how the strategy is implemented. But generally the compromise here is that, while dark scenes can look a little washed out and flat, they retain a decent amount of dark detail.

Then there’s the “Just For UST” camp.

These are the models that, like some men of a certain age (mine), are obsessed with trying to hide their greys. USTs in this camp tend to crank their contrast, making films look like a Frank Miller comic, offering an added level of punch but at the expense of detail. I particularly hate this approach.

Despite steps in the right direction, with blacks on some of the units I tested going deeper than I have seen on past USTs, all of the models at least partially fell into one of these camps, and couldn't quite nail dark scenes as a result.

Which is why, for the third year running, I find myself typing this feature, offering a minor word of warning to potential UST buyers: these devices can be magical for their intended market, and they are improving every year, but they still have a couple of niggling flaws to overcome as a category, compared with both TVs and full-fat long-throw projectors.

So, think hard about whether a UST really is right for your specific circumstances before investing in one.

If ease of use is your main priority, a home cinema-in-a-box coffee-table projector may be a better fit. If you want a proper home cinema, there is nothing like a decent long-throw unit. And if you’re not so bothered about screen size and just want a quality home movie experience, there are excellent OLED TVs available at the same price as most USTs.

USTs are designed and marketed to a specific type of home cinema fan for a reason.

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After seven years, Marvel’s star-studded epic Avengers: Endgame is coming to the big screen again at the end of September with a new Avengers: Endgame Encore special release.

You might remember the cultural phenomenon back in 2019. Whether you had a hoard of Marvel comics or got dragged to a screening by your mates, there’s no denying the energy was infectious.

Editor's note: There are spoilers ahead.

I remember seeing it in my local cinema. There was an enthusiasm from the crowd that I have rarely experienced since.

The film follows the aftermath of Avengers: Infinity War, where the villainous Thanos snapped half of the universe out of existence. The remaining superheroes, including Iron Man and Captain America, must figure out a way to bring them back.

While all your favourite parts of the film will be present and correct, the catchily named Avengers Endgame: Encore will be bringing some changes.

There are rumours that the film has a completely revised colour grade, designed to fix the somewhat drab original version’s grey and brown aesthetic, which wasn’t universally loved by fans.

That, though, hasn’t been confirmed by Marvel. The only evidence for it is that if you compare the two trailers, there seems to be a little more black depth and slightly more vibrant colours on the new version.

It could be the colour grading or increased saturation of the trailer and not the full movie, however, so the cinematic release may not see the same benefit. We have reached out to Disney for clarity and will update this page when we hear back.

Colours aside, it’s certainly an exciting prospect to see such a classic superhero film in the cinema again – and, if the colour grading rumours are true, it would make for an even more vibrant experience.

But what’s so special about the revamped Avengers experience, and is it worth the trip? Thankfully, a few additions to Encore have been confirmed.

To infinity and beyond

The biggest difference with the new release is the film’s length. If you watched the original version, you may remember having to take a well-timed toilet dash, as it ran for about three hours.

There are two slightly different cuts that are being released. The regular screening of Endgame: Encore will feature two extra minutes of footage, according to the British Board of Film Classification.

There’s no word yet on what this will actually include, but in an interview with Fandango, the Russo brothers called it “required viewing” in preparation for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday film.

If you go to an Infinity Vision screening, however, you will be treated to just over five minutes of extra content, bringing the total runtime to a touch over 186 minutes.

What’s Infinity Vision, I hear some of you ask? It’s Disney’s new cinema certification, which calls for screens to meet certain specifications. Infinity Vision-approved cinemas must have a screen width of at least 45 feet (around 14 metres), a Dolby Surround 7.1 sound system, and a specific brightness level.

This is not a proprietary sound or projection system like IMAX or Dolby Vision, so any cinema can become Infinity Vision-approved if it meets the specifications. That makes it harder to pin down the exact number of eligible cinemas, but selected Cineworld, Vue and Odeon screens in the UK are on the list.

It’s hard not to be cynical about Marvel re-releasing its most financially successful film with only five minutes of extra material.

Having the Infinity Vision badge of certification does, at least, make it reassuring that you will get to experience immersive picture and sound while recalling the golden days of the studio. And, if you’re a newcomer to Marvel who never got to experience Endgame in the cinema the first time round, it should certainly be worth a watch.

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What is Infinity Vision?

These are the best 4K Blu-ray players

And check out the best TVs

Ever since the idea of the vampire came into being, there have been stories that define each iteration. Whether that’s the grotesque Nosferatu or Matt Berry’s preening Laszlo from What We Do in the Shadows, there’s a nocturnal freak out there for everyone.

But arguably the most influential vampire to have shaped how we see the infernal creature today is from the 1958 film Dracula starring Christopher Lee. His take on the character introduced Dracula as a more suave, fanged version of the vampire.

And now, there’s good news for classic horror fans: a restoration of the film is coming to 4K Blu-ray and is being released in cinemas. It includes around three minutes of missing scenes that were originally shown only in Japan when the film was released.

The 4K restored edition was handled by Silver Salt Restoration, and I got the chance to get a taste of the process in its London studio, and to speak to the team behind the curtain.

Hope for the market

The state of physical media is a contentious topic, but Anthony Badger, Head of Restoration, has hope for the future. “It’s certainly the end of the day of buying a film in DVD at Tesco. But I think there will always be a place for it,” he says.

He adds that people seem to value the tangibility of holding a physical disc in your hands.

“I think it’s been fascinating that a lot of the more obscure Hammer stuff that isn’t horror, has actually sold really well too. When’s the last time anyone’s seen that? Like 10 pm on BBC Two in 1997. So it’s fascinating – the wealth of stuff. And there is a hunger for that.”

The editions that originally appeared, he explains, would often have been a “horrific” transfer. “I think with a lot of the older transfers, it is a barrier to enjoying it because you can’t quite hear the sound properly and the image is all blurry.”

Badger says he hopes this prompts people to look more into their archives.

4K editions, the team agrees, have more of a draw for collectors too. Mark Stanborough, Head of Restoration at Hammer, says that “when you look at some of the Hammer titles that we’ve done, they could have been filmed last week.

“They look so sharp and it’s amazing,” he smiles.

A trip to the pictures

As well as being released on 4K UHD and Blu-ray, Dracula will be shown in UK cinemas in October.

When it was first shown at the pictures, people were shocked at the graphic nature of the grizzly killings – and it still makes for tense viewing today.

Stanborough says that it was important for Dracula to get a release on the big screen. He adds: “We did Curse of Frankenstein, and I think that went into 150 cinemas and was very popular. And obviously, Dracula is the bigger film, the one that everybody knows.”

Badger says that Dracula presented the challenge of removing sudden colour changes and fringing, especially in the cut elements: “In the cut elements that were preservation elements, you tend to often get issues with it when you recombine the colour channels together from monochromatic film.”

This results in, he says, the different colours often not lining up perfectly so the combined image will be one colour, and then it will “slowly or abruptly change to a different colour”.

He continues: “We had to lock the colours even in the original negative, which had age related fading and degradation, because it is a lot harder [to colour grade] if it’s not the same colour from frame to frame.”

The Dracula 4K Limited Collector’s Edition is available for pre-order now from the Hammer website – and I can’t wait to get it into our test room to challenge the best home cinema products out there.

MORE:

I saw the 4K restoration of a classic horror movie – and I will never take the process for granted again

These are the best 4K Blu-ray players

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It can be nice, sometimes, to sit back and simply let the full production of a track wash over you, to be immersed in a wide soundstage that’s packed with instruments and information for you to soak up. However, there is also nothing quite like hearing a great acoustic track.

Strip away all the bells and whistles, and music immediately sounds more intimate, encouraging a greater connection between listener and artist. Great acoustic tracks allow you and your system to peer in and dig out the subtlest and finest of details and deliver tone and texture the like of which you haven’t heard before.

Our team of expert reviewers have dipped into their box of tracks to pick the acoustic test tracks that they use to highlight a system’s abilities, or shortcomings.

What are your favourite acoustic tracks? Let us know in the comments below…

Fast Car – Tracy Chapman (Tracy Chapman, 1988)

As predictable as it might be, there’s no getting away from the fact that Fast Car is one of the greatest acoustic tracks of all time.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard it emanating from our test rooms while our reviewers have been putting hi-fi kit through its paces. It’s hard to resist, especially if you’ve got a talented pair of speakers sitting in front of you.

The track is a catchy mix of folk and pop, and there’s even a sprinkling of rock for the chorus. It’s an emotional story about one person’s desire and dream to leave their current circumstances for a better life, and there's real beauty in the way Chapman delivers emotion in her vocals. You can really feel the hope and yearning in her voice, and any decent system should be able to communicate this.

Add to the mix the delicate guitar playing where you can hear subtle details such as fingers sliding over strings, and contrasting drums that explode into life during the chorus, and you’ve got an awesome switch of tempo and a great test of dynamic versatility.

Words by Andy Madden

Take On Me – A-ha (MTV Unplugged: Summer Solstice, 2017)

I first stumbled across this track whilst doing a recce of the Bristol Hi-Fi Show a few years ago. I can’t remember the exact system I was listening to at the time, but I distinctly remember thinking that although the tune was familiar, I had never heard this particular version before. So I pulled up a pew, sat down and proceeded to be blown away.

I suppose because the video for Take On Me is so iconic, you sometimes forget about the actual song itself, the lyrics and composition, so to hear it stripped back to just a vocal, piano and a guitar gave me a newfound appreciation for Morten Harket.

His vocal is beautifully controlled and shows some extremely subtle dynamics, while the natural texture of each instrument shines through. An intimate performance that’s just as memorable as the track’s original 1984 music video.

Words by Andy Madden

S P E Y S I D E, Bon Iver (SABLE, fABLE, 2025)

Bon Iver’s comeback track after a five year hiatus delivered all of the raw emotion I’d hoped it would, and that’s mostly down to the raw, minimalist acoustic production.

This track features minimal instrumentation, with an acoustic guitar taking an equally important role to singer/songwriter Justin Vernon’s delicate and emotionally charged falsetto vocals. Everything is underpinned by a sweeping viola that is woven in throughout the song.

It’s a dynamic showcase, with moments of near silence permeated with Vernon’s harmonised vocals. It’s a delicate balance, and it requires a system that can handle low-level dynamics with finesse for the track to truly shine. Furthermore, the stripped-back production is best served by headphones, earbuds or speakers that lean towards the natural and un-coloured end of the spectrum.

I have used this track to test soundbars, speaker packages and smartphones, as it’s a sure-fire way to find out if a product knows how to handle nuanced dynamic shifts and convey emotion.

Words by Lewis Empson

Old Churchyard - The Wailin’ Jennys (Fifteen, 2017)

If you have looked for folk music tracks on streaming services, then you have most likely come across the Wailin' Jennys. The trio is known for their stripped-back approach, and Old Churchyard from their most recent 2017 album Fifteen, is no different.

It begins with the soft drone of an accordion, setting the foundation for the intimate track to build upon. One voice is introduced, delivered with remarkable expression and delicacy. Then the rest of the vocal harmonies are added gradually; and it’s then that the hairs on your arms will truly stand to attention.

The sense of closeness brings you back to a time when music was one of the only ways we could share stories, as the song is a version of a long-told folk tune that has survived for generations.

The barebones approach will certainly not make for a floor-shaking sound experience, but it should challenge your sound system even more as it calls for a good level of subtlety and refinement.

Words by Robyn Quick

Dancing on My Own – Robyn (Radio 1 Live Lounge Vol. 5, 2010)

I first heard this version of Robyn’s electro-poppy floor-filler in the car, and even listening to it through the subpar speakers in my Vauxhall (that’s Opel for our non-British readers) Astra I was almost moved to tears, such was the quality of Robyn’s performance.

Ditching the pop backdrop for simply a piano and her bare vocal was a genius move and one that completely transforms the emotional intensity of the track. Slowed down, the vocals shine and hit you like a sledgehammer. The delicacy of her tone and the piano play paint such a vivid picture that your attention never wavers. It’s truly heartbreaking to listen to, but in the best way possible.

