Best of CES 2025: next-generation OLED TVs, 5-star earbuds and a hi-fi surprise

CES 2025 is coming to a close and our tired team of hi-fi and home cinema experts are packing up their bags to get the red-eye flight home. But as one final treat they have created a definitive shortlist of all the most impressive home cinema and audio hardware they saw at the show.

And what a list it is, with the world’s biggest tech show bringing everything from amazing new wireless earbuds and next generation OLED TVs to the surprise resurrection of a hi-fi heavyweight.

Here’s what you need to know about the products.

1. Technics EA-AZ100

Technics is well known for its hi-fi systems, turntables and speakers. To this day its SA-C600 just “add speakers” system remains a What Hi-Fi? Award winner and staple sight in our editor’s lounge, as well as our test rooms. But it’s struggled to earn a perfect five-star rating with its wireless earbuds. That all changed at CES 2025 where it unveiled its new Technics EA-AZ100 earbuds.

Having had them in a good month before the event for review, we can confirm they are a true step forward for the brand. Featuring a wealth of new features that refine Technics’ sound, adding the dynamics and oomph that were missing on past sets, they impressed our reviewers enough to earn a full five-star rating and a place among the best wireless earbuds currently available.

Read our full Technics EA-AZ100 review

2. Onkyo Icon A-50

Onkyo has a strong record in audio, particularly with its AV receivers. But since the brand filed for bankruptcy in and was then bought by Premium Audio Company (the parent company of Pioneer, Klipsch, Sharp and others) it went a bit quiet. For the past two years you’re more likely to have seen the branding on a TCL TV’s sound system than a speaker or hi-fi separate.

Thankfully that changed at CES 2025 where the brand unveiled its new line of Icon separates. These include a P-80 network preamplifier, the M-80 power amplifier and the A-50 streaming amplifier. For us the A-50 is the most interesting, as it targets the growing streaming amp market, which has been gaining popularity in recent years.

Featuring all the streaming smarts any modern music fan will need, along with Dirac room correction powers and Class A/B amplification, with 140 watts per channel into 8 ohms (or 180W into 4 ohms), it looks like an impressive piece of hardware – especially considering its $1499 price tag.

Hopefully it will deliver the goods sonically when / if we get it in for review. Either way, it’s one of the most interesting bits of audio hardware to appear at CES 2025.

Read the full story: Onkyo returns to hi-fi with the launch of Icon Series electronics at CES 2025

3. JBL Tour One M3

CES usually brings with it a wealth of affordable over-ear headphones, with most big-name brands hosting separate launch events for premium sets later in the year. Which is why we were surprised and delighted to see JBL buck the trend and use CES 2025 as the launch pad for its new flagship Tour One M3 wireless headphones.

As well as the usual driver, Bluetooth standard and design improvements, the headphones are particularly interesting as they have one key, atypical feature – a stand-alone transmitter.

The catchily named Smart Tx transmitter uses proprietary JBL tech to improve latency, stability and call quality when wire connected to the source. As an added bonus it also comes with a touchscreen to help you control music playback, call management, EQ settings and broadcast audio to Auracast-enabled devices.

Read the full story: JBL’s Tour One M3 flagship wireless headphones are smarter than your average over-ears

3. Fiio S15

Fiio, the brand behind some of our favourite portable DACs, picked CES 2025 as the launchpad for its new S15 music streamer. Designed to take on big names, including the five-star Cambridge Audio CXN100, the S15 may target an already competitive market, but from what we saw at the show, it is a technically impressive piece of hardware.

Highlights include a AK4191+AK4499EX DAC set-up, capable of streaming high-resolution audio files up to 32-bit/384kHz and the use of Fiio’s custom digital audio purification system (DAPS). The latter is a technology that aims to reduce sonic jitter and let the streamer deliver a clearer, cleaner sound.

Add to this Roon-ready capabilities, Apple AirPlay 2, Tidal, Spotify, Amazon Music and Deezer support, as well as Bluetooth streaming with aptX Adaptive and LDAC codec smarts, and it becomes a pretty enticing piece of hardware.

Read the full story: Fiio’s triple drop includes a Cambridge Audio-rivalling music streamer with HDMI support

4. Samsung HW-Q990F

Samsung unveiled its latest flagship Dolby Atmos soundbar system, the HW-Q990F, at CES 2025. Why’s that a big deal? Because it is the follow up to the Award-winning Samsung HW-Q990D that we gave a perfect five-star rating to last year.

