TechRadar Reviews

Rotel DX-5: Two-minute review

The Rotel DX-5 is a compact, beautifully constructed and very nicely designed stereo integrated amplifier with the emphasis firmly on digital sources of sound. It looks and feels good, it’s quite obviously built to last, and it’s specified to handle hi-res sources via its USB, coaxial and optical inputs as well as TV sound thanks to its HDMI ARC socket. A single line-level analog input deals with your properly legacy equipment (but not a turntable unless it’s pre-amplified).

Because it’s not a network device, it doesn’t have a control app. It has a remote control, though, which looks and feels just as swish as the device it’s controlling – but is more dependent on line-of-sight to the device it’s controlling than is the norm, and by quite a distance.

Sound quality is straightforwardly impressive. The DX-5 is an open, revealing and entertaining listen, one that has a real facility with dynamics and can express rhythms confidently. It retains and contextualise all the detail in a recording, has nicely even frequency response and is adept at unifying a recording even at the same time that it can pick it apart for your inspection. It demands you spend some time considering system-matching, because it’s quite assertive at the top of the frequency range – but other than that, its sound is no kind of chore to enjoy.

Rotel DX-5 review: Price and release date

(Image credit: Simon Lucas / Future)

• Released in April 2025
• Priced $1,499 / £1,399 / AU$2,199

The Rotel DX-5 is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it sells for £1,399. In the United States the going rate is $1,499, while in Australia you’ll have to part with AU$2,199.

This is not hair-raising money for an integrated stereo amplifier from a renowned brand, but it’s quite stiff if you apply the ‘physical stuff/asking price’ ratio…

(Image credit: Simon Lucas / Future)Rotel DX-5 review: Features

• ESS Sabre ES9039Q2M DAC
• Digital inputs outnumber analog inputs
• 25W per channel into 8 ohms

There’s not a huge amount of space inside the Rotel DX-5, but it seems fair to say it’s been utilised to something approaching ‘the maximum’.

Under the lid, the most space-hungry element is the high-current toroidal transformer – it’s wound in-house, and can churn out 25W of Class AB power per channel into an 8-ohm load (rising to 33 watts per channel into 4 ohms). The crucial business of digital-to-analog conversion is handled by the deeply fashionable ESS Sabre ES9039Q2M chipset – it supports 32bit/384kHz PCM and DSD512 via the amplifier’s USB-B input (some source devices will need a driver to be installed, but not all) and 24bit/192kHz PCM via its coaxial and optical inputs. The DX-5 is certified Roon Tested, and Rotel suggests the machine is capable of a considerable 10Hz - 80kHz frequency response. It’s also claiming vanishingly low intermodulation distortion and signal-to-noise ratio numbers at the same time.

The three digital inputs I’ve already mentioned line up alongside an HDMI ARC socket and a single line-level analogue input accessed via a pair of stereo RCA inputs. Outputs amount to a pair of speaker cable binding posts, a pre-out for use with a subwoofer, and a fascia-mounted 6.3mm headphone socket. Wireless connectivity is handled by Bluetooth, and here it’s compatible with SBC, AAC and aptX HD codecs. A small, discreet Bluetooth aerial is integrated into the rear of the chassis.

The strong implication, then, is that yours is an overwhelmingly digital set-up – and, what’s more, a set-up in which your source devices don’t have digital-to-analog conversion circuitry that can lay a glove on the DX-5’s. That may well be true, but nevertheless it might be nice to see a second analog input if only for flexibility’s sake. The omission of a phono stage for use with a turntable is more understandable, though, despite the record player’s sudden front-and-centre position in any modern stereo system – keeping costs and physical dimensions down do rather make it a bit of a non-starter.

Features score: 4.5 / 5

(Image credit: Simon Lucas / Future)Rotel DX-5 review: Sound quality

• Open, detailed and properly defined presentation
• Equally adept with rhythms and dynamics
• Requires some system-matching in order to play nicely

It might be worth starting with the one area where the Rotel DX-5 is anything less than entirely easy to enjoy – this way I’ll be able to finish on a long and enthusiastic high… In the simplest terms, the DX-5 needs a greater degree of care taken with system-matching than many of its price-comparable rivals.

Sources of music or loudspeakers that count ‘high-frequency excitability’ among their attributes will find this trait compounded by the DX-5 – and if the Rotel is part of an entire system that shares this kind of emphasis, you may end up with rather too much of a good thing. Even a tonally warm recording like Otis Redding’s That’s What My Heart Needs enjoys plenty of shine at the top of the frequency range, and unhelpfully trebly tunes like FKA twigs’ Cheap Hotel could conceivably become problematic in a properly unsympathetic set-up. A moment or two spent ensuring you’re not going to provoke the Rotel is time well spent.

But with that out of the way, I think it’s safe to say the remaining news is good without qualification. From the deep and carefully shaped low frequencies to the top end, the tonality of the DX-5 is consistent and even (provided you’ve paid attention to the previous paragraph), and quite carefully neutral – it’s able to describe the fundamental tone of a recording without meaningfully sticking its oar in.

And the same is true of frequency response, again from the very bottom to the very top of the frequency range: the bottom end is detailed and textured, and so well-controlled where onset attack is concerned that the Rotel expresses rhythms with real confidence. The midrange is similarly informative and similarly articulate, and there’s a directness to the way the DX-5 delivers the voices of the two vocalists I’ve already mentioned that makes them sound positive and eloquent. The top end is similarly accomplished in this respect – it’s just as packed with information as the rest of the frequency range, and receives just as much emphasis and drive.

All this good stuff takes place on a large, well-defined and easy-to-understand soundstage – even a fairly complex recording like Bath is Black by Marika Hackman is organised to the point that it’s simple to follow. Each individual element gets the necessary space in which to express itself – but the DX-5 is also able to let these elements cohere into a unified whole. There’s a sense of togetherness that’s not always available when an amplifier is as capable of separation and focus as this one.

The dynamic variation in this recording, where attack, intensity and sheer volume are concerned, is identified and contextualised carefully, and the smaller harmonic variations are given the correct amount of weight too. The Rotel is very talented in this regard, and can put very worthwhile distance between ‘quiet’ and ‘loud’ despite what is, on paper at least, a less-than-promising amount of power on which it can call.

But it’s the facility with detail retrieval that I’ve already referred to that’s possibly the single most impressive thing about the way this amplifier goes about things. From the broad strokes to the most minor transients, it can locate and position any details in a recording in the most naturalistic and convincing manner – which means you’re never in any doubt as to whether or not you’re getting the complete picture.

Sound quality: 4.5 / 5

(Image credit: Simon Lucas / Future)Rotel DX-5 review: Design

• 76 x 215 x 251mm (HxWxD)
• Anodised aluminium construction
• Black or silver finish

There may not be all that much of it (it’s a titchy 76 x 215 x 251mm, HxWxD), but what there is of the Rotel DX-5 is nicely designed and flawlessly built.

It uses a luxurious amount of anodised aluminium in its construction, and is a visually and tactile treat no matter which of the black or silver finishes you choose. The industrial design is sophisticated, and nice little touches like the knurling of the volume control and the confidently embossed ‘R’ on the ventilated top of the box don’t do any harm either.

As the asking price demands, the DX-5 is built and finished to an extremely high standard. Nothing about the design or construction of this device suggests a single penny has been pinched, and it feels ready to last for the long haul.

Design score: 5 / 5

(Image credit: Simon Lucas / Future)Rotel DX-5 review: Usability and setup

• Full-colour TFT display
• Heavy, luxurious and unhelpful remote control
• A (very) few physical controls

This is not a wi-fi -enabled device, and so there’s no control app. Getting what you want from the Rotel is done the old-fashioned way.

There’s a big, bright, crisp TFT display in the centre of the fascia – it features an indication of volume level, confirmation of selected input, and some reasonably in-depth set-up menus too. It also has a ‘source selection’ button embedded in its bottom left, opposite the 6.3mm headphone output. There’s an illuminated ‘power’ button on the left of the fascia, and a big, tactile volume dial on the right.

The DX-5 can also be operated using a remote control handset that’s a weird combination of ‘sky-high perceived value’ and ‘marginal usefulness’. Its weighty aluminium construction, sensible button layout and nicely judged dimensions all fall into the first category, while its absolute insistence on being pointed precisely at the sensor on the fascia in order to operate falls strongly into the second. If there’s a remote control that’s more dependent on pin-point line-of-sight in order to be of any use, I’ve yet to encounter it.

Usability and setup score: 3 / 5

Rotel DX-5 review: Value

If it’s the amount of stuff your money buys that’s important, then the DX-5 obviously doesn’t represent the same sort of value for money as an alternative that uses much more metal.

Its specification could be said to be slightly lacking, too, if you squint. But if you concentrate on the quality of componentry, the sophisticated nature of its design, its bank-vault build quality and its lavishly detailed, wide-open sound, there’s unarguable value on offer here. Best not to dwell on the remote control, though…

Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Rotel DX-5?

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

Stuffed to the gills, just one more analog input might have meant full marks

4.5/5

Design

Luxurious anodised aluminium – a tactile treat!

5/5

Sound quality

Consistent, even, neutral, faithfully detailed (just get the system-matching right)

4.5/5

Value

If you want more physical product for your money, it's a tough sell. We all know that's not always the point though

4/5

Buy it if...

Your system is mostly digital
Physical and wireless digital inputs outnumber the analogue equivalent by quite a margin

You admire understated industrial design
There’s nothing shouty about the design here, and it makes the perceived value of the DX-5 all the greater

You enjoy entertaining, insightful sound
Not every amplifier combines forensic levels of detail retrieval with an overall attitude of uncomplicated musicality, but this one does

Don't buy it if...

You’ve more than a single analog source
There are numerous amplifiers that will suit your analog ways better than this one

You don’t have particularly steady hands
The remote control handset insists on being pointed precisely at the IR receiver on the amp’s fasciaView Deal

Your system is already happy to fully attack high-frequency information
Unsympathetic partners in the system, and/or unsympathetically recorded music, can bring the Rotel’s treble reproduction to the foreView Deal

Rotel DX-5 review: Also consider

If you like the Rotel’s dinky dimensions, will happily trade a USB input for a phono stage, and will forgo some tactility in exchange for a more aggressive price tag, the Rega’s excellent Brio mk7 ($1,095 / £799) could be just the ticket. It’s a punchily exciting listen, but capable of deft insight at the same time. Or if you want to retain the size but hang the expense, then Cyrus (who could fairly lay claim to having the idea of full-on sound from a half-pint box in the first place) has just launched its $4,995 / £3,995 AMP 40 – and it’s a bravura performer in every respect.

How I tested the Rotel DX-5

I connected the Rotel DX-5 to a pair of Bowers & Wilkins 606 S3 Signature loudspeakers using Chord Company Clearway X speaker cable. I used my Naim Uniti Star as a streamer and a CD player (attached to the sole analog input, of course) and plugged my Colibri-enhanced Apple MacBook Pro into the USB-B socket to get the highest-resolution content possible on board.

And then I listened to lots of music, of many genres and of many file-types and -sizes – probably for longer than was absolutely necessary…

• First reviewed: December 2025
• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

KEF XIO soundbar: Two minute review

The KEF XIO can be installed either on a tabletop (shown above) or flipped up for a flat wall-mount configuration (Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

The KEF XIO Dolby Atmos soundbar brings a new level of power, elegance, and versatility to the normally utilitarian soundbar category. And though KEF asks a pretty penny as the price of admission, the XIO delivers a performance that few soundbar systems can match. The fact that it looks just as good hanging on a wall as it does when placed horizontally is the icing on the cake.

As the company’s first Dolby Atmos soundbar, the KEF XIO is not quite as mesmerizing for height and surround effects as the Sonos Arc Ultra or Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus, but it makes up for that small weakness with sublimely clean audio and impressively robust bass. And when it comes to playing music, it’s no contest; the XIO is the best soundbar I’ve ever tested.

There are a few small quibbles. Not enough inputs, a smartphone app that doesn’t do as much as many competitors, and a remote that could do with a few more buttons. But overall, the KEF XIO is a formidable sound machine for all of your entertainment needs.

KEF XIO soundbar review: Price & release date

The KEF XIO's included remote control could use a few more buttons to be truly useful (Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

• • $2,499.95 / £1,999.00 (around AU$3,765)
• • Released July 2025

KEF launched the XIO, the company’s first Dolby Atmos soundbar, in July 2025 in a variety of markets, including the UK and the US.

While KEF is well-known and widely praised for its long heritage of producing passive hi-fi speakers, the British brand is no stranger to powered audio. Its LS series of wireless, amplified bookshelf speakers has been a favorite of audiophiles since the first models debuted, and KEF continues to expand its active lineup, most recently with its reboot of its passive Coda speakers as the Coda W.

KEF brings this amplified speaker experience to the XIO, along with its Uni-Q driver technology, and throws in some new innovations for good measure, like its Velocity Control Technology, a sensor-based system that actively monitors the XIO’s four low-frequency drivers to minimize distortion.

At $2,499.95, the KEF XIO lives in a soundbar category dominated by other high-end audio brands, like Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound Stage ($2,900), Sennheiser’s Ambeo Soundbar Max ($2,999.95), and the Devialet Dione ($2,199).

Price isn’t the only thing these models have in common: All are designed to be single-speaker solutions. Although you can add an external subwoofer to the XIO and the Ambeo Soundbar Max, none of these soundbars offers surround channel expansion.

KEF XIO soundbar review: Specs

Dimensions (W x H x D)

47.6 x 2.8 x 6.5 inches (1209 x 71.2 x 165mm)

Speaker channels

5.1.2

Connections:

HDMI 2.1 ARC/eARC out, optical digital audio, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-C (service only)

Dolby Atmos/DTS:X

Yes/Yes

Sub included

No

Rear speakers included

No

Features

AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, UPnP, Dolby Atmos Music, 360 Reality Audio, Night Listening mode, Room Correction, native integration of music services including Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music, more

KEF XIO soundbar review: FeaturesImage 1 of 2

The KEF XIO rear panel ports include a wired subwoofer output (Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)Image 2 of 2

The XIO's surface controls (Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi with comprehensive streaming support
• Room correction
• Four built-in subwoofers with force cancellation

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Despite its hefty price, the KEF XIO is a little shy on ports. You don’t get any HDMI inputs to make up for the one it will grab from your TV, and there’s only a single optical port as an alternative for physically connected external devices.

This makes the XIO less desirable for those who want to hook up turntables, Blu-ray players, or game consoles. On the other hand, KEF has included a dedicated subwoofer output, a fairly rare feature on soundbars at any price.

Its wireless connection suite, however, is excellent, with both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, plus Apple AirPlay 2, Google Cast, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, and UPnP/DLNA support. Depending on your music source and the protocol you choose, you can stream to the XIO at up to 24-bit/384kHz for lossless, hi-res audio playback.

Thanks to all of those wireless protocols, it’s easy to stream from almost any app. You can also access several leading streaming services inside the KEF Connect app, including Amazon Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and Deezer.

Using the KEF Connect app, you can trigger the XIO’s room correction feature. I’d characterize it as semi-automatic: you still need to tell the app how high the speaker is mounted and how big your room is, but after that, it does the rest.

If there’s one area that sets the XIO apart from other soundbars, it’s the driver configuration, especially KEF’s approach to low frequencies. The XIO uses a set of four 2 x 6-inch P185 racetrack subwoofers mounted in horizontally opposed pairs. This force-cancelling arrangement reduces cabinet vibration, while KEF’s newly developed Velocity Control Technology uses sensors and a feedback loop to minimize distortion.

• Features score: 4 / 5

KEF XIO soundbar review: Performance

(Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

• Brilliant Dolby Atmos performance
• Astonishing two-channel stereo rendering
• Missing height and surround level adjustment

Can a single soundbar recreate true movie and music magic? While purists may scoff, the KEF XIO is exceptional.

Buried under its low-key exterior is a series of six, 2-inch Uni-Q MX drivers, two 2-inch full-range drivers, and a four-driver subwoofer array, all of which are discretely powered by class D amps, to the tune of 820 watts of total power.

What those specs can’t convey is how great the XIO sounds when it gets going. The performance is smooth, balanced, and immensely powerful. Your neighbors probably won’t agree, but the XIO rewards loud listening better than any other soundbar I’ve tested.

The benefits of KEF’s acoustic design start to reveal themselves at 50% volume. Bass is deeply resonant, yet detailed and at times quite musical. Yes, you can feel it, but it stops just shy of shaking furniture. Could it be further improved with a subwoofer? Sure. But believe me, unless you have a really big room, or aren’t happy unless your vision gets blurred by sub-bass, you don’t need one.

Image 1 of 3

The XIO's speakers include a built-in four-driver subwoofer array (Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)Image 2 of 3

(Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)Image 3 of 3

(Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

In fact, if you want more of a gut-punch, more immersion, or just more, simply dial up the volume. Doing so had a proportional effect on my smile. The XIO’s sound is so clean, so free from vibration or distortion, you may not even notice as the decibels approach unhealthy levels.

As I ran the XIO through my usual Dolby Atmos test clips from Mad Max: Fury Road, Ford v Ferrari, Unbroken, Dune, and No Time To Die, I was impressed by both the immersiveness and the dialogue clarity. The soundbar also does a decent job with Dolby Atmos Music.

However, I wouldn’t classify the XIO as the best single-speaker Atmos soundbar I’ve heard.

In fact, Sonos’s Arc Ultra ($1,099) can go toe-to-toe with the XIO for thunderous bass, and even edges out the XIO for surround channel effects. Meanwhile, Sennheiser’s Ambeo Soundbar Plus ($1,799.99) runs in the opposite direction, with slightly less low-end punch, but with far more effective surround and height immersion.

It’s not entirely surprising, given that the XIO is KEF’s first kick at the Dolby Atmos can. Moreover, in making the XIO wall-and-surface-mount friendly, it compromised a little on the directionality of its drivers. The side-firing drivers always face out at a 90-degree angle, as do the height drivers. It’s hard to do any kind of beam-forming when that’s the setup.

All of this fades into the background when you stream music. The XIO may not be the king of the Atmos hill, but when it comes to delivering two-channel sound, it’s staggeringly good.

The challenge that all soundbars face with stereo music is achieving sufficient separation of left/right channels. At just over 47 inches, the XIO isn’t any wider than other flagship soundbars, and yet it convinced me I was listening to discrete speakers set much farther apart. When sitting dead center, it gave me a level of stereo imaging I wasn’t expecting, and a nearly perfect phantom center channel. Given that nearly all soundbars have actual center channels, you’d think this would be a no-brainer, but it rarely works out that way.

The KEF Connect app offers only six EQ presets (Default, Movie, Music, Night, Dialogue, and Direct), with no manual equalizer controls. There are no bass/treble or loudness controls either, unless you create a new EQ profile using the app’s Expert mode.

For most content, the Default mode worked best for my tastes, but each preset is enjoyable in its own way. Dialogue mode can improve the intelligibility of TV speech, but it’s also a handy way to improve vocal clarity when listening to Dolby Atmos Music mixes that may push vocals further away.

• Performance score: 5 / 5

KEF XIO soundbar review: DesignImage 1 of 3

The XIO is available in Slate Black (seen here) or Silver Grey fabric finishes (Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)Image 2 of 3

(Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)Image 3 of 3

(Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

• Fully removable grilles, elegant, understated look
• Wall-mountable
• No visible indicators when surface-mounted

From a design perspective, the KEF XIO is a radical departure from the company’s trademark aesthetics, which puts exposed speaker drivers proudly on display. The XIO, by contrast, is demure, hiding all 12 of its drivers behind elegant, splash-proof fabric grilles in Slate Black (seen here) or Silver Grey finishes.

Those grilles cover all but the central top aluminum surface, which houses the bar’s touch controls on one side, a discrete KEF logo on the other, and a covered driver in the middle.

Though it may not scream “KEF,” it’s a smart choice. Soundbars are generally in your line of sight when watching TV, so the fewer visual distractions, the better. Klipsch went loud-and-proud with the drivers on its Cinema series soundbars, and my eyes kept being drawn to their metallic glint. Want to see the XIO’s drivers? Peel away those grilles and, voila.

Though deeper, at 6.5 inches, than many soundbars, the XIO still comes in under three inches tall, which should keep it from blocking the bottom of most TV screens. It also keeps the XIO from sticking too far off your wall when wall-mounted.

Around the back, you’ll find the XIO’s ports, dedicated buttons to reset the speaker and put it in Bluetooth pairing mode, and something we rarely see on soundbars: a physical rocker switch for power. Typically, soundbars are always on, even if they may drop down to a low-power mode when not in use. It’s nice to see the option to completely power a speaker down when you’re going to be away for extended periods.

Many soundbars can be wall-mounted, but in the case of the XIO, it’s a key feature. The speaker automatically detects its orientation, and KEF includes all the hardware you need to get it on a wall. Just be careful — this box is a beast, at 23.1 pounds. Hiding the power and HDMI cable may prove tricky. The HDMI and power ports are very close to the bottom edge of the speaker. And while the included power cable has an L-shaped connector to minimize its protrusion, the included HDMI cable doesn’t. KEF also includes a backlit remote control.

The XIO’s touch controls let you choose your source, set your volume level, mute the sound, and wake the speaker from its low-power state. Beside the controls is a volume meter – a string of little white LEDs. If you wall-mount the XIO, these indicators will be plainly visible, but when sitting on a surface in front of your TV, they’re invisible, and KEF didn’t include a secondary set behind the front grille.

• Design score: 4 / 5

KEF XIO soundbar review: Setup & usability Image 1 of 2

Once connected to Wi-Fi, the XIO's streaming options include AirPlay, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, and Tidal Connect, with specific services available within the KEF Connect app (Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)Image 2 of 2

(Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

• Easy setup and calibration
• KEF Connect app is a work in progress
• Remote could use a rethink

If all you want to do is crank your TV sound, the XIO only takes a few seconds to install. Plug the HDMI cable into the TV, plug the XIO into a power outlet, and flip the power switch on the back panel. As long as you stick with TV, Bluetooth, or Optical sources, you’re good to go.

But don’t stop there. Using the KEF Connect app, you can join the XIO to your Wi-Fi network, which opens up all of the high-quality streaming options like AirPlay, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, and others. It also lets the app configure the XIO, including the room correction feature, which can’t be initiated from the soundbar or the remote.

These steps only take a few extra minutes (more if a firmware update is required). My only complaint is that KEF insists that you create an online account before it lets you do any of this. The rationale is that, should you wish to control the speaker from other devices, an account ensures that all settings are shared between them. In fairness, Sonos, Bose, and many other soundbar companies require the same thing.

Pro tip: Ensure you add TV as a second wake-up source in the preferences section; otherwise, the XIO won’t automatically power up when you turn on your TV.

The KEF Connect app takes some getting used to. It’s divided into five tabs: Home, Remote, Music, EQ settings, and Device/app settings. And yet, it could probably get away with just the Home and EQ/Device settings sections, since the features of the Remote and Music tabs are duplicated on the Home tab.

Having integrated music service access in the app makes sense, but only if it increases convenience and/or sound quality (versus using the service’s standalone app). The potential is there, but KEF’s execution is weak. There’s a very limited number of services available, with Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music being the big omissions. Within each supported service, navigation can be slow as the app populates the available menu items.

Visually, it’s a Spartan experience: Menus are text-only, and album art is presented as tiny thumbnails alongside the playlist, album, or track info. I could chalk this up to KEF’s minimalist aesthetic, but there’s also a lack of a universal search, the single biggest benefit of bringing together music sources in one app.

Having a physical remote is handy. And since KEF’s is an infrared (IR) model (as opposed to Bluetooth or other RF standards), you can use any universal IR learning remote instead (including Logitech’s now-defunct Harmony line). I like that it’s backlit (though just barely) and has an easy-to-use button layout. However, the heart (favorite) button is a bizarre tool. It only lets you pick a favorite function, e.g., Next Source or Set Maximum Volume, and not a favorite album, playlist, or radio station, which you’d normally expect from a favorite button.

I’m also a bit disappointed with the EQ shortcut buttons. For some reason, there are only two, and yet the XIO has six EQ modes to choose from. Why are we limited to just two of our favorites? I think KEF should take a page from Yamaha’s remote control playbook and give us access to all EQ modes.

My biggest critique of the XIO’s usability, however, is the lack of front indicator lights I mentioned earlier. I don’t think you should ever be in the dark when it comes to your soundbar’s selected source or volume level, and unless you consult the KEF Connect app, you won’t know either if you’ve got the speaker setup horizontally. Normally, HDMI-connected soundbars can provide feedback to your TV so that you see an on-screen display of volume level, but this didn’t happen during my time with the XIO.

• Setup & usability score: 3.5 / 5

KEF XIO soundbar review: Value

The XIO's bundled accessories include wall-mounting hardware (Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

• Expensive
• Good for Dolby Atmos, superb for music
• Limited expansion options

Soundbars are, first and foremost, all about getting better TV sound. The KEF XIO delivers on that mission effortlessly, with big, bold, and perfectly clean audio. But it doesn’t perform this role significantly better than lower-priced options, specifically, the Sonos Arc Ultra ($1,099).

You can add a subwoofer (wired or wireless) to the XIO, but unlike the Arc Ultra and many others, you can’t add surrounds, which would significantly increase the XIO’s ability to immerse you in a soundtrack.

Still, if you believe a soundbar should be just as killer for music as it is for movies, the XIO rocks, and I have yet to hear a competitive single-speaker system that can touch its music chops.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Should I buy the KEF XIO?

Section

Notes

Score

Features

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming plus room correction but shy on ports

4 / 5

Performance

Excellent Dolby Atmos and stereo music performance with powerful bass for an all-in-one soundbar

5 / 5

Design

Elegant, fabric-wrapped design, but no alphanumeric LED display

4 / 5

Setup & usability

Easy setup and calibration, but app and remote control could use some work

3.5 / 5

Value

Expensive, but unbeatable when it comes to soundbar music performance

3 / 5

Buy it if...

You want a single speaker that can do it all
The KEF XIO belongs to a new generation of soundbars that don’t need dedicated subwoofers to deliver big, bold bass that you can feel. Whether for movies or music, it’s a full sonic experience.

You need to wall-mount your soundbar
The XIO isn’t just wall-mount compatible, it’s designed from the ground up to be hung below a TV. You’ll get the same sound quality as a horizontal placement and you’ll find everything you need in the box — no optional accessories needed.

You don’t own (or plan to own) multiple external devices that need connections
With no extra HDMI inputs and only a single optical input, the XIO is aimed at those who are content to stream wirelessly or source their audio from a connected TV.

Don't buy it if...

You want to expand
Not only are there no wireless surround speakers for the XIO, but there’s also no good option for making it part of a multiroom sound system. You can add it to Google Home or Apple Home apps, but these are only basic options that lack the power and convenience of Sonos, Denon Home, Bluesound, or Wiim.

Your TV doesn’t have Dolby Atmos
Without any HDMI inputs, you’ll be missing out on the XIO’s spatial audio prowess if your TV can’t pass through Dolby Atmos via HDMI ARC.

You want to play vinyl
Without any kind of analog input, you’ll need a turntable that connects via Bluetooth. That might be convenient, but if you’re spending KEF XIO money on sound, you deserve better than Bluetooth for your record collection.

KEF XIO soundbar: Also consider

KEF XIO

Sonos Arc Ultra

Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus

Samsung HW-Q990F

Price

$2,499.95 / £1,999.00 (around AU$3,765)

$999 / £999 / AU$1,799

$799 / £699 / AU$1,299

$1,999 / £1,699 / AU$2,099

Dimensions (w x h x d)

47.6 x 2.8 x 6.5 inches (1209 x 71.2 x 165mm)

2.95 x 46.38 x 4.35 inches (75 x 1178 x 110.6mm)

27.6 x 2.6 x 3.9in (700 x 65 x 100mm)

Soundbar: 1232 x 70.8 x 138 mm (48.5 x 2.8 x 5.4 inch); Subwoofer: 249 x 251.8 x 249 mm (9.8 x 10.0 x 9.8 inch); Rear speaker: 129.5 x 201.3 x140.4 mm (5.1 x 8.0 x 5.5 inch)

Speaker channels

9.1.4

9.1.4

7.1.4

11.1.4

Connections

HDMI out (with eARC), 3x HDMI 2.1 in, optical digital audio, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-A

1HDMI with eARC, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

HDMI eARC, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-A

1x HDMI out (with eARC), 2x HDMI 2.1 in, optical digital audio, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth

Dolby Atmos/DTS:X

Yes/Yes

Yes/No

Yes/Yes

Yes/Yes

Sonos Arc Ultra

If you’d like to expand your system over time, Sonos’ excellent Arc Ultra ($1,099) offers a similar starting point to the XIO in terms of TV sound and can be expanded with a variety of wireless subs and surrounds. It’s also one of the best multiroom systems you can buy. However, it won't solve the XIO’s lack of inputs, and it lacks features like Tidal Connect and Google Cast.

Read our full Sonos Arc Ultra review

Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus

If a single-speaker Dolby Atmos system is your goal, but you’d like to spend a little less and get a few more connectivity options, Sennheiser’s Ambeo Soundbar Plus is well worth a look. It’s under $2,000, it’s got the most immersive sound I’ve ever heard from a single speaker, and it has tons of inputs, including 2 HDMI ports, an optical input, and an analog input. Like the XIO, it supports Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, 360 Reality Audio, MPEG:H, and can even act as an Alexa-powered smart speaker.

Read our full Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar Plus review

Samsung HW-Q990F

If you want to achieve maximum cinematic immersion and don’t mind dealing with a few extra speakers, Samsung’s HW-Q990F is considered by many to be the best Dolby Atmos home-theater-in-a-box product you can buy, and it’s still $500 less than the XIO. It lacks the XIO’s refined looks with its all-plastic construction, but it delivers stellar spatial performance and includes two HDMI 2.1 inputs.