A word of warning, though. This version of the track is impossible to track down on streaming services, so you’ll need a copy of Radio 1 Live Lounge Vol. 5, which was released in 2010. Kings Of Leon also covered this track for the Live Lounge, and although not quite up to the level of Robyn’s performance, it’s still definitely worth listening to.

Words by Andy Madden

Hurt – Johnny Cash (2002)

Johnny Cash’s rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt remains the cover to end all covers.

With nothing but an acoustic guitar and a single death-knell of a piano stroke chiming under the 70-year-old country legend’s croaking voice, Cash’s rendition was such a powerful and poignant reinvention that it is often misattributed as his own original composition.

While the excellent Nine Inch Nails original employs the more industrial, eerie soundscape which was to define much of 1994’s The Downward Spiral, Cash’s cover stripped everything back, spotlighting the bleak nature of the central vocal performance and its accompanying lyrics of despair and regret.

For a cover that’s actually quite a long way from a wholesale reinvention, it’s striking just how much Cash’s reinterpretation affects the track’s mood and message. Trent Reznor sounds as though he is still fighting his demons; the wearier Cash – more confessional yet composed – seems to have accepted them.

Words by Harry McKerrell

Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) – Green Day (Nimrod, 1997)

I’ve lost count of how many times I have seen and heard this track used in a nostalgic montage. It tends to be used to help add a layer of emotion to a major sporting occasion, or it’s inserted to try to reduce the audience to tears near the end credits of a TV programme. But I never get bored of it.

The track kicks off with just an acoustic guitar and Billie Joe Armstrong’s instantly recognisable tone holding the track together, but it’s the injection of slow, sweeping strings into the performance which really elevates it to another level.

They rise and fall, complementing Armstrong’s expressive guitar playing. It all rolls along at quite a rate of knots before the guitar starts to slow before fading to black right at the end. It’s a real test of fine detail, timing and low-level dynamics which can be tricky for even the most capable of hi-fi systems.

Words by Andy Madden

Free Fallin’ – John Mayer (Live at the Nokia Theatre, 2007)

John Mayer loves playing the guitar. In fact, his attachment to the instrument as a teenager became such a concern for his parents that they enlisted the services of multiple psychiatrists to diagnose what they perceived to be an increasingly unhealthy obsession.

Whether you love Mayer or loathe him, there’s no denying that those isolated hours of adolescent practice paid serious dividends. The man’s guitar work, even among credible blues and rock circles, is held in truly high regard; it’s a talent onto which the spotlight fully shines during Mayer’s 2008 live album Where the Light Is.

Recorded at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, the concert features Mayer performing as part of a trio and a full-scale band, but it’s his acoustic opening salvo – particularly his acclaimed cover of Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ – that really merits close attention.

Petty’s tune was already a well-worn classic, but the acoustic Where the Light Is rendition gives it an intimate melancholy and vulnerability that now feels lacking from the original recording. Wherever John Mayer goes and whatever he does, his most beloved tune may end up being one originally penned by somebody else.

Words by Harry McKerrell

Change – Big Thief (Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, 2022)

Big Thief have been a major player in the modern alternative scene since the release of their 2016 album, Masterpiece. Over the decade since, the band has gradually embraced a more acoustic, earthy sound than their indie folk beginnings foretold. Their recordings are often roomy, littered with characterful imperfections, and feel – to put it simply – very real.

Of course, a no-frills recording makes a solid live performance all the more essential. Thankfully, Big Thief have no trouble in this department, and Change from Dragon New Warm Mountain I believe In You sees the band shine as a unit, by way of a simple, heart-rending arrangement.

The recording style does much to serve the song, with a substantial kick-drum delivering a healthy dose of room ambience, while close-up vocal harmonies and Buck Meek’s trembling guitar solo contribute a sense of vulnerability and emotional potency.

“Would you smile forever, never cry,” sings Adrienne Lenker – not very easily while this tune is playing.

Words by Ioan Hazell

Michael Hedges - All Along the Watchtower (Watching My Life Go By, 1985)

Michael Hedges is one of the quintessential acoustic guitarists of his time. Featuring an atypical style, for me, he did to acoustic what Eddie Van Halen did for electric guitar in the ’80s.

His revolutionary style features heavy percussive elements and atypical, at times outright bonkers, tunings; even now, there really has been nothing else quite like him. He was also a stellar live performer to boot, as evidenced by the above video.

But despite his diverse portfolio, which kept evolving right up to his tragic death in 1997, for most people it’s his iconic cover of Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower, especially the performance from his Live on the Double Planet album, that gets recognised.

In true Hedges style, it sees him masterfully use a mix of percussive slapping on the guitar, which is in an atypical D A E E A A tuning, and left-hand hammer-ons and pull-offs to create an enthralling, dynamic rendition of the classic song that is entirely unique.

And the version captured on Live on the Double Planet is a personal favourite. It captures the nuance and dynamism of his playing in a way most other recordings, including the studio version on his Watching My Life Go By album, fail to match. I highly recommend any guitar player or fan of the song give it a listen if you haven’t already. You won’t be disappointed.

Words by Alastair Stevenson

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I'm not really one for nostalgia – not only is it misguided, it's pointless too. (Also, it's not as good as it used to be.) But when my brother messaged me about a 20-year-old MP3 player I gave him, I confess I did feel a little pang of excitement.

The player in question is the Acer MP340 pictured above, which came out in 2006 when I was in my first journalism job. This was before the financial crash, in the days when companies would occasionally let us humble journos keep the odd review sample. And so, being the generous sort that I am, I must have sent it to my brother (possibly in lieu of a birthday present, but let's not dwell on that – I blame the first-job wage).

Anyway, I'm sure he got a lot of enjoyment out of it, despite the tiny 1.8-inch, 160 x 128 TFT display (don't zoom in on the photos of it, or you might fall into the gap between the on-screen pixels). It had two headphone jacks for sharing audio with a friend, voice recording, and could display photos as well as playing videos (albeit only in H.264). It even had playable Sudoku built-in! And if that's not the most early noughties thing ever, I don't know what is (the 2020s equivalent would be a Covid face mask with built-in Wordle, I suppose).

But, life being life, the MP340 soon found its way into my brother's garage, where it remained for well over a decade.

He recently started clearing out this garage, and found the MP340 nestled among the old family photos and pointless receipts. And to his – and my – amazement, it switched on on the first attempt. This is despite lying unused in his lock-up for at least the last 13 years (he can trace this back to when his first child was born).

Which made me think: was the MP340 a marvel of engineering? Were all portable music players of the time this durable? And would today's players pass the same test? I put on a 2006 playlist and went in search of answers.

A changing musical landscape

The MP340 launched in a digital music landscape that's unrecognisable to today's. Back then, downloads ruled the roost, led by iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster in its second, legal incarnation. Spotify was still two years from launch.

The fifth-gen iPod Classic was the player to beat (though this was before Apple started calling it the 'Classic'). And for any serious player offering a significant amount of storage, hard drives were the order of the day.

It's not just the landscape that's changed drastically – the players have too.

The MP340 had 20GB of storage, which you could expand using an SD card. Nowadays any portable player worth its salt supports streaming, though for those of us who prize sound quality, local storage never really went away. The FiiO M21, for example, has 64GB onboard (although as with all modern players, it's flash memory rather than a hard drive) as well as taking microSD cards up to 2TB, as does the pricier – but Award-winning – Astell & Kern A&norma SR35.

Apple did sell an iPod with 160GB of storage, which since became something of a collectible. But that's still paltry compared to today's 2TB-via-expansion options.

Industry experts put the jump in storage down to the introduction of hi-res music downloads.

"The early generation of portable players was built around a simple idea: downloads and on-board storage. You filled a device with files you owned, and those files were usually compressed – a CD rip was about as good as it got," says Dave Jang, Business Lead at Astell & Kern (which grew out of iRiver, so has been in the portable music player market ever since MP3s were a thing).

"When high-resolution downloads arrived, that changed the equation completely. Hi-res files are many times larger, so the demand for storage grew with them."

One other area the MP340 lags behind today's players is battery life. While its headline figure of 10 hours doesn't look too shabby initially, it certainly does once you realise that's with the screen turned off. Keep it switched on, and you'll only get a paltry 3-5 hours. Which is laughable by today's standards (though don't tell that to anyone who's pre-ordered the latest AirPods).

For more serious music fans

The rise of streaming completely changed how people consumed music, while smartphones mean everyone has a pretty sophisticated music player in their pocket at all times. As a result, "A dedicated music player had to justify itself all over again: it needed to offer a genuinely higher-quality alternative to listening on a phone, while still delivering the convenience and usability people had come to expect from their phones," says Jang.

Cheaper players fell by the wayside – why would anyone buy an iPod Shuffle when their phone can do all that and more? As a result, the market was reshaped as a more premium product category aimed at those more interested in sound quality.

While Bluetooth became a given (something missing from the MP340), today's players mostly support wired headphones as well, to provide higher-quality sound – which we welcome, of course.

The MP340 might be a relic of a bygone age, but the fact it still works after so long left unused is seriously impressive, let alone that it's held its charge for all this time.

So is this a one-off? Or were players just hardier in those days?

"That story is very familiar to us," says Jang. "We still see people using our first-generation players today, and when they get in touch, it’s rarely because something has gone wrong." Rather, they're after a new battery to replace the worn-out one that came with the player.

And would today's generation of players still turn on if left untouched for that long? I'll let you know in 2046.

MORE:

Best portable MP3 players: budget to hi-res music players

Why the time is right for a new Sony Walkman

Read our Astell & Kern A&norma SR35 review

Autumn is here, which means lots of things are changing. The days are getting darker and we won’t get another Bank Holiday until December. But it’s not all bad news.

In fact, over the past seven days, there have been plenty of great product launches and reasons to celebrate if you’re a hi-fi and home cinema fan.

And to help you shake off the autumnal blues, we’ve even penned a fresh entry to our Rewind news digest, detailing them, in case you missed the news the first time round.

Technics' new direct-drive turntable impressed

The Technics SL-1500CS turned heads when it was first unveiled earlier this year. The latest iteration of the firm’s iconic line of direct-drive turntables, it’s a successor to numerous legendary record spinners, including the five-star, multi-Award-winning SL-1500C.

Initially, our reviewers were a little nervous when the SL-1500CS arrived in our listening rooms, with it looking all but identical to its older step-down sibling, despite costing £300 / $300 more.

But thankfully, the moment we connected it to our reference system, we found plenty to like, with the changes Technics has made to its direct-drive motor control circuit, which features the firm’s Delta-Sigma (ΔΣ) Drive technology, having paid off in spades.

As we said in our Technics SL-1500CS review: “Under-the-skin upgrades take the direct-drive SL-1500 design to new sonic heights.”

The only slight issue is that, while it’s easier to tinker with the Technics, the Rega Planar 3 RS Edition remains the class leader at this level for pure audio quality, based on our testing.

Read our full Technics SL-1500CS review

Audio-Technica is taking on Grado in an unexpected area

Wireless open-back headphones are a rare sight, even in our listening rooms. Not because we think they’re a bad idea, but because there aren’t that many of them out in the wild!

In fact, until last week, the only pair we’ve recently reviewed and recommend that are still on sale were the Grado GW100x. That’s why we were equal parts curious and excited when Audio-Technica unveiled its first-ever pair of wireless open-backs, the ATH-AL5NC mere days ago.

Built around a set of 53mm dynamic drivers and offering 75 hours of music playback (50 if you turn on their “noise reduction” tech), the cans look impressive and, as an added perk, cost £30 less than their Grado rivals, being set to retail for £219 / $279 / AU$499.

Read the full story: Audio-Technica's first wireless open-backs seek to bring audiophile quality to the convenience of a wire-free design

Sony unveiled new affordable headphones

Sony also unveiled new wireless headphones last week. Specifically, the affordable WH-CH530 and WH-CH730N.

The WH-CH530 are the successor to the five-star WH-CH520, while the WH-CH730N replace the Award-winning WH-CH720N. So big shoes to fill for both.

The WH-CH730N has had the biggest refresh, with a new Sonos Ace-like redesign which adds a new look and folding mechanism. The latter is a key feature we wished the old CH720N had that will hopefully improve portability.

