Top home entertainment solutions to get you through lockdown
We’ll all be spending the next few weeks in the house, and even Christmas looks likely to be a subdued affair this year. So why not console yourself by pimping out the living room in which you’ll be whiling away your precious hours? Here’s our pick of the top home entertainment solutions on which to spend all that money you’ve saved during lockdown.
Epson LS500 Projector
Your head may tell you to stick with a traditional TV, but your heart, if you’re a gadget nerd like us, might be telling you to splash out on a fancy projector.
There’s something wonderfully analogue about a little box throwing light against your living room wall, making you feel like one of those people in the first cinema, screaming in abject terror as a train hurtled towards them on the silver screen.
Projectors have come a long way, however, with the new generation no longer requiring you cordon off a huge chunk of your living room. The Epson LS500 can sit just a couple of feet from the wall it will project onto, throwing out a 65” to 130” display in super-crisp 4K.
It even comes with a speaker built into its slick little chassis.
Bang & Olufsen Beosound 2
The inclusion of audio-visual visionaries Bang & Olufsen in home entertainment round-ups is obligatory, with the company producing TVs and speakers that wouldn’t look out of place in the Tate Modern.
Case in point: the Dalek-like Beosound 2, a conical objet d’art that will merrily blast beautiful music in each of the three hundred and sixty degrees our rudimentary human consciousness is able to perceive.
It will sync with Chromecast and AirPlay, making it a total music solution for the 21st century home, and when your auntie Nora comes to visit you can tell her it was excavated from an Egyptian tomb.
Xbox Series X
Finally arriving in the hands of punters today, the Xbox Series X is heralded as the fastest console ever made, beating even Sony’s PS5 – which arrives later this week – in terms of raw power.
It will make a slick addition to your home entertainment set-up, with its subtle black box resembling a mysterious monolith capable of stealing hours and days of your attention, leaving little indication of where the time went. Perfect for lockdown, really.
Naim Mu-So 2nd Generation
Wireless home speaker systems are de rigueur these days, with every Tom, Dick and Lottie having an Amazon Echo, Sonos or Google Home set-up. Stand out from the crowd with this next-level solution from audio masters Naim.
Capable of linking up to provide multi-room audio, the Mu-So offers exceptional sound quality in a sleek little package. Whether you’re streaming music from Spotify or using it as an audio output for your TV, this is an exceptional piece of kit.
Samsung Q950TS QLED
If you’re fond of using sledgehammers to crack nuts, then you really need to upgrade to an 8K TV. Sure, the jury may be out over whether the difference is actually perceptible to our outdated organic hardware (sac-fulls of jelly are so prehistoric), but people said that when 4K was new, and now we’d rather sit in a dark room than watch a movie in 1080p.
Samsung’s snappily-titled Q950TS QLED is a real cracker, hitting the sweet spot between jaw-dropping hardware and eye-pleasing design. It ain’t cheap, but when have nice things ever been?