January was a huge month for Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi Foundation released the Raspberry Pi Pico, a brand new board that serves as a microcontroller and uses the organization’s first custom silicon, the RP2040 CPU. There’s now an entire ecosystem of Pico products to go along with all the traditional best Raspberry Pi accessories and HATs.
While the influx of Pico projects is just getting started, the onslaught of awesome innovations based on traditional Pi models continues unabated. February’s best Raspberry Pi projects list includes an Etch-a-Sketch, an intercom and a Lego sorter.
Star Wars-Themed Raspberry Pi Terminal
(Image credit: Maz_Baz)
Cyberdeck projects provide a fun way to be creative and productive. This maker decided to pay homage to Star Wars by theming this Raspberry Pi cyberdeck after the classic sci-fi movie franchise. It can be used for basic things like browsing and coding.
Why we love it:
The force is strong with this Raspberry Pi project, what’s not to love? The concept is fun enough in itself but the final execution makes for a quality machine that can actually be used in a practical manner.
Read:Raspberry Pi Star Wars Terminal
Raspberry Pi Intercom
(Image credit: Bruno, Chordata)
Keeping up with everyone while working from home can be tricky. This project bridges the at-home communication gaps that come with remote working by using a Raspberry Pi to control a custom intercom. It has multiple buttons and relies on Telegram to transfer audio.
Why we love it:
This is a simple and fun project that brings people together in a time when we’re living at a distance. It’s well-designed and hits every marker for an at-home DIY project with the kids. All you need is a Raspberry Pi Zero, a speaker, some buttons and a little bit of patience.
Read:Raspberry Pi Intercom
Raspberry Pi Pico Tetris Demo
(Image credit: Jools64)
While we wait for more Pico projects to roll in, there’s already a couple we can show off! This maker was eager to get the Pico running and developed a quick Tetris demo using Pimoroni’s Display Pack Module. The buttons control the piece direction, speed and orientation.
Why we love it:
We’re super excited for the Pico projects that are coming and this one is a delicious taste of what’s to come! For something thrown together in a few hours, it looks great and like fun to play. We could easily sink an hour into some Pico Tetris if we aren’t careful.
Read:Raspberry Pi Pico Tetris Demo
Raspberry Pi Monitors Your Power Usage
(Image credit: Mark Bryan Milligan)
Keeping an eye on your bills is one thing, but anticipating them by monitoring your own power usage is an entirely new level! This project uses a Raspberry Pi to help monitor power usage and solar panel data.
Why we love it:
Raspberry Pis are a popular choice for smart-home makers and it’s projects like this that demonstrate why. This is an incredibly useful and fascinating application of the Raspberry Pi.
Read:Raspberry Pi Power Monitoring System
PiStation 2
(Image credit: Farizno)
This PlayStation 2 looks like your average, beloved, unsuspecting console from the ’90s but, in fact, it’s home to our favorite SBC. That’s right! This PlayStation 2 is a retrogaming emulator running on the Raspberry Pi.
Why we love it:
It’s a beautiful meld of retro hardware and modern technology. If you’ve got an old, broken console that can’t be refurbished, projects like these are a great way to bring a little life back into them.
Read:Raspberry Pi Playstation 2
Raspberry Pi Etch-A-Sketch
(Image credit: BenB116)
We know you’ve probably seen an Etch-a Sketch before but have you ever seen one so huge? This Raspberry Pi operated board has working knobs and can automatically draw a pre-programmed image for you. The housing was 3D printed while the image displayed is a custom app running in a browser window on the Raspberry Pi.
Why we love it:
We’ve never seen a Raspberry Pi project quite like this one! It’s wonderfully creative and makes for a well-finished piece of art that can be displayed inside your home.
Read:Raspberry Pi Etch-a-Sketch
Raspberry Pi 4-Track Looper
(Image credit: he Psychotenuse)
This groovy Raspberry Pi project is cool enough to make you get up and dance. This maker used a Raspberry Pi to make a 4-track audio looper. He even provides a real-time demo which we absolutely recommend our readers check out.
Why we love it:
Why spend money on specialized hardware when you can make it yourself and even customize your experience along the way? This project is really cool and looks like it would be plenty of fun to recreate at home.
Read:Raspberry Pi 4-Track Looper
Raspberry Pi PlottyBot
(Image credit: Ben Akrin)
Plotters are fun and all, but this one copies your handwriting and can even memorize it as a custom font! This awesome Raspberry Pi project is known as PlottyBot and can also be used to reproduce images. The pen can be replaced with a fountain pen which provides more options for specialized ink.
Why we love it:
We’re writers, what did you expect? It uses fountain pens and a Raspberry Pi. This project is brilliantly crafted and demonstrates the power of creative discipline. Excellent work!
Read:PlottyBot Raspberry Pi Plotter
Raspberry Pi Universal Lego Sorter
(Image credit: Daniel West)
Can’t find the Lego brick you need? We feel you. That’s where this Lego brick sorting Raspberry Pi project comes in! It’s beyond thorough, using AI and machine learning to predict and sort unfamiliar brick shapes.
Why we love it:
It’s made of LEGO bricks for LEGO bricks. There’s just too much fun in this project not to love it! The sorting process is extremely well designed and the final LEGO design is a nice finishing touch.
Read:Raspberry Pi LEGO Brick Sorter
Custom Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Tablet
(Image credit: Ostahos)
Makers have tried to make Raspberry Pi tablets before, but the thick form factor of models like the 3 B+ and 4 always gets in the way. This custom PCB solves that issue by providing a platform for the CM4 module to operate a touchscreen panel.
Why we love it:
This Raspberry Pi project provides all the power of a CM4 module with the user-friendly experience of a tablet interface. It’s one thing to build your own Pi project but designing an open-source PCB is an extra step that gets points in our book.
Read:Raspberry Pi CM4 Tablet
MORE: Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout: What Each Pin Does
Devialet has announced a successor to one of the most distinctive and innovative wireless speakers around. The all-new Phantom I is an evolution of the original model, with improved amplification, next-generation audio processing, wider functionality, and better thermal dissipation for a claimed four times greater energy efficiency.
Like the first Phantom, which was released in 2014 and has since spawned more powerful Phantoms as well as the more compact and affordable Phantom Reactor (now being renamed ‘Phantom II’), the Phantom I is based on Devialet’s patented ADH (Analog Digital Hybrid) amplification.
It also uses the French audio brand’s Speaker Active Matching (SAM) technology for ensuring the amplifier and drive units work in harmony, says Devialet. Heart Bass Implosion (HBI) is claimed to provide deep, impactful bass from the compact enclosure; and Active Cospherical Engine (ACE) is designed to output sound waves evenly from the spherical chassis in all directions.
(Image credit: Devialet )
Devialet has always been proud of the Phantom’s compactness to power fidelity ratio – even the least powerful Reactor can go as loud as a motorcycle or hand drill – and to that end the Phantom I is available at two power levels, each in two colourways. One model comes in light chrome or matt black and can deliver a maximum volume of 103dB (between 16Hz and 25kHz); the other comes with dark chrome and gold side panels and offers up to 108dB volume (between 14Hz and 27kHz) – equal to the most powerful Phantom Gold.
While very much adhering to the distinctive spherical Phantom aesthetic, the newest member of the family has been updated with a matt finish, tweaked signature side panels, rear LED lights for showing statuses, and the all-new Arch accessory, which allows the owner to connect and play analogue sources through the speaker, expanding its network (AirPlay 2, UPnP and Roon) connectivity.
The Devialet Phantom I is now available from £1890.
MORE:
Best wireless speakers 2021: wonderful wi-fi speakers for all budgets
Audio-Technica has been making beautiful wooden high-end headphones for a quarter of a century – its first were the ATH-W10VTG in 1996 – and thankfully (because we’re yet to hear a bad pair), it doesn’t appear to be calling it a day on that particular production line. The Japanese audio brand has just announced the European availability of the new ATH-WP900 portable headphones with flame maple housings.
The company has used many types of woods for its more home-friendly over-ears in the past, such as the Japanese striped ebony hardwood Kokutan for the ATH-AWKT and Asada Zakura birch for the ATH-AWAS, and now maple has been chosen for its combination of stiffness and density, qualities that make them good candidates for string instruments such as guitars and violins. Speaking of string instruments, each unique flame maple-finished housing is created by Japanese guitar manufacturer Fujigen.
(Image credit: Audio Technica)
The ATH-WP900 promise to accompany their appealing aesthetics with the sonic goods too, with their 53mm large diameter driver, coated in diamond-like carbon. A high-power magnet is designed to provide “superlative low-range audio”, while the foam-packed, synthetic leather-finished ear pads and swivel ear cup design have been made with long listening sessions and portability in mind.
Detachable A2DC connectors offer high sound quality and durability, too, and included in the box, in addition to a carrying pouch, are detachable 3.5mm (3-pole stereo mini-plug) and balanced 4.4mm (5-pole balanced mini-plug) cables.
The Audio-Technica ATH-WP900 headphones are available in the UK and Europe from March, priced £599 (€699).
MORE:
Best audiophile headphones 2021
Best over-ear headphones 2021
Focal looks to build on its headphones success with stunning Celestee
What’s the first thing you think of when someone says the word ‘multi-room’?
For most, we imagine it’s a dedicated set-up from a single manufacturer such as Sonos or Bluesound, with its connected ecosystem of speakers, soundbars, soundbases and hi-fi components. Or perhaps you’d think of AirPlay 2, a gateway for an iOS source (Apple device) to stream music to multiple compatible products.
If you want to mix and match from multiple manufacturers, cherry-picking devices in order to get the best performance and fit for each room, DTS Play-Fi could be an option worth looking into. The app-controlled, wireless, multi-room platform has been licensed to several hi-fi brands and consequently sits at the functionality core of excellent streaming products such as the What Hi-Fi? Award winning Audiolab 6000N Play (pictured below) and five-star Arcam rPlay music streamers.
It claims to provide “premium wireless audio for every room of your house”, and works across a wide array of products. So, let’s take a look at what it does, how it does it and what products utilise it…
Multi-room audio: everything you need to know
What is DTS Play-Fi?
(Image credit: Audiolab)
DTS Play-Fi is, at the most fundamental level, a platform and app that lets you connect and control various hi-fi devices together in order to stream audio from one to another. This can be within one room for a multi-channel set-up, or across multiple rooms in your home. Multi-room aside, it can just be used to facilitate network streaming in one standalone product.
The range of compatible devices includes portable wireless speakers, stereo systems, A/V tuners, preamps, amplifiers, music streamers and media servers – all of which can be managed on your smartphone, tablet, PC or TV via the dedicated app. DTS Play-Fi launched in 2012 and originally its app was only available only on Android. But now its dedicated control app is available on iOS, Kindle Fire (the operating system on Amazon’s Fire tablets) and Windows PCs too, as well as on TVs.
On Windows, however, there are two varieties of Play-Fi app: a free version and a “Play-Fi HD” version. The latter costs $14.95 (approximately £10), which buys you a code for from the DTS online store and ultimately gives you greater control over your audio as well as higher quality.
Best multi-room systems 2021
Best multi-room speakers 2021
How does it work?
Download the app and you should quickly see a list of available devices. Tap to select it, then choose audio from a number of sources including Amazon Music (including Amazon Music HD), Tidal, Deezer, Spotify and Qobuz, as well as internet radio stations via iHeartRadio, SirusXM and Radio.com. Apple Music is not available on the service at the moment.
Some DTS Play-Fi-compatible products will also support AirPlay and AirPlay 2, Apple’s simple method of streaming audio and video directly from iPhones, iPads and other devices. However, this isn’t available in every DTS Play-Fi product; it’s the manufacturer’s decision whether to implement it or not. Similarly, that’s the case with Google Chromecast and Spotify Connect.
You can configure two separate speakers into a stereo pairing – one playing the left channel audio, the other playing the right – using the app, or (if you have at least six DTS Play-Fi compatible products) create a 5.1 surround-sound system.
Those speaker groups can then be designated as ‘Zones’, which allows you to delegate music to different rooms of your house. For example, you could have a Tidal stream going to the speakers in your living room while a Deezer stream plays in the bedroom.