Read our full Samsung HW-Q990F review

How I tested the KEF XIO soundbar

(Image credit: Future / Simon Cohen)

• Used KEF XIO as main audio system for one week
• Tested in basement media room
• Sources: Apple TV 4K, Nvidia Shield 2019, and streamed music from various apps

I spent a full week with the KEF XIO as my main audio system for watching movies, shows, and music in my basement media room. During that time, I played a variety of Dolby Atmos test clips from movies like No Time To Die, Ford v Ferrari, Mad Max: Fury Road, Dune, and Unbroken, paying special attention to details like dialogue clarity, surround sound, and height channel impact.

I streamed most content from an Apple TV 4K connected via an LG OLED TV, which fed the MK2 from its ARC output, but I also connected an Nvidia Shield TV to an eARC extractor so I could hear the XIO’s treatment of Dolby Atmos in Dolby TrueHD.

I evaluated the effect of the various EQ modes as well as the XIO’s room correction feature.

For music, I used a variety of apps, including Apple Music, Tidal, Qobuz, and Amazon Music, listening to a wide range of genres and formats, like Dolby Atmos Music. Some were played from apps on the Apple TV 4K and Nvidia Shield, while others were streamed wirelessly using AirPlay, Bluetooth, Tidal Connect, and Google Cast. I tested several of these within the KEF Connect app as well.

Read more about how we test

• First reviewed: December 2025

Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor: one-minute review

Cuisinart is a renowned brand in the kitchen appliance space, and the Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor proves why. This food processor appliance offers a 1.1L capacity, providing a reasonable amount of space for everyday use without occupying a large amount of storage space. But don’t let its compact size fool you, this is a powerhouse of an appliance.

The FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor comes with three attachments: a reversible shredding disc (offering fine or medium shredding/grating), a whipping disc for creams, and a sharp chopping blade, which can also be used to purée and emulsify foods or for tasks such as combining pastry. Shredding and chopping take mere seconds, depending on the food type, while this food processor also saves time (and energy) on more tedious tasks, including whipping double cream or blending nuts into butter. We found minimal food to be left unprocessed at the end, or stuck under the disc/blade. Handwashing was fairly easy, too, especially given that the attachments and bowl are dishwasher safe.

(Image credit: Future)

However, results aren’t always even. While this is largely a minor issue, with carrot or courgette gratings being of varied sizes (though still grated), it was more apparent with a couple of tests/ We found that chopping almonds resulted in some being left whole, while others were almost a powder, while puréeing the almonds into a butter results in half of the nuts (those on the bottom half) being more processed than the other.

The power this food processor packs seems to be part of the issue, as its speed can let down its precision at times. You have little control over this power, too, as the FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor only comes with two main functions: on and pulse. Pulse gives you a bit more control, but we’d have loved to have had the option to increase or decrease the power level as needed. We’d also have liked the inclusion of a slicing attachment, which we’ve seen with similar products, such as the Magimix 4200XL.

These issues are relatively minor, however, and the Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor is overall a superb kitchen appliance. And, with a £70 price tag, you’d be hard pressed to find a food processor that offers as high quality for such good value.

Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor: price and availability

• £70 at Cuisinart UK or $89.95 for US model (FP-5)
• Unavailable in Australia
• Available at third-party retailers, including Amazon and Lakeland
• Regular discounts can see it dropped to around £50

The Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor (Model FP5U) is available in the UK for £69.99 at Cuisinart UK, while the US equivalent model (FP-5) is $89.95. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, this food processor isn’t available in Australia.

This places this food processor firmly in the budget range, and the quality on offer for that price tag is exceptional, especially considering that there are regular discounts on this appliance. It doesn’t offer the variety of functions we see with some of the premium products on our best food processors list, such as the Breville the Paradice 16 ($699.95 / £579.95 / AU$899) or Nutribullet Triple Prep System ($244.99 / £229.99 / AU$349.95), but it’s considerably more affordable.

So, if you want one of the food processors that does the basics well, you can’t go wrong with the Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor. If you need a slightly larger capacity, but don’t want to fork out for a premium appliance, it’s worth considering the Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro FP8 food processor, priced at £125/ $99.95.

• Value score: 5/5

Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor: specifications

Review model

FP5U

Number of functions

2

Functions

On and pulse

Number of attachments

3

Attachments

Reversible shredding disc (fine shredding/medium shredding), whipping disc, and chopping blade

Smart control

No

Rated power

N/A

Capacity

1.1L work bowl

Dimensions

5.9in (D) x 13.3in (W) x 8.1in (H) / 150mm (D) x 338mm (W) x 206mm (H)

Dishwasher-safe

Yes (on top rack only)

Guarantee

3 years

Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor: design

• Storage hub for chopping blade
• BladeLock system for safe handling
• Compact size
• No control over power
• No slicing attachment

Out of the box, the Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor comes with a compact, silver housing base, a 1.1L work bowl, a lid featuring a feed tube, a pusher for that tube, a stem adapter, a metal chopping blade, a reversible shredding disc (for fine and medium shredding), a whipping disc, and a storage hub for the blades. On the outside of the base are two black buttons: on and pulse/off.

What’s immediately striking is how compact the appliance is. As such, it doesn’t offer a huge capacity, but plenty for those preparing smaller batches of food. The appliance is fairly straightforward to assemble, with the work bowl locking into the base, and then your disc or blade locking into the accompanying stem adaptor, which is then locked into the work bowl. Cuisinart’s BladeLock system ensures the blade or disc remains locked in place when processing or pouring, offering an extra layer of safety. The lid then locks into the work bowl, with the pusher slipping easily (but tightly) into the lid’s food tube.

(Image credit: Future)

Our main issue with the setup was that, while the accompanying user manual is quite thorough, it’s mostly text-based, with very few images, making it initially challenging to ensure we’d set up the appliance correctly before its first use, which is critical when sharp blades are involved. We appreciated the storage hub that allows you to safely store the chopping blades and stem adapter, and fits into the workbowl but wish it could fit the discs, too.

The Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor’s two buttons make it easy to use, with Pulse used for short bursts of power and On for consistent processing. However, this food processor packs a punch, so while your food can produce results quickly, there’s a fine line between it potentially becoming overprocessed. At one point in our testing, the machine began shaking back and forth on our countertop with the power, and some grated carrot jumped out of the feeding tube as we tried to add more.

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It’s also incredibly loud; we found it registered a 99 decibel reading when chopping onions, comparable to the volume of a boiler room. We also wish a slicing attachment were included, as this is a common function for food processors and would have offered slightly more variety.

Overall, we found this to be a safety-conscious food processor that is easy to use, has a sleek and compact design, and values basic practicality over extra bells and whistles.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor: performance

• Extremely powerful…
• Almost too powerful at times
• Shreds, chops, whips, and more
• Speedy (but sometimes uneven) results

We began testing using the chopping blade to chop a medium-sized red onion. While the user manual includes a user guide for different food types, suggesting the tool, function, and directions to use for each, it offers few instructions for vegetables, bar a suggestion to cut raw ingredients into even, 1cm pieces before inserting them into the work bowl. This user manual also doesn’t suggest optimal quantities of food (or any quantities).

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We were taken aback by how quickly the appliance chopped the onion in its consistent On mode. It took a few seconds (less than 10) for the onion to be entirely chopped, with no unchopped ingredient left under the blade, and the result was largely even cuts, with some outlying larger pieces – though not enough to present an issue. The speed was impressive; however, the power means you should use the Pulse feature for chopping, to have more control and prevent overprocessing.

Chopping bread with this blade, too, produced excellent results. As the user manual suggested, we tore three slices of multi-seed bread into pieces before using Pulse (for just one second) three or four times, before setting the processing to On. It took between five and 10 seconds to produce evenly chopped bread crumbs, with no bread caught underneath the blade.

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Chopping almonds, however, produced less consistent results. We added 250g of whole almonds to the work bowl before using the Pulse setting to break up the nuts. It took around 25 one-second pulses to break up the almonds, but we found that while some of the almonds were chopped well, others in the same bowl were either a powder-like consistency or still whole.

After checking the consistency, we pressed the On button to continue processing to make almond butter. In around 10 seconds, the chopped almonds transformed into almond flour, but it took around six minutes to produce butter. The issue with this was that the bottom half of the work bowl’s produce had become butter, but the top half hadn’t, and wasn’t getting access to the blades as evenly, even when we used a spatula to scrape down the edges (when the appliance was off). The result was very hard butter at the bottom, with smoother butter nearer the top.

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We did, however, find the Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor a dream when combining shortcrust pastry with this chopping blade. After adding our flour and butter to the bowl, we pulsed the mixture around 20 times before adding a couple of tablespoons of water and setting it to On.

It took around 45 seconds for the pastry to come together, resulting in perfectly mixed pastry. You need to keep a close eye on the appliance when using it for this task, however, as the speed and power of the machine means it your dough can quickly become overworked.

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We next tried the reversible shredding disc, which offers two options: fine shredding or medium shredding. You choose your shred by inserting the disc with the corresponding side (there is small writing that indicates which side is which) facing upwards. We started with a standard courgette on the fine shredding side. A full courgette wouldn’t fit through the feeding tube, so we sliced it vertically down the middle to fit. With the food processor on, we were able to slowly insert the courgette through the tube and into the spinning shredding disc.

The appliance shreds quickly, but you don’t feel it pulling the ingredients in at an unsafe speed. Instead, the pressure you apply feels largely in your control. In less than 20 seconds, or courgette was shredded. While the result was well-shredded pieces, with minimal residue left on the lid, the pieces weren’t all evenly sized: some pieces were shorter and others longer.

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Our results with shredding carrots on the medium shred blade were similar. Again, we had to cut our two carrots down the middle vertically to fit them in the tube, but they grated in less than 20 seconds – though some carrot pieces shot out of the tube as we added more. The carrot was grated well, but again, the pieces weren’t consistently even with each other. Much like with the courgette, this isn’t a huge issue in the cooking process, but it is something we’ve seen achieved by competitors.

Finally, we tested the whipping disc with 240ml of double cream. Whipping cream can be a real chore, but this food processor produced perfectly whipped cream (that we could hold upside down without drippage) in around 40 to 50 seconds. While some residue was stuck under the blade and not entirely mixed in, we were pleased overall with the results.

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Overall, the Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor offers high-quality results, but not necessarily precision. Its power is its greatest strength, as it offers tremendous speed, but it is also its biggest weakness, as it can easily overwork foods if you’re not careful.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Should you buy the Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor?Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor: score card

Attribute

Notes

Score

Value

This food processor may not come with the variety of functions seen with premium products, but offers high quality for a budget price tag.

5/5

Design

Its compact size means this food processor won't need a lot of storage room. It's also incredibly easy to use, but we do wish we had more control over its power levels.

4.5/5

Performance

This is a powerhouse food processor, shredding, whipping, and chopping with impressive speed, but this does come somewhat at the cost of precision.

4.5/5

Buy it if

You want a quality, budget food processor

For its budget price tag, this food processor offers quality results. While it can only perform a handful of (fairly basic) functions, it offers excellent value for those who want an affordable food processor to handle day-to-day food prep.

You value speed over precision

This food processor offers a huge amount of power, which means it produces its results with impressive speed. The pieces may not always be even, and you need to keep an eye on it to ensure it doesn’t overwork your food, but if speed is the most important factor to you, this is a great option.

You want to save on storage space

The Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor is surprisingly compact, taking up minimal room. So, if you’re struggling for storage space, this is an excellent choice.

Don't buy it if

You want a wide variety of functions

The Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor can shred, purée, chop, whip, and emulsify, but doesn’t come with some of the functions we’ve seen in competitors, such as slicing. If you want an all-singing-all-dancing food processor, this may not be the one for you.

You want control over power levels

While this is a powerful appliance, it can be too powerful at times, and there’s little control over it. If you want a food processor that has more options for power levels, therefore giving you more control over the final results, then you may be better considering an alternative.

You need a large capacity food processor

This food processor’s 1.1L work bowl offers decent capacity for smaller households or for those who plan to use it for smaller batches of food prep, but if you have a bigger household or need to make larger batches, we advise considering a food processor with a larger capacity bowl.

Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L Food Processor: also consider

If the Cuisinart FlexPrep 1.1L isn't quite the right food processor for you, here are two alternatives that are worth considering:

Breville The Paradice 16

This premium food processor delivers the precision that the Cuisinart FlexPrep lacks, albeit for several times the price. It's incredibly well made and has an attachment for virtually every kitchen job, from peeling to whisking and everything in between. Highly recommended if your budget will stretch this far.

Read our full Breville The Paradice 16 review

Nutribullet Triple Prep System

Three appliances in one (a food processor, jug blender, and smoothie maker) for much less than buying them separately. Works particularly well for larger quantities, but not so well with small servings, and the pitcher's blades can't be removed for cleaning, which is a shame.

Read our full Nutribullet Triple Prep System review

Edifier S880DB MKII: Two-minute review

As the best small-format active speakers go, the Edifier S880DB MKII are pretty swell. They go toe-to-toe with a great many other low-to-mid-range hi-fi pairs, thanks to a prodigious array of forward-thinking inputs both analog and digital. There’s also a subwoofer output to fully extend the practicality of these little (and surprisingly loud) actives, and a gesture-controlled remote puck to access a bunch of different functions, from input switching and volume control to handling various EQ sound profiles.

Excellent as the S880DB MKII are on paper, between their swish aesthetics and versatile, future-friendly control options, small frustrations abound with the remote control’s reaction time and bass-representation issues inherent to the small-bookshelf format.

These frustrations are just that: small. But they’re made all the larger when other active speaker models in Edifier’s roster, namely the excellent MR5 monitors, are simultaneously cheaper and better-performing.

Ultimately, though, the Edifier S880DB MKII do a lot of things right, and as many things well. I’m thusly inclined to score it kindly, in recognition of what it’s achieved over what it’s competing against. After all, it’s a MKII, and well and truly a well-upgraded successor in a competitive niche.

(Image credit: Future / James Grimshaw)Edifier S880DB MKII review: Price & release date

• $449.99 / £335.99 / AU$595.99
• Launched on 4th September, 2025

Edifier is a key figure in the budget audio space, with a pretty wide-ranging roster of audio bits and bobs that punch well above their figurative weight. I can prove it, too: I was happy enough to review Edifier’s new MR5 monitor speakers some months ago, and happened to think mighty well of their performance (and even mightier of this performance against their frankly astonishing budget price point).

These speakers, though, exist in a different paradigm to the musician-oriented active listening monitors that the MR5 very much are. These are the Edifier S880DB MKII, a second-gen successor set of multidisciplinary active bookshelf speakers that ably straddle a broad set of use cases. Bedroom hi-fi system? Small desk-friendly active monitors? Subsidiary speaker set for your small cinema system? Why not!

This versatility is courtesy of some powerful internal amplification, some smart user-friendly features, and some future-friendly upgrades that make them more able (and better-sounding) than ever before. But do they make the grade, and do their updated features do them justice?

(Image credit: Future / James Grimshaw)Edifier S880DB MKII review: Specs

Type

Active

Tweeters

1.25-inch titanium diaphragm dome tweeters

Woofers

3.75-inch long-throw aluminum diaphragm mid-low drivers

Frequency response

50Hz - 40kHz

Inputs

RCA-in x2; USB-C; Optical; Coaxial

Outputs

3.5mm TRS subwoofer out

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 5.3; LDAC, SBC

Output (total)

88W RMS

Extras

RCA-to-RCA cable; RCA-to-3.5mm aux cable; USB-C-to-USB-C cable; 5-pin DIN speaker connector cable; remote control puck

Edifier S880DB MKII review: Features

• Multifarious inputs, plus sub output
• Hi-res Bluetooth LDAC connectivity
• Handy remote-control surface

The S880DB MKII are a highly connectible set of small-form active bookshelf speakers, designed to settle suavely into a wide variety of different at-home listening scenarios. Being a successor model to Edifier’s OG S880DB, there’s a lot of familiar stuff in here. But that familiar stuff is part and parcel of a pretty comprehensive upgrade, that brings some improved acoustics and techy quality-of-life updates.

The biggest auditory updates come from the new drivers. The 1-inch titanium dome tweeter from the first model has been sized up to 1.25-inch, with a bigger voice coil to match. The mid-bass driver has also had a ground-up redesign, with the impact of more low end, any of which is a gift in small-format speakers such as these.

With their small size, large 88W RMS output and surprisingly broad frequency range, the S880DB MKII are excellent low-profile partners for a home office PC system – and they’ll slide just as effortlessly into a multi-faceted living room hi-fi or home theatre system, with especial thanks to an expansive set of inputs.

On the wired side of the equation, we have two separate channels of RCA input, a Toslink optical in, coax, and an all-new USB-C connection – the latter of which enjoys its own DAC architecture, so you can connect a laptop directly to it without any dongle-y jiggery-pokery. Sadly, this USB-C port doesn’t also provide the option of 5V power – when USB ports are a commodity at your desk, a spare port for powering peripherals (foreshadowing alert!) would be a welcome gift. Also new is a 3.5mm TRS output for optional connection to a subwoofer unit, giving what’s nominally a small-form set of active bookshelf speakers a great deal more oomph potential.

On the wireless side of the equation, the Edifier S880DB MKII are handily equipped with Bluetooth 5.3, up from the previous version’s 5.1, and now supports Sony’s hi-res LDAC codec, too. On-board you’ll find the requisite rear-mounted treble, bass and volume controls, and within, a set of five EQ presets for different sound profiles: ‘Classic’, ‘Monitor’, ‘Dynamic’, ‘Vocal’ and ‘Customized’.

A new 2.4GHz wireless remote-control puck eschews black plastic and clicky buttons in favour of a silver-and-white gesture-control surface. It senses your hand on approach, and can be used to switch audio inputs, access Bluetooth, control the volume and switch between the aforementioned sound profiles. Any and all changes are heralded by a cheery little vibration from within the puck itself. The MKII is also tweakable via Edifier’s ConneX app, which gives you access to the same controls as the remote, and a six-band EQ with which to customize the, er, ‘Customized’ sound profile.

A small OLED screen on the front displays the necessaries – defaulting to your current audio input, but also showing you volume changes and differing sound profiles as you cycle through. It’s subtle, but subtly futuristic. And I like it.

• Features score: 5/5

(Image credit: Future / James Grimshaw)Edifier S880DB MKII review: Sound quality

• Excellent high-end clarity
• Exceedingly powerful for their size
• Unfortunate handling of low end

The Edifier S880DB MKII are loud, and impressively so for the format. I dared, hubristically, to test them at full volume while sat at my desk – a crime for which my ears paid dearly, and for which I undoubtedly owe my neighbour an apology bottle of wine.

When they’re not being loud, they’re being remarkably consistent. Whether listening via RCA-in or Bluetooth, there are no discernible shortcomings on the fidelity front. As for character, these speakers are decent all-rounders, but particularly and delightfully tactile in the upper register. Knik by Portugal. The Man is a delight of swishy cymbals, woozy guitars and stacked chest- and head-voice vocals. It’d be fair to say, generally, that the S880DB MKII speakers are extremely vocal-forward, a function of those tight mid-range drivers and titanium tweeters.

That overall handiness, bolstered by high-end tactility, trades off against an under-representative low end. Knik ends with an explosion of fuzzed-out guitars and blooming bass, all lost to a set of speakers that don’t have the stature to platform them properly. At least, this was the first impression I had of the S880DB MKII, predicated on an initial listen through the automatically applied ‘Classic’ sound profile.

Cycling through other modes revealed a decent wedge more boom on all fronts, the more neutral ‘Monitor’ mode immediately the most musical to my ears. The ‘Dynamic’ mode adds a little treble-y urgency, giving a little more love to transients in the process, while the ‘Vocal’ mode seems to target upper mids, doing exactly what you’d expect it to (with a little compensatory ducking of lower mids). Personally, I don’t see why the Classic sound profile is the default option, when it’s so clearly the worst of the bunch.

Better as the other modes sound, all bear out the same essential conclusion that bass isn’t the S880DB MKII’s strong suit – a fundamental truth of the speakers’ small form. This isn’t to say they’re entirely without punch, though. Across all EQ profiles, they’re tuned exactly as you’d expect a jack-of-all-trades hi-fi device, with plenty of presence for hi-hats, voices, and kick-drum clicks, the latter of which grab you enough to insinuate the oomph you’d otherwise miss much more dearly. And if you crank them, you get plenty of somewhat-indistinct bassy bloom from their ported rear faces.

Of course, Edifier are deeply aware of this form-borne shortcoming, and have even made adjustments towards improving it in this second go-around – including greater low-end extension and a new subwoofer out port. I didn’t have an active subwoofer with which to pair the S880DB MKII, but I’d wager that most potential buyers of such speakers don’t either. Besides which, I wouldn’t want to colour my straight opinion of these things with something ‘else’. All the same, it’s a credit to Edifier that they’re working with the size, rather than against it!

I oughtn’t have spent so long on the lower end of the S880DB MKII’s frequency spectrum, not when there’s so much to love a little further up the graph. Queens of the Stone Age’s Everybody Knows That You’re Insane is an explosive delight, jangly guitars and croon-adjacent vocals giving in to gratifyingly grabby power chords and pingy snares.

Getdown Services’ Blooze, meanwhile, is right at home on these speakers, with a boxy, idiosyncratic mix that attains a woolly, three-dimensional presence on my desk – and brings out the best of the S880DB MKII’s miasmic-bass potential in the process. These are truly some high-definition performers, bringing some densely detailed magic where it counts for most.

• Sound quality score: 3.5/5

(Image credit: Future / James Grimshaw)Edifier S880DB MKII review: Design

• Aesthetically delightful little things
• Breezy to set up and use
• Remote is cool but slow

The Edifier S880DB MKII are incredibly pleasing to behold, with their two-tone, multi-textured, veneer-sandwiched visual design. There are two colorways on offer: one a black-and-walnut affair, the other a white-and-pine-y sorta deal. My review sample matches Nordic pine vibes with a leatherette finish to make something wholly more living-room friendly than other bookshelf-style speakers, many of which fall prey to the same sort-of boring anthracite proclivities, and stick out like lead-stained thumbs accordingly.

The OLED panel on the front runs the risk of being gaudy, but is understatedly smart in execution. It doesn’t clamor for your attention, and only ever shows you whatever you need to know at the time.

As for the practical side of things, it’s as easy as it could be to situate these speakers. Installation is simply a matter of connecting one speaker to the other via the supplied DIN cable, connecting power and making the various audio connections you require. The S880DB MKII have two RCA-ins, USB-C connectivity and Bluetooth 5.3, so you’re unlikely to struggle, though some may understandably miss the convenience of a HDMI ARC option for their telly systems.

Realistically, the biggest challenge you’ll face setting these up is sorting your wireless connections – but Edifier’s made that a breeze, too. You put the speakers in search mode by touching the dedicated Bluetooth space on the remote, and they pop up a moment later in your device’s list of available connections. That’s it. With Bluetooth connected, you can stream audio and access the ConneX app, which also makes messing with your speaker settings breezy as can bee…zy. [Careful now. Ed.]

The only shortcoming on the design front is the remote – and this is in spite of its relatively inspired gesture-control schema. Every time you go to use it, it needs a moment to wake up first; what could be a smooth one-touch experience becomes a couple of frustrated jabs before your request is recognized. It’s hard to design around this, since the alternative is that the remote’s battery drains so much quicker, but it’s still a minor hiccup in an otherwise butter-smooth setup.

If only you could wire it straight to the speakers via a handy 5V-powered USB-C port…

• Design score: 4.5/5

(Image credit: Future / James Grimshaw)Edifier S880DB MKII review: Value

• Comprehensive feature-set is great
• Performance is better in other, cheaper Edifiers
• Buy these if you value convenience over sound

The question of value is a difficult one to answer with respect to the S880DB MKII. They’re undeniably an excellent prospect as desktop speakers or a small-room sound system, irrespective of their cost; their connectibility, ease of use and perfectly serviceable sound performance make them functionally excellent. But cost is relative, and something else entirely.

The RRP of these speakers is $449.99 / £335.99 / AU$595.99 – not a lot in a world of high-valued mid-range hi-fis and break-the-bank audiophile speaker systems, but still a fair whack to put down (even if what you’re getting is a completed integrated, powered audio system). It’s especially difficult to judge fairly when another set of Edifier speakers – the aforementioned MR5 monitors – are simultaneously cheaper and, to my ears, far better.

The question of value, then, is a question of what value you place on certain things: convenience, aesthetics, fit. The Edifier S880DB MKII are compact, easy to place, easy to look at and handily controllable with a wireless remote – all things that could justify a little uplift in price, but only to those of you that value them.

For me, this is hard. I genuinely like these speakers, and I think they’re pretty faultless for most of the things you reasonably expect from them. But when I enjoy another set of Edifier speakers far more, which cost quite a bit less, it’s difficult to say this is a good-value purchase.

• Value score: 3/5

(Image credit: Future / James Grimshaw)Should you buy the Edifier S880DB MKII?

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

Fully kitted out, with six different input options and a new sub out for better bass; better speakers and internals than their predecessor.

5/5

Sound quality

Excellent mid-to-high-end communicators, with bright, clear and vocal-forward articulation. Bass is lacking in some sound profiles.

3.5/5

Design

Hard to fault aesthetically, they're unreasonably fetching on one’s desk. Easy setup but remote can feel laggy.

4.5/5

Value

Hard to say these are great value – if only due to the fact that Edifier have a much more capable, and cheaper, set of active monitors on their roster.

3/5

Buy them if...

You value convenience
The Edifier S880DB MKII are hugely convenient active speakers, with a remote control that makes it so easy to switch between the wide variety of inputs – both analog and digital – on offer.

You like your speakers prominently displayed
My favorite thing about the Edifier S880DB MKII is the design. My pair were a dashing cream-and-pine affair, but the black-and-walnut dealies look The Business, too.

Don't buy them if...

You want a fully representative soundstage
The Edifier S880DB MKII’s stereo image is great, but, despite its wide frequency range, it struggles with low-end representation. You’ll want to use that subwoofer output!

You’re not too fussed about a remote control
The S880DB MKII’s remote is a nifty way to access a bunch of helpful controls – but if you’re not too bothered about wireless control, Edifier’s MR5 monitors provide a lot more bang for a little less buck.

Edifier S880DB MKII: Also consider

Edifier S880DB MKII

Edifier MR5

Kanto Ren

Type

Active

Active

Active

Price

$449.99 / £335.99 / AUS $595.99

$349.99 / £279.99 (approx AU$570)

$599 / £599 (around AU$1,199)

Tweeters

1.25-inch titanium diaphragm dome tweeters

1-inch silk dome tweeter

1-inch silk dome tweeters

Woofers

3.75-inch long-throw aluminium diaphragm mid-low drivers

5-inch woofer, 3.75-inch mid driver

5.25-inch aluminium concave cone

Frequency response

50Hz - 40kHz

46Hz - 40kHz

50Hz - 22kHz

Inputs

RCA-in x2, USB-C, Optical (Toslink), Coaxial, Bluetooth 5.3

Dual XLR, dual TRS, RCA, 3.5mm aux, Bluetooth 6.0

HDMI ARC with CEC, USB-C, Optical (TOSLINK), Bluetooth 5.3. RCA, 3.5 mm aux

Outputs

3.5mm TRS subwoofer out

3.5mm headphone out

RCA subwoofer out

Bluetooth

Bluetooth 5.3: LDAC, SBC

Bluetooth 6.0 (two devices): LDAC, SBC

Bluetooth 5.3: AAC, SBC

Output (total)

88W RMS

110W RMS

100W RMS

Extras

RCA-to-RCA cable, RCA-to-3.5mm aux cable, USB-C-to-USB-C cable, 5-pin DIN speaker connector cable, remote control puck, power cable

x1 3.5mm to 3.5mm aux cable, 1x RCA to 3.5mm aux cable, power cable

Remote control, 2x magnetic grilles, power cable, speaker wire, rubber feet

Kanto Ren
Kanto’s Ren speakers are a multiferous hi-fi delight, with a hugely musical sound profile and a peerless level of connectibility. They’re a bit pricier, but that extra cost gets you HDMI ARC as well as some nifty internals, nifty bass representation and even niftier living-room-friendly aesthetic.
Read more in our full Kanto Ren review

Edifier MR5
You don’t have to spend much money to get a set of Edifier speakers with more overall oomph. The Edifier MR5 active monitor speakers are aimed more towards music and music-making than the S880DB MKII’s broad remit – sounding bigger and bolder, but losing some small conveniences in the process.
Read our full Edifier MR5 review here

How I tested the Edifier S880DB MKII

• Tested for 3 weeks
• Used in attic office, as primary desktop listening speakers
• Predominantly tested using audio output from a Universal Audio Volt 4 audio interface, and Bluetooth transmission from a Samsung Galaxy S23 FE

The Edifier S880DB MKII found their home on my attic office’s desk, as a primary pair of monitor speakers for my work setup.

They received audio via RCA-in, from my trusty Universal Audio Volt 4 interface; I also tested the USB-C input directly from my HP Pavilion 15 laptop, and Bluetooth connectivity using my Samsung Galaxy S23 FE smartphone.

Over four weeks, I rotated through some new and familiar artists on Spotify and in my personal digital music library, to get a feel for the S880DB MKII in different musical contexts.

First reviewed: December 2025

Read more about how we test at TechRadar

Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand: Two-minute review

It was a surprise to many fans of Nanoleaf's popular smart-lighting products when the brand expanded into wellness, releasing a selection of devices including the Nanoleaf LED face mask and 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand.

Given its experience in making some of the best smart lights, it makes sense that the brand should know what it's doing when it comes to light therapy, and based on my experience so far, it’s best demonstrated by the new light wand.

Offering six treatments (anti-aging, acne, repair, soothing, heating and cooling), the Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand is a veritable facial in your pocket, clad in a stylish sage green and weighing just 201g. I’ve been using it two or three times a week for five weeks at the time of writing this review, and I can already tell that it’s working well for me, and that’s not just because the treatment itself is better.

