It might be overly simplistic to view the entire wireless earbud market as one big attempt to rival Apple's AirPods Pro, but as someone who returns to his AirPods Pro 3, I do sort of look at it that way. If you can rival Apple's convenience and at least match its sound quality and ergonomics, you're off to a good start.

Probably my favourite non-Apple earbuds ever are the Technics EAH-AZ100, and I think it's a little surprising that it's taken this long for another brand to get close to the high-water mark they set.

Sennheiser has done just that, though, with the Momentum True Wireless 5, a truly excellent new set of earbuds that deserve your attention. I've used them nonstop for a couple of weeks for this review – and they've made a lasting impression.

Price and Availability

The Momentum True Wireless 5 can be yours right now, having been revealed and released in late August 2026.

The asking price is £249.99 in the UK, $299.95 in the US, and €299 in the EU. That means it's a chunk more expensive than getting a pair of AirPods Pro 3, and puts the earbuds on a par with flagships from Sony and a bunch of others.

That means these are obviously premium earbuds, as reflected in the fact that Sennheiser makes a fair few more affordable pairs you could also consider, including the Accentum True Wireless model from a couple of years ago.

Design and Features

There seems to be a bit of a rule in the audio industry about major redesigns of earbuds and headphones – each design gets at least a couple of outings before it's changed in a major way.

That's how I'd look at the Momentum True Wireless 3 and True Wireless 4, which were really similar to each other, and have now been completely rewritten in the form of these earbuds, the Momentum True Wireless 5.

Where those older earbuds tried to stand out from the crowd with a fabric-covered case that was quite interesting, Sennheiser has gone more mainstream this time around. That case is instead finished in matte plastic with a slight speckle finish, topped with Sennheiser's logo. It's also taller rather than flat and squat like the older one.

The earbuds themselves are also very different. The last two generations were quite square in their shape, but that shape has been shaved down into a far more bean-like look that's a little more obvious in its ergonomics. Sennheiser told me this didn't necessarily make each earbud smaller than last time, but that it would make them more comfortable.

Each earbud also has a circular Sennheiser logo on its outer edge, and this is the touch-sensitive zone for some customisable controls. You can tap up to three times on each side, with each of those being mapped to a different control.

As befits their price, active noise-cancelling (ANC) is present and correct, and probably the setting I've been cycling the most using those touch controls.

The earbuds and case have one massive trick up their sleeve that I want to spotlight and praise, too: repairability. We've heard a lot about the EU requirements around user-replaceable batteries recently, and indeed the number of exemptions that are going to be flying around (here's looking at you, Apple).

Sennheiser has embraced the opportunity, though, and that means the Momentum True Wireless 5 is hugely future-proof. Each earbud sports a couple of recessed screws to let you take them apart for battery replacement, while the case needs only one screw to do the same.

This is massive for longevity, with battery degradation being one of the very few flaws that can affect this sort of higher-end earbud over time. Once your earbuds no longer last a satisfactory span, Sennheiser will sell you a replacement you can fit yourself – what a step forward, and here's hoping it pressures other brands into following suit.

Out of the box, though, you can expect around 12 hours of use on a charge, with nearly three more full charges in the case making for about 40 hours without needing to plug it in. You also get IP54 dust and weather protection, meaning they're safe for use in workouts or bad weather.

Sound and Performance

It's nice to see Sennheiser putting the R&D work into adding repairability to its earbuds, but you wouldn't necessarily want that to come at the expense of sound quality. Luckily, I can't find much to fault in terms of how the Momentum True Wireless 5 perform sonically.

I've long been a fan of Sennheiser's neutrality and its calm approach to sound signatures – it avoids the temptation to pump the bass past reasonable limits, and tends to keep things sensible on a few fronts. That trend has continued with the Momentum True Wireless 5, which sounds pretty exemplary.

I've used the earbuds as my daily driver for multiple weeks, including on an overseas trip, so I'll cover off their ANC ability first. It's extremely solid, dulling the hum of a plane cabin really well for a few hours, but also making the London Underground far less of a sensory overload.

This was an area where there was improvement to be had from the Momentum True Wireless 4, so it's great to see a decent stride be made. It's probably still not quite up there with the AirPods Pro 3 in my experience, but I'd feel comfortable putting it in the same bracket, which is more than enough.

How do the Momentum True Wireless 5 fare with music? It's impressive. I've been genre-hopping with the earbuds, including quite a lot of mellow material like J.J. Cale's album Naturally and Green River from Creedence Clearwater Revival. The acoustic texture of both came across really clearly and characterfully with Sennheiser's default tuning.

Jungle's new album Sunshine is a warm delight, meanwhile, and its hints of bass were nicely nuanced and detailed. Going back to my most familiar ground, Justice's debut album Cross is a monster of bass deployed tactically, and it too was a punchy success on these Momentum earbuds.

That's a pretty great outlook, and the picture's further rounded out by Sennheiser's Control+ app, which gives you a bunch of tweaks to make and settings to figure out.

Being able to swap what the touch controls do is a great touch, although I can't pretend to love the controls themselves that much. They're a little finicky, and the reality is that few brands have nailed on-earbud controls at this point.

Verdict

I'm hugely impressed by the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 5 – just as I was with the over-ear Momentum Wireless 5 a few months ago. These are earbuds that do exactly what I need, whether that's because of rock-solid ANC or superbly balanced sound.

After a lot of noise about whether Sennheiser had a future at all around the turn of the year, this is a pretty phenomenal way to silence the crowd. The brand now has 5-star headphones and earbuds fresh out of the gate, and retains a pretty loyal following thanks to the work of previous generations.

If you need some new wireless earbuds, I think it would be crazy to ignore the Momentum True Wireless 5 moving forward – and I can only hope that they usher in a new era of user-replaceable batteries in earbuds.

Also Consider

I've mentioned them in this review already, and Technics still just about retains my personal award for "best non-AirPods earbuds", but it's by the merest sliver over the Momentum on review. The AZ100s are brilliant, comfortable, and because of their age, they're now cheaper – but they don't have those replaceable batteries.

Meanwhile, the obvious other point to make is that the AirPods Pro 3 remain phenomenally convenient and reliable, and if you're a big Apple user then their device-swapping smarts can't really be beaten. I still use them every day for music, media and when out running – and that probably won't change unless something big happens.

Ever reached for a portable speaker only to discover that you forgot to charge it? This is a pretty clever solution to that. The Battery-free Amplifying iSpeakers don't have a battery, Bluetooth or even a power cable, they simply make your phone louder using acoustics.

And that's it. No pairing, no app and no battery indicator to worry about. Just slot in your phone.

Designed by Ooi Masato and made in Japan, the iSpeakers use a precision-machined slot that holds your phone in place and channels the sound from its built-in speaker.

That means it works with virtually any phone, without worrying about compatibility or software updates. You simply put the phone into the slot and the acoustic chamber does the rest.

It's small enough to throw into a bag, too, so you could take it to a picnic, hotel room or even just keep it on your desk. There's no charging port because, obviously, there's nothing to charge.

The body is machined from Duralumin, a lightweight and vibration-resistant aluminium alloy, while the design follows the golden ratio. It certainly looks more like a piece of Japanese design than a conventional portable speaker.

There is an obvious trade-off here. Without an amplifier, battery or Bluetooth connection, this isn't going to compete with a proper portable Bluetooth speaker for sheer volume or bass.

That's not really what it's trying to do. The appeal is having something that can make your phone sound better without adding another electronic device to charge.

There are also optional +Bloom and +Jet attachments that change the direction of the sound, giving you more control over how it projects.

At $179, it's certainly not cheap for something that is essentially an acoustic amplifier. But unlike a Bluetooth speaker, there's no battery to degrade, no charging cable to lose and no wireless connection to set up.

In theory, it should sound exactly the same years from now as it does today.

If you’ve ever tried to take a keyboard on the road with you, it becomes pretty clear that keyboards are annoyingly big. Pianni’s Orphea solves this by shrinking a playable piano down to something only slightly larger than a smartphone. And now, I want one.

Orphea has 13 physical keys covering a full chromatic octave from C to C, including the black keys that tend to disappear on ultra-portable keyboards. You can then shift the octave up or down, with seven octave positions in total, so you’re not limited to the notes physically under your fingers.

It measures 170 x 78 x 28mm and weighs just 130g, making it actually pocketable rather than merely "portable" in the way that a 61-key keyboard technically is. There’s a built-in speaker too, alongside a 3.5mm headphone jack for quieter playing.

The rechargeable 1,200mAh battery is rated for up to eight hours of continuous use, while USB-C handles charging. There’s also MIDI In/Out, meaning Orphea can double as a tiny controller for other music hardware and software.

The obvious catch is that 13 keys aren't going to replace a proper piano. Orphea's keys aren't velocity-sensitive either, so this isn't going to give a pianist the expressive control of a full-size digital piano.

That's not really the point, though. Pianni describes Orphea as a portable musical sketchbook, designed for getting ideas down, practising or simply playing when you're away from a proper instrument.

The company says its founder Jordan Daniels has even tested the prototype with a three-voice Bach fugue, making it a seriously well thought out bit of kit.

There are still some unanswered questions. Orphea is currently a prototype, with Pianni continuing to refine the hardware before production, and there's no confirmed price yet. The company says it is preparing to launch the piano through Kickstarter.

But as a concept, I can see this working well. It's small enough that you might actually take it with you, rather than leaving it at home because carrying it is a pain.

Now all we need is a price that doesn't make that pocket look quite so much like a wallet.

Ever since British tech startup Nothing sprang up five years ago, its focus has largely been on releasing quality devices, with high-level components but at very competitive prices.

That has permeated its Android phones, earbuds and, more recently, over-ear headphones. The Nothing Headphone (1) was slightly different, in that it was more at the premium end of the spectrum – not least thanks to its partnership with audiophile brand KEF. But ultimately Nothing still managed to undercut similarly spec'ed rivals.

Now it looks like it's back for another stab, but this time it seems to be taking on the big boys directly.

The Nothing Headphone (1) Pro has leaked, with a report by Dealabs claiming that a follow-up is imminent. And considering it's specifications and, most significantly, the suggested price, we could be looking at the brand taking the next step.

According to the French tech site's sources, the Headphone (1) Pro will feature a triple-driver architecture, with bass, precision and XMEMS type treble drivers. This has the potential for a more refined and solid sound performance, to compete with the likes of Sony, Bose and Bowers & Wilkins.

It'll have Hi-Res Audio and LDAC support, it's claimed, along with spatial audio and sound customisation capabilities. And there will be improved noise cancellation, with real-time ANC using 10 microphones to block ambient sounds more effectively.

Battery life is said to last up to 60 hours of playback in the headphones themselves, while Bluetooth 6.1 will be on board for wireless streaming. Physical touch controls will also feature on the headset's aluminium shell, the the earcups will be covered by scratch-resistant glass. IP52 water and dust proofing rounds up the leaked specs.

Perhaps the most surprising element to the early information is its price. It is claimed that the Nothing Headphone (1) Pro will cost $399 / €349. That's also likely to translate to £349 in the UK too.

That's naturally a step up on the £299 of the original Headphone (1) and is considerably more than the Headphone (a) price, which started at £149.

Indeed, if genuine, it puts the Headphone (1) Pro on a par with the Sony WH-1000XM6 and Bose QC Ultra 2 alternatives. So it'll be interesting to hear them in action to find out whether they can match or even beat those hugely popular pairs.

We have a few weeks to wait before then though – Dealabs says that the launch won't be until 29 September. We'll keep our ears to the ground until then.

Apple has announced its fifth generation AirPods and they blur the line between the entry and pro models more than ever before.

More durable and with live translation capabilities – much like the AirPods Pro – the AirPods 5 also feature better active noise cancellation. Apple claims that it works 50% more effectively than the last-gen, and with improved audio playback.

The design is largely the same, but the new AirPods are now rated IP57 for dust and water resistance. There's a bigger battery offering up to five hours of playback time with ANC activated, while the USB-C charging case expands that to up to 20 hours.

Another new feature of the upgraded buds is that they support the new Siri AI functionality coming with iOS 27. And there are two models that will be available – with a standard variant and a step-up pair that come with a wireless charging case.

This additional version also features volume controls on the stem of the right AirPod – a feature also migrated from the AirPods Pro.

The standard Apple AirPods 5. are priced at $129 / £129 and they're available to pre-order from today. They'll ship on 18 September 2026.

The step-up model with on stem audio controls, wireless charging case and longer battery life are priced at $149 / £149.

There is no new AirPods Pro version announced as yet, but with the features added to these entry buds, you have to wonder whether we need a new Pro. At least until the variant with an AI camera in the buds arrives (likely early next year).

T3 is covering all of the new Apple announcements live – just follow the news as it happens in our regularly updated blog.

Marantz has just revealed its latest compact music system, the MCR 60n, which combines CD player with network streaming, Phono (MM) and HDMI eARC for connecting your other hi-fi kit.

Marantz, the world-renowned Japanese audio brand, is no stranger to making some of the most desirable high-end hi-fi kit on the planet – and the MCR 60n updates the earlier MCR 612 with a bunch of enhancements.

CD players are hugely in demand at the moment, as an increasing movement towards 'proper album listening' has seen more artists releasing on the format – and more listeners enjoying the experience of taking in a full release, track by track.

The MCR 60n offers one of the more luxurious ways in which to enjoy your CDs, thanks to a built-in player, which now offers a dual-plate design for greater rigidity and better isolation for improved playback.

The brand's latest HEOS model, meanwhile,supports PCM up to 384kHZ/32bit and DSD up to 11.2MHz for streaming, should your preference be the highest available audio formats on a network-attached drive.

Much as the CD format is in demand, the vinyl resurgence hasn't slowed either – and the MCR 60n can cater for this format, whatever your kit. The Phono connectivity supports Moving Magnet (MM), if that's the kind of record player that you possess.

Marantz has souped up the audio quality in the MCR 60n, too, with more linear Class D amplification than its 612 predecessor, at two lots of 65W stereo output (marking a 30% increase). There's a subwoofer output with adjustable crossover settings, too.

The Marantz MCR 60n will be available from 15 September, priced at $1000 in the USA. The UK/European version gains DAB radio, too, with its asking price set at £800 / €900.

Sometimes you have to hold your hands up and admit when you've made a device so good that retiring it makes no sense. Sony's basically doing that by acknowledging that its flagship headphones from two generations ago, the WH-1000XM4, remains its most popular model ever. Now it's bringing them back.

The WH-1000XM4 has apparently sold over 10 million units by Sony's own reckoning, which is a fairly huge threshold for some headphones that were really quite premium in price for much of their shelf-life. As a result of the enduring popularity of the design (since modernised in the XM5 and XM6 models), Sony's now launching the WH-1000XM4C, which changes very little about the older cans.

Sony says the new model is "based on" the older one, but in truth it's almost identical, featuring the same sound and noise-cancelling from back in 2016. You will now get 10-band EQ control, though, which could be welcome, and a new RRP accompanies the launch – £219.

It'll be fascinating to see whether bringing in this newer tier of essentially an older headphone will undercut the momentum of the XM5 and XM6s, but maybe this is a sign that said momentum wasn't all that powerful in the first place.

It's not the only set of headphones Sony is putting out this month, either. It's also launching the £100 WH-CH730N, a revision that puts a surprisingly lovely design on some affordable over-ears. Then there's the £50 WH-CH530, an on-ear option that similarly refreshes an existing model.

This all adds up to mean Sony's headphone lineup covers pretty much every price bracket from the very high-end (represented by the super-premium WH-1000XX The Collexion) right down to the very entry-level, and it's hard to argue with the idea behind that move.

At a time when people are watching prices get hiked on all manner of tech devices and launches, having options for those who want to spend less is hard to argue with. That said, this is also the first time I've seen a big tech brand bring out a new version of a 10-year-old product like this, so it'll be fascinating to see whether the XM4's popularity waxes or wanes as a result.

All of these headphones will be available later this month, according to Sony's estimates.

The beginning of September was huge for Sonos, which revealed a new Sonos 27 app architecture, new Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar, and new Sonos Ace Ultra headphones.

It's the last of those that I got to try in Berlin, at an event running adjacent to the IFA tech expo's calendar. These new headphones play nice with other Sonos products, able to handover audio with ease – which is what I was keenest to test out.

The feature is thanks to the new Headphones Engine 2, which sees the Ace Ultra act, in part, like other Wi-Fi-capable Sonos speakers to connect to the wider Sonos system – something that previous Ace product couldn't deliver.

I had many questions about how the feature would function, however, so have broken down in Q&A style below to explain how it all works.

What is Headphone Linking?

If you have a variety of Sonos speakers in your home, whether setup individually or as groups, then you're able to pass over what you're listening to on the Sonos Ace Ultra to those – it's called Headphone Linking.

There's no restriction on the product, so long as it's a Wi-Fi-capable Sonos – the Bluetooth-only products, like Roam, won't function in this way (just as they don't function in the same way in Sonos' overall setup).