A new companion app, called DTS Play-Fi Headphones, also lets you stream audio from select DTS Play-Fi-connected products (soundbars, stereo amps and speakers) to a pair of headphones over wi-fi. DTS claims the wi-fi connection is better than Bluetooth headphones (which can introduce latency issues) and its AV synchronisation technology means there shouldn’t be any syncing issues between picture and audio when watching TV.
To use it, you have to connect your wired headphones to your smartphone or tablet with the app on it, up to four people can be connected to one stream, and users can even listen at different volumes. The free app is available on iOS and Android.
Best music streaming services 2021
Does DTS Play-Fi support hi-res music?
DTS Play-Fi will play MP3, M4A, AAC, FLAC, WAV and AIFF files. They can be streamed up to a 16-bit/48kHz resolution limit without compression – anything bigger will be compressed by default.
However, this can be changed using the service’s Critical Listening mode, which lets you stream 24-bit/192kHz music across your wi-fi network. A word of warning, though: since those files are generally pretty large (many of our hi-res music files are between 30MB and 70MB per track, compared to 3.5MB for the average MP3 file) and thus require greater bandwidth to stream, DTS advises using a wired connection for more reliable performance.
High-resolution audio: everything you need to know
Which products support DTS Play-Fi?
Among the vast array of products supporting DTS Play-Fi are soundbars, systems and speakers from – deep breath – Audiolab, Anthem, Arcam, Aerix, Definitive Technology, Integra, Klipsch, MartinLogan, McIntosh, Onkyo, Paradigm, Philips, Polk, Quad, Rotel, Phorus, Pioneer and Sonus faber.
Most recently, product announcements include the Quad Artera Solus Play streaming system, a range of Philips audio kit and TVs, and kit by Porsche Design.
You can see the full list of supported brands here.
Best music streamers 2021
How to add a streamer to your hi-fi system
How many products can you connect using DTS Play-Fi?
In the words of The Notorious B.I.G., the sky’s the limit. You could theoretically connect as many products as you like together, but DTS recommends a maximum of 32 Play-Fi devices per home network, lest performance start to suffer.
Up to 16 Play-Fi products can stream the same song, whether that’s from your phone, tablet, or Windows PC. You can designate a maximum of four zones, with each zone streaming audio from a different source.
Up to eight people can use the same wi-fi network to stream songs using DTS Play-Fi (provided they’re all using different devices).
Adding a music streamer to my hi-fi system has been a revelation (and a frustration)
Does DTS Play-Fi support voice control?
In a word, yes. DTS Play-Fi supports voice control most exhaustively via Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. This functionality is available in two ways: “integration of Alexa Voice Services” (which is for products with the Alexa voice assistant built-in) or, most commonly, “Works with Alexa” (which means you’ll be able to control Alexa-based music streams on DTS Play-Fi products via an Echo device).
Play-Fi-connected smart speakers such as the Onkyo P3, Pioneer F4 and Phorus PS10 have integrated Alexa, so you can shout commands at it just as you would Amazon’s own Echo speakers.
To use Alexa with other Play-Fi products (such as those from McIntosh or Martin Logan – basically anything without microphones built in) you’ll need to ask any of the above smart speakers or an Echo or Dot to play music, which it will then do across the rest of your Play-Fi products. There’s a long list of Works with Alexa-supporting DTS Play-Fi products, which we can be found here.
Speaking of Alexa, DTS Play-Fi products now support Alexa Cast, allowing users to send and control music directly from the Amazon Music app to them. See compatible products here.
How about Apple’s Siri voice assistant? Music playback on Play-Fi products that support AirPlay 2 can be started via voice commands to Siri or to a HomePod. Alternatively, users can use spoken commands to add AirPlay 2 speakers into a group with a HomePod or even transfer music playback from the HomePod to other AirPlay 2 products in the home.
Amazon Echo smart speakers: which Alexa speaker should you buy?
Best smart speakers 2021
What are the DTS Play-Fi alternatives?
Many other companies offer their own services to connect up audio kit – controlled through bespoke apps. Sonos is the obvious standout in that respect – its multi-room speakers routinely win What Hi-Fi? Awards for ease of use and excellent support of numerous streaming services, plus exclusive features such as Sonos Trueplay.
Streaming products from the likes of Naim, Linn, Audio Pro, B&O and Bose (and many more) use their own streaming apps, while Bluesound, NAD, Dali use the shared BluOS platform, and Denon and Marantz use the shared HEOS platform.
Then there’s arguably the most ubiquitous platforms: Apple AirPlay 2 and Google Chromecast, which have been integrated across a huge variety of wireless products, allowing you to mix-and-match products in your streaming household.
One thing’s for sure, it’s no longer difficult to make a multi-room audio system. If anything, it’s just harder to choose which of the many paths to go down.
According to analysts, Chromebooks had an incredible 2020, with the last quarter being the strongest ever for Google’s laptops (via 9to5Google). According to research firms Gartner and Canalys, over 30 million of the devices shipped last year, with somewhere between 11 and 11.7 million shipping in Q4 alone. Canalys says that’s a staggering 287 percentmore than were shipped in Q4 2019.
The firms disagree on how much growth this is when compared to 2019, but both estimate that it’s a lot: Gartner estimates that Chromebooks are up 80 percent, while Canalys says it’s 109 percent. For comparison, PC sales were up by 11 percent this year, which is the biggest growth the category had seen in a decade. This isn’t to give the impression that Chromebooks outsold PCs — Gartner estimates there were 275 million traditional computers sold this year, but it does show that one category is experiencing an explosion in growth, while another is recovering after a dip.
Education has a lot to do with it, according to Canalys. Chromebooks are big sellers in the education market, and schools had to find a way to provide at-home students with computers for remote learning during COVID. Even the Vice President of Microsoft Education agrees that Chromebooks are great for schools — according to audio from a leaked meeting obtained by Business Insider, he told his employees that “[i]n many cases, when schools are buying Chromebooks or Windows PCs, Chromebooks are still faster and cheaper, they are easier to deploy and manage.”
As students attend school from home, they’re obviously not going to be coming home to a different PC. A lot of kids I know have never used a traditional computer: they spend their time on Chromebooks and tablets instead.
(Pocket-lint) – The rise of Amazon Music Unlimited has gone hand-in-hand with the explosion in the use of Amazon Echo speakers and Alexa, its digital assistant. It integrates seamlessly with Echo devices, while also working just like any other streaming service on your phone and other devices.
Spotify is probably the first service you think of when you think of music streaming – it’s been around the longest, integrates with loads of services, and has some very clever features.
But which service is best for you – Amazon Music or Spotify? We’ve looked at the features of both, how much Spotify and Amazon Music cost, and how you can access them to help you make your ultimate decision: Spotify or Amazon Music Unlimited?
Want to check out other options such as Apple Music or Tidal?
Amazon Music Unlimited vs Spotify: Prices compared
Amazon Music Unlimited is available with several different pricing tiers available. To help you get to grips with Amazon Music Unlimited and to decide if it’s the right service for you, Amazon offers a 30-day free trial.
If you don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime, a Music Unlimited membership will cost you £9.99/$9.99 a month, but if you do have a Prime account then you’ll only pay £7.99/£7.99 a month or £79/$79 for the whole year.
Subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited UK
Subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited US
Amazon also offers a membership for £3.99/$3.99 a month but you can only stream music through the Echo speaker or Echo Dot. Note that you can only use the £3.99 month Echo membership on a single Echo device and it can’t be transferred. If you have multiple Echo devices in your home and want to use Amazon Music Unlimited with all of them, you’ll need a regular individual membership. There’s also a Student membership at $4.99.
A Family membership is available for £14.99/$14.99 a month for up to 6 family members or £149/$149 for a year.
Spotify has a much simpler pricing structure with just three tiers: a free, ad-supported tier and a Premium tier that costs £9.99/$9.99 month. Again, there’s a 30-day free trial.
Spotify also offers offer a family subscription plan which costs £14.99/$14.99 month for you and up to five family members. Each member gets their own personal account.
Students can also get a discounted membership for just £4.99, but they have to sign up through UniDays or NUS Extra.
Sign up for Spotify
Amazon Music Unlimited vs Spotify: Devices
While Amazon Music can be played on a wide range of devices, it’s in connectivity that Spotify has a killer feature – Spotify Connect. And even though Amazon now has Alexa Cast – enabling you to cast to a variety of Alexa or Bluetooth devices from within the Music Unlimited app – it’s not quite as flexible as Spotify Connect.
Spotify Connect enables you to control what is playing on any Spotify Connect device or Spotify app, from any other. That means you can use your desktop app to control Spotify on your Echo, you can pause it on your phone, find something else and play that on your PC instead. Each app gets to control the music wherever it’s playing.
Amazon Music Unlimited is accessible through the Amazon Music app. The app can be downloaded on iOS and Android devices, as well as Mac and PC. You can also access it through a Web player in your browser and through the company’s Echo devices and Fire tablets. You can also play music through a Sonos multi-room system or Roku media streamer.
Amazon has also said that select BMW and Mini cars are Amazon Music-enabled and provide access to the service through its infotainment system when connected to a smartphone.
Spotify is available almost everywhere, there’s an app for iOS, Android, PC and Mac but is available via Spotify Connect on a list of devices that’s almost too long to put here. You can get a Spotify app on select TVs from Panasonic, LG, Sony, Samsung, B&O and Philips while Spotify works with stacks of audio products including those from Bose, Sonos, Onkyo, Denon, Yamaha, Pionner, Naim, Libratone and Revo.
A wide range of car manufacturers, as well as Uber, have either built-in access via Spotify Connect, Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. The Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox One have apps for Spotify, along with Google Chromecast and Chromecast Audio. Check out this full list of Spotify Connect Devices.
We’ve mentioned both on Amazon Echo devices – while Amazon Music is slightly better integrated, Spotify plays natively too, so there isn’t a huge difference in experience.
And, naturally, you can always stream either from your phone to a Bluetooth speaker or another Bluetooth-enabled device.
Amazon Music Unlimited vs Spotify: Which offers better sound?
Amazon hasn’t revealed the streaming bitrate quality of its library, but we’d have a guess and say it will be 320kbps as this would put it on par with Spotify.
Spotify reserves 320kbps streaming for its Premium tier. It’s called “extreme quality” on mobile. If you use the free tier and listen on a mobile, you can choose between 96kbps normal quality or 160kbps high quality. The same 160kbps streams are called standard quality on a computer.
However, Amazon also offers a premium tier called Amazon Music HD, which unlocks lossless music at a higher quality, for audiophiles. It’s pricier, and has a more limited library, but is a great way to get higher-quality audio, so that’s a major leg-up over Spotify for now.
What is Spotify Spotlight and how does the new format work?
Amazon Music Unlimited vs Spotify: Other features
Radio
Both Amazon Music Unlimited and Spotify offer personalised radio stations based on artists and tracks you like.
Both have mood-based playlists and a list of auto-generated stations and you can also choose to start a station based on an artist or song you’re currently listening to. These can also be accessed on Echo devices.
Playlists
Both services will let you create your own custom playlists you can then share with friends, or you can save curated ones to your collection.
Discovery
Amazon’s Music app and the web player have a recommended section which serves up albums and playlists that it things you’ll like based on your listening habits. The Music app itself has had a major redesign, and now claims to make music discovery easier than ever before.
Spotify meanwhile has a feature called Discover Weekly, which is an automatically curated playlist of songs that it thinks you’ll like based on your listening habits. It’s updated every Monday morning and from our experience, we’ve always liked what we’ve heard.
Assistant
Because of the integration with Echo devices, Amazon Music Unlimited can be used with Alexa. You can ask Alexa all manner of questions to get the music you want, such as “play music for a dinner party” or “play Britney Spears greatest hits” and so on.
Spotify has no built-in assistant as such, but can be controlled with Alexa or Google Assistant – so you can simply ask for the music you want “on Spotify” and it will play.
Offline
Both Amazon Music Unlimited and Spotify offer offline playback. Amazon offers it as standard but you can only download songs from Spotify if you subscribe to the Premium tier.
Amazon Music Unlimited vs Spotify: Which is best?
