Listening Devices Speakers, Soundbars And Headphones

From all-in-one soundbars capable of re-creating a surround-sound system to smart speakers that can control your home’s heating, audio hardware has been growing up. Make sure you keep pace with our complete guide.

EQUIPPING YOUR HOME with a full assortment of quality sound kit is an even more daunting proposition than it initially seems. Upgrading your TV’s output with a dedicated soundbar is an obvious start, but then there’s your desktop PC, whether you want to have separate speakers for Bluetooth playback from a phone, whether you want to play music out in the garden… and that’s before getting to your own set of headphones.

There’s also the rise of smart speakers to contend with. Pioneered by Amazon’s Echo range, this young breed of audio product has exploded in the past year, with the likes of Google, Apple, Sonos and UE all bringing out their own takes. Besides sounding different, as you’d expect, each speaker can vary in just how ‘smart’ it is, further complicating the process of choosing one.

To help demystify things and to help you fill your home (or your head) with great-sounding tunes, we’ve rounded up a select list of products in five key varieties: soundbars, desktop speakers, Bluetooth speakers, smart speakers and headphones. Before we look at each one in detail, let’s consider what qualities you should be asking of each product type.

PIECE OF THEATRE

All TVs come with built-in speakers, but very few are up to the task of producing the sound output a film or TV series needs to be enjoyed at its best. That’s where soundbars come in: they can sit in front of, below or mounted together with your telly as, essentially, a replacement for the integrated speakers.