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Anno 117: Pax Romana is a marked return to simplicity for the long-running city-building strategy game franchise. Some returning fans might find what it offers a little basic, but for others, the more relaxed progression will be a welcome, more relaxed change of pace - especially paired with the countless quality of life features that are available from day one.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, PC
Release date: November 13, 2025

In contrast, its forbear Anno 1800 is one of the most complex city builders that I’ve ever played. The act of constructing a civilization is an intricate dance of lengthy supply chains that has you micromanaging the production of resources across two continents (or more with all the downloadable content) while simultaneously juggling a wealth of overlapping effects generated by the buildings in your town center.

It was incredibly rewarding to master, but doing so required plenty of YouTube tutorials, and a fair number of panicked searches on the community wiki.

A fresh start

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Anno 117: Pax Romana is much more approachable for newcomers, an area that was clearly a key concern for developer Ubisoft. This is especially evident in the campaign, which is one of the most engaging in series history.

Don’t get me wrong, the story mode in Anno games has always been little more than a glorified tutorial - basically showing you what you need to do to get started in a safe environment before setting you loose into the wider sandbox - and that’s no different here, but the choice to have you playing as a named character does add an extra layer of narrative detail.

Best bit

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Anno 117: Pax Romana is absolutely gorgeous, and will delight true history nerds. Its Roman setting is recreated wonderfully with intricate details that lead to stunning and life-like streets. There are even some authentic painted statues, which is always great to see.

Out of the two options, I picked Marcia Tertia, a wealthy Roman daughter who has been married off to a troubled governor whom she’s never met. After a series of events in Latium (the game’s Roman region) that I won’t spoil, she winds up banished to Albion (Celtic England), where she ends up acting as the governor in secret to try and get back into the emperor’s good books. In typical Anno fashion, dialogue is comedic throughout, and I found myself enjoying some of the twists and turns.

This is a much shorter campaign than 1800's, lasting just over six hours rather than about 15, though it’s tightly paced and doesn’t overstay its welcome as a result. I couldn’t resist diving into my own sandbox games once I hit the end, though I’m still eager to try the story as the other protagonist - Marcus Naukratius. There are a handful of narrative decisions and some side activities that I wouldn’t mind going back to for a replay, too.

The best thing I can say about the mode, though, is that it does a very good job of telling you what you need to know. I finished the 1800 story with more questions than answers, but a new player here would feasibly be fully qualified to dive into sandbox or even online multiplayer.

Soggy sandals

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

But what exactly is it that you’re doing exactly? Anno fans will know the drill, but for everyone else, this is a city-building game that’s all about constructing supply chains to collect the resources that your citizens need to level up. Anno 117: Pax Romana lets you choose whether to start your game in Latium or Albion, and each region plays out in a slightly different fashion.

In Latium, there are four population tiers: Liberti, Plebeians, Equites, and Patricians. Needs become more complex as you move between the levels, with citizens that initially required porridge and straw sandals eventually demanding access to running water for communal baths, education through libraries, flashy jewellery, and even yummy bird tongues in aspic to nibble.

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

The map is split into multiple islands, with each island only capable of harbouring specific resources. No one island will offer every resource that you need late in the game, so at some point, you will inevitably need to load up a ship and start settling them. Funnelling resources back to your main city center becomes a game in and of itself, as you set up trading routes and, on higher difficulties, deal with the disruption caused by frequent attacks from raiders.

It’s the same formula that fuelled 1800, but importantly, in 117, you don’t actually need to fulfill all of a specific group’s needs to progress.

If you’re struggling to get enough fine glass, for example, you can ignore it and focus on olive oil instead. It cuts down the complexity massively, and while you are rewarded for meeting all needs at once, so less confident players don’t need to worry about overwhelming themselves with too many types of resources to manage.

More refined than ever

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

You shouldn't take all this to mean that Anno 117: Pax Romana feels incomplete, though. There’s plenty here, including a wealth of quality of life changes that long-time fans will love.