If you already have an Amazon Prime membership and you’ve bought an Echo speaker or Echo Dot, paying just £3.99 a month makes it incredibly worthwhile if you just want playback on your Echo – certainly cheaper than paying for a full Spotify subscription. And the cheaper price for Prime members mean Amazon Music Unlimited is a no-brainer if you already have a Prime membership.
Subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited UK
Subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited US
But if you aren’t within the Amazon ecosystem already then Spotify is our pick. Spotify is available almost everywhere and offers a free tier. It’s worth noting that while the free tier still lets you listen to Spotify’s entire music catalogue, it does come with some limitations on where and how you can play your music, restricting downloads and so on.
It helps that Spotify is incredibly easy to use, sounds good and has some incredibly useful music discovery features. We also rate Spotify Connect – it’s the best system if you have a range of different speaker types.
Sign up for Spotify
Also why not check out these Spotify tips and tricks, if you want to level up your experience.
Writing by Max Langridge and Dan Grabham. Editing by Max Freeman-Mills.
The iPhone 12 Mini delivers a hugely satisfying iOS experience in a tiny package
For
Excellent OLED picture
Entertaining sound
iOS as slick as ever
Against
Battery life not outstanding
No charger supplied
If you have big hands, big pockets and a ‘bigger is better’ outlook on life, then the iPhone 12 Mini probably isn’t for you.
This is a smartphone for those who prefer a more subtle and discreet design, where pocket space is at a premium and you’d rather not pull a thumb muscle every time you attempt to write and send a text one-handed.
But, just because it’s been shrunk in the wash, doesn’t mean all its features have been diluted. On paper, you’re looking at virtually all the same ingredients that make the standard iPhone 12 so great, including the OLED screen tech and excellent camera. If the iPhone 12 Mini turns out the same way, we could quite easily be looking at another five-star performer.
Pricing
The iPhone 12 Mini might not be the cheapest iPhone Apple currently makes (that honour goes to the iPhone SE (2020)) but it is the most affordable handset in the current ‘12’ range.
The iPhone 12 Mini costs £699 ($699, AU$1199) for the 64GB model, and £749 ($749, AU$1479) for the 128GB model, while the range-topping 256GB variant will set you back £849 ($849, AU$1449). This makes it around £100 ($100, AU$150) cheaper than the equivalent iPhone 12.
Features
(Image credit: Apple)
If you’re used to wielding a standard iPhone 11 or a Pro or Pro Max, the iPhone 12 Mini appears almost toy-like when you take it out of the packaging. It’s the smallest and lightest iPhone in Apple’s current line-up and in your hand, it feels like it.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you’re looking to downsize or want a premium iPhone experience in a device that won’t take up a huge amount of space, then this could be at the top of your shopping list.
The beauty of the iPhone 12 Mini is that it gets the same flat-edged design as its bigger siblings, such as the standard iPhone 12. This means it not only feels premium, but it’s easy to get a grip of the aerospace-grade aluminium enclosure even if the curved edges of the iPhone 11 sit more comfortably.
Apple iPhone 12 Mini tech specs
(Image credit: Apple)
Screen size 5.4in
Type OLED
Resolution 2340 x 1080
Operating system iOS 14
Finishes x5
Battery life 15hrs video, 50hrs audio
Dimensions (hwd) 13.2 x 6.4 x 0.7cm
Weight 133g
Thankfully, the iPhone 12 Mini gives off the same premium impression as the other models in the line-up whether it’s in the black finish of our review sample or the alternative white, blue, green or Product Red options.
The big attraction of the iPhone 12 Mini is the fact that it shares virtually the same features as the standard iPhone 12. This includes the OLED Super Retina XDR display, which measures 5.4in across the diagonal. By contrast, the standard model measures 6.1in.
Looking through the specs, you’ll also see that the 12 Mini is shorter and narrower than the cheaper iPhone SE (2020) but its screen is actually bigger (5.4in versus 4.7in), thanks to black bars encroaching into the top and bottom of the SE’s screen. The SE has to accommodate a Touch ID sensor, while the 12 Mini uses Apple’s Face ID tech, like the rest of the iPhone 12 range.
The resolution of the Mini is 2340 x 1080 with an accompanying pixel density of 476ppi (pixels per inch). This compares to 2532 x 1170 and 460ppi on the iPhone 12. It’s a True Tone and Wide colour display and there’s HDR support for HDR10, Dolby Vision and HLG content. As a result, it’s possible for the iPhone 12 Mini to reach a peak brightness of 1200 nits (compared with 625 nits for SDR content).
As is the case with the standard 12, the Mini’s screen also features Apple’s Ceramic Shield front cover, which Apple claims boosts the phone’s durability by making it less likely to crack on impact with hard surfaces. However, it attracts fingerprints and dust, a fact that’s regularly highlighted on the darker finishes.
The iPhone 12 Mini may not have the bulk and heft of the other iPhone 12 models, but it doesn’t sacrifice any power under the hood. It gets Apple’s new A14 Bionic chip and next-gen Neural Engine. We find it provides a wonderfully quick and satisfying user experience in both the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro Max, and the same can be said for the iPhone 12 Mini.
If you’re familiar with Apple iOS, it won’t take long to get to grips with the Mini. It takes multi-tasking in its stride and never puts up any resistance to having a large number of apps open all at once. Whether you’re opening and streaming from Apple apps, such as Apple Music and Podcasts, or third-party services, including Netflix or Amazon Music, the iPhone 12 Mini fires them all up and gets the ball rolling with minimal fuss.
(Image credit: Apple)
Apple has also squeezed in the exact same camera set-up on the Mini as on the standard 12. That means a 12MP dual-lens set-up on the back that’s perfect for those who want to point and shoot high good quality pictures with minimal fuss in both decent and sub-optimal lighting conditions. The iPhone 12 Mini can also record video in Dolby Vision at 30 frames per second, which gives the phone an extra string to its bow for those who do the occasional bout of vlogging.
So far, it’s been pretty much plain sailing for the iPhone 12 Mini, but there is one drawback to this tiny iPhone. To get that smaller, more pocketable design, Apple has had to sacrifice battery life. Apple refrains from quoting the actual size of its batteries, but a quick look at its website reveals a drop in both video playback (15 hours versus 17 hours) and audio playback (50 hours versus 65 hours) compared with the iPhone 12.
On an average day, using a mix of video streaming, audio streaming, web browsing and taking calls, the battery regularly drops below the level of our iPhone 12. Though never in danger of running out completely, it’s worth bearing in mind that regular charging will be required.
A dedicated charger could come in handy here but, disappointingly, Apple ships its latest iPhones with just a USB-C to Lightning cable. There are no Earpods in the box, either, which is at least a good excuse to check out our guide to the best wireless headphones.
Screen
(Image credit: Apple / Tredstone, Amazon Prime)
We play Stranger Things Season 3 and, as the Soviet scientists try to open a gate to the Upside Down, their laboratory is lit up as their mighty machinery spins into life. As all the components start to move, the iPhone’s screen bursts bright with huge sparks of bright white electricity that contrast nicely against the darkness of the dingy-looking lab.
As the Soviet general watches on, the iPhone 12 Mini manages to dig out plenty of detail in his face and uniform, from his pock-marked skin to the fine stitching on his uniform. The balance the iPhone strikes makes video inviting and watchable. The picture mimics that of the iPhone 12 and, despite the slight drop in resolution, the increased pixel density means you never feel as though you’re missing out on detail.
As the episode shifts location to the Starcourt Mall with its neon exterior and brightly lit interior, the iPhone 12 Mini treats this burst of colour confidently and fairly. Colours burst into view as the camera pans through the mall, but they’re also perfectly judged, whether it’s the striking shade of blue that dominates the Scoops Ahoy sign or the colourful 80s clothing worn by the hoards of shoppers.
Sound
(Image credit: Apple)
Like its bigger sibling, the iPhone 12 Mini supports Dolby Atmos and Apple’s own spatial Audio processing, which you can experience if you own a pair of AirPods Pro or AirPods Max headphones.
Unsurprisingly, the Mini sounds like a slightly smaller-scale version of the iPhone 12. The balance is similar – you don’t notice any real reduction in quality or tone apart from a slight drop in solidity and weight. It also starts to sound stressed a little sooner when you start to ramp up the volume. What you get, though, is still a perfectly listenable performance by smartphone standards.
During the Stranger Things scene in the Russian lab, as the machine whirs and spins into life, the mechanics sound crisp and there’s a good sense of detail and spread of sound. Dialogue is clear and easy to understand and the phone will easily dispatch an episode of your favourite Netflix series or a quick Spotify stream without issue.
Hook up a pair of wireless headphones and the Mini sounds mighty. We start with a Tidal stream of Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy and the bassline and drums stomp along with power and intent. But it also captures the delicacy and fine detail from Eilish’s vocals. The claps and clicks are crisp and refined too. We tend to find iPhones talented when it comes to timing and following rhythms and the 12 Mini is no different.
Switching to Dual Of The Fates from Star Wars The Phantom Menace soundtrack, the iPhone handles its speed and sprightly nature with confidence and composure. All the different orchestral elements can be picked apart, but the listener can also bask in the music as all the strands come together as a wonderfully cohesive whole.
The phone has multiple changes of pace to contend with and also sudden shifts in dynamics from quiet moments to huge crescendos, but none of these fluster the iPhone 12 Mini.
Verdict
If a super-sized handset is out of the equation, but you still want a premium Apple experience, the iPhone 12 Mini could be the smartphone for you. It offers all the top features of the iPhone 12, but in a smaller, more pocket-friendly package.
It is smooth and speedy to use, camera quality is great and picture and sound performance are both excellent for the money. The battery life takes a small hit, but that doesn’t really detract from this hugely talented tiny iPhone.
AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs for workstations are prohibitively expensive due to their exclusive capabilities and positioning. Asus this week announced the pricing of its AMD WRX80-based motherboard, and unlike the processors, the platform isn’t too costly by today’s standards. In Europe, it will carry a price tag that is significantly below a psychologically important €1000 level.
The Asus Pro WS WRX80E-Sage SE WiFi is set to be one of a few retail motherboards carrying AMD’s WRX80 chipset as well as sWRX8 socket that exclusively support AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs. The platform will be available sometime in the first quarter for €868, including VAT, according to a press release published by Hardware-Inside.
Given the price of the Pro WS Sage SE in Europe, it is logical to expect the motherboard to carry an $880 ~ $900 MSRP in the U.S., which is not cheap but is still well below the price of high-end platforms mainstream platforms, like Z490 or Z590, for overclockers and enthusiasts. Comparatively, you get a lot more bang for your buck with this board – especially if you’re looking for the ultimate workstation platform.
(Image credit: Asus)
The Pro WS WRX80E-Sage SE WiFi from Asus is indeed the mother of all motherboards as it has a complete roster of features found in workstations, servers, and enthusiast platforms, all wrapped in a 12-pound package.
(Image credit: Asus)
The E-ATX monster comes in black and does not have any RGB LED bling. But to ensure absolute stability and reliability, the Pro WS WRX80E-Sage SE WiFi is equipped with a 16-phase voltage regulating module (VRM) for the CPU that gets power from three EPS-12V connectors (i.e., the mobo will require an advanced PSU). The VRM is covered with two massive all-black aluminum heatsinks (one of which has a fan), which is adjacent to heatsinks covering the chipset (which is also actively cooled) as well as M.2 slots for SSDs. To further improve cooling and add some rigidity to the mainboard, it has a rather huge backplate.
(Image credit: Asus)
AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs support up to 1TB of DDR4 memory as well as 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, so the board carries seven PCIe x16 slots, three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, and two U.2 ports. In addition, the Pro WS Sage SE has eight SATA ports for those who need high-capacity local storage.
(Image credit: Asus)
As far as connectivity is concerned, the Pro WS WRX80E-Sage SE WiFi is a no-compromise product. The motherboard is equipped with a Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth adapter (the Intel AX200), two 10GbE ports controlled by the Intel X550-AT2 chip (one of which connects to a baseband management controller), seven USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A connectors, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port, and a 7.1-channel audio subsystem.