To action this is simple: you simply press-and-hold the physical action button on the Ace Ultra, wait until it beeps, then it'll ping over to your nearest Sonos system. It's really simple to use.

What if I've got multiple groupings?

But what if you've got multiple groupings in your home? Say one kitchen setup, one bedroom, and another larger home cinema system in the lounge?

This is where the new Sonos 27 app will identify through your Wi-Fi network the nearest signal to you.

Can you fool it or can it mess up? I asked a Sonos engineer and the answer was only if you were perfectly equidistant would the system need to make a 'choice', but the company spent a long time testing to deliver the most fluid result.

Can you play on headphones and speakers?

As Ace Ultra have the hardware on board to act like a speaker, can you listen on the headphones whilst other Sonos speakers output audio – in a separate room in the house, for example?

While this could theoretically be possible, Sonos took the decision to disable such functionality. The Ace Ultra are either playing your source audio, or you hand it over to another system – you can't run the headphones in tandem with a speaker grouping.

What about the original Ace headphones?

Will this functionality be coming to the original Sonos Ace headphones? The short answer here is 'no'.

That's because the Headphones Engine 2 is part software, part hardware solution. And the chip required to run the calculations and Wi-Fi operability isn't in the original headphones.

If you want the most functionality, you'll therefore want the Ultra headphones, not the original product.

Has the TV Audio Swap feature changed at all?

One thing that the original Ace did do – and while niche, it's a feature that many love – is TV Audio Swap. This enables you to nab the audio from your soundbar and deliver it straight to the headphones.

It's also activated by a press-and-hold of the action button on the Ace Ultra (just as it is on the original Ace), but rather than functioning Headphone Linking and passing the audio over to another Sonos grouping, the app will know that audio is via an HDMI signal.

It's that HDMI hard-wiring that overrules the usual functionality, enabling the Ace Ultra to run TV Audio swap in the same way as the original Ace. As the majority processing is done on the soundbar, not the headphones, there's no disparity between Ace and Ace Ultra here.

Should I buy the Ace Ultra?

I'm not going into detail about how the Ace Ultra sound in this feature – a quick listen and I think they're superior to the original product thanks to a new driver and new tuning – but should you consider buying the latest headphones?

Absolutely. If you're a Sonos power user then the new Headphone Linking feature will expand your usability considerably. TV Audio Swap remains in tact and is still great. And the comfort of these headphones is second to none.

I'll be reviewing the new headphones in the coming weeks ahead of their 29 September on-sale date, digging into the design differences, long-term wear functionality, sound quality and ANC in minutiae detail.

The Philips Fidelio name has been around for years, generally attached to more premium audio kit. The new L5 headphones take some of that high-end heritage and put it into a much more affordable pair of wireless cans.

The L5 use custom 36mm ceramic-coated dome drivers with woven silk suspension, designed to deliver detailed sound with controlled bass and natural mids. There’s also support for LDAC, Bluetooth 6.0 and Auracast, while USB-C lets you listen to lossless hi-res audio at up to 24-bit/96kHz.

The L5 also get Philips’ most advanced active noise cancelling system yet. Adaptive Noise-Cancelling responds to changes in your surroundings, while a new leakage-detection system monitors the seal between the earcups and your ears and adjusts the ANC accordingly.

There’s also an Adaptive Awareness Mode, which can automatically switch on in quieter environments when you need to hear more of what’s going on around you.

The headphones use memory-foam ear cushions and a soft protein-leather headband, with touch controls and wear detection that automatically pauses playback when you take them off.

Battery life is another strong point, with up to 60 hours of playback or 50 hours with ANC enabled. A five-minute quick charge adds up to eight hours of listening.

The L5 support multipoint connectivity, allowing two devices to remain connected at once, while Spatial Audio modes are available through the Philips Headphones app. The app also includes AI Neural EQ, which gives you a simple way to adjust the headphones’ tonal balance, alongside Adaptive EQ.

Philips has also made the ear cushions and rechargeable battery replaceable by the owner, which should help extend the life of the headphones.

The Philips Fidelio L5 launch in October 2026 for €199.99 / £179.99.

CDs might not be enjoying quite the comeback they were promised, but there’s still something appealing about a proper stereo system, especially when it doesn’t require a rack of separates to house it.

Philips’ new Fidelio FA7 takes that approach, squeezing a serious hi-fi setup into a compact system. As such, this should appeal to those who still have a CD collection but spend plenty of time streaming too.

The FA7 is a genuinely stereo-focused system, with two separate amplifiers delivering a total of 120W RMS through an active crossover.

Each speaker gets a 5.25-inch woven glass-fibre mid/woofer and 1-inch titanium dome tweeter, with dedicated amplification for the two driver types. Philips says the result is a wider soundstage, controlled bass and more precise treble.

The speakers also get a tapered bass port and can be used with or without their magnetic grilles, while the main unit has a brushed-aluminium finish designed to echo traditional hi-fi separates.

The FA7 isn't stuck in the past, either. Alongside CD playback, there’s DAB+ and FM radio, internet radio and podcast support.

For streaming, it supports AirPlay 2 and Google Cast over Wi-Fi, alongside Spotify Lossless, Tidal Connect and Qobuz Connect. Bluetooth 6.0 adds multipoint connectivity, LDAC and LC3 support, while Auracast lets compatible devices share audio with multiple speakers.

There’s also optical, RCA, USB-A and 3.5mm connectivity, plus a headphone output, giving you plenty of options for hooking up a TV, turntable or other kit.

The Philips Fidelio FA7 launches in October 2026 for €599.99 / £509.99.

Earlier this year, Shokz, the well-known open-ear earbuds brand, revealed its 5-star OpenDots 2 product.

Now the brand is elevating its partnership to premier levels, with a newly announced limited-edition version and collaboration with England star Chloe Kelly.

The England forward – whose famous Euro Championships-winning goal broke the internet in 2022 – is now breaking the mould of what Shokz has delivered before.

Modelling the limited-edition OpenDots 2 in signature pink, this new addition to the product line – under the 'Always More' campaign banner – will be a big hit for footie fans.

The tie-in makes sense: the OpenDots 2 are ideal for running and training without blocking out the outside world, so you can remain aware of your surroundings – while listening to your favourite tunes.

Kelly says: "'Always More' really resonates with me because football is a huge part of who I am, but there’s of course more to me than simply the player you see on the pitch.

"I’m always pushing myself to perform at my best, while also enjoying everything that matters to me away from the game.

That’s what I like about Shokz: it’s made for performance, but fits naturally into everyday life too.”

You can buy the limited edition pink colourway right now from uk.shokz.com, with the Shokz x Chloe Kelly Limited Edition Clutch Gift Box priced at £179 in the UK.

Be quick, though, as when that Gift Box version sells out, that's the end of availability – although the pink colourway will continue to sell thereafter, joining the current pearly white, grey and black options.

If you still have a shelf full of CDs but spend most of your time streaming music, Majority has a new hi-fi system that could save you from having to choose between the two. The new Quadriga Maxi combines a CD player, Spotify Connect, DAB radio, Bluetooth and more in a single 200W sound system.

It's a pretty substantial box, measuring 50 x 28 x 13.3cm and weighing 6.4kg, but that's still simpler than building a system around separate components and speakers.

Inside, you get two 3-inch full-range drivers and a built-in 5.25-inch bass woofer, making it a 2.1-channel system designed to deliver enough sound to fill a room without needing a separate amplifier or pair of passive speakers.

There's a slot-loading CD player supporting CD, CD-R, CD-RW and MP3 CDs, while Spotify Connect handles streaming. Bluetooth 5.2, USB MP3 playback, internet radio, podcasts, DAB/DAB+ and FM radio are also included.

An optical input, stereo RCA and 3.5mm AUX input mean you can connect other sources, while a 4.3-inch colour display, remote control and Majority's OKTIV app handle the controls.

If an all-in-one system isn't quite what you're after, Majority has also launched the Fitzwilliam range of three full-width hi-fi components.

The £179.95 Fitzwilliam CD is a streaming CD player that can be added to an existing system, with Spotify Lossless through Spotify Connect, Bluetooth, USB, DAB/DAB+, FM, internet radio and podcasts. Digital optical and coaxial outputs give you plenty of options for connecting it to an amplifier or active speakers.

For £199.95, the Fitzwilliam AMP adds a 200W Class-D amplifier for passive speakers, alongside the same broad selection of streaming and radio options. It also has optical and coaxial inputs, RCA connectivity and a headphone output.

The £229.95 Fitzwilliam CD AMP combines the two, adding a CD player to the 200W amplifier in a single full-width component.

All four products are available now, with the Quadriga Maxi priced at £349.95. It's not the cheapest way to listen to Spotify and CDs, but for anyone who wants one straightforward system rather than a pile of separate boxes, it could be ideal.

For many people of a certain age, Packard Bell will hold a special place in their memories. The once computer giant exited from the States back in 2008, due to acquisition by Acer.

But that doesn't mean the brand vanished in its entirety, as Acer has used PB's marque to launch various products over the years – before phasing it out in 2013. But 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the brand's original founding date.

To celebrate, Acer has revived the brand – and there's a whole new product series, called Dot, with various value-proposition products set for European launch this month. The highlight? It's got to be the DotLoop, which is a portable turntable housed in none other than a briefcase.

There's certainly been a major retro revival over recent years, with vinyl in particular picking up a lot of attention. It's fitting of the brand's history, too, as accessible radio products were a big part of its success – before selling personal computers.

The DotLoop weighs 3kg, features two built-in 3W speakers for output, or you can override with RCA wired or Bluetooth out to connect with another system – such as a portable wireless Bluetooth speaker.

It's also not the first time we've seen tech sandwiched into a briefcase. LG is the most prominent that springs to mind, with its portable OLED TV product – the StanbyMe – which wasn't the stuff of concept, but a real, viable on-sale product.

The Packard Bell prospect isn't nearly as pricey as LG's telly, though, with its September launch price set at €149 for the EMEA market (that's Europe, Middle East and Africa – it won't be more widely on sale).

There's a bunch more in the Dot range, too, from a home speaker (DotTune) to headphones (DotBass), audio glasses (DotLook) to a feature phone (DotLine) and laptop (DotBook).

Separately to Packard Bell's 100th anniversary reveal, Acer has also launched a swathe of new product as part of its annual global conference at the IFA show in Berlin, Germany.

After Sony said it had new Ult speakers for me to check out at a hands-on event in late August, it was a bit of a surprise to walk into their event space and see speakers about ten times bigger than I was expecting.

I was faced with the new Ult Tower lineup – the Tower 5, Tower 7 and Tower Max, and from where I was seated, even the smallest was a little hard to imagine making sense in my admittedly compact living room.

These are party speakers that make absolutely no apology for their size or scale, not least because they're aimed squarely at those who want such power. Listening to each one in turn, it was pretty easy to see the appeal, too.

The "smallest", the Tower 5, was still hefty enough to need a sensible approach when you pick it up to move it, and had impressively full and rounded sound in its default "flat" mode, which still has more bass than many other speakers would tune for.

Swapping up to the Tower 5, which expands the size of its main driver and adds some more tweeters for precision, you indeed get a pretty significant boost in overall volume and depth. That middle size looks relatively modest in the lineup photo below, which is pretty hilarious – it would be the biggest speaker anyone you know owns, and only looks small because the Ult Tower Max is so absurdly massive.

The Tower Max was my favourite demo of the three, not least because I got to choose a track to listen to. Justice's Waters of Nazareth is a go-to for bass testing, and its crackly yet precise beats were fairly monstrous, in a good way. This sort of track can help sift out speakers that dial up the bass while losing any detail, and the Tower Max passed that test with flying colours.

That said, its chunky price and enormous size mean that it's really only going to make sense for professional use. That might mean DJs who bring their own kit to venues, touring companies, or party planners, but it does also ensure that any event with sound running through Tower Max speakers will be able to get ridiculously loud.

In a soundproof basement, each speaker tended to be running at around 60% of its maximum volume, and that was generally more than enough to be antisocial in the wrong setting. My downstairs neighbours wouldn't thank me for testing any of them, frankly.

I was also thoroughly impressed by the new design of the three speakers, unified with their metal front grilles and LED fringes. Party speakers can often be a little too poppy and unserious for my tastes, whereas these are among the more mature and industrial I can remember seeing.

That said, I'm always fascinated by the concept of party speakers in the first place, from a marketing and sales perspective – how many units will these Ult speakers sell? It's a question I probably won't get an answer to, but I'd love the insight. Speaker-makers clearly know something I don't, though, because they keep on making new ones.

From what I've seen, the Ult Towers will be impressive new competitors in the market when they arrive later this month.

Sony's getting in on the pre-IFA action by announcing a revamp of its biggest party speakers, confirming that its Ult branding is very much how it sees the path forward for its audio business outside of the very biggest hitters (namely the WF and WH-1000XM series of headphones and earbuds).

The new speakers are all pretty big, but the biggest of them is frankly massive, so these are launches aimed very much at those putting on proper parties, raves, and events.

• Check out my full impressions of the new Ult speakers here, from a recent hands-on demo

All three speakers also share the same design language, and it's one that brings impressive unity to the previously various designs used by Sony's largest speakers. Each is fronted with a pretty transparent metal grille, and ringed by LEDs that can sync to your music or play pre-arranged lighting medleys.

They're all really industrial and modern-looking, stripped of much of the ornamentation that can make speakers look a bit overdone. Each also has an Ult-branded dial to the top-left of its drivers, letting you adjust through different sound modes (largely to decide whether you want punchy bass or chest-shaking ultra bass).

Crucially, they also all have the same array of connectivity options – XLR, RCA and USB-C, along with Bluetooth. That means they should be reliable in a variety of setups.

The smallest of the three is the Ult Tower 5, and it'll come in at €400 when it launches this month. It's clearly the most approachable of the three, but still brings pretty powerful sound for its size. Carrying handles make it easier to use than you might expect, and it gets 20 hours of battery life for flexibility.

Next in the lineup is the Ult Tower 7, which is a good chunk bigger and increases the number of drivers for a big boost in power and sound output. It costs €600, and might be the most sensible choice for event planning, since it's super powerful but still not the craziest piece of kit to move around. It has 30 hours of battery life, meanwhile.

Finally, the Ult Tower Max is a genuine beast, with wheels on one side so that you can cart it around carefully. It has power that needs to be heard to be believed (and I have indeed heard it), and it's no surprise that it therefore comes in at €1,500, a big jump that makes it far more of a niche option. It's also exclusively mains-powered, which makes sense given its size.

Sony says all three will be available later this month, but also that this is part of a strategy to take previously diverse branding decisions and make far more of its speakers Ult-branded. That might indeed be a winning play over time, since Sony's naming conventions have long been a little arcane.

There's no skirting around the fact that Sonos had a debacle with its attempted app update a couple of years ago. But that's now behind the company, which has changed leadership, invested time, and forged forward for the better.

Now, Sonos has revealed its latest new software vision, Sonos 27, the redesigned app set to act as the hub for all things Sonos. Its reveal arrives in tandem with two new product launches: the Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar and Sonos Ace Ultra headphones.

But just what's the core purpose of Sonos 27 and what does this software set out to do differently than what came before? The new iterative approach – 'Sonos 28' will follow next year, and so forth – is akin to Apple's iOS updates for its iPhone products.

That means you can expect an evolving network of updates and additional features, expanding the practicality of what your Sonos ecosystem can do over time. Here are 5 key takeaways from the new Sonos 27 app:

1. Sonos Fabric

Starting with what you probably know Sonos best for: grouping speakers together. But that didn't have a specific marketing name. Until now.

Which is what 'Sonos Fabric' is all about – it's the underlying architecture of all things grouped, paired and bonded together across your Sonos products and ecosystem.

Keep an eye out for that name change, therefore, as you'll need to get used to it as being the main hub of your Sonos connected family.

2. Design & Controls

With a new app invariably comes a new design. And Sonos 27 has got a bunch of new visuals and features, which I've summarised in bullet points below.

• Tab navigation
• Lockscreen controls
• 'Room Sort' organisation
• Virtual knobs for volume control
• Forthcoming (Q3/4): System Health views; Presets

As you can see from that list, Sonos 27 will offer layers within the app, more controls, and a greater sense of 'tactility' to its use.

Furthermore, the iterative approach is clear: later in the year Presets and System Health Views will follow, showing that persistent feature updates are part of the ongoing package.

3. Sonos 27 Voice

Building upon the original Sonos Voice is the updated Sonos 27 Voice control. It's a new voice assistant that's even more advanced.

You can prompt it into action using the "Hey Sonos" wake word, or you can bypass Sonos' system for a preferred Amazon Alexa or Google Gemini integration if you wish.

The goal with Sonos' new voice control is for more organic, conversational requests and further humanised context – less of the defined rigidity of the earlier system.

4. AI Agents

Speaking of choice, Sonos is also to expand its connection with artificial intelligence – with Sonos 27 MCP allowing you to connect to external AI systems of your choice.