This ranges from small things like a day and night cycle (which wasn’t available in 1800 at launch) and the ability to play using a keyboard and mouse on consoles, to substantial changes such as the option to place buildings diagonally for the first time and a planning mode that lets you visualize your city with blueprints.

Some major DLC features from past games are also included for free. Your governor villa, for example, is effectively identical to the Palace from 1800’s Seat of Power expansion, allowing you to buff parts of your island with well-placed Specialists. Once built, the villa is also the primary target for invaders because land combat, a feature entirely missing from Anno 1800, is back too.

Fighting has always been the weakest part of any Anno game in my eyes. It largely boils down to clicking on enemies, and battles are usually won by whichever side has more soldiers. Unfortunately, there haven’t been many strides in this regard, though I hope the fact that ground combat is back will prove a good foundation for some combat-focused DLC or updates in the future.

(Image credit: Ubisoft)

There were also some weird bugs that I hope will be addressed. The most annoying of these was with my island’s fire safety rating, which would randomly decrease a few thousand points without warning. Hovering over the icon told me that this was due to “City Status", whatever that means, and there was seemingly very little I could do to remedy it.

I tried moving all my most flammable buildings, like bakeries and kilns, to a separate island, making sure that they were well spaced to avoid their areas of effect, and filling every street corner with Vigilies (the Roman fire department) in vain.

Actual fires didn’t even seem that much more frequent, but this big red number did cause some frustrations with diplomacy as other leaders looked down on my apparently highly combustible settlement.

That aside, I’ve been very much enjoying my time with Anno 117: Pax Romana. It's a more relaxed take on the Anno formula than 1800, and while not as complex, it’s still easy to lose track of the hours as you watch your city grow.

Should I play Anno 117: Pax Romana?Play it if…

You want a high-quality city builder
Anno 117: Pax Romana is more polished than lots of competing city builders like Cities: Skylines 2. It also offers significantly more content in the form of a single-player story and online multiplayer.

You love the Roman setting
Both Rome and England are beautifully recreated in Anno 117: Pax Romana, with plenty of details that will delight history nerds and lovers of the past.

You were overwhelmed by 1800
Anno 117: Pax Romana is much easier to manage than 1800, with fewer complex supply chains needed to progress. If you love the idea of an Anno game but bounced off the last entry, then this is the perfect time to come back.

Don’t play it if…

You expect even more complexity
If you go into Anno 117: Pax Romana expecting a game that’s even more complicated than Anno 1800, then you will be disappointed. Stick with that past entry and wait for some new expansions to up the difficulty.

Accessibility features

There is no dedicated accessibility menu in Anno 117: Pax Romana, which is a bit of a shame given Ubisoft’s leading track record in the area.

There are still some useful options in the settings, though, such as the ability to rebind your keys and increase the scale of the UI. Dialogue features subtitles throughout, with the option to use only sans-serif fonts for reliability or to remove italics.

How I reviewed Anno 117: Pax Romana

I played close to 20 hours of Anno 117: Pax Romana on PC using a copy provided by Ubisoft, with a small amount of time spent also trying the PS5 version, including testing its mouse and keyboard support.

My system is a 5070 Ti-powered model from retailer Scan that features a compact Corsair 2000d RGB Airflow case, Asus ROG Strix B860-I Gaming Wifi motherboard, Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU, a 2TB WD Black SN770 SSD, 32GB of DDR5 Corsair Vengeance RAM, and an Nvidia 5070 Ti manufactured by Asus.

This setup allowed me to play the game smoothly on its highest graphics settings with the use of Nvidia DLSS. For peripherals, I relied on my trusty Razer DeathAdder V3 Pro mouse and Cherry XTRFY K5V2 keyboard, plus an Astro A20 X PC gaming headset for audio.

Throughout my time with the game, I constantly compared my experience with my significant experience playing other Anno games, including 1800, 2205, 2070, and 1404.

First reviewed November 2025

Anno 117: Pax Romana isn’t as complex as its predecessor, but it’s still a gorgeous city builder that impresses across the board.