(Image credit: Asus)
As the name of the motherboard suggests, it is positioned for professional workstations, yet ASUS stresses that the Pro WS WRX80E-Sage SE WiFi is DIY friendly. Whether or not a lot of DIY enthusiasts decide to build a professional workstation with all of its attributes is something that remains to be seen, but at least it is safe to say that they will have such an opportunity when the platform hits the market this February or March.
Choosing the best motherboard is in many ways the most integral part of your PC build, although choosing the best graphics card and best CPU often get more attention. Every part of your PC plugs into the motherboard you choose. Its form factor dictates the size of your computer and how much you can plug into it, and the chipset / CPU socket define what kind of processor you can install.
Motherboards (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Motherboards—particularly high-end models—are often made up of a confusing collection of features, and can range in price from sub-$60 (£50) budget boards to as much as $1,000 or more. We’re here to help untangle the complexities and make sure you pick the right model for your needs, without blowing too much of your build budget for other parts.
Speaking build budgets, if you’re looking to save some money while shopping , you should check out our feature about the eight features you probably don’t need on a motherboard.
And if you’re after a brand-new board from Intel’s new Z590 or AMD’s X570 linuep, note that motherboard prices for both platforms have increased over previous generations, at least in part due to support for PCIe 4.0. Just note that while AMD’s B550 boards support PCIe 4.0 now with a Zen 2/3-based processor, the Intel Z490 boards that list PCIe 4.0 support (and all new Z590 boards) will only activate that support when paired with a next-generation Rocket Lake-S CPU. Those processors aren’t quite here yet, but should arrive in the next few months.
TLDR
Get the right socket for your CPU: You can find great CPUs from either Intel or AMD, but whatever CPU you buy, make sure that your board has the correct socket to support it. The latest mainstream AMD chips use AM4 sockets while current Intel 10th and upcoming 11th Gen Core CPUs work in LGA 1200 sockets.
Smaller boards = fewer slots and features. Motherboards come in three main sizes, from largest to smallest: ATX, Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX (Yes, Mini is smaller than Micro). You can use a smaller chassis with the micro or mini boards, but you’ll have to settle for fewer PCIe slots, RAM slots and other connectors.
You can spend under $150: You can often find a decent motherboard for less than $150. But if you want to overclock an Intel chip, you want PCIe 4.0 or you need a lot of ports, you will have to spend more, often more than $200. High-end desktop chips like AMD Threadripper require expensive $200-plus motherboards.
Pay for built-in Wi-Fi, high-end ports only if you need them. Don’t spend extra for wireless if you are using a wired connection. You can futureproof your PC by getting USB 3.1 Gen 2 and / or Thunderbolt 3 support, as well as PCIe 4.0.
The Basics: Chipsets, Board Size, Connectors & Ports
If you’re after a refresher on motherboard basics, including the differences between chipsets, motherboard sizes, connector and port features, and RAM slots, you can find them in our Motherboard Basics feature. There we dive deep into the complexities of board design and features, so you’ll know exactly what to look for (or ignore) when shopping for a motherboard.
Motherboards
How much can you spend on a motherboard?
Prices range from below $50 (£40) on the low-end to above $1000 (£772) for premium boards that support HEDT (High-End Desktop) chips like Core X and Threadripper. Here’s roughly what you get at each price range:
Up to $100/£80: You can get overclockable boards for AMD chips (even with the premium, last-generation X370 chipset) in this range. But with Intel, you’re stuck with stock speeds (though that may change with Intel’s upcoming B560 and H570 boards). Depending on sale prices, you can get a host of features, including onboard Wi-Fi, although Wi-Fi-equipped boards usually start above $80/£60.
Sub $150/£140: Boards with Intel’s Z490 and chipset, which you’ll need for overclocking, start at the low end of this range. You also start to see more AMD boards with higher-end chipsets (X570) and premium features such as RGB lights lights and Wi-Fi. Note that, when we wrote this, pricing for the full range of Intel’s latest Z590 motherboards was still very much up in the air.
Sub $200/£180: As you start to climb into the premium tier, you’ll see more RGB lights, beefier heatsinks and better power phases and VRMs (voltage regulation modules)–which are important for competitive overclocking. You’ll also find a better selection of ports at this level, including a greater number of USB 3.0/3.1 Gen 2 connectors. The bulk of Intel’s Z490 boards also start in this range, right around or above $150.
$200/£180+: For mainstream platforms, before Z490 and X570, this was the truly premium price range, where you’d see the best board components, giant (often very stylized) heatsinks, and I/O covers designed to deliver a slick, premium look. Extreme overclocking features, which mainstream builders don’t need, are also often a key feature set.
For more recent chipsets like Z490 and Z590, the truly premium boards start above about $250.
Also in this price tier, you’ll find HEDT motherboards for CPUs with very high core counts (Intel Core X and AMD Threadripper). Threadripper boards in particular start at around $300 (£250).
What CPU are you using with your motherboard?
The CPU you’re planning on pairing with your board will narrow down your options, since the CPU socket on a given motherboard will only work with the chip line it was designed for.
For instance, if you’re buying an Intel 10th or 11th Generation Core processor, you’ll need a board with an LGA 1200 socket. Older 9th Generation processors need boards with an LGA 1151 socket. AMD makes this process a bit less confusing because (for now at least) the company uses the same AM4 socket for all of its mainstream current-gen chips, from Athlons all the way up to 16-core Ryzen 9 parts, although you may run into complications installing newer CPUs on previous-generation motherboards. Intel, on the other hand, has a tendency in recent years to switch sockets (or at least socket compatibility) from one generation to the next, although that’s not the case this generation, with Socket 1200 sticking around for two generations.
For the true high-end, both Intel (LGA 2066) and AMD (TR4) have different sockets to accommodate the larger size and power draw of their Core X and Threadripper processors. For more on processor considerations, see our CPU Buying Guide.
Sockets
Enthusiast/Mainstream
HEDT
Intel
LGA 1200
LGA 2066
AMD
AM4
TR4
What size motherboard do you want?
We’ve covered this in detail in our Motherboard Diagram feature. But most modern motherboards come in three sizes.
ATX is the de facto standard and offers the most space for plugs and slots.
Micro-ATX is 2.4-inches shorter, which means less room for expansion slots.
Mini-ITX can make for a tiny PC, but you’ll usually only have room for one add-in card (like a graphics card), and fewer connectors for storage and RAM.
What ports do you need?
It’s always important to check the I/O area on a motherboard to make sure it has the external connection options you’re after, but also check for USB headers on the motherboard. These will let you add more ports via front-panel connection on your PC case, or via inexpensive expansion slot brackets at the back.
Here’s a list of common ports, and our take on each:
USB 3 / USB 3.1 Gen1: You can never have too many of these, because they work with most peripherals.
USB 2: Slower than USB 3 / 3.1, but more than adequate for keyboards, mice and many other devices.
USB 3.1/3.2 Gen2: Not many peripherals take advantage of this standard yet, but it delivers 10 Gbps of bandwidth, which is double what you get with USB 3.1 Gen 1 / USB 3.0. USB 3.2 Gen2 2×2 doubles that bandwidth again, with two 10 Gbps lanes. You’ll often only find one of these ports on mid- and high-end boards.
USB Type-C: These ports could be either USB 3.1 Gen1 or USB 3.1 Gen2 compatible and are designed for newer devices such as phones. A few are also just USB 2.0, and often get labeled as Audio USB-C ports, aimed at connecting USB-C headsets.
HDMI / DisplayPort Video out: You only need these if you plan to use integrated graphics. Discrete cards have their own ports.
Audio ports: Important if you plan to connect analog speakers or headphones.
PS/2 ports: Give you compatibility with really old keyboards and mice.
Thunderbolt: Very rare to find this built into motherboards, but some boards support it through dedicated add-on cards. Provides the fastest possible connections, up to 40 Gbps.
While you may not need many USB 3.1 Gen 2 or Type-C ports today, they are good ways to future-proof your PC.
How many RAM slots do you need?
Most mainstream boards these days have four RAM slots, although compact Mini-ITX models often have just two, and high-end HEDT boards (like the one pictured below) frequently offer eight. The amount of slots of course limits the amount of RAM you can install.
But for mainstream tasks and games, 16GB is sufficient and 32GB is ample. And even with just two slots, you can install as much as 64GB of RAM. Note, though, that you will often pay a premium for denser 64 and 32GB kit that uses two sticks, rather than a kit that’s spread across four sticks.
What expansion slots do you need?
You’re most likely to come across just two types these days: the short PCIe x1 shot (often used for things like USB and SATA expansion), and the longer PCIe x16 slot (used for graphics cards, RAID cards, and extremely fast PCIe storage like Intel’s Optane 905 SSD). If you’re just planning on installing a single graphics card, a couple of SATA/M.2 drives, and perhaps a video capture or sound card, you should be fine with most ATX or Micro-ATX boards, which offer at least one x16 slot and one or two x1 slots.
But note that recent X570 and B550 as well as upcoming Intel Rocket Lake-S boards (and, confusingly, some previous-generation Z490 boards) also support PCIe 4.0 rather than the 3.0 that’s been standard for the past several years. PCIe 4.0 technically doubles the available bandwidth of every PCIe lane. But outside of PCIe 4.0 SSDs, most devices haven’t taken major advantage of PCIe 4.0 yet. So think of it as some future-proofing on your board.
However, figuring out how many drives and cards you can install is tricky, because no matter how many physical slots you have, there’s a limited number of HSIO (high-speed input/output) lanes and PCIe lanes that all of your components must share. We could spend 3,000 words trying to explain how these lanes work, but the bottom line is that many mainstream motherboards compensate for bandwidth limitations by switching some connections off when you install hardware in specific slots.
For example, adding a PCIe M.2 drive may disable some SATA ports, or installing a card in a third PCIe slot may disable a second (or third) M.2 slot, etc. These issues vary greatly by motherboard model, so you’ll need to consult online manuals before buying–especially if you’re planning on loading up your board with lots of components.
That said, if you are planning on plugging lots of drives and cards into your PC, it’s worth considering one of the high-end HEDT platforms, as they have more PCIe lanes to work with. All of AMD’s Threadripper processors have 64 lanes (60 from the CPU, 4 from the chipset), while Intel’s competing Core X platform provides up to 44 lanes, depending on the CPU, and up to 24 more from the chipset. So if you’re planning on plugging, for instance, multiple graphics cards and a RAID array of PCIe/NVMe storage, or other bandwidth-hungry hardware into your system, these higher-end platforms are definitely the way to go.
Which chipset should you get?
Your CPU choice will dictate your compatible chipset options, and if you opt for the highest-end consumer Intel or AMD chips (Core X or Threadripper), you’ll only have one choice (X299 for Intel or X399 for AMD). But for mainstream users who just want to install a single graphics card and a few drives, you can often get the features you’re after by opting for a chipset below Intel’s Z590 or X570 for AMD.
Previously, if you chose, say, an H470, B460, or H410 board on the Intel side, you’d lose the option to overclock, though only a handful of mainstream Intel chips are unlocked for overclocking anyway (those with product names that end in the letter “K”). But that looks to be changing with upcoming Intel 500-series boards. Stay tuned to our motherboard reviews for more info there as we get to test a new round of mainstream Intel boards.
On the AMD side, the B550/X570 (as well as older B450, B350 and B300) chipsets still support overclocking. Although you will lose some fast USB and SATA ports and PCIe lanes over the X570 chipset, enough of those connectivity options remain to support most mainstream computing tasks. If you need more ports and drives, stepping up to an X570 board is worth the money, especially considering that many higher-priced B550 boars are just as (if not more) expensive than many X570 offerings.
Do you plan to overclock?
As we noted in the chipset section above, if you plan to overlock on the Intel side, for older boards, you’ll need to opt for a Z490 chipset and a CPU with a “K” in its model name (like the Core i7-8700K), or step up to the high-end X299 platform and a Skylake X chip. It looks like lesser Intel 500 series boards will also make overclocking possible, though you’ll still need an unlocked “K” processor. On the AMD side, things are a lot simpler, with nearly all current-generation Ryzen chips supporting overclocking, and all but the lowest-end chipsets (A320 and A300) supporting overclocking as well.