Later this year Sonos Custom Agents will preview, pulling on Agentic AI to manage requests in more specifically targeted ways – a 'Movie agent', perhaps, as one example.

There's not much more information around this as yet, as it's a forthcoming feature. But effective results in other apps/services based on your Sonos use would be one likely potential.

5. Headphones & Surrounds

This one ties directly into the addition of Sonos' new Beam Ultra soundbar and Ace Ultra headphones being revealed alongside the new app announcement.

The Ace Ultra headphones can act like any other Sonos speaker, using its Headphones Engine 2 systen, so you can group or handover audio as you wish through the app.

The Beam Ultra, meanwhile, enhances its surround sound proposition, as it's now compatible with wireless (Wi-Fi capable) Sonos speakers – i.e. the Move 2 and Play speakers.

That means you can add a Sonos Play to your Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar and the app will understand its position relative to the setup. It's like a more advanced version of Trueplay.

This feature isn't Dolby Atmos FlexConnect – which allows you to freely position surround speakers anywhere you please – but a similar functionality using Sonos' proprietary technology.

Sonos is back with a major hardware announcement this September, revealing the all-new Beam Ultra soundbar.

Consider it the uprated version of the classic Beam original and follow-up Beam 2 soundbars, which have been a major success for Sonos over the years.

The key difference? The Sonos Beam Ultra adds upfiring channels to its audio arrangement, bringing more immersive audio for better Dolby Atmos experiences.

Small 'bar, big sound

The system is a 7.1.2 arrangement, so seven speakers for the front soundstage (including centre, left, right, and sides), one central sub/bass, and two upfiring outputs.

"Big sound. Not-so-big soundbar": That was Sonos' goal in the Beam Ultra. It occupies a similar footprint to the other Beam products, but has been redesigned internally.

Note, however, that it's not the same footprint. That's why a new wall-mount (sold separately) is also available, should you wish to have the Beam Ultra up on the wall.

The Ultra's internal arrangement features nine drivers in total – which is four more than in the previous Beam (Gen 2). So it's not just new upfiring speakers that complement the audio offering here, helping to deliver a bigger, broader sound stage.

The Beam Ultra offers an HDMI eARC, but there's no additional HDMI passthrough – long a dream request, but absent in all Sonos soundbars – for an easy TV connection.

A new app, too

Sonos has also revealed its latest app, Sonos27, which will take on an iterative format – similar to Apple with iPhones in iOS26, 27, etc – with updated annual future versions expected.

The app is the hub to control various features, including Sonos' new AI Speech Enhancement. This offers four customisable levels for dialogue enhancement, depending on environment and preference.

You can also use the Sonos Beam Ultra with other speakers. The new 'Portable Surrounds' feature, will mean that even Sonos' portable Wi-Fi speakers – i.e. the Move 2 and Play products – can be used as surround sound speakers.

If you have a Sonos Play, for example, that can be integrated as a rear speaker. Sonos' in-house software solution will measure the additional speakers' positions, similar to Dolby Atmos FlexConnect (but not using this specific system) for ideal output.

All in all, the Beam Ultra sounds like a huge new release for Sonos. It betters the good of the previous Beam 2 product, with true upfiring channels and beefier audio overall.

It will cost you a fair bit more than a 2nd Gen Beam, however, with pre-orders open now for an on-sale date of 29 September. Retail pricing is set at £699 / $699 / AU$1099 / €699 – so the UK gets the rawest deal in terms of value.

Sonos has gone all-out this week with major new reveals, adding its second-ever headphone product, the Ace Ultra, to its incoming future line-up.

That follows the all-new Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar, which brings upfiring channels to the mid-size soundbar range for the first time, improving its immersive Dolby Atmos credentials.

While the Sonos Ace Ultra may look similar to the original Sonos Ace over-ears, this newer product has been "built from the ground up" and uses an all-new 40mm driver within each earcup.

Audio handover

Crucially, however, the Ace Ultra introduces what Sonos calls its 'Headphone Engine 2', enabling the Ultra to handover audio to your other Sonos speakers.

As the Ace Ultra can act as a full-scale node in Sonos' platform, you can link them to your system in myriad ways.

This expands beyond the established TV Audio Swap feature, where the headphones can wirelessly receive three-dimensional audio from a connected Sonos soundbar.

Note, however, that as the Headphone Engine 2 feature requires specific hardware to operate, this handover feature will not be available on the original Sonos Ace product – as it doesn't have the necessary chip to operate this way.

New and improved ANC

Elsewhere, the Ace Ultra also up their active noise-cancelling (ANC) game, thanks to a new microphone arrangement – with 10 in total, marking two additional ones over the original Ace product.

An Adaptive EQ feature is designed to measure how well the earcups are sat on your head, adjusting the ANC profile accordingly based on the seal – and that'll act as a big benefit for glasses wearers.

Battery life has also been considerably improved, offering 35 hours per charge with ANC active. That's a far superior claim to the 24 hours achievable with the original Ace. There's also boost charging, said to offer up to 3 hours of use from just 3 minutes at the plug.

While the wireless format is the Ace Ultra's forte, these over-ears can also be used wired via the USB-C port. That offers Hi-Res listening up to 16-bit/48kHz for those who can serve it the correct audio formats.

Upgraded design

It's not only the drivers within that are new. Sonos has further improved the ergonomics, with the earcups' connections even more adaptable and with improved rotation

Making the most comfortable headphones even better was surely no small order, but Sonos looks to have pulled out all the stops in the Ace Ultra.

How much will a pair set you back? You can pre-order right now for the 29 September on-sale date, with retail prices fixed at £399 / $449 / AU$699 / €449.

If you were in any doubt that Sonos is looked at by the rest of the audio industry with some envy, all you really have to do is watch what other brands launch. I've seen a fair few home speaker announcements in my day, and JBL's new Cove speakers are just about as direct in competing with Sonos as any I can remember.

JBL says that Cove is a new "whole-home Wi‑Fi audio system" and, to be fair, I'm a huge fan of Wi-Fi speakers in general. Their convenience is hard to match when you're at home, and their connectivity is superior to Bluetooth-only models in my experience.

Cove launches with three models – M1, P1 and X1. To start with M1, it's a fixed-in-place speaker that needs mains power and is very much the entry option to the range. That doesn't mean it's all that cheap, though, at $219.95 in the US, £199.99 in the UK and €229.99 in the EU. Think of it as JBL's equivalent to the Sonos Era 100 SL.

The most interesting speaker in the lineup is the JBL Cove P1, which is the competition for the five-star Sonos Play. Like the Play, the P1 is portable with a charging dock that you can put where you want. It's a bit more powerful than the M1, too, and has Dolby Atmos support thanks to an upfiring tweeter. It gets 14 hours of use on a charge, and has water and dust resistance at an IP56 rating.

That bump in specs and options also makes it quite pricey – at $399.95 in the US, £399.99 in the UK and €449.99 in the EU. That's significantly more than even Sonos' equivalent, which is punchy.

Finally, there's the biggest speaker of the lot, the Cove X1, which reverts to powered use and looks more like the Sonos Era 300 equivalent. It offers 3D sound, apparently, and therefore also has Dolby Atmos support, and comes in at $379.95, £429.99 or €499.99 depending on your region.

All of the speakers can be grouped in multi-room setups and controlled through JBL's app, and the two smaller speakers can also be used as surrounds with the JBL Bar Mk2 soundbar, which is welcome. They'll all be available from JBL in October this year, with a precise launch date likely to follow fairly soon.

They'll also all become smart speakers later this year with Alexa+ integration, which might be of interest to plenty of people. They actually launch with a wide range of connectivity options, too, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Roon Ready, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, and Qobuz Connect.

To be clear, too, it's probably a good thing that Sonos' reputation for multi-room audio is prompting this competition. While I use its speakers happily, I've thought for a long while that more Wi-Fi speakers need to flood the market to make it easier to get multi-room setups without breaking the bank.

For now, JBL's route isn't one that seems to prioritise affordability, but give it a couple of years, and it'll be fascinating to see where the Cove lineup ends up sitting in the market.

FiiO has been making portable audio gear for years, but the EA13 is about as far removed from a pocket-sized DAC as you can get. This is a big, heavy analogue amplifier designed to put the tubes firmly on display, right down to the glowing valves and mechanical VU meters.

There are six tubes inside the EA13: two Sylvania PCF80 tubes handle the preamp stage, while four JJ Electronic EL34 tubes provide the power amplification. They're arranged in a Class A push-pull configuration based on amplifier designs from the 1950s.

The EA13 produces 28W per channel into 8-ohm speakers, although that figure comes at 5% distortion. At 1% distortion, the output is 18W per channel. FiiO provides separate outputs for 4-ohm and 8-ohm speakers, so you can match the amplifier to your setup.

It's also a decidedly analogue affair. There are four RCA inputs, a 6.35mm headphone output and a 12V trigger, but no DAC, Bluetooth, network streaming or phono stage. If you want to connect a turntable, you'll need a separate phono stage.

The design is clearly part of the appeal. The EA13 has a CNC-machined aluminium chassis, two illuminated VU meters and backlit controls, while the tubes sit prominently behind a protective cover. At 17.7kg, it's also not something you'll want to move around very often.

The FiiO EA13 costs $769 (around £610), putting it well below many traditional EL34 tube amplifiers. It's also the first full-size tube amplifier from a company better known for portable players, DACs and headphone amps, making it a fairly clear sign that FiiO wants a bigger presence in conventional hi-fi.

Whether you want that classic tube setup is another matter. Modern amplifiers can give you considerably more connectivity for the money, but they don't tend to look quite as good sitting on a shelf with six glowing valves and bouncing VU meters.

Recently, Bose launched the QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen) – sometimes abbreviated as 'QC Headphones 2' or, per the app, 'QC 2 HP' – and I've been using them for a full week.

However, over the years I've used the original Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones for hundreds of hours since their launch.

Whether at home, on walks, commuting, or flying dozens of hours on a plane – those headphones have been with me every step of the way.

Thing is, the 'basic' QC Headphones 2 are mighty similar to the pricier QC Ultra Headphones 2. So what exactly is the difference and which one wins?

I've side-by-side tested Bose's two QC Headphones so you don't have to, highlighting their differences to help in your purchase decision.

Price

The Bose QC Ultra Headphones 2 went on sale in September 2025, priced at £449 ($449). They've since dropped in price in the UK, however, and you can buy for £349.

The newer Bose QC Headphones 2 (i.e. not the Ultra) went on sale this month, in August 2026, priced at £299 ($359).

Even with price drops, however, the Ultra ultimately still cost more – so just what more do you get and is the extra outlay actually worth it?

Design & Controls

I'll caveat this section by saying that I really don't like the silver finish of the Ultra headphones that I possess – I think they look tacky. Go with one of the other colourways would be my suggestion.

In terms of weight – and I put each pair on my digital kitchen scales to check this – the Headphones 2 come in at 239g, while the Ultra are a little more, at 263g.

That weight difference ultimately comes down to the material choices in construction. While the Ultra may look plasticky in places, it's the only product with aluminium as part of its build makeup – the QC 2 HP is all plastic.

The weight difference is marginal for comfort, with both headphones using protein leather coatings on their earcups and headband areas. Both offer the same slide-adjustable headband mechanism, too, which feels great.

So which is more comfortable? I prefer the Ultra, for the simple reason the earcup openings are deeper. The base QC 2 HP have a 'step' behind the mesh within, and I find them slightly inferior as a result. It's a close race, though.

Controls are another considerable part of the difference: the Ultra has touch controls, whereas the base model has a trio of buttons for play/pause and volume up/down; it also has a physical switch for Bluetooth pairing – the Ultra opts for a simple button instead.

Sound Quality

As you might have guessed by my earcup depth comment above, the Bose QuietComfort Headphones 2 and the Ultra 2 don't possess the same drivers – although Bose doesn't state that anywhere on its website.

I'm claiming this on the basis of listening, because these two headphones do not sound the same. They both sound great, granted, but the sound profile is different.

In short, the Ultra is the better-sounding pair, with greater expansiveness across the higher frequencies. It just delivers a bit more bite and depth – which I've checked again and again by switching between the two headphones across various tracks.

However, whichever you choose you can guarantee great bass and great overall clarity. Both are also USB-C compatible for wired listening should you prefer.

Active Noise-Cancelling (ANC)

When I first received the QC Ultra Headphones 2, I was disappointed by the active noise-cancelling (ANC) – as my side-by-side tests against the first-gen QC Ultra Headphones proved it to be a downgrade in blocking out external sounds.

Software updates have progressed, though, with Bose's systems and app now in a greater place of parity. And it's fair to say that's largely the case with the ANC systems on both the QC Ultra Headphones 2 and QC Headphones 2.

Both are very good at blocking out external sounds, as I've tested at home with various degrees of fans whirring, TV noise in the background, and when commuting out and about through London.

However, the Ultra visibly feature more microphones, so ultimately have the more advanced setup. The only way I've perceived this, however, is with the QC 2 HP getting gazumped by pressure changes when on the Tube network in London – the Ultra model seems to withstand this better (although not always entirely).

Battery Life

While both these headphones are pretty close in their runtime, the official take is that the Ultra offer 30 hours of use to the QC 2 HP's 24 hours of use. The Ultra therefore take it.

Note, of course, that battery longevity will depend on listening volume and whether you activate Bose's Immersion feature within the app – which depletes the battery even more quickly (but gives an awesome three-dimensional sound stage enhancement effect).

In Conclusion

For me, both these headphones deliver 5-star sound and active noise-cancelling (ANC).

The Ultra is the better product, however, on account of its sound profile delivering slightly more bite, its higher battery offering, and greater comfort due to interior earcup structure.

Side by side the two look very similar, aside from the extra physical buttons on the QC Headphones 2 – which may be an upsell if you don't like touch-based controls – and I'd think carefully about which colourway you choose, too.

So it's a close run race, but the Ultra take the crown. Whether those slight gains are enough for you to pay the extra is another question entirely, though – because the lower price point adds obvious appeal too.

When I first received Bose's QuietComfort Headphones Ultra a few years ago, I was blown away by the comfort, portability, sound quality and just absolutely on-point active noise-cancelling (or ANC, for short).

Later, Bose released a pair minus the 'Ultra' name, trimming back on some of the finer aspects of its top-tier travel headphones. While I didn't get to see those original QC Headphones, however, I've had the updated '2nd Gen' pair on review for a week.

What you need to know about the Bose QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen) is that these updated over-ears take many cues from the superior Ultra model – including many trickle-down features that, in some cases, put these headphones on par with the best.

Indeed, if you're a fan of physical buttons rather than touch controls, then these over-ears arguably make the better choice. That said, with the Ultra – which features a slightly nicer finish – now down from its original price, you're spoiled for choice.

Price & Availability

The Bose 'QC 2 HP' – that's the shorthand name, per the Bose app – are on sale now, with an asking price of £299.95 in the UK, $359 in the USA, AU$549.95 in Australia, and €349.95 in wider Europe.

That's actually a lower price for the UK market than the original, but that's an integral move to provide an ample gap between these QC Headphones 2 and the Ultra version (which is also a '2nd Gen' product).

That said, you can find the original QC Ultra Headphones on significant discount, making those an even more affordable purchase – see in the shopping widget embedded above.

That creates some confusion, perhaps, as while the 2nd Gen Ultra isn't quite as close yet, the asking price is very tight between it and these QC Headphones 2 on review.

Features & What's New?

• Updated design with adjustable sliders and new faux-leather cushioning
• Addition of Bose's TrueSpatial technology (Still, Motion, Cinema)
• Active noise-cancelling (ANC) said to be improved
• Battery life reduction (18h using Immersive)
• Lossless playback via wired USB-C

I've included a series of bullet points above to summarise what's different between the original and 2nd Gen model of these Bose headphones.

The more interesting comparison, however, might be between these headphones and their Ultra equivalents – as the gap between the two is fairly close.

I've used the Ultra extensively over the years, so can tell you that its touch-sensitive controls and improved padding are the two aspects that set it apart.

If you prefer physical buttons, however, then that's what the QC Headphones 2 put pride of place – a hark back to the earlier models, such as Bose's QC45.

Design & Usability

I don't mind using those physical control buttons at all, though, with the left earcup housing a Bluetooth connect switch and single button for cycling between the ANC modes (Quiet, Aware, Immersion).

The right earcup, meanwhile, features a play/pause that's straddled by volume up and volume down buttons. This trio lives near to the exposed USB-C port. And that's your lot – no other major distractions to get in your way.

The QC Headphones 2 come with an included carry case, in which is a little pouch with USB-C-to-C and separate USB-C-to-3.5mm cables. That's handy for different outlets, should you want to use a wired connections, such as on planes.

The headphones feature a folding design, so the earcups fold towards the headband, minimising their size for stowing. They sit in the case slightly differently to that, but everything is held nice and secure.

The updated Bose app can register your product, which will give you app-based controls to adjust the Modes, tweak the EQ, customise (or deactivate) the Shortcut button, and toggle between Source options.

