2025-01-07T12:50:47.205Z

We had an early listen to Samsung’s latest flagship Dolby Atmos soundbar package

Samsung’s 2024 flagship soundbar package, the Samsung HW-Q990D was one of the best surround sound systems to launch last year. Which is why it earned high praise and a five-star rating from our testers and What Hi-Fi? Award.

Which is why we have high hopes for its follow up, Samsung HW-Q990F system which launched this week at CES 2025.

While the system’s design hasn’t had a big refresh Samsung’s loaded a number of key upgrades into the Samsung HW-Q990F – chief of which is the new wireless subwoofer, which has been reduced in size.

Thankfully, having fought past the crowds to have an early listen our team on the ground at the show came away with positive impressions of the unit, reporting:

“It’s too early to say, but the Samsung HW-Q990F is already showing signs of being a promising sequel to an Award-winning Dolby Atmos soundbar package.”

Read our full Samsung HW-Q990F hands-on preview.

2025-01-07T12:27:34.581Z

JBL’s Tour One M3 flagship wireless headphones are stuffed full of fancy features

It’s Harry here, jumping in to update the live blog as CES 2025 continues to drop products and make earth-shattering announcements at an alarming pace. My fingers can only type so fast…

Some of us (me, mainly) were quietly hoping for the long-awaited debut of the JBL Flip 7 or even the Charge 6 to knock the socks off Bluetooth speaker fans everywhere, but a new pair of wireless over-ears isn’t to be sniffed at. The JBL Tour One M3 flagship cans are absolutely stuffed with features and fancy tricks, supporting Bluetooth 5.3 and 24-bit/96kHz high-res audio and packing in 40mm mica cone drivers. Oh, and you get a whopping 70 hours of battery life and a remarkable five hours of juice from a five-minute charge. Incredible stuff.

Perhaps the biggest draw of the new flagship cans is their Smart Tx wireless audio transmitter. Doing the same job as the transmitter found in some of JBL’s much-talked-about smart charging cases (see the Tour Pro 3 buds, for example), the Smart Tx enables wireless streaming from a source which doesn’t have Bluetooth, such as an in-flight entertainment system or an old telly. Pretty clever, right?

2025-01-07T12:02:03.436Z

LG’s new OLED TVs came with a few big surprises

CES 2025 kicked off with a big launch from LG, which unveiled its G5, C5, B5 and M5 OLED TVs.

At a technical level the G5 and M5 are in most ways the most interesting. The G5 because it replaces the award winning, brightness boosting Micro Lens Array (MLA) screen tech we liked so much on last year’s LG G4 with new ‘Brightness Booster Max’. It’s also the first G-series to be offered with a 48-inch option – a fact that delighted our editor. The M5 is interesting because it’s a new completely wireless OLED from LG that shares most of the core DNA as the G5.

But it was the LG C5 that our intrepid staff writer, Lewis Empson, managed to get an in person demo of at the show. And while it may not a appear to be a huge upgrade on last year’s model based off its specifications, he came away with a positive impression of the set reporting:

“We’re looking forward to getting the C5 into our TV testing space to ascertain exactly how much of an upgrade it is over the C4. Signs are pointing in the right direction, with its brighter panel and excellent feature set, but we’re also concerned that the C5 is an incremental upgrade, much like how the C3 was to the C2.”

Read his full LG C5 hands-on preview here.