But that doesn’t mean that mainstream users should overclock their processors. As we said in our CPU Buying Guide, in order to make your CPU achieve higher clock speeds than it’s rated for out of the box, you’ll likely spend extra on an enhanced cooling system and a high-end motherboard. By the time you factor in all these extra costs, you may be better off budgeting another $50-$100 (£40-80) for a CPU that comes with higher clock speeds out of the box.
Now, if you already have a top-of-the-line chip and want to push it even further, or you just enjoy the challenge, by all means, spend the extra money and time to squeeze out that extra speed.
What about audio?
Unless you’re a serious audiophile, you happen to get faulty hardware, or you opt for the lowest-end motherboard possible while still expecting exquisite sound, you should get by with on-board audio these days just fine.
Motherboard audio quality is primarily defined by the audio codec (aka the audio processing chip) a given board uses. So, if you’re a stickler for sound quality, you can look up the codec a given board uses before buying and see if it’s a mid-range or high-end model. Alternatively, you can, of course, still opt for a dedicated sound card, or USB speakers that move the DAC (digital-to-analog converter) hardware outside of the PC altogether, like the Audioengine A2+.
Given the sheer number of features that board makers sometimes slap on motherboards–particularly high-end models–it’s impossible to discuss them all. But here are a few to keep an eye on:
On-board on/off switches: These can be handy in the initial build process, or if your system is being housed in an open case for benchmarking/component testing. But for the average user, on-board buttons (which sometimes also include buttons to clear the CMOS or do basic overclocking) aren’t necessary.
LED diagnostic readouts: The tiny speaker that plugs into motherboard headers to provide diagnostic beeps when something goes wrong is going the way of the dodo. In its place, many mid-to-high-end boards now include a two-or-three-digit display for the same purpose, giving you an alpha-numeric code when something goes wrong. This can be a real help when building a PC or upgrading and you either forget to plug something in, something isn’t seated properly, or one of your components turns out to be faulty.
Wi-Fi Card: If you don’t have Ethernet near your computer, you want this. And if you plan on keeping your PC around for years to come, look into a board with Wi-Fi 6.
Dual Ethernet ports: A single Gigabit Ethernet port has plenty of bandwidth for Internet traffic, so this is helpful mainly if you plan to use the computer as a server and the board can aggregate the two connections into one. For those with heavy-duty wired network needs, look for a board with 2.5Gb or 10Gb Ethernet.
For more on what features you don’t need, see our 8 Motherboard Features You Probably Don’t Need.
How important are aesthetics to you?
If the only time you’re going to see your system’s innards is when it’s powered down with the side panel off, there’s no reason to opt for RGB lights or flashy I/O covers and heatsinks. However, if your case has a window, you should get a board that you like looking at–with lights if you like them.
Just keep in mind that, particularly if you’re a novice builder, a dark motherboard can make building or updating your system more difficult, as on-board labels will be harder to see. Also, if you are building a system that you want to look as clean as possible (that is, with few visible wires snaking around the motherboard), look for a board with its fan and USB headers placed around the edges, and SATA and USB 3 header ports that point to the side, rather than sticking up vertically. This will make accomplishing a clean build much easier.
MORE: Best Motherboards
MORE: All Motherboard Content
MORE: How to Sell Your Used PC Components
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With the superb construction, elegant design and perfectly natural sound of the Michi P5 and S5 combo from Rotel, the only question left to ask is ‘how much?’ The pair offer awesomely low noise with huge output and do so in a gorgeous package.
For
Superb sound
Prestige appearance
Great built-in DAC
Against
No AES/EBU input
Cross-talk between each unit’s remote
Incredibly heavy and bulky
Aus Hi-Fi mag review
(Image credit: Future)
This review and test originally appeared in Australian Hi-Fi magazine, one of What Hi-Fi?’s sister titles from Down Under. Click here for more information about Australian Hi-Fi, including links to buy individual digital editions and details on how to subscribe.
Rotel Michi S5 tested at £3299 (AU$5999). Rotel Michi P5 tested at £5399 (AU$10,399).
Can a famous brand be a victim of its own success? Ask any professional marketing person that question and their answer will be a resounding “Yes!” Take, for example, one of the world’s most famous motor vehicle manufacturers, Toyota.
Toyota is not only one of the most famous car companies in the world, it also sells more passenger vehicles than any other car manufacturer. But when it first tried to enter the luxury vehicle market to compete against the likes of Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz and Daimler, with its fabulous – and famous – Century model, it could not gain any traction on the world market.
No-one wanted to buy one, despite its technical superiority and the provision of luxury fittings no other vehicle had, such as reclining rear seats with built-in massage systems, and doors that opened and closed electronically at the touch of a button. Still in production, the Toyota Century is the vehicle that is used to transport both the Japanese Emperor Naruhito and the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzō Abe.
It wasn’t the money that stopped those who could afford it from buying a Toyota Century (the current model will set you back more than AU$250,000), it was the badge on the bonnet. Because anyone could own a Toyota, it seems that the rich didn’t want to be seen in one. Motoring enthusiasts didn’t want to be seen in one either. Imagine if, when asked what type of exotic vehicle they drove, they had to answer “a Toyota”.
So what did Toyota do? It started building luxury vehicles that didn’t have the Toyota badge on them, but another one. That name?
You know it already: Lexus. And they sold like hot cakes (and still do), because, quite frankly, not everyone can own a Lexus.
Which brings us to Rotel.
At the start of the hi-fi era, in the 70s, Rotel was by far and away the best-selling hi-fi component manufacturer in Japan and, indeed, in all probability the best-selling hi-fi brand right around the world, with a well-deserved reputation for delivering top quality at reasonable prices.
However, as more and more manufacturers entered its particular niche in the hi-fi market, Rotel’s market share diminished, so that in the early 90s, the company decided to start building high-powered, high-performance ‘luxury’ models to compete against the likes of Luxman and Accuphase in its home market, and against the likes of McIntosh and Audio Research on the world stage.
The models it built were undeniably fabulous and were certainly completely different visually from all other Rotel products, exemplified by the appearance of the RHC-10 preamplifier and RHB-10 dual mono power amplifier, to name but two. The company also learned from Toyota’s marketing faux pas and branded the models ‘Michi’, which is often translated from the Japanese as meaning ‘Righteous Way’. But instead of leaving it at that, it marketed the brand as ‘Michi by Rotel’. You can guess the rest.
This time around, twenty years into a new century, the Michi brand name is just ‘Michi’, the marketing is for ‘Michi’ and the brand writ large on the front panels is also just ‘Michi’. It’s only if you look around the back that you’ll find small lettering that says ‘By Rotel’. “Michi is taking Rotel’s values of excellent performance and value into the high-end segment with models that offer new levels of engineering, build and design while setting new reference standards for audio performance,” says managing director Peter Kao. “We have used all of our 55 years of design and manufacturing experience to create our best-ever products.”
Best stereo amplifiers: best integrated amps for every budget
Michi S5 preamplifier
The front panel of the Michi S5 Control Preamplifier’s austere exterior, with its black glass plate and two large rotary controls gives absolutely no clue as to the complexity of what’s inside it… at least it doesn’t until you switch it on and its brilliant full-colour OLED panel springs into life.
Then, if you spin the left-most control to see what sources might be on offer, you’ll discover that the P5 has no fewer than six line level inputs, four of which are unbalanced (via RCA inputs) and two of which are balanced (via XLR) plus a single phono input which you can switch between being most suitable for either moving-coil or moving-magnet cartridges.
On the digital side, you get six SPDIF inputs, three optical and three coaxial, as well as USB and Bluetooth. Curiously, there is no AES/EBU input.
The Michi S5’s extensive menu system allows owners sophisticated customisation options for all inputs, so you can switch off the ones you’re not using so they don’t appear when you’re scrolling through inputs, rename any or all of the inputs to more accurately reflect whatever component you have connected to them, plus you can use the Michi’s bass and treble controls to make specific tonal modifications attach to the specific input you’re using.
You can also fix a specific volume level to each input that will override any other volume setting and cannot itself by changed using the front panel volume control or the infra-red remote control’s up/down buttons. Michi says of this feature: “This is useful for input sources that include their own volume setting like common Apps on phones or tablets.”
Look around the rear of the amplifier and you’ll find some additional digital connections, but the network port is only for firmware updates and control over IP, and that USB-A socket is only there to power external devices. It has no digital signal capability. The RS232 connector is there, of course, to facilitate custom installation integration.
Also on the rear panel are six pairs of stereo line outputs, labelled ‘Line Out’, ‘Mono Sub Out’, ‘Pre Out1’ and ‘Pre Out2’, ‘Balanced Out1’ and ‘Balanced Out2’. The ‘left’ and ‘right’ subwoofer outputs are not stereo: as the labelling suggests, each one outputs a summed signal derived from both channels. You also get two digital outputs, one coaxial and the other optical.
The USB input supports 16-bit and 24-bit PCM from 44.1kHz up to 384kHz as well as DSD64 and DSD128, but to do this via a PC, you’ll have to load a Windows Driver, which Michi helpfully supplies on a USB stick. Mac users, of course, don’t need a driver: their computers will just work properly with the Michi. The SPDIF inputs support 16/24 PCM up to 192kHz. Digital decoding is accomplished using an AKM4490EQ 32-bit/768 kHz dual DAC, one of the best of the currently available devices.
Whereas Rotel equipment was once manufactured in Japan, like the great majority of Japanese hi-fi manufacturers (and many other hi-fi manufacturers around the world), it is now manufactured in China, and the same is true for components bearing the Michi name. However, Rotel retains a point of difference from most manufacturers because it owns its own factory in Zhuhai in China, which it established in 2005. Rotel says that although Michi components are manufactured at that same facility, they are made in a separate section of one of the factories.
(Image credit: Rotel)
Best phono preamps: budget to high-end
Michi P5 power amplifier
Me saying earlier on that the front panel of the Michi S5 was austere doesn’t leave me much to say about the Michi P5 stereo power amplifier’s front panel because, as you can see for yourself, it’s even more umm… austere.
There’s just a single button at the bottom centre of its front panel, which is actually a standby power switch, since the main power switch is on the rear panel. Since power amplifiers consume a lot of power even when they’re not being used, and particularly so in the case of the Michi P5, which is rated with a power output of 500-watts per channel into 8Ω, you can choose to have the Michi P5 switch itself off automatically after a no-signal period of 20 minutes, 1, hour, 2 hours, 5 hours or 10 hours. Alternatively, you can disable the automatic power-down circuit completely so it never switches off.
As with the S5, the P5 has a very bright OLED display whose primary feature is its ability to act as a spectrum analyser, showing the spectrum of the music being played in your choice of 8, 12 or 16 bands, or you can choose to have the display act as a VU meter, for which there are four different options (VU/x2/x4/x8). For either setting you can choose between four different brightness levels, or you can choose to switch the display off entirely.
The display also shows the input voltage at the top right of the display and the temperature of the heatsinks at the top left. The voltage shown on the display (240V) didn’t actually reflect the mains voltage in my home at the time, which was 244V, so it might just show the intended operating voltage, rather than the actual voltage being delivered to the amplifier.
Being a power amplifier, all the action is around the rear, and you should be able to see from the photograph that the Michi P5 has two sets of inputs, one balanced (XLR) and the other unbalanced (gold-plated RCA). The rocker switch that selects which of the two will be active is located above them, with a network port and RS232 to its left, and 12V trigger inputs and outputs to its right.
There are two pairs of high-quality speaker terminals that are colour-coded and have collars that make it very easy for the knobs to get a grip on bare wire, plus you can also use banana plugs. In a really welcome move, the knobs are completely removable, so you can use ultra-secure insulated eye terminal terminations on your speaker cables if you like.
As you might have guessed from the size of the Michi P5’s chassis, the rated power output into 4Ω (800-watts) and the relatively limited amount of heatsinking – along with the fact that the heatsinks are covered by a protective layer of aluminium – the output devices are fan-cooled, for which purpose there are two large (90mm diameter) holes in either side of the rear panel.