Outside of this, both feature the same drivers and core tech as the older models, but Sony is still quoting “palpable” audio quality improvements thanks to tweaks it has made to its digital signal processing and algorithms. Fingers crossed they ring true when we get the new Sony wireless over-ears in for testing.

Read the full story: Sony has finally upgraded its budget five-star wireless headphones range – and it's promising a major sonic boost on both sets

New Apple iPhones launched

Like clockwork, Apple ran its September iPhone launch event last week. Though we’d have liked to have seen a bit more AV hardware on show, it brought a few treats that are of interest.

For music fans, the big-ticket item is the new AirPods 5. Available in two options, the earbuds feature a wealth of upgrades designed to improve ANC and audio performance.

It also showed off three new iPhones: the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, as well as the foldable it’s been rumoured to be working on for many moons, which we now know is called the iPhone Duo.

Read the full story: Apple’s foldable iPhone Duo is here – and it's immediately eyeing up the Samsung Z Fold series

Read the full story: Apple AirPods 5 boast improved ANC and updated acoustic architecture for a "richer, more detailed sound"

MORE:

These are the best wireless headphones we’ve reviewed

Our experts rank the best turntables for music fans

Our picks of the best cheap headphones

It’s been a week since I was on the ground at IFA 2026 in Berlin, and there was a whole range of home cinema equipment that I got to see while at the huge convention.

But there’s one demo that I experienced on Xgimi’s stand that will not leave my head, and it involved a prototype 3D projector system.

And I really do mean "prototype": this isn't a product you can buy, but more of a Frankenstein’s monster combining various products.

There was quite a lot going on behind the scenes, so let’s break it down: Xgimi had two of its newly announced Titan Noir Ultra Max projectors set up side-by-side, each hooked up to the same laptop.

In front of each projector, Xgimi positioned a polarising filter. Essentially, one projector produced the image for the left eye, while the other handled the right. Once you put on the polarised passive glasses, the picture came together to create an incredible 3D experience.

Just one of these projectors will set you back £4799 (around $5000 / AU$9040), but the Titan Noir Ultra Max does boast some impressive specs.

Xgimi claims it delivers up to 8000 ISO lumens of peak brightness and a native contrast ratio of 12,000:1, for starters, and the brand says this results in an “impressive contrast performance for true cinematic depth”.

There are some promising specifications for gaming, too, with Xgimi claiming input lag of just 1ms, which seems preposterously low, but will need proper testing once we get a sample in for review. VRR and ALLM are also on board.

My demo wasn't about gaming, though; it was about 3D movies.

The team had the trailer from Avatar: Fire And Ash on a loop and, even though I had seen it countless times by the end, I was captivated by the video every time it played.

The sense of three-dimensionality was simply breathtaking. When the majestic flying Leonopteryx swooped into the frame, the creature’s wings and tail appeared to flick into the audience with a stunning sense of immersion.

Surrounding the winged animal were floating islands in the sky, and they came out of the frame like a pop-up book.

Instead of feeling limited to the screen on the demonstration room's wall, it really felt as though the picture reached far beyond the frame. I almost thought that if I reached my hand out I could brush the animal's wing.

During the blue-tinted nighttime water scenes, the picture looked detailed despite the movie's lower-light presentation. The bioluminescent spots on the skin of our blue protagonists stood out against the dark woodland instead of getting lost in the background, too.

The picture was bright and punchy as well, and this was in a reasonably well-lit environment. Imagine it in a blacked-out room. That all transported me away from the busy convention space to the world of Pandora in seconds, and it was really a sight to behold.

The sound was less impressive, with the projector's speakers struggling to cut through the bustling showroom floor. But that would obviously change in a more ideal environment, and you could hook up a separate sound system.

It's been a while since I have seen a projector brand, or really any brand at all, running a 3D movie demo. That's hardly surprising, considering that fewer and fewer movies are getting a 3D release.

But even though you won't find it on shelves anytime soon, Xgimi's experiment has still given me renewed curiosity about the world of 3D. Perhaps we gave up too easily, and perhaps it's not too late for a thrilling, three-dimensional renaissance.

MORE:

Check out the best projectors

These are the best soundbars on the market

And here's our review of the Horizon 20 Max

It may have been a week of looking forward to new tech, notably the long-rumoured foldable iPhone Duo and the very welcome surprise of the AirPods 5.

But if you're willing to consider some tech that's a little bit older, there are some absolute bargains available this week.

Bluetooth headphone fans especially are in for a treat, with new lowest prices on everything from budget earbuds to high-end over-ears.

The long-running Hisense HS214 has also somehow got even cheaper, while there are also savings on newer recommendations such as Sony's RGB Mini LED offering.

But it's not just the prices we're excited about – these are all high-quality products that we've tried and tested ourselves. We only recommend the best, and all the devices below earned at least four stars from our expert reviewers.

So take a look at this week's selection...

The fine Focal Bathys were five-star stunners even at their hefty £699 launch price, so with £300 off, they are now rather good value. For your money, you'll get two different levels of ANC, a transparency mode, aptX Adaptive support, a USB-DAC mode that supports 24-bit/192kHz and a compellingly big, spacious and clear sound.

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd gen) have rather stubbornly stuck around the £400 mark, but are now suddenly seeing some generous drops. If you're after noise-cancelling, the QC Ultra 2 are class leaders and come with a wealth of functionality in a smart, nicely fitting design. £39.96 is removed at checkout to get this new lowest price.

The Sony WF-C710N not only received five stars, but are Award winners and our recommendation in this price range. They offer a great sense of musicality, fulsome, controlled bass and 30 hours of battery life. Save £10.28 at checkout for the lowest price we've seen.

If you want to upgrade your TV audio for the lowest possible price, we recommend the Hisense HS214 2.1. It's a truly rare breed of a soundbar that delivers a truly likeable home cinema sound at a bargain price, which is now the lowest we've seen. Save £20 with the code CLEAR20.

The Sony Bravia 7 II employs the new RGB Mini LED technology, and the result is one of the best backlit TVs we've tested. Sony's ever-reliable processing adds excellent picture depth and detail too. Get £200 off the listed price with the code TRADE200.

We only reviewed the Xgimi Titan a few weeks ago, and found it to be a highly ambitious offering with an extremely bright, detailed image. The built-in sound is good too, giving decent TV sound systems a run for their money.

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

Ah, September. A turning point for many as children head back to school, summer turns to autumn and, inevitably, people look towards the end of the year.

That's no bad thing, however – there's plenty to look forward to in the rest of 2026, especially in the dynamic worlds of hi-fi and home cinema.

With IFA and the Apple September event now concluded, we have plenty of new product releases to look forward to, including offerings from heavyweights such as Apple, Sonos and Sony.

That's not all, though! An HDR war is on the horizon as Dolby Vision 2 and HDR10+ Advanced start rolling out across consumer TVs, and RGB Mini LED is now out on the market and facing its first sales season.

So don't start planning Christmas just yet – we've got all this to come...

The HDR format war heats up

It's been a long time in the making, but the next generation of HDR formats is finally here.

Dolby Vision 2 launched on select Hisense TVs on 6th August, with more models set to receive the firmware update over time.

Not to be outdone, HDR10+ Advanced also launched on select Samsung TVs last month, setting the stage for a good old-fashioned format war that the AV industry can't help but love.

Supported TVs are still rather limited, as are compatible streaming services – Dolby Vision 2 has only been confirmed for Peacock, CANAL+ and iQIYI so far, whereas HDR10+ Advanced is currently only on Prime Video.

However, support is only set to grow, so it will be interesting to see how the next few months unfold – we're looking forward to having a closer look in our test room as well...

A Sonos double bill

IFA saw the launch of not one, but two key Sonos products – the long-awaited Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar and Sonos Ace Ultra wireless headphones.

The Beam Ultra is not a replacement for the beloved five-star Sonos Beam (Gen 2), but instead a step-up model with up-firing Atmos drivers as the big selling point. We'll be sure to test it as soon as possible, but we were very impressed when we heard a demo session.

The Sonos Ace Ultra are a more interesting proposition, as they are only the American brand's second wireless headphones. We were left underwhelmed by the three-star Sonos Ace, but the new drivers, refined tuning and upgraded ANC of the Ultra model look to rectify many of our misgivings.

The Sonos Beam Ultra and Ace Ultra both release on 29th September.

Good things come in threes for Sony

When it rains, it pours. The release of new Sony wireless headphones is always a cause for celebration, but three have come along at once.

Granted, one of them is an update of an old favourite: the Sony WH-1000XM4C is a redesign of the five-star WH-1000XM4, now with EU-compliant batteries and a tweaked sound more akin to the WH-1000XM6. Battery life has dropped from 30 hours to 27 hours, but luckily so has the price tag: the WH-1000XM4C retails for £219 / $300 / AU$449.95.

The other two are newer proposals, even if they are budget offerings. The Sony WH-CH530 and WH-CH730N replace two of the cheapest five-star headphones we recommend, with several upgrades and tweaks to the already great-value cans.

The WH-CH730N have had a notable redesign from the WH-CH720N they replace, with a smoother, more premium look similar to the Sonos Ace. They also fold away and boast a titanic 75-hour battery life.

The Sony WH-CH530 are very similar to the WH-CH520 aesthetically, but have a longer 55-hour battery life. Both models also claim to have a sonic boost thanks to improved digital signal processing and algorithms, as well as upgraded noise-cancelling thanks to Sony's 'Dual Noise Sensor' technology and beamforming microphones.

All three Sony headphones are available now. We look forward to welcoming them to our test room very soon!

Apple joins the folding craze

We're sure you've seen that slick folding animation all over social media by now, but yes, Apple has announced the long-rumoured foldable iPhone. The iPhone Duo has an outer display measuring 5.4 inches and an inner display coming in at 7.6 inches, with speakers at the top and bottom of the screen for spatial audio.

We awarded five stars to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 only a few weeks ago, so the Duo is up against some tough competition. However, we're excited about what the Duo's aspect ratio and wide-angle OLEDs could mean for movie and TV watching.

More of a surprise, however, was the AirPods 5. ANC is now available even on the base model, as well as several AirPods Pro 3 features such as a new multi-port acoustic architecture, transparency mode and live translation.

Two models were announced, with the more expensive version coming with a wireless charging case, volume swipe controls and an extra hour of battery life. We're excited about the AirPods 5, but the four hours of battery life on the base model has left us scratching our heads.

The iPhone 18 range also launched with two new Pro models, with a heavy emphasis on AI and camera upgrades.

The AirPods 5 and iPhone 18 range will be released on 18th September, with the iPhone Duo following on 23rd September.

RGB Mini LED faces its first big sales test

The other big display technology of 2026, RGB Mini LED finally entered our test rooms this spring after months of anticipation.

It's fair to say that while we were impressed with sets such as the Sony Bravia 9 II, the backlit technology was not about to eclipse the impressive contrast, perfect blacks and wide viewing angles of OLED in our eyes.

However, with Black Friday and the biggest TV sales event of the year on the horizon, consumers may well think otherwise. One of our biggest gripes with RGB Mini LED was the OLED-level price, so a healthy discount in the sales week could do wonders – we've already seen huge drops on the Hisense UR9 and Sony Bravia 7 II. Only time will tell...

MORE:

These are the best phones for serious music and movie fans

Our picks of the best wireless headphones

We rank the best soundbars money can buy

It’s not often I’m left bemused by an Apple launch, but the recent unveiling of the AirPods 5, its latest ‘open’ wireless earbuds, has left me scratching my head. It just doesn’t make any sense.

You see, the AirPods 5, like AirPods 4 before them, come in two flavours. But unlike the previous generation, which were clearly distinguishable by price (there was £50/$50 between AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with ANC) and by the cheaper model's lack of noise-cancelling, they have more in common this time around.

Both pairs now offer the same ANC, the same acoustic architecture, the same H2 chip, the same sound modes and the same IP57 rating. And there was nothing said during Apple’s video event to suggest they won’t share the same sound quality.

And this time around, there is only £20/$20 between the two models. Spending that little bit extra gets you better battery life and more useful features, so you can hopefully see where I’m coming from?