At first glance it doesn’t look like a huge upgrade on that model, featuring a fairly similar design outside of its subwoofer, which has been reworked from the inside out. But once we wrestled past the crowds to have an early listen to the unit, we came away impressed, with our staff writer, Lewis Empson, reporting:

“It would be an understatement to say we’re quite excited to get the HW-Q990F into our AV testing room. After its predecessor proved to be a smash hit, we’re eagerly waiting to see what this updated model can handle.”

Read our Samsung HW-Q990F hands on preview

5. Panasonic Z95B

Panasonic TVs have a strong track record in delivering “as the director intended” picture quality. That was certainly the case with the Panasonic Z95A we reviewed and gave five-stars to last year. Which is why we were excited when the Japanese home cinema giant unveiled its spiffy new Z95B flagship OLED TV at CES 2025.

The TV is interesting for a variety of reasons. First, because it has a new “Primary RBG Tandem Panel” and ThermalFlow cooling system.

The first of those is a new multi-layer OLED stack panel architecture that aims to boost max brightness levels, while simultaneously improving things including colour volume and accuracy. Considering how much we liked the Z95A, if it achieves even modest upgrades in either department when we get it in for review, the Z95B should be a solid performer and great choice for serious movie fans.

The second reason for our interest in this TV is that it has a new, more compact sound system. Specifically, Panasonic has reduced the TV’s thickness and weight by embedding new line-array side firing and height speakers into the edges of the chassis of the TV. Paired with a new 30W subwoofer, Panasonic claims this will allow the set to offer a much more expansive and dynamic sound than its predecessor.

Read the full story: Panasonic unveils its latest flagship OLED and Mini LED TVs at CES 2025

6. Hisense L9Q UST

Hisense has a strong track record in the Ultra Short Throw (UST) projector space. Jump over to our What Hi-Fi? Awards page and you’ll see both the Hisense PL1 and Hisense PX3-PRO won accolades last year.

Hence why we were excited when the Chinese giant launched its new LQ9 UST at CES 2025. The projector is available with five screen sizes – 100, 110, 120, 136, and 150 inches.

Hisense is pitching the L9Q as “the next leap in Laser TV technology” and made a load of big claims about its performance. These include a quoted 1500 nits full-screen brightness (when paired with an ultra-bright 2.9 grain screen) and 5000:1 contrast ratio.

Hisense also claims that the use of its proprietary TriChroma triple-laser light engine will let it cover 110% of the BT. colour space favoured by creatives, meaning the picture will reveal “stunning details” lost on rival USTs. Add to this its 6.2.2 in-built sound system and it becomes a fairly enticing piece of hardware that we’ll be keen to test when it launches later this year.

7. TCL QM7K

Our editor (me) penned a feature detailing why what’s going on with Mini LED at CES 2025 is super interesting. The new TCL QM6K is a big reason why.

This is because the TV features a number of never-before-seen technologies. These include Precise Dimming Micro OD.

The tech works to improve screen quality and reduce blooming – a common issue on Mini LED TVs where there’s an unwelcome glow around bright sections of a picture over a dark background.

On the one hand it does this by reducing the optical distance between the backlight and diffuser plate.

But the panel tech also uses smaller Mini LEDs with RGB, rather than the standard all-blue backlight, that don’t need to pass through the red quantum dot layer of the screen to create colours – in theory making them more vibrant and accurate.

We had a brief look at the hardware at TCL’s stand and found it is at the very least interesting, and we are keen to get the new unit in to see how it performs in our viewing rooms, when the QM6K launches later this year.

Read the full story: TCL announces first ‘Precise Dimming Series’ QD-Mini LED TV at CES

8. LG G5

LG is one of the biggest names in OLED TVs, and its sets have a strong track record, with two out of the three top sets we recommend in our best OLED TV guide currently coming from the Korean giant.

Which is why we were excited when it unveiled its new flagship LG G5 OLED at CES 2025. The G5 is especially exciting for two reasons. First, because it features new four-stack OLED technology, which replaces MLA.

This has the same goal of boosting brightness levels. LG specifically claims the tech means the G5 can go 40 per cent brighter than the G4 when it comes to full-screen brightness – which considering how bright the older model is would make it an outright cornea scorcher.

Second, because it comes with a 48-inch option – a smaller size usually reserved for step-down OLED models, such as the LG C5 which the G5 launched alongside.

Add to this the wealth of processing and refresh rate boosts common to all the flagship OLEDs we saw at CES 2025 and the G5 earns a place as one of the show’s shining stars.

Read the full story: LG announces G5, C5, B5 and M5 OLED TVs, none of which features MLA technology

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