Specs

Weight

201g

Dimensions

187 x 40 x 55mm (L x W x H)

Temperature

Heating Temperature: 38±3℃

Cooling Temperature: 15±3℃

Wavelengths

Red + NIR: 630nm + 850nm

Blue: 460nm

There are three key reasons why I prize my Nanoleaf light wand over and above the brand’s LED face mask, which I enjoyed, albeit with some reservations.

Firstly, the device is lightweight and very portable, making it an excellent travel companion. This is something I also appreciated about Nanoleaf’s silicone face mask, especially in comparison to the bulky and rigid Shark Cryoglow, and the handheld wand amps up the convenience by being portable enough to stash in a toiletries bag and lasting up to three hours on a single charge.

Each treatment lasts just four minutes, with Nanoleaf recommending two to three sessions per week, meaning the wand can comfortably go weeks without charging, too. It takes three hours to recharge via USB-C, so it’s plenty convenient even if you're traveling.

The second reason I’m drawn back to the Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand over its competition in the face-mask market is its versatility. To use the wand, you glide its light panel and metallic face across your skin in a circular motion, choosing one of its six presets depending on your needs.

Each preset is paired with a different combination of temperature, LEDs, and vibration, which I’ve detailed below. Each setting can be adjusted to one of three intensity settings, though I’d always recommend sticking with the factory settings.

Treatment

Light therapy

Temperature

Vibration

Intensity (default)

Anti-aging

Red Light + NIR

Heating

Y

3

Acne

Blue Light

None

Y

3

Repair

Red Light + NIR

Cooling

N

3

Soothe

N

Heating

Y

3

Cooling

N

Cooling

N

1

Heating

N

Heating

N

1

Much like the Shark Cryoglow, there’s a cooling element around the light panel, except here this effect can be used on your whole face rather than just your under-eye area.

Cryotherapy treatments can help to constrict blood vessels under your skin, reducing redness, puffiness and inflammation and helping to tighten pores and improve circulation; all things my acne-prone skin can benefit from.

However, it’s not just cooling that can maximize the benefits of light therapy; some modes instead utilize a heating effect, which can help to loosen debris and cleanse the skin, reduce tension and even stimulate skin regeneration according to some research.

Neither heating nor cooling is too intense, with the former reaching up to 42C and the latter at a lowest temperature of 12C, meaning both treatments can be enjoyed as a relaxing step of your skincare routine.

That’s an excellent segue into the final feather in the Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand’s cap, which is the fact that you can use it to apply products to your skin as part of your daily routine.

I loved starting my nightly skincare routine with a round of heating to help open my pores and clear my skin of the day’s grime, and relax myself for bedtime, applying my various lotions and potions and massaging them into the skin while treating it with heat, light and massaging vibrations.

Personally, I think this is what has made all the difference for me (and my skin!) compared to Nanoleaf’s LED-only face mask; my skin is a lot clearer, and after a slightly painful few days where it seemed my acne worsened and came to the fore, weeks down the line it’s settling and looking clearer than it has since I was using Shark’s Cryoglow every day.

(Image credit: Future)

While I love these three benefits, none of this is to say Nanoleaf’s 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand is perfect. One major design flaw is that you should never look directly at these LEDs, yet it’s really easy during use to slip or misplace the wand and blast bright lights straight into your eyes. Of course this can be remedied with eye masks or keeping them closed, but I personally don’t find jabbing blindly at my face with a hard surface particularly relaxing.

Also noteworthy is that, much like the brand’s face mask, the light wavelengths on offer still aren’t quite within peak performance based on currently available scientific studies; its blue light emits at 460nm versus the recommended 415nm and near-infrared (NIR) at 850nm versus 830nm. Thankfully, though, red light bucks the trend with its 630nm output vs 633nm peak performance.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Nanoleaf’s product isn’t effective; it just means that more premium products that align more closely with scientifically backed peak-performance levels might be better, and the results more noticeable.

As I always caveat when reviewing these products, the science behind light therapy is still in its infancy, and my review experience can be described as anecdotal at best. Still, I have noticed some moderate improvements which, while non-permanent, are helping me manage my adult acne.

(Image credit: Future)Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand review: Price and availability

• Price: $99 / £99 / AU$159.99
• Affordable alternative to masks, best price option for wands

At its list price, Nanoleaf’s 6-in-1 LED Light Therapy Wand is an excellent budget-friendly alternative to a full face mask, and even offers some benefits that make it a better choice overall.

Even when compared to other skin-therapy wands, Nanoleaf stands out as a uniquely affordable offering. There are cheaper LED-only wands, yes, and there are similarly priced cooling/heating products at similar price points, but not many (if any) that can do both, and certainly not so affordably.

Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand review: scorecard

Category

Comment

Score

Value

At this price, it's better value than most (if not all) budget-friendly LED masks and most wands.

5/5

Design

Handheld, easily portable and stylish enough to leave out on your vanity.

4.5/5

Performance

Light wavelengths aren’t optimal but slightly improved upon Nanoleaf’s facemask, plus added heating/cooling features improve efficacy.

4/5

Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand: Should I buy it?Buy it if...

You’re looking for a travel-friendly light-therapy device

Easily slipped in a travel bag and lightweight, this is an excellent travel companion and alternative to a bulkier or unwieldy mask.

You’re on a budget

The Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand is a great budget option, especially if you can find it on sale.

Don't buy it if...

You want peak power and performance

With some of the light therapies falling outside of recommended wavelengths, you’re not getting peak performance from this mask, though it’s by no means bad.

You're nervous of eye strain

If you're really careful, you can avoid accidental blasts of LEDs to your eyes, but I found it hard to relax and ensure that I benefitted from the treatments without the occasional slip.

(Image credit: Future)How I tested the Nanoleaf 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand

I used Nanoleaf’s 6-in-1 Light Therapy Wand for five weeks, primarily trialling its acne treatment, which is my primary skin concern. However I also used its anti-aging setting for a fortnight for good measure, having tried other products against which I could benchmark its effectiveness.

I’ve been testing beauty devices for four years, considering everything from product design and functionality to performance, affordability and any available medical research to assess their efficacy and value for customers. With this particular product, I considered everyday use-cases like travel, charging and beauty routines, researched optimal light wavelength compared to the product’s stated output, and the price and availability of the device to come to a decision on its overall score.

First reviewed December 2025

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Philips Hue Essential: two-minute review

Philips Hue Essential bulbs are a more affordable version of the company's standard smart lights, and they perform incredibly well considering they're less than half the price. There are a few limitations, though. For example, Philips Hue Essential bulbs offer a maximum brightness of **803**CHECK*** lumens, whereas standard Philips Hue White & Color Ambiance bulbs range from 800 to 1,600 lumens.

In most other respects, the two are very similar, and during my tests there was only one clear instance where the standard bulb really outshone the Essential version.

The Philips Hue Essential bulb's color reproduction was impressive (Image credit: Future)

To see how the two would compare, I set up a pair of lamps – one with a Philips Hue Essential bulb, and the other with an 800-lumen Philips Hue White & Color Ambiance bulb. I added them to the same room in the Philips Hue app, which would enable me to control them simultaneously, and directly compare and contrast their output.

During most of the tests I ran, it was difficult to spot any difference between the two. Both were equally responsive, and produced colors that were identical to my naked eye when I switched between scenes. According to Signify (the company behind the Philips Hue brand), Essential bulbs use different color-matching technology to regular Hue lights; but personally, I had a hard time telling the difference.

Having said that, I did notice a dark band at the top of the Essential bulb, which wasn't present on the premium bulb. This was most apparent with purple and blue light. Note that it isn't something you'll notice if you're using the bulb in a ceiling light, nor in a table lamp, and therefore is unlikely to be a deal-breaker unless you're exceptionally picky.

A dark "halo" is sometimes visible around the top of the Philips Hue Essential bulb (Image credit: Future)

The two were equally bright (as expected), although if I'd used a higher-output White & Color Ambiance bulb, then it would have been appreciably brighter.

However, there's one important difference that you should be aware of, particularly if you're looking for smart bulbs that will produce a natural-looking sunrise and sunset to help you wake up feeling refreshed, or to create subtle ambient lighting in your living room.

With both bulbs dialled down to their dimmest setting, the Hue Essential bulb was much brighter than the more expensive White & Color Ambiance model, as you can see in the photo below. That's because the Hue Essential bulb can only be dimmed to 2% of its maximum brightness, whereas the regular bulb can drop to just 0.2%.

(Image credit: Future)

I also found that the Essential bulb tended to show a slightly warmer cast, due to its narrower white light spectrum (2,200–6,500K compared to 1,000-20,00K for a regular Hue bulb). Depending on your preferred light temperature, the difference could be apparent if you use the two different types of bulbs in close proximity,

I wouldn't mix and match regular Hue and Hue Essential bulbs within the same room. However, they're an excellent option for those wanting to setup a Philips Hue system but have previously been intimidated by the price. They're also great if you're looking to extend your existing system to more rooms in your home, without splashing too much cash.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Philips Hue Essential: price and availability

• Much cheaper than regular Philips Hue bulbs
• Even more affordable when bought as a multipack
• You may also want a Philips Hue Bridge

The Philips Hue Essential range is designed to be an accessible entry point into the world of smart lighting, with the bulbs coming in at a much cheaper price than standard Philips Hue ones.

One Philips Hue Essential bulb (either screw or bayonet) costs $24.99 / £19.99 (about AU$40). If you want several, you can save money by opting for a multipack. A twin-pack costs $44.99 / £32.99 (about AU$70), and a four-pack comes in at $59.99 / £49.99 (about AU$90).

For comparison, a twin-pack of regular 800-lumen Philips Hue White & Color Ambiance bulbs costs $98.99 / £84.99 / AU$149.25, and a four-pack is $185.99 / £169.99 / AU$290.50. That's the starting price for a maximum brightness of 800 lumens; brighter bulbs cost even more.

The Philips Hue Essential bulb (left) has a slightly warmer cast than the regular Philips Hue White & Color Ambiance bulb on maximum brightness (800 lumens) (Image credit: Future)

There's another potential cost to consider, though. Although you can control the color and brightness of your Philips Hue Essential lights using Bluetooth on your phone, for more advanced features (such as applying scenes, setting schedules, and connecting them to smart speakers or switches) you'll also need a Philips Hue Bridge.

A standard Philips Hue Bridge costs $65.99 / £49.99 / AU$99.95, so factor this into your budget when planning your new smart lighting system. There's also a Philips Hue Bridge Pro, but this would be overkill for a new user with a small setup.

At the time of writing, Hue Essential bulbs only seem to be available in Australia as part of a starter kit, costing $170.08 for four bulbs and the Hue Bridge.

• Value score: 5/5

Philips Hue Essential: specificationsPhilips Hue Essential specifications

Fitting base

E26/E27, B22, GU10

Wattage

60W equivalent

Maximum brightness

***806 lumens***CHECK

Colors

16 million colors, 2,200–6,500K white light

Control options

Hue app, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Matter, and more

Connection options

Bluetooth, Zigbee

Philips Hue Essential: design

• Only three bulb types available
• All options offer tuneable white and colored light
• Maximum brightness of ***802***CHECK lumens

Philips offers only a small selection of Hue Essential bulbs, which makes sense for an entry-level option. There are currently three models available – screw, bayonet, and GU10 spotlights – and these should be fine for most fittings around your home. Here, I tested an E27 screw-fitting bulb.

By contrast, regular Philips Hue lights come in virtually every shape and form possible, including candle and "filament"-style bulbs, LED strips, and gradient lamps to name just a few.

All bulbs in the Philips Hue Essential Series are "Warm to Cool White & Color", meaning they can show eight million colours, plus white light at different temperatures (from 2,200K to 6,500K). Regular Philips Hue smart bulbs are available in three versions:

• Warm white, which lets you tune brightness but not color;
• White Ambiance, which lets you adjust the brightness and temperature;
• White & Color Ambiance, which also lets you pick from eight million colors.

For more details, take a look at my complete guide to the different types of Philips Hue smart light bulbs.

All Philips Hue Essential bulbs offer a maximum brightness of ***803***CHECK lumens. Regular Philips Hue bulbs range from 800 all the way through to 1,600 lumens.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Should you buy Philips Hue Essential bulbs?Philips Hue Essential scorecard

Attribute

Notes

Score

Value

Exceptional value at less than half the price of a standard Hue bulb (and even better in a multipack).

5/5

Design

Only available in three formats, but these cover most everyday use cases.

4.5/5

Performance

Compares favorably with original Philips Hue bulbs, but can't dim as low and has a slightly warm cast.

4.5/5

Buy them if

The price of regular Hue lights is off-putting

Philips Hue Essential bulbs are less than half the price of standard Hue lights, making them a much more affordable introduction to smart lighting.

You want to extend your Hue setup into more rooms

If you have a Hue system for your entertainment area, Hue Essential bulbs would be a great way to light areas such as hallways and dining rooms, where you don't need to dial the brightness right down.

Don't buy them if

You want to create subtle ambience

The dimmest setting on a Philips Hue Essential bulb is 2%, compared to 0.2% for a standard Hue light, so you won't be able to make super-subtle effects, and it doesn't make an ideal wake-up light.

You already have regular Hue bulbs in your room

Philips Hue Essential bulbs are very good, but their limitations might be apparent if you use them side-by-side with regular Hue lights. I'd recommend using one or the other in a room, rather than a mixture of both.

Philips Hue Essential: also consider

Govee Wi-Fi LED Bulb

Govee's lights connect directly to your home Wi-Fi network, meaning you can control them remotely via an app without the need for an additional hub. There's a very limited selection of bulb types, though, and during our tests we found their colors lacked vibrancy.

Read our full Govee Wi-Fi LED Bulb review

Nanoleaf Matter Essentials

As the name suggests, these smart bulbs are Matter-compatible, which makes them easy to integrate with a mixed smart home. They're a little cheaper than Hue Essential bulbs, too; but we found setup a little buggy in comparison to the smooth Hue experience.

Read our full Nanoleaf Matter Essentials review

How I tested the Philips Hue Essential bulbs

I tested a Philips Hue Essential E27 screw-fitting bulb alongside a standard Philips Hue Essential White & Color Ambiance bulb in identical table lamps, so I could more easily compare the two. I connected both to my existing Philips Hue setup, and added them to the same zone, which would enable me to control them both at once via the Hue app on my phone, set them to the same colors and brightness, and note similarities and differences.

I also tested them using the "sunset" automation within the Philips Hue app, with various preset scenes, and by tuning the light color and brightness manually.

For more details, see how we test, rate, and review products at TechRadar.

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Google Pixel Buds 2a: Two-minute review

Google’s audio department has had something of a tough go of it – our list of the best earbuds seems far, far out of reach, with buds (or Buds) after buds that fail to impress. After the brand netted only three stars in our Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review, and again only three stars from the Google Pixel Buds A, it’s finally managed to release a pair of true wireless earbuds that aren’t disappointing… if only because our expectations were quite low.

The Google Pixel Buds 2a are a more affordable alternative to the Pro 2, and a significant upgrade on the original A-series buds, bringing features which – if we’re being honest – the previous buds really should already have offered. However, though Google has managed to make a pair of earbuds that are finally pretty OK, the company hasn't managed to make buds that are especially competitive in the grand scheme of things.

Let’s start with a positive: like the past Pixel Buds, these are nice lightweight earbuds that don’t weigh your ears or your pocket down. The fit isn’t reliable though, partly because stem-less earbuds don’t lend themselves well to stability, partly because the tip material doesn’t offer much friction and partly because Google’s eartip fit test invariably failed to work.

Upgrades over the Pixel Buds A bring the 2a up to speed with industry trends: they have noise cancellation finally, and a greatly-improved battery life than the 1a’s embarrassing figure. But the feature list is still svelte: the EQ doesn’t offer much control over your sound, you can’t control your music from the buds, and the ANC is very light-touch.

The sound quality is, for lack of a better word, sloppy. The tuning is just all over the place, with audio parts tripping over themselves and frequent peaking. Individual lines can be detailed and clear but they don’t sit together well at all; an orchestra of the world’s best musicians can still sound poor if led by a hapless conductor.

I’m used to mid-range earbuds sounding cheap and cheerful, sometimes sacrificing audio precision and clarity for a fun, energetic or distinguished sound. Google has seemingly decided to go the other way, and has in doing so, learnt why none of the other manufacturers did so.

At the end of the day, myriad tweaks and improvements over Google’s lackluster previous offerings make these slightly easier to recommend, but they still pale in comparison to many other options available. That’s still true, just to a lesser degree, if you manage to pick them up for a discounted price. All that being said, if you’re offered them as a pre-order or bundle package with a Google Pixel phone, you could do worse.

Google Pixel Buds 2a review: Price and release date

(Image credit: Future)

• Announced and released on August 20, 2025
• Launched for $129.99 / £129 / AU$239
• Seen discounts since release

The Google Pixel Buds 2a were announced on August 20, 2025, almost two years to the day after the release of the Buds Pro 2.

You can buy the buds for $129.99 / £129 / AU$239, although they’re the kind of buds that you’re just as likely to receive as a bundle or pre-order gift for something like the Google Pixel 10.

That’s a mid-range price, higher than the $99 / £99.99 (around AU$130) first-gen A-series buds, but more affordable than the $229 / £219 / AU$379 original asking price of the Buds Pro 2 (in theory – they’ve dropped in price quite a bit since their 2024 launch).

It’s also, unfortunately for Google, a cost which puts the buds slap-bang in the middle of a really competitive price point. The buds don’t have much to endear them against the competition… except perhaps price cuts, as I easily found them for $99 / £99 / AU$198 just months after testing (no, not on Black Friday, during a period devoid of sales).

Google Pixel Buds 2a review: Specs

Drivers

11mm

Active noise cancellation

Yes

Battery life (ANC off)

7 hours (buds) 20 hours (case)

Weight

4.7g (buds) 47g (case)

Connectivity

Bluetooth 5.4

Waterproofing

IP54

Google Pixel Buds 2a review: Features

(Image credit: Future)

• ANC is here, but it's subtle
• 7/20 hour battery life (ANC on)
• Not all of the features work well

A new addition Google has granted the Pixel Buds 2a, over their predecessors at least, is the introduction of Active Noise Cancellation or ANC. Now, your buds will detect sounds around you and strip them out as much as possible. Better late than never, I suppose.

The ANC here is nothing to write home about. It’s present, removing some of the major annoyances from environmental or nearby sounds, but there are plenty of other earbuds (even at this price point) that do a better job of keeping things quiet. The ambient mode is a little better; this feature allows select noises to bypass ANC, so you can hear people talking to you or important beepings (time to unpack the dishwasher). This mode tends to be hit-or-miss at what it allows through, but I found few faults when testing the Buds 2a.

In terms of battery life, the buds hit the average I expect from in-ear buds: 7 hours of listening with ANC on or 10 hours with it turned off, with my own listening matching Google’s predictions. That’s fine, but a nice upgrade from previous Google buds with their lacklustre lives. The charging case brings the total to 20 or 27 hours respectively, which is perhaps a little lower than on most rival buds I’ve tested, but enough for several full recharges.

(Image credit: Future)

Like all good earbuds (read: all earbuds), there’s a phone app you can use to get some extra functionality. It’s called Pixel Buds, although you don’t need it to listen to music if you don’t want it. I wouldn’t blame you either; I spent the first week of my testing time without it, and when I eventually installed it, it didn’t really change the experience.

You can use the app to toggle ANC mode, turn touch controls on or off (but not change what they do; toggling ANC or awakening Gemini are the only two options), find your buds if you’ve lost them, update the buds’ firmware, set up multi-point connection and turn in-ear play detection on and off. So far, the standard array of features.

Pixel Buds offers an equalizer, with a five-band custom mode or a small range of presets. It’s some degree of control over your sound, but not a nuanced one. This option also offers an eartip seal check, so you can figure out which size of eartip to use, but I tried this about 10 times over the course of a week and not once did it work successfully. Every single time, it told me it failed, and that I needed to be somewhere quiet – even if I was home alone in the middle of the night. One time, in the wee hours, I even held my breath so my breathing wouldn’t disrupt it. It still failed.

There’s one feature I do like: there’s a hearing wellness test, which is useful for people who worry they’re listening to music too loud, as it tells you your music volume in dB. Even if you don’t think about that kind of thing, it’s useful to know, just in case you are damaging your ears unknowingly.

• Features score: 3.5/5

Google Pixel Buds 2a review: Design

(Image credit: Future)

• Lightweight buds
• Problems with fit
• Two color options, IP54

The Google Pixel Buds 2a are some of the smallest earbuds I’ve ever tested. They’re in-ear buds with no stem, weighing 4.7g each, and it’s easy to forget they’re in your ear when you’re listening to music.

That is, when they stay in. Despite the small fin to help the buds wedge in your ear, I found the fit a little unreliable, and they’d sometimes slip when I was walking or running. In theory the earbud fit test should help me ensure that isn’t the case, but you’ve already read about how well it worked out.

There are touch controls if you press and hold the buds, and they’re easy enough to trigger, but they can only be mapped to toggle ANC or enable your smart assistant. You can’t play or pause your music, toggle the volume or, from what Google’s app suggests, answer a call. These are all fundamental functions of other buds’ gesture controls, and I simply can’t understand why they’re not in place here.

(Image credit: Future)

The pebble-shaped case is small and light too, weighing 47.6g. It’s a no-fuss case and it’s easy to remove the buds, though returning them isn’t always as simple: it’s fairly easy to put the wrong bud in each ingress, and only realise your mistake when the case doesn’t shut fully.

You can pick up the buds in two colors: Iris or Hazel, as Google calls them, or violet or black as they actually are. The color choice affects the buds and inner section of the case, though the outer shell itself will always be a white cream. The case picks up scuffs easily, and I was constantly wiping marks off the case after a brief stint in my pocket.

The buds have an IP54 protection against dust ingress and splashes of water, and the case has an IPX4 rating. According to Google, the buds were made with “at least” 41% recycled materials, including the entirety of the buds and charging case magnets, solder paste and battery.

• Design score: 4/5

Google Pixel Buds 2a review: Sound quality

• 11mm driver
• No Bluetooth codec supported
• Sound lacks sparkle

(Image credit: Future)

Google has packed custom-made 11mm drivers into the Pixel Buds 2a; it hasn’t confirmed if these are the exact same drivers as in the Buds Pro 2, but the size is the same. I did most of my listening on the default EQ mode, simply because the presets didn’t seem to actually change the sound all that much.

On first listening, it sounds like the Pixel Buds 2a have it all: clear treble, solid bass and hearty mids. But the more I used the buds, the more I got the impression that something about the tuning was a little off. The elements don’t sit alongside each other well, and there’s an inconsistency to the sound.

In Seventeen Going Under by Sam Fender, as soon as the bass comes in it drowns out the acoustic guitar accompaniment; it’s not very well-defined or handled bass either, sounding too rumbly. Some parts of songs lack energy; the hook that begins Spector’s Chevy Thunder is too shrill and frail, while the guitar accompaniment is bounced down into a distorted mush; somehow in this song, the bass is barely audible.

There are times when the audio quality was enjoyable, especially when there was only one musical line, but that didn’t stay true when more instruments came in. In Vampire Weekend’s A-Punk, the introduction offers clear and detailed music but as more instruments come in, the overall package sounds worse. I also noticed consistent peaking and distorting, for certain instruments (I barely remember what a hi-hat is supposed to sound like after testing the 2a) and when the timbre became too complex.

So it sounds like the issue is with tuning across the frequencies, and not the technical specs, with audio sounding relatively detailed. There’s Bluetooth 5.4 for connectivity, but Google’s online specs sheet makes no mention of support for any advanced Bluetooth codecs.

• Sound quality: 3.5/5

Google Pixel Buds 2a review: Value

(Image credit: Future)

• Decent value at full price
• Better value on sale
• Great value as bundled gift

At their standard price, the Google Pixel Buds 2a are decent value: you get what you pay for, with a nice small body and fine audio quality for a mid-range price.

They’re not fantastic value though, and other buds for the same price can offer you more energetic audio, a fuller complement of features and a more reliable fit.

However, if you buy the Pixel Buds at the reduced cost, that changes… a little bit. They’re still not the most competitive buds even at the lower price, but they’re definitely better value for money.

• Value: 3.5/5

Should I buy the Google Pixel Buds 2a?

(Image credit: Future)Google Pixel Buds 2a score card

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

They have most of the features you'd hope for, but none of them wow.

3.5/5

Design

The lightweight build is great, though a reliable fit would be appreciated.

4/5

Sound quality

It's detailed sound, but it lacks energy and is woefully under-refined.

3.5/5

Value

You can do better for the price, even if you pick the Buds 2a up at their reduced price.

3.5/5

Buy them if…

You need petite earbuds for your bijou ears
Both the case and the buds of the Pixel Buds 2a are svelte, fitting in your pocket and ear without a complaint.

They're included with a Pixel phone
If you've found the Pixel Buds 2a because you can get them in a deal with a Google smartphone, then it's a package worth taking.

Don’t buy them if…

You like to customize your tunes
The Pixel Buds 2a's equalizer just doesn't give you the flexibility to tweak your music, that rivals do.

You need industrial-strength noise cancellation
Google's ANC doesn't match many rivals, and you don't need to spend any more to lose a lot more annoying background noise.

Google Pixel Buds 2a review: Also consider

Google Pixel Buds 2a

OnePlus Buds 4

Sony WF-C710N

Google Pixel Buds Pro 2

Drivers

11mm

11mm + 6mm

5mm

11mm

Active noise cancellation

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Battery life

7 hours (buds) 20 hours (case)

11 hours (buds) 45 hours (case)

8.5 hours (buds) 30 hours total (with case)

8 hours (buds) 30 hours (case)

Weight

4.7g (buds) 47.6g (case)

4.73g (buds) 40g (case)

5.2g (buds) 38g (case)

4.7g (buds) 65g (case)

Connectivity

Bluetooth 5.4

Bluetooth 5.4

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.4

Waterproofing

IP54

IP55

IPX4

IP54

Sony WF-C710N
Sony's fantastic earbuds are cheaper than the Pixel Buds, while offering a similar design and feature set. They also have great noise cancellation and come in a funkier array of colors.
See our full Sony WF-C710N review

OnePlus Buds 4
For the same price as the 2a, you can buy another smartphone tie-in buds. The OnePlus Buds have great ANC and a bassy sound, so if you like stem-toting earbuds they're a great choice.
See our full OnePlus Buds 4 review

How I tested the Google Pixel Buds 2a

• Tested for one month
• Tested at home, at the gym, on runs and on walks

I tested the Google Pixel Buds 2a for just shy of four weeks, before submitting this review.

The earbuds were paired to my Android phone for the duration of the testing period, and I used them for a variety of tasks including streaming music, watching videos, gaming and taking calls.

I used the buds when at home, when going for walks or using public transport, when at the gym and while on runs.

I've been testing audio products for TechRadar for many years now, including a variety of other mid-range earbuds.

• First reviewed in December 2025

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Confirmed: Harlan Coben's Run Away is the most fun you can have on New Year's Day without leaving your sofa. In truth, it wouldn't be a festive veg-out session if a new Harlan Coben mystery wasn't waiting for us, with Fool Me Once taking Netflix by storm in 2024. I'm no psychic, but I predict the same happening with Run Away.

Why? We're returning to the tried-and-tested formula of book adaptations after Prime Video's Harlan Coben's Lazarus in October. That's both a plus and a disadvantage depending on how you look at it, but when it comes to Coben's signature craft, we're in safe hands.

Not only that, but this might just be Coben's wildest story yet. Simon (James Nesbitt) is desperately searching for his runaway daughter Paige (Ellie de Lange) after she leaves home for her abusive, drug-addicted boyfriend, Aaron (Thomas Flynn).

When Aaron turns up dead, Simon is the number one suspect. Going against the police, his family, and his better conscience to find Paige, he discovers far more than he ever bargained for.

While that's not ideal news for the Greene family, it's perfect for us. Paige's disappearance is only the tip of an incredibly unhinged iceberg that turns a family tragedy into a web of betrayal, lies, and deceit.

I'm not going to give away any spoilers in this review, so you'll have to trust me when I say that there's no way on Earth you'll be able to guess what's to come... and Coben's final twist is the ultimate hand-clapped-over-mouth moment.

Harlan Coben's Run Away turns belligerent teen drama into a criminal rollercoaster you can't tear your eyes away from

Coben is getting to the stage where his fictional lore rivals that of the MCU or Lord of the Rings, and Run Away is no exception. If you watch all eight episodes in one go, not only will your brain break in half (like mine did), but you might also need a police whiteboard just to keep up with the explosive secret and inscrutable subplots.

It's this sense of immersion that's always made Coben's work the cream of the crop, and partnering his style of writing with a stellar cast not afraid of getting their hands dirty means you've got streamable magic. James Nesbitt was born to play an aloof yet naive father in a British crime drama, with Minnie Driver getting the slightly easier job of mostly lying in a hospital bed.

It's Ruth Jones as Elena Ravenscroft that's the most pleasing addition here (though her character sounds like a Harry Potter extra). The UK has particularly been hellbent on pigeonholing Jones as nothing more than Nessa in Gavin & Stacey, rarely taking notice of her varied existing body of work.

She might be a Queen of comedy, but Jones injects some light-hearted relief into Run Away that perfectly offsets Nesbitt's erratic chaos.

"Sexy prick" DS Fagbenle (Alfred Enoch) is another intriguing layer of the puzzle. In his work, he's incredibly standoffish, but the personal relationship he's cultivating in secret makes you want to step inside his mind and unravel the man we're not properly getting to see. Even when we're getting answers to the big questions, it's nice that something is kept back from us, especially when we don't need it spelled out.

How much are you willing to suspend belief for a whodunnit mystery?