The majority of that can be achieved without the app, of course, but it's a good visual way to delve into those settings – especially the EQ, which can't be controlled any other way. There's also a battery percentage visual, which is handy.

I will say that the general feel of the headphones, given their plasticky frame and light weight, might not make you think 'top tier' immediately. But the earcups and headband are well supported, with the slide mechanism of the size adjustment proving smooth and elegant in use.

Performance & Sound Quality

While some aspects of the product's feel – as in, to touch – might not be hyper premium, you'll totally forget about that when wearing these over-ears.

I've already worn them for dozens of hours, whether at home in the office, out on morning walks, or commuting by train and tube, and they almost dissolve away – they're that comfortable.

The sound is truly epic, too. Big bass, enthusiastic mid and high frequencies combine to output a wide soundstage with settings at their most basic.

Play around with the Immersion aspect, however, and this feature – which was originally reserve of the Ultra model – gives you a three-dimensional uplift that makes you feel as if you're moving through the music.

You can adjust Immersion to be static, or based on your motion, which changes the experience. It can over-sharpen some higher frequencies, while battery life is more limited when it's in use – but it's a totally optional processing feature, so up to you whether it's active or not.

Whether it is or isn't, however, doesn't affect just how capable the active noise-cancelling (ANC) system is here. Ideal for blotting out surrounding ambient sound, I've found it ideal to escape the outside world and get focused.

Bose is master with ANC, as the company has long proven, and the version in the QC Headphones 2nd Gen is mighty impressive – no 'downgrade' blips, as I experienced with the Ultra 2nd Gen (issues which, via the power of over-the-air updates, Bose has since ironed out anyway).

There's one thing that can gazump the ANC, however, and that's changes in pressure. That's by no way unique to this product, I just felt it more sensitive and therefore pronounced with some wind-tear issues, or with passing trains causing one side of the ANC to cut out and reset. No biggie, but something you might notice on public transport.

Battery life is technically worse for this generation product, because the addition of the Immersive ANC option dictates that. You'll still get 18 hours at a decent volume, though, and that's been feasible by my in-use calculations – and I don't listen quietly, so Bose isn't pulling your leg here.

Verdict

While the Bose QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen) don't have 'Ultra' in the name, there are plenty of ultra features on show here.

If you're looking for lightweight and supremely comfortable travel headphones with decent sound quality, exceptional active noise-cancelling (ANC) and strong battery life, then these tick every box.

If anything, it's only the proximity to the higher-spec QC Headphones Ultra (2nd Gen) that makes purchasing these questionable – given the close pricing between the two.

Should you prefer physical buttons to touch-sensitive ones, the non-Ultra model is actually your best match. And while the build might not look great at every turn, the cushioning materials and wear factor are second to none.

Also Consider

One of the QC Headphones 2nd Gen's issues is that the original 'Ultra' version is now available for less. They look a bit smarter, with fewer visible buttons, and on a price basis are the most logical buy.

There's also a heap of competition in this market, with many worthy competitors to consider. The Sonos Ace is supremely comfortable, for example, while Sony's WH-1000XM6 offer arguably the supreme travel headphones design.

Every time I test a bit of Marshall kit, whether it's a new speaker or some headphones, I tend to say a similar thing at the start of my review – that few audio brands have anything like the defined visual identity of its lineup. That cursive Marshall logo, generally in brass or white, atop either a grille or some leatherette, makes for a genuinely iconic look.

It's one that's seen the brand carve out an impressive niche for itself among those who want punchy audio and a more old-school aesthetic, and that's getting a further twist with the release of three new parts of its ongoing tribute to Jimi Hendrix.

It's apparently 60 years this year since Hendrix used a Marshall amplifier to level up the sheer noise of his sound, and Marshall's already released a couple of tributes, but the newest ones include probably the most approachable and attractive designs yet.

They include new versions of the very solid Emberton III Bluetooth speaker, along with the ever-popular Major V headphones. In both cases, purple is the name of the game.

They've both been given new colours; in the case of the Emberton III, it's a more all-over job, with a new purple-hazed colour that Marshall calls "psychedelic graphics", along with a Hendrix-themed version of the brass control knob on top of the speaker. Even the status lights have been turned purple instead of red.

The Major V has the same purple accents, but it's a little more subtle, since it's only on the ear cushions of the headphones, rather than the outside. This might make it the most sleek of the lineup, since it's different but doesn't shout about it.

There's a third part of the tribute, but it'll ship in far smaller quantities – a hand-assembled JMH Studio amp, with that gorgeous purple design all over it. It's genuinely staggeringly cool to look at, but obviously will be a far more niche prospect aimed at real musicians.

To that end, the Emberton III and Major V versions can be ordered from Marshall today for £129.99 and £149.99 respectively, while the JMH Studio amp comes in at a cool £1749.99 and will be available from 9 September.

The Fidelio FA3 wireless active stereo speaker system and the Fidelio FT1 Bluetooth-equipped turntable with integrated CD player are available separately, but Philips is pretty sure they were made for each other – and if anyone should know, the company that builds them should.

In today's world of super-pricey separates, and with retro nostalgia seemingly at an all-time high, this mid-price system seems a smart move. Which is why I’ve reviewed these two products as if a complete system, to find out if putting your would-be cash into Philips’ pocket is money well spent or a rash investment.

Price & Availability

Both the Philips Fidelio FA3 wireless active stereo speaker system and the Fidelio FT1 Bluetooth-equipped turntable with integrated CD player are on sale now.

In the United Kingdom the Fidelio FA3 sells for £349, which translates to around $399 in the United States and AU$499 in Australia.

The Fidelio FT1, meanwhile, goes for £269 in the UK, something like $349 in the US, and around AU$469 in Australia.

For the sake of both brevity and sanity, for the rest of this review I’m going to refer to these products simply as ‘FA3’ and ‘FT1’. We all know what they are by now, right?

Features & What's New?

Philips Fidelio FA3 speakers

The FA3 are two-way speakers, each of which features a 25mm titanium dome tweeter above a 127mm glass-fibre mid/bass driver.

Each speaker is home to 50 watts of Class D amplification and, in partnership with a small reflex port at the rear of each cabinet, Philips reckons this layout is good for a frequency response of 40Hz to 40kHz.

Both speakers need to be connected to mains power – this is an active system, after all. And both speakers have an RCA socket on the rear which can be used to connect the two together – that’s how truly hi-res playback can be achieved, although the system will work just as happily (but at a lower resolution) with the speakers wirelessly paired.

One speaker does the heavy lifting where connectivity is concerned, though – the ‘primary’ speaker features a USB-C slot (available for both playback and servicing), a digital optical input, an HDMI ARC connection, and a line-level analogue input on stereo RCA sockets.

This primary speaker also takes care of wireless Bluetooth connectivity – the FA3 features Bluetooth 5.4 LE Audio and compatibility with SBC, AAC, LC3 and LDAC codecs. It’s also packing Auracast technology, so it can easily become part of a multi-speaker system if given appropriate speakers to partner with.

It’s worth noting the speakers can be connected using a length of coaxial cable with an RCA connector at each end, or wirelessly using a 2.4GHz wireless connection. Most unusually, there’s no trade-off in maximum resolution if you choose to go down the ‘wireless’ route – the FA3 operates at 24bit/96kHz natively, and anything that comes in via digital optical, USB-C or HDMI ARC of greater size is downscaled to this resolution.

Philips Fidelio FT1 turntable-CD system

The Fidelio FT1, meanwhile, is something that might have been called a ‘music centre’ back in the day. It’s a belt-driven turntable, a CD player, and a Bluetooth transmitter – with an integrated phono stage, Auracast connectivity, and a headphone socket thrown in for good measure.

It arrives with an Audio Technica AT3600L moving magnet cartridge pre-fitted to its straight aluminium tube tone-arm – all that needs to be done is to fit and adjust the supplied counterweight, slip the belt over the motor pulley, and your record player is ready to go. Or, at least, it is once you’ve positioned the aluminium platter and put the rubber slipmat on top.

The FT1 will convert an analogue signal from your vinyl to a digital equivalent and then send it to a pair of wireless headphones (or speakers, obviously) via Bluetooth 5.4 using the SBC, AAC or LC3 codec. And as it’s also Auracast-equipped, it’s able to transmit whatever it’s playing to as many appropriate speakers as you have access to.

There’s a compact disc drive built into the FT1, too, accessed via a drawer integrated into the front of the chassis. The door of the drawer is where you’ll find the system’s LED display – it can give confirmation of the selected input as well as the usual ‘track number, time elapsed, etc’ stuff when a CD is playing. All the usual CD player modes (‘shuffle’, ‘repeat’, ‘random’ and what-have-you) are here, and the drive itself is compatible with CD-R/RW and MP3-CD as well as your regular discs.

Performance

Obviously I’m testing the FA3 and FT1 components as an entire system, and that’s the way I’m going to discuss the sonic pros and cons.

In the course of this test, I spent some time listening to the FA3 speakers with other sources of music, just as I did the FT1 with different speakers (and with headphones too).

So I think I’m qualified to say that everything this system does, both good and bad, is a more-or-less equal result of the characteristics of each component. They’re both in this together, for better and for worse.

What’s most immediately impressive and engaging about this set-up is the sense of energy and animation it creates. There’s a forward and quite direct character to the system’s sonic presentation, a kind of positivity that makes every listen to any recording above the tempo of a dirge an invigorating event.

Not everyone will be enchanted by what I can quite easily describe as the relentless nature of the system’s attitude, but those who enjoy a vivid and quite forceful presentation will be very happy indeed.

No matter if you decide to listen to CD or to vinyl, there’s a fair amount of detail available in almost every respect, and an unarguable dynamism that allows the distance between the least and the most intense sections in a recording to be absolutely apparent.

Midrange resolution is accomplished too, and the way the system handles voices is very enjoyable as a result. The soundstage that’s available is quite wide and fairly well defined – and the midrange gets enough space in which to properly communicate.

Combine that with the amount of detail that’s revealed, and it follows that voices are both eloquent and direct, so it’s possible to discern plenty about their character and attitude – just as readily as about their technique and their texture – as a result.

At the bottom of the frequency range there’s a quite startling amount of substance given the size of the driver and the cabinet that’s producing it – but bass is not a blunt instrument here.

Confidence and presence are not in doubt (although a little more solidity around the edges of low-end sounds wouldn’t go amiss), but the attack is leavened by a fair amount of detail and variation.

Control is good too, and the Philips has no problem expressing rhythms with confidence and no little positivity. Leave the EQ settings in their most benign, ‘balanced’ setting and low-frequency wallop and momentum is the result.

Bass sounds have plenty in common with the midrange where tonality is concerned, and that’s also the case at the top of the frequency range. The 25mm titanium dome tweeter serves up shining, crunchy and detailed high frequencies that have the substance to balance out their latent bite.

Detail levels are high again, and though the tweeter is just as assertive as the mid/bass driver it sits above, it steers clear of glassiness and hardness right until the moment you start listening at ill-advised volumes.

Context is everything, though, and the FA3/FT1 system is never less than enjoyable and generally quite invigorating to listen to. Is it perfect, sonically speaking? No, and I get the strong impression that ‘outright fidelity’ was sacrificed in favour of ‘excitement’ quite early on in the voicing process. Does it offer plenty of sonic verve, as well as a stack of flexibility, for the money? Most certainly.

Design & Usability

Each of the speakers is a fairly substantial 303 x 170 x 211mm (HxWxD), which means the FA3 is not exactly a candidate for desktop use – and besides, given that I’m considering this as a complete system along with the FT1, you’d have to have a very big desk indeed if it’s going to accommodate all three components.

It seems more likely the entire system will be used either on an equipment rack and some speaker stands, or on an appropriately deep shelf or piece of furniture. The only drawback here, though, might be the fact the speakers are designed to lean back a little and fire upwards rather than directly outwards.

If the surface they’re on is fairly low, this is a helpful little design feature – but if you have the speakers on stands or a slightly higher shelf, the FA3 will direct sound above your ears rather than towards them (unless you like to listen while standing up, that is).
For all their slightly strange orientation, though, the speaker cabinets are properly made and finished in that special high-gloss black that looks great but collects fingerprints like no one’s business. The plastic shell features 45% recycled material in its construction, and each one is supplied with a magnetically attached grille.

The primary speaker is doing further heavy lifting where control is concerned. As well as all the physical inputs, its rear panel features a volume dial (it takes a fair few rotations to elicit a proper response), a button to initiate wireless pairing between the speakers, a button to cycle through the available inputs, and a power on/off switch.

All of those functions can also be achieved using the small remote control that’s supplied – it also includes independent bass and treble controls, and a button to cycle through the six EQ presets (‘balanced’, ‘warm’, ‘bright’, ‘powerful’, ‘clear’ and ‘custom’). For some reason, though, it crams selection of the six different inputs (which includes Auracast) onto just three buttons.

Both the FA3 and the FT1 are compatible with the Philips ‘Entertainment’ control app that’s free for iOS and Android. It’s a thorough, if not especially intuitive, interface and as well as playback control, EQ presets, source selection and the usual stuff, it’s where you can check for software updates (in the case of the FT1) or pick from a selection of sonic soundscapes (‘generative’, ‘ambient’ or ‘nature’ are the categories) for a more soothing experience than, um, listening to music.

The FT1 also has a selection of physical controls on the surface of the plinth. There’s a fairly large ‘power on/off’ button, a control dial to select between 33 and 45rpm, and buttons to handle Bluetooth pairing, source selection, Auracast, play/pause, and the opening and closing of the CD drawer.

On the rear of the plinth there are a couple of analogue outputs – a 3.5mm socket for use with wired headphones and a pair of stereo RCA connections, in case you want to join the FT1 to a traditional amplifier. There’s also a switch for defeating the integrated phono stage, which makes the player even less fussy about the equipment it’s partnered with.

The FT1 is made mostly from the same shiny black plastic as its partnering speakers, and is supplied with a clear plastic dust cover that somehow contrives to be just as reflective and fingerprint-hungry as the black plastic it sits on top of. Build quality is perfectly fine, although an all-in weight of comfortably less than 4kg makes the player seem slightly insubstantial.

Verdict

The Fidelio FT1 and FT3 combined deliver an awful lot for your money – with more extensive functionality than this sort of money can buy anywhere else.

In the context of the asking price the standard of build and finish is very acceptable, and the general sense of vigour and dynamism to the overall sound is enjoyable and commendable, too.

That's as long as you’re happy with ‘a good time all of the time’ in terms of the system’s overall character, and you can position the speakers as they need to be, then there’s plenty to enjoy here.

Also Consider

I think it’s fair to say that like-for-like comparisons are pretty thin on the ground.

Something like the Ruark MR1 MkIII is a very good pair of wireless speakers and has the inputs to support both a turntable and a CD player. The Sony PS-LX310BT, meanwhile, is a turntable that can connect wirelessly to appropriate speakers or wireless headphones.

But as far as finding a Bluetooth turntable with an integrated CD player and matching speakers? It seems to me that Philips has basically cornered that market.

CMF, the affordable sub-brand of Nothing, has announced the CMF Buds Neo, a new set of earbuds that include active noise cancellation at an incredibly low price.

With CMF stepping away from smartphones (for this year, at least), the focus appears to be on accessories. CMF recently announced the Clip Pro, its new open ear model, but this new addition returns to CMF's traditional earbud design.

As such, there isn't a huge change to the aesthetic, with CMF sticking to a two-tone case, the earbuds themselves offering contrasting bodies and silicone tips. Three tips are supplied to make sure you can get the right fit.

That's where the price comes in: they launch at ₹1999 (about £15), which is really affordable. CMF says that the whole aim is to make the CMF Buds Neo easily accessible.

There's a 12.4mm driver, but it's the active noise cancellation that's impressive at this price, said to offer up to 35dB noise reduction, with a choice of two different strengths.

The sound can be changed using the EQ in the Nothing X app on your phone, while the battery is said to last for 11 hours (without ANC) on a single charge - and up to 52 hours total thanks to recharging via the case.

With ANC on that drops to a total of 30 hours, but that's still fairly typical for earbuds that cost a lot more. Recharging the case via USB-C takes 70 minutes, while 10 minutes in the case will give the earbuds 5.5 hours of playback.

CMF's existing Buds 2a are the next step up, costing ₹2499 (£29) offering 42dB ANC, but otherwise appear to be much the same, perhaps making the Buds Neo an easy choice.

The CMF Buds Neo are listed as being exclusive to India, although it's not clear if that's just launch exclusivity or if that's going to be for the life of the product. With the Buds 2a currently priced at £29 in the UK, coming in at around £15 would be about right for the UK - the question is whether CMF offer the new earbuds outside India.

The CMF Buds Neo can be ordered from Flipkart.

Sennheiser might have just fixed one of the few remaining problems posed by true wireless earbuds in 2026 – when their batteries degrade, in most cases they're rendered near-useless. For a long time, when your earbuds started to barely hold a charge, you were toast.

Now, with the newly unveiled Momentum True Wireless 5 (joining the five-star over-ear Momentum 5 Wireless from earlier this year), we finally have a mainstream earbud that features a fully user-replaceable battery system.

