SONY HT-G700

AMAZON FIRE HD 8

From £90, amazon.co.uk

There’s always been something comforting about Amazon’s Fire HD line. Decent tablets, cheap enough that they’re almost throwaway devices. Capable media players you won’t mind getting covered in sticky fingerprints. And the tablets, tied to Amazon’s own store and its own spin on Android, are obviously working: the 10-inch line had a recent update, and now it’s the turn of its 8-inch cousin. There are no great physical changes here from the 2018 Fire HD 8 model, though it gets a moderate power lift, a battery boost, and some quality of life improvements that £450, sony.co.uk

Any new entry in Sony’s soundbar canon is cause for celebration, because the company has serious virtual surround chops. Looking at the physical 3.1 makeup here isn’t the right way to approach it; the HTG700 is (at least virtually) one of the most compact and clever 7.1.2 solutions out there. You can put its wireless sub anywhere that makes sense. You can tweak it with a single button press to suit movies, music, speech or nighttime playback, the latter of which tweaks the levels to keep everything important audible without shaking the walls too much. make it the budget slate to have. USB- C charging replaces the old microUSB connector, with wireless charging (and a chunk of additional RAM) included on the £20-extra Plus version, and a tough-as-nails case cushioning the Kids edition.

T3 SAYS: A welcome upgrade, dated looks or not.

TECH-O-METER

COOLNESS INNOVATION FEATURES

And yes, you can hit a single button to upscale anything, DTS:X/Atmos or not, to full-on virtual surround. Using Sony’s S- Force Pro tech, it’ll even shift its sound field upwards so stereo sounds like it’s coming directly from the centre of your screen.

T3 SAYS: A real roomful in a tiny package. What’s not to like?

TECH-O-METER

COOLNESS INNOVATION FEATURES