Elena and Simon discuss strategy. (Image credit: Netflix)

The biggest problem with a mind-boggling mystery is when it starts to veer into ridiculous territory. For the first half of Run Away, the drama feels grounded in reality. It's incredibly possible for a teenage girl to lose her way in life thanks to an abusive partner, with her family being broken apart as a result.

But when you start tying in seemingly unconnected murders and cult behavior, things get a little more far-fetched. I know that fictional drama doesn't have to stay true to life, but shows like this also aren't soap operas. Between episodes 5-8, I can picture families across the globe saying to each other, "For God's sake, that's enough now."

For the most part, I think Coben gets away with it... right up until the astonishing final twist. Not only does the reveal feel incredibly unnecessary, but it also changes the entire tone of the story in the last few minutes. It's the secret that tips Run Away over the edge into genuinely unbelievable, and perhaps a case of 'less is more' would have made for a more effective ending.

On the other hand, the narrative beats of the overarching story fit snugly into the Coben formula, and that's either stoic and dependable or more of the same. It's probably important to remember that Run Away is slotting into an existing collection of mysteries, so some level of uniformity is needed. We're dealing with signature Coben drama here, and while that might put some viewers off, I think enough people will find comfort in knowing what to expect – in the broadest sense.

Where Lazarus faltered, Run Away shines. I definitely believe the book-to-screen adaptation is a huge strength for Coben, mining a level of satisfaction we were missing earlier in the year. I was giddy the entire way through watching it, and it's safe to say that I've never enjoyed following a grisly murder more.

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Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker: one-minute review

With the Ninja name comes an expectation of quality. From air fryers and coffee machines to blenders and ice cream makers, Ninja kitchen appliances are among the most popular on the market – with several of their products topping our buying guides lists. The Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker MC1101UK offers the level of quality you’d expect while combining the power of multiple appliances into one compact package. This multicooker offers the capabilities of a rice cooker, slow cooker, steamer, and hob in one appliance, helping reduce your need for kitchen storage space and the amount of washing up after a meal.

The PossibleCooker offers eight main functions: sear/sauté, slow cook, white rice, brown rice, pasta (without drainage), porridge, steam, and keep warm. During our testing, we found results were consistently excellent. The 6L cooking pot offers plenty of space, while the appliance itself isn’t as bulky as you might imagine. And, thanks to a thorough user manual and clear markings inside the pot, it’s easy to ensure your liquid-to-oat/rice ratio is accurate with every cook.

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While this multicooker will likely become a firm favourite in your household, it’s not flawless. Some cooking functions, like rice cooking, take longer than they maybe would on the hob, though the results are worth the wait. And while using the appliance is straightforward, its small digital display is quite basic, indicating a preheating function only via symbols and offering no timer for rice cooking functions.

We also found that the non-stick coating on the inside of the pot began chipping away within a week of testing, despite carefully following the cleaning instructions. Ninja says the cooking pot and lid are dishwasher-safe, but we’d recommend handwashing where possible, especially as it’s easy to do even with stubborn residue.

Overall, for £119.99 ($129.99 / AU$249.99 for non-UK models), the Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker is an excellent value multicooker for households big and small who want more efficiency in the kitchen.

Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker: price and availability

• MC1101UK model costs £119.99 at Ninja UK
• MC1101 model available for $129.99 in US, and AU$249.99 in Australia
• Available at third-party retailers like Amazon, John Lewis, and Staples
• Regular discounts at Ninja and third-party retailers

The Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker MC1101UK (which is the model I tested here) retails for £119.99 at Ninja UK, while non-MC1101UK models are available in the US and Australia for $129.99 and AU$249.99, respectively.

This means it’s more affordable than some of the top picks in our best instant cookers list, including the Instant Pot Pro ($129.99/ £149.99) and the Instant Pot Duo Crisp ($229.99/ £229.99), but just slightly more than the likes of the Instant Pot Duo Plus ($119.99/ £99.99).

Considering the quality of the results, the pot’s 6L capacity, and the functions on offer, we believe it‘s excellent value for money. Especially when you consider what buying a dedicated rice cooker, steamer, and slow cooker would cost combined.

What’s more, we regularly see discounts on this appliance at Ninja and third-party retailers, so keep an eye out for these to pick it up for even less.

• Value score: 5/5

Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker: specifications

Review model

MC1101UK

Color

Midnight Blue

Number of baskets

1 cooking pot

Number of cooking functions

8 cooking modes

Cooking functions and modes

Sear/Sauté, Slow Cook, White Rice, Brown Rice, Pasta, Porridge, Steam, Keep Warm

Accessories

Rice spoon, steam rack, measuring cup, recipe guide

Smart control

No

Rated power

1,400W

Capacity

6L

Time range

Up to 12 hours on slow cooking/keep warm modes

Dimensions (including handles)

280mm (H) x 420mm (W) x 290mm (D) / 11in (H) x 16.5in (W) x 11.4in (D)

Dishwasher-safe

Yes (but we don't recommend it)

Guarantee

2 years

Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker: design

• 6L capacity cooking pot
• Fairly compact and quiet
• Minimal effort needed to clean
• Non-stick coating on pot can easily come off
• Digital display can be confusing

Out of the box, the Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker MC1101UK comes with a silver main unit (with a black control panel), a 6L midnight blue cooking pot, a glass lid, a rice cup, a rice spoon, and a steam rack, plus a thorough user manual and recipe booklet.

Immediately, we were surprised by how compact the appliance is, given its capacity. When assembled, the PossibleCooker takes up less than one kitchen counter space, making it a great choice for those with fewer storage options or a smaller kitchen work surface.

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(Image credit: Future)

On the main unit is a fairly straightforward control panel, listing the eight cooking functions on the left, beside a small digital display. On the right-hand side are arrow buttons for function, time, and temperature, alongside a start/stop button.

The cooking pot has a black non-stick coating inside, with clear lines indicating where to fill up to with water for white rice, brown rice, and oats, corresponding to the number of cups you’ve added. The included recipe booklet provides more thorough instructions on this in its grain and pasta chart, which covers a variety of rice types (and certain pasta), alongside handy cooking tips. So, if, like me, you struggle to get your ratios right, keep it near. This recipe manual also offers guidelines for commonly slow-cooked meats and steamed vegetables, plus some recipes to get you started. We did, however, find the recipes weren’t as flavoursome as they sound, and some of the instructions aren’t particularly clear.

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Using the Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker is straightforward, but we highly advise reading the user manual first to understand how each cooking function works. Though the advice given in the manual can sometimes contradict the recipe book: for example, in the manual it advises to keep the lid on during cooking, while the recipe book recommends removing it after boiling.

To use the appliance, turn it on, use the function buttons to navigate to the relevant function, and then (where applicable) adjust the temperature and timing settings before pressing start. Some functions kick in straight away, while others have a preheat period. This preheat period is indicated by progress symbols (lines) in the display window, but the user manual doesn’t make the preheating process particularly clear, or how long it will last. For searing/sauteéing, these progress symbols are followed by the instruction to add food, but for other functions, this isn’t the case. After several uses, we got to grips with this feature, but it can be confusing initially.

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When running, the PossibleCooker is quiet, but lets out a loud beep when cooking is complete. The appliance has markers indicating which parts will get hot during the process (and not to touch with bare hands), and the user manual makes it clear, too. So, if you’ve got little ones, we advise moving it away from the edge of your counter and ideally positioning it near or under an extractor fan (it gets steamy).

After letting the appliance cool down, the main unit can be wiped down with a cloth, and you can hand-wash the cooking pot with ease – though avoid using anything abrasive on its non-stick coat. However, despite carefully following the instructions, the coat began to chip off around the rim of the pot, possibly due to wear from the lid, within a week. So, while Ninja claims the pot is dishwasher safe, we advise (as we do with any non-stick coated appliance) to only hand-wash for longevity.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker: performance

• Eight cooking functions, including rice and slow cooking
• High quality results across all modes…
• But expect a wait for some products
• Medium slow cook temperature would be beneficial

We started our testing of the Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker MC1101UK by using its white rice function. Cooking perfect rice every time is no mean feat, and this reviewer regularly gets the ratios wrong. Fortunately, the rice chart made it easy. We added two cups of long-grain white rice to the cooking pot and filled it with water to the corresponding mark.

It’s initially a bit unclear whether the appliance is on. Following the progress symbols, the display doesn’t show anything, so you’re left in the dark about how long the rice will actually take to cook. On average, it can take around 30 to 40 minutes to cook this amount of rice. We, however, waited slightly longer.. The result was perfectly fluffy rice, but it took around 40 to 50 minutes. We will caveat, however, that you can expect this wait with some other rice cookers.

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We had the same results with brown rice, which has its own function. This time, we tried the Cajun Dirty Rice recipe from the booklet, which first requires you to cook 360g of brown rice (two cups) using the corresponding function. The booklet suggests this will take approximately 50 to 60 minutes, but we found it took 75 minutes altogether. Brown rice typically takes longer to cook than white, and you may wait longer than the booklet suggests, but the result was perfectly cooked grains once again. Well worth the wait, as long as you expect it. If speed is your priority, though, this may not be the appliance for you.

The Cajun Dirty Rice recipe allowed us to test efficiency and the multi-functionality of the PossibleCooker. After removing the rice, we easily cleaned out the inside of the pot with a cloth, ensuring it was dry before the next use. When you use more than one function of this multicooker for a recipe, expect extra waiting times for the pot to cool enough to be cleaned. Fortunately, the pot was quickly washed up, and I selected the sauté function (which requires a preheat) for the next section: browning off pork and beef mince.

The cooking pot essentially acts as a pot or pan on a hob when this function is selected, though the controls only let you select High, Medium, or Low temperature (giving you less control over the heat). It works a treat, though, and the digital display shows how long the pot has been heated for, so you can easily keep track of your timings. After cooking my minced meat, followed by my veg, I added stock and brought the pot to the boil before folding in the brown rice. The recipe itself was a bit flavourless, but the result was perfectly cooked rice, meat, and veg.

This multifunctionality is also useful when slow-cooking. Rather than the abundance of pots and pans I usually use for my go-to beef stew recipe, we were able to soften the veg in the pot using the sautée function before adding liquid and beef. After four hours at High temperature, we were thoroughly pleased with the results: the beef was tender, the vegetables soft but not mushy, and the sauce reduced and flavoursome without being watery or congealed.

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We had similar results with a Beef Tinga recipe, a Ninja recipe accessed via the QR code on the appliance’s box. This one didn’t require using the sautée function, but allowed us to test the slow cooking function’s capabilities on the Low temperature setting. After adding all the ingredients to the pot and setting the time to eight hours, the meat was melt-in-your-mouth, but the recipe was (again) a bit bland. Our main takeaway here is that the functionality of the appliance is great, but maybe use it for your own recipes.

The steaming and pasta functions are perhaps the only ones that we had a couple of issues with. Following Ninja’s guidelines, we chose to steam 200g of Tenderstem broccoli. The guidelines tell you the amount of water to add to the pot. You then place the provided steaming rack inside the pot and place the broccoli in a single layer across it before placing the lid on top. The digital display, again, showed the progress bar indicating preheating, but it’s not entirely clear what the appliance is doing at that time. Building up its steam?

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Either way, this heating time isn’t taken into account when you set your timer. So, for example, we set our timer for eight minutes as recommended, but the preheating/presteaming process wasn’t accounted for in those eight minutes, so you may need to account for that when cooking. We also found water bubbled around the lid of the pot during steaming, with a little water coming out the top. Overall, the broccoli was steamed well: with a slight crunch but not too floppy. It may have been easier to steam it the old-fashioned way, however.

Pasta, too, offered mixed results. The guidelines in the recipe book recommend the amount of water to add for the weight of pasta you’re using (the lines in the pot don’t apply to this). The booklet advises adding the pasta first, followed by the water, and then select the function. The pasta function seems to work more like the rice function, not giving you control over (or insight into) temperature or time, but telling you when it’s done.

(Image credit: Future)

The draw of the pasta function is that it allows you to cook pasta without needing to drain the water, but the time it takes almost makes it not worth it. After preheating for about six to nine minutes, it’s meant to take around 18 to 20 minutes to cook (again, it’s unclear if preheating is taken into account), but the appliance didn’t beep for over 22 minutes, at which point we stopped the cooking because the pasta was starting to make a skin on the bottom of the pot. While the timings were questionable, and the skin gross, the actual resulting pasta was perfectly al dente. And, in fairness, we didn’t have to drain any water.

Overall, the Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker's results are excellent, but you may need to wait a little longer than you expect from some cooking functions – and spend some time getting used to its quirks.

• Performance score: 5/5

Should you buy the Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker?Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker score card

Attribute

Notes

Score

Value

This is a budget to mid-range appliance that's well worth its value when you consider the price of purchasing individual appliances and the quality on offer.

5/5

Design

Compact, quiet, but with a 6L capacity, this appliance is a great fit for bigger and smaller kitchens – and it looks pretty sleek, too.

4.5/5

Performance

While you may need to be patient with some of its functions, this multicooker provides consistently excellent results across its eight cooking functions.

5/5

Buy it if

You want to save kitchen space

If you’re struggling to fit a steamer, rice cooker, and slow cooker in your kitchen cupboard, this multicooker could help you save some space by combining these appliances into one, fairly compact package – without sacrificing capacity.

You want a quality, multi-functional cooker that won't break the bank

The Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker provides excellent results across its eight cooking functions, but at £119.99, it is much more affordable than other premium instant cookers. It’s great value for money considering the quality and multi-functionality on offer.

You suck at making rice

If, like me, you struggle cooking perfect rice every time, it’s well worth considering this appliance. With a handy ratio guide that covers everything from white rice to sushi rice, the PossibleCooker makes rice cooking easy – even if you have to be a bit patient.

Don't buy it if

You'll only use one cooking function

While the PossibleCooker is great value for money, you need to actually get your money’s worth. If you want to use just one of its functions, and don’t care much about the others, you might be better off buying an appliance solely dedicated to that cooking function.

You're impatient

This multicooker provides great results, but you may need to wait a little longer for them. We found that two cups of brown rice took over an hour to cook, pasta took over 20 minutes, and white rice took over 40 minutes. If you can’t be bothered waiting, you may be better with a stove.

You want an multicooker with a pressure cooker built in

If you're not swayed by the PossibleCooker's functions, and would prefer a similarly priced instant cooker with pressure cooker capabilities, we highly recommend the Instant Pot Duo Plus, which retails for $119.99/ £99.99. Instant Pot is the go-to name in instant cookers, and this one has some excellent cooking functions, including pressure cook, slow cook, sous vide, yogurt, and sauté, without breaking the bank.

Astro A20 X: Two-minute review

The Astro A20 X is basically a jazzed-up version of the Logitech G522 Lightspeed - but is that such a bad thing? That latter headset is, in my eyes, one of the best wireless gaming headsets of the year, and many of its strongest qualities have carried forward into the Astro A20 X.

You’re still getting fantastic, well-balanced sound that, despite lacking a bit of bass out of the box, can be easily tweaked to perfection in the strong Logitech G Hub companion software. On PC, there’s support for DTS Headphone:X too, which delivers immersive spatial audio that’s perfect for immersive story titles like Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2.

It features the same excellent detachable 48kHz microphone, which picks up your voice clearly when you’re chatting on services like Discord, and the handy red LED indicator that tells you when it’s muted.

The level of comfort offered by the headset is unchanged, too. It’s lightweight but feels suitably durable, with plush earcups and a pleasantly soft headband. The design looks bulky on my head, but it's hard to complain about this too much when it’s so comfortable to wear.

(Image credit: Future)

So what is actually new this time around? The big new addition isn’t found on the headset itself, but rather what else you get in the box. The Astro A20 X comes bundled with a small Playsync base and two USB Type-C cables. This is its wireless dongle, and it can be plugged into two different systems at the same time.

Tapping a tiny new button found on the back of the headset itself switches between the two systems almost instantaneously, which is a game-changer if you’re like me and use a PlayStation 5 and PC (or Xbox and PC) with the same display. The feature works fantastically, but I can’t help but feel that the use of the Astro branding is a bit of a misstep from Logitech.

Sure, Astro products do generally support multiple platforms - but the headset’s design looks nothing like existing models like the Astro A50 X or Astro A10.

It doesn’t even have an Astro logo on it - bearing the same Logitech G branding as the Logitech G522 Lightspeed. As a big fan of the Astro brand, there’s something a little sad about seeing it lose some of its identity like this.

(Image credit: Future)Astro A20 X: Price and availability

• Costs $179.99 / £169.99 / AU$349.99
• More expensive than the G522 Lightspeed
• Worth it if you use multiple platforms

At $179.99 / £169.99 / AU$349.99, the Astro A20 X is priced just a touch higher than the Logitech G522 Lightspeed, which costs $159.99 / £139.99 / AU$299.99. It can be found at most of the same retailers, meaning Amazon and Best Buy in the US or Amazon, Currys, and Argos in the UK. In Australia, it can be purchased at Amazon and JB Hi-Fi.

Whether the extra $20 / £30 / AU$50 is worth it compared to the Logitech G522 Lightspeed is largely going to come down to your platform preferences. If you use two or more platforms in the same setup, the Astro A20 X makes a lot of sense and will be the more convenient option.

At this increased price point, you will need to consider alternatives like the Razer BlackShark V3 or SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 Wireless more seriously, though. That latter model is significantly cheaper at $129.99 / £129.99 / AU$139.95 and offers similarly good audio quality, though you do miss out on the convenient platform switching.

Astro A20 X: Specs

Price

$179.99 / £169.99 / AU$349.99

Weight

10.23oz / 290g

Compatibility

PC, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Android, iOS

Connection type

Bluetooth, Lightspeed Wireless, Wired USB-C

Battery life

40 hrs (default lighting), 90hrs (RGB off)

Features

Detachable 48kHz / 16 bit omni microphone, Lightsync RGB, Playsync Base

Software

Logitech G Hub (PC) / Logitech G app (mobile)

Astro A20 X: Design and features

• Almost identical to the G522
• New platform switching button and base
• Spatial audio support on PC

Logitech hasn’t taken any risks with the design of the Astro A20 X, making only minimal changes compared to the G522 Lightspeed. On the headset itself, the only noticeable change is two extra buttons on the back of the right earcup.

One is a volume mix rocker that increases or decreases the volume of a call compared to your game, while the other is a little red switching button. This works in tandem with the new Playsync Base - a super compact dongle that connects to two systems with USB Type-C.

The front of the base features two LED lights, which illuminate to denote your selected input device. On the back, you’ll find the two USB Type-C ports and two little switches.

(Image credit: Future)

These switches are labeled Xbox / USB and PC / USB, respectively, and should be selected depending on what you have plugged in. Luckily, a useful guide is printed on the bottom of the Base to tell you what you need to choose if you want to use a PC, Xbox, PlayStation, or Switch.

The Base has two little rubber feet that help it grip the surface of your desk a little better, though I find that it can still slip off from time to time. The base is very, very light, and even just the weight of the plugged-in USB cables can move it around.

The new platform switching aside, the Astro A20 X otherwise boasts identical features to the Logitech G522 Lightspeed, with highlights like PC spatial audio support and customizable RGB zones on each earcup. The colorways of the Astro A20 X are also slightly different from the G522 Lightspeed. There’s still a Black and White option, but both feature red accent colors rather than blue.

(Image credit: Future)Astro A20 X: Performance

• Comfortable to wear
• High quality audio
• Great microphone

Being nearly identical to the excellent G522 Lightspeed, it’s very hard to fault the performance of the Astro A20 X.

It sounds great out of the box, though as with that headset, I would personally use the companion Logitech G Hub software to crank the low frequencies (20Hz, 50Hz and 125Hz) up by 3dB, 2dB, and 1dB then add 0.5dB at the higher end for slightly better all-round sound as the bass is a little weak by default.

You can access all the same good presets of the G522 Lightspeed with the Astro A20 X, too, including a bass boost mode, gaming mode, dedicated FPS mode, and a media mode, or download hundreds of alternatives created by the community.

The microphone is indistinguishable too. It’s high-fidelity at 48kHz and picks up your voice well, though it does tend to allow in background noise, so I would suggest making sure the noise cancellation features of the Logitech G Hub software are on.

Battery life is identical to the G522 as well, and in my testing, I easily managed a touch over 40 hours with RGB enabled, which is a decent result.

On top of all this, the new platform switching feature works flawlessly with no noticeable delay, swapping you over, and has no issues with pairing.

(Image credit: Future)Should I buy the Astro A20 X?Buy it if...

You play on two systems on one display
The platform switching feature of the Astro A20 X makes it a great choice if you play on a console and PC or two consoles via the same display.

You’d like strong audio and a great mic
The Astro A20 X has the same audio chops as the G522 Lightspeed. It sounds clear and crisp out of the box, with a killer microphone to boot.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t need to frequently swap platforms
If you’re only going to be playing on one system or don’t switch between them often, you're better off with the G522. Moving its dongle between machines isn’t too much of a hassle, and you’ll save some cash.

Also consider...

Not sold on the Astro A20 X? Here are two other options to consider, including the original Logitech G522 Lightspeed.

Astro A20 X

Logitech G522 Lightspeed

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5

Price

$179.99 / £169.99 / AU$349.99

$159.99 / £139.99 / AU$229

$129.99 / £129.99 / AU$139.95

Weight

10.23oz / 290g

10.22oz / 290g

9.5oz / 266g

Compatibility

PC, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Android, iOS

PC, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Android, iOS

Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, Mobile

Connection type

Bluetooth, Lightspeed Wireless, Wired USB-C

Bluetooth, Lightspeed Wireless, Wired USB-C

Wireless (2.4GHz via dongle), Wired (USB-C), Bluetooth 5.3

Battery life

40 hrs (default lighting), 90hrs (RGB off)

40 hrs (default lighting), 90hrs (RGB off)

Up to 60 hours

Features

Detachable 48kHz / 16 bit omni microphone, Lightsync RGB, Playsync Base

Detachable 48kHz / 16 bit omni microphone, Lightsync RGB

360-degree spatial audio, retractable ClearCast 2.X mic

Software

Logitech G Hub (PC) / Logitech G app (mobile)

Logitech G Hub (PC) / Logitech G app (mobile)

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 Companion App (mobile), SteelSeries GG

Logitech G522 Lightspeed
The Logitech G522 Lightspeed is nearly identical to the Astro A20 X minus the platform switching feature, but it comes in cheaper. You can still use it with multiple systems if you’re willing to manually swap the dongle or Bluetooth pairing each time.

For more information, check out our full Logitech G522 Lightspeed review

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5
The SteelSeries Arcis Nova 5 is an absolute titan of the mid-range headset demographic and becomes a seriously tempting option compared to the Astro A20 X. It’s much cheaper, but still offers great sound - you do lose the functionality of the Playsync Base though.

For more information, check out our full SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 review

How I tested the Astro A20 X

• Tested for multiple months
• Tried with a wide range of games
• Tested with PC, Xbox, and PS5

I tested the Astro A20 X over a period of multiple months, using it with PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC. In that time, I played plenty of games with it, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and subsequently Black Ops 7, plus the likes of Astro Bot, Sniper Elite: Resistance, Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, Lego Horizon Adventures, Dead Island 2, and more.

Throughout my time with the headset, I compared its performance to a range of other models that I’ve tested, including the Logitech G522 Lightspeed and SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5, plus more premium alternatives like the Razer BlackShark V3 Pro and Astro A50 X.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed September-December 2025

Noise Luna Ring (Gen 2): One-minute review

The Noise Luna Ring 2 is the second generation of the Luna Ring. I reviewed the original in early 2025 and liked that it felt comfortable, offered solid insights, and was impressively accurate for sleep tracking from a first-gen product.

On paper, the Luna Ring 2 doesn’t sound like a huge leap forward and, visually, you’d be forgiven for not immediately spotting what’s changed. The design tweaks are subtle, and if you already own the first Luna Ring I don’t think this is a must-have upgrade.

But taken on its own, this is a good smart ring. A few pain points have been ironed out. The ring is around 10% slimmer, there’s a new charging case which looks great and stores multiple top-ups, battery performance has improved slightly and the app feels quicker to update. I also felt like sleep tracking was more precise this time round, which is probably due to the improved sensor accuracy.

The main advantage here remains the same as last time round, there’s no subscription here. That immediately makes it more appealing than the Oura Ring 4 (the most popular smart ring) if you’re not keen on adding another subscription to your life, especially if you consider that the Oura Ring 4 is more expensive to begin with.

Personally, the best new feature here is Luna’s circadian alignment tools, presenting guidance about when to get sunlight, drink coffee and exercise throughout the day. It includes a “caffeine window” that tries to stop you sabotaging your sleep with badly timed coffee. These are genuinely useful, presented nicely and feel actionable and meaningful than an arbitrary score.

There are still some things I didn’t like here. The app is pretty information dense and yet again the typography choices feel too small and fussy, which makes daily use less enjoyable than rivals. There’s an AI coach here, but it delivers generic chatbot advice rather than anything helpful. And while battery life here is good, it doesn’t quite make it as long as some rivals.

But the biggest issue here is the market. When I first reviewed the Luna Ring Gen 1, I said one of the main problems wasn’t the ring itself but the competition. That’s even more true now. The Oura Ring 4 still offers the most refined overall experience, the Samsung Galaxy Ring is great as long as you’re not on iOS and the Ultrahuman Ring Air and RingConn 2 Air are strong subscription-free alternatives to both. More and more cheaper alternatives are now entering the market too, like the Amazfit Helio Ring, which isn’t as good but is cheaper.

If you want a capable, subscription-free smart ring with strong sleep tracking and don’t mind that it doesn’t look quite as premium as the big names, the Luna Ring 2 is a good choice. It’s just not the obvious pick and even though I like it I’m not sure there’s anything standout here to recommend it over the competition.

Noise Luna Ring (Gen 2) review: Price and availability

(Image credit: Future)

• Price is around $329/£299/AU$510
• No subscription fee
• Several color options at the same price

The Luna Ring 2 is available for around $329/£299/AU$510. I say around as pricing seems to vary across regions and I’m writing this during sale season when prices are fluctuating.

It comes in a range of finishes, including Sunlit Gold, Stardust Silver, Rose Gold, Midnight Black and Lunar Black – that last one is a matte shade. All of these finishes are the same price, which is good as some rivals charge more for specific colors or materials. Then again, that could explain why the Luna Ring 2 has a less premium look and feel than rivals, but I’ll get to that later.

That puts it below the Oura Ring 4, which typically retails for $349/£349 at full price, though more premium materials and colors can push that up to $499/£499. What’s more, you’ll need an ongoing membership to unlock full insights, which is a further $5.99/£5.99. The Samsung Galaxy Ring was also more expensive at launch at $399/£399/around AU$750, though it’s hard to compare given it’s not for iOS users.

Meanwhile, subscription-free rivals include the Ultrahuman Ring Air at £329 (it isn’t available in the US at the time of writing) and RingConn Gen 2 Air at $299/£280/AU$570 (approx). You can also find the Amazfit Helio Ring for £119.90 as a budget option.

All of this means the Luna Ring 2 is more affordable than the Oura Ring 4 but not a budget pick. The lack of subscription does help it seem better value, but it’s not so cheap that it’s a no-brainer over the rest.

• Value score: 3.5 / 5

Noise Luna Ring (Gen 2) review: Specifications

Colors

Silver, Black, Matte Black, Rose Gold, Gold

Weight

3-5g (depending on size)

Material

Titanium

Battery life

Up to 7 days

Connectivity

Bluetooth

Waterproofing

Up to 50m/164 ft

(Image credit: Future)Noise Luna Ring (Gen 2) review: Design

• Light and comfortable
• Slightly slimmer than first Luna Ring
• Can look cheaper than rivals, especially in gold

The Luna Ring (Gen 2) is a light and compact ring, weighing between 3g and 5g depending on the size you need. On paper, that’s a small shift from the Gen 1 ring, and Luna says its Gen 2 ring is 10% slimmer and lighter overall. In reality, the difference is subtle. But the Gen 2 is genuinely very comfortable to wear 24/7.

Sizing runs from 6 to 14 and you get a sizing kit in advance, which works the same way as most smart ring brands. It’s based on standard ring sizes, but I still find that different brands fit slightly differently, so the kit is worth using.

The ring itself is made from titanium with a PVD coating and there’s a non-allergenic and seamless inner surface that sits against your skin. It’s rated 5ATM, which means you don’t need to take it off for showers, swimming or getting caught in the rain. Ideal if you’re trying to build a habit of wearing it constantly.

(Image credit: Future)

As for colors, there’s a nice choice here. Stardust Silver, Rose Gold, Sunlit Gold, Midnight Black and Lunar Black, a matte shade. The marketing images make most of them look shiny, and in real life the Sunlit Gold I tested is particularly shiny. Other brands have glossy finishes too, but here it tips over into looking a bit more like a plastic gold ring rather than blending in to look like jewellery, at least to my eye.

The real star of the design in this newer version isn’t the ring itself, but the new charging case that comes with it. Instead of the little charging plinth that came with the Gen 1 version, you now get a compact case that looks more like the cases you get with earbuds, or the Samsung Galaxy Ring. Not only does it pack in lots of extra charges, it’s one of the nicest smart ring charging solutions I’ve used so far.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Noise Luna Ring (Gen 2) review: Features

(Image credit: Future)

• Strong core health and sleep data
• Circadian alignment tools genuinely helpful
• AI integration feels gimmicky

The Luna Ring (Gen 2) follows the familiar smart ring formula, lots of sensors in a tiny band. You get green and red LEDs for heart rate, blood oxygen and skin temperature tracking, photodiodes and a 3-axis accelerometer for movement.

From those, Luna tracks your sleep time, sleep stages and sleep score, resting heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), respiratory rate and SpO2, temperature fluctuations, stress, activity and menstrual and ovulation tracking, based on temperature and HRV.