Maybe I’m a sucker for specs, but the AirPods 5 Wireless Charging Case as they’re known (and doesn’t that name just roll off the tongue?), just seem the obvious buy.

To me at least, it feels like you’re actually getting shortchanged if you go for the standard AirPods 5 model. And the fact that the cheaper model can only muster four hours of battery life per charge is verging on the laughable in this day and age, as one of my colleagues has already pointed out.

Having the volume swipe feature on the force sensor on the pricier model shouldn’t be underestimated either. This gives usability a big boost and is something I use all the time on my ageing AirPods Pro 2.

So why is Apple offering both? Now, who am I to question Apple’s business plan - they seem to be doing a pretty good job of making money without my input – but is it really cost-effective to be selling two pairs of earbuds so similar in price when one pair is at a disadvantage? I can't wait to get both pairs into our test room to find out which pair is the better buy.

What do you think? If you’re an Apple fan, do you find the cheaper pair of AirPods appealing, or would you rather just spend a tiny bit extra to get the all-singing, all-dancing model? Let us know in the comments below.

MORE:

Our pick of the best wireless earbuds you can buy right now

Apple AirPods 5 boast improved ANC and updated acoustic architecture for a "richer, more detailed sound"

I'm excited for Apple's newly announced AirPods 5 – but one major issue has me scratching my head

Read our Apple AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation review

Apple finally lifted the lid on its most anticipated smartphone to date, with the iPhone Duo marking the Californian tech giant's first step into the foldable phone market.

While Apple spent most of its annual iPhone event touting the AI (that's Apple Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence, by the way) capabilities and camera quality of its first foldable, we did get a sneak peek at how movies will look and sound on the phone.

An uninterrupted, anti-glare-equipped 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR display with "Wide-angle OLEDs for excellent viewing angles", alongside a stereo speaker system that supports spatial audio, should make this the best AV product to come from Apple this year; and that's an issue in itself...

Apple neglected to update its 4K streaming box yet again, despite rumours that an upgraded version has been in the works for years now. Delays are cited as being caused by Apple having to overhaul its Apple Intelligence system after it fell short of expectations after its launch alongside the iPhone 16 series.

The new Apple TV 4K is expected to rely heavily on the upgraded Siri system shown off during the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo event, and a new rumour even suggests that it could sport the same A19 or A19 Pro chipset from the iPhone 17 or iPhone 17 Pro, respectively.

While rumours don't always tell the full picture, the truth of the matter is that Apple is really dragging its feet with the new Apple TV 4K. It's already lost some goodwill by raising the price of the existing TV 4K from £149 to £199 for the 64GB model, and from £169 to £249 for the 128GB model, earlier this year.

And need I remind you that the price increase has been applied to a product that launched almost four years ago.

A new Apple TV 4K is the real AV-focused announcement that I'm waiting for, and I feel as though my patience really isn't paying off at this point. I wrote this rant almost exactly a year ago (a year ago yesterday, actually), venting my frustrations and claiming that "I am losing patience"; if I was starting to lose patience in September of last year, you can imagine how I feel now.

While I am genuinely excited to try the iPhone Duo out, and I'm sure it will make a stellar portable movie-watching machine, I prefer to watch my movies on an OLED TV or projector, which is why I'm waiting for Apple to make a proper announcement for home cinema enthusiasts.

In the meantime, I'll keep waiting for Apple to finally pull the plug on the ageing (but still excellent) Apple TV 4K (2022); surely it can't be much longer now...

MORE:

Read our full Apple TV 4K (2022) review

As well as our Apple iPhone 17 Pro review

And check out our picks for the best streaming devices for movies and TV

University is, of course, a time to prioritise study and hard work.

But it’s also the first experience of living away from home for many, and a chance to make a dorm room or shared house that is truly your space.

To do that, you’ll need the essentials. And that, in our eyes anyway, includes a TV setup, noise-cancelling headphones and at least one way to blast out music at the weekend.

Luckily, we have you covered. It may have been a little while since our dorm-room days, but we do rate and review hundreds of AV products every year and know good quality when we see it.

We have rounded up a few of our favourite products below, all of which we’ve tried and tested. They are all within reach of a student budget, but still highly recommended for freshers and students of life alike.

So if you or a loved one has an imminent first week, here are some AV products sure to liven up even the most bare-bones student accommodation:

A What Hi-Fi? Award winner, the Sony WF-C710N are the cheapest noise-cancelling headphones we recommend and brilliant budget earbuds all round. For the new low price of £62, you’ll enjoy fulsome, controlled bass, a great sense of musicality and a cool design. Perfect for studying without breaking the bank.

Good news: you don’t need to pay through the roof for high-resolution music. Tidal has long been the music-streaming service of choice for audiophiles thanks to its 24-bit/192kHz streams, and students can get a £5.99 student plan that is better than half price.

To take full advantage of those hi-res Tidal streams, though, you’ll want a good portable DAC for the best possible sound quality. iFi has been producing affordable five-star models for years, and its latest, the iFi Go Link 2, comes highly recommended.

For the full budget audiophile experience, a Tidal subscription, portable DAC and decent wired headphones will set you up perfectly for three years of studying. The Røde NTH-100 are Award winners and one of our top picks at this price, thanks to its eloquent, revealing sound and well-made design that’s comfortable for hours at a time.

Dinky, portable and highly stylish, the Roberts Revival Petite 2 may look like a humble radio but is so much more. With Bluetooth, a 20-hour battery life, a 3.5mm headphone port and a clearer, richer and more dynamic sound than you might expect, the Revival Petite 2 will bring retro flair to your dorm parties.

They may be a bit costlier than some of the other items in this article, but if you’re looking for desktop speakers on a budget, then the Ruark MR1 MK3 is what we recommend. They are compact enough to lug to student accommodation and back, but most importantly they sound powerful, punchy and dynamic with excellent rhythmic drive.

If you’re on a student budget, the Pro-Ject Primary E is a great choice as an entry-level turntable. It lacks fancy features such as USB ripping, Bluetooth and automatic operation, but if you’re looking for a purist design and great quality sound, the Primary E comes recommended. It’s easy to set up for beginners too.

We’re sure AirPods need no introduction. But the Apple AirPods Pro 3 are the tech giant’s best headphones yet, with spacious, powerful and dynamic sound as well as impressive active noise cancelling. If you already have an iPhone, you can also enjoy snappy user-friendliness and exclusive features.

The Sony WH-CH720N may be getting an upgrade soon, but they still come highly recommended, with a forceful, robust sound and decent ANC for the price. A What Hi-Fi? Awards winner for the best wireless headphones under £100, they are absolutely our top choice at this price range.

The Echo Dot has undergone several generations by now and hasn’t always hit the audio sweet spot, but the Amazon Echo Dot (5th gen) punches above its weight with an impressively expansive sound. Alexa, now synonymous with audio assistants, is as helpful as ever, particularly if you have other Amazon smart devices such as a Fire TV.

For a TV that is big enough for a flat move night, small enough to fit in the car and cheap enough for a student budget, the 43-inch Samsung U8000F is more than up to the job. Great value at £229, it’s a solid all-rounder for both movies and gaming, and it has all the main streaming and catch-up apps built in.

If you’re moving away from home for the first time, there’s a good chance you’ll need your own games console if you can’t wrestle the family unit away. If you’re getting a PS5, we recommend the disc-based version, as it can double-up as a 4K Blu-ray player.

MORE:

Best cheap TVs: affordable 4K televisions for under £500

Best cheap wireless headphones: tried and tested by our experts

Looking for a bargain? Here are the best budget soundbars

Apple's long-rumoured AirPods with a camera – potentially called AirPods Ultra – made no appearance at the 9th September iPhone 18 launch event, with the release now rumoured to be pushed back to 2027.

Honestly? I'm happy that it was a no-show.

I think this is a wise decision. Not only does this mean that the focus is rightly on the new AirPods 5 models and the brand-new foldable iPhone Duo, but it gives Apple more time to iron out any kinks with these rumoured AirPods with camera (that's assuming it's a real product, of course).

AirPods with a camera were touted as early as 2024, with reports suggesting they will feature embedded IR cameras, centred around augmented reality. This is with a view to them working with Apple's Visual Intelligence, rather than capturing images and video directly.

Considering the current controversy surrounding the Meta glasses that can be used to record images and videos without people's consent and without making the fact they're recording obvious, I can't really imagine Apple going for a similar kind of camera embedded into small earbuds.

Apple has a reputation for being privacy-focused, so the cameras being used for features such as enhancing ANC, spatial awareness, or for accessibility reasons based on your surroundings (which are current best guesses) rather than actually capturing real pictures or videos around you seem more likely.

As reported by MacRumors, a video seen in a macOS Tahoe release doc shows short-term practical applications, such as identifying a book to save it for later.

AI and AI-powered features are all the rage today, and Apple Intelligence/Siri isn't exactly leading the popular race. With the updated, more conversational Siri AI that launched today with the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max – and which makes a big deal about protecting users' data and privacy – this could be a way for Apple to differentiate itself from the likes of Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT, and offer practical solutions that embed into users' iOS-led lives in a way that isn't too frivolous like generative AI.

The AirPods with camera, or AirPods Ultra, are rumoured to effectively be integrated in a souped-up pair of AirPods Pro 3, but considering the wealth of features already stacked into the Pro 3's compact buds (live translation, health features, various ANC modes and more) the current H2 chip would be working overtime.

It's not hard to imagine this would have a knock-on effect on battery life, along with perhaps less focus on improving overall performance – and that's not a trade-off I would be happy with.

And that's the key thing here: yes, technology advances in many ways, and it's exciting to have new possibilities, especially when products such as wireless earbuds have become so embedded in our busy, multi-tasking lives.

But I hope Apple doesn't forget what the AirPods' main purpose is: to allow people to enjoy their music.

Of course, Apple could use the proposed AirPods Ultra launch to launch an all-new, more powerful H3 chip. If it does, I hope it brings with it more advancements and improvements in the areas we really care about: sound quality, ANC quality, and battery life.

Camera or no camera, the current AirPods Pro 3 are a pretty great-sounding pair of 'buds. While the class leader, the Sony WF-1000XM6, still rules the roost here, the premium Pro 3 are a five-star pair whose nicely balanced, clear and dynamic sound is enjoyable with all genres, while ANC quality is excellent.

We wouldn't hesitate to recommend them for iOS die-hards, especially if you – like us – are all about the performance, and prioritise sound quality over fancy features.

Apple does a great job of refining features and improving performance, but it can sometimes be incremental – let's hope the next pair is a much bigger step forward in sound quality.

MORE:

Apple AirPods 5 boast improved ANC and updated acoustic architecture for a "richer, more detailed sound"

Read our Apple AirPods Pro 3 review

Our guide to the best wireless earbuds you can buy, tested by our in-house experts

Apple’s events have never been known for their music. Outside of a 2014 snafu when it forced a U2 album on its customers, regardless of whether they wanted it, the firm likes to play it safe.

Muzak and the occasional foray into popular, mainstream acts are generally the official soundtracks of its launch events.

You know, the stuff you could play in front of your grandparents and at worst, they’d just look slightly confused, but probably find a way to happily tap along nonetheless.

But during this year’s iPhone launch, rather than the dulcet tones of Bono or whelps of Chris Martin, as the event trundled on, it was Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s voice that was ringing loud and clear – at least in my head.

Specifically, the iconic lyric “no alarms and no surprises” from the band’s 1997 banger of a single, No Surprises, was playing on repeat as the firm rattled off this year’s offerings.

Why? I’m not smart enough to pretend there’s any deep or philosophical meaning behind the thought.

It’s just that, as a serious music and movie nerd, that’s precisely what Apple delivered: no alarms and no surprises. Which made it a far better soundtrack than the official one – which I’ve already forgotten – and the reason I couldn’t get it out of my head.

Unlike days of yesteryear, when founder and former CEO Steve Jobs would famously always have “one more thing” to surprise fans, the pre-event rumours proved to be bang on the money.

New iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max handsets, with the standard smattering of tech upgrades, headlined by a new A20 Pro chipset and an assortment of AI upgrades. And then the new folding iPhone Duo handset people have been harping on about for just shy of half a decade.