These holes are the exits for air-cooling ducts at the other end of which are located ultra-quiet, low-speed fans that switch on when the output transistors reach a temperature of 39°C. These fans are so quiet that when they’re operating you’ll only be able to hear them by putting your ear up to the duct exit, and even then you’ll hear only a very soft sound; one that sounds uncannily as if someone is exhaling softly through their fully opened mouth.
As for those output transistors, there’s quite a few of them to be cooled – 32 of them, in fact. The power delivered to them issues from a pair of 2.2kVA transformers made in-house by Rotel itself. This is not surprising, because Rotel has been making its own mains power transformers for many years. What is rather surprising is that the four 47,000µF capacitors linked (two each via regulators) to each of these transformers are made in the UK.
I say “surprising” because Rotel is also famous for making its own capacitors, but its website informed me that it “always sources the best capacitor for each specific application”, which means that in the case of its Michi components, it uses slit-foil and T-Network electrolytic capacitors from the UK; Rubycon electrolytic capacitors from Japan; and LCR polystyrene capacitors from Wales. The integrated circuits come from Analog Devices, Texas Instruments and Burr-Brown, companies that are all domiciled in the USA.
Can I warn you in advance not to attempt to lift – or even manoeuvre – a Michi S5 on your own? Its dimensions (485x238x465mm) would make it an awkward lift at the best of times, but no matter what its dimensions, its dead weight of 60kg would make it impossible… unless you’re an Olympic weightlifter.
Performance
Rather unusually these days, Michi includes interconnects with its components. I say “unusually” because most manufacturers try to cull favour with their retailers by not including interconnects, so those retailers can make additional profit by adding interconnects to the sale.
While I have to admire Michi for doing this, the quality of the interconnects it supplies would have me asking my friendly retailer what other interconnects he might have available. The quality is, however, a moot point, because Michi provides only unbalanced interconnects, and given the choice between using balanced or unbalanced connectors to link a pre-amplifier with a power amplifier, I’d choose balanced connectors every time, so that means I’d have to spring for balanced interconnects anyway.
Each component comes with its own remote control, but the two are identical, so you can keep one for a spare. The remotes are of extremely high quality and very attractive. If only Michi had seen fit to supply high-quality name-brand alkaline (or even lithium) batteries to install in them rather than the ones it does provide. I didn’t chance it, and used my own Eveready batteries instead. Why Eveready? Because the company guarantees that its batteries will not leak, and a remote control can be ruined by a leaking battery as, to my chagrin, I once discovered.
Both units not only have identical remote controls, those controls also use identical infra-red remote codes. This has the advantage that the same remote signal turns both units on and off, and adjusts display brightness, for example. But in this case it also introduces a curious quirk so that when you’re using the remote to tell the P5 to do something, the same remote signal will tell the S5 to do something completely different… which may be, for example, to switch the display from spectrum analysis to VU.
Since any changes implemented on the P5 by this behaviour are completely benign (i.e. they have absolutely no affect on the amplifier’s sound quality or its performance or, in fact, anything that could affect the music playing at the time) I didn’t worry about it and just regarded it as a quirk. However, if you’re particularly bothered by it, you could just obscure the P5’s IR receiver so it couldn’t receive the signal.
Set-up is quite intuitive, so you are unlikely to have reason to have recourse to either of the two Owners’ Manuals, but if you do you’ll be pleased to find that they’re well-written, well-illustrated and highly informative. During set-up please resist the temptation to place the P5 on top of the S5, despite the obvious physical and visual temptations to do so. Both devices will return better performance if they’re placed side by side, or one above the other on separate racks of a proper hi-fi component shelving system.
My review units were obviously relatively new, so I made sure to burn them in continuously for several days using pink noise at relatively high volume to do so, avoiding any sonic annoyances by wiring one of the two speakers out of phase then facing it directly in front of the other loudspeaker so almost everything cancelled out. (If you haven’t ever tried this, it’s not only a great burn-in aid, but also a great party trick!)
After the long wait I was pretty eager by the time the listening sessions were scheduled and I’m here to tell you it was well worth the wait. The sound was absolutely enthralling, totally realistic and completely captivating.
I knew I was in for a treat because there was no need to acclimatise myself to anything or work my way into the listening session. Right from the outset it was all just wide smiles and toes a-tapping and allowing tracks to play right through, rather than switching to other tracks to evaluate different areas of performance.
The result of all this was that I spent rather more time listening to the Michis than I really should have given the time constraints involved in preparing a review for this issue, but there were no complaints from me. If the Michis had been performers, I would would certainly have been on my feet calling for an encore.
This same high level of performance proved true for whatever input I used, because the Michi P5’s digital and phono stages are truly excellent. If you’re a true vinylista you’ll want to use an external phono stage that enables greater precision with cartridge matching than the P5’s ‘one input fits all’ phono stage, but if you play vinyl only irregularly, I think you’ll be more than happy with the sound of the phono stage… I certainly was. I couldn’t fault the digital inputs either, whether I used SPDIF or USB. They’re so good that there would be absolutely no need to invest in an external DAC unless you’re one of those audiophiles that actually likes fiddling with different filter settings and oversampling rates. So full marks to Michi here as well.
What did I find so enthralling about the sound? Everything really. But overall, I’d have to say that what’s most impressive is the totality of the very real and tangible feeling that a musical event is taking place right there in your own room. The sonic presentation is so lively and so true-to-life it will take your breath away.
And if you’re into trying to achieve true-to-life listening levels, then the Michi S5 is amongst those very few amplifiers that will be able to realise this for you effortlessly, without stress, without distortion, without impacting on your mains power bill… and without its chassis becoming so hot you need to ruin the ambience by turning on the air-conditioning.
That said, the Michi S5’s chassis can become warm if you work it very, very hard, so do give it some room to breathe, but that said, I found that it runs far cooler than most amps of its ilk.
‘Massive’ would be the best descriptor for the bass I heard from this Michi combo, but it was at the same time delicate and tuneful. I can think of no better demonstration of these twin virtues than to suggest that you listen to the tympani in the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, the famous Choral Symphony.
Yes, their sound is impactful, impressive and thunderous, but many high-end amplifiers can do this. What most can’t do is reveal that there’s only two being played, or that they’re tuned an octave apart. But using this Michi duo, I could hear this instantly… and that’s a metric I’d call not just revealing, but a revelation.
But if the Michi’s ability to reveal minutiae in the bass regions is impressive, its ability is equally impressive across the midrange… if not more so. And if you want to check the midrange ability of any component, one of the best albums to use is the one that debuted Chick Corea on electric keyboard but also has two of my favourites, Joe Farrell and Flora Plurim. Despite being recorded in 1972 (or perhaps because of it), the recording is stunningly good, whether it’s Plurim’s rich scat singing or the clarity with which Corea’s staggeringly lyrical electric piano playing is revealed, and the Michis revealed everything with crystal clarity.
On this album, you can really hear how an amplifier’s ability to deliver air in the midrange aids one’s ability to hear multiple instruments clearly, no matter how closely they compete for space. Whereas I think that many of the once-revered jazz fusion albums now sound dated, ‘Return to Forever’ sounds as though it could have been recorded yesterday.
The Michis’ high-frequency performance didn’t disappoint either. I’m generally a great fan of Ludovico Einaudi (though perhaps not of his more minimalist stuff) and his album ‘Elements’ from 2015 is one of my favourites for testing the extreme highs, and most particularly the second track, Night. Just listen to that ethereal opening synth as it loops and then the way Einaudi layers all the other sounds over it. The stabbing piano notes are interjected at the perfect moments. It’s a great example of why timing is everything, and why component-chain timing is crucial for an authentic high-fidelity listening experience.
Great stereo separation and magnificent stereo imaging are crucial to tricking the ear and the brain into imagining the reproduced sound is ‘live’, and the Michis demonstrated both to perfection when replaying Canadian chanteuse Holly Cole’s Train Song, from her 1995 Tom Waits tribute album ‘Temptation’. Although it’s also a great tester of bass, I prefer to use the myriad sounds of Cyro Baptista’s tinkly percussion to evaluate high-frequency reproduction, stereo imaging and, for amplifiers, channel separation. And what I heard from the Michis was as good as I’ve ever heard from any pre/power combo. Bravo!
(Image credit: Rotel)
Final verdict
You need to see the Michi P5 and M5 in the flesh to see how superbly they’re built. Words can’t really begin to describe that. But you also need to hear for yourself how music that’s played through them sounds, because words can’t even begin to describe that… though if you started off by saying “totally and completely natural”, you’d be off to a very good start.
This Michi P5/S5 combo gets it right. Really nails it, in fact. If you want good looks, insanely high power output, low noise, superb performance and, most importantly, great sound, you’ve arrived at your destination.
Best DACs: USB, portable and desktop DACs
Laboratory test report
Before going into detail about the results of Newport Test Labs’ test results, it’s extremely important to note that for the purposes of this test, Australian Hi-Fi specified that all tests had to be conducted with both the Michi S5 and Michi P5 in the ‘test loop’. Therefore there are very few results that can be compared with Michi’s own specifications, which are gained by testing the components individually, or indeed against the results from any other audio test laboratory that has not tested the two amplifiers as a ‘combo’.
It means that, in effect, we’re reporting ‘worst case’ results because for results such as distortion, the inherent distortion of the Michi S5 are here added to that of the Michi P5, which obviously does not occur if the components are tested individually.
One of the few outcomes that would not change is power output, of course, and Newport Test Labs measured the power output of the Michi S5 at 612-watts per channel (27.8dBw), both channels driven into 8Ω, when it was delivering a 1kHz test signal. It was also able to deliver this exact same power when delivering a 20Hz test signal.
However, when Newport Test Labs used a 20kHz signal to test power output, the Michi P5’s protection circuitry kicked in when the output voltage reached 45 volts RMS, which is around 253-watts (24.0dBW) into 8Ω, and around 506-watts (27.0dBW) into 4Ω. The fact that the protection circuit kicked in was not a surprise in itself, because 20kHz is a very high frequency to use for testing power output, and the power spectrum of music is such the Michi P5’s rated output power (500-watts into 8Ω) would never be required at this frequency.
But because the protection kicked in a little earlier than we expected, we checked with Michi, which told us: “The S5 has been engineered and tested for continuous power output of 20Hz–20kHz but as you noticed we have protection circuitry to monitor what is considered abnormal operating conditions including short circuit, d.c. voltage on the outputs and over-current. As normal operations would not typically have a signal of this type (frequency/power) we do shut down the unit into protection at high power outputs at high frequency. We found it best practice to monitor and use an abundance of caution with the power output generated by the S5.”
When Newport Test Labs tested the power output of the Michi S5 into 4Ω loads, the same protection circuitry kicked in with 20kHz test signals, but the Michi S5 easily delivered 1052-watts (30.2dBW) per channel with 1kHz test signals, both channels driven into 4Ω and 1,024-watts (30.1dBW) per channel with 20Hz test signals (both channels driven into 4Ω). These independent laboratory test results at 1kHz and 20Hz show power output levels that are well above Michi’s power output specification for both loads.
It should also be noted that if Newport Test Labs had tested dynamic (short-term) power output, the Michi S5 would have delivered its rated power output, because the test signal used for this purpose is so short-term that it would not have triggered the protection circuitry, but the Australian amplifier power measurement standard specifies that the power output of high fidelity audio amplifiers must be measured (and stated) on a continuous, rather than a dynamic basis.
Frequency response is one test that would certainly be impacted by measuring both the P5 and S5 as a combo, yet as you can see from the tabulated results, the Michi combo delivered superlative performance, with Newport Test Labs measuring a response of 5Hz to 480kHz –3dB. The Michi combo’s frequency response across the audio band, which is shown in Graph 7, was measured as 20Hz to 20kHz ±0.18dB, which is self-evidently an excellent result.
The frequency response measured when the Michi S5 was driving a test load that simulates the load that would be presented to it by a typical hi-fi loudspeaker system is shown by the black trace on Graph 7, below.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
You can see that it tracks the response gained with a non-inductive load almost perfectly, which shows that the Michi S5 will sound the same no matter what speakers you connect to it, and will also be able to perfectly control the back-emf from speakers that have large bass drivers. Although the Michi S5’s damping factor was more than will be required by any speaker system, it’s not overly high, with Newport Test Labs reporting it as DF61, on the back of an output impedance (at 1kHz) of 0.13Ω.
