Best bargain buys!

We present a full round-up our favourite kit under 500 to help you onto the home-entertainment upgrade ladder

The journey to hi-fi heaven has to start with the first step, of course. And often, that initial stride is, rightly, a tentative one; a toe in the water, perhaps, just to see if things turn out as hoped for. In terms of home-entertainment kit, that might mean starting your system with a bargain Bluetooth speaker or budget turntable. If that first purchase is a success, however, it doesn’t take long before the yearning to upgrade becomes only too apparent.

Which is where this issue of What Hi-fi? comes in. Here we have endeavoured to do the major legwork for you, as far as choosing your first upgrade – or, of course, you might be new to buying any kind of audio-visual equipment and want to jump straight in with one or more of these recommendations as your first purchase. Either way, we’re sure you won’t be disappointed.

So we have collated a large selection of some of our favourite pieces of affordable home-entertainment products. We’ve tried to be as inclusive as possible, covering a wide range of formats from a pair of stereo speakers (not forgetting the desktop variety), to a 50in television, via turntables, streamers, DACS, Blu- ray players and more.

Everything you see on the following 30 pages comes with the What Hi-fi? seal of approval and is, in our view, an absolute bargain buy that should give you years of entertainment – at least until you want to take another step up the hi-fi and home-entertainment equipment ladder. It’s as well to remember that this one, small step for your bank balance could end up being one giant leap for your long-term enjoyment. Be warned: in our experience it’s an addictive, but delightful, voyage.