With just a regular (albeit small) screwdriver, you'll be able to replace the battery on each of these earbuds when it's degraded, with Sennheiser committed to selling that spare part. In fact, the charging case itself will also feature the same boast, so you can take care of all parts of the earbud system.

Anyone who remembers the last two generations of Momentum True Wireless will also easily spot a very new design for the earbuds, too. Gone is the squared-off shape, replaced by a far smoother and more ergonomic one. Sennheiser told me that the overall volume of each earbud hasn't changed much, but that this new version should be more comfortable for most people.

Excitingly, Sennheiser is also bucking its former plans and launching a range of colours immediately, rather than drip-feeding them over the next two years. You can choose between Graphite, Cream, Copper, Denim and Lavender, with that blue denim colour looking particularly handsome to our eyes.

It's also upgraded the earbuds' actual battery life, which now stands at around 12 hours on a charge with ANC on, and a total of around 40 hours including the power in the case.

That ANC should also be improved, too, with extra microphones, one of which is a bone-conduction mic to help the earbuds pick up your voice more accurately and reject outside noise better for your call quality.

Another headline addition is full Dolby Atmos compatibility, which could make these an immersive choice for your commute movie-viewing if you're using a compatible service (like Apple TV in many cases).

All of this adds up to quite an exciting launch for Sennheiser, after the superb Momentum 5 Wireless, and the earbuds will be available to order from 3 September, coming in at £249.99, €299.90, $299.95 and $479.95 AUD (the same as the last generation at launch).

You may have seen Sonos in the news a lot lately. It's because rumours have been circulating about a big new launch – and with the IFA technology show in Berlin just weeks away, the timing makes sense.

Initial rumours, however, suggested that this would be a launch around artificial intelligence. Whatever that means. Sonos is an audio company, not the next Google, so if you ask me, I think we can forget about the AI buzzwordery and focus on the real matters at hand.

Fortunately, said rumours have rapidly evolved – and it now looks as though more Sonos hardware could be on the near horizon. Now that's what I'm talking about. I also don't think it's a surprise, given the app debacle that saw a leadership shake-up and a refocus on what Sonos is particularly good at – i.e. making great products.

Show me the HDMI passthrough already

However much AI may (or may not) be integrated into forthcoming Sonos products is by the by in my view, as what really matters is getting the core hardware correct. And if there is to be a Sonos Beam (Gen 3) incoming then, well, there's one feature that I really want to see implemented – daresay 'fixed'.

Sonos has been rather stubborn in its approach to HDMI ports to date. All of its soundbars – the Beam and Arc and their derivatives anyway; the Ray only has an optical connection – feature one individual HDMI eARC to connect to a TV. There's no second HDMI for passthrough.

Now I, for one, would pay more to shun the AI and have a second HDMI added to future Sonos soundbar hardware. Such an addition effectively frees up one of the ports on the rear of your TV – which, if you're like me, are in excess demand anyway – and creates a better flow in usability.

The approach to HDMI ports has been getting slightly better, though. It was earlier this year that Samsung's 2026 flagship fixed my biggest bugbear with HDMI ports – namely the lack of them – by introducing an option for four additional ones, making eight total, on its S95H/S99H TVs.

HDMI 2.2 incoming – but does that even matter?

Most people looking to buy a Sonos Beam aren't going to need eight HDMI ports, fair enough, but many of them will want to connect up a 4K/120Hz games console and separate TV Box with best possible resolution and frame rate. Adding a passthrough on the next Sonos soundbar would solve that.

It could well be this is nothing more than wishful thinking on my part, of course. It could be that a future, higher-end Sonos product won't opt for an HDMI passthrough addition at all. Or, who knows, perhaps the brand is just waiting – after all, the HDMI 2.2 standard is imminent.

However, HDMI 2.2 is going to be seen in high-end gaming monitors first, as its 96Gbps bandwidth is largely there to support very high refresh rates at higher resolutions – the kind that movies, sport and TV shows don't require. You could, therefore, call it a niche format – certainly at its launch stages.

Really, at the core of it, Sonos products are about simplicity. Customers don't want to fret about "2.0 versus 2.1 or 2.2", they just want to plug and play, enjoy great sound and a quality experience. But I do think the addition of an HDMI passthrough would quietly enhance that, without making a song and dance of it.

Let's not forget about headphones...

Seeing as I'm spinning the rumour mill's outpourings of late, let's not forget that there might be no new Sonos soundbar at all. Indeed, other rumours point strongly to new headphones: the so-called Sonos Ace Ultra, expected to be a step above the original Ace model.

When Sonos made the big dip into headphones, it seemed like a genius idea. The product didn't please everyone – we loved it at T3 for the sheer comfort factor – and, as mentioned earlier, timing for the company turned out to be poor.

I think Sonos will be looking at this market sector and scratching its head, though, as there's clearly greater potential for the brand to win bigger here – especially with its integration between home cinema and personal audio.

And, just to be clear (as if not obvious enough), I most certainly don't want to see an HDMI port on any pair of headphones. But I'd keenly see a new pair of step-up Sonos over-ears to fill a gap in the brand's line-up.

All of which, in summary, suggets that Sonos is about to have a very busy 12 months or so. If any of these rumours are true, then we could be seeing new hardware, new innovations and, yes, new AI integrations.

But let's get the hardware nailed first and foremost, eh? That'll make me and many existing and prospective customers very happy indeed.

You might not have heard of Ruka before, but the audio brand describes itself as a "collective of former Apple engineers and designers", and its first turntable is certainly a head-turner. The TD-1 is a vertical deck that makes your records into wall art as you play them,

Available to pre-order at a founder price of $1,399 (around £1,033), the player has a machined aluminium body that can be hung on a wall or stand. And while modern looking, there's a touch of the retro about it too, with physical knobs and clickable switches.

Once you've loaded a record, you secure it to the player with a magnetic clamp and the belt driven motor does the rest. The platter is acrylic and you can choose your own cartridge, with automatic calibration to your stylus of choice, too.

Power is supplied through USB-C and there are both wired and wireless connections to hook the TD-1 up to speakers or a sound system. On-board Bluetooth also means you can enjoy playback through wireless headphones.

Of course, the better-looking the LP, the better the aesthetic, but the Ruka certainly looks impressive. We've seen a few vertical turntables recently, including the Trettire TTT-LP3 and CoolGeek VS-01, but this looks the most understated. That means it should suit most living spaces.

Ruka plans to ship the first production run of just 500 units in 2027, with another batch to follow after. Pre-orders can be secured with a $100 deposit on the company's dedicated website.

As for what to play on it, why not get the coloured vinyl version of Bob Marley's Sun is Shining. It comes with three LPs in red, green and yellow.

Or there's The Rolling Stones' Forty Licks box set – a best-of featuring yellow, red, blue and orange LPs.

Next month marks the on-sale date for Technics' much-revered classic turntable, the SL-1200 series, which returns in a 55th Anniversary Edition in celebration of five-and-a-half-decades in the market.

The chosen weapon of many vinyl-based DJs – and still the hardware partner of the DMC World DJ Championships – the SL-1200 and SL-1210 models have seen many iterations of progression over the years.

Indeed, the direct drive turntable, well known for its precision, first adjusted its +/-8% pitch control (with a double-up to 16% function) to a digital mechanism in the SL-1200MK5G. Since, the sixth-gen and seventh-gen models have been released, further refining the product.

The 55th Anniversary Edition is a collectors' version of the latest, limited to just 12,000 units worldwide in total, and available in a variety of colours – Gold, Blue, Red, Black, Green, White, Grey (see all seven in the gallery above) – to give a whole new look to the classic turntable.

Each of those 12,000 units will feature an "individually engraved anniversary badge with its serial number, underlining the collectable character of this commemorative release," says Technics in its official press release.

Whether you choose the Gold model as your preference or not, all models feature gold detailing and accents, including a gold anodised aluminium tonearm, a platter with gold-coloured rim and strobe markers, plus gold knobs and buttons all round. Details are shown in the gallery below:

Beneath the bling, however, is the real reason the SL-1200 became – and still remains – a classic piece of kit. The pioneering direct-drive technology was a world-first, able to connect motor directly to platter for reduced speed fluctuations and rapid acceleration to rotation target thanks to high torque.

The Technics SL-1200 55th Anniversary Edition will first be on public show in Poland at the DMC DJs Day, Warsaw, on 20 August. It will go on sale the following month, with pricing yet to be confirmed – but with such limited volume in this run, chances are they'll sell out quickly.

Pro-Ject is not one to sit still when it comes to its turntable lineup. It regularly updates and upgrades products with new features and capabilities.

This time it has taken a look at its hugely popular and reasonably priced E1.2 model, with two new variants being added to the range.

The Pro-Ject E1.2 BT has arguably the most significant upgrade – Bluetooth. It has been fitted with a Qualcomm Bluetooth 5.4 transmitter module that's capable of aptX HD and aptX Adaptive streaming to compatible headphones or sound systems.

It comes with a dedicated pairing button that simplifies the process of connecting to devices, and that includes Pro-Ject's own line of wireless products – such as the Uni Box S3 or Wireless Box E.

The turntable itself is the same E1.2 we all know and love. It is plug and play, with a 730g die-cast platter and a pre-adjusted Pro-Ject Pick it MM E cartridge.

Different colours and options

There are three standard finishes available – High Gloss Black, Satin White, and Walnut – plus a variety of coloured versions, including Satin Golden Yellow, Satin Steel Blue, and Satin Fir Green.

Prices are £399 / €399 for the standard finishes, £449 / €449 for one of the coloured options. US prices are yet to be confirmed, but we expect them to be an equivalent $399 / €449 respectively.

In addition to the Bluetooth model, an E1.2 Phono variant is also now available. It adds a switchable phono preamplifier so the turntable can be connected directly to any line or CD input.

This includes sound setups without their own amplification.

You can expect to pay £319 / €359 for the E1.2 Phono on High Gloss Black, Satin White, or Walnut. The original Pro-Ject E1.2 is also still available from multiple retailers.

Sonos has finally brought Live Activity to the iOS app, meaning you'll get Sonos control from your lock screen and Dynamic Island on compatible devices.

Sonos says that the feature has been widely requested and after a slightly tumultuous couple of years, it's going to be welcomed by those using Sonos on an iOS device.

Live Activity will mean that you can glance at what's playing and get immediate controls without having to open the Sonos app.

The new additions come to the latest version of the Sonos app for iOS and the feature is turned off by default, so you'll need to switch it on to get it working. Head into Account > App Preferences > Live Activity.

Live Activity will appear from Sonos when you open the app and start playing music. At the moment there's no support for album art, although Sonos says that work is in progress to explore other ways to "enhance the lock screen".

Once you stop listening, the Live Activity will stay in place for 15 minutes before it disappears.

The Live Activity is also supported on Apple Watch and in Apple CarPlay, although currently the playback controls aren’t supported, so it's sort of pointless. A fix is expected in the future to change that.

Sonos, reporting on the changes on Reddit, also mentioned that there could be more coming with the arrival if iOS 27 later in the year. For those with the app already installed, make sure that you update it to get the latest feature.

Sonos is also thought to be working on an updated version of the Beam, potentially with more AI skills to support better voice control, while new Ace Ultra headphones are said to be in the works too, with the new hardware potentially appearing in September.

Sonos has been plagued by setbacks over recent years, from ending support for older speakers, an app update that broke everything and plenty of changes in the C suite, but it now looks like the company is getting back into its stride.

It's been a good few years since Marshall dropped the Stockwell II, but now it's coming back to the same territory to make a new version of its mid-sized Bluetooth speaker.

I've had the Stockwell III on review for well over a month, giving me loads of time to test it out, and see how it fares in everyday use.

Smaller than the Acton IV by a big chunk, but way more portable as a result, the Stockwell III might be the speaker in Marshall's lineup that makes the most sense to me.

Its tactility and design are as good as anything on the market, and if you're after a pure Bluetooth speaker with a different aesthetic, you won't find many finer.

Price and Availability

The Stockwell III is available directly from Marshall right now, with wider retail availability from 25 August, and it comes in both black and white versions.

The speaker costs £199.99 here in the UK, making it around £30 more expensive than the Stockwell II was at launch. It's $249.99 in the USA.

Given the Stockwell II came out all the way back in 2019, though, that's perhaps neither a surprise nor a great controversy, with inflation having been brutal in the tech industry in those 7 years since.

Design and Features

The Stockwell III is classic Marshall, from basically whatever angle you choose to approach it from. For one thing, it has that cursive Marshall logo on its front side, brassy and proud, but it also has a row of physical controls atop itself that really does stand out from the crowd.

Its size and shape are also relatively unusual, even for someone who tests as many portable speakers as I do. It's a sort of portrait-orientation speaker, so it stands much taller than its base.

Included in the box is a sturdy carrying handle that can be swivelled down to be less obvious, which feels like an essential part of the aesthetic proposition.

That handle matches the faux-leather finish of your white or black speaker, but its inside edge is in a red velvet that gives a really nice pop of colour to the speaker when viewed as a whole. The speaker's actual body is covered in a rubber shell with its outside in that leather-grain texture.

The front and back of the Stockwell III are grille-covered, while the bottom is rubberised for stability and to dampen vibrations.

At 1.29kg with the strap attached, it's light enough to be easily stowed in a bag and carried around, but I won't pretend it's insignificant – you will find lighter alternatives out there if that's a priority.

The top of the speaker is a brassy plate with a wide range of controls embedded in it. You get a power button and a pairing button, each nice and clicky, as well as three gorgeous knobs. One is your master volume, while the other two dial up bass and treble, respectively.

Finally, there's an M button that can be customised, but cycles through presets by default, and a clever little rocker button that controls play/pause as well as letting you skip tracks.

Marshall is the best in the game when it comes to tactile controls, and these are no different. You might not need bass and treble controls to hand like this, but when you do use them, you'll be thrilled by how smoothly they actuate, and by how cleverly the LED lighting makes it obvious what setting you're on.

On one of the speaker's edges you'll find its only ports – an AUX for wired audio, and a USB-C for power. Its battery is advertised as lasting 40 hours on a charge, twice as long as the Stockwell II.

Intriguingly, despite the fact that it looks like a speaker with a clear front and back, Marshall has built the Stockwell III to be a 360-degree speaker, so you should get good sound regardless of where you position it. That's worth knowing, since it does make it more adaptable.

Another big upgrade comes in terms of durability, with an IP55 rating making the Stockwell III more resistant to water and dust than before. That said, this makes it safe for rain showers, but not any form of immersion, so beware if it's intended for use by a pool.

In a similar vein, the Stockwell III also lets you pry off its rubber faux-leather skin entirely to access its replaceable battery (which will be sold separately by Marshall, should you need to swap it). You can open that compartment with just a Phillips-head screwdriver. That's a huge step (thanks to the EU) that could extend its usable life massively.

Sound and Performance

I'm a big fan of how the Stockwell III looks, then, but how does it sound?

Marshall's big marketing push in 2026 has been around "loud", centring its history of making amps for rock stars and rebels, and I think the Stockwell III is a fun little addition to that lineage, punching above its weight.

As a Bluetooth-only speaker (bar that AUX input), it's really simple to get connected, and once you're hooked up, its sound is as impressive as you'd hope for. I used a variety of genres to test the Stockwell III, and wasn't ever really tripped up by something sounding off-kilter.

Eric Clapton's lockdown-era cover of After Midnight is a great choice for testing the acoustic qualities of a speaker, and it sounds as warm and detailed as I'd want, with those first few guitar plucks resonant and deep. On Phoebe Bridgers' Garden Song, the elusive bassy backing vocals can be picked out far more easily than on some of the competition, too.

Alt-J's 3WW, meanwhile, has the urgency I look for, and an interesting balance between the treble twangs of its guitars and the pulsing bass of its undercarriage. The opening bars of Harry Styles' Undertow bring an impressive amount of precision and clarity, too.

That's all pretty great, and the reality is that I don't have any complaints to level at the Stockwell III's sound. For its size, it's simply excellent, and being able to dial up bass or treble song-by-song can be really enjoyable if you want the extra fun.

Marshall's claims of a 360-degree sound sphere bear some weight – turning the speaker around during listening, it is indeed far less directional than you'd assume from its design. That said, while being in line with its front or back sounds pretty identical, it's definitely a little less clear from the left or right sides, so true 360-degree coverage isn't quite there.

Another interesting little side note is that, despite the rubbery base of the speaker, there's quite a lot of vibration passed out of the Stockwell III while it plays at any decent volume – so unless it's on a really solid surface, expect some transference. I don't think that stacks as a major negative, though, and it does underline the amount of power squeezed into this relatively small speaker.

I found the battery life of the Stockwell III to be just as impressive as its quoted 40 hours indicated (without having timed it exactly). It lasts for days and days of regular use, which is a really good showing.

Verdict

The Stockwell III is probably my favourite Marshall portable speaker to date. It's a great size, has oodles of character, and some of the best physical controls in any speaker on the market. The fact that it pairs those attributes with excellent sound is foundational to its success, of course.