Channel separation was outstanding at low and midrange frequencies, as shown in the tabulated results, with the Michi combination returning test results of 105dB at 20Hz and 98dB at 1kHz. The 72dB result at 20kHz is excellent, and more than will ever be required in order to deliver perfect stereo imaging and separation, but a little short of what I might have expected.
However, this could easily have been influenced by where the amplifiers were placed on the test bench relative to each other, as well as by the interconnects connecting the two, so even-better results might be achieved under different conditions. The same could be said for the inter-channel phase results, even though these, too, are really excellent results.
Channel balance was amazingly good. Taken merely on its value of 0.019dB, no-one would ever have guessed this would be the result of testing a pre/power combination; It’s more like you’d get by testing a state-of-the-art stereo power amplifier on its own. This is a superb achievement by the engineers responsible for designing the Michis.
Newport Test Labs measured the A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio of the Michi P5/S5 combination as 76dB referenced to an output of 1-watt, and 103dB referenced to rated output. The 103dB result is excellent, but further suggests that the result at 1-watt, although good, could be further improved by careful component placement and interconnect routing.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 1 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 1-watt into an 8Ω load. You can see there’s a second harmonic component at –95dB (0.00177%) and a fourth harmonic at –110dB (0.00031%) and that’s it: otherwise the noise floor above the fundamental is perfectly clean, and also sitting right down at –115dB (referred to one-watt). This is an excellent result, as both harmonics are harmonically related to the fundamental, which will ensure good sound.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 2 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 1-watt into a 4Ω load. You can see the second harmonic component has increased slightly, to –88dB (0.00398%), and the fourth to –112dB (0.00025%) plus a third harmonic has appeared at –108dB (0.00039%) and a fifth at –113dB (0.00022%). Once again, this is excellent performance.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 3 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 20-watts into an 8Ω load. As you’d have expected given the increase in power output, additional distortion components have been introduced, but the essential structure of the lower-order components is maintained, with the second harmonic component at –93dB (0.00223%), the third at –110dB (0.00031%), the fourth at –112dB (0.00025%) and the fifth at –115dB (0.00017%).
The difference in the visual appearance of the graph is due to the noise floor of the amplifier having dropped down to around –130dB, which speaks for itself.
You can see that the noise that contributed to the overall result mentioned previously and tabulated in the results is low-frequency in nature, as evidenced by the spikes at the extreme left of the graph.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Graph 4 shows the total harmonic distortion measured by Newport Test Labs when the Michi combo was delivering 20-watts into a 4Ω load.
Essentially the distortion components are the same as when driving an 8Ω load, but interestingly, there’s a slight increase in the noise floor. This, together with the one-watt results, would seem to suggest you should prefer 6Ω or 8Ω designs when choosing loudspeakers to partner with the Michis.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
CCIF-IMD distortion (19kHz and 20kHz test signals at equal levels) into an 8Ω load is shown in Graph 5. As you can see, there’s nothing to be seen at all. Sensational performance! Not only are there not any of the side-bands around the high-frequency test signals I normally expect to see, there’s also no sign at all of a regenerated difference signal down at 1kHz.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
When Newport Test Labs used the same CCIF-IMD test signal, but increased the power output to 20-watts (Graph 6, above), both the side bands and the regenerated signal were introduced into the output, but at very low levels: around –90dB (0.00316%) for the two primary side bands at 18kHz and 21kHz, and at around –105dB (0.00056%) for the regenerated signal. Once again, these are all outstandingly good results.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The tone control action of the Michi P5 is shown in Graph 8. You can see the bass control delivers around 11dB of boost that is nicely shelved at 20Hz, then rolls off below this, which is excellent design. It delivers rather more cut: around 17dB. This same graph also shows the action of the treble control, and you can see it offers 9dB of boost that shelves nicely at 20kHz. Again, this is excellent design.
As with the bass control, the treble control offers rather less high-frequency attenuation, but still a more-than-adequate 13dB at 20kHz. If you attenuate both bass and treble you will also reduce the overall volume slightly across the midrange, but this is of no import, as it could be easily corrected by increasing the volume slightly.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The Michi combo’s distortion at the S5’s rated power output (500-watts per channel into 8Ω) is shown in Graph 9. Once again, Michi’s engineers have excelled themselves, with distortion completely under control, such that the second-order component is at 93dB (0.00223%), all the even-order components are more than 100dB (0.001% down, and all the odd-order components are more than 120dB down (0.0001%).
All these distortion components are too low in level to be audible, but even if they were, even-order distortion is pleasing to the ear, so it wouldn’t be an issue. Note on this graph that the noise floor right across the audio spectrum is now down at –140dB, and even the low-frequency noise at the left of the graph, which is higher in level, is still more than 110dB down. Once again, excellent performance.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Square wave testing using a 100Hz square wave revealed what the frequency response already showed, with the tilt on the waveform indicating the Michi combo’s frequency response rolls off at low frequencies and does not extend to d.c. The slight curvature in the tilt also shows a tiny amount of group delay.
The overshoot on the leading edge shows that there is a rise in the Michi’s frequency response at an ultrasonic frequency. Further investigation into this by Newport Test Labs revealed that the rise was 3dB, and that the frequency of the peak was at 302kHz. This is interesting, and obviously measurable, but will have zero affect on the amplifier’s sound quality.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The 1kHz square wave shows the same h.f. overshoot, and some slight tilt on the horizontals, so it’s not a perfect result, but it’s so close to perfect as really doesn’t matter.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
The 10kHz square wave’s horizontals are on the other hand, perfectly flat, and the rise-time is super-quick, so if it were not for the overshoot caused by the high-frequency rise to 302kHz, it would be a perfect result.
(Image credit: Australian Hi-Fi Magazine)
Newport Test Labs determines amplifier stability by placing a 2µF capacitor in parallel with an 8Ω load and driving the amplifier into this load using a 1kHz square wave as the test signal. As you can see from the oscillogram, the Michi was beautifully behaved, with just a quarter wave height overshoot that was completely damped within three cycles, so I can say that the S5 will be completely stable into even the most highly reactive loudspeakers.
When both units are in standby mode, they will still draw 2.41-watts from your mains power supply, which is rather higher than the Australian Government’s mandate for standby power consumption, but low enough that it would have almost zero effect on your utility bill.
When you’re using this Michi combo to listen to very loud music, the two will pull somewhere around 200-watts from your power supply, which is surprisingly modest considering the S5’s power rating. Combined power factor was measured at +0.627.
Overall, Newport Test Labs measured outstandingly good performance from this high-powered, low-distortion pre/power combination.
Discord is now helping the r/WallStreetBets team moderate its new server. The company originally banned the group yesterday due to “hateful and discriminatory content” and revealed it had sent repeated warnings to the team managing the community.
Those warnings, for whatever reason, were ignored, but now the r/WallStreetBets team and Discord are working together. Discord staff are actively working with the server’s team to help with moderation. At least one Discord staffer, who is now in the new WallStreetBets server, is also helping with infrastructure problems related to the rapid growth the community is experiencing.
“WallStreetBets members have set up a new server and we are working with them,” says a Discord spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “We will welcome the group back so long as they improve their moderation practices and follow our Community Guidelines. We have reached out to the moderators to provide them with support and advice, like we do for many of our large communities.”
Discord was left in an awkward position yesterday, after the largely unmoderated server suddenly grew in size and got out of control. It could either let hate speech continue in a community it wouldn’t normally ban or act to shut it down after repeated warnings. The ban appears to have worked to get the r/WallStreetBets moderators to respond.
Hours after the ban, the moderators of the subreddit criticized Discord publicly. “We blocked all bad words with a bot, which should be enough, but apparently if someone can say a bad word with weird unicode icelandic characters and someone can screenshot it you don’t get to hang out with your friends anymore,” said the r/WallStreetBets subreddit moderators.
The new WallStreetBets Discord server currently has 296,000 members, and it continues to grow every second. It has played a central role in the subreddit’s ongoing mission to drive up the price of GameStop and AMC stock. We’ve been following the Discord server growth over the past few days, and while it was full of profanity and racial slurs yesterday, whatever work Discord is doing behind the scenes appears to be working to reduce that content today.
There are now fewer people screaming in calls, using racial slurs, or blasting music to the hundreds listening in. The memes are now mainly emoji and text, rather than images that often included offensive material.
We’ve asked Discord exactly what is being done to improve moderation for text-, image-, and audio-based communications and how the company was able to resolve its differences with the WallStreetBets. The company wasn’t able to provide details at the time of publication.
Tesla’s all-new Model S not only offers a higher peak power, longer range, and faster acceleration, but in a tweet from Patrick Schur spotted by PC Gamer it is rumored that the Model S also features an infotainment system with a combined compute horsepower of around 10 FP32 TFLOPS, which is powerful enough to play Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3. But can it mine cryptocurrency like this BMW i8 with six RTX 3080 in the trunk?
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The new car uses an all-new infotainment system that uses a computer featuring 10 presumably FP32 TFLOPS of compute power, which is comparable to that of Sony’s PlayStation 5. That horsepower is presumably shared between all three displays, so one user cannot have access to all that performance. The infotainment system is still good enough to play such games as Cyberpunk 2077 as well as The Witcher 3. To make the gaming experience better, the new Tesla S features a 22-speaker, 960-Watt audio system with active noise cancelling.
What is unclear is which hardware Tesla uses for the new Model S. Historically, Tesla used SoCs designed by Nvidia, but we have no idea what SoCs power 2020 Model S’s infotainment system.
The new Model S Long Range starts at $79,990, whereas the new Model S Plaid starts at $119,900. The car maker will start delivering its latest vehicles this March.
Philips has produced a brilliant OLED television, but the partnering soundbar isn’t quite at the same level
For
Tidy and appealing build
Punchy HDR and SDR pictures
Fabulous 4K detail
Against
UI a little dated
Mediocre motion processing
Sonically short on dynamics
Combining a television with an integrated soundbar can be a double-edged sword. It’s the height of TV sound convenience, but unless the soundbar is top quality, then you’re stuck with it. Enter the Philips 65OLED935 – a sleek, powerful television that aims to get around this inherent pitfall by having hi-fi specialist Bowers & Wilkins design and build the speaker system.
This isn’t Philips’s first combined television and soundbar. The company’s 2019 flagship OLED, the OLED934, was a similar creature, but with a far bigger Bowers bar built into a large floor stand. It proved to be a match made in AV heaven, so why break up the partnership?
This time, looks and price tag are considerably more modest, but its fresh take on the 3.1.2ch Dolby Atmos soundbar design makes this a tempting solution for those who like to keep things simple to use and easy on the eye.
But to describe the Philips 65OLED935 in those terms alone is doing it a disservice. Underneath that sculpted steel exterior, there is a TV with impressive specs that could even outperform its soundbar-less sibling, the five-star-rated Philips 65OLED805.
Now with a dual AI engine inside its top-of-the-line P5 processor, Philips is confident enough to describe the performance of the 935 as “OLED+”.
Build
(Image credit: Future)
Philips 65OLED935 tech specs
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
The Philips 65OLED935 is a classy looking set. It comes with a choice of two different chrome brackets in the box, one for wall-mounting and the other to use as a stand. The cable tidying system means that the join between the soundbar and the TV itself is seamless, leaving only your HDMI cables and power lines to tuck neatly away behind.
The stand and bracket are pretty heavy and highly polished, so take care they don’t slip out of your grasp when you’re putting this together. Fortunately, the wafer-thin OLED panel is nice and light. The stand needs a surface that’s at least 88cm wide and 26cm deep to accommodate it and if you choose to use the bracket, it stands 15cm proud of the wall.
There’s little to no bezel, just an even 2mm metal bead around the edge of the glass. On the back of the panel, you’ll find four HDMI sockets. Next-gen HDMI features are thin on the ground, though: there’s no support for 4K@120Hz (also known as HFR), VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) or eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel), although standard ARC and ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) do feature.
