The best home entertainment tech for your post-tax splurge

Now that a new financial year is upon us, and all the last-minute business-related tech purchases have been made, it’s time for many of us to look ahead to what purely personal big-ticket items we could acquire with our (fingers crossed) significant tax refunds.

If you’ve been waiting on a big upgrade for your lounge room or home theatre, here are some of the best devices and machines to weigh up.

The LG C3 TV can be paired with a SC9S soundbar to become one single unit.

Televisions

The battle for the premium mid-range TV has been all about LG and Samsung for a while, but now that they’re both focusing on OLED panels the race is tighter than ever.

LG has been on a roll for the past few years with its C series of TVs, pairing just about the best OLED panels you can get with all the connectivity and software features most people will need, and leaving only a handful of extras for its top-price G and Z series. This year’s C3 isn’t a huge upgrade over the C2, with notable changes being a bit higher peak brightness and (finally) the ability to process DTS audio signals. The C2 was already a wonderful TV for movies, and those two additions have made the C3 the ultimate home cinema driver. It also retains everything that has made the series a favourite among gamers: exceptionally fast response and a full suite of HDMI 2.1 features including 4K at 120Hz and variable refresh rate. The C3 starts at $2600 for a 42-inch model, with the popular 65-inch size coming in at $4300.

Meanwhile, Samsung, on its second generation of OLED TVs, has delivered a phenomenal offering with its S90C. In a hardware and software sense, it’s quite different to the LG, but in actual use it more than holds its own. It has brighter highlights in HDR content, it supports up to 144Hz, and everything just looks stunning on it. I wish it had the external processing box of the more expensive S95C, where you can hide all the inputs in the furniture so you never have to go digging behind the TV, but that’s not a huge deal. More of a concern is that not only does it not support DTS, it does not support Dolby Vision, which is becoming a ubiquitous HDR format. If that doesn’t matter to you, it’s a great choice, though at a premium versus the LG: $5000 for the 65-inch model.

It may be small, but the Sonos Beam Gen 2 packs eARC and Dolby Atmos capabilities.

Soundbars

One thing that virtually all new TVs have in common, no matter how much they try, is that the speakers suck. The good news is that if you want good surround and booming bass you no longer need to fork out for a room full of speakers and run cables everywhere; wireless soundbar systems are just as good.

To start, let’s match those TVs above with their ideal sound system. For LG, that’s the $1500 SC9S, largely because it comes with a bracket that replaces the C2’s base, combining the TV and soundbar into a single unit. It has three upward-firing speakers that attempt to add height in spatial soundtracks, and comes with a wireless subwoofer, though there are no rears which can leave things a bit unbalanced. It has an extra HDMI 2.1 port so you don’t lose one from your TV. For the Samsung it’s the $2000 Q990C, a huge bar plus two wireless rears that are all stuffed with speakers for 15 channels in total, plus a wireless sub. This all makes for very convincing Dolby Atmos performance. It has two HDMI inputs, so it actually expands the number of things you can plug into your TV. But these are not HDMI 2.1, so your highest end tech will still need to go direct into the TV.

For an option that’s smaller in both size and price, the Gen 2 Sonos Beam is hard to beat. At $800 it’s probably the best value Atmos-compatible soundbar you can get, and is also the simplest, as all you need do is plug it in. Of course, you don’t get a lot of height out of it, but the soundstage is impressively wide from such a little bar, and it’s also very nice for music.

The Era 100 doesn’t have a lot of competition as a high-end smart speaker.

Wi-Fi speakers

While it’s hard to beat a proper hi-fi system with a pair of big speakers and separate components, there is a nice middle ground between that and a tinny Bluetooth speaker that splutters or breaks up if you take your phone out of the room. Plopping a Wi-Fi speaker in the right spot can make a big difference to your home listening.

Sonos has long been a leader here and for good reason. Its latest Era 100 and Era 300 smart speakers sound amazing, with the former being a slim $400 unit and the latter being a chunky $750 monster designed for spatial audio. The 100 is honestly enough for almost all use cases, filling a medium-sized room with good sound and a surprising amount of bass. If you really like to sit and listen, the 300 could be worth the extra, though be warned that some spatial mixes on Apple and Amazon Music are incredible while some are a bit confused. These speakers have microphones, and can work with Amazon Alexa or Sonos’ own privacy-preserving assistant. Most of the Google functionality of past Sonos products has been removed.

Google itself has long-since retired its greatest speaker, the Home Max. But at $150, and frequently discounted, its Nest Audio is easily the best value in the smart speaker space. Especially in smaller spaces or if you buy two to make a stereo pair, the sound is a lot more impressive than you might expect. On the other hand, those fully immersed in the Apple ecosystem could look at the newly resurrected HomePod, a $480 Siri-powered speaker with a high-end sound and easy AirPlay functionality that lets you fling sound from an iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Game consoles

Sony and Microsoft’s latest machines will be three years old by November, but due to the pandemic and other circumstances, it feels like they’re only now hitting their stride. For a long time these machines were difficult to find in stores, and most new games were released on the old consoles as well as the new, so you may have skipped the upgrade. But with 2023 already proving to be one of the biggest years in video games, now could be the time.

For power, features and games, there isn’t a lot separating the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The Xbox is slightly cheaper at $750, but that will change on August 1 when the price will go up to make both consoles $800. The first thing you should consider is whether you have friends or family that mostly play on one console or the other (some games let you play together no matter the system, but it’s generally easier if everyone has the same machine), and whether you already have a library of PS4 or Xbox One games you want to continue using. To save some cash you could look for the PS5 Digital Edition ($650) or Xbox Series S ($500), which play the same games but with no disc drive. The Series S is also less powerful, so it can’t do 4K gaming.

Both companies now have a decent subscription offering that gives you access to hundreds of games for a monthly fee, though the edge goes to Microsoft in terms of what’s included. And then you have to consider that some games are exclusive to one machine or another. Historically Sony has been stronger here, though this year both have compelling offerings: Marvel’s Spider-man 2 and Final Fantasy XVI on PS5, and Forza Motorsport and Starfield on XSX.

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