With its durability and battery life also provided welcome boosts for this generation, it's hard to see this as anything other than a massive success for Marshall. It's probably the pure-Bluetooth speaker that I'd recommend most strongly from its whole lineup, and looks like a banker for the next few years to come.

Also Consider

It's not a charge I'll level at the Stockwell III thanks to its smaller size, but if it were much pricier I'd start to gripe that the speaker should have Wi-Fi connectivity on board, too. If you want that added flexibility, you have to consider the Sonos Play, my favourite flexible home-and-away speaker right now, and for the extra money you do get clearer sound.

If you're more geared toward portability, though, and want something just a little more packable and portable than the Stockwell III, our top pick needs a mention. It's the Bang & Olufsen Beoplay A1 3rd Gen, and it's a stunning little slice of audio and design. That said, in pound-for-sound terms it's a more luxury choice than Marshall's.

Apple has long been rumoured to be working on next generation AirPods that house cameras to see the world around them. This will allow the wearer to engage Visual Intelligence features – much like the cameras on smart glasses, like the Ray-Ban Metas.

It could make street navigation suggestions more accurate, with the buds seeing landmarks and signs, or you could find out more information on objects around you.

The only issue is that this has been just rumour and speculation. Until now, that is.

MacRumors has discovered an instructional video clip inside the latest release candidate build of macOS. The short demo shows a man allegedly wearing the new AirPods and being able to "save" a physical book "for later".

We assume that using Visual Intelligence, Siri AI will be able to log that book in a diary or calendar entry so you can be reminded to check it out again when you're free. And while we don't know for sure, maybe this feature can be used to look at a book cover in a store, but then check it out online too when you get home.

This could help you check out alternative prices or buy a digital equivalent. There are plenty of other use cases that could be unlocked too.

According to MacRumors, the AirPods will also inform you if the cameras have been obscured by objects, such as long hair or a hat. It's claimed that you'll receive an alert: "To get the most accurate information about things in your environment, make sure AirPods are not covered," it says.

It's not yet known when the new AirPods will launch, nor what they'll be called. It's believed that they'll look like AirPods Pro and the cameras will be hard to detect.

Apple will undoubtedly host its annual iPhone launch event in early September, so we could find out more then. And with the iPhone Ultra also likely to appear, it could be the most exciting presentation in a few years.

As someone with a living room full of its speakers, if you asked me what device I'd most like Sonos to release next, it'd be a refresh of the Beam. Time flies, and it's now been ages since the second-generation Beam was released in 2021, after all.

While the compact soundbar has been basically my default pick as the best soundbar on the market for most people since then, it's still not completely flawless, and there's always room for improvement.

Now, a report from Bloomberg indicates that we might be getting a new Beam very soon, with Sonos gearing up to make some hardware reveals this September. Filings with the FCC in the US indicate that a device with dimensions that look nearly identical to previous Beam soundbars is on the way.

That would make for a five-year gap between generations for the Beam, and it's interesting to consider what might get upgraded in a new version. The big upgrade that came in the second generation was Dolby Atmos support, but a lack of upfiring drivers meant that it was virtualised.

If Sonos could squeeze in extra drivers, that could make for a big boost to vertical sound – although it would also raise the question of whether the price would bump accordingly. Given that the Beam sits as the deliberately mid-level option between the Ray and the Arc Ultra, Sonos probably won't want to push its price up much.

My second-gen Beam replaced a first-gen model, and both have been basically pretty beloved. The size of the soundbar is nearly ideal, in my view, since it gives a huge sound upgrade for almost any TV without taking up a huge slice of real estate.

Sonos is apparently going big on improved AI integration for this slate of new hardware, so it's possible that upgraded voice controls and integrations are on the cards, too. I'm unlikely to use that much, but I appreciate that people do want it.

The other big hardware rumour is that Sonos will also drop a new pair of headphones – Ace Ultra, upgrading the existing Ace. That's another bit of sound kit that we use most days in my flat, since its sound-sharing feature with the Beam makes it so convenient to get personal audio from the TV. That means movies can be watched as loud as you like, without anyone else needing to hear every detail.

Quite what the Ace Ultra will upgrade, beyond apparently improved integration with Sonos' non-soundbar speakers, isn't clear. With all of this likely to be unveiled in September, though, we won't have to wait too long to find out.

Nothing's cheaper sub-brand CMF teased a new product yesterday, which led to online speculation – we also covered it. However, it now seems more clear what the company has up its sleeve.

A second tease has been posted on X with a brief video clip showing a volume rocker on what looks to be the corner of a charging case. The text is even more precise: "Buds Neo. 20 August," it says.

Basically, as we guessed yesterday, it looks to be a new pair of earbuds from CMF by Nothing, which will launch properly this Thursday.

We still haven't got many details, nor have we seen anything but the original vague image of what looks to be an earbud, but the video clip does hint that the CMF Buds Neo will borrow something from the open ear CMF Clip Pro pair released recently.

The charging case that comes with the Clips Pro has a dial on the front that can be used to manage playback, change the volume and even answer calls. That seems to be the case (literally) here too.

We can also see that the new buds will come in three colour options – white and orange, cyan and black, and simply black.

Other than that, we'll have to wait for more information. But that won't be long considering the launch is just a couple of days away.

It'll be interesting to see where the CMF Buds Neo fit in the lineup. The label already has earbud models for most affordable price points, starting from just £29 / $29. Will the CMF Buds Neo replace the Buds 2 Plus or Buds 2a, for example? Or are we looking at a new entry-level pair?

T3 will let you know the minute we find out.

It's only been a couple of weeks since Nothing's budget brand CMF launched the Clip Pro open earbuds, but it seems that's not the only product on the horizon.

An official X post from CMF by Nothing has revealed "a hint of what's next", but without furnishing followers with any further information.

Comprise of what looks like three elements, the "device" is seemingly capped off with a silicone ear tip. So maybe that points towards newly-designed CMF Buds. Maybe even buds that can swivel into different shapes to fit your ears better.

However, others provide more radical speculation – @pauwmaa suggests it's CMF's answer to Star Wars droid BB-8, for example.

It's certainly not of anything currently in the CMF stable, and won't be anything to do with a new CMF Phone. It's already been confirmed that we won't see a new budget handset from the brand until next year at the least – when RAMageddon and the components crisis hopefully starts to turn around.

It also doesn't really look like a replacement for the CMF Headphone Pro over-ears, which have proved excellent for the price.

So that doesn't really leave much other than new earbuds. Sadly we might have a few more weeks of teases (and inevitable pictures of Pokémon) before we find out for sure.

CMF Clip Pro open earbuds now available

At least the CMF Clip Pro earbuds are now available to buy, so that should keep us all amused in the meantime.

Priced at £79 / $99 a pair, they are the label's first open ear buds, with an innovative clip that secures them around each ear. They are designed to be worn when you need to also hear your surroundings, so don't expect any noise cancellation wizardry.

You do instead get IP54 protection, making them sweat and rain resistant if you're in the gym or out for a run. And battery life is an impressive 10 hours, with a further 22.5 hours in the included charging case.

Justifiably encouraged by its domination of the ‘wireless stereo speaker system’ scene, KEF has decided to see what sort of damage it can do even further upmarket.

The LS Luxe system, on review here, wants to combine outstanding sound with unique aesthetics – and half of that battle is won before it’s even plugged in!

Price & Availability

The KEF LS Luxe wireless stereo speaker system is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it costs £3499.

It sells for $3999 in the United States, and in Australia the going rate is AU$6399.

Push the boat out yet further by opting for a pair of the bespoke S-Luxe stands and you will add another £799 / $799 / AU$1199 to the bill.

Features & What's New?

Everything about the LS Luxe is striking in one way or another – but perhaps it’s the 12th-gen Uni-Q driver array that’s the most visually dramatic thing about this system.

KEF has been perfecting this driver arrangement since the first Uni-Q made an appearance back in 1988 – and here this coincident-source layout features a 25mm aluminium tweeter in the centre of a 165mm mid/bass driver.

As with every Uni-Q array, the idea is to offer outstanding time-alignment and top-notch driver integration by having the tweeter and the mid/bass driver occupy the same point in space.

Of course, there are some rather newer technologies deployed here in order to get the best from this array. KEF has positioned its ‘metamaterial absorption technology’ behind the tweeter, where it can negate the energy travelling backwards from the tweeter and prevent it corrupting treble response.

‘Velocity Control Technology’, which was first deployed in 2025’s XIO soundbar, assesses the speed of movement of the mid/bass cone and compensates for differences between the actual and the expected values in real time.

The ‘Music Integrity Engine’, meanwhile, is in charge of maintaining tonal consistency at all volume levels.

The Uni-Q array is mechanically decoupled from the body of the cabinet, and a separate chassis within the driver assembly minimises any and all vibrations produced by the motor system – both of these measures are intended to keep vibration in the cabinet structure to a bare minimum. This way, goes the thinking, clarity can be maximised and distortion minimised.

The audio information that’s going to feel the benefit of this very thorough demonstration of engineering can be fed to the system in a few different ways.

Wireless connectivity is handled by the ‘primary’ speaker. It includes Bluetooth 5.3 and, more importantly, dual-band Wi-Fi on KEF’s ‘W2’ wireless platform – which means that Apple AirPlay 2, Google Cast, the ‘Connect’ versions of Qobuz, Spotify and Tidal, and internet radio are all available. In addition, the LS Luxe is UPnP-compatible and will be Roon Ready before very much longer.

The ‘primary’ speaker is also where all the physical connectivity lives. There’s an Ethernet socket, naturally enough, along with digital coaxial and optical inputs, an HDMI eARC socket and a 3.5mm analogue input at line level.

A USB-C slot looks like it might be another digital input, but in fact is a 5V charging slot. There’s also a pre-out for use with a subwoofer and an RJ45 socket for connection to the ‘secondary’ speaker. This ‘secondary’ speaker has a corresponding RJ45, of course, and also features a subwoofer pre-out of its own.

If you use the cable KEF provides to join the speakers together, they operate at 24bit/192kHz resolution. If you prefer a wireless connection, the resolution is cut to a still-healthy 24bit/96kHz. The LS Luxe can deal with resolutions of up to 24bit/384kHz and DSD128 through its network inputs, 24bit/192kHz via digital coaxial and HDMI, and 24bit/96kHz via digital optical.

Once the audio information is on board, decoded and ready to go, it’s amplified by two different types of power. Each mid/bass driver can call on 280 watts of Class D amplification, while each tweeter is driven by 100 watts of Class A/B power – an all-in total of 380 watts per channel really should be sufficient unless you’re trying to fill an aircraft hangar with sound.

Performance

Position the KEF LS Luxe as you would almost any other pair of stereo speakers – toed in so that a line drawn from each driver array would cross just in front of your seated position – and the sonic performance is not all you might be hoping for. In this orientation the sound is narrow and confined.

Get them to the point where they’re almost, but not quite, pointing straight ahead and they‘re much happier – and so, as a consequence, will you be.

The soundstage is still not the widest you ever heard, but it’s nevertheless appreciably taller and more confidently and convincingly laid out. The LS Luxe has a quite narrow ‘sweet spot’ where positioning is concerned, but it’s worth putting in the time to find it – because the rewards are significant.

It’s actually difficult to know where to start when discussing the things the KEF is good at. There’s detail retrieval, of course – this system is alert to even the finest, most minor details in a recording, and is more than capable of teasing them out and putting them into convincing context.

It’s analytical in this respect, sure, but it’s not in any way prissy, or uptight about it, and it never becomes the whole point of the LS Luxe’s performance. It simply reveals absolutely as much detail as possible, because it’s keen to give you as complete a sonic picture as possible.

And then there’s frequency response. At the bottom-end the KEF digs deep, hits with determination, and thanks to those sky-high detail levels it makes a stack of information regarding tonal and textural variation available too.

At the opposite end it attacks treble sounds with gusto – but it’s never hard or edgy, even at the considerable volumes the system is capable of achieving, and there’s plenty of substance to balance out the bite and shine of the top-end response.

In between, it communicates eloquently through the midrange, allowing voices to express the secrets of their technique and timbre just as readily as of their emotional state of overall character.

But the LS Luxe never underplays any area of the frequency range, just as it never seeks to push any area into the spotlight. It’s even, smooth and balanced from top to bottom, and back again.

Dynamic headroom is considerable – so even if you’re listening at quite big volumes to start with, the KEF is able to track upticks in intensity and attack in a completely unstressed manner. It’s equally adept with the more nuanced dynamics of tonal and harmonic variation – because that extraordinary attention to detail is apparent at every turn.

Control and balance are apparent everywhere – but no more so than when it comes to rhythmic expression. The LS Luxe does great work when controlling the decay and, especially, the attack of low-end information – and because every note or hit at the bottom of the frequency range is straight-edged at the point of attack, rhythms are handled with a confident, naturalistic attitude that makes for a fluent account of rhythm-centric recordings.

Overall, the KEF LS Luxe is a decently energetic, impressively insightful and, ultimately, endlessly entertaining listen. Once its speakers are pointing in the correct direction anyway.

Design & Usability

Between the Uni-Q driver array and the edgeless, seamless, slippery look of the LS Luxe cabinets, it seems fair to say that some designing has gone on here. Which is more than you can say about most of the more functional-looking alternatives to this KEF system.

KEF has again collaborated with Ross Lovegrove for the design of the LS Luxe, and the curvily organic shape of the speakers is easily recognisable as his work. It’s the use of BMC (‘bulk moulding compound’) in their construction that allows for this fairly elaborate shape – and it has advantages to its malleability beyond its willingness to form distinctive shapes.

The cabinet shape here is less susceptible to the build-up of internal standing waves than the more usual ‘box’ shape. The rigidity of the material means that less internal bracing is required than is the norm, which liberates greater internal volume than would be the case in a straight-edged cabinet of similar dimensions.

The rear of the cabinet has a degree of visual drama, too, as you can see from the images scattered throughout this review.

Each speaker features a heat-sink to help disperse the heat generated by the internal electronics – and here it’s chanelled and swoopily curved, which increases its surface area as well as making it look mildly unusual.

Each speaker’s bass reflex port divides its heat-sink - it’s a relatively large port and it features KEF’s ‘Flexible Port Technology’. This is another way of saying the walls of the port are less than rigid, and this configuration intends to keep internal resonance down to a minimum.

Three finishes are available: as well as the Eclipse Black of my review sample, Mineral White and Dusk Titanium are also available.

This isn’t the first pair of speakers I’ve encountered that look better in some finishes than in others, of course – but it might well be the pair that is most affected by the colour they’re finished in.

For my money, at least, Eclipse Black makes the speakers look bulkier and chunkier than either of the other two alternatives. You are, of course, very welcome to disagree – and might want to get to a KEF showroom to check out the whole range with your own eyes.

Verdict

There’s more than a normal amount of legwork to be done when setting up the LS Luxe, but don’t be discouraged – putting in the required effort to position the system correctly allows it to perform in the most engaging and impressive way possible.

Yes, this is one of the more expensive products of its type around (as long as you discount some couture outliers), but it’s also one of the very best.

Also Consider

In its own way the Sonus Faber Duetto is just as distinctive as the LS Luxe – more readily identifiable as speakers, sure, but elegantly shaped and beautifully made, and with almost as much credibility as furniture as it has as an audio system. The sound is more easy-going than the KEF equivalent, but some listeners are sure to count that as a positive.

By way of contrast, the JBL 4329P couldn’t look any more like a purposeful, functional pair of loudspeakers if it tried. But while its potential as decorative items hovers around ‘zero’, it has an awful lot going for it where sheer sound quality is concerned. If you’re all about the listening and unconcerned about the looks, this system deserves serious consideration.

There are plenty of things I didn't expect to get excited about this year, and a record player the size of a shoebox was probably one of them. But Tiny Vinyl has somehow made miniature vinyl look ridiculously appealing, and now there's a tiny turntable to match.

The Tiny Vinyl Player is an all-in-one manual belt-drive turntable made specifically for the company's four-inch records. It spins them at 33⅓rpm and has a built-in speaker, so you don't need to connect it to a separate hi-fi system just to hear your tiny collection.

There's Bluetooth too, so you can send the audio to a wireless speaker or headphones if the built-in speaker isn't quite enough for your listening session. There's also a wired audio connection on the back for hooking it up to a larger system.

And yes, the records really are tiny. Each one has a single track on each side, with around four minutes of music per side, and the format has already attracted releases from artists including Chappell Roan, BTS, The Rolling Stones, Sabrina Carpenter and Noah Kahan.

The records are also designed as collectibles, with individual releases numbered and officially licensed. Tiny Vinyl says it has now pressed more than one million of the little discs, so this isn't quite the novelty format it might initially sound like.

There's an important catch: the Tiny Vinyl Player can only play four-inch Tiny Vinyl records. You can't put your prized copy of Rumours on it and expect the world's smallest Fleetwood Mac listening session.