As well as the HDMIs there’s an optical audio-out, ports for connecting headphones and an external subwoofer, plus two USB slots. It’s Bluetooth-enabled for audio, too.
The soundbar houses ten separate drive units. There are two 5cm midrange cones plus a 19mm titanium-dome tweeter for the centre channel, one of the same cones and tweeters each for the left and right, and then a single racetrack-style 10cm x 6.5cm subwoofer unit on the top surface, ported to the rear. Also along that top edge are the two 5cm height speakers facing upwards for that Dolby Atmos effect.
The tweeters are decoupled from the main enclosure, with the centre one in a metal case of its own in B&W’s tweeter-on-top style. There’s a micromesh to protect those drivers on the upper surface and Philips’s acoustically transparent wool blend cloth, Kvadrat, across the front of the array.
Made from glass fibre-reinforced polycarbonate ABS, the enclosure is braced with internal rib sections to control resonance. It’s mounted to the TV with a stiff metal plate. If that sounds like an appealing level of attention to detail, you’ll also be pleased with the remote control, which is backed in Muirhead leather and feels very much the part for a premium OLED TV.
Features
(Image credit: Future)
Functionally, the remote is the same as we’ve had from Philips over the last few years. Much like the Android 9.0 operating system itself, all the right options are there but they’re not presented in a particularly wonderful, intuitive or user-friendly fashion.
Other manufacturers such as Samsung and LG are slicker and more progressive on this front and while it’s just about acceptable here, we’d expect to see the company up its game on this front before it falls too far behind the promised UI advances from Google TV and LG’s webOS 6.0.
The benefit of the Android OS is its app offering. All the UK catch-up services are present, along with Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. During testing, we experienced a little bit of crackling through the speakers when using the Netflix app, but restarting the app sorted that out.
There’s no Apple TV or Apple Music on Android TV. For that, you’ll need to add an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Apple TV or other media streamer. Instead, your pay-as-you-go film and TV options are Rakuten and Google Play Movies & TV, neither of which is up there with the Apple TV app. You’re better covered for sport, though, with BT Sport and Now TV both on board.
In terms of picture technology, the OLED935 gets one or two bumps over the soundbar-less OLED805 thanks to the improved Philips P5 processor with its AI dual picture engine. The big one is AI Machine Learn Sharpness, a local level picture sharpening tool that enhances the textures and patterns of specific parts of the image, rather than applying a blanket tightening up across the whole display.
Another is AI Smart Bit Enhanced 2.0, which should remove colour banding without sacrificing detail. Last, but not least, is a boost for the Philips Perfect Natural Reality processing which aims to boost standard-def material so it looks more like Full HD.
The other picture tech of note is an anti-burn-in logo detection feature, which recognises permanent screen logos, such as those of TV networks, and dampens their effect. In testing, this works very well – we try out a Dolby Atmos test disc and the bright white intensity of the Dolby logo in the corner of the screen is dropped to a level that won’t tire the pixels so rapidly.
On the sound front, the big news is the 3.1.2 speaker arrangement, the Dolby Atmos support and upmixing, and the involvement of hi-fi specialist Bowers & Wilkins. The TV is also compatible with the DTS Play-Fi hi-res streaming standard, meaning you can set-up your soundbar to work as part of a multi-room system along with any other Play-Fi-enabled kit you might own.
No review of a top-end Philips TV is complete without a tip of the hat to Ambilight. The company’s delightful LED lightshow tech comes in its four-sided variety for the OLED935. You can set it to change colour according to the on-screen image, to music or even to mimic a national flag for sporting events. It’s a great feature and long may it last.
Picture
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
The Philips 65OLED935 supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ alongside HDR10 and HLG. We see what it makes of the first of these by slotting Spider-Man: Homecoming into our 4K Blu-ray player and the results are impressive.
Using the Dolby Vision Bright setting, the upgrades to the picture quality over the Philips OLED805 are small but clear. The scene where Peter gets stuck in the Deep Storage Vault has plenty of monochrome textures, bright colours and a large depth of field, but right from the off, the Philips AI processing works alongside the Dolby metadata to make a brilliantly punchy and vivid HDR picture.
The spidey suit really pops against a nicely detailed and defined set of greys in the background. The AI Machine Learn sharpening tech enhances the textural differences between the rough raw concrete slabs of the hangar entrance, without doing the same to the soft marbling of the polished floor. There’s a strong sense of colour precision to the hero’s mustard yellow backpack and the different red and blue shades of his outfit.
All the same, we prefer Philips’ take on the film with the TV’s HDR AI preset, which is an excellent quick-fix solution for getting the most out of Dolby Vision films. This setting keeps things simple but leaves the user with the five main Philips processing modes to experiment with. Keep the Perfect Motion and Perfect Contrast settings at a minimum and you won’t go far wrong.
The HDR Personal mode squeezes every last drop of the excellent picture performance from this TV. Once balanced for brightness, the OLED Contrast slider offers the best customisation. The higher you go, the more zing you’ll add to the colours, however, you lose a little of the sense of depth to the picture.
Heading to the film’s climax, there are some healthy levels of dark detail on show alongside some lusciously deep OLED blacks. We can still make out the folds and the feel of the material of the Vulture’s leather jacket and sheepskin collar. Those details are just shy of the best LED-backed TVs, but the trade-off for those blacks is worth it here.
(Image credit: Future / Modern Love, Amazon Prime)
Philips has upped its motion processing game for its most recent TVs by adding a couple of extra modes. All the same, the actual quality of the underlying tech is similar to what we’ve found in previous years – perfectly decent, but not in the same league as the likes of Sony and Panasonic.
We prefer the light touches of either Pure Cinema or Movie mode, although many will prefer to turn the processing off altogether. Watching Peter rush to the rescue of his friends in the Washington Monument, we’re happy to put up with some judder in the faster panning shots in order to avoid the soap-opera aesthetic.
That decision is harder when watching SDR, where judder can be more significant. Viewing the opening scenes of Jack Reacher in Full HD on Blu-ray, there’s a case for setting the motion to Standard to avoid the over-processed look, although there are plenty of artefacts every time the car disappears and emerges again under overhead freeway signs.
Philips recommends its Vivid preset as a good starting point for SDR material, but you’ll need to step back quite far on most settings to get the right blend. Colour, Brightness and Sharpness should be below their halfway marks and the Perfect Natural Reality (fake HDR) and Perfect Contrast filters are best switched off.
Once stripped back, you’ll achieve a watchable picture. The overhead shot of the riverside crime scene is excellently handled. There’s a good feel to the paving stones, a believable colour palette to the nearby flowerbeds and plenty of dark detail as the uniformed SWAT team arrives on the scene. For SDR, it has a remarkably punchy look.
Watching standard-def material is obviously less of a treat, and you’ll struggle to pick up Philips’ good work on colour blending and image sharpening. No TV can work miracles, of course, but watching BBC News, the colour of the clothing appears faithful and the newsreader’s skin tone retains a natural feel.
Sound
(Image credit: Future)
Our expectations of TV sound are usually tempered, but here things are different. While there are small picture quality advantages of the OLED935 over the OLED805, the integrated soundbar makes up most of the difference in price.
There are plenty of sound presets to choose from, including Personal mode, which allows access to an EQ. ‘Movie’ gets our vote for the majority of our viewing. It’s not quite as clear as the AI or Original modes, but this is a speaker array with plenty of precision and we’re happy to sacrifice a little of that for the extra spatial boost.
We watch the bombing raid sequence of Unbroken in Dolby Atmos and the B&W soundbar projects an excellent soundstage, adding plenty of height and breadth to the sound. Even with our eyes closed, it’s easy to picture the planes flying across the screen and the bullets zipping by.
The agility of the drivers makes for a good separation of the effects, unveiling all the details in the clicks and clinks of the military equipment, and the creaks of the pilots’ leather jackets. But clarity isn’t quite everything when it comes to great TV sound and this set-up is missing one of the other crucial ingredients – excitement.
Dynamically, there just isn’t enough going on, with differences in scale between the various sounds too small to deliver much in the way of drama. Everything’s rather flat and lacking in impact. We hear the bombers fly over our heads, but without that level of involvement, we’ve no urge to duck whatsoever. The bullets offer little threat from our perspective, even as the cockpit becomes riddled with bullet holes.
Similarly, voices lack expression, which sells short the tension of the sequence. The young servicemen seem all too relaxed on their mission deep into the heart of enemy territory, rocked by the lifeless pops of flack exploding just inches from their heads.
The audio from the OLED935 is clearly superior to the OLED805. You won’t struggle to hear dialogue or appreciate music with more rhythm, but the results are far less enthralling than those of even a relatively affordable soundbar, such as the Sonos Beam. Compared with a more expensive Dolby Atmos-supporting soundbar, such as the Sonos Arc, the contrast is even less flattering.
Verdict
Philips has done a superb job to make improvements on what was already a first-class picture performance with this OLED+ TV. Watch 4K material on this set, whether Dolby Vision or otherwise, and it looks stunning. The picture is sharp and colourful with deep blacks and a great level of tonal detail – however, you can get almost all of that joy with the far more affordable OLED805.
Integrating a soundbar into the design of a TV brings the expectation of audio excellence and the OLED935 doesn’t quite deliver that. While there are plenty of plus points for the spatial smarts and the coherence and clarity of the sound, there just isn’t enough impact or drama.
Ultimately, while the price gap between the two TVs remains this wide, there’s a strong case for recommending opting for the OLED805 and investing in a dedicated soundbar, such as the Sonos Arc or even the much cheaper Beam. The 935 is clearly a more elegant solution and a step up in picture quality but, currently, that comes at too high a premium.
Malaysian manufacturer Cytron are working on their first Raspberry Pi Pico accessory and so far it looks like it could be a winner. The Maker Pi Pico is a carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Pico which breaks out all of the GPIO pins, along with a few extra features, all for $10.
(Image credit: Cytron)
The Maker Pi Pico carrier board breaks out the GPIO of the Raspberry Pi Pico via the castellated edges of the Pico. In a nice touch, Cytron have included LEDs for most of the GPIO pins, this may seem trivial but they are invaluable for learners who want to make LEDs flash, and for skilled makers to debug circuits. A single RGB LED is present on the top right of the board, and around the perimeter there are six Grove connectors for compatible Grove components. Three pre-wired push buttons, connected to the GPIO provide a means of input, audio output is via a piezo buzzer (with off switch) and a TRS headphone jack.
Most interestingly there are two extra features, a micro SD card slot and an ESP-01 header. For those who don’t already know, the ESP-01 was the original breakout board for the now ubiquitous ESP8266. The inclusion of an ESP-01 header means that we can add our own WiFi to the Pico!
Coming a lovely shade of purple, and with detailed pin references for every pin on the top, and a full pinout on the rear of the board, the Maker Pi Pico is currently on sale for a limited time at $5, but after this ends $10 is not too much to pay for this handy board.
Focal has enjoyed indisputable success with its wired headphones in recent years, most notably with its Elegia and Stellia closed-back models. And it’s looking to carry on that momentum with a new closed-back offering. The Focal Celestee sit between those two existing models in price, on sale from this month for £999 ($990), and have been inspired by their engineering and design.
While the Celestee will be instantly recognisable as Focal headphones to those familiar with the French brand’s previous fare, owing mostly to the ornate ear cup design and thick microfibre leather headband, they introduce a new navy blue and copper aesthetic. Like their siblings, they also come with matching cables and thermoformed woven carrying case.
(Image credit: Focal )
Focal’s engineers have drawn from their experience in making the Elegia and introduced an acoustic treatment inside the Celestee ear cups. They also use the 40mm Aluminium/Magnesium ‘M’-shaped dome full-range drivers also found inside their closed-back cousins. Impedance is a lowly 35 ohms, which should make them suitable partners for phones and portable audio players.
While speakers are very much the Saint-Étienne-based brand’s heritage and vocation, headphones seem to be becoming a bigger part of its focus. Only recently our colleagues Down Under at our sister title, Australian Hi-Fi magazine, were impressed by the Focal Arche DAC and headphone amp. Will the Celestee be yet another Focal pair to find itself on our best audiophile headphones list? We hope to find out very soon.
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