AUDIO PRO ADDON C5A

Like one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ stories, different ways of judging a winner here could leave you with different results – and all would be worthy outcomes.

In terms of technology, there’s plenty to love about the Amazon Echo Studio with its support for various 3D audio engines. Whether this will indeed be the way we listen to music in the future remains to be seen – we have had albums mixed in Dolby Atmos for a while, after all, only now you might not need a whole array of speakers at home to enjoy it – but its performance is hit and miss, and not really helped by overcooked bass and slack timing.

If it’s a mix of features and great sound you’re after, then the Sonos One and Apple Homepod should both hold your attention. Both integrate their voice assistants brilliantly, offer multi-room possibilities and show off with authoritative and entertaining sound. Our pick would likely be Sonos, due to its more welcoming functionality, slicker eco-system and cheaper price tag

A fair test

Alas, the only really fair way to decide this test is to do so on the basis of overall sound quality. In that sense, it’s pretty much a knock-out for the Audio Pro Addon C5A.

Its built-in Amazon Alexa goes some way to negating the need to use what is admittedly a rather rudimentary product app, and allows you to centre in on the speaker’s bold and punchy presentation, and marvel at its exquisite eye for detail and sympathetic ear for subtle dynamics.

The original Addon C5 – essentially this speaker without voice control – won a What Hi-fi? Award a couple of years ago, only to be replaced by other Audio Pro boomboxes, and the company’s greatest success might well be the uniformity of these units’ talents. Certainly there are few other speaker ranges we could recommend buying with such confidence.

So for pure sound quality, it’s the Audio Pro Addon C5A all the way. But there are also sound reasons to choose pretty much any of the others, too. With, sadly, the probable exception of the Bose.