Then the new AirPods 5 with ANC, as rumoured by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman before the event, which look like a nice refinement on the AirPods 4 with ANC – though I wish Apple had spent more time talking about the audio quality upgrades rather than all the clever AI gubbins, and had managed to deliver more than five hours of playback with ANC on.

Finally, the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 wearables, which come with yet more AI-powered health features and an Audio Intelligence live transcription service that lets you record, transcribe and check conversations in realtime – but sadly not the hi-res local music playback I’ve long asked for.

Yes, I like some of the stuff on offer, especially the 18 Pro’s new burgundy (Apple missed a trick not calling it Ron) colour and the in-frame camera mode for audio, which lets you cut out background noise when capturing a live performance.

And yes, technically Apple did say "and one more thing" before unveiling the Duo, despite every man/woman and their dog already knowing about it.

And, finally, yes, the two AirPods 5 models look decent, though I’m not impressed with either pair's quoted battery life with ANC on.

But that was it. There was nothing else on show to give us the old Apple “and one more thing” experience where we saw something we really were not expecting, and that, for me, is a crying shame.

Remember when Jobs' “one more thing” unveiled the Apple Cinema Display (a monitor with an atypical, at the time, 16:9 aspect ratio that was ideal for watching films)?

Or 2005, when he surprised us with the iPod Shuffle, and then, one year later, the first Apple TV?

Heck, he may not be as much of a showman as Jobs, but I can still hear the collective “ooh” from the team after Tim Cook’s “one more thing” unveiling of Apple Music in 2015.

To be clear (before I get hunted with torches and pitchforks by the Apple fans among our readers), that’s not a dig at the new hardware from the event – the new iPhones are as interesting as mobile devices can be for AV aficionados.

The firm has a strong record of delivering decent audio and picture quality on its iPhones, after all. That’s why, if you look at our list of Award-winners over the past decade, you’ll tend to see an iPhone on top as our recommended handset for serious music fans. So even a minor spruce-up to its offering is at least partially of interest.

And its foldable iPhone Duo has piqued my interest more than usual, as it has a similar movie-friendly aspect ratio to the five-star Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8.

If either AirPods 5 manages to fix our minor issues with the previous generation's lack of punch and dynamism, they could be great. So again, it's not about the tech it unveiled being particularly bad. We need to review it before we make any judgements like that.

I just wish it had something more meaty to show serious AV fans. Forget the Apple OLED TV or Dolby Atmos soundbar the team and I have been asking for; at this point, like our senior staff writer, Lewis Empson, I’d settle for a new Apple TV 4K.

Truthfully, I just want new stuff that hasn’t already been fully revealed in the sea of pre-event rumours to start appearing at Apple’s events again, as right now it all feels a bit stagnant.

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Apple announced plenty of exciting goodies at its most recent September launch event, including a series of Apple Watches and its first-ever folding phone, the iPhone Duo.

No new HomePods materialised, but hey, you're always going to be let down by at least one major omission. Another year and no HomePod Mini 2? No surprises there, then.

The Californian mega-brand also announced the next generation of its standard wireless earbuds, the AirPods 5, again splitting the new models into two main variants: the AirPods 5 and the AirPods 5 with wireless charging. The standard AirPods 5 will cost £119 / $129, while the AirPods 5 with wireless charging case will cost £139 / $149.

That's a departure from the fourth generation of Apple's core AirPods line, where the key difference between the two models was the use or absence of noise-cancelling. Hence, the AirPods 4 and the AirPods 4 with ANC.

Many of the initial signs look positive. Apple is promising elevated sonic performance from the fifth-generation buds, teasing a "richer, more detailed sound across a wider range of ear geometries" alongside more immersive and dynamic spatial audio.

Noise cancelling should be better, too, with improved "computational audio algorithms" improving noise reduction by around 50 per cent. So says Apple, anyway.

Lots to be excited about, then, but one fly does appear to have landed in the ointment: those battery life numbers.

The standard AirPods 5 are teasing a paltry four hours of playtime from the buds with ANC enabled, which will creep up to around five hours when noise cancelling is switched off.

The AirPods 5 with wireless charging, conversely, offer five hours of in-ear battery, with 22 hours with the charging case. That total just edges the 20 hours of the standard model.

Those numbers seem bafflingly low, especially when compared with price-adjacent rivals. The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds (2024) (£119 / $149) deliver 8.5 hours of in-bud playback with ANC enabled, boosted to up to 12 hours with noise cancelling turned off.

The cheaper Sony WF-C710N (£70 / $130) are also superior, again granting 8.5 hours of playback with ANC turned on, 12 hours with it off, and a total of 30 hours with the charging case in play.

It's not as if Apple has improved on its last-gen offerings, either. The AirPods 4 delivered 4 hours of in-bud playback with ANC on, 5 hours with ANC off, and a total of 30 hours with the charging case. That means the in-bud playtime has gone down, and total playtime has actually decreased from one generation to the next. How has that happened?

It's fine for a more premium pair of earbuds to sacrifice a bit of battery life, or for a new generation to maybe lose out in this area because of new features or hardware, but when the mainline AirPods already offered such mediocre figures, Apple couldn't really afford to lose much more. What will the sixth-gen buds offer? Three hours of battery life if we're lucky?

It won't be a dealbreaker for many, but those figures really do seem poor in an era when some rivals are pushing to almost double the in-bud playback time.

It's not a disaster for Apple, but it means the onus is now on the AirPods 5 to deliver outstanding performance across the board – from sound to noise-cancelling – if they're going to justify such a glaring blind spot.

I might be wrong, but battery life figures do matter, especially when there's a fear of being left high and dry when your buds run out of charge, and you've no way of getting them powered again. I'm optimistic it isn't a decision Apple ends up regretting.

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It has been a long time coming, but Apple has finally thrown its hat into the foldable smartphone ring.

The iPhone Duo is Apple's answer to Samsung's dominant Z Fold range, which includes the recently reviewed Z Fold 8 – a five-star phone that convinced me foldables have reached the point where I could happily switch from a slab phone to a bendy one.

Apple's effort, however, will convince any remaining holdouts that this is the case. Like it or not, Apple's influence is so huge that this new foldable will win over naysayers who would never have taken a second look at a Samsung foldable simply because it runs Android.

Thankfully, the iPhone Duo is an exciting announcement for AV enthusiasts, especially those who rely on their phone for entertainment on long flights and train rides, such as myself.

While Apple barely spoke about the AV capabilities of the handset during its presentation, we do know that it has a 5.4-inch outer display and a 7.6-inch inner display, 3000 nits peak brightness on both displays, and stereo speakers that support spatial audio.

It even has an under-screen front-facing camera for uninterrupted video, which is a concept that Samsung used on its Z Fold phones a few years ago.

For reference, the Z Fold 8 has a 5.5-inch cover display and a 7.6-inch main display; now I won't point fingers at who is copying who here, but there have been years of leaks and rumours pointing towards the then-called iPhone Fold adopting this form factor. Samsung was the first out of the gate with this design though, so it's a tricky one to call.

Regardless, I think this is the correct move. While Apple hasn't confirmed the iPhone Duo's aspect ratio yet, it appears to follow the Z Fold 8's lead with a display that squashes letterboxing bars. This should make it pretty fantastic for watching movies and TV shows on the go, and it has an edge over the Samsung thanks to the inclusion of Dolby Vision HDR.

Interestingly, Apple has matched the aspect ratio on the outer and inner displays for a more "continuous" experience, which seems like a smart move, but I'll need to compare the iPhone directly to the Z Fold to see how this works in practice.

Apple also said that it has taken direct inspiration from the iPad lineup during its event, which also saw the iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and AirPods 5 break cover, and that could hint towards the iPhone Duo being a follow-up to another Apple product we've previously championed.

The bendable Super Retina XDR OLED display with the Nano Texture anti-reflectivity coating sounds like a chip off the iPad Pro block; and while it looks like Apple has left Tandem OLED to the iPad Pro, the iPhone Duo could be our closest thing to an OLED iPad Mini.

Now, Samsung's latest foldable smartphone really did impress us; so much so that it earned a well-deserved five-star review. That's not to say it's completely perfect, though, and there is some room for improvement where audio is concerned.

Given Apple's stellar reputation for sound, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Duo outperform the Z Fold 8 in this category, as Apple's tuning leans more towards a warmer, more spacious hi-fi sound that's hard to beat.

That said, picture could be a closer race, and these smartphones might be heading towards a ferocious bendable battle, especially as we close in on our Awards testing process...

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As well as our Apple iPhone 17 Pro review

And our Apple iPhone 17 review

“Really?!” That was my initial reaction when I heard the first rumours that Sony was readying the WH-1000XM4C.

The use of those two punctuation marks is intended to indicate that it was a reaction of both excitement and confusion. I was excited, because the original WH-1000XM4 is a classic. It’s one of the models that has made the biggest impression on me out of all the pairs of wireless headphones I have tested over the years.

These headphones took performance to a whole new level when they launched back in 2020 – look around online, and there’s still a lot of love shown to this particular pair.

The confused part of me, though, wondered where Sony would place them in its current range, since it already has the XM4’s successor, the WH-1000XM5 (pictured above). And this is a pair which is already pretty well discounted.

Following Sony’s official WH-1000XM4C unveiling (pictured below), though, the picture has become clearer. Or has it?

We know the new headphones cost £219 / $300 / AU$449.95, which is pretty close to where the WH-1000XM5 headphones sit right now.

We also know that the WH-1000XM5 will go end of life in February next year, as they aren’t compliant with EU battery regulation 2023/1542 (which stipulates that portable batteries need to be able to be removed by the end user), which comes into effect at the same time. The XM4C is compliant. So, I’m left wondering where the incentive is for people to go out and buy the XM5?

In our WH-1000XM5 review, we found them to feel less premium than the XM4, and they also don’t have the folding design of that model, which was a big selling point back at the time.

They still sound great, though, and at the time of our original WH-1000XM5 vs WH-1000XM4 comparison, we felt the newer model sounded “clearer and more open” and that the headphones were “more precise in the low-end, making the XM4 sound a little thick by comparison”.

We do know Sony has retuned the sound of the XM4C, but this is only through DSP – the hardware remains the same.

The WH-1000XM5, by contrast, introduced a smaller 30mm driver compared with the 40mm unit of XM4, so Sony will only be able to tweak the sound of the new model so far. We will, of course, let you know if and how the sound has changed once we get a pair into our test rooms.

I’m also intrigued to see how pricing looks over the next few months.

If retailers try to move all their existing XM5 stock with one eye on February next year, could they drop the price of those headphones below WH-1000XM4C? It could be an interesting few months that lie ahead, especially if you’re on the lookout for a new pair of wireless headphones at a great price.

It's not often we have two competing pairs of headphones from the same brand around the same price, but at least this should give an added element of choice for the consumer.

What do you think? Do you think there’s still a place for the WH-1000XM5 following Sony’s recent announcement? Would you consider a pair if they still sound better than the WH-1000XM4C? Let us know in the comments below.

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We are fully into Awards season. That means a bunch of testing to find which new hi-fi and home cinema products will dethrone our current What Hi-Fi? Award winners to reign supreme, and which current trophy holders will carry on leading the field in their respective categories and price points.

This does mean our test rooms are heaving with new products, from feature-packed DACs to new floorstanding speakers and the latest TVs and more.

We won't list them all here (that's in a super-secret spreadsheet for our eyes only), but below we've highlighted a handful of the key products that we can't wait to put through the testing process.

Sonos Beam Ultra

It has just been announced, but we are expecting the arrival of the new Sonos Beam Ultra Dolby Atmos soundbar in our test rooms any day now. Costing £699 / $699 / AU$1099, the new model sits above the five-star, Award-winning Beam (Gen 2), and brings plenty of upgrades in its compact form.

The step-up Beam Ultra has nine drivers in total – four more than the Beam Gen 2 – which includes dedicated up-firing drivers for proper Dolby Atmos sound, for up to a 7.1.2-channel configuration.