There’s automatic detection for walking and running, plus basic workout logging for other exercises. Though, as with most smart rings right now, this isn’t designed to replace a full-on running or fitness watch, but it works well for general movement.

It’s worth noting there’s no VO2 max estimate here, which you’ll find on some rival rings and many of the best smartwatches. If you like that training metric, you might miss it here.

The more interesting additions on the software side are Luna’s “Life OS” platform, which has been updated in this version. It brings new tools like the aforementioned circadian alignment guide and a “caffeine window”. These suggest the best times to get sunlight, eat, exercise and drink coffee based on your patterns, with the aim of nudging you into a more consistent rhythm and protecting sleep.

I found those features genuinely useful and really nicely presented. Even if they don’t transform your sleep overnight, they did gently encourage me to think about my day in a way that’s more aligned with my sleep and rhythms.

There’s also an AI coach here, but I found it quite gimmicky (like most AI integrations these days). It’s essentially a chatbot bolted onto your health data. Now, some people might enjoy asking it questions, but in my testing the nutrition and lifestyle advice felt generic. Responses could be slow and if you already know the basics of health and fitness you might find it a little condescending.

On the integration front, the Luna Ring currently works with Apple Health and Google Fit, which at least lets you pull workouts from other platforms. But there are no deeper third-party integrations yet, so you can’t plug it directly into more specialized training apps or health dashboards, for example.

• Features score: 3.5 / 5

Noise Luna Ring (Gen 2) review: Performance

(Image credit: Future)

• Sleep tracking feels upgraded
• Battery life is good, not class-leading
• Good app but a bit cramped

Let’s start with the battery, as that’s been updated over the previous version. Noise says you’ll get between 4 to 7 days, which is quite a broad amount of time. During my testing I consistently got just under 6 days out of it, which I think is good. It’s an improvement over the first ring, which only ever reached 4 days.

The charging case can store around 30 days of power before you need to plug it in, which was really handy. Especially considering the charging case is light, small and looks nice.

For content, the Oura Ring 4 and Ultrahuman Ring Air can deliver six to eight days, while the RingConn Gen 2 Air can stretch to 10 to 12 days. So Luna sits in the good but not outstanding bracket where battery is concerned. Good thing it’s got the charging case this time around, which helps – did I mention I love the charging case?

The Luna Ring (Gen 2) will automatically detect walking and running and in my experience it did this reliably. You’re prompted to confirm detected sessions, which is handy.

For other exercise types, you’ll need to log activities manually and there are lots to choose from, including yoga, treadmill, cycling, bouldering, pilates, even surfing. As with most smart rings, it’s not a hardcore training tool, there’s no GPS or dedicated workout models. Think of it more as an everyday health tracker that handles simple workouts reasonably well rather than something you’d use for serious training.

I have mixed feelings about the Luna app. On the plus side, it’s packed with information and you can dig deeper into information about sleep, readiness, activity, temperature and more. In some places, scores are accompanied by short explanations, which I always appreciate more than a bare number.

(Image credit: Future)

However, the presentation of the data still doesn’t quite land for me. Fonts are tiny and a lot of elements are tightly packed together. It’s a subjective complaint, sure, but one that does impact on my day to day enjoyment of using it.

Some of the language and flagging around health data also feels more alarming than it needs to be. For example, waking up to a red exclamation mark on my SpO2 with a blunt “Pay Attention” message isn’t in line with how I think wearables should be talking to us about health. The same goes for some of the coaching prompts, they’re technically accurate, but not particularly warm or human.

Sleep tracking is where the Gen 2 shines, it does a great job at picking up on sleep and wake times, even on nights when my sleep was broken. I often wake up around 3am, read for a few hours, then go back to sleep. The Luna Ring 2 picked up this pattern consistently, where in the past other wearables have not detected the break or not detected me falling back to sleep again. It also detected short naps accurately.

You get a full breakdown of your sleep stages, a nightly sleep score and insights into what’s pushing that score up or down. Over time, trends are handy to see.

(Image credit: Future)

As for whether those circadian tools I mentioned earlier improve my sleep, that’s hard to say definitively, but having prompts about when to get outside, drink coffee or exercise did make me more intentional about my routine.

Finally, there’s the AI coach. I know other reviewers enjoy this kind of feature, but here it still feels like a very basic chatbot sat on top of your data rather than anything geared to personalized guidance. Generic nutrition tips, slow responses and a lack of nuance mean it’s not something I enjoyed using.

Though I will say one of the suggested prompts was “Which health metric needs my attention today?” which does highlight anything noticeable without digging around. Without that I’d say it was a bit useless.

• Performance: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Scorecard

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Design

Light, comfortable and slightly slimmer than Gen 1. The gold color looks less premium than rivals. But the charging case is excellent.

4 / 5

Features

Strong core health and sleep tracking with useful circadian alignment feature. The AI coach and lack of VO2 max are my only bugbears.

3.5 / 5

Performance

Accurate sleep tracking, decent activity detection and good but not class-leading battery. App is overall great but needs a design refresh in my opinion.

4 / 5

Value

Cheaper than some rivals and subscription-free but not cheap enough or polished enough to be a really obvious choice over rivals.

3.5 / 5

Should I buy the Noise Luna Ring (Gen 2)?Buy it if…

You want a smart ring without an added subscription
Oura is still the most popular choice, but its monthly membership and initial price make it an expensive choice. The Luna Ring 2 is one of several capable subscription-free alternatives.

You want accurate tracking and plenty of data
I’ve focused a lot on rivals in this review, but taken by itself this is a good device with accurate sleep and recovery tracking, and a generous amount of data and trends to explore.

You want strong sleep tracking without bulk
If you mainly care about sleep and general recovery, smart rings are hugely appealing because you can ditch the bulk of a smartwatch at night.

Don’t buy it if…

You want the absolute best tracking and polish
I was impressed by the Luna Ring 2 overall but the Oura Ring 4 will still deliver the most polished experience in terms of design, app refinement and depth of insights.

You care a lot about premium materials and finishes
If you want your smart ring to double as jewellery, Oura’s rings do look and feel more high-end.

You already own the first Luna Ring
This is a nice step up with a better charging experience and extra features. But if you’re happy with the Gen 1 and not itching for a new ring, there isn’t a killer upgrade here.

Noise Luna Ring (Gen 1): Also consider

Oura Ring 4
Still the best all-rounder for design, app experience and depth of data across iOS and Android. More expensive than the Luna Ring 2 and does require a subscription to unlock its full potential. But for some the extra polish and insights will be worth it.
Read our full Oura Ring 4 review

Ultrahuman Ring Air
A strong subscription-free alternative. With a slick design, polished app and good sleep and recovery tracking. It’s widely considered the second best option after Oura.
Ultrahuman Ring Air review

How I tested the Noise Luna Ring (Gen 2)

(Image credit: Future)

• Paired with an iPhone 16 Pro
• Wore the ring 24/7
• I’ve been testing wearables for 12+ years

I tested the Noise Luna Ring 2 for several weeks, paired with an iPhone 16 Pro. I wore it all day and night, including running outdoors, to gym sessions, during long workdays in coffee shops, evenings at home and, of course, while sleeping. I only took it off to charge it or when showering – yes, it’s waterproof but I never like to risk soap or shampoo messing it up.

Over the past 12 years I’ve reviewed dozens of wearables, including smart watches, fitness trackers and smart rings from Oura, Ultrahuman, RingConn, Motiv, and more. Having got hands-on with so many, I’ve got a strong sense now of what makes a smart ring comfortable, truly useful – from design and comfort to performance, app quality, and long-term wearability – and standout in a busy and competitive space.

• First reviewed in November 2025

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Of all the older games getting a reboot, refresh or remaster lately, I didn’t have 2009’s Plants vs. Zombies on my bingo card or wish list. In its original form, it’s a fantastic puzzle-meets tower defence game, where sentient and weaponized plants are used to protect an unseen dweller (the player) of a simple suburban house against an expanding variety of zombies.

With cartoon-like visuals and a simple presentation, there wasn’t much more I wanted out of the original PvZ. It also works very well in mobile form on both Android and iPhone.

But along came Plants vs Zombies: Replanted anyway, and I simply had to give it a go to see if it has stood the test of time, albeit with a lick of paint.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch
Release date: October 23, 2025

Starting with those visuals, from what I can see support for higher resolutions and HD textures do make this version of PvZ look cleaner and sleeker that the 2009 one. But that arguably comes at the cost of a little charm and art direction, with the bold lines and shadows that helped lower-res assets stand out, somewhat flattened and dulled with an HD sheen. This gives the impression of the graphics looking both more and less refined in certain cases, with mild inconsistencies between the seed packets of plants and how they appear when planted.

This extends a little into the menus too, which seem to mix elements from different versions of the game over the years. In general this is fine but they occasionally felt like something was off with them, perhaps throwing too much into the mix compared to the purity of the original PC version.

(Image credit: Future / Roland Moore-Colyer)

A lack of precise refinement might be a bit of a theme here, as various bugs and glitches initially popped up around the release of Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted. Not many stood out to me other than the odd placement of an asset or two (see the screenshot above), but subsequent patches seem to have paved over a suite of these issues; obviously not ideal, but at least PopCap is taking action.

Art style choices aside, in motion PvZ: Replanted looks fantastic in my eyes. The way the ‘peashooters’ – a cute sentient pea plant that fires, you guessed it, peas – bop to the game’s fun, light and a little jingly music still brings a smile to my face. As does the huge creativity of all the other plants at the player’s disposal.

(Image credit: Future / Roland Moore-Colyer)

Unlocked as you advance through the game's levels, which take place on from the front and back lawns, and escalate from there, these plants vary from offensive, defensive, support and augmenting variants. All have a unique design that shows off the creative and left-field ideas that smaller developers had a bounty of, and the scope to explore, in the noughties.

The same applies to the zombies, which start off with that classic Shaun of the Dead shambling style and evolve into all sorts of fun, and challenging, variants. Developer PopCap’s sense of humour extends from just the design to a virtual almanac that describes the plants and the zombies, along either their individual personalities, in a very wry and quirky way.

Tower defence with brains

(Image credit: Future / Roland Moore-Colyer)

All this means Plants vs. Zombies is a lot of fun today. Not only is the idea of beating back a zombie invasion of a lawn or back yard amusing, it’s rather in-depth too.

Having played PvZ on multiple platforms I’m well-versed at forming established patterns of vegetable, spore, or fruit throwing plants, supported by defensive walls of nut plants, and paid for by carefully laid out grids of sunflowers – sunlight is the main currency of PvZ battles, and needed to fund the deployment of your selected plants.

So far this is all very much the same as the original. And maybe to a fault, as there are the occasional difficulty spikes amid a normally very balanced progression, which I recall being present in the original game.

As an experienced PvZ-er, I’m not against these, and I do enjoy some of the levels that change up how you tackle your defence, such as being given random plants on a conveyor belt rather than pre-selecting them. This injects a dose of chaos, but can fall foul of randomization not landing in one’s favour.

Small changes, like being able to speed up the game’s action can up the challenge, and help speed past the odd slow section where you’re left waiting a wave of zombies but have already got your core defensive lines and sunlight economy sorted. Equally, the light and fun music and just general pleasant vibe of Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is so nice, I never felt like I wanted to hurry through it.

The meat – or should that be marrow – of Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted lies in how it’s combined all of the content from other versions of PvZ into one. There’s the co-op and versus multiplayer modes of console versions, the option to maintain a plant garden that came with the original, and all manner of mini games.

(Image credit: Future / Roland Moore-Colyer)

The latter shine, with one offering bigger sums of sunlight falling from the sky, which means a turbocharged economy and thus a lot more scope to mix up your defences with a host of plants that might be too expensive to use in volume in the standard game mode.

Another mode introduces cloud cover that can reduce the output of your sunflowers or put them to sleep, meaning you need to economise for such eventualities or make use of plants that aren’t directly reliant on sunlight to produce sun. It’s a fun mode that offers a nice challenge for PvZ veterans.

(Image credit: Future / Roland Moore-Colyer)Best bit

(Image credit: Future / Roland Moore-Colyer)

A quirky, creative take on defending against a zombie apocalypse combined with some fun mechanics, means the core Plants vs Zombies experience still impresses today.

All these modes and mini games will keep your attention well after the main adventure part is completed. Some are better than others, but all are worth a quick spin and make Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted a great game to dip into, especially as it even works reasonably well on a Steam Deck.

I still reckon the core adventure mode remains the true highlight, with its charm, style, creativity and well-paced progression on enemies and plant powers.

(Image credit: Future / Roland Moore-Colyer)

Part of me wishes PopCap hadn’t played it so safe with a few more fresh nuances to the adventure to really pull back players well-versed in Peashooter placement, even if that extended to refining the visuals that little bit more.

Nevertheless, I think Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is easily the definitive version of a left-field game that I’ve sunk plenty of time into. And even putting aside nostalgia, it’s a fantastic puzzle and tower defence game that’s so very much worth your time today.

Should you play Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted?Play it if...

You’re after a brilliant tower defence game
Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is simply a wonderful and creative take on the tower defence genre, with a dose of puzzling thrown in for good measure.

You want a fun holiday game With levels and mini-games you can simply jump into, Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted is a great game to dip in and out of during the holiday season.

Don't play it if...

You’re a PvZ purist
Changes to the original game’s art style might not appeal to everyone, with visuals looking a tad flat in places.

You have Game of the Year editions of PvZ
Previous versions of PvZ in Game of the Year packages offer nearly as much as Replanted, without the art style changes.

Accessibility

There’s no dedicated accessibility menu in Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, but you can tweak a few settings like lowering the game’s speed to half speed and opting for a high contrast viewing mode.

As the game is available on multiple platforms, you have the option to play on the platform that most suits you, with PC and mouse control being the one I’d recommend.

How I reviewed Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted

I played some five hours of Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted, getting through most of the adventure mode, which I’ve already finished in previous versions of PvZ, and trying out various mini-games.

I’ve not flirted with the multiplayer options, but they follow the form of previous console releases. I played PvZ: Replanted on my Steam Deck and on my desktop gaming PC, and over that time the game received several updates, which appeared to squash some bugs and refined the remaster. As such, my review covers what I’d consider to be the most complete version of the game.

First reviewed December 2025

Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless review: one-minute review

If you’re in the market for a new headset, you don’t want to sleep on Corsair’s new Void Max Wireless V2. It’s the upgraded version of the Corsair Void Wireless V2, one of the best wireless gaming headsets we’ve tested, adding Sonarworks SoundID through iCue and simultaneous dual connectivity to the mix, to the tune of a small price increase.

It offers solid connectivity, offering both 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth across PC, PlayStation 5 (using the dongle), Nintendo Switch 1 and 2, and mobile, with an Xbox version sold separately. Plus, with extensive battery life of up to 130 hours over Bluetooth and up to 70 hours over wireless, the Void v2 MAX is comfortable and performs great on test, making it a fantastic headset for long gaming sessions.

Still, I wish it had a wired option, and perhaps a detachable microphone – that would have perfectly rounded out the feature set in this Max version, for me, but it’s nonetheless a fantastic mid-range option with ample fun and useful features.

(Image credit: Future)Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless review: price and availability

• List price: $149.99 / £119.99 / AU$249
• Announced September 2025
• Lands in the mid-range of wireless gaming headsets

Sitting comfortably in the mid-range price bracket, Corsair’s Void v2 MAX Wireless justifies its price with a neat design, decent customizability and some great sound smarts, offering a slightly more interesting look and experience than the more budget-friendly alternatives. It skips the deluxe design, features and audio specs from much more pricey options like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite while still hitting the mark on most of the must-haves.

It’s $30 / £20 / AU$60 more expensive than the original Void v2 Wireless released in April 2025, and while it largely offers the exact same experience, the added option for simultaneous 2.4Ghz and Bluetooth connectivity in addition to the Sonarworks SoundID through iCue sweetens the deal.

(Image credit: Future)Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless review: Specs

Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless

Price

$149.99 / £119.99 / AU$249

Weight

10.7oz / 303g

Drivers

Custom 50mm driver

Compatibility

PC, PS5 (with dongle), Nintendo Switch 1 and 2, Mobile. Xbox version sold separately.

Connection type

Simultaneous 2.4GHz and Bluetooth connections.

Battery life

Up to 70 hours (2.4GHz), Up to 130 hours (Bluetooth)

Features

Custom 50mm Neodymium drivers, omnidirectional microphone, RGB lighting, dual connectivity, custom button mapping

Software

Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio (PC), Corsair iCUE (PC), Tempest 3D Audio (PS5)

Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless review: Design and features

• Easy, quick connectivity
• Stylish design
• Flip-to-mute mic – but it’s not detachable

There are no significant design changes between the standard and Max versions of Corsair’s Void v2 headset. Out of the box, the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless comes with just the headset, USB 3.0 dongle, USB 3.0-to-USB-C charging cable, and a QR code to open out the instruction manual.

Available in white and black, the design of these headsets is sleek yet unmistakably gamer-coded headsets thanks to the two slim RGB light strips. The geometric cups are cushioned with breathable memory foam padding, and the adjustable frame ensures a comfortable fit over your head. There are two buttons on the left: one to turn the headset on and off, and the other is customizable to different functions, as well as a small scroll wheel to control the volume on the side.

(Image credit: Future)

The mic arm can be flipped up to mute input or keep it out of your face when not in use, but it’s a real shame they didn’t opt to make it removable for this more premium option – if they had, these would be more socially acceptable to use in place of the best wireless headphones while you’re out and about. Instead, the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless remains confined to my gaming desk. To the same end, I wish they’d offered a dongle adapter with this version; the USB 3.0 receiver feels dated when many consoles and machines are moving towards USB-C.

After charging, it’s simple to set up the headset; if you’re using the dongle, it’ll automatically pair with your headset, or you can pair via Bluetooth by pressing and holding the lower of the two buttons on the left side of the headset. When using the Void v2 MAX Wireless on PC, you’ll want both the Dolby Access app and the Corsair iCUE software; the former allows you to enable Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio, while the latter offers device customisation. When playing on PS5, simply head to the console’s sound settings and enable the Tempest 3D Audio.

(Image credit: Future)Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless review: Performance

• Superb battery life
• Lightweight and comfortable in use
• Excellent audio performance

As you can expect from Corsair, performance is reliably good across the board. The audio and microphone quality is great, and they’re comfortable to wear, to boot.

I’ve been using the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless as my main gaming headset for a month, often playing for hours on end, and I’ve yet to experience any discomfort. Its memory foam cushions, lightweight design and excellent battery life make it a go-to for extended gameplay sessions, whether I’m hooked up to my Nintendo Switch 2, PS5 or my PC.

I’m still not quite over my Baldur’s Gate 3 era, and the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless headset was the perfect companion to enjoy the rich audio landscape of the Sword Coast and the lively voice acting of its fantastic cast. The headset’s noise suppression works wonderfully in tandem with iCue software’s EQ, meaning everything was rendered with great clarity and depth. I also spent some time in Valorant on PS5, finding it super easy to pick out environmental cues thanks to the impressive audio clarity and Tempest 3D Audio.

(Image credit: Future)

Dual connectivity worked well on test, and came in handy a few times I wanted to answer calls or listen to a podcast on my phone while playing a less audio-reliant game, and when I used the headset to chat with friends over Discord, I received several comments on the solid microphone quality.

Best of all, I could complete most of my testing without ever needing to recharge the headset, because it offers around 70 hours of battery life via 2.4GHz wireless and an impressive up to 130 hours on Bluetooth; based on my testing, that’s an accurate benchmark from Corsair.

Should you buy the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless?Buy it if...

You want long battery life
Offering an impressive up to 70 hours of battery life via 2.4GHz wireless and up to 130 hours on Bluetooth, you can game for days on end without reaching for your charging port.

You want dual connectivity
If you’ve got a burning desire to listen simultaneously across devices or be able to take calls while gaming, this presents an easy option.

You want a great all-rounder
It’s simple to use, comfortable, offers great connectivity, looks great, and performs well on test; what more can you ask for?

Don't buy it if...

You were hoping for Xbox compatibility
Unfortunately, the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless isn't compatible with Xbox, although there is a specific model available for Xbox users.

You have a premium headset already
While it’s really impressive for its price point, the Void v2 MAX Wireless isn’t a premium headset-beater, so you’re best off sticking with a pricier model if you already own it.

Also consider...

Still not sold on the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless? Here’s how it compares to more of the best gaming headsets.

Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless

Razer BlackShark V3 Pro

SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless

Price

$149.99 / £119.99 / AU$249

$249.99 / £249.99 / around AU$510

$349.99 / £329.99 / AU$649.00

Weight

10.7oz / 303g

12.9oz / 367g

11.9oz / 337g

Compatibility

PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, iOS, Android

PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android

Connection type

Wireless (via USB 3.0 dongle), Bluetooth

Wireless (via USB 3.0 dongle), Bluetooth

Wireless (via base station), Bluetooth, 3.5mm wired

Battery life

Up to 70 hours

Up to 70 hours

Up to 44 hours

Features

Custom 50mm Neodymium drivers, omnidirectional microphone, RGB lighting, dual connectivity, custom button mapping

Razer TriForce Titanium 50mm drivers, advanced passive noise isolation, detachable microphone, dual connectivity

Custom 40mm Neodymium drivers, retractable microphone, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, dual connectivity, AI-powered noise-canceling mic

Software

Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio (PC), Corsair iCUE (PC), Tempest 3D Audio (PS5)

THX Spatial Audio (PC), Windows Sonic Spatial Audio (PC/Xbox), Tempest 3D Audio (PS5)

360 Sonar Spatial Audio (PC), Tempest 3D Audio (PS5)

Razer BlackShark V3 Pro
It’s a fair bit pricier, but the Razer BlackShark V3 Pro is one of the best gaming headsets we’ve reviewed. Offering much the same features but throwing Xbox compatibility into the mix as well as awesome ANC, it’s a superb set of wireless audio-givers.

For more information, check out our full Razer BlackShark V3 Pro reviewView Deal

SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless
Again, a pricier option compared to Corsair’s Void Max v2, but with a few extra features that sweeten the deal, such as a wireless base station for dual connectivity rather than one through Bluetooth, plus a fully retractable mic that makes it a little more discreet if you want to use them while you’re out and about.

For more information, check out our full SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless reviewView Deal

How I tested the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless

(Image credit: Future)

• Used as my main gaming headset for four weeks
• Connected to my Nintendo Switch 2, PC and PS5
• Played a variety of games across genres

Typically, I use my iconic Razer Kraken Kitty V2 wired headset, but putting this to one side to try the Corsair Void v2 MAX Wireless granted a better all-round experience and the benefits of dual connectivity. I used it with my Nintendo Switch 2, gaming PC, and PlayStation 5, playing everything from first-person shooters to RPGs like Baldur’s Gate III and Assassin's Creed: Shadows to see how the headset works in different environments.

I used all of the advertised features, and exhaustively used the headset over my four weeks of testing to see what the long-term experience is like and ensure comfort, performance, and software all work as promised.

First reviewed November-December 2025

Read more about how we test

WiiM Sound: Two-minute review

WiiM has been rapidly building a wireless, multi-room streaming ecosystem that competes directly with Sonos and Bluesound. The WiiM Sound is its first wireless smart speaker – an important milestone – and in typical WiiM fashion, it’s an impressive product with design and performance that rivals the best products in its class. However, unlike its previous products, which delivered these attributes for less than the competition, the WiiM Sound carries a premium price.

It sounds great, with a full, powerful sound signature and tons of EQ settings, and the built-in circular touchscreen is a fun feature. But its lack of a hands-free voice assistant and no support for Apple AirPlay limit its value as a smart speaker – especially for the iOS ensconced.

Is it one of the best wireless speakers we've tested for sound, though? And crucially, is the WiiM Sound the speaker to build a new multi-room audio system with? Read on…

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(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)WiiM Sound review: Price & release date

• Released October 28th, 2025
• Priced $299 / £299 / €349 (AU$499 approx.)

The price of the WiiM Sound is $299 / £299 / €349 (AU$499 approx) and it's not hard to see that its nearest and most relevant rivals are the either the Sonos Era 100, which costs $219 / £199 / AU$319 officially, (though at the time of writing has some tasty discounts – in the UK, it's currently £159) or the more powerful Sonos Era 300, which costs a more substantial $479 / £449 / AU$749.

So it sits squarely between the two, which is a smart choice. Also sitting here at this price point is the Apple HomePod 2, which is officially $299 / £299 / AU$479. How does the WiiM Sound stack up against the competition? That's precisely what we're here to work out…

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(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)WiiM Sound review: Specs

Speaker drivers

2x tweeters, 1x woofer

Amplification

3x Class D amps

Dimensions

5.7” x 5.7” x 7.5” (146 x 146 x 193 mm)

Connectivity

Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 (transmit and receive), 3.5mm line-in, 100 Mbps Ethernet

Streaming support

WiiM Home app, DLNA, Google Cast, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, Roon Ready

Voice assistant support

Amazon Alexa (via Voice Remote), compatible with Google Assistant

Other features

Room Correction, WiiM multi-room control, WiiM 5.1 home theater, and stereo pair options, hi-res audio up to 24-bit/192kHz

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(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)WiiM Sound review: Features

• Very good wired and wireless connectivity, 2-way Bluetooth, but no AirPlay
• Built-in 1.8-inch touchscreen display
• Room Correction via iOS or Android

I’m not sure why WiiM and Apple don’t see eye to eye, but the WiiM Sound is now the fourth new WiiM product to ship without Apple AirPlay support. Because it has Google Cast (and good native service support in the WiiM Home app), this omission only impacts one type of user: Apple device owners who want to stream Apple Music. If that’s you, there’s always Bluetooth as a fallback, but let’s agree this is much less convenient.

Still, that Bluetooth connection is versatile, letting you stream to the speaker or letting you connect a set of headphones so you can listen to the same audio privately.

As more people become interested in analog formats like vinyl, having a wireless speaker with a 3.5mm AUX input is handy. The WiiM Sound has one (and a dedicated Ethernet jack), something you won’t find on either the Sonos Era 100 (unless you buy an adapter) or on the Apple HomePod 2. WiiM’s feature-filled app even lets you set the pre-amplification level on the aux input so that it’s sufficiently loud for your source, without risking distortion.

The most recognizable aspect of the WiiM Sound is its circular touchscreen. It’s a vibrant gem that looks way better in real life than in these images, and I love the option of having a clock face when the speaker isn’t in use. Design-wise, circles are lovely, but as Apple rightly identified with the Apple Watch, sometimes circles aren’t great for user interfaces.

(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)

Album art, the thing most folks will want to display while streaming, is always square, which means some of the image is usually hidden. If you want to display track/album info too, you’ll see even less of that cover art.

As a touchscreen, it’s very responsive and easy to navigate, and yet, unless you place the WiiM Sound on a shelf at shoulder height, it can be awkward to use. Thankfully, all of its functions can be replicated from the WiiM Home app, and the most important controls (volume and playback) are accessible from the top touch controls and the included remote.

Speaking of the remote, WiiM knocked it out of the park with the WiiM Voice Remote 2 Lite, a simple and elegant rechargeable Bluetooth unit that feels great in the hand. Or should I say, Apple knocked it out of the park? The similarity to the Apple Siri Remote for Apple TV is immediately obvious. What’s less obvious is that, unlike Apple’s weighty chunk of aluminium, the WiiM version is much lighter due to its partially plastic construction. If you want more heft, you’ll need to buy the regular WiiM Voice Remote 2.

You don’t need a remote for the WiiM Sound (your smartphone does it all) unless you want to access Amazon Alexa. For reasons known only to WiiM, the WiiM Sound will work as an Alexa speaker, but it can’t hear you unless you talk into the remote’s mic.

Your room and a speaker’s position in it can heavily influence your system’s sound, which is why room correction is becoming a highly sought-after feature. The WiiM Sound’s AI RoomFit isn’t as convenient as the HomePod 2’s automatic system, but it works on both iOS and Android, something that Sonos’ TruePlay tuning still can’t do.

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Maybe Sonos is right. I used AI RoomFit on an iPhone 16 and a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and the iPhone delivered markedly better results, bringing the WiiM Sound much closer to the target EQ curve. Still, even after using the iPhone, the change in equalization in my two test locations wasn’t night and day. The improvements are subtle – a little less boomy-ness, and a less strident upper midrange. Nothing you couldn’t achieve with a few tweaks of your own.

Speaking of Sonos, the WiiM Sound has one of Sonos’ best features: you can use the speaker as part of a stereo pair, or as a surround or center channel in a 5.1 system (when using a WiiM Amp Pro, WiiM Ultra, or Amp Ultra connected via HDMI ARC to your TV).

That’s the kind of flexibility I’ve come to expect from WiiM, and it makes investing in the company’s gear a better long-term play. WiiM hasn’t announced a soundbar product yet, but you can bet it will, and when that happens, I expect the WiiM Sound will be the logical rear speaker companion.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t detail all of the features in the WiiM Home app. Instead, check out my Sonos vs WiiM comparison. But know this: when it comes to software, WiiM is quickly becoming one of the best multi-room systems you can buy…

• Features score: 4/5

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(Image credit: WiiM )WiiM Sound review: Sound quality

• Full, rich sound with excellent bass response
• Technically a stereo speaker, but you won’t get true stereo sound
• Two WiiM Sounds make a great stereo pair or rear 5.1 surrounds

When Audio Pro released its A10 MKII WiiM Edition speaker, I was eager to try it out, hoping that the first WiiM-compatible wireless speaker would be a strong alternative to the Sonos One and Era 100. While the A10 MKII did well with midranges and highs, it felt lacking in the lows – a key strength of Sonos’ smallest speakers.

I was worried the WiiM Sound might suffer from the same issue, but it put my fears to rest as soon as I turned it on. This speaker is everything I’d hoped it would be sonically.

