Q ACOUSTICS Q ACTIVE 200

£ 1,499, qacoustics.co.uk

Uniquely designed – to the point we struggled at first to work out which side of the speaker was the front – the Q Active range marks the company’s first dip in the active speaker world. And these are some significant speakers. Each is equipped with three discrete amplifiers pushing 140W to an offset pair of Balanced Mode Radiator drivers, which apparently create a wall of sound with a wide sweet spot, and a rear-firing waveguided subwoofer rounding out the meat of the sound. The smarts are solid, too. Whatever the source you’ll be able to play it, from turntables to network services, with the main control hardware and physical connections pulled out into a central unit. There’s also Google Assistant support, with an Alexa version set to join it soon.

T3 SAYS:

Looks good, will surely sound good.

TECH-O-METER GOOGLE PIXEL 5

£599, store.google.com

The Pixel range tends to set the tone for the next generation of Android phones. As midrange becomes the new normal, so the specs (and price) of the Pixel 5 have fallen right in line. This is, for a Pixel, a phone of quite restrained power, one with 8GB RAM, 128GB storage, and the 5G-compatible Snapdragon 765G chipset, a decent processor that’s a half-step behind the top end today. Google has employed a cheaty workaround to give it both-ways wireless charging despite the Pixel 5’s recycled aluminium shell, and there’s a very solid camera package with an ultra-wide lens replacing the previous telephoto. There’s even an in-screen top speaker, which enables the Pixel 5 to do away with the top bezel – but that does mean a fingerprint scanner in place of the Pixel 4’s 3D Face Unlock tech.

T3 SAYS:

There are so many cool features here.

TECH-O-METER