Cambridge Audio TV5 v2

IMPRESSIVE SOUNDBASE

Modern televisions look gorgeous, but as designs get thinner the space for speakers shrinks and sound quality suffers. If you’ve ever tried to listen to a live concert, or stream a digital radio station through the TV, you’ll know just how flat playback can be.

The Cambridge Audio TV5 v2 soundbase (above) sits neatly beneath your TV set and, using either an optical or hi-resolution HDMI cable, hijacks the audio output and vastly improves its sound quality. The two frontfacing 5.7cm speakers dramatically improve dialogue, while the dual down-firing 16.5cm subwoofers enhance action sequences at lower frequencies. Together they produce a superb full-range of frequencies, with 180-degree room-filling sound wherever you are seated.

Watching Sir Simon Rattle conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Haydn’s The Seasons, on Sky Arts, the TV5 v2 managed to deliver an immersive and refined, room-filling performance. Spectre, the most recent James Bond movie, also sounded spectacular.

The design, however, is a little basic, lacking a digital display and a little finesse, but given there’s also Cd-quality aptx Bluetooth streaming it can double up as a discrete wireless music system. cambridgeaudio.com