That's actually part of the appeal. Tiny Vinyl records can already be played on many conventional turntables at 33⅓rpm, so this player isn't a necessary purchase for existing vinyl fans. It's more of a fun, affordable way to build a dedicated little collection around the format.

The player itself is about the size of a loaf of bread, with a faux-leather exterior and a simple control panel. There's even a storage slot integrated into the platter area that can hold around five or six Tiny Vinyl records, depending on the packaging.

Tiny records, tiny accessories

Tiny Vinyl has also introduced a couple of accessories to turn the player into a miniature music system. The $20 (£15) Crate sits underneath the Player and can store up to 30 of the four-inch records, while the $15 (£11) Frame displays four of your favourites on the wall.

It's a cute setup, but there's more thought behind it than simply shrinking a normal record player. The platter, tonearm and controls have all been designed around the smaller format, while the motor has been calibrated to keep the records spinning at the correct 33⅓rpm.

The obvious compromise is sound quality. This isn't intended to compete with a proper hi-fi turntable, and hands-on testing found the built-in speaker to be rather tinny and muffled, although the player itself runs quietly and Bluetooth gives you the option of using much better speakers.

How much does the Tiny Vinyl Player cost?

The Tiny Vinyl Player costs $49.99 (£38) and is currently available exclusively through Target in the US. A UK release is reportedly being considered for later in 2026, although there's no confirmed UK launch date yet.

At $50, it's cheap enough to feel like a fun impulse purchase rather than a serious hi-fi investment. And while you could quite reasonably argue that you don't need a dedicated turntable for records that already work on a normal one, that's completely missing the point.

Although the AP30 Music Boy looks like a miniature retro gaming handheld, and comes with a built-in game, it has a hidden secret... it's not really a gaming handheld at all.

The clue is in the name. The Music Boy is actually a Hi-Res digital music player and USB DAC that can be used to clean up the audio from your phone or laptop. Its design is inspired by the Game Boy and handhelds from the 90s, but it has more in common with an iPod nano.

Soon to end a funding round on Kickstarter (via Yanko Design), the AP30 has a 2-inch IPS display with a 296 x 240 pixel resolution. supports Bluetooth 5.3 for music streaming, and comes with a microSD card slot for your lossless music files.

It is Hi-Res Audio certified (up to 192kHz/24-bit), with the Cirrus Logic CS43198 DAC and RT6963 amp chip on board. You also get 3.5mm and 4.4mm balanced audio outputs, plus USB-C for both charging and to use the AP30 as a processing DAC.

Its 1,200 mAh battery is claimed to last up to 12 hours when using the single-ended audio output to wired headphones. And the software even supports e-book reading, so you can check out your book files on your travels.

The gaming aspect is through the one preinstalled game, which is a block building puzzler in the style of Tetris.

There are two versions of the AP30 on offer – one plastic, one aluminium. They weigh 56g and 80g respectively. Multiple colour options are also available.

A magnetic protective case can also be found in the box, which will snap to the back of a MagSage compatible phone – such as an iPhone.

The Kickstarter funding round has just less than a week to go at the time of writing. It's raised more than 84 times the original goal, but there are some models left with early bird pricing.

You can get the plastic version from just £64 / $85 per Music Boy, and the aluminium model from £70 / $93.

CD players are having a bit of a comeback, and Syitren's latest is clearly not interested in pretending it's a piece of invisible hi-fi. The RM1 makes the mechanics of playing a CD part of the experience, turning the physical appeal into something you can actually see.

The RM1 sandwiches its electronics and disc mechanism between two transparent acrylic panels, giving you an unobstructed view of what's happening inside. That includes the CD itself, making the act of putting an album on feel considerably more tactile than tapping a playlist in a streaming app.

The player can be positioned in three ways. You can lay it flat on a surface, stand it upright or mount it on a wall, so it can become part of your room rather than something that gets hidden away beside the TV.

There's more to look at than the spinning disc, too. The exposed mainboard includes a yellow LED matrix that displays information such as the track number, volume and battery level, alongside small animations.

It gives the RM1 a distinctly retro-futuristic look while also making the electronics part of the design. Instead of hiding the technology behind a plastic shell, Syitren has essentially made the circuitry part of the album artwork.

The RM1 isn't trying to replace a full hi-fi system. It doesn't have built-in speakers, but instead offers a 3.5mm AUX output for wired setups and Bluetooth 5.3 for wireless speakers or headphones.

Playback is controlled using a separate remote, keeping the front of the player clean and uncluttered. You get the usual playback controls along with repeat, sequential playback and shuffle modes.

The rechargeable player is rated for around six to eight hours of continuous playback, making it portable enough to move around the house even if its wall-mounting option makes it tempting to leave it on display.

And the price makes the concept even more interesting. The RM1 is currently available to pre-order through Kickstarter from $89 (£66), putting it firmly into impulse-buy territory for anyone who wants to get back into CDs without buying another anonymous black box.

Physical music doesn't have to mean going completely old-school. The RM1 keeps the CD, but turns the player itself into something you'd actually want to look at.

More than just a Bluetooth speaker, and with the talents and chutzpah of a soundbar, the Music Studio 7 (officially the HW-LS70H if you enjoy a codename) smart speaker sits at the top of Samsung’s new Music Studio family.

Its stablemate is the related but less well-endowed Music Studio 5. Both models share a similar aesthetic, but the flagship boasts a far more ambitious acoustic architecture, with Dolby Atmos support, HDMI eARC connectivity and Q-Symphony compliance.

The brief may be a little confusing, but there’s no doubt this is one of the more intriguing premium wireless speakers to find its way onto the T3 test bench in 2026.

Price & Availability

You can pick up a Samsung Music Studio 7 in the UK right now, priced at £499 in the UK. It sells for $499 in the United States, and is AU$599 in Australia.

These tickets place it firmly in the premium wireless speaker category, which could be considered a little rich, until you factor in its Dolby Atmos and HDMI functionality.

Features & What's New?

There’s quite a party going on inside the Music Studio 7.

Samsung has crowbarred in a five-driver array for 3.1.1 Dolby Atmos playback.

Samsung kettles these front, side and upward-firing drivers with proprietary Pattern Control Technology, designed to minimise acoustic interference between drivers and improve directional accuracy.

A dedicated Super Tweeter extends frequency response to 35kHz, allowing support for 24-bit/96kHz Hi-Res Audio, if you have the source material. Power comes from a 150W Class D amplifier.

Alongside the Dolby Atmos there’s support for Eclipsa Audio, making this one of the first standalone wireless speakers ready for Samsung and Google's emerging immersive audio format. This may or may not prove significant, but time will tell.

Artificial intelligence (AI) also features prominently, selectable from the Samsung Sound app.

SpaceFit Sound Pro employs an onboard microphone to calibrate the speaker automatically to its surroundings. This happens in the background, optimising playback without requiring manual intervention. I’m not too convinced of its impact either way, but left it on for the bulk of this audition.

Active Voice Amplifier Pro uses AI processing to improve dialogue intelligibility when background noise rises. Not an issue in my case, so not routinely used.

Sound Quality

The Music Studio 7 has been voiced with entertainment in mind.

As a music speaker it produces an impressively large soundstage for its size. Those side-firing and upward-firing drivers extend well beyond the cabinet.

Samsung has always been good at needling out fine detail, and has produced an impressive line of low-cost, high-performance super tweeters over the years. That lineage continues here.

Bass is plentiful. Sometimes very plentiful. This low frequency bloom is more noticeable on some content than others. On piano recordings, low frequencies can become more dominant than ideal. Jon Batiste's meditative Always Know is robbed of its delicacy, sounding heavier and thicker than intended.

Modern pop and rock are much more natural companions. My Chemical Romance's pacey anthem Na Na Na arrives with tremendous energy, the speaker maintaining composure even at enthusiastic listening levels.

Film scores also play to its strengths. Hans Zimmer's Stay, from the movie Interstellar, benefits from the Music Studio 7's generous low-frequency extension. The ominous bass foundation and swelling organ notes create a genuinely cinematic sense of atmosphere.

Switching from streams to HDMI transforms the speaker's character again. With a Dolby Atmos bitstream, bass becomes noticeably tighter and more disciplined. Channel steering snaps into focus. Effects spread wide, while the up-firing driver introduces a tangible sense of height.

Is the Music Studio 7 a realistic alternative to a soundbar? I’d say conclusively it is. Helpfully, the speaker has a very wide sweet spot. That patented Wave Guide does a great job filling the room, making it ideal for a family audience.

The opening introduction to Stranger Things (season 1), on Netflix, is particularly immersive. The soundtrack's unsettling groans, distant rumbles and pulsing score are not squandered.

Dolby Atmos-encoded music proves equally rewarding. The spatial mix of Elton John’s Rocket Man, streaming from Amazon Music over HDMI, is fresh and airy, while Pink Floyd's Time alarm clocks are distinct and separate, before the track digs into David Gilmour’s opening vocal.

Design & Usability

The Music Studio 7’s distinctive Dot Design is the work of Erwan Bouroullec. He’s one half of the Paris-based Bouroullec brothers, who were also responsible for the look of Samsung’s The Frame and Serif lifestyle TVs.

Available in either black or white, the cabinet combines gently curved surfaces with perforated metal grilles. I like it, but can see it might prove divisive with bookshelf speaker traditionalists.

Build quality is reassuringly solid: at 5.6kg, the speaker feels substantial. A recessed carry handle at the rear helps to manoeuvre it around. The footprint is a tidy 185 x 269 x 190.5mm.

Controls line up across the top, including volume adjustment, microphone muting and a programmable shortcut button. Spotify Tap support allows users to launch personalised playlists with a simple double press.

Placement obviously deserves some consideration, and is a key part of the soundbar replacement debate, since much of the speaker's spacious presentation depends upon its side-firing and upward-firing drivers. These therefore need to remain unobstructed for the soundstage to work.

Connectivity is comprehensive. HDMI eARC allows direct TV integration, with optical digital audio as a legacy set backup. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 6.0 provide flexibility for music streaming. HDMI eARC is particularly welcome, not least because it allows volume adjustment via a TV remote.

Owners of compatible Samsung televisions also gain access to Q-Symphony, allowing the Music Studio 7 to work alongside compatible Samsung soundbars and TV speakers as part of a larger sound system. Great for additional height to the front soundstage.

Software setup involves Samsung's Sound app alongside SmartThings, and feels slightly less streamlined than it should be. Once configured, daily operation is relatively straightforward though.

Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Roon Ready certification all get Hall Passes, as does Alexa, which is built in. Samsung's own smart assistant, Bixby, is notably absent (he’s been playing truant quite a lot lately).

Samsung Music Studio 7 review: Verdict

The Music Studio 7 is an excellent wireless music speaker. Bouroullec's industrial design is nothing if not elegant.

It’s also a capable TV sound upgrade and a foundation for Samsung's wider Q-Symphony ecosystem. Few rivals can multi-task so convincingly.

Its sonic personality isn’t without foibles, though. Bass can dominate more delicate recordings, yet this same authority becomes an advantage when watching a movie, or grooving with your mates.

If your listening habits span albums, streaming services and blockbuster movies in equal measure, the Music Studio 7 is well worthy of consideration. Just don’t park it on a crowded bookshelf.

Also Consider

If you like the idea of a versatile all-in-one, the Denon Home 400 is a strong alternative. It also looks great and supports Dolby Atmos. There's no HDMI though.

Another contender is the Sonos Era 300. This also delivers excellent spatial audio, and has top-notch multiroom capabilities, but once again it lacks HDMI eARC.

Victrola has brought its Wave Bluetooth turntable to the UK, Europe and the US, with a matching Soundstage all-in-one speaker also set for release.

The Wave features a low-resonance MDF plinth and an aluminium platter. It also comes with an aluminium tonearm and the Ortofon OM 5E moving magnet cartridge.

This makes it great for beginners setting out on their vinyl journey, especially when you consider that the deck also supports Auracast Broadcast Audio and Bluetooth transmission, with aptX Adaptive and aptX HD support.

That means you can stream vinyl playback wirelessly to a Bluetooth speaker or audio setup for close to lossless listening.

There's a switchable phono preamp built into the player too, so you can connect the Wave directly to powered speaker. RCA outputs are also on board to hook it up to amplifiers and hi-fi systems.

That includes the other product also announced by Victrola – its matching Soundstage.

The Soundstage is an all-in-one speaker system that comprises front-facing radiators for "stereo dispersion" and a down-firing Symmetric Drive Woofer to provide that extra oomph.

The cabinet is vibration-isolated, so you can place a Victrola Wave on top – or any other turntable – and the woofer shouldn't affect vinyl playback or the sound signature.

It's available in walnut, like the Wave, or black and also supports Bluetooth, RCA, USB-C and 3.5mm AUX for wireless and wired connections.

It is also worth noting that the Bluetooth in the Wave turntable can also be used to connect a separate audio source, such as your iPhone or Android device, and play music through any connected speakers.

The Victrola Wave Bluetooth turntable is priced at £349 / €399 / $499 and is available across regions now. The Victrola Soundstage will follow on 1 October in the UK and Europe for £299 / €329. It's already available in the US, at $349.

A special edition version of the Victrola Wave is also available. Made in collaboration with Third Man Records in the US, it features the brand's distinctive black and yellow colourway and a custom slipmat.

It's not only a decent laptop that you need for your next year going to university or college – a decent pair of headphones can, for many people, really help to focus in and crack on with work.

Other times it's just great to have a pair of earbuds or headphones that you can use in your personal time to skip on the distractions – without disturbing any of your cohabiting colleagues.

As a student, of course, budget is a major consideration. So in this round-up –where I'll dig into three top audio picks – I'm selecting a cheapy pair of earbuds, a more premium pair of noise-cancelling over-ears that'll serve their worth for years to come, and a pair of over-ears that won't break the bank.

If you're more explicitly looking for workout headphones for running and exercise, take a look at our Running Headphones Guide instead, as I won't be delving into a sports-based outlook here otherwise.

T3's Top 3

Pricing

As you can see from my selection of top headphones picks, I've selected a pair that'll cost you pocket money, versus some top-tier over-ears that are 10x the price, with the fancy AirPods option sitting in between the lot. The three aren't therefore directly comparable.

You do, however, get what you pay for. The Bose are the nicest made, best-sounding, and most feature-laden of the lot, as you'd expect for the price. Apple's option is just plastic, so there's a premium on the features – but they'll still ideal for most people. Sony, meanwhile, has pulled off magic in offering over-ears at such a lean price, with such bold sound.

As you can see from the best-price shopping widgets attached to each of the products above, the price variance across this range of options is fairly significant.

Beginning at £30 / $38 for the alternative suggestion Sony over-ears, and rising to £299 / £359 for the top-tier Bose headphones, budget may be a big part of what dictates your purchase.

You'll need to pay more for active noise-cancelling (ANC), inevitably, so if that's a must-have then you can rule out anything in the double digits – unless you get very lucky with a Soundcore Q45 deal anyway.

Personally I wouldn't want headphones without ANC – the quiet they can bring, that escape from noise and distraction, will bring worth to your life for years to come. So spending a little more now is a better economy.

Alternatives?

There are good and bad reasons to buy any one pair of headphones. From features you don't need, to pricing that's out of whack with your budget, or just a design difference – the fit, for example – that won't agree with you.

Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3

If you want materials and comfort that are second to none, plus some decent ANC that doesn't feel like your head's in a vacuum, then Bowers & Wilkins makes superb headphones.

They're expensive, mind, so might not be the most obvious go-to for students. But these Px7 S3 cans will last the test of time – and were a T3 Awards 2026 winner.

Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless

Another super strong ANC pair of over-ears that often gets overlooked is from Sennheiser, whose latest Momentum 5 Wireless cans are an easy 5-star product.

These are all about a neutral yet impressive soundscape, so you can immerse yourself in your music, paired with some great control refinements that make using them a breeze.

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While we've got the Pro version of Apple's in-ears as our go-to pick, if you don't want the ANC and don't want to spend as much, then the step-down AirPods 4 (Without ANC) are a great pick.

This is all about balancing the budget sheet, really, as while the ANC is missed, the sound quality is still on point. They're even IP54 rated, so you could use them for sports and fitness, not just in class or when doing out-of-hours work.

The Winner Is

You'll have personal preference whether it's in-ear, on-ear or over-ear that most suits – but for a more relaxed fit that gives your ear canals a break, I'd suggest over-ears.

Of the lot, it's Bose's lightweight, comfortable, yet well-designed QC Headphones 2 that take the prize. Yes, they're more expensive – but the advanced features here will last for years and are worth the investment.

That's because the new-and-improved ANC is impressive, as is the inherent sound quality – with a great dollop of bass to keep everything sounding its fullest.

Need a lower-price alternative? Glance back over our other top suggestions and their budget alternatives, as each are a quality, viable option – it just depends how much you've got to spend and whether in-ear or over-ear best suits your needs.

Happen to be looking for some desktop speakers – or even smaller-scale bookshelf speakers – but have been struggling to find anything on the reasonable side of affordable?