Even before adding EQ tweaks like Bass Booster mode, the Sound delivers a warm resonance that complements acoustic genres like jazz. If a bigger, more bombastic low end is your thing, WiiM’s EQ presets and manual adjustments will happily oblige. It never achieves chest-thumping levels of bass, yet for a speaker of its size, it won’t disappoint. Just be mindful that if you push bass and volume to their limits, there can be some distortion.

Midrange definition and clarity are both very good, and the highs possess a pleasing brightness without becoming sharp or sibilant. One of my favourite test tracks – Birds by Dominique Fils-Aimé – reveals the WiiM Sound’s penchant for balancing subtle vocal details with low-frequency instrumentation.

Given that the WiiM Sound uses a similar acoustic design to the Sonos Era 100, it’s no surprise that these speakers have similar sound quality. However, where the WiiM Sound offers a wider soundstage for a greater sense of immersion, the Era 100 has greater cohesion and definition, especially when you’re listening position is centered on the speaker’s main axis. For more casual listening, or if you’re moving about your space, these two speakers sound very close to one another.

Stereo-pairing a set of WiiM Sounds is a treat, as it almost always is when dealing with great wireless speakers. However, WiiM’s software hasn’t quite caught up to Sonos on this feature. Grouping the two speakers and selecting their left/right channels is a breeze, but if you’ve enabled any kind of EQ tweaks or room correction on these units, there’s no way to synchronize these settings. WiiM says this is coming in the next month or so.

Being able to use the WiiM Sound as 5.1 surround channels is a lot of fun. Using a WiiM Amp Pro, a wired sub, and two bookshelf speakers, the WiiM Sounds provided a flexible and immersive experience, even for downmixed Dolby Atmos soundtracks. The same stereo pairing software caveats apply, however, so care will need to be taken in the settings for each device.

• Sound quality score: 4.5/5

(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)WiiM Sound review: Design

• Larger than similar speakers
• Fun display
• Matches most decor

At first glance, the WiiM Sound is immediately recognizable by its built-in circular touchscreen. Now that Bose no longer makes its Home Speaker 500, the WiiM Sound is unique. It’s an eye-catching feature guaranteed to be a conversation piece when friends and family come over. I’m not going to lie: despite the fact that it’s completely unnecessary, I kinda love it.

You get a variety of display choices in the WiiM Home App, with more on the way, like custom wallpapers, and the brightness can be set manually or automatically according to your room’s ambient light. If you’d prefer to go distraction-free, it can also be turned off.

The slightly squarish, fully fabric-wrapped body (available in black, seen here, and white) should work with almost any decor. It's a wee bit taller than the Sonos Era 100, and a full inch taller than the HomePod 2. That shouldn’t be a problem for placement – you’ll likely be able to put it anywhere you’ve got an available power outlet.

Including a 3.5mm AUX input was a smart choice on WiiM’s part, since Sonos didn’t do it on the original Play:1 or the subsequent Sonos One. Even the Era 100, which can support analog, requires an optional adapter. However, I’m less crazy about the port’s placement, which is under the speaker, beside the power and Ethernet jacks. I acknowledge that putting it on the rear of the speaker wouldn’t look as good, but I think it would be worth it for the added convenience.

Most folks will likely use the WiiM Sound on a tabletop or counter, but you can also buy wall-mounts. At publication time, I haven’t seen them yet and don’t know the price.

As I mentioned above, the included remote is a really nice touch and, unlike some other remotes I’ve seen, it doesn’t feel like an afterthought.

• Design score: 4.5/5

(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)WiiM Sound review: setup and usability

• WiiM Home App is powerful but still missing some features
• Touch controls work well
• …It's just too bad that voice control needs the remote

Getting the WiiM Sound set up is as easy as opening the WiiM Home app, plugging the speaker into power, and then waiting a few seconds for the app to detect the speaker. Once it has, you’re less than a minute away from being able to stream music from sources like Spotify and Tidal, and it only takes a few extra minutes to add Google Cast and sign into the music services supported within the app.

While music service support is good, it’s nowhere near as comprehensive as Sonos. You get most of the big names: Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer, YouTube Music, Qobuz, Pandora, plus TuneIn, Plex, BBC Radio, and some lesser-known options. What you don’t get is Apple Music, and Spotify only works when you use the Spotify app (via Spotify Connect).

The app also guides you through the optional RoomFit tuning process and helps you sign into Amazon to set up Alexa on the WiiM Sound. Except for a hiccup on Amazon’s end, it was very straightforward and easy to do.

WiiM’s universal search quickly locates any music you have access to, including your personal collection if you have a DLNA server set up (super easy to do via Plex or Twonky) or a shared folder on a PC or NAS.

On the speaker itself, the top controls illuminate automatically when your hand approaches. That’s a slick feature, and it works well, but it would be nice to have them always on.

Now, about that touchscreen. The reason I said it’s completely unnecessary is that it replicates features that are more easily accessible from the WiiM Home app. It’s easy enough to navigate, but other than changing EQ settings and accessing presets, there isn’t that much you can do. Critically, you can’t browse for something to play – there’s no access to your streaming sources – and WiiM chose not to include the radio shortcut that comes with the WiiM Ultra.

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If you’re using the WiiM Home app to manage a single device, like the WiiM Sound, the features work much as you’d expect: You can control the playback queue, select favorites, and create playlists. WiiM’s presets feature is particularly powerful, letting you not only assign a track, album, or playlist to an available slot, but you can also use presets as shortcuts. For example, if you regularly wanted to play vinyl via the Sound, you could set a preset to switch to the line-in input, enable an EQ preset, and pick a specific volume level that’s different from the Wi-Fi level.

The tricky part comes when you add additional WiiM devices to your system. Each new streamer or speaker is treated individually in the sense that all of your streaming accounts must be added again, Google Cast must be enabled, and if the device supports Amazon Alexa, you’ll need to sign in to use it.

Playlists can also be confusing since, unlike in Sonos, they aren’t universal. In other words, playlists are content-sensitive: Tidal tracks can only be added to Tidal playlists, your personal music can only be grouped with other tracks in your library, and in some cases, like Amazon Music, you can’t save items to playlists at all. The same is true for favourites.

The only place you can mix and match content from different sources is in the presets list for each device, as each preset can trigger any audio accessible from within the WiiM Home app.

While the WiiM Home app may not be as playlist- and favorite-friendly as Sonos, it more than makes up for it with its reliability and huge selection of advanced options for power users. Interactions within the app, like changing volume, grouping/ungrouping of devices, and playing/pausing/skipping of tracks, are all snappy.

If you find that your system isn’t performing as you’d expect, there are adjustments you can make. Mesh Wi-Fi users, for instance, have the option of forcing a WiiM device to connect to a specific access point instead of roaming for signals, which can improve network reliability.

• Setup & Usability score: 4/5

(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)WiiM Sound review: Value

• More expensive than Sonos
• But also more full-featured
• Worth it for WiiM fans

At $299, the WiiM Sound is $80 more than the Sonos Era 100, arguably its closest competitor. Given that these two speakers have very similar sound signatures, and both exist as part of a larger, multi-room wireless ecosystem, WiiM’s speaker is a costlier option. Still, WiiM offsets its higher price with more features, like an included remote, a built-in auxiliary analog input, and of course, that eye-catching touchscreen.

For WiiM fans looking to build out their multi-room systems, the WiiM Sound is an excellent choice, with better performance than the similarly WiiM-compatible AudioPro Addon A10 MKII WiiM Edition.

The only thing that keeps this smart speaker from a perfect value score is its lack of on-device, hands-free voice commands, something that most competitive models from Sonos, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Denon offer as a standard feature.

• Value score: 4/5

Should you buy the WiiM Sound?

Features

The only thing missing is AirPlay and hands-free voice commands

4/5

Sound quality

Clear, powerful sound with excellent bass response and tons of EQ controls

4.5/5

Design

Simple and elegant, with a gem of a built-in display

4/5

Setup & Usability

A cinch to set up and use, though Sonos fans may find the WiiM Home app lacks some features they’re used to

4/5

Value

As long as you’re not looking for a true smart speaker you can talk to from across the room, there’s a lot here to love

4/5

Buy it if…

You’re looking for a Sonos alternative
It’s no secret that some Sonos users are unhappy with the company’s latest software, and have been looking at WiiM as an alternative. With the exception of the WiiM Sound’s lack of hands-free voice commands and Apple AirPlay, it’s a great way to start a WiiM system.

You’re already all-in on WiiM
If you own one or more of the company’s streamers and have been waiting for a compatible wireless speaker, the WiiM Sound is an excellent choice for expanding your system.

Don't buy it if…

You’re an iPhone-wielding Apple Music user
With no in-app support for Apple Music and no AirPlay, iPhone owners will only be able to stream Apple Music via Bluetooth – a lossy wireless connection. It will still sound good, but that’s not why we invest in Wi-Fi speakers, especially ones capable of 24-bit lossless audio.

You need a true smart speaker
Having a Sonos Era 100 with Amazon Alexa in the kitchen has been super handy. But would I use Alexa if I had to keep reaching for a remote? Nope. And yet that’s how Alexa works on the WiiM Sound. To use the speaker hands-free, you’ll need an Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant speaker somewhere else nearby.

WiiM Sound review: Also considerSonos Era 300 competitors

WiiM Sound

Sonos Era 300

Apple HomePod 2

Sonos Era 100

Price

$299 / £299 / AU$499 (approx)

$449 / £449 / AU$749

$299 / £299 / AU$479

$249 / £249 / AU$399

Speaker drivers

2x tweeters, 1x woofer

4x tweeters, 2x woofers

5x tweeters, 1x woofer

2x tweeters, 1x midwoofer

Amplification

3x Class D amps

6x Class D amps

Not listed

3x Class D amps

Dimensions

5.7” x 5.7” x 7.5” (146 x 146 x 193 mm)

6.30 x 10.24 x 7.28 in / 160 x 260 x 185 mm

5.6 x 6.6 x 5.6 in / 142 x 168 x 142 mm

4.72 x 7.18 x 5.14 in (120 x 183 x 131 mm)

Connectivity

Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 (transmit and receive), 3.5mm line-in, 100 Mbps Ethernet

Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C (3.5mm line-in and Ethernet via adapter)

Wi-Fi (802.11n), Bluetooth 5.0 (not audio)

Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C (3.5mm line-in and Ethernet via adapter)

Streaming support

WiiM Home app, DLNA, Google Cast, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, Roon Ready

Sonos app, Apple AirPlay 2

Apple AirPlay 2

Sonos app, Apple AirPlay 2

Voice assistant support

Amazon Alexa (via Voice Remote), compatible with Google Assistant

Alexa, Sonos Voice Control

Siri

Alexa, Sonos Voice Control

Other features

Room Correction, WiiM multi-room control, WiiM 5.1 home theater, and stereo pair options, hi-res audio up to 24-bit/192kHz

Dolby Atmos support, Sonos multi-room control, Sonos home theater option, stereo pair option

Dolby Atmos support, Thread/HomeKit smart home hub, auto-calibration, stereo pairing option, Apple TV home theater option

Sonos multi-room control, Sonos home theater option, stereo pair option

Sonos Era 100
The obvious choice for folks who want a great-sounding smart speaker that can work alone or as part of a coordinated whole-home wireless multi-room sound system.
See our in-depth Sonos Era 100 review for more. View Deal

Apple HomePod 2
While not as fully featured or as affordable as the Sonos Era 100, it sounds great and works brilliantly with all of Apple's devices, and of course, Apple Music.
Here's our full HomePod 2 review.

Denon Home 150
Less expensive than the WiiM Sound and a fair bit older, yet it's chock full of features including hi-res audio, built-in Amazon Alexa, USB storage access, and an analog input.
Consult our Denon Home 150 review to see if it's right for you. View Deal

WiiM Sound review: How I tested

(Image credit: Simon Cohen / Future)

• Received two review samples
• Tested individually, in a stereo pair and with the WiiM Amp Pro
• Tested using calibration software – and without it

I received two WiiM Sound speakers and set them up as individual units, as well as in stereo-pair and surround sound configurations with a WiiM Amp Pro. I calibrated both speakers using the WiiM RoomFit tuning feature and compared the before and after results.

I tested both the top touch controls and the circular touchscreen for responsiveness and ease of use.

I streamed audio to them from third-party apps including Tidal, Qobuz, and Amazon Music to test features like Tidal Connect and Google Cast, and I also signed into these services from inside the WiiM Home app to see how they performed when used natively. I used the WiiM Home app on both iOS (iPhone 16) and Android (Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra).

During these sessions, I sampled a variety of genres, such as jazz, rock, classical, and hip-hop, and then repeated the process on the Sonos Era 100 and Apple HomePod 2 to hear how the WiiM Sound compared.

When using the WiiM Sound in surround mode, I played a variety of test clips in 5.1, stereo, and Dolby Atmos to hear how the speakers handled immersive rear channel effects.

You can read TechRadar's review guarantee here.

• First reviewed: December 2025

Cosori 5L Rice Cooker: one-minute review

Nowadays, rice cookers aren’t simply rice cookers. Many double as multicookers, offering a multitude of cooking functions that make them multifaceted kitchen appliances. The Cosori 5L Rice Cooker is one such rice cooker, offering more than 10 cooking modes that cover sautéeing, steaming, and even jams and cakes. However, this appliance falls short in what it should do best.

During our testing, we found the rice results to be overly dry, with clumps of overcooked grain. Far from inedible, but not the quality you’d expect from a rice cooker of this price range. The Cosori Rice Cooker’s other cooking functions present mixed results, too. In some cases, the results were excellent.

When it comes to making cakes, compotes, boiled eggs, and porridge, the quality is extremely high. However, we found its Slow Cook function a tad disappointing, and we wish we had more control over the temperature of some of the modes available.

(Image credit: Future)

The design of this rice cooker is top-notch, however. It’s exceptionally easy to clean, compact for its 5L capacity, and the digital touchscreen display is a joy to use. It’s not overly pricey either, at £119.99 / $99.99 (about AU$150).

If you don’t mind experimenting a bit to get optimal results, the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker is well worth considering. But we can’t help but compare it to similarly priced competitors offering higher-quality results.

Cosori 5L Rice Cooker: price and availability

• $99.99 / £119.99 at Cosori
• Sold at Ubuy and Amazon in Australia for between AU$197.57 and AU$249
• Available at third-party retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy

At $99.99 / £119.99 (about AU$150), the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker is a budget-to-mid-range appliance. You get extra value for your money here, as it also doubles as a multi-cooker. While it’s not the best Instant Pot alternative we’ve tested, it’s more affordable than the likes of the Instant Pot Pro ($129.99 / £149.99) and the Instant Pot Duo Crisp ($229.99 / £229.99)

However, when stacked against the likes of the Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker, which is another rice cooker that doubles as a multicooker and falls in a similar price range at $129.99 / £119.99 (about AU$200), there’s no contest. While the Cosori Rice Cooker has its benefits, performance isn’t as consistent, nor its results as high quality, as the Ninja.

• Value score: 4/5

Cosori 5L Rice Cooker: specifications

Review model

CRC-R501-KUK

Number of baskets

1 cooking pot

Number of cooking functions

10+

Cooking functions and modes

White Rice (Long Grain, Short Grain, Quick), Brown Rice (Short Grain, Long Grain, Quick), Grains (Quinoa, Porridge, Mixed), Steam, Slow Cook, Soup, Sauté, Jam/Sauce, Cake, Keep Warm, Delay Timer

Accessories

Soup ladle, measuring cup, 3L steam basket, and standing rice paddle

Smart control

No

Rated power

970W

Capacity

5L

Time range

Up to 24 hours on Slow Cooker/Keep Warm modes

Dimensions

12.3in (D) x 10.6in (W) x 9.2in (H) / 312mm (D) x 269mm (W) x 234mm (H)

Weight

9.81lbs / 4.45kg

Dishwasher-safe

Yes (but we don't advise it)

Guarantee

2 years

Cosori 5L Rice Cooker: design

• 5L capacity cooking pot
• Large, touchscreen buttons
• Easily clean pot and accessories
• Lines in pot indicating required water levels

Out of the box, this Cosori rice cooker comes with a black, silver-topped main base, a 5L non-stick cooking pot, a soup ladle, a measuring cup, a standing rice paddle, and a 3L steam basket. Assembling the appliance is straightforward thanks to its thorough user manual, though you may find its inner lid and steam cap a tad confusing to insert the first time.

This rice cooker isn’t overly chunky, taking up less than one kitchen counter space, and its modern matte black base, silver-topped design means it shouldn’t look out of place, no matter your kitchen’s style.

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(Image credit: Future)

When on, the touch-screen digital display on the front of the rice cooker lights up, displaying the rice preset options, a Keep Warm button, and a Mode button, allowing you to access other cooking functions such as Sauté and Steam. The touchscreen is easy to use, with the large buttons and digital timer display (which is even bigger) clear to see, even from a few feet away.

To open this rice cooker, you simply click the silver button on its top, and the lid springs open, revealing the heating plate and temperature sensor inside. The 5L non-stick-lined cooking pot effortlessly inserts into the space and provides a decent capacity for small to medium households. Inside the pot are lines on either side indicating where to fill the pot with water when steaming or cooking white rice, brown rice, etc., corresponding to the number of cups of grain you’ve added. These lines, when combined with your measuring cup and the user manual’s quick reference chart, make it easier to balance your water-to-grain ratio when cooking.

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(Image credit: Future)

This non-stick pot was probably the easiest cooking pot we’ve cleaned in our time testing appliances. By filling the pot with warm soapy water and wiping it with the soft side of a sponge, we found rice, porridge, and even compote residue could be removed with minimal effort. While Cosori says the pot and accessories are dishwasher safe, we don’t advise cleaning anything with a non-stick coating in a dishwasher, as it could damage the non-stick lining.

Just ensure you also clean the inner pot lid and its steam cap after each use. This has a few more crevices, and the lid needs to be disassembled for proper cleaning, but the process is, again, pretty easy. The same can be said of the inside of the base, which can be easily wiped with a cloth.

The accompanying 3L steam basket neatly fits into the inner pot, but we wish it had some non-metallic handles to make removal after cooking easier (and safer).

(Image credit: Future)

In addition to its user manual, the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker comes with a quick reference guide that includes tips for cooking, the grain chart, and a quick rundown of how to set up the appliance and cook white/brown rice. This is handy if you don’t want to flick through the user manual. The rice cooker also comes with a recipe book featuring global recipes that utilise its various functions. We always love the flavour of Cosori recipes, so we highly recommend trying these out.

Cosori 5L Rice Cooker: performance

• Variety of cooking modes and rice presets
• Rice was overcooked
• No control over temperature
• Cake function is excellent

The Cosori 5L rice cooker is positioned first and foremost as just that: a rice cooker. Unfortunately, we found its rice cooking capabilities to be lower quality than its other cooking functions.

This appliance has several presets for rice and grains. For white and brown rice, you can specify short grain, long grain, or quick cook (which takes less time but results in harder rice, according to the user manual). We added two cups of washed, long-grain white rice to the pot, filled it to the respective line in the pot, and selected the White Rice/Long Grain option, which takes 50 minutes. This is in line with some rice cookers, but slightly longer than cooking on the hob.

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(Image credit: Future)

When running, the rice cooker is surprisingly quiet, registering around 32 decibels (about the volume of a whisper), but when cooking is complete, it lets out several loud beeps that you can easily hear from another room. After using the rice paddle to fluff the rice, we found clumps of overcooked rice in the batch, and the results were, overall, quite dry. In case it was an error on our part, we tried again with the Quick Cook option, which takes 39 minutes. While the dry clumps were less prevalent, there were still enough to make the results less than ideal.

We had the same issue with long-grain brown rice. On the relevant preset, it took 75 minutes, much longer than on a hob, even though brown rice takes longer to cook. Again, we found the results to be overcooked and quite dry, with several clumps of chewy grain. Edible, but not the high quality we’d expect.

(Image credit: Future)

It’s disappointing, as the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker’s other functions work pretty well. We tested several recipes from the Recipe Booklet, which utilises the different cooking functions, and were generally impressed by the results (though it was a mixed bag).

Following the Spiced Carrot & Lentil Soup recipe, we used the sautée function (accessed through Modes) to sauté onions and cumin seeds to perfection. Our only gripe here was that the pot gets very hot, and there seems to be no control over its temperature settings, so you need to be careful not to overcook in this mode. After sautéeing, we were able to seamlessly move to the Soup function, and after 45 minutes, we had a lovely chunky soup with soft carrots ready for blending.

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(Image credit: Future)

The Jam/Sauce mode is impressive, too. We followed the Strawberry-Thyme Compote recipe, which requires the lid to be open, and had a delicious compote after 15 minutes: soft chunks of strawberry, plenty of tang, and just the right consistency.

This (perhaps minus the thyme) pairs well with porridge. We were surprised that, despite the rice cooking issues, the Porridge preset (under Grains) provided excellent results. We added two cups of rolled oats to the pot and filled the pot to the corresponding water/liquid line for porridge. While it took 30 minutes to get there, the porridge consistency was spot on.

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(Image credit: Future)

The Steam function, too, provided great results. For steaming, you add water to the steam line in the pot, then place the steam basket into the pot. We followed the recipe for a soft-boiled egg, adding two eggs to the basket. For steaming, there’s some preheating required. While it doesn’t tell you how long preheating takes, the digital display shows when the rice cooker is preheating and beeps when finished. We were concerned this preheat time would impact cooking, as the eggs were in the basket during that time, and it wasn’t accounted for in its six minutes of cooking time, but the results were excellent. The egg yolk was runny and yellow, the white cooked but not overdone.

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(Image credit: Future)

Again, following a recipe from the provided book, we made the Slow Cooked Sunday Sauce, which utilises the Sauté and Slow Cooker modes. We found the pot’s width to be somewhat of a restriction here. The recipe advises cooking your meat in batches, and we did, but there wasn’t a huge amount of room to ensure our chuck beef could layer along the bottom without several batch cooks.

The pot prioritizes depth capacity, so don’t expect it to act as a de facto hob in Sauté mode. After sautéeing our meat and veg in several batches and adding the necessary ingredients, we set the appliance to Slow Cook for four hours. After four hours, the sauce itself was delicious. However, the fat on the beef chuck hadn’t rendered, despite braising, and we were left with inedible, chewy fat on our meat. It’s a shame, because the meat was otherwise cooked well, though not necessarily melt-in-your-mouth.

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(Image credit: Future)

The best results we got by a mile, however, were for cake. Of all things. We were understandably very sceptical of a rice cooker’s ability to bake a cake. We followed the Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting recipe in the book, which requires making the batter separately before pouring it into the greased inner pot and selecting the Cake mode. After 70 minutes, we had a (slightly oddly shaped) chocolate cake that was delicious. The cake was moist but not wet and somehow light. In my husband’s words: “It’s the best chocolate sponge I’ve ever had.”

The Cosori 5L Rice Cooker is a mixed bag when it comes to performance, but we’re particularly disappointed in its rice-cooking abilities. You potentially could, with some experimentation (like adding more water than suggested), get better results, but if you want a rice cooker that makes perfect, fluffy rice each time, this may not be the appliance for you.

• Performance score: 3.5/5

Should you buy the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker?Cosori 5L Rice Cooker: score card

Attribute

Notes

Score

Value

This rice cooker is good value for what it offers, but competitor products offer better performance for the same price range.

4/5

Design

A dream to clean and use, this appliance is quiet and easy to use.

5/5

Performance

We had subpar results with rice cooking and a mixed bag when it came to other cooking modes.

3.5/5

Buy it if

You will use its various cooking functions

This rice cooker offers a multitude of cooking functions, covering sautéing, steaming, and even cooking cakes or jams. If you like to cook a range of dishes in your kitchen, or just experiment with new things, it's worth considering this appliance. Not sure where to start? We highly recommend trying the recipes in the accompanying recipe book.

You're looking for a budget-to-mid-range multicooker/rice cooker

Considering this rice cooker doubles as a multicooker, its £119.99 / $99.99 price tag is good value, especially compared to the $200+ price tag of some multicookers. So, if you’re on a budget, it’s worth considering if you think you’ll make the most of its various functions.

You want an easy-to-clean appliance

This is probably the easiest-to-clean appliance I've ever tested. Whether you’re dealing with porridge or compote residue, minimal elbow grease is needed due to the cooking pot’s exceptional non-stick coating.

Don't buy it if

You want effortless, perfect rice every time

As we’ve said, we found this appliance’s rice-cooking capabilities subpar. With some experimentation, you may be able to achieve optimal results, but if you want perfect fluffy rice every time, with minimal exertion, you may be better off considering an alternative.

You won't use all its functions

If you simply want a rice cooker – nothing more, nothing less – then this may not be the appliance for you. There’s no point getting an appliance that doubles as a multicooker if you won’t use its multi-cooking functions. Instead, you can purchase a quality rice cooker, with no extra bells and whistles, for less than $100.

You want consistency across all cooking functions

While we were hugely impressed by several of the Cosori 5L Rice Cooker's functions, others didn't quite hit the mark. So, if you want exceptional quality across the board, it's worth considering an alternative, such as the Ninja Foodi PossibleCooker.View Deal

The Dragon of Dojima has smashed his way onto the Nintendo Switch 2 once again – this time with a port of Yakuza Kiwami – a remake of the first game released in Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s iconic series. This excellent action role-playing game (RPG) has landed on Nintendo’s latest console almost ten years after its initial release on PS3 and PS4, so does it hold up?

Review info

Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2
Available on: Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC
Release date: November 13, 2025 (Switch 2 version)

Well, before I answer that and get into the nitty-gritty, allow me to set the scene.

Yakuza Kiwami follows the story of Kazuma Kiryu – a yakuza who is expelled from the Tojo Clan after being accused of murdering his patriarch, Sohei Dojima. After spending ten years in prison, Kiryu is forced to find his feet in truly chaotic circumstances. His childhood friend, Yumi, has gone missing. His sworn brother Nishiki is spiralling after being appointed as a yakuza boss. And the Tojo Clan is frantically searching for 10 billion yen, which has seemingly been stolen. The story is compelling as ever, and kept me engaged from start to finish.

I’ve spent more than 15 hours playing through the main and side stories in Yakuza Kiwami for Nintendo Switch 2. And as someone who played – and thoroughly enjoyed – the PS4 version of this remake, my hopes were pretty high. Here’s how it stacked up against my expectations.

Making the Switch 2 a new console

(Image credit: Sega)

Good news, Yakuza fans, this is a very strong port of Kiwami. First of all, the game runs at an impressive 60fps, which is the same as the PS4 version. I was glad to see that the framerate rarely ever dropped with my Switch 2 docked or in handheld mode, keeping the action flowing when it mattered most.

There was the very occasional drop during heat actions, but this was minor and had no impact on gameplay whatsoever. The title also displays at 1080p, meaning you get very solid performance, all things considered. Of course, as a port of a decade-old game, the visuals aren’t the flashiest, but Kiwami certainly looks as good as you’d hope on Switch 2.

Other than one cutscene in Chapter 1, which appeared to be a little low-res, in-game movies also looked as good as they did on PS4. The murkiness of 2005 Kamurocho, the vibrancy of yakuza fashion, and the character animations all look as character-filled as I’d hoped.

Another good thing about the Switch 2 version is that load times have been kept nice and brief. So, whether you’re heading into a fast food joint or going to the Serena bar, transitions feel swift and seamless.

Best bit

(Image credit: Sega)

Majima just loves getting beaten up by Kiryu. Only to help the Dragon of Dojima ‘get stronger’, apparently. Anyway, I found him hiding under a giant cone and then used it to crush him in combat. The sheer creativity of this series never fails to wow me.

Yakuza Kiwami isn’t only nice to look at and smooth performing, but it’s also a joy to control on Switch 2. I mainly played through it with the Joy-Con 2 controllers, piecing combos together, switching into different battle styles, and general movement feels just like it should.

There are a few small options that also help to make this a great port. For instance, you can carry over data from the original Nintendo Switch version of the game, straight onto Switch 2 if you’re mid-way through your adventure, say. There are also more text languages available than in the PS4 version, for example, which is a nice touch. And obviously, being on Switch 2, you can also play on the go, which is a key reason to pick this edition over home console alternatives.

Overall, this is a great way to play Yakuza Kiwami – an awesome game in its own right. Speaking of, let’s talk a little more about the game itself, which has been a favorite of mine for a number of years.

KIRYU-CHAN!

(Image credit: Sega)

Yakuza Kiwami’s story covers some pretty heavy ground. Kiryu aims to help a vulnerable child find her mother; he has to survive in an increasingly hostile Kamurochō, and the internal politics of the Tojo Clan leave him in some extremely precarious situations. But the heaviness of Kiwami’s story is weighted against some truly bizarre – oftentimes hilarious – sub-stories and events.

Perhaps the most obvious example I can think of is just about every interaction with Goro Majima, who is nicknamed ‘The Mad Dog of Shimano’. This troublemaker has a sadomasochistic obsession with Kiryu and will fight you at every turn through a battle system called Majima Everywhere. He claims this is to revive the ‘true’ Dragon of Dojima – the full-strength Kiryu that existed before spending a decade imprisoned.

Usually, you’ll just have a scrap in the streets of Kamurochō, but some of your encounters are phenomenally bizarre. Majima will dress up as a police officer, hide in a comically oversized traffic cone, and even get into drag. All with the purpose of fighting you. There are so many hilarious moments, and these episodes will make it clear why Majima is such a fan favorite.

As you continue to battle it out and improve your Majima Everywhere rank, you’ll unlock skills for the Dragon combat style. This is a bit different, as you simply spend EXP to gain proficiency in the other styles: Brawler, Rush, and Beast. I’d argue that the pure volume of fights required to advance the Majima Everywhere plotline and gain all of the Dragon skills is too high, and can grow tiresome after a while. But still, there are a lot of brilliant moments sprinkled throughout this segment of the game.