The Beam Ultra will work with the updated Sonos 27 app, and will link with the new Sonos Ace Ultra wireless headphones to transfer sound between the two products. You'll also be able to use the portable Sonos Play and Move 2 as rear surround speakers with the Ultra.

Will Sonos be able to deliver a winning formula yet again? We shall see.

Rega Planar 6 RS Edition

At long last, we have Rega's Planar 6 RS Edition in our test rooms, which takes the standard, Award-winning Planar 6 turntable as a base and adds elements from the more premium Planar 8 (also five stars) into quite an attractive package.

The 6 RS features a foam core plinth sandwiched between two layers of high-pressure laminate that is coated in the same lovely brushed aluminium finish we've seen on the superb Planar 3 RS Edition. This adds rigidity while keeping things light – a key Rega engineering principle.

The top-of-the-line Nd9 moving magnet cartridge comes fitted as standard, and other elements taken from the P8 include the RB880 tonearm, an outboard power supply with electronic speed switching, and a double belt drive. Costing £2000, could this deliver the mid-way magic between the Planar 6 and Planar 8? We can't wait to take it for a spin.

Arcam A50 Signature

We're not the only ones celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. Arcam has also joined us in turning the big 5-0 and has launched the A50 Signature integrated amplifier to celebrate the milestone.

Billed as the "best-sounding integrated amplifier Arcam has ever produced", the A50 is the new flagship of the successful Radia line, which includes the Award-winning A5+ and A15+ stereo amplifiers.

It boasts 150W per channel into 8 ohms, with a fully dual-mono Class G architecture that aims to deliver purer audio. The specs list is exhaustive – analogue RCA and XLR, digital inputs including HDMI eARC and USB, MM/MC phono stage, and more.

Costing £2499 / $3000, the A50 Signature amp is also joined by a new CD25 CD player, that sits above the Award-winning CD5 – we have high hopes for both.

Ruark Talisman-R

We had an early listen to the Talisman-R speakers at the High End Vienna show in June, and now these premium floorstanders are waiting in the wings in our test room.

With a distinctive sloped baffle that harks back to the 1990 original, the new Talisman-R costs £1499 per pair and features a 27mm silk dome tweeter alongside a 16.5cm long-throw fibre woofer, updated cabinetry with internal bracing and real wood details.

We very much liked the previous-gen Talisman-R III's fast, dynamic and exciting performance, but that was a good 20 years ago. We're keen to find out if Ruark has held on to that same magic when we hear the new towers against their contemporary rivals.

TCL X11L

Despite also having an RGB Mini LED model (the TCL RM9L), TCL has banked on Quantum Dot tech for its flagship TVs. The £3999, 75-inch TCL X11L is the very TV with the tech we've had in our test room.

TCL's 'Super' QLED flagship TV features next-generation Quantum Dots along with a new super-high ‘Ultra’ colour filter, which put together should deliver a wider colour gamut, better brightness, more local dimming zones, slimmer designs and no colour crosstalk issues. The final point being a repeat issue we've seen crop up in some RGB Mini LED displays. It also comes with an integrated B&O sound system.

In our demo earlier this year, we were impressed with the X11L's "raw brightness", high contrast and wide colour range, so we are excited to see how it fares under our full review treatment.

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Back with a bang! Sony has resurrected a classic pair of wireless headphones by launching the WH-1000XM4C

We've pretty much been waiting for a sequel to the Award-winning Sony WH-CH720N wireless headphones since they arrived in 2023.

Not because they fell short of our expectations – quite the opposite – but because the budget noise-cancelling over-ears were so good, we couldn't wait to see what Sony could do when given another chance to impress.

A sequel has indeed finally arrived in the shape of the Sony WH-CH730N, vowing to elevate everything we liked about the WH-CH720N while mitigating their modest but not-trivial limitations.

Those limitations included a slightly bass-heavy sonic signature, as well as a design that, if we're being charitable, wasn't exactly the last word in luxury.

If the WH-CH730N can rectify such minor issues without losing the character of what made their predecessors so great, they could truly be successors to some of our favourite headphones of the past few years. Now that's something worth getting excited about.

When Sony invited us for an exclusive look at the WH-CH730N, we had to take advantage. We haven't heard the new headphones yet, but we've had a sneak peek at how they look and feel, and heard directly from Sony about the changes the next-gen over-ears have made. From what we've seen, they could be something very special.

Excited for: a new folding look

When we went to see them in person a few weeks ago, we really liked the way the new WH-CH730N looked.

Taste is subjective – and how a pair of headphones appear on the outside should be a secondary priority to how they sound – but that wholesale redesign really works for us. The WH-CH720N were, to be charitable, rather rough and ready headphones, but the smoother, more modern design of their successors feels like a big improvement. Out are the rather basic earcups, replaced by larger, more premium cups that come across as far more premium than the headphones' modest price might suggest.

Better still, they should be more ergonomic to live with thanks to the fact that the new over-ears feel sturdier and are now fully foldable, something that was lacking in the somewhat rigid WH-CH720N. It was always a worry that you might accidentally snap your precious headphones in transit, but full foldability helps assuage such fears this time around.

It makes sense considering that these are still reasonably budget-friendly headphones geared towards everyday use. When you've got over-ears that are going to be thrown into backpacks and tossed into the back of the car, you want to know they're going to survive years of potentially hard use.

Excited for: refined tuning and (hopefully) better sound

At first, it was easy to hear the news that Sony hadn’t updated the physical drivers for the Sony WH-CH730N. You expect new hardware from one generation to the next, so the fact that Sony had kept the same 30mm dynamic units as found in the WH-CH720N just slightly smacked of complacency.

Yet that needn’t be the case. The thing is, the WH-CH720N sound great – they might be the best sound-per-pound wireless over-ears you can buy – with their slightly enthusiastic bass the only real point of criticism. Even then, you can tone that down via the in-app equaliser, so it’s not a huge deal.

As it turns out, we want more of the same from the WH-CH730N, albeit with a bit of sonic tinkering to make them as good as they can be. Tweaking tuning algorithms rather than physical hardware can make a surprisingly profound difference, too – just look at how much better the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) sound over their first-gen antecedents.

The punchy, deeply musical personality of the WH-CH720N…but better? Sounds like a recipe for success to us.

Excited for: longer battery life

Wow, check out these numbers. We didn’t think the WH-CH720N were exactly short on battery life, thanks to their 50 hours of lifespan with ANC off and a still-massive 35 hours with it on, but Sony has really doubled down for the sequel.

The WH-CH730N will go for 75 hours before they need a recharge if you have noise cancelling turned off, a figure that quite frankly puts their predecessors in the shade. That’s a huge usability bonus, only sweetened by the fact that a three-minute quick charge will grant around an hour of playback when you’re in a hurry.

Not many rivals come close at this kind of money. The Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT (£129 / $140) will go for around 30 hours before they need a recharge, whereas even the mega-battery-boasting Philips TAH8000E's (£140 / $149) 70 hours with ANC off can't quite keep up.

Excited for: that seamless Sony usability

From the bottom of its range to the very top, Sony's headphones are very rarely a chore to live with. Quality tends to suffuse everything the brand does at the moment, with its wireless cans exemplifying this customer-first focus on usability and performance that few rivals can match.

What the WH-CH730N have in their favour right out of the gate, then, is the fact that they're a pair of Sony over-ears. That means certain features, such as DSEE upscaling for poorer-quality files, as well as 'Precise Voice Pickup Technology' for better noise calls and beamforming mics contributing to improved noise cancelling, are already in the bank.

Plus, access to the Sony Headphones app is never a bad thing, as while it's rarely been the most sleek or stylish platform in the world, the levels of customisation it offers are extremely tough to beat.

Unless something goes horribly wrong, we'd feel confident in stating that, from its voice calls to its ANC, we'll likely be in very safe hands with the WH-CH730N.

A small concern: that higher price

This isn't a dealbreaker for most, but it's still worth mentioning: the WH-CH730N are more expensive at launch than their predecessors. It's not a massive increase – only £10 in the UK – but it does point to a slightly more worrying trend in audio concerning rising prices.

This isn't something for which we blame Sony, but more a reflection of where things could be headed across the market. Due to poor market conditions, the global economic downturn, certain political decisions and an increasing scarcity of computer chips, consumer audio prices are rising, and even the budget end of the audio landscape isn't unaffected.

£10 isn't a huge rise from one generation to the next, but when even massive entities such as Sony are affected, it could point to an unwanted trend: higher prices for your headphones.

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The summer holidays have ended, and we are all well and truly back in work mode as a result. At least that’s what it felt like for our team of hi-fi and home cinema experts last week, who were outright bombarded with hardware launches.

These included everything from multiple new Sonos products launching to the arrival of Yamaha’s new active speakers in our review rooms. So if you struggled to keep up with all the news, don’t worry.

As always, we’re here to help keep you apprised of all the most important AV developments with our latest Rewind column.

Sonos unveiled two new products

The biggest news of the week came from Sonos, which unveiled not one, but two, new pieces of hardware. First up are the new Sonos Ace Ultra wireless headphones. These are the second wireless headphones from the brand, following on from the three-star Sonos Ace we reviewed two years ago. Loaded with new drivers, refined tuning and upgraded ANC, Sonos made big claims about their improved audio quality at the event. Fingers crossed they ring true when we get the Ace Ultra in for testing.

Second, there was also a new Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar. Despite the naming, this isn’t a replacement for the long-lived, five-star Sonos Beam (Gen 2). Instead, the Ultra sits between the entry-level Beam (Gen 2) and Sonos Arc Ultra in the firm’s lineup. The biggest upgrade is the Beam Ultra’s new driver arrangement, which includes up-firing Atmos speakers. We haven’t reviewed it yet, but our staff writer, Robyn Quick, walked away from the demo session very impressed. We’re excited to get one into our viewing rooms for the full What Hi-Fi? review treatment, as a result.

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

Read the full story: Sonos' new Beam soundbar is finally here with a big Dolby Atmos upgrade – but there’s still something missing

We reviewed Yamaha’s active speakers

Active speaker systems are a vogue category in the world of hi-fi right now, with the Cambridge Audio L/R series speakers, KEF LS Luxe and more already having passed through our review rooms this year. Last week, we had the Yamaha NX-70A wireless speaker system in our test rooms, continuing this trend.

Sandwiched between the five-star LS Luxe (£3500 / $4000 / AU$6375) and LS50 Wireless II systems (£2199 / $3000 / AU$4000) on price, they have stiff competition. But during testing we found plenty to like, with the units delivering a mature, spacious sound with a nicely extended, well-controlled bass. Add to this their stellar, high-quality build, and there’s a lot to like about them. Were it not for their strong rivals, which offer slightly more rhythmic drive, they’d be a class leader, rather than merely a valid alternative to the KEFs.

As we said in our review: “The Yamaha NX-70A is a sonically talented and highly adaptable wireless all-in-one speaker system. While it might not be an outright class leader, this system is nonetheless worthy of serious attention for its expansive feature set, heaps of aesthetic panache and mature, expressive sound.”

Read our full Yamaha NX-70A review

What Hi-Fi? readers unite behind Blu-ray

We always love it when we get to chat with you, our ever-opinionated readers – especially when the stars align and you agree with us. That’s exactly what happened last week when we collated your responses to our last Ask The Reader question: are we living in a golden age of home cinema?

You were all united in your response of no, we are not. But it was the reason for your rejection of said 'golden age' that caught our eye, with nearly all of you flagging the prevalence of streaming as a key reason, arguing that the technical and cultural benefits of physical media, especially Blu-ray, mean the days of yore were superior. We can’t help but agree.

Read the full story: The What Hi-Fi? readers have spoken and the age of streaming is not a golden one for home cinema – all hail the Blu-ray

A new premium Dolby Atmos system caught our eye

Samsung has long dominated the premium Dolby Atmos soundbar system space. That’s undeniable if you look at recent years’ What Hi-Fi? Award winners and our latest five-star review of the flagship Samsung HW-Q990H system.

But walking around the IFA tradeshow, our eagle-eyed (and eared) senior staff writer, Lewis Empson, spotted a potential rival with the technical chops to challenge for the crown this year. Specifically, the Hisense UX1.