Well, look no further. Creative has just announced the XF1, a pair of desktop speakers that could complement a mini PC arrangement, personal workstation, or even be used as a dedicated sound system if you prefer.

Price is a key factor in the appeal, of course, with the £139 / $179 on-sale figure considerably lower than many of the larger and, inevitably, more expensive options on the market.

Perhaps you have a monitor with no built-in speakers and are looking to upgrade your audio output. This stereo pair certainly looks preened for the job, coming in either black or white finishes.

Audio dips down to 55Hz for relatively deep bass delivery, but the XF1 are expandable too. You can add a subwoofer at a later stage, while 3.5mm AUX connections extend to adding a turntable or other such input – it's not all workstation-only stuff!

The XF1 are also Hi-Res Audio certified, meaning you'll be able to extract the utmost quality from your file types. Or there's Bluetooth 6.0 connectivity as part of the package, whatever the quality of source.

Each speaker measures 19cm high, 15.5cm long and 10cm deep, ensuring they're on the smaller scale – and ideal for positioning with ease. The two pair via an interconnect cable.

Inside each are two 3-inch woofers and two 3/4-inch tweeters, which can extend right through to 40,000Hz at the top end. Only the right speaker has the physical control knob solution, though.

Good things come in small packages, as the saying goes, and this Creative XF1 pair look like a dreamy affordable desktop speaker arrangement.

Bose makes some of the best noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones on the planet – as the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones make abundantly clear.

The New York-based company also makes step-down over-ears as part of its line-up, dropping the 'Ultra' for the QuietComfort Headphones namesake.

Now, Bose has revealed its updated take, in the aptly named QuietComfort Headphones 2nd Gen, which add a variety of design changes and feature updates.

QuietComfort Headphones 2nd Gen: What's New?

• Updated design with adjustable sliders and faux-leather cushioning
• Addition of Bose's TrueSpatial technology (Still, Motion, Cinema)
• ANC renamed as QuietControl, improved performance
• Lossless playback via wired USB-C (to 24-bit/48kHz)
• Battery life reduction (24h / 18h with Immersive)
• New colourways and two-tone design

The 2nd Gen version of Bose's QuietComfort Headphones aren't akin to the originals with new colourways – although the addition of new colour options is part of the latest.

Instead, Bose has redesigned the QuietComfort Headphones 2nd Gen with new materials for greater comfort, plus updated adjustable sliders for the headband fit.

The active noise-cancelling (ANC) technology has been renamed QuietControl – presumably a staple for Bose products moving forward? – and brings some enhancements for poor fit.

Bose specifically cites its improvement for glasses wearers, where an imperfect seal due to glasses stems can be optimised for, still offering great ANC results.

A feature previously reserved for the Ultra model also trickles down to this new 2nd Gen Headphones: the TrueSpatial technology brings a trio of motion controls – Still, Motion, Cinema – that adapt to the wearer's head movements, depending on the desired effect.

However, the quoted battery life is now lower as result of these design changes. It's still good, though, with up to 24 hours per charge, or a maximum of 18 hours with the Immersion mode of ANC activated.

If you're keen to keep the cord and ditch wireless mode, then the QuietComfort Headphones 2 also introduce a lossless playback via wired USB-C, for 24-bit/48kHz audio.

Or simply you want the ability to handily use a cable, should you want to plug into, say, an in-flight entertainment (IFE) system on your travels.

The Bose QuietComfort Headphones 2nd Gen are available for pre-order right now (you'll need to sign up to MyBose for early access), with an on-sale date set for 13 August. They're priced at £299.95 in the UK, with other regional pricing to be confirmed.

The price remains the same irrelevant of which colour you pick, too. The staple Black and White Smoke duo return, but there's also a trio of new additions: Eucalyptus Green, Dewdrop Mint, Rosewood Mauve. These seem to embody a 90s nostalgic movement.

Nothing has been teasing a new CMF product for over a week and now we know exactly what it is. The CMF brand has its own open-ear earbuds – Clip Pro.

Supporting Hi-Res Audio and with an ergonomic 3-point clip design to fit around your lobe, the CMF Clip Pro buds further the trend of open-ear audio that seems popular right now.

They are designed to provide a solid, rounded audio experience but without fully drowning out external noise. That means they especially suit runners and wearers who want to move around a city while remaining aware of their surroundings.

Each ear contains a custom-tuned 10.8mm dynamic driver, with CMF's own Ultra Bass technology that enhances lower frequencies.

The buds support LDAC, AAC and SBC playback, while the lack of active noise cancellation has the added benefit of up to 10 hours battery life in the buds. This extends to 32.5 hours with the included charging case.

A 10-minute fast charge will provide up to four hours of listening time, so they'll pretty much always be ready for you.

The charging case can also be used to manage playback and change volume remotely, as well as answer calls, with a smart dial on the lid. This matches other CMF product design.

Bluetooth 5.4 is on board, along with a low latency mode so they're suitable for gaming too. IP54 protection means they're also sweat and rain resistant.

Nothing has, of course, already got a pair of open-ear buds in its lineup – the Ear (open) – but the CMF pair are more compact and come in at a reduced price point.

You'll be able to order the CMF Clip Pro buds for £79 / $99 in the UK, US and Japan from 15 August in dark grey, light grey and coral colourways. They'll also be available in other regions across Europe and the rest of the world from 15 September.

Is your desk setup is looking a little too serious? This clever 3D printing project could be just the inspiration you need. South Korean creator Momandeum has recreated Gary the Snail from SpongeBob SquarePants as a functional Bluetooth speaker, using recycled electronics hidden inside a custom 3D-printed shell.

Instead of building the speaker from scratch, the project begins by dismantling an old alarm clock. The internal components are carefully measured before a digital model of Gary's body is designed around them. Once printed, the individual parts are trimmed, sanded, primed and painted to recreate the cartoon character's distinctive look.

The result is more than just a novelty ornament. Gary's shell houses the speaker hardware, while the turntable-inspired base conceals the original circuitry, wiring and charging components.

Magnets are used throughout the build so sections can be removed without visible screws, helping preserve the clean cartoon aesthetic. When powered on, the first sound it plays is Gary's famous "meow".

Projects like this show how far home 3D printing has come. No longer are makers simply creating decorative models. Now they're designing functional enclosures that breathe new life into ageing electronics. It's a fun way to reduce waste while ending up with something far more personal than another black plastic speaker.

While there's no indication this Gary speaker will ever be sold commercially, it's exactly the sort of project that makes you want to dust off a 3D printer. Whether you're a SpongeBob fan or simply like the idea of giving forgotten gadgets a fresh purpose, it's a reminder that a little imagination can completely transform yesterday's tech.

Sonos is planning a "product launch event" for September the company has revealed via its third quarter results. While Sonos CEO Tom Conrad didn't reveal exactly what that would be, he then went on to talk about "conversational computing and predictive intelligence".

That's right, it looks like Sonos is going to be moving its platform in the direction of AI, with Conrad going on to address the debate about which is the "best" AI model and how Sonos might put AI to best use in the home environment.

"The lasting value is going to be in what surrounds the model in a real home: the hardware that can converse with quality across every room, the system that already knows the shape of a home and the way a family lives in it, the connectivity to reach the speakers, services, and devices that turn a request into coordinated action."

Sonos shot to fame more than a decade ago, thanks to enabling multi-room audio. With a central controller, multiple Sonos speakers could be grouped and controlled, making streaming a much better experience across the home.

That was followed by a deliberate focus on quality, looking to appeal to more aspiring customers, while devices like the Amazon Echo offered rival connected streaming skills at much lower prices. Sonos' audio devices are still highly prised however, with a reinforcement of its soundbar offering over recent years.

Amazon's latest move for its Echo devices was to boost Alexa's performance using AI - called Alexa+ - although Sonos' own Voice Control system is rather basic by comparison, focusing mostly on music control.

Sonos has, in the past, supported other brands' voice control systems, but with the rapid acceleration of AI, the sort of voice models that Amazon and Google have offered over the last decade are probably easier to develop.

Exactly what Sonos will offer and how it will implemented remains to be seen. However the company is no stranger to riling its user base with changes, having struggled to put a new app in place and facing criticism for dropping support for a number of legacy devices.

Whether Sonos' current line-up have the processing power to handle AI functions is unknown, although the company might hand it off to the cloud for processing, so that older devices remain supported.

With September just around the corner, it won't be long until Sonos' plans are revealed in full.

When you've spent as much time as I have testing speakers, you also tend to collect a range of experience checking out audio brands' home turf. Whether it's a factory or HQ visit, or a peek behind the curtain at what they're working on, brands are often interested in letting you have a nose around at their storied histories.

While these previews often offer a great big chunk of context on a new speaker or about a brand's priorities moving forward, they can also be interesting for the older tech that you get to glimpse. I've found it consistently intriguing to note that audio teams are always eager to refer back to the work that preceded them.

Sometimes this involves direct generational moves – like when I visited Bowers & Wilkins' "secret" R&D base in the UK to check out its newest 800 Series Diamond D5 speakers. Bowers was confident enough in the changes to let me compare their audio directly against the previous generation (D4), and that obviously meant it needed one of each of those older speakers to be wheeled in.

Elsewhere in the building, though, I could see far older speakers, including some that have lasted decades. I asked Bowers what its oldest piece was, and was told: "We have a pair of the very first Bowers & Wilkins speakers, the P2H. We started making this model in 1966. The pair we have in our archive were made in 1968".

Its team even found a scan of the original brochure for the speakers, an impressively technical breakdown of their strengths that really does underline how things haven't changed as much as you might think. After all, Bowers still largely makes speakers where "cost is secondary to performance", even all these years later.

When I asked why Bowers goes to such lengths to maintain an archive of older speakers, rather than simply keeping them in storage, the response was clear, too: "It’s a reference and visual reminder for all of our team of the great heritage and consistent, excellent engineering work from the first days of the brand all the way up to today's range".

Andy Kerr, B&W's director of product marketing and communications, went on: "You can draw a direct link from some of the ideas we had back in the mid-1970s to the way Bowers & Wilkins works today".

Of course, Bowers can perhaps more easily prove this more than some others, since it quickly adopted the separate tweeter that made its speakers iconic, and has never abandoned that design note. It's not the only one that can draw a direct line, though.

Visual identities maintained

A few months ago, I was at Marshall's office in Sweden, where I was checking out the Milton ANC headphones before they were officially announced. As a bit of a cultural extra after some presentations and hands-on time, though, we headed up into a testing space in the loft to find a raft of vintage Marshall amps from down the years.

With metal band Opeth's Fredrik Åkesson on hand to run us through them with some guitar solos, we got an amazing showcase of the sonic differences between older amps, a sonic journey through time that made it surprisingly easy to see how artists' demands and sensibilities changed how amps were tuned over the years.

You only have to look at Marshall's recently announced Billie Joe Armstrong limited edition amp to see that its core design ideas have stayed true to those old amps in the decades since the first ones were built in West London.

Marshall told me at the time that reacquiring some of the older models and keeping them working was not a simple task (nor a cheap one), but it's clearly considered worth it.

More than just speakers

It's not just speakers that audio brands hold onto, either. In late 2024, I visited Technics in Kyoto for a thoroughly interesting showcase of its then-new earbuds, the supreme EAH-AZ100. While Technics is now getting more well-known for such earbuds, for a long time it has been associated far more tightly with turntables.

On that trip I got to see a lineup of Technics' turntables going back down the years, and when I reached out to Technics to ask about those samples, two years later, it was happy to explain them.

Per Tadayoshi Okuda, Technics chief engineer: "The oldest turntable in the Technics collection is the SP-10, released in 1970. Released as the world's first direct-drive turntable, it was widely adopted by broadcasters and professional users.

"Its technology became the foundation of future Technics turntables and continues to influence our products today."

Technics debuted the direct-drive system in the SP-10, and that system can indeed be traced all the way to its most recent turntables, so the continuity is hard to argue with.

I didn't see them in Kyoto, but Okuda also explained that Technics has plenty of old speakers of its own in its archive, too: "One of the oldest speakers in the Technics collection is the Technics 1, released in 1965." When I asked him why these devices are useful, he was effusive.

"These products are more than historical exhibits. They serve as valuable references that allow us to compare today's products with decades of Technics engineering and sound design.

"They also help pass on our brand heritage and development philosophy to the next generation of engineers, ensuring that the Technics identity continues into the future."

That last point is the one that interests me most – new engineers learning from tech that has technically been superseded and rendered obsolete. Those lessons might be technical, but they can also be almost philosophical.

A maintenance puzzle

Get any amount of tech from the 1960s and 1970s out for testing, though, and you're likely to hit challenges in maintaining them. When I asked Bowers & Wilkins if it's hard to keep its older speakers working, Kerr stressed that it's an ongoing system: "We keep a good selection of spares for all of our products and have kept the engineering schematics for every product all the way back to the start. We also have a team of dedicated engineers who can refurbish any of our products".

Being able to call on those schematics is doubtless key, but you have to assume that the challenge of retaining spares (or making them) will only escalate over time.

Technics' explanation saw Okuda return to the theme of generational lessons: "Like all electronic and mechanical products, the components used in these systems inevitably age over time, making it challenging to preserve exactly the same performance they delivered when first released. For that reason, we carefully preserve these products as important historical and technical assets, treating them with great respect so that their value can be passed on to future generations."

Hybrid theory

That last quote from Technics opens up a fascinating possibility. When Okuda says that it's "challenging to preserve exactly the same performance they delivered when first released", he acknowledges the possibility that these vintage speakers and turntables don't sound the same as they did when first made.

If you square that with the fact that these speakers nonetheless continue to influence designs being made now, then it could be that this takes us into entirely new territory. We could be getting speakers influenced by the interesting new characteristics of old speakers, worked on by engineers who only know those older versions from what they can now test on-site.

That's not a bad thing, to be clear; in fact, I think it's really exciting. It's intangible, too, in the way that all the best audiophile theories often are – we might not know exactly how a Bowers speaker from the late 1960s "should sound" in a totally perfect scenario, just as we might not be able to totally quantify how a Technics one from 1970 ought to either.

Instead, we can work with how they sound now – to come up with new acoustics that meet the needs of our times, while using what came before to ensure a continuity and continuation of important history-making.

While retro-inspired gadgets are hot property right now, wired headphones (which could be labelled as vintage, due to their lack of modern features like wireless chips) have never really gone away.

Case in point: most high-end headphones have always featured a cable, because it just sounds better that way.

And Apple has never stopped selling its simple EarPods, though they're just more inclusive these days: 3.5mm, Lightning, and USB-C. They also cost just £19, so you can join the anti-wireless revolution without having to take out a bank loan.

SENNHEISER HD 620S

Until now, Sennheiser's ‘600' range of over-ear headphones have been open-backed – they sound great but leak sound, to the annoyance of anyone nearby. The HD 620S are closed-back, and so nothing like as anti-social in this regard – but Sennheiser has somehow managed to retain the sense of air and space that's the hallmark of its open-backed designs.

£299.99, sennheiser-hearing.com

MEZE AUDIO 99 CLASSICS (2ND GEN)

By combining balanced and insightful sound with an excellent build and finish, and throwing in a USB-C DAC dongle, Meze Audio has made the second generation of its 99 Classics very easy to admire. Smaller-headed listeners should try before they buy, though…

£319, mezeaudio.com

CAMPFIRE AUDIO ALIEN BRAIN

Given the name that's on them, let's not pretend to be surprised by the way these earbuds look or the price they carry. Almost as predictable is the stunningly direct, positive and controlled sound the Alien Brain earphones serve up – must be something to do with those five (five!) drivers per bud…

£999, campfireaudio.com

MARSHALL MODE USB-C

They're necessarily small, of course, but the rock 'n' roll credentials are clear from the way they sound. The presentation has punch and drive, with a combination of detail and energy that turns the excitement in a recording all the way up.

£45, marshall.com

APPLE EARPODS

The lack of eartips remains a weird idea, but in every other respect the Earpods are a tremendously competitive product and arguably the best value item in the entire Apple line-up. Big, confident sound, sleek design and the usual pride of ownership that comes free with every Apple product makes these the best affordable wired headphones around.

£19, apple.com

SHURE SE215

The SE215 have the usual Shure benefits of sky-high comfort levels, impressive scale and prodigious bass power – but what really sets these wired earbuds apart is the level of passive noise isolation that's provided by their carefully designed ergonomic shape and super-snug eartips. Which means you're able to listen to your tunes in peace, freed from most external distractions.

£109, shure.com

GRADO S750 SIGNATURE

The broad design of Grado's products doesn't seem to have changed much since the early '60s. And neither does the effortlessly dynamic, tonally convincing and beautifully poised sound that's the calling-card of the company's wired over-ear headphones, either.

£1,695, grado.co.uk

FOCAL HADENYS

Lighter than they look and every bit as comfortable as they appear, the Focal Hadenys present a warm, informative and welcoming sound that's the aural equivalent of a cuddle. These tasteful open-backed charmers are the complete package.

£599, focal.com