Happy Monday, and welcome to the latest entry into our Rewind hi-fi and home cinema news digest.
For those of us short on time, our team of experts has created a handy summary of all the important hi-fi and home cinema news to break over the past seven days.
It was another hectic time for the What Hi-Fi? team with a new pair of hi-fi speakers impressing our reviewers enough to earn a five-star rating, as well as a surprising bit of good news for home cinema fans from Sony.
Here’s what you need to know.
Fyne’s new standmounts expertly blend of insight and expression
The Fyne Audio F701SP is an interesting pair of stereo speakers. The idea behind them is to take the five-star F701 standmount speaker’s cabinet as a base and then give the company’s engineers free rein on everything else.
The result? Based on our experience, after putting them through their paces in our listening rooms over the past week, a fantastic set of speakers that will delight hi-fi fans.
The tweaks Fyne has made to the speakers’ Isoflare hardware, which places a 25mm horn-loaded magnesium dome compression tweeter at the centre of a 20cm multi-fibre paper mid/bass cone, along with other adjustments elsewhere lets them deliver excellent audio when matched well.
Paired with appropriately refined, price-compatible hardware, the speakers deliver a fast, agile and articulate performance with stellar detail and expressive dynamics. Hence our five-star rating and conclusion:
“The F701SP speakers deliver a blend of insight and expression that’s hard to beat for the money.”
Read our full Fyne Audio F701SP review
Surprise! Sony projectors are back on sale
Earlier this year Sony was forced to take a number of its five-star projectors off sale – much to the dismay of our editor (me).
Though the reason was never made explicit, it was believed to be due to sanctions hitting part of the supply chain that made sourcing components nigh impossible.
But this week we had some good news, with the brand confirming all the impacted models will go back on sale.
These include the Award-winning VPL-XW5000ES, Bravia Projector 8 and Bravia Projector 9.
Read the full story: Sony officially resumes projector sales in Europe, and it's even bringing a new model to the market
The next Apple TV is shaping up to be a very different beast
Apple’s WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) is fast approaching and we have seen a steady stream of rumours suggesting it will feature more than a few big changes to its current home cinema and audio platforms.
The strongest to break came from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The serial Apple leaker reported that sources familiar with the matter have confirmed the Apple TV platform will be getting its biggest user-interface overhaul ever.
Read the full story: Apple TV 4K owners should prepare for a major software upgrade, according to this report
We did a technical deep dive on OLED’s latest rival
We got our first glimpse of RGB Mini LED at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2025) in January.
Since then, a number of big name brands, including Sony, Hisense, Samsung and TCL, have confirmed plans to use the technology in their TVs. All those brands have since shown off demonstration / prototype units with the hardware in place over the past five months.
This is a big deal: all the companies are pitching the new technology as “the next big thing” in home cinema, and a rival to OLED as the panel of choice for peak performance.
With our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, and senior staff writer, Lewis Empson, both having seen the tech at separate preview events, and walking away impressed, we are already taking these boasts very seriously.
Which is why we took a technical deep dive, to explain how RGB Mini LED works, last week.
Read the full story: RGB Mini LED: all you need to know about the TV panel tech that could defeat OLED
MORE:
These are the best bookshelf speakers we have tested
Our picks of the best OLED TVs
We rate the the best projectors we have reviewed