Featuring satellite wireless surrounds and a subwoofer, complementing the central soundbar, the UX1 impressed him for three key reasons, which you can find out by clicking the article below.

Read the full story: Hisense is taking on the mighty Samsung HW-Q990H with a new Dolby Atmos soundbar system – here are 3 reasons I think it could be great

New Michi amps

Finally, last week Japanese brand Rotel unveiled two new additions to its premium line of separates: the Michi Prestige P430 preamplifier and Michi Prestige S430 stereo amplifier.

Offering music fans 230 watts per channel into 8 ohms worth of muscle, Rotel claims the S430 is designed for people who want to graduate from single box systems into the world of separates. Packed with custom hardware, Rotel claims it will deliver a sound full of dynamic impact and a firm but controlled low end.

Alongside it, Rotel is pitching its P430 preamplifier as an ideal purchase for music fans looking for modern connectivity alongside premium separates performance. Loaded with all the outputs you most people will ever need and built around an ESS SABRE ES9028PRO 8-channel DAC, Rotel claims the preamplifier will deliver audio with “pristine clarity, natural detail, and an open, precisely focused soundstage".

Both units are set to go on sale this month. The S430 will retail for £3599 / $3999 / €3999, while the P430 will cost £3599 / $3999 / €3999.

Read the full story: Double drop! Rotel expands its premium Michi portfolio with a new stereo amplifier and preamplifier

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This week, one of the biggest pieces of news to break is that, after years of our team wishing upon an AV star, Sonos has released a new Beam Dolby Atmos soundbar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE:

These are the best soundbars we’ve tested

We rank the best surround sound systems

Our picks of the best TVs

In the immortal words of Green Day, it might be tempting to skip this month and be woken up when September ends.

But then you'd miss the pretty great deals, especially if you or a loved one are heading to university in the coming weeks.

Whether you're into hi-fi or home cinema, there's a little something for everyone this week, all the way from mid-range Bluetooth speakers to premium AV receivers.

These are all products our expert reviewers have tried and tested, some as recently as last week. And all of the below have earned at least five stars to get the What Hi-Fi? recommended thumbs-up.

Curious? Take a look for yourself...

The Harman Kardon Luna 2 has a classy design with a ring light that is far more elegant than the garish party lights of other Bluetooth speakers. Sonically, it doesn't quite topple the class leaders, but it has an articulate, clear and spacious presentation with a particularly excellent midrange presence.

The iPhone 17 Pro may be superseded in a matter of weeks, but that just means there's some great discounts available now. At the time of writing, at least, the 17 Pro is the best iPhone yet for movies and music, with a gorgeous but balanced picture and superb sound.

The Beyerdynamic DT 700 Pro X may be studio headphones marketed at content creators, but there's plenty to offer consumers with excellent detail and a musical but articulate sound. If you’ve got a desktop hi-fi system in need of new headphones, these are one of our top recommendations, now at a new lowest price.

The Arcam AVR31 may be getting on a bit, but it's still one of the best AV receivers we've ever tested. It's a sophisticated, premium amplifier that offers both high-class sound and impressive connectivity features, with a healthy seven HDMI 2.1 inputs and three outputs. Now a whopping 57 per cent off.

A former What Hi-Fi? Award winner, the Sonos Era 300 is a wireless smart speaker that comes packing all the goodness and seamlessness of a Sonos system, with a key stand-out feature: spatial audio. However, it performs admirably with any format of music you throw at it, and the vast array of features go a long way toward justifying the price tag.

We've only just reviewed the Hisense PT1, but we were very impressed with the inclusion of a full tri-chroma (RGB) laser projection, built-in Vidaa smarts, a premium design and a potent integrated sound system for a very reasonable price. That price is now a whole lot more reasonable – pay only £1199 with the code RSTV400.

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 long Labor Day weekend is the last big sales event before Black Friday, so it’s well worth taking a look at the deals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE:

These are the best projectors out there

Check out the best TVs we have reviewed

And here are the three best OLED TVs

It's *gasp* September. But before we start an existential crisis about how the year is moving too fast, the evenings are getting darker and it will be Christmas before we know it, it's time for our Pick of the Month column.

Here, our reviewers once again look back at all the great products that passed through our test rooms this month.

As you'd expect, these products have all been put through the proverbial wringer by our dedicated testing teams. Only devices that earned five stars are included here, with a whopping seven joining the club this month.

So luckily, we've done the hard work of sorting the wheat from the chaff – so take a look, and we'll explain why we rate them so highly below.

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

The Apple iPhone 17 Pro may have a successor in only a matter of days, but we still highly recommend it, especially now that it's available discounted. It's the best iPhone yet for movies and music, with a gorgeous but balanced picture and superb sound.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 is a pricey but brilliant portable movie machine with a bright, punchy and detailed picture and a new content-friendly aspect ratio. If you've been considering a folding phone, this is the most compelling option we've reviewed so far.

The smallest speakers in Dali’s new Sonik range follow in the footsteps of their floorstanding sibling, the five-star Sonik 5, with expressive, well-balanced sound and solid build quality. The Dali Sonik 1 will also forgive less than ideal placement, making them a strong choice for music lovers without a dedicated listening space.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra is as close to cinematic as a tablet can get, with a huge Dynamic AMOLED 2X display screen and a peak brightness of 1600 nits. You'll want to make use of broader performance features and beefy specs for this price, but this is the Android tablet to beat for movies and music on the go.

Amazon's Fire Tablet range has long been incredibly good value, and the Amazon Fire HD 8 is no different. Available for well under £100 when on sale, the Fire HD 8 absolutely nails the basics when it comes to movies and music – and regularly surpasses them.

Yamaha continues one of head-fi's greatest comebacks. The Yamaha YH-C3000 sets a new standard in their high-end class, with a fast, clear, natural sound and fluid, expressive dynamics.

The Roksan Caspian 4G Streaming Pre-Amplifier/Caspian 4G Power Amplifier has some big shoes to fill, but does so effortlessly. The pairing is a refreshingly forward-looking combination with the sonic talent to worry the class leaders, and makes us highly excited for what Roksan does next. You'll have to purchase them separately – the Caspian 4G Power Amplifier is at Richer Sounds for £2999.

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

Hopefully you’ve been enjoying our quizzes over the past few weeks. We’ve had quite a few testing brain teasers, ranging from ‘name that cable’ to ‘can you name these hi-fi firsts’, but this week we’re switching topics to the world of TV, and TV tech in particular.

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

MORE:

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

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

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

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

AI in music is the talk of the town. Whether you’re a music fan, watching from the sidelines as streaming services make continual updates to their AI policies, or a musician fighting for their individuality in a lawsuit against an AI music company, it has become blatantly clear that this particular technology isn’t going away any time soon.

Indeed, with the recent investments of major labels such as UMG, Warner and Sony in AI music companies, it looks as though the role of AI in the music industry is only likely to expand.

Naturally, opinions are divided. Some users of the text-to-music generation software Suno are reportedly abandoning human-made music altogether, in favour of their AI-generated tracks. Meanwhile, others have taken to the streets in protest against licensing recorded music to generative AI companies.

As a 50-year-old hi-fi publication, music is at the heart of our work. While testing products, our review team listens tirelessly to a broad range of tracks, carefully assessing how human emotions and real-life recordings are conveyed by the equipment at hand. As such, we wanted to find out more about the role AI is playing in the records we listen to.

To do so, we spoke to British sound engineers about the ways that AI is changing their work.

Exposing Flaws

In the view of Jake Murray, director and studio manager at Strongroom Studios, generative AI within music is uncovering pre-existing issues within the industry.

“People try to spin it as this new thing on the horizon,” says Murray, “but what I’m seeing – much like during the Covid-19 pandemic when artists lost all touring revenue and it exposed problems with streaming and digital remuneration – is that this new software is exposing flaws with the commercialisation of music and the behaviour of corporations.

“In the case of recent lawsuits, the record labels aren’t happy because data they could monetise is being scraped on a massive scale,” he says. “But for a massive corporation, AI music is incredible, it is product, through and through. There are no creator rights, no unpredictable behaviours on tour, no ‘I’m tired, I want out of my contract.’ I think anyone who believes that major labels are going to continue fighting generative AI once they’ve got a deal in place is wrong.”

Izzy McPhee, a freelance mastering engineer who has worked with acts such as Dream Wife, Walt Disco and Marla Kether, feels that AI’s encroachment presents artists with new challenges. “The pace at which music is created and released now, definitely puts pressure on artists to prioritise singles and virality over the integrity of their music,” she says. “The instantaneous results of AI affect how quickly everyone expects information, and of course, music.”

Such pressures feed back into the use of AI, as musicians reach for tools that allow them to create faster and more cheaply. The attraction of such tools isn’t hard to appreciate given that nearly half of professional musicians were found to earn less than £14,000 a year in a 2023 census by Help Musicians and the Musicians’ Union.

One of Murray’s friends, who is a dance musician, recently approached him in a crisis about having used Suno to create a vocal topline. “He found himself really conflicted about whether to use it,” says Murray. “It sounded so close to what he had imagined, but it wasn’t sung by a singer, recorded by a sound engineer, mixed, balanced, processed and submitted to the production house. It hadn’t generated those three or four stages of revenue. It had only cost him the comparatively meagre subscription fee.

“It’s vital that we remember we are talking about lives and livelihoods here,” he says. “I think it’s going to be left to the individuals to decide what they think is kosher or not.”

"Human creativity is what makes beautiful music"

AI has seen widespread adoption beyond music. Even at Strongroom, Claude AI has proven handy in aggregating the studio’s vast discography.

“It has been incredibly useful for data management,” says Murray. “And best of all, nobody would have wanted to do that job. Previously, when I’ve sat down with new employees and broken the news that they are going to spend a few weeks sorting through the discography, the look on their faces is like they are about to die.”

Murray adds that, within musical work, there is a “grey area” of audio effects plug-ins that use AI.

“I’m a bit unclear about what people count as AI in the studio,” he says.

Recent software such as Synplant 2, which uses AI-powered features to turn audio samples into editable synthesiser patches, walks a fine line. “Depending on who you talk to, these are either plug-ins or neural networks or AI. But I don’t think anyone really has a problem with any of those [pieces of] software, aside from whether they like the sound or not.”

When it comes to the creative, musical and technical parts of her workflow, McPhee takes a stronger stance on using AI tools: “I have made a conscious decision not to use AI, and not to master songs that have been AI-created. A big part of my ethos is that human connection, collaboration and creativity is what makes beautiful music, and the bottom line is that I don’t think AI can replicate this.”

Charlie Francis, a mastering engineer who has worked with artists such as REM, Del Amitri and Gruff Rhys, says that he hasn’t yet seen a reason to use AI in his work, but acknowledges that some of the software he uses has been developed with machine learning.

“My perception is that my clients value my instincts and experience above anything else, so I would be very wary of allowing AI to make any judgments for me,” says Francis. “Automated systems in rendering and other areas are very useful, but they don't involve any decisions and have no artistic influence.”

"Heaven forbid, we might be able to define an era"

A common trait in almost all conversations around AI is their tendency to focus on the future. As technological advances outpace all but the experts’ comprehension (and sometimes even theirs), many of us are left guessing about the state of things to come.

Speculating on AI’s musical future, Murray says: “The people who want to produce homogeneous rubbish aren’t going to need anyone to do it for them anymore. As a result, I think we could see a new era of Muzak (background music played in public spaces such as elevators, shops and waiting rooms).

“On the flip side, I think the people who care are going to make more human-sounding music. I think music made by people whose priorities are expression, connectivity and interaction is going to become more characterful and less perfect. We might see a broader spread in terms of how music can sound, perhaps a release of the tension around things sounding ‘perfect’. Heaven forbid, we might actually be able to define an era again.”

McPhee echoes Murray’s sentiment: “I think there will be a corner of the music industry where people are consuming AI music, and are happy to follow algorithms and playlists that are AI-generated. However, I also think a lot of people will tire of the rapid turnaround, viral side of music and seek out human-made music and connection – whether through listening or attending gigs and concerts.