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The AO mini portable wireless speaker offers relentless battery life but its tinny sound lacks bass and oomph

AO mini portable wireless speaker: two-minute review

If you don’t live in the UK, you’ve probably never heard of AO, so allow us a brief explainer. AO is a Bolton-based online electrical retailer that sells white goods – fridges, dishwashers, ovens, TVs, hi-fi equipment and the like – for a fraction of their store price. For an annual membership of £39.99, you get discounted prices when buying from its website because it cuts out the middle man and sells direct to the customer. It also has a natty advertising campaign that features the soundalike “Hey, hoh – let’s go!” refrain from The Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop. Got it? Good.

What AO has never done is make the audio gear it also sells. Until now. In the summer of 2025, the AO mini portable wireless speaker (yes, this really is its does-what-it-says-on-the-tin name) was part of a suite of releases to change that and try to provide an inexpensive entry to the best portable Bluetooth speakers on the market.

So, how does it fair? Well, the £29 price – $40 / AU$59, but only available in the UK (and only direct from AO) at the time of writing – is a strong start for a portable speaker with Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity. Indeed, for AO members in the UK, it's cheaper still at £19. Better still, a 25-hour battery life dominates some of the biggest competition in the budget market such as the JBL Go 4 (seven hours), the five-star Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 (12, already four more than the first-gen model) or the Edifier ES20 (15 hours).

The AO mini portable wireless speaker is also nicely built, with sturdy buttons plus appreciated answer/end/reject call options (with decent accompanying call quality) that is increasingly absent from the competition. Plus, its IP67 waterproofing means it more than does the job in the shower or down at the beach.

Unfortunately, though, there’s the biggest of elephants in the room – the way the AO sounds. It’s not good. In fact, I’d rather listen to tunes coming out of my iPhone 15’s speakers or even my retro MacBook Air's pretty limited sound-producing alternative. For a bit of tech whose primary purpose is to elevate sound, add depth and make it louder – nope, it doesn’t do that, either – this is quite a big problem.

Is it going to be your primary Bluetooth speaker to while away hour upon hour? Definitely not, but that’s not to say it doesn’t warrant a place in your lineup of listening apparatus. The AO mini portable wireless speaker’s flexibility, solid build and near-peerless battery life make it a decent bet to accompany a long weekend away or just be left in the shower so you can sing along to Wham! to help wake you up, before you go-go. After all, that aggressive price is pretty hard to ignore…

(Image credit: Future / Andy Murray)AO mini portable wireless speaker review: price and release date

• £29 (not on sale in US or AUS)
• Launched in summer 2025

The AO mini portable wireless speaker was launched in the summer of 2025 as part of the retailer’s debut line of self-made audio products and costs £29 (£19 for AO members) in the UK. It isn't available in the US or Australia, but that equates to $40 / AU$59. Just to confirm, you haven’t misread that price – it really is that cheap.

TechRadar's review sample is black, but it also comes in white, which was the only color available to purchase on the AO website at the time of writing. It’s an opposite Model T Ford, then.

AO mini portable wireless speaker review: specs

Drivers

1x 20mm

Dimensions

82 x 47 x 98mm

Connectivity

Bluetooth 5.3

Battery life

25 hours

Waterproofing

IP67

(Image credit: Future / Andy Murray)AO mini portable wireless speaker review: features

• Excellent 25-hour battery life
• Shower-tested IP67 waterproofing
• Easy setup but no multi-point connectivity

For what is a pretty small bit of kit, the AO mini portable wireless speaker undeniably packs plenty in. Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity isn’t industry-leading – and a 3.5mm line-in for wired listening would’ve been nice – but it’s decent for a speaker as emphatically entry-level as this, while at no stage in testing did I encounter any drop outs.

It’s solid and reliable, the only minor gripe being its lack of multi-point connectivity option. At one point I needed to switch from music listening via Tidal on my iPhone to Match of the Day football watching on my laptop – technically, that’s still work, but only just – and discovered that I’d need to disconnect from the former to be able to connect to the latter. Sure, it’s not the greatest of impositions, but it’s nevertheless unwieldy.

