Best Buys – Audio & AV

You may know exactly what you want. Or you may realise it instantly when you read one of our reviews — ‘that’s what I want!’ But for many people on the path to a great home entertainment system, it’s a good idea to ask yourself right at the beginning — what are you really after? To help with this, check out the questions here. Hopefully they’ll steer you towards exactly what you want, and then you can use our reviews to help you find it. Music or movies? Or both? First question: are you an avid music lover looking for an exceptional hi-fi system? Or are you more interested in creating a cinematic experience with a home theatre? Or something inbetween — a hi-fi which will flank your TV to…

BenQ’s projector variations continue to proliferate, especially in the field of plonk-and-play all-in-one projectors which have streaming smarts and speakers built-in. Some of BenQ’s projectors look like traditional projectors, but then there are circular ‘GV’ projectors which roll around in curved bases beaming light at the ceiling, and roughly cubic ‘X’ projectors like this one, a friendly box you can put down pretty much anywhere, ready to create big-screen entertainment from its projected images, and relatively small-box sound into the bargain from its own internal speakers. By our count there are currently three of these near-cubic projection offerings from BenQ, and you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart from the outside without lining them up, or at least noting their dimensions in the specifications. The other two are both…

Epson is the world no.1 for projection, across all categories from the home to the classroom, from sporting events to conferences. And within our particular focal point of consumer AV projection, there’s hardly a niche in which this Japanese company doesn’t have at least one offering, and usually a range. It’s also a company which has a back story of which potential purchasers might be proud, given the path chosen during the company’s last 30 years with regard to sustainable practices. This builds on the origin story of its founding as ‘Daiwa Kogyo’ in 1942 by local clock-shop owner Hisao Yamazaki in Suwa, Nagano (still home to Epson’s HQ today), so that as it stands today, Seiko Epson Corporation is not only one of the world’s largest manufacturers of printers…

Welcome to Leica’s ‘Cinema TV’, an ultra-short-throw projector with TV tuners, smart streaming, and a built-in sound system — as the name suggests, it is intended as a complete TV replacement. You can plug in external sources, but the Cine 1 could provide everything you need in one neat and quite gorgeous package. It’s a stunner. A home theatre projector might seem rather the side-step for Leica Camera AG, global manufacturer of high-end cameras and lenses. But perhaps not so much, if we step back a little in time. Photography has always been a form of home entertainment in itself, and in many 1960s and 1970s homes the biggest available imaging system would have been a projector and a large square screen for showing carousels of 35mm transparencies mounted in…

When you look back at the history of projection, whether it be film, video or photographic, they all involve setting up a projector in front (or behind) the screen to display the projected image. The positioning of the projector would be determined by the requisite image size and the throw distance of the lens. Over time came newly-developed projection-screen technologies that were able to complement particular projector technologies in ways that achieved the best image performance possible. Early silver screens were developed to optimise image brightness from low-output projectors; later higher-gain white screens were developed for the same reasons. It is fair to say that screen manufacturers respond to the projection technology of the day (see panel overleaf), rather than developing a new screen technology and expecting projector manufacturers to…

Three new ‘Authentics’ wireless loudspeakers have arrived from JBL, rising from the smallest Authentics 200 at $500, next to the Authentics 300 at $600 (a small price lift given its larger size and bonus battery operation), and lastly the Authentics 500 reviewed here, the largest at 47cm wide, mains power only, and priced at $999.95. The Authentics 500 came to us with a turntable, the JBL Spinner BT, perhaps to point to the potential for a package, as that turntable can send its groovy tunes via Bluetooth, the Authentics speaker receiving them wirelessly, along with its own app-based music streaming and fairly minimal provision for external inputs. “There is a very good JBL app for your phone or tablet, plus another way to get what you want — just ask.…