The image and the sound of a living room, judged properly
What the brightness claim means,
and what actually reaches the wall
Projectors and screens, soundbars and subwoofers, AV receivers, speakers and mounts — and the cables, stands and adapters that get bought a week later. Compared on what actually decides whether they work: whether a brightness figure is in ANSI lumens or in nothing at all, whether a contrast ratio is native or dynamic, whether an Atmos badge means height drivers or only decoding, and what throw ratio your room can hold. Priced on your own country's Amazon.
- Categories covered
- 50
- Machines reviewed
- 135
- Accessories & consumables
- 83
Every category we cover
Pick the job you are doing
32 families of tools, 18 of accessories and consumables. Each hub below compares one of them, with a plain answer to “what should I actually buy?” at the top — and the buying mistake that category invites.
- 4K home cinema projectors Native panel, pixel shift, or upscaling — three different things
- Full HD projectors Where the money goes into light instead of pixels
- Laser projectors No lamp to replace, and no warm-up
- Short and ultra short throw projectors A big image from twenty centimetres, and a screen that must match
- Portable projectors The brightness claim to read twice
- Fixed frame projector screens The flattest surface money buys
- Motorised projector screens It disappears, and that is what you are paying for
- Manual pull-down screens A spring, a lock, and nothing to break
- Tripod projector screens The screen that travels with the projector
- Ambient light rejecting screens Optical, directional, and matched to one projector geometry
- Outdoor projector screens Wind is the specification nobody prints
- Soundbars The one upgrade a flat television cannot argue with
- Dolby Atmos soundbars Decoding Atmos and having height channels are two claims
- Active subwoofers Cabinet type and stated extension, not the number on the amplifier
- AV receivers The one box everything plugs into
- Stereo amplifiers Two channels, and everything spent on them
- Network audio players The source that replaces the disc
- Compact hi-fi systems One box, one remote, and speakers that are part of the design
- Centre channel speakers Seventy per cent of a film comes out of this one
- Surround speakers Small, placed high, and easy to drive
- Dolby Atmos height speakers Up-firing needs a ceiling; in-ceiling needs a drill
- Floorstanding speakers Bass from a cabinet rather than from a subwoofer
- Bookshelf speakers Passive, and meant for a stand rather than a desk
- Home cinema speaker packages Five matched cabinets, bought once
- Wireless TV headphones Latency is the specification that decides it
- Streaming boxes and sticks Licensing decides more than processing power
- 4K Blu-ray players Still the only source that is not compressed to fit a pipe
- DVB-T2 and satellite receivers The standard is national, and so is the tuner
- Tilting and full-motion TV mounts The stated load says nothing about your wall
- Fixed and low-profile TV mounts Flat to the wall, and nothing to work loose
- TV floor stands and trolleys For the wall you are not allowed to drill
- Projector ceiling mounts Adjustment you can reach, and a drop that fits the room
- HDMI cables Certified bandwidth, or a version number that means nothing
- HDMI splitters and switches One source to two screens, or four sources to one
- HDMI extenders When the projector is further away than copper reaches
- Optical audio cables Immune to hum, and limited to compressed surround
- Subwoofer cables Long, shielded, and single-ended
- Speaker cables and connectors Cross-section and length, in that order
- Audio converters and DACs The box that reconciles a new television with an old amplifier
- Speaker stands Height first, mass second
- Soundbar mounts Under the screen, without covering the remote sensor
- Projector stands and tripods Adjustable, and heavier than it looks necessary
- Bluetooth transmitters for TV Codec support at both ends, or the latency stays
- Bluetooth audio receivers The cheapest way to make an old amplifier modern
- Universal remote controls Infrared, Bluetooth or hub — three different products
- Indoor TV aerials Amplification helps a weak signal and ruins a strong one
- TV backlights Bias lighting, and the reason it is meant to be white
- Screen and lens cleaning Alcohol and ammonia take coatings off
- Projector lamps Original bulb, original housing, or neither
- Projector cases and bags The lens is the part that has to survive
How this site works
Three things we will not do
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Ranked on merit, not commission
Nothing here is ordered by what it pays. Where a €300 projector puts as much light on a wall as a €900 one, that is what the page says — and where the cheap option is a false economy because its screen will ripple under a short-throw lens, it says that instead.
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Reported, not paraphrased
ANSI lumens against plain "lumens", native contrast against dynamic, RMS power against peak, throw ratio against a headline image size, certified bandwidth against a version number printed on a cable — the specifications that decide whether a thing does its job, not the headline. Every figure names where it comes from, its unit is written exactly as the maker published it, and a figure we could not source is left out rather than guessed.
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Priced where you live
One button, fourteen Amazon stores. We send you to the same product on your own country’s Amazon, in your own currency — and where a model is not sold there, we say so instead of linking to a page that does not exist.
Prices quoted in these summaries are dated readings. The live price is shown next to each product.