At least the AO is quick and easy to set up. Within minutes of turning on the AO for the first time, my partner and I were dancing around the front room to Going Places by Teenage Fanclub – she effortlessly magnificent, me shufflingly dreadful, thanks for asking. Gerard Love’s lilting vocal complemented his erstwhile bandmates’ harmonies well enough but without a clarity or depth to be expected even at this low price point. More on which later, and the fault certainly doesn't lie with the Scottish group Kurt Cobain once called “the best band in the world”.

(Image credit: Future / Andy Murray)

Better still, the AO’s IP67 waterproof rating makes it borderline impervious to dust and water ingress. Short of trying to bury it at the bottom of the Atlantic, or subjecting it to extended periods in your teenager’s never-cleaned dust box of a bedroom, you’ll do very well to stop it from working. I used the AO constantly in the shower for over a week and (much like me) it got absolutely soaked, but at no stage did the superb improv podcast Three Bean Salad featuring Taskmaster alumnus Mike Wozniak cut out or the speaker lose connection from my phone in the adjoining bedroom. A trip to my local beach also presented no issue for water ingress either from Portland Harbor or the heavens as an unexpected Dorset shower passed overhead.

No less sturdy is the battery life, which is nothing short of relentless. In testing, the AO’s claimed 25 hours proved plenty accurate – I used the speaker throughout three full seven-hour working days, plus aforementioned trips to the beach and in the shower, and it still had half its juice remaining according to the battery indicator on my phone.

Compare those figures with the as the JBL Go 3’s notorious five-hour lifespan, the updated Go 4’s seven and even the recent Edifier ES20’s 15 hours and the AO dominates the competition for half the (already pretty insignificant) price in some cases. Stuff it in your rucksack on a camping trip and it’ll neither take up much space, nor will it fail you across a week’s medium use before its next charge, a vital consideration when living off-grid in a field. Just 1.5 hours’ charging from the included USB-C cable gets it back to full power, too.

My only other issue is the lack of accompanying app, so there’s no option to tweak EQs or come up with your own presets to get the sound just how you like it. But at this price point what did you expect? This little box is packed with plenty.

• Features score: 4/5

(Image credit: Future / Andy Murray)AO mini portable wireless speaker review: sound quality

• Almost no bass
• Lacks clarity
• Limited top volume

Sadly, though, we can ignore the obvious no longer. The AO sounds dreadful, and you don’t need me to tell that this is a bit of a problem for a speaker. No separation, very little bass, a tinny sound and generally just not loud enough. This is regardless of the quality of source device music, too – I tried streaming hi-res FLAC content on Tidal but still to no avail.

A level of compression for a portable Bluetooth speaker this size is to be expected – it measures 82 x 47 x 98mm and though no weight is quoted, it feels lighter than the Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 I used as a comparison – but it is definitely possible to make a better sound than this within the dimensions. The AO’s 20mm driver soon hits a ceiling that others glide beyond and, though its timing is OK and it doesn’t feel too jumbled, the lack of definition and depth are immediately obvious.

Rich by Yeah Yeah Yeahs comes across as one-dimensional – something bordering a war crime – with no separation between Nick Zinner’s synth promptings, lead singer Karen O’s exultant, imploring vocal and Brian Chase’s percussive beat. Switching between the AO and the Tribit mid-song only serves to highlight the difference further – the latter delivers a clearer, punchier vocal and the frequencies are more faithful to the original.

The bass, hardly the thing you most associate with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, is broader, deeper and much more noticeable with the Tribit, so I switch to a band known for allowing its four-string to drive tracks. New Order’s All the Way features arguably Peter Hook’s most melodic and rhythmic high-fretted bassline – thanks in part to the band’s increasing use of sequenced synthesizers and Hooky still wanting to be heard – but the AO strips all that away and it sounds tinny. Even the notoriously lo-fi band Guided By Voices, and the stellar Game Of Pricks, lacks oomph.

More infuriating still, the ‘power-down’ sound the AO makes when you turn the speaker off features a demonstrably bassy effect that is completely absent when listening to music. If the AO is capable of making that noise, why do we only hear it when turning it off? Here’s what you could’ve won.