“In a world of constant overstimulation, I already find myself trying to find moments where I can sit down and immerse myself in longer form albums that take me on an emotional musical journey,” she says.

Francis adds: “A musician friend of mine thinks songwriters regurgitate iterations of everything they have heard before, which would make them indistinguishable from AI, but I think the human genius for making unseen connections and making distinctive work can't be written off so easily. We discount our own emotional and experiential life at our peril.”

The consensus among the engineers seems to be that, while AI threatens revenue streams and professional opportunities for musicians, its mass-produced genericism could drive creative innovation among those who view music as an essential, communal art form. The question is: will musicians find the time to create on an income yet further reduced?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

MORE:

"Music can only work if it's an intentional creation of one human, experienced by another human" – Qobuz's MD on the future of music streaming

What will hi-fi look like in 2076? We asked some of the most influential experts in the industry

Our pick of the best streaming services tested by our expert reviewers

When testing entry-level Dolby Atmos soundbars, there’s one Award-winning model that all new entrants must compete with: the Sonos Beam Gen 2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE:

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

Here's our review of the Sonos Beam Gen 2

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

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

“We know the home, we know audio, we know music” – those are the particularly bullish words of Sonos's vice president of software, Sid Patel, whom we recently spoke to about Sonos’s new operating system rebrand (we were also given the lowdown on its new Ace Ultra headphones and Beam Ultra soundbar).

In case you’re catching up, last week the company announced Sonos 27, a new overarching name for the company’s audio operating system which covers the entire Sonos ecosystem. It’s promising better integration between Sonos products and various ways to control them, but without completely excluding other brands.

The company plans to update it annually, just like Apple’s iOS, so we’ll see Sonos 28, 29, etc.

But getting back to the quote, we wouldn’t be surprised if those words might have raised an eyebrow or two among current or ex-Sonos customers, especially given the brand’s tricky timeline over the past couple of years.

The last tweaks to its operating system didn’t go down too well. An ill-fated Sonos app update back in 2024 resulted in what was once a robust, rock-solid and intuitive way of interacting with Sonos products turning into a bit of a mess. Not only was it affected by bugs and glitches, but key features were omitted, much to the disdain of numerous Sonos customers.

Such was the fallout from this event that the then Sonos CEO Patrick Spence was forced to step down eight months later, in January 2025. At the time, the Sonos board even went as far as to say it would not take a bonus "unless the company succeeds in improving the quality of the app experience and rebuilding customer trust".

Despite this botched app release happening more than two years ago, it’s probably fair to say there are still many existing and potential Sonos customers who are still sitting on the fence and requiring a bit more reassurance from the brand.

Of course, the proof will be in the experience. If Sonos does what it’s promising and there aren’t any hiccups with either its new software or hardware, then it might be back in the good books of those disappointed by its recent efforts.

But what do you think? Have you been convinced by the statements coming from Sonos?

If you were disappointed by app-gate, have you been convinced to come back into the fold, or are you happy to watch from the sidelines to see what happens before you commit to any new products? Sonos has many music and movie fans in its midst and surely won’t make the same mistake twice?

Let us know by voting in our poll above and commenting below. We’re interested to hear your thoughts!

MORE:

“We know the home, we know audio, we know music” – we speak to Sonos about its operating system rebrand, its "customer-led" focus and app updates

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

Sonos' new Beam soundbar is finally here with a big Dolby Atmos upgrade – but there’s still something missing

I'm excited by the Sonos Beam Ultra’s Dolby Atmos upgrade, but gutted it didn't borrow this feature from the Arc Ultra

Hisense has given us a preview of its first 2027 soundbar at IFA 2026, and it has its sights set squarely on Samsung's Award-winning formula.

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. It's packed full of drivers

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

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

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

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

2. It's taken some big bass inspiration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE:

Read our full Samsung HW-Q990H review

As well as our Hisense AX5125H review

And check out our picks for the best Dolby Atmos soundbars

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

What got you into hi-fi? It’s a question people embedded in the hobby get asked a lot.

After all, hi-fi is a time-consuming, sometimes lifelong, endeavour that will see fans design entire rooms from scratch and invest vast amounts of money in the pursuit of sonic perfection – if that even exists.

So from the outside, it can look like a lot of effort for something that, unless you "get it", doesn't seem that important.

There are many answers to this question, even among the What Hi-Fi? team, which includes numerous experts who have chosen to dedicate their professional and personal lives to the endeavour.

But one of the most consistent themes we hear when answering the question is that it all began with a specific piece of hardware.

Which is why, for this month’s Ask The Reader question, we want to know: what product got you into hi-fi?

Maybe, like our editor (me), it was a special turntable your parents had set up in the lounge and let you use to play their (rather glorious) selection of classic rock LPs?

Or was it a set of speakers you bought in college out of the back of a van at a car boot sale, not knowing the treasure you’d just stumbled upon?

Perhaps you’re a bit younger and discovered the magic of hi-fi after adding a streamer to a classic separates set-up you inherited?

Whatever the answer, we want to know!

You can post your answer in the comments section of this page, or in our forums. Just make sure to tell us what the product was and why it was so special.

Maybe it was the album it was playing? Maybe it was the company you kept, or the place you heard it that made it so special?

As always, at the end of the month we’ll publish a new piece collating your most interesting answers! So please make sure to keep your language PG-13 and stick to our community guidelines for a chance to be included.

MORE:

Check out the What Hi-Fi? Hall of Fame

We rank the best turntables for music fans

Our picks of the best speakers

We've been begging for precipitation for months, and at long last, it has rained in the UK! The ground is still as dry as a bit of reheated chicken, but we've finally seen evidence that this long, torturous summer might soon be giving way to a damp and soggy autumn.

Like the changeable weather, it's also been a strange and tumultuous time for music: the great Dolly Parton sadly passed away at the age of 80, and we got a new hip-hop album from one of the most left-field celebrities we can think of. We'll get to that below, as we share the songs that have been on our review team's playlist over the past few weeks.

There's even talk that The Rock is planning to release a country album, thus proving that nominative determinism doesn't always work in the way that you expect. You're called The Rock, Dwayne, not The Country. The clue is very much in the name.

• Check out the full playlist on Tidal

Ballerina by YHWH Nailgun

A minute-long song is usually a novelty, a throwaway interlude, something to keep the label's wolf from the door. But despite being exactly that length, Ballerina, from YHWH Nailgun’s sophomore album Magazine, is far from thoughtless filler. It isn't even an exception within the album; Magazine’s longest song comes in at just 1:36.

Ballerina’s 60 seconds are populated by reverberant, growling synths, playful drums and the distinctive rasping of the band’s singer, Zack Borzone, who sounds something like Birthday Party-era Nick Cave with a chest infection. Periodically, the song descends into an erratic cacophony of record-scratching, before returning abruptly to its hypnotic, twisting groove.

The song's overall arrangement (scratching breaks aside) is sparse and staccato, but the depth of its groaning, overdriven synths, alongside a skilful deployment of reverb, makes this an interesting listen when assessing a system’s stereo imaging and depth. If your system is working well, you might be surprised by how quickly Ballerina lures you into its uniquely graceful breed of chaos.

Words by Ioan Hazell

Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire

I’ve been playing rather a lot of Mafia III recently, and while the game itself is somewhat hamstrung by its repetitive mission design, outdated mechanics and reboot-inducing glitches, it proudly boasts one of the best and most bulging licensed soundtracks this side of a Grand Theft Auto title.

Given that it’s set in the southern US in a fictional version of ‘60s New Orleans, Mafia III uses its in-game soundtrack to craft that hazy American mise-en-scène, with contemporary classics such as Aretha Franklin’s Respect and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son reflecting the simmering political upheaval running beneath the central narrative.

Then there’s Barry McGuire’s Eve Of Destruction, an anti-war polemic that also incorporates themes of racial inequality, political polarisation, global instability and, my old favourite, the impending nuclear apocalypse.

The charm of Eve Of Destruction is in its raw, unfiltered nature. McGuire isn’t the most velvety crooner in town, favouring a hard, throaty delivery that only enhances his urgent fury as he pointedly warns the listener: “Don't you understand what I’m trying to say? If the button is pushed / There’s no running away / There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave.”

I wish I could say things had changed, Barry old chum. A man after my own nihilistic heart.

Words by Harry McKerrell

Jolene by Dolly Parton

It's one of the most well-known stories in music: Dolly Parton wrote two of her biggest hits – I Will Always Love You and Jolene – in one day (or thereabouts) in 1973. What a woman. Whitney Houston's powerhouse vocals transformed the first song when she covered it in 1992, although I have a soft spot for Parton's more small-scale, fragile and intimate original.

And while Jolene has been covered many, many times in various genres, Parton's original remains a true country classic.

It's an addictive rhythm, with the guitar strums sounding distinctly tactile and propulsive. Parton's indelible voice holds steady and firm, full of confidence and defiance, even as she begs the titular Jolene to not steal her husband away. True story or not, it's a song that has spanned decades and genres, and shows just how far-reaching Parton's cultural influence is. Jolene is a cracking tune, full of fluid dynamics and a catchy chorus, and with a vocal performance that should keep your attention rapt to the story, no matter how you listen to it.

It's hard to put into words just how much of a shining light Dolly Parton was, not just as a musician, but as an actress, a philanthropist, a savvy businesswoman – coming across both sharp-witted and kind, and imbuing everything she did with a genuine joy. She will be hugely missed, but never forgotten. Not with songs like Jolene, 9 To 5, Here You Come Again out in the ether, that's for sure.

Words by Kashfia Kabir

Present Tense by Pearl Jam

During my formative weeks as a What Hi-Fi? journo, I was shipped off to one of my first press events at a London listening room. One of the hitherto unfamiliar assortment of sound engineers and PRs asked me the standard question about the sort of music I was into, and while I was enthusing about the ‘90s Seattle grunge scene, I mentioned my affection for a nice slice of Pearl Jam.

To my surprise, one of the attendees revealed that they used a Pearl Jam track for testing all the time, although it wasn’t one of the big-hitting anthems, such as Black, Jeremy, Alive, with which I was familiar. Instead, he suggested I check out Present Tense from the lesser-known No Code album, and nearly four years down the line, I still dig it out on the regular whenever testing duties call.

He really was on to something. Instead of sludgy riffs and meaty hooks, Present Tense trades on gentle, almost hesitant guitars which tease and twinkle within a decidedly uncluttered soundscape. This is where a fine pair of wired headphones, say, would have a chance to prove their talents in providing that airy, spacious soundscape in which each twang and strum can rise and decay without bleeding or distortion.

That’s before we even get to lead vocalist Eddie Vedder, a man whose raspy vocals are imprinted onto my brain like initials scrawled into wet cement.

Present Tense is distinct from many of Pearl Jam’s established catalogue because, astonishingly, you can actually make out most of Vedder's lyrics. Listen to Yellow Ledbetter, by contrast, and not even the greatest hi-fi system will give you a hope of understanding what on Earth he’s actually singing.

Words by Harry McKerrell

Mad Technology by Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer

I’m so confused, I don’t know where I am or what day it is.

Surprise number one: Tom Hardy has officially dropped a hip-hop album. Yes, that Tom Hardy. You know, the burly acting chap who played Bane, Charles Bronson and Eddie Brock in Venom. He’s done a hip-hop album, and it’s on Spotify and Tidal and everything.

Surprise number two: he’s brought backup. Performing under the pseudonym Frankie Pulitzer, Hardy has teamed up with hip-hop supergroup Czarface, which itself counts Inspectah Deck – formerly of Wu-Tang Clan – among its key members.

Surprise number three: it’s genuinely, almost unfathomably, pretty darn good. Forget mumble rap churned out over the same off-sync processed beats – this is full-blooded, heavy-hitting hip-hop straight out of the 1990s, with Mad Technology going hard and heavy with its big beats, staccato piano riff and ruthlessly aggressive flows.

Hardy’s turn comes right at the end, and rather than sticking out like – well, an actor in a rap collective – he fits in pretty well. Considering that’s about as likely as Sir Patrick Stewart slotting perfectly into Arsenal’s current back four, our Tom deserves a rather hearty pat on the back.

Well done, Tom.

Words by Harry McKerrell