What Hi-Fi? June 2022

The variety and choice we all have – now well into the third decade of an utterly bewildering century – when it comes to methods of accessing our music is quite simply remarkable. The old formats of vinyl and compact disc are still very much part of the musical makeup of many consumers’ systems – as evidenced by our turntable special last month, and a forthcoming look at our favourite CD players (see our next issue, out on 25th May). Rather than throw the baby out with the bath water, then, it could well be best to add a streamer to the equipment you are already enjoying. There’s no need at all to restrict your options as far as music is concerned. In this issue, we look at hi-fi streamers (p32) that…

EXPERIENCE. HERITAGE. We’ve been helping the world discover the best in hi-fi and home entertainment for more than 40 years, and have more than 100 years of reviewing experience under our collective belts – so you can count on our expert opinion. DEDICATED TEST FACILITIES We test every product against its peers in our extensive, bespoke reviewing facilities in London, Reading and Bath. We conduct all our tests as a team – our opinions and conclusions are always the result of collaboration. HOW WE SCORE All review verdicts are agreed upon by the team as a whole – not an individual reviewer. Each product will be listened to and/or viewed by several members of the test team, who will then discuss the final verdict before it appears in the magazine or on the website. This…

View offers £3300 | whf.cm/LGOLED65G2 While not a change that all buyers appreciated, LG decided in 2021 that its premium G-series OLED TVs needed more than just a fancier design to make them a compelling step-up alternative to the brand’s all-conquering C series. So 2021’s G1 benefited from a new, higher brightness ‘Evo’ panel that the C1 did not get, justifying its higher price. LG has continued this approach for 2022: while the new C2 does now have an Evo panel, the G2 boasts a new heat-sink element that allows it to be driven even harder – i.e. brighter – than its predecessor. In short, if you want LG’s best 4K OLED TV in 2022, this should be it. The 65in G2 (OLED65G2) is priced at £3300, £300 more than the G1 at launch.…

View offers Standmount speakers | £899 | whf.cm/Concept30 At this point, Q Acoustics’ Concept speakers aren’t so much an abstract idea as a fully established and successful reality – a product line that has existed for close to a decade and barely put a foot wrong. The British brand’s first Concept model, the Concept 20 standmounters, arrived in 2013 as more ambitious designs than the entry-level efforts that had set the company in motion some years before. It would be far from the only Concept model to walk away from our test rooms with a five-star review (and a What Hi-Fi? Award, come to that). In fact, the only slight hiccup in the Concept lineage in our minds has been the more recent high-end Concept 300, which we considered a technological triumph but,…

View offers Cartridge | £845 | whf.cm/SabreMM Audio fanatics like to take sides. You have digital vs analogue, valves vs transistors, moving-magnet vs moving-coil cartridges. You see, Vertere Acoustics’ new Sabre sits very much in the premium end of the moving-magnet market, at a price point where MC cartridges traditionally dominate. While conventional wisdom suggests that moving-coil designs are the way to go at higher price levels, the Sabre is talented enough to cast a pretty large shadow of doubt over this view. Easy to fit This is a carefully considered design, as we have come to expect from Vertere. That bold orange body is machined out of a solid block of aluminium for rigidity, and it clamps onto the generator structure with four bolts, rather than being glued, on performance and alignment grounds.…

View offers Smartphone | £1149 | whf.cm/S22Ultra Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S22 Ultra smartphone boasts so much headline-grabbing specification, it’s tough to know which feature to lead with. For example, it is categorically the most powerful Ultra to date, thanks to the arrival of a 4nm processor, aka the fastest CPU on a Galaxy device yet. But, to Samsung’s avid fan base, the fact that it is the first S-series device to feature a built-in S Pen will probably garner more attention, since it effectively merges Samsung’s S line with the now-defunct Note series. Then there’s the “completely different” four-lens camera system that Samsung says delivers the best low-light photography and smoothest video of any phone yet. And that’s before we mention its Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+, on the front and back of the device,…