Keen to find out what the AO could do in the open air, I took the speaker on a 10-minute walk to my local beach. Sadly, it’s no different. The gradual 40-second jangle-guitar intro of Star Sign by Teenage Fanclub from 1991 classic album Bandwagonesque is barely audible, then Brendan O’Hare’s driving bass drum lacks attack. The AO is quiet, too – I fire it up to maximum volume and it hits another ceiling all too quickly. Whack the Tribit up to a Spinal Tap-approved 11 on the same song, and two nearby seagulls take their immediate. It feels instructive.

Weirdly, the spoken word is better. The Elis James and John Robins podcast on BBC Sounds, featuring the two titular comedians and producer Dave, comes through impressively and sounds true-to-life. Even the choral theme tune to regular feature Cymru Connection, in which Elis has to find a mutual acquaintance with a fellow Welsh person inside 60 seconds, sounds well-rounded.

It's just a shame about, well, everything else.

• Sound quality score: 2.5/5

(Image credit: Future / Andy Murray)AO mini portable wireless speaker review: design

• Small enough to fit in a hoody pouch, but not a jeans pocket
• Tactile buttons
• Loop is small and not very versatile

The AO mini portable wireless speaker certainly lives up to its name. Its 82 x 47 x 98mm dimensions make it smaller than the Edifier ES20 (90.4 x 93.7 x 49.7mm) or the Tribit Stormbox Micro 2 (104 x 99 x 41mm) – it's perfect to pop in a bag to enjoy on the move. You could just about fit it in a hoody pouch, but a jeans pocket is probably a stretch too far, unlike the squarer Tribit which can squeeze into a back pocket with a bit of encouragement.

Simple to use, the AO has four buttons that sit on top of the speaker – 'on/off', 'volume up/skip track', 'volume down/skip back track' and 'play/pause'. Unlike some headphones' on-ear controls, where a double tap skips a track instead of increasing the volume by two, there’s no danger of an errant press, either. It’s a single press for each volume increment you want (no matter how quickly you push), and press and hold for three seconds to skip forward and backward – never once did I err, a minor miracle in itself.

A much-appreciated feature was the 'answer/reject call' option, something sorely lacking from similar products such as the JBL Flip 7 and Go 4. A quick press of the 'play/pause' button answers the call, a three-second hold rejects it – once on a call, the quality is good and stable.

It’s pretty well built, too. The AO’s unobtrusive rubber feet mean it isn’t going to go sliding off tables with an accidental knock, and even if you are on the clumsy side – guilty as charged, your honor – then it’s still plenty sturdy enough to cope with a few knocks on the floor.

There are, though, some flaws. If you’re planning on using the green plastic-covered coiled loop to hang the AO from something – a pole in the roof of your tent, or from a strap on a backpack, for instance – you’re going to need a carabiner of some kind to attach it because there’s almost no space in the loop itself. No rucksack release buckle is small enough to slide through.

There’s also good reason why you wouldn’t want to leave the AO suspended in midair. And, yep, it comes back to the sound. Though AO claims ‘multi-directional audio’ for its mini portable wireless speaker, in testing I didn’t encounter anything so aurally 360. Put the speaker next to your ear and it’s immediately obvious out of which side the sound emits, and it sure doesn’t come out of both sides, despite the impression given from a fabric jacket that covers 80 per cent of the product.

On a desk in front of you that isn’t much of an issue – just turn the AO to face you and you’re sorted – but if you’re taking advantage of the speaker’s brilliant battery life and it’s accompanying your outdoorsy endeavors then the situation is different. Assuming you’ve got the aforementioned carabiner, the AO’s sound pings off in whatever direction it happens to be hanging from a rucksack or your tent roof. Essentially, you’ve got three options: deal with it, try to balance the AO in an adequate position or adjust the gradient of the field in which you’ve pitched your tent.