My Judgement

(Image credit: Sega)

I mentioned EXP earlier, which you gain through beating street punks, defeating bosses, eating food…you name it. This can be spent on upgrading health, learning combat skills, and the like. The way your power scales as the game goes on feels fitting for a yakuza who’s been long out of the game, and adding new moves into the mix as you become more familiar with the combat system is a strong design choice.

And speaking of combat, it’s seriously addictive. The various battle styles are well-differentiated, piecing together combos feels satisfying, and building up your heat gauge to unleash powerful – and sometimes zany – finishing moves is seriously gratifying. You’re not getting the most complex or deep action mechanics ever, but that’s honestly not a flaw – the fact that the simplistic combat feels this rewarding is a feat in itself.

Before I come to my conclusion, I have to mention that the story is executed very well overall. There are plenty of twists and turns, plenty of emotion-filled moments, and a wonderful cast of characters. You’ll have the odd errand to run in the main story, and this can slightly disrupt the pace of the adventure, but aside from these occasional bumps in the road, Kiwami is a real blast to play through.

There are also some funny, action-packed, and plot-enriching sub-stories to explore. Most of these are non-essential, but you can get some amazing rewards if you take the time to see them through. You’ll hear a ton of groovy and heartfelt tracks throughout these substories, and just in Kamurochō generally, which I regularly come back to listen to.

All in all, Yakuza Kiwami is great on Nintendo Switch 2. This version runs smoothly and looks very good for the most part, although the game does, of course, show its older-gen roots. Load times are short, everything feels easy to control, and the game itself is strong in terms of its narrative, gameplay, and soundtrack. If you haven’t played Yakuza Kiwami yet, then it’s all too easy to recommend it on Nintendo Switch 2.

Should you play Yakuza Kiwami on Nintendo Switch 2?

(Image credit: Sega)Play it if...

You want to enjoy Yakuza on the go
This is a smooth-performing and good-looking version of Yakuza Kiwami, whether played in docked mode or handheld mode. Being able to take Kiryu’s journey on the go is a massive plus, and the Switch 2 version is a very solid one indeed.

You’re looking for a more digestible RPG
Sure, if you were to take on all of the substories, you could probably spend more than 80 hours in Yakuza Kiwami. However, players taking on the main story and a small bit of side content can expect to see the adventure through in around 20-25 hours. If you want a shorter action RPG to blast through, Kiwami is a nice choice.

Don't play it if...

You’re new to the series
It may seem counterintuitive, but the first game in the series isn’t the best to start with, in my view. For Switch 2 players, I’d recommend picking up Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut first. This is a prequel to Kiwami and takes you through the backstory of Kiryu and Majima, and even touches on how their paths intersect.

You’re expecting real next-gen magic
This is a port of an almost decade-old remake, so if you’re expecting some flashy next-gen magic, you may be disappointed.

Accessibility features

There are quite a few options available in the settings menu, like camera control customization, subtitles in a range of languages, different difficulty and gore levels, and the choice to toggle display tips on or off. Unfortunately, there’s no colorblind mode, though, which would’ve been a nice touch.

How I reviewed Yakuza Kiwami on Nintendo Switch 2

(Image credit: Sega)

I spent more than 15 hours playing through the main story and a handful of side stories in Yakuza Kiwami on Nintendo Switch 2. I usually played in docked mode, with my Switch 2 console connected to the Sky Glass Gen 2 TV and Marshall Heston 120 soundbar. However, I did play in handheld mode on occasion, where I usually listened to in-game audio with my Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones.

I’ve played Yakuza Kiwami on the PS4 before, and spent in excess of 50 hours on the game. As a result, I had a strong understanding of what would make this a successful port. I’m also a big fan of the Yakuza series in general, with Yakuza 0 standing as my favorite game in the franchise.

More generally, I’ve been a Nintendo Switch 2 owner from launch, and have reviewed a wide range of games for the console. This includes other RPGs like Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake and Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, but also titles from other genres, like Kirby Air Riders and Drag x Drive.

First reviewed December 2025

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2: two-minute review

If you’re looking for a PS5 headset that boasts unrivaled customization options, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2 is an endlessly versatile wireless gaming headset option. And while it is indeed a tweaked version of the multiplatform model, one that swaps out the control wheel on the right earcup for one that dials in sidetone, this headset can be used on a whole host of platforms to great effect.

After using the headset for 100 hours, I’ve found myself keeping it on for music listening and work calls throughout the day. It’s a Gen 2 version of an existing headset, with a larger battery that I’ve found to be good for just over 50 hours, and a few extras in terms of software compatibility. Having also used a SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 review, I can say with confidence that this is a big step up in terms of user experience and comfort.

All in all, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P offers everything I want from a PS5 headset, and I’ve been impressed by the custom audio profiles for games like Fortnite and Alan Wake 2. While the Arctis app is easy to use on mobile, some features, like creating custom EQ profiles, are locked to the desktop app. I’d love to see full functionality on the mobile app, as having to jump between devices to use the full suite of features is a little frustrating. Similarly, you have to use the desktop app to update firmware.

Audio quality for the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P is great across the board and has held up while I’ve been testing the headset with gaming, work calls, and music listening sessions.

There’s a handful of music EQ profiles to play around with, and they offer the usual Bright, Heavy, Bass Boost options you’ll find on most EQing programmes these days. I love the fact that Side Tone is controlled via a wheel on the right ear cup, as it allows me to dial it up for online, voice-chat heavy games, and then back down for when I’m playing a single player title.

(Image credit: SteelSeries)

Battery life was pretty much bang on the 54 hours claimed by the manufacturer (my estimate was 52 hours following a full charge), though I did find that the battery drained a little quicker when using both the Bluetooth and 2.4Ghz functions simultaneously. As such, I never actually ran out of battery (besides the testing for battery life), as a quick charge at the end of the day would boost the headset up enough to last comfortably more than the following day’s usage.

Retractable microphones are my preference in a gaming headset, and I’ve really appreciated being able to neatly slot away the microphone while I’m using the headset for music or single-player games. Other gaming headsets I’ve owned have had detachable microphones, and sooner or later, they get misplaced, rendering the device useless for certain kinds of games. The red light that indicates muting is a nice touch too, giving me a clear signal that, yes, I am indeed muted on a call once again.

I’ve unfortunately also had two instances requiring me to hard-reset the device. This seems to happen due to an endless cycling of the Bluetooth pairing when connecting and reconnecting between multiple devices. To reset the headset, you have to remove the foam from one of the earcups and then use a pin to poke down into a very tiny hole.

This isn’t ideal, and particularly frustrating when you don’t have the right tool on hand to initiate the fix. I’ve kept the headset’s firmware updated throughout this review, so for now, I’m unable to say whether this issue is something that’s prevalent and planned to be fixed.

(Image credit: SteelSeries)SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2: price and availability

• List price: $199 / £179.99 / AU$399
• More expensive than the Gen 1 version at launch, which was $179.99 / £174.99 (about AU$310)
• Competitive pricing with a great feature set that matches rivals

The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P launched in October 2025. It’s positioned somewhere in the middle of the mid-range premium gaming headsets in terms of cost, and it’s in-line, though slightly more expensive than the Gen 1 version due to its refreshed and updated feature set.

At $199 / £179.99 / AU$399, the headset has a number of competitors like the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3. It’s exactly the same price as the Stealth 700 Gen 3, and shares many of the same features, though the Turtle Beach has the SteelSeries beat on battery life by a considerable margin.

Then there’s the Razer Kraken V4, a cheaper alternative ($179 / £179 / AU$329) to the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P. You get a little less battery life and THX Spatial Audio, which really improves the audio experience. Unfortunately, this THX Spatial Audio is only available on PC, so if you’re a console gamer, you may find the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P’s suite of software features a lot more useful in your setup.

For the price, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P does offer great value for money in terms of build quality and features. It doesn’t have Active Noise Control (ANC), though you can’t find another headset that does in this price range. In fact, ANC is very uncommon in the gaming space as of yet, so for now at least, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P feels fully featured.

It’s also worth mentioning that, despite having launched in October of this year, there have already been deals and discounts for Black Friday that brought the headset down by $20 on average. Even if you can’t find a deal on the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P headset, it’s still great value for money for what you’re getting.

(Image credit: Future)SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2: specs

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 3

Price

$199 / £179.99 / AU$399

Weight

11.5oz / 326g

Drivers

40mm carbon fiber with brass surround

Compatibility

PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, Mobile

Connection type

Wireless (2.4Ghz via dongle), Wired (audio jack), Bluetooth

Battery life

54 hours

Features

Retractable boom noise-cancelling microphone, Simultaneous wireless and Bluetooth audio, AirWeave memory foam ear cup material, Fast Charge (6 hours in 15 minutes).

Software

SteelSeries GG/Sonar, SteelSeries Arctis Companion App (iOS & Android)

(Image credit: Future)SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2: design and features

• Comfortable and lightweight design that feels sleek and unobstructive
• Simultaneous 2.4Ghz wireless and Bluetooth audio is a real winner
• Three cleanly designed colorways

The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P comes in three colors: Black, White, and Pink, though the design largely follows the same of other Arctis Nova headsets. Comparing it to my own SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5, the 7P is noticeably improved in build quality. It’s slightly heavier, and the headband is a PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition)-coated steel that’s much more sturdy. At a glance, however, this is the same design we’ve seen from other SteelSeries gaming headsets, just a little bit more premium-feeling.

In comparison to the weight of competitors like the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 (14.3oz / 408g) and the Kraken V4 (12.3oz / 397g), the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P is noticeably lighter (11.3oz / 326g). I often find gaming headsets too bulky and heavy for extended use, though the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P has been superbly comfortable to wear all day. I was given the Black color variant for review, and it’s a big upgrade on the White model I’ve used for the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 (which discolored and yellowed a little after a few months of use).

Another thing I like about this headset is the retractable microphone. It slots neatly into the left earcup and can be pulled out and replaced smoothly. There’s even a small red LED on the tip of the microphone to indicate when the device is muted. Personally, I need a little bit of Side Tone in my gaming headsets, which usually plays back a bit of my speech audio into the headset while using the microphone. The 7P version here has an adjustable dial on the right earcup to adjust Side Tone, a nice feature that’s exclusive to the PlayStation-centric version I’ve been testing

(Image credit: Future)

There’s a mute button, a volume wheel, and two pairing buttons that activate Bluetooth and 2.4GHz connections, respectively. These all feel solid, though there’s nothing particularly interesting to report about them. Other headsets might use a click here and there on their volume wheels, but I can’t say I was left wanting with the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P’s more straightforward offering.

This 7P variant is multiplatform across PC, mobile, Mac, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch 2, Meta Quest 2 and Quest 3, and Nintendo Switch, as are the 7 and 7X variants. The difference between the models is that in the 7, the right ear cup has a chatmix volume wheel (tailored for PC functionality), rather than the 7P and the 7X’s Side Tone wheel. The PS5 doesn’t use chatmix, so the Side Tone wheel is more useful if you’re primarily playing on PlayStation. If you want proper Xbox compatibility, the 7X is the headset that’ll connect to Xbox devices. The 7 and 7P will not.

Having separate buttons for each connection type works like a charm, and they even have slightly different sound effects upon activation. This streamlines a potentially finicky process that can often crop up with simultaneous connectivity devices like this.

(Image credit: Future)SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2: performance

• Fantastic sound across gaming, music, and work calls
• Arctis app’s custom game profiles truly make a difference
• Comfortable and versatile enough to become a daily driver

The SteelSeries Arctis 7P excels in audio quality, mostly leaning on the Arctis app to offer a deep level of customization in how your in-game audio is mixed. I’ve played hundreds of hours of online games like Fortnite, Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders using the headset, and found in-game audio to rise to the occasion, regardless of what I’m playing. I often chose to use the headset without the companion app, instead relying on default settings to play a whole host of games. I found the audio to be well-balanced and with adequate levels of bass without needing to tweak things in-game.

Similarly, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P will perform great when streaming music, though it’s not really positioned as a music-first product, lacking noise cancelling and the clarity you’ll get from a dedicated set of more audio-focused headphones.

Generally, the headset features solid audio quality and performance in default settings, with very few issues with stuttering or streaming, whether connected to Bluetooth or 2.4Ghz signals. I had quite a few problems with the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 in this respect, frequently finding that my audio would glitch or cut out entirely from time to time. Whatever’s been finetuned for the 7P model has ironed out these issues completely, and I’ve had a very smooth experience switching between Bluetooth and 2.4Ghz modes so far.

A huge plus point of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P is its compatibility with the companion Arctis app, which adds flexibility and features. You can download the Arctis app on your phone, and from there you can tweak the Bluetooth audio, the 2.4Ghz audio, and microphone profiles on the fly. It’s a robust app that has custom profiles for games like Battlefield 6, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, and Fortnite.

(Image credit: Future)

In online competitive titles, enemy footsteps are bumped up in the EQ mix, and the difference is stark. Having spent around a hundred hours playing Arc Raiders on the headset with the “FPS Footsteps” custom profile enabled, I’ve been able to hear enemies sneaking up behind me, saving me from a potential ambush.

Unfortunately, custom EQ settings are locked to the desktop app, so if you want to make your own audio profiles, you’ll need to load up another device. I’d like to see this compatibility added to the mobile app, as having to open up my laptop and connect my headset to a separate platform really complicates what should be a simple process.

Microphone quality isn’t perfect out of the box, but after some tweaking in the Arctis app, it sounds great when playing online with other players. At this price point, the audio quality from the microphone is standard, but nothing to write home about, though I’ve had reports from my regular gaming group that the microphone sounds noticeably better than on my SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5.

All in all, however, I have very few gripes with how the Steel Series Arctis Nova 7P performs day to day. The simultaneous Bluetooth and 2.4Ghz connections have made the headset a staple for me, whether I’m gaming, working, or chatting to pals on Discord.

(Image credit: Future)Should I buy the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2?Buy it if...

You want a comfortable and light gaming headset
The Steel Series Arctis Nova 7P is the most comfortable gaming headset I’ve reviewed so far. It’s noticeably lighter than its direct competitors, while still having great build quality and a sturdy headband.

You want custom audio profiles for games like Fortnite
Arctis offers custom audio profiles specifically tailored for a whole host of games. Some amplify enemy footsteps, while others bump up the high-end to do justice to soaring orchestral soundtracks.

You want to run two audio streams simultaneously
The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P offers simultaneous Bluetooth and 2.4GHz wireless audio streams. This means you can run your Discord chat over Bluetooth, and your game audio through 2.4Ghz. This is seamless and very easy to manage on the fly.

Don't buy it if...

You want to make your own EQ profiles easily
Unfortunately, you’ll need to use a desktop app to create and manage EQs you’ve made yourself. This is frustrating, as the mobile app has every other piece of functionality covered. Still, this is a niche issue, and most won’t need to open their desktop even once.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2: Also consider

Still not sold on the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P? Here are two competitors that might better fit your needs.

SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 3

Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3

Razer Kraken V4

Price

$199 / £179.99 / AU$399

$199.99 / £179.99 / AU$399.95

$179 / £179 / AU$329

Weight

11.5oz / 326g

14.3oz / 405g

12.3oz / 350g

Drivers

40mm carbon fiber with brass surround

60mm Eclipse™ Dual Drivers

Razer TriForce Titanium 40mm Drivers

Compatibility

PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, Mobile

PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS

PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, Android, iOS

Connection type

Wireless (2.4Ghz via dongle), Wired (audio jack), Bluetooth

Wired (USB-A), Wireless (2.4GHz, Bluetooth 5.2)

Wired (USB-A), Wireless (Bluetooth 5.3, 2.4GHz USB dongle)

Battery life

54 hours

80 hours

Up to 50 hours

Features

Retractable boom noise-cancelling microphone, Simultaneous wireless and Bluetooth audio, AirWeave memory foam ear cup material, Fast Charge (6 hours in 15 minutes).

Flip-to-mute mic with AI noise reduction, CrossPlay Dual transmitters, remappable Mode button, and wheel

Razer HyperSpeed Wireless technology, Retractable Razer HyperClear Super Wideband Mic, THX Spatial Audio

Software

SteelSeries GG/Sonar, SteelSeries Arctis Companion App (iOS & Android)

Swarm 2

Razer Synapse

Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 Wireless
The closest competitor to the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P is the Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3. It’s exactly the same price, but it does have more battery life. It’s also much heavier, however, and overall has a much more bulky design.

For more information, check out our full Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3 review.View Deal

Razer Kraken V4
The Kraken V4 is a slightly cheaper alternative here. It has more bespoke technology applied to its microphone and audio drivers, with particular care taken to ensure the microphone quality punches well above its weight. The battery life is only slightly less than the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P’s, and it similarly features a retractable design for its microphone.

For more information, check out our full Razer Kraken V4 review.View Deal

(Image credit: Future)How I tested the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P Gen 2

• Tested daily for a month, between gaming and work sessions
• Used primarily on PS5 Pro, but also on my MacBook Air, and Google Pixel 7
• Compared directly to the Steel Series Arctis Nova 5, which I’ve now used daily for over a year

The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P has become my daily driver for the last month or so. I’ve been using it as my main gaming headset, playing Arc Raiders and Fortnite with pals online. I’ve also used the headset for work, joining meetings and presentations, and using the microphone to speak. I’ve regularly had both audio streams running simultaneously using the Bluetooth and 2.4Ghz wireless functions, especially while gaming.

On my PS5 Pro, I’ve tested the custom audio profiles in the Arctis app. Audio for Fortnite, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Battlefield 6 all offered distinct differences when paired with their respective custom profiles. Primarily, I’ve played around 60 hours of Arc Raiders, a game where audio is particularly vital. The FPS Footsteps profile saved my life a bunch of times by lifting low-end audio and making enemy footsteps clear and pronounced.

On my MacBook Air, I used the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P to listen to music, and applied some of the dedicated music profiles from the Arctis app to test audio quality. During my testing, I was able to compare the headset to the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 and noted the upgrades offered by the newer version. I also paired the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7P to my Google Pixel 7 to test calls, Discord Mobile audio, and to access the Arctis app’s full suite of features.

First reviewed October-December 2025

Read more about how we test

Eufy E25 Omni: two-minute review

Hybrid robot vacuum-and-mops have come a long way in the last few years, and the Eufy E25 Omni is the latest example of bots that are capable of tackling both tasks to a high standard. I tested one for two weeks to see how it compares to the rest of the best robot vacuums on the market, and I was generally very impressed.

The E25 Omni offered solid performance in my vacuuming tests and was especially efficient at clearing fine dust. However, despite the squared-off shape and dual side sweepers, the edge cleaning wasn't the best. The AI-based automatic adjustment failed to recognize my spillage and bump up mop settings to clear it, but with manual tweaking to Max mode, this bot delivered some of the best mopping I've seen.

Navigation was reliable, as was obstacle avoidance. However, the E25 Omni proved a little fussy when it came to the initial mapping stages – I had to clear my floors to achieve a complete map. Meanwhile, the app is intuitive to use and offers a range of ways to operate the robot, including scheduled cleans, zone cleaning and the ability to change the intensity of vacuuming or mopping.

At full price it's expensive, but regular deals take the price down and deliver better value for money. That's the short version; read on for my full Eufy E25 Omni review.

(Image credit: Future)Eufy E25 Omni review: price & availability

• List price: $1299.99 / £849 / AU$1799.95
• Launched: May 2025
• Availability: Worldwide

Officially, the E25 Omni is a premium robot vacuum, costing $1299.99 / £849 / AU$1799.95 at sticker price. However, you shouldn't read too much into that list price – the manufacturer offers regular, steep discounts and the Amazon price history shows it is rarely full price. With an average price of around US$750 it's still not cheap, but it does compare well with equivalent flagship hybrids like the Roborock Qrevo Curv or the Ecovacs Deebot X11 Omnicyclone.

In terms of value for money, the E25 is a very good robot vacuum and it does a lot to justify its high price point. However, it's worth considering the ongoing costs too. Replacement dust bags and floor cleaning solution are available from Eufy, with dust bags costing US$16.99 for 3 and the solution $20.99 a bottle. Third party dust bags are available for cheaper, although I can't confirm their compatibility.

• Value for money score: 4 out of 5

Eufy E25 Omni specs

Max suction:

20,000 Pa

Robot size (L x W):

12.8 x 13.7in / 32.6 x 34.8cm

Robot height:

4.4in / 11.2cm

Dock dimensions (W x D x H):

14.6 x 19.1 x 17.3in / 37.2 x 48.4 x 43.9 cm

Mop type:

Roller

Max threshold clearance: 

Not stated

Dust bin volume (onboard):

Not stated

Dust bin volume (base):

3L

Water tank volume:

2.5L (clean), 1.5L (dirty)

Base functions:

Self empty, refill water, clean and dry roller mop

Eufy E25 Omni review: design

• Rounded square with two side sweepers, spit main roller and roller mop
• Relatively compact dock takes care of a range of maintenance tasks
• Dock has a useful transparent water tank

The Eufy E25 is a rounded square robot vacuum with a raised nodule housing the LiDAR for navigation. Flip it over and you'll find a roller that's equipped with bristles and rubbery fins, and is split in the middle to try and combat hair tangling, plus two spinning side sweepers. The main central suction are is really quite small in proportion to the size of the robot.

There's also a tube-shaped mop, which applies downward pressure to dislodge dirt. It's fed with clean water as it rolls around, while the dirty stuff is constantly siphoned off.

(Image credit: Future)

The all-black design is minimalistic – which, for a functional product is definitely preferable to trying to do something a bit more eccentric. It is able to fit under objects 4.4in / 11.18cm off the ground, and through gaps of 12.83in / 32.58cm wide.

The dock is pretty inoffensive looking, and compared with some hybrids vac-mop options, feels relatively small. It's all black, with a view to blending into its surroundings, which is definitely a plus in my view. In terms of functions, it'll take care of emptying the bot's onboard dustbin, washing its mop pads and drying them with hot air, draining the onboard dirty water tank and refilling it with clean water, and dispensing detergent.

(Image credit: Future)

The water tank is transparent, so you can visually see when it is starting to run low. This feature is surprisingly rare, but useful. There's also a white ring light, which will turn red if either water tank isn't correctly installed.

The fact that the robot sits on a ramp outside the body of the dock, rather than slotting inside, helps keep the dock size down. As with most robot vacuum docks, you're technically meant to leave a wide margin of clear space all around (1.6ft / 0.49m either side and 4.9ft / 1.49m in front), but experienced owners will know it's possible to get away with far less than this.

• Design score: 4 out of 5

Eufy E25 Omni review: performance

• Strong obstacle avoidance but initial mapping can be hit-and-miss
• Tendency to return to dock mid-clean, extending overall task time
• Solid vacuuming and excellent mopping on the highest settings

It was fairly straightforward to get the Eufy E25 Omni set up, although I found the mapping task less forgiving than some rival models. Specifically, it's worth ensuring all obstacles are out of the way before attempting mapping.

You can control the E25 through the Eufy companion app or a smart home system. Both methods are fairly straightforward, although I found starting a specific room clean could be a bit hit-and-miss when I tested it using Amazon's Alexa. It would sometimes work, even with rooms where I'd used custom names, but half the time it would just start a whole house clean – a major hazard in a household like mine when another room's floor may be littered with Lego.

(Image credit: Future)

In terms of navigation, I found coverage of the rooms was good, with E25 taking a systematic path that didn't leave any patches uncleaned. It also did a good job of detecting different floor surfaces, reliably lifting the mop when it reached carpet to ensure it didn't get it damp, and upping the suction intensity on deeper carpet.

When given a cleaning task the E25 returned to its dock periodically to empty the dust container, clean the mops and recharge the battery. This did extend cleaning times a bit, but for an area of around 700 sq ft with mixed floor material, it generally took an 1hr 30mins, or a little bit under, to complete the clean.

Vacuuming performance

I ran a series of dedicated tests to access the Eufy E25's vacuuming performance of both fine dust (a mix of flour and cookie crumbs) and chunkier particles (dry rice). On hard floors I found it vacuumed fine particles well, picking up all the material in my test in one pass.

It didn't do as well with larger debris, with the side brushes pushing a few grains of rice into areas where the robot had already cleaned. It did eventually manage to pick up almost everything, though. On mid-pile carpet the E25 performed perfectly, picking up both fine and chunky debris in a single zone clean, although on higher pile it did leave a few grains of rice.

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Like many robot vacuums, cleaning performance around the edges of rooms isn't great. (It's this that really keeps it from being a vacuum that could fully replace a manual – as well as it not being able to vacuum stairs.) In my tests, the E25 worked its way around walls and objects but didn't get close enough for a really thorough edge clean.

Even on the highest vacuuming intensity I round this robot relatively quiet, although the auto-empty function in the dock is louder as the dock sucks the dust from the small onboard bin.

Mopping performance

On first look the mopping performance wasn't great. It did well at clearing a fresh liquid spill, leaving no more water on the surface than regular mopping would, but it struggled with tougher dirt. To test this, I smeared a small amount of ketchup on a hard floor and left it to dry.

I then sent the bot out to mop, leaving it to use its own AI features to work out which mop setting to use. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make a dent in the dried up ketchup at all. For a second pass, I toggled the settings manually to the highest mop mode, and during this run the robot did seem to identify the stain and focus on it. It took a few passes but eventually managed to remove it completely.

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While the Eufy E25 omni does lose some points for needing a manual tweak of the settings, this is still some of the best mopping performance I have seen from a robot vacuum-mop.

Object avoidance

I also ran tests to assess how accurate the Eufy E25's object avoidance was. Here it performed very well, not only spotting and avoiding the objects I'd laid out, but even identifying them on the map and correctly labelling them as a power cable, a shoe and clothing (in the case of the sock). It managed to repeat this flawlessly twice in testing. However, in everyday use it did on occasion drag a charging cable around a room, so I'd still recommend keeping these out of reach as much as possible before starting a clean.

(Image credit: Future)Maintenance

Cleaning and maintenance of the robot itself is low-effort. Like most robot vacuums, it will auto-empty dust from the small onboard bin into a larger bag within the dock. Emptying the dirty water tank is straightforward – it's easy to lift it out of the dock and unclip the top lid.

This robot's side sweeper brushes are angled to prevent hair tangling, and even after extended use I didn't have to remove any manually. If you do need to clean the main brushroll, the cage is easily removed and both halves of the roller can be popped out slightly to help you get at anything stuck inside.

(Image credit: Future)

The only part of the setup that needed a bit of attention was the part of the dock where the mop is cleaned. I found debris could collect here, although it was cleared easily enough using a regular vacuum with a crevice tool, or a brush.

• Performance score: 4 out of 5

Eufy E25 Omni review: app

• Simple setup and easy to use, with an editable, 3D map
• Can store multiple maps for different floors
• Naming inconsistency can cause confusion

The Eufy Clean app is easy to use and offers clear instructions to pair to the device and start mapping. Once you've completed mapping you are given a 3D map you can rotate, tilt and edit to divide, merge and rename rooms. From this you can then start cleaning either individual rooms or square zones that are defined on the map.

Using these zones you can isolate specific parts of a room, such as around a dining table for a quick post-dinner clean. If these are cleans you are going to be doing often you can also use the 'Common' section to define these regular tasks to make them easy to start or schedule.

(Image credit: Screenshots from Eufy app)

When choosing an area you can define different features of the clean or leave it to the AI agent to select the best option for the room type and floor material. Options include cleaning intensity, water level, suction power and whether you want the robot to make 1 or 2 passes of the area.

As well as using the app to launch a clean, you can also schedule cleans, either as a one-off or a recurring event. Scheduled cleans can be set to whole home, specific rooms or scenarios. My only tiny gripe is that these 'scenarios' are the common tasks mentioned above, and it would be clearer if Eufy used a consistent name for the function in the app.

If you want to use the robot over multiple floors, you can also save multiple maps within the app. Just bear in mind you'll have to carry the robot up and down the stairs – potentially multiple times, because this robot likes to return to its dock to empty, clean its mop and top up its battery mid-clean.

The Eufy E25 Omni integrates with smart home systems and is compatible with the Matter standard so will work with Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple's Siri.

You can set 'Do not disturb' periods where the robot won't clean. If it's halfway through a clean when one of these kicks in, it will return to the dock, and resume once the designated quiet time has passed. If you are planning on having the base station in a bedroom it is worth considering that even during 'Do not disturb' hours the dock will continue to dry the mop, which is just about audible, although no more than a low-level hum.

• App score: 4 out of 5

Should you buy the Eufy E25 Omni?

Attribute

Notes

Rating

Value

Premium, but regularly discounted. Decent value when on sale.

4 / 5

Design

No-nonsense robot vacuum with roller mop and two side sweepers. Relatively small dock for a hybrid cleaner.

4 / 5

Performance

Good vacuuming and excellent mopping on the highest settings. Strong obstacle avoidance, but initial mapping is unforgiving.

4 / 5

App

Easy to use, with plenty of options. Some inconsistency in names.

4 / 5

Buy it if...

Your priority is mopping

Although it did take a manual tweak of settings to get there, this robovac's mopping is some of the best I've seen.

You want a robot that doesn't need intervention

Some robots need regular saving after getting trapped on obstacles but the Eufy mostly managed to keep itself out of trouble.

Don't buy it if...

You don't need mopping

If all your floors are carpet there's no point paying the premium for mopping functionality.

You're worried about damp carpets

Although the Eufy E25 Omni reliably detected carpet and avoided mopping, other bots have the ability to leave their mop pads in the dock when they're not required – that's not an option here.

You want efficient cleaning

The Eufy E25 Omni regularly returned to its dock to empty its bin or top up its charge mid-clean, which did extend how long it took to complete tasks.

How I tested the Eufy E25 Omni

I tested the E25 over two floors of my home with mixed surfaces for a period of a few months. I performed specific tests to assess how well it picked up fine particles and larger debris on hard floors, low pile and high pile carpet. I also tested mopping performance on hard floors, testing how well it dealt with a dried ketchup stain and a fresh spill.