• Design score: 4/5

(Image credit: Future / Andy Murray)AO mini portable wireless speaker review: value

• Astonishing price point…
• ... at which you shouldn’t expect too much

You might argue it’s a bit unfair to rag on something that costs as little as £29 (£19 if you’re an AO member in the UK, the only territory it's currently on sale) but I’ve done so anyway.

That being said, if you can look past the AO mini portable wireless speaker’s shortcomings in sound representation and volume, and aren’t going to use it for anything other than to listen to some tunes or a podcast on-the-go, then the price makes it an attractive option nevertheless.

The AO sits squarely in the gray area where ‘cheap’ and ‘good value’ merge.

• Value score: 4.5/5

(Image credit: Future / Andy Murray)Should I buy the AO mini portable wireless speaker?

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

Unbelievable 25-hour battery life; IP67 waterproofing; Bluetooth 5.3 but no 3.5mm line-in.

4/5

Sound quality

Severely lacking bass; limited top volume; compressed and tinny sound.

2.5/5

Design

Well built, compact with tactile buttons; small hanging loop and no multi-directional sound.

4/5

Value

Astonishing price point but in a gray area as to whether 'cheap' equates to 'value'.

4.5/5

Buy it if...

You like camping
The battery life is beyond excellent. Even with moderate-to-extensive use, the AO will survive a week on just one charge, especially useful if you regularly spend vacations in a field with next-to-no plug sockets.

You get lots of calls
I’m not popular enough, but if your phone is ringing off the hook then you can answer, talk and hang up with seamless efficiency using the integrated buttons on top of the AO. And that’s rarer than you think in many recent Bluetooth speakers.

You like singing in the shower
The AO’s IP67 waterproofing makes it the perfect morning accompaniment. You can even drop it in the bath and it’ll survive.

Don't buy it if...

You appreciate sound quality
The small 20mm driver can only deliver so much. There’s almost no bass (apart from the 'on/off' wake-up noise), limited separation and a general lack of attack.

You want to turn it up to 11
The top volume just isn’t loud enough, especially when you consider the AO will be most often listened to outdoors.

You want to hang it
The loop hole is too small to be used without a carabiner, and even if you do, there’s no omni-directional functionality.

AO mini portable wireless speaker review: also consider

AO mini portable wireless speaker

JBL Go 4

Edifier ES20

Price

£29.99 (£19 for AO members, not available in other territories)

$49.95 / £39.99 / AU$59.95

$89.99 / £49.99 / AU$99.99

Drivers

20mm

45mm driver, integrated class D digital amplifier

43mm full-range driver

Dimensions

82 x 47 x 98mm

94 x 78 x 42mm

90.4 x 93.7 x 49.7mm

Weight

Not supplied

190g

326g

Connectivity

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.3 / USB-C (charging)

Bluetooth 5.4

Battery life

25 hours

7 hours

15 hours

Waterproofing

IP67

IP67

IP67

JBL Go 4
If it’s an ultra-cheap Bluetooth speaker for under $50 / £50 you’re after, the JBL is the one to go for. Punchy, clear audio in a tiny form, even if the aforementioned battery life could do with improvement.
Read our full JBL Go 4 review.

Edifier ES20
The Edifier offers punchy sound, ambient lighting and sturdy waterproofing in a perfectly styled box, all for the $50 bracket. EQ options are lacking, but it represents excellent value for money.
Read our full Edifier ES20.

How I tested the AO mini portable wireless speaker

(Image credit: Future / Andy Murray)

• Over two weeks as my primary Bluetooth speaker
• On my office table, in the shower, at the beach
• With a variety of music styles, sources and podcasts

I had just over two weeks with the AO mini portable wireless speaker, listening to various different music styles and resolutions via streaming service Tidal. I also listened to podcasts downloaded from Apple Podcasts and BBC Sounds onto my iPhone 15, plus music from my Apple MacBook Air.

I tested the AO indoors while writing and editing words about everything from audio to football, in the shower and at the beach. In short, in most everyday conditions possible (if you’re lucky enough to live by the sea, that is).

• First reviewed: November 2025
• Read more about how we test

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