The robot was put through two obstacle avoidance tests and I tested the custom tasks and scheduling functions, as well as how well it worked with smart home integrations by operating it through Alexa to start whole home and zone cleans.

Read more about how we test robot vacuum cleaners

• First reviewed December 2025

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Two-minute review

(Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

What makes a great sequel? Across film, gaming, and indeed smartphones, the best follow-ups carry forward and amplify the good things while dialing down any pretension. In the phone world, this means zeroing in on the features and functions that give a phone its purpose.

That’s exactly what Oppo has done with the Find X9 Pro. It takes everything great about last year’s Oppo Find X8 Pro and dials it up to 11, while ditching the idea that this is anything other than an iPhone 17 Pro Max for Android lovers. It's both simpler and somehow more obscenely powerful than its predecessor, and I, for one, love it.

Now sporting a drastically simplified flat-edged design, flat display, and top-left-mounted square camera housing, the Find X9 Pro resembles an iPhone more than any other Oppo phone before it, but the Chinese tech giant is banking on the idea that if you’re willing to spend pro-flagship prices on an Android phone, that’s not too big a deal.

For all its cool designs over the years, the Find X series has always been defined by hardware power – and more recently, extremely powerful camera systems – so it’s quite something that the Find X9 Pro still managed to surprise me with its specs sheet. The phone is one of the first to ship with the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chipset, alongside a healthy 16GB of RAM, and a ludicrously large 7,500mAh silicon-carbon battery with 80W wired charging. It's almost excessively performant, but can get a bit hot in even moderate use.

But what about that camera system? The Oppo Find X9 Pro has a 50MP main camera, 50MP ultra-wide camera, and – brace for impact – a 200MP telephoto camera with 3x zoom. That super-high-res sensor allows for a 50MP crop at 6x, which helps make up for the loss of the dedicated 50MP 6x camera from last year’s model, and a 12MP crop at 13.2x zoom. And that’s not even mentioning the detachable 10x zoom lens – you’ll have to read on for my thoughts on that.

In adequate lighting, the main camera defaults to 50MP shots rather than binning to 12MP as most phone cameras do, and a special mode allows for 200MP full-res shots with the telephoto camera. The capability here is immense, but unfortunately, Oppo’s post-processing is still a bit too aggressive, sometimes veering into AI-flavored reconstruction.

For the Star Wars fans out there, the Oppo Find X9 Pro is the Empire Strikes Back of smartphone successors – bigger, brasher, and close to objectively better than last year’s Oppo Find X8 Pro. Yes, polishing the experience has buffed out some of the quirky charm of last year’s model – I especially miss the vinyl-like rear panel, which has been replaced with glass – but the final product is so much greater than the sum of its parts that this simply ceases to matter.

This is a superb phone that would immediately rank amongst the best phones on the market, were it not for its tragically limited availability. As with previous Oppo phones, no US release is expected.

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Price and availability

The Oppo Find X9 Pro in the Oppo Aramid Fiber Case (sold separately) (Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

• Not available in the US
• Costs £1,099 / AU$2,299
• One configuration with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage

Despite launching “globally”, the Oppo Find X9 Pro is unavailable through official channels in the US. It is, however, available in the UK and Australia, where it competes with and slightly undercuts other large pro-grade flagship phones when it comes to price.

The Oppo Find X9 Pro costs £1,099 / AU$2,299 for its single configuration. For that, you get 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

At face value, that price is about right for a large Pro-labelled camera phone, but as usual, Oppo is actually offering great value for money. Compared to the iPhone 17 Pro Max – an obvious analogue to the Find X9 Pro, not to mention an influence – the Find X9 is £100 less with double the storage in the UK. In Australia, the Find X9 Pro comes in at AU$300 cheaper than the iPhone 17 Pro Max with 512GB of storage.

Let’s keep it real: the Oppo Find X9 Pro isn’t cheap, but it's a pretty good deal compared to its plus-sized, Pro-powered camera phone contemporaries. It’s a shame it’s not more widely available, which will probably keep it off our lists of the best camera phones, best AI phones, best Android phones, and more. I’d expect to see it top our list of the best Oppo phones soon, though.

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Specs

In this review, I’ll go through the Oppo Find X9 Pro’s features and capabilities in detail, but if you just want an overview of the phone’s key specs, check out the handy table below.

Dimensions:

161.3 x 76.5 x 8.3mm

Weight:

224g

Display:

6.78-inch AMOLED

Resolution:

1272 x 2772 pixels

Refresh rate:

120Hz

Chipset:

MediaTek Dimensity 9500

Rear cameras:

50MP main + 50MP ultra-wide + 200MP telephoto (3x)

Front camera:

50MP

Storage:

512GB

RAM:

16GB

OS (at launch):

Android 16 with ColorOS 16

Battery:

7,500mAh

Charging:

80W wired, 50W wireless

• Value score: 4 / 5

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Design

(Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

• Comes in two colors – Silk White and Titanium Charcoal (named as such despite the phone containing no titanium)
• Flat edges, flat display, flat rear panel
• Square camera housing

With its flat edges, rounded corners, and almost square camera housing in the top-left corner, there are no prizes for guessing where Oppo got its inspiration for the Find X9 Pro's design. This is probably as close as a phone maker can legally get to the iPhone before Cupertino starts asking questions.

Specifically, the Find X9 Pro resembles last year’s iPhone 16 Pro Max. Its Snap Key and Quick Button are echoes of the Action Button and Camera Control and serve similar, if not identical, functions, and the curvature and overall ergonomics of the phone are reminiscent of last year’s Apple flagship (why the "Snap" key doesn't control the camera is lost on me).

As on OnePlus phones, the Snap Key replaces the ringer switch from last year’s model. While I was a fan of the convenience of the ringer switch, the modularity of the new button helps to make up for it. It's set to the new AI Mind Space feature by default, but I mostly had it set to control the flashlight.

The Find X9 Pro is beautifully made. My review unit came in the striking Silk While finish with a matte glass rear panel and satisfyingly bold aluminum rails. I’m a big fan of how subtle the branding is, too. The Oppo logo and Hasselblad icon on the camera housing only show up as light hits them, which gives the phone a sense of prestige.

As for the front panel, the 6.78-inch screen is surrounded on all sides by 1.15mm bezels that barely feel present during use. A punch-hole selfie camera sits at the top of the display. There’s also the standard power and volume buttons on the right side of the phone, and a USB-C port on the bottom edge by the main speakers. Unfortunately, I noticed some wobble in the buttons after just a few weeks of use, which isn’t the most encouraging thing to see.

At 8.3mm, the Find X9 Pro is barely thicker than last year’s Find X8 Pro, but feels a lot heftier due to its flattened sides. I think this makes the phone easier to take photos with, considering the location of the Quick Button, but I’ve got large hands – your mileage may vary. Overall, the Find X9 Pro is a good-looking phone, but doesn’t leave as much of an impression as the marbled design of the Find X8 Pro or the faux-leather body of the Find X6 Pro before that. It trades originality for subtlety, and I’m not sure that’s an equivalent exchange.

• Design score: 3 / 5

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Display

(Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

• 6.78-inch display
• 1272 x 2772 resolution
• 120Hz refresh rate with 3600 nits of peak brightness

The Oppo Find X9 Pro’s display is second only to its camera system in the list of its best features. This is a huge, bright, sharp, and immersive panel that makes photos, videos, and games look vivid while providing plenty of room for browsing, scrolling, and even multitasking.

The Find X9 Pro’s display feels truly immersive. At 6.78 inches, it’s almost as large as the iPhone 17 Pro Max or Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, which have 6.9-inch panels, though to be honest, the Find X9 Pro is about as large as I’d want a phone to be. Its flat edges make the panel feel much more present and consistent than last year’s Find X8 Pro, but make using the phone a touch less comfortable, especially when dragging in gestures from the edges.

At a resolution of 1272 x 2772 pixels and a pixel density of 450ppi, the Find X9 Pro’s display is sharp and detailed, and its maximum typical brightness of 1800 nits is plenty bright for indoor or outdoor use (brightness peaks to 3600 nits for HDR media). It also gets down to a single nit at its minimum brightness – handy for use at night or in darker environments.

The display cycles at a static 120Hz, which works synergistically with ColorOS’ brilliant animation processing to offer a super-smooth UI experience. The display is unfailingly bright. Colors may be a touch less saturated than other flagship handsets, but not to a problematic degree. The settings app has a full section dedicated to color balance, too, so you can fine-tune the visuals to your liking.

The Find X9 Pro’s display is calibrated for balance out of the box, but the settings app is rich with color and brightness settings.

• Display score: 5 / 5

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Cameras

(Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

• 50MP main camera
• 200MP telephoto camera with 3x zoom
• 50MP ultra-wide camera
• 50MP selfie camera

The Oppo Find X9 Pro has one of the most powerful camera systems you’ll find on any phone. Its 50MP main camera with a large 1/1.28-inch sensor picks up an excellent amount of light and detail. Its 200MP telephoto camera, with 3x relative optical zoom, can take full-resolution photos and reach into double-digit zoom lengths with a solid amount of detail. Its 50MP ultra-wide camera is sensibly relegated to third place but still produces great pictures in good conditions, and its 50MP selfie camera is a real step up from the Find X8 Pro’s 32MP sensor.

Taking photos is comfortable and enjoyable with the Find X9 Pro. I’m a big fan of the Quick Button, Oppo’s answer to the iPhone’s Camera Control, which is easy to work with thanks to the phone’s general bulk and flat aluminum chassis. The camera app is clean and keeps all the important settings within immediate reach or under a single menu, while the large display makes for a great viewfinder. As for video, the Find X9 Pro can shoot at a maximum of 4K at 120fps, or 1080p at 240fps.

The Find X9 Pro will default to taking full-resolution photos with its 50MP main camera, as long as the phone judges there's enough light around. That leads to more detailed photos, but it also takes up more storage. Similar is the new 4K motion photo capability, which ups the resolution of the video clip taken with each image, but again takes up more space.

So far, so good, but there is unfortunately a catch – Oppo has filled its image processing pipeline with what appears to be some pretty aggressive AI, which is hard to anticipate and impossible to switch off. At all ranges, there's a chance your image may become a mess of swirls and smudges as the AI image signal processing tries to replicate what you saw through the viewfinder. This seems to happen whether the AI Telescope Zoom feature is turned on or off.

Shooting on the Find X9 Pro is a joy, but aggressive post-processing can make it hard to predict how the final image will look. (Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

That means that photography on the Find X9 Pro is intermittently transcendent and frustrating. When it’s good, the Find X9 Pro captures brilliant photos that contend with those taken on the best camera phones – dynamic, rich in detail, and naturally vivid. But every now and then, you’ll scroll through the gallery and find something that looks like it came straight out of the early days of Dall-E mini. It’s not too common, but it is unpredictable, which is almost worse.

In terms of photo-focused accessories, the Oppo Find X9 Pro launches alongside the Oppo Hasselblad Teleconverter Kit, which requires the Aramid Fiber Photography Case. The kit centers on an attachable telephoto lens that extends the reach of the telephoto camera to 10x, resulting in genuinely breathtaking images. It’s a beautiful and confusing thing to capture this much detail with a phone camera system.

However, the teleconverter kit isn’t available in the UK or Australia, so it doesn’t impact the score here – you can read my Oppo Find X9 Pro camera impressions for more on that. Still, even without a huge attachable zoom lens, the Find X9 Pro’s camera system is brilliant – yet I can’t ignore how much its aggressive post-processing annoys me.

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• Camera score: 4 / 5

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Software and AI

(Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

• Android 16 with ColorOS 16
• Possibly the smoothest Android wrapper
• AI Mind Space is well executed

The Oppo Find X9 Pro ships with ColorOS 16, built on Android 16, and like ColorOS 15, it’s a smooth and well-formatted Android wrapper that takes obvious influence from iOS. You’ll notice Liquid Glass-style transparency effects, rounded square app icons, and a near-identical control center to the one found on an iPhone. But the outsider Oppo Find X9 Pro isn’t trying to compete with the iPhone – it’s trying to provide an alternative for Android enthusiasts, and under that lens, the aesthetic choices make sense.

If it seems like I’m being lenient on Oppo for jacking Apple’s style, it’s because I can’t get over how well ColorOS 16 runs. ColorOS (and by extension OxygenOS, the OnePlus equivalent) is the most performant and smoothest-running Android wrapper I’ve ever used. Thanks to parallel processing, several UI animations can run at the same time, and I like the way app windows and other elements react to your inputs.

This is the other end of the scale from the stiffness of Samsung’s One UI, and while some may find ColorOS feels a bit loose, for me, it’s the perfect way to keep things feeling fast and reactive.

That’s not to say ColorOS is perfect; there are some quirks. The one that appears most often is the Snap Key triggering things on screen – it seems the software registers a long press as some kind of input – not a dealbreaker by any means, but a strange oversight for a premium phone. And the Find X9 Pro comes with the usual folders of suggested apps (read: advertisements) and a handful of preinstalled bloatware apps, which is completely unacceptable on a phone that costs £1,099.

Unfortunate bloatware aside, the big-ticket software item on the Find X9 Pro is AI Mind Space, a transplant of OnePlus’ AI Plus Mind feature that launched earlier this year. The concept is a good one – a dedicated space for your various notes, screenshots, and digital ephemera that uses AI to pick out the important stuff.

AI Mind Space is bound to the Snap Key by default, with a short press taking a screenshot and scanning for information, and a long press recording an audio message. AI Mind Space can also be paired with Google Gemini to merge your assorted memories with the phone’s onboard Google AI tools. Even as an AI skeptic, I like AI Mind Space – it’s an intelligent and well-presented home for the disparate notes, screenshots, and audio recordings I make on a daily basis. You can also add your own notes to each memory, which is useful for context that the straightforward AI screenreader can’t gather.

It’s also worth giving O+ Connect a mention, Oppo’s app for cross-platform file management and remote control, specifically with Mac computers. It’s no replacement for AirDrop, but it is nice to have the option of easier cross-platform collaboration if you need to send something to a Mac-wielding friend or, like me, run a hybrid Android/MacOS everyday carry.

• Software and AI score: 4 / 5

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Performance

(Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

• MediaTek 9500 chipset
• 16GB of RAM
• Performs admirably in a variety of tasks

The Oppo Find X9 Pro is one of the first phones in the world to launch with the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chipset. Taiwan-based chipset manufacturer MediaTek has been a growing name in the mobile industry for a while, and the Dimensity 9500 delivers. The Find X9 Pro is fast and fluid in pretty much any scenario, and even with multiple apps open and on-screen I couldn’t find a way to slow it down.

For web browsing and social media, using the Find X9 Pro is like driving to the grocery store in a tank, but when things heat up, that extra power really comes in handy. Things do literally heat up, though, as I noticed the Find X9 Pro getting a bit toasty at times – understandable during long gaming sessions or when pushing the camera system, but a little puzzling when swiping through Instagram.

As for memory, the Find X9 Pro comes in a single configuration, with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and both feel plentiful. That large RAM budget gives the phone flexibility when it comes to multitasking and AI – I noticed that I rarely had to reload pages or apps. And 512GB of storage is, in my opinion, more than enough for any smartphone – though the camera’s high-resolution imaging modes will fill up that space pretty quickly.

Everything about the Find X9 Pro is just fast. The in-display fingerprint scanner is basically instant. Installing and opening apps is painless; I can hop into Call of Duty or Fortnite or Capcut and trust things will just work, which, to me, is the ideal phone experience. Accessing the camera is fast thanks to the Quick Button. And thus far, I haven't encountered any crashes or experience-breaking glitches. The phone does get hot intermittently, which I’m keeping an eye on, and if I can get really nitpicky, the speakers are a little too sibilant for my preference. Otherwise, the Find X9 Pro excels.

• Performance score: 4/5

Oppo Find X9 Pro review: Battery

(Image credit: Jamie Richards / Future)

• 7,500mAh silicon-carbon battery – almost as large as an 11-inch iPad
• 80W wired charging
• 50W wireless charging

The Oppo Find X9 Pro has a 7,500mAh silicon-carbon battery. There are no adjectives I could use to accurately convey how huge that is, so let’s get into some comparisons.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has a 5,000mAh battery, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max with e-SIM has a 5,088mAh battery. These are considered excellent battery capacities by phone standards.

The Oppo Find X8 Pro managed an impressive 5,910mAh, while the OnePlus 13, which we showered with praise for its fantastic battery life, has a 6,000mAh battery. That’s quite a bit larger than the average phone battery already, but the Oppo Find X9 Pro blows both of these flagships out of the water.

The Find X9 Pro’s battery is so large that it makes more sense to compare it to tablets. According to PhoneArena, the 2025 base-model iPad has a 7,698mAh battery, which is fractionally larger than the battery in the Oppo Find X9 Pro. Holding the two devices side by side makes this feel physically impossible, but Oppo has leveraged the energy density and capacity benefits of silicon-carbon technology to make it so. It’s a serious engineering win that other phone makers should look to for inspiration.

As you might expect, battery life is unfailingly excellent. I frequently got one and a half or even two full days of use from the Oppo Find X9 Pro, and support for 80W SuperVOOC charging (that’s proprietary Oppo charging tech, so not all high-wattage chargers will deliver it) meant top-ups were pretty swift too. I would often plug in the Find X9 Pro to charge, look away for what felt like no time at all, and come back to an additional 40% charge, and topping up from empty to full took no more than an hour.

• Battery score: 5/5

Should you buy the Oppo Find X9 Pro?Oppo Find X9 Pro score card

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Value

The Oppo Find X9 Pro isn't cheap, but it steadily undercuts its closest mainstream competition

4 / 5

Design

Without the quirky materials and curved frame of last year's model, the Find X9 Pro is left feeling a little unoriginal. Superb build quality, though.

3 / 5

Display

A terrific display made all the more immersive by new flat edges and a sharp resolution.

5 / 5

Software

Bloatware is inexcusable at this price point, and there are a few quirks to smooth out, but, damn, ColorOS 16 is just so smooth.

4 / 5

Camera

The Find X9 Pro comes equipped with an overpowered camera system that opens a world of photo possibilities. Aggressive post-processing adds annoying guesswork to shoots.

4 / 5

Performance

Oppo has done its thing and equipped the Find X9 Pro with a handful of very powerful internal components. No complaints other than a bit of occasional heat.

4 / 5

Battery

A 7,500mAh cell means the Find X9 Pro is in a league of its own when it comes to battery life. Charging is quick, considering the massive capacity.

5 / 5

Buy it if

You want a powerful camera phone

If you can bear with its occasionally aggressive post-processing, the Oppo Find X9 Pro's camera system is one of the most powerful on the market, and takes fabulous photos. View Deal

You want a huge battery

The Oppo Find X9 Pro's battery is so large it'll make you rethink the way you approach charging, and how much battery life is enough for a day's use. Ludicrously good. View Deal

Don't buy it if

You want something familiar

Oppo has created a powerful phone with a great software experience, but it'll be harder to find others using the same platform if that matters to you. View Deal

You don't need loads of power

Despite offering pretty good value for money, the Find X9 Pro is mighty expensive. If you're not a power user, there are cheaper and more suitable options, such as the OnePlus 13R listed below. View Deal

Also consider

iPhone 17 Pro Max

The Oppo Find X9 Pro takes so much inspiration from the iPhone 16 Pro Max that anyone who isn’t a diehard Android fan should give the latter’s current-gen counterpart some consideration. Apple’s latest big flagship is the company’s best camera phone ever, and it produces excellent photos despite boasting lower-resolution sensors than the Find X9 Pro. You also get access to the App Store and easier networking with MacBooks and other Apple devices.

Read our full iPhone 17 Pro Max reviewView Deal

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra

Want a beastly Android camera phone but need a more familiar interface and a more developed ecosystem than Oppo can offer? The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra could be for you. Its quad-camera setup is one of the best on the market, while the 6.8-inch display and built-in S Pen make it a great productivity tool.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S25 UltraView Deal

OnePlus 13R

The Oppo Find X9 Pro is a heavyweight, both in its build and its ability. If you’d rather have something a touch lighter in the hand and on the pockets, the OnePlus 13R is a great choice. With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, 12GB of RAM, and a genuinely great camera system, the OnePlus 13R is a cheaper flagship with few compromises.

Read our full OnePlus 13R reviewView Deal

How I tested the Oppo Find X9 Pro

I used the Oppo Find X9 Pro over the course of a month, putting it through daily use and a number of specific performance and charging tests. I made and received calls, chatted over SMS, WhatsApp, and social media, took plenty of photos and videos, and played games like Fortnite and Call of Duty Mobile. I also tried out AI Mind Space.

Before completing this review, I adopted the Oppo Find X9 Pro as my daily driver, then combined my experience with the phone with my journalistic training and knowledge of the phone industry to provide an accurate assessment.

The Eureka Ergonomic Ark EL Executive is just one example of the California-based brand's many items of home office furniture, and it's a striking beast indeed. Sitting (or should we say, standing) near the top of Eureka's desk food chain, it's the third-most expensive single-level standing desk—behind the Ark X and the monumental Zen Pro.

It's undeniably a statement piece, although despite its dominating stature, I feel like it would suit almost any formal environment. That said, compared to some rivals that appear in our rundown of the best standing desks, the Ark EL comes with a hefty price tag that may put off those looking to deck out the home office on a budget.

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(Image credit: Future)Eureka Ergonomic Arl EL Executive: Specs

Height range

29.5-48 inches (75-122cm)

RRP (USD$)

$1,299

Max load

220lb (100kg)

Desktop size

60x26 inches (152x66cm)

Finish material

PU Paper Laminate

Built-in connectivity

1x wireless charging pad, 2x USB A, 1x USB C

The Ark EL's sticker price is $1,299—it's certainly not the cheapest standing desk around. However, Eureka Ergonomic runs one of those perpetual sales, so you're likely to be able to grab it for less than a $1,000 most of the time. It's currently available direct from Eureka Ergonomic by clicking here.

With a generous maximum height of 48 inches, the Ark EL will be able to accommodate all but the tallest of beanpoles. At a modest 5'10", I find 39 inches perfect for my standing sessions. Those up to 6'8" should be perfectly comfortable.

(Image credit: Future)

The 220lb capacity should be more than enough for all your home office needs—that's the equivalent of one prime Mike Tyson sat daintily on your Ark EL Executive. However, some rivals outdo it here. For example, our top choice of standing desk, the FlexiSpot E7, can take up to 355lb—one Iron Mike, plus a Floyd Mayweather thrown in for good luck.

Elsewhere, connectivity is good, but in 2025, I'd prefer a couple more USB C ports. That said, many standing desks omit these completely, so having a wireless charger and a few ports is a big green checkmark in my book.

(Image credit: Future)Eureka Ergonomic Ark EL Executive: Shipping & unboxing

The Ark EL ships in two very large, very heavy boxes, one of which is more than six feet long—so I recommend making room beforehand, and avoiding the need to shift the boxes around too much once they've been set down. The largest contains the weighty desktop and drawers, while the smaller (in comparison only) box contains the leg mechanisms.

If you're handling the delivery yourself and need to move the boxes a considerable distance, I'd recommend opening them up and moving the desk piece by piece to its final destination. Thankfully, my burly housemate was on hand to share the load, so we moved each box whole to the home office for construction.

The packaging did a great job of protecting the desk, but there's a lot of polystyrene, and disposal can be troublesome. (Image credit: Future)

When I finally broke into the boxes, the quality of packaging was truly impressive. Both were a box within a box, and although the swathes of polystyrene won't win any awards from being green, they certainly protected the contents on their travels.

Bear in mind that no standing desk is an easy affair to haul. They're invariably far heavier than regular desks, and often come in multiple packages. Overall, the unboxing experience was excellent, and I wouldn't change a thing about how it the Ark EL was packed (except, perhaps, using some greener packing materials).

Eureka Ergonomic Ark EL Executive: Assembly

If you've been scarred by impenetrable flat-pack instructions before, don't fret—Eureka Ergonomic provides a very clear, step-by-step manual on how to assemble the Ark EL. Each piece is labeled within the booklet, but more usefully, all the fixings come packaged in a single large blister pack.

This both helps keep everything tidy when you're assembling the desk, and also leaves no confusion over which bolt is an "A" and which is a "B," despite their similarities.

You're provided with a couple of Allen keys as well as a double-ended screwdriver. However, I must confess I broke out my trusty DeWalt impact driver to save some time. If you do the same, it's critical not to over-tighten anything. Don't hammer away at the bolts—hand-tight is plenty.

(Image credit: Future)

Assembly took me a couple of hours. However, I've built a lot of flat-packed furniture in my time, so I'd recommend budgeting around four hours from opening to completion. I found it quite a sprawling build, too, so make sure you've got enough room to work.

In all honesty, I had very few, if any issues during the build. Probably the most challenging part was sliding the weighty legs over the lifting mechanisms while the desk was upside-down. However, even this wasn't too difficult, and I managed the whole build solo without any assistance.

Eureka Ergonomic Ark EL Executive: First impressions

When I finally completed the desk, I stood back and marvelled at its stately presence. Its bold design and chunky legs give the Ark EL Executive a reassuring plantedness, and in no way does it appear flimsy.

Despite "only" being PU paper, the finish is convincing, and the pattern is unique all over. There are no noticeable "copy and paste" sections of grain that repeat and give away its artificialness.

(Image credit: Future)

However, when I first got up close and started using the during one of my work-from-home days, I noticed the whole finish had a sort of roughness to it—rougher than you'd expect any real wood to be finished.

To remedy this, I took a cleaning spray and a microfibre cloth, and really went to town scrubbing the surface of the desk. After a good few minutes, I was much happier with the texture—although I'd prefer not to have to break out the elbow grease to improve the finish of a $1,000+ desk myself.

That said, the finish wasn't damaged by my scrubbing, which I was worried might be the case.

Overall, it immediately improved the feel of my home office, and if you're looking for a statement desk, it's one to consider.

(Image credit: Future)Eureka Ergonomic Ark EL Executive: Design & build quality

The Ark EL Executive desk only comes in "Natural Oak," which is a little disappointing. While it's a great finish, I can imagine many people might prefer a darker walnut-style color, or even plain white or black.

The size and shape of the desk provides ample legroom, and plenty of possibility to move side to side—perhaps between multiple displays and devices. The buttons are also very pleasant, with a gloss black finish and white text that illuminates when the desk is woken up.

I haven't noticed any wear on the buttons in my short time using the Ark EL, but over the years I'm sure they'd see a little scratching. Admittedly, though, they're much prettier than the matte black physical buttons found on lower-end standing desks.

Their positioning is sensible, but I have noticed my elbow activating them once in a while when I drift over to the right of the desk. Thankfully, the lock button does what it says on the tin—a 5-second long press locks and unlocks the controls to avoid any inadvertent movements.

The wireless charger and ports are nestled in the right-rear corner of the desk, and this is the perfect place for them. They're in reach, but far enough away that they won't interfere with your day-to-day.

(Image credit: Future)

Finally, having drawers is a massive bonus, because many standing desks omit these. Admittedly, they're quite small to accommodate all the electrics that sit behind them, but at 22 x 12 inches, the middle drawer is capacious enough for more home-office essentials.

Overall, the Ark EL feels supremely sturdy—as it should, considering its weight—and gives the impression it'll last for long time.

Eureka Ergonomic Ark EL Executive: In use

Spending a day sat at the Ark EL working is a pleasant experience. In the couple of weeks I've been using it for, I've found it to accommodate all my trinkets and tech nicely. I'm very much prone to clutter, so having good square-footage is a must—and the Ark EL delivers.

I've moved the desk a couple of times due to moving into a new apartment, and it really is a beast. It needs at least two people to lift it fully assembled, and if you're heading up any stairs, I'd recommend part disassembly.

(Image credit: Future)

A slight concern I have is over how "sharp" the edges of the desk are. While there's a pleasing 45-degree angle around the bottom edge of the desktop, the upper edge is pretty much a right angle. When I first saw this, I worried that it'd dig into my forearms, but thankfully this hasn't proved to be the case so far. I'm sure it would take a ding quite prominently too, but I've been careful enough not have experienced that.

When using the desk as intended—raising and lowering every day for a variation in working position—I've found it works seamlessly. Rather than use the Up and Down buttons, I've found setting the H1 and H2 memory buttons to my preferred heights very useful. When changing the desk's height manually, I found myself forgetting my optimum setting, leading to inconsistent heights between sessions.

Eureka Ergonomic Ark EL Executive: Final verdict

As the centerpiece to my new home office, the Eureka Ergonomic Ark EL Executive is eye-catching and—most importantly—very functional. Although it's extremely heavy, once it's in place it's the perfect item to build the room around.

The addition of built-in drawers, a wireless charger, and integrated USB ports edges it above cheaper rivals in terms of day-to-day usefulness, and in general, it feels very well-built.

Of course, the price will put some people off, and there admittedly very good desks—some of which have better specs—available for less.

However, if you're looking for a statement piece for your work environment that's a pleasure to use day-in, day-out, the Ark EL Executive is an excellent choice.

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Design

There's no denying this is a gorgeous desk.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Material quality

The use of PU Paper Laminate instead of hardwood veneer (or even solid wood) introduces a few doubts in terms of how long the finish will last.

⭐⭐⭐

Assembly

Beyond the huge packaging and heavy components, assembly couldn't be easier. The instructions are very good.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ease of use

No confusing design choices make it incredibly easy to use.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Practicality

Good maximum load and drawers are a nice addition. However, cupboards around the legs could increase practicality is aesthetics were sacrificed.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Customer support

Phone lines and live chat open 8-5 PST, Monday-Friday, which is good. However, short one-year motor warranty is disappoiting.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Price

The Ark EL Executive is an expensive desk, although there are few better looking alternatives for less.

⭐⭐⭐

For more workspace furniture, we've tested the best office chairs you can get right now.