By the time you read this, another Bristol Hi-Fi Show would have come and gone, with audio and AV brands showcasing their latest wares in front of the UK public on a slightly grey and wet weekend.
But, new hi-fi and home cinema products always brightens our day, and there were a few new products making their debut – as well as some products we’ve seen at previous shows such as Paris and Munich – that were in attendance in Bristol.
Rather than round up all the new launches Trusted Reviews saw while it was at the show, we thought we’d round up what we saw into five things that look like they will shape hi-fi and AV trends for the rest of 2026.
RGB Laser projectors are taking over
This is not necessarily new news. Over the course of 2025 Trusted Reviews saw (and reviewed) several RGB laser projectors but 2026 does feel like the time has come for RGB laser technology to usurp projector-based lamp technology.
Optoma launched its 4K RGB laser UHZ78LV at the Bristol show, an effort supports HDR10+, Dolby Vision HDR and IMAX Enhanced, is able to produce 5000 lumens of brightness, with its PureEngine Ultra tech able to harness those specs and meld them into a native 4K image that’s bright, detailed and colourful.
Watching a few trailers on the projector, we were impressed by the colour fidelity and richness of its performance; along with the brightness of the projector, especially as black levels come across as strong.
The UHZ78LV doesn’t come cheap at around £5999 when it launches in March 2026. We’ll be hoping to take a closer look at it in the near future.
Two-channel sound is here to stay
Did two-channel sound ever go away? The introduction of immersive formats such as Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and more recently Eclipsa Audio lent weight to the theory that two-channel belonged in the past, not the future. But it’s still here, and if anything, it’s having a resurgence as punters choose the stereo image of speakers over height-enabled soundbars.
This is increasingly down to more hi-fi speakers modelling themselves not just as speakers for hi-fi but also partners in crimer with your TV. As active/powered speakers grow in popularity; you could do the same with a passive speaker by adding streaming amplification that supports HDMI ARC and connect it to your TV.
DALI’s new Sonik range typified this approach at Bristol, with its floorstanding models showing they can fit nicely into a living room as part of the furniture – and they also sounded pretty good too.
Budget stereo speakers + streamers = affordable hi-fi
Perhaps there aren’t as many people now than there was in the past who understand “hi-fi”. But the industry has pushed streaming as a way of making hi-fi more accessible to people who’d otherwise be (understandably) baffled its intricacies. And streaming has become very, very affordable.
You could, quite easily, bag yourself a pair of small bookshelf speakers for less than £300; and add a streaming module (say a WiiM or a Bluesound) and start your music streaming experience for less than £500.
That said, we did see the opposite end of this spectrum at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show with the Audi3 A3HF1 speakers and A3IA1 streaming amplifier (with HDMI connection). With a design in which you could neatly place the streaming module on top of a speaker the price for the entire system was stratospheric – £9950 – a world away from getting a DALI Kupid and add a WiiM Pro.
A system more for enthusiasts, while its price is costly, perhaps it’s good that there’s action at both ends of this market as it continues to grow.
Portable music players can be desktop amps too
Portable music players haven’t given up the ghost just yet, and in recent years there’s been a realisation that they can be more than just be an alternative to your smartphone for music – they can provide a few more reasons to inveigle their way into your life.
Now, we’re seeing more of them positioned as desktop amplifier substitutes; and one that we got up close to was the new iBasso DX340 player which acts as a portable music player when outdoors and can be used as a headphone amplifier indoors.
With 8GB of RAM onboard, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 processor running the show, its headphone amplifier circuitry, plus 2TB of expandable storage, support for audio up to PCM 32-bit/768kHz and native DSD512 decoding and the iBasso is a portable powerhouse.
It does mean that the DX340 is on the chunky, heavy side; but that might be a sacrifice worth making given its specs.
CD players have staying power
Just like turntables, of which there were many at the Bristol Hi-Fi Show, we caught a glance at a few CD players; notably Musical Fidelity’s B1xCD.
It features a “true” Red Book CD-DA drive that uses a tray-loader mechanism that aims to extract as much information, with as much accuracy, as it possibly while keeping jitter (put simply, noise/distortion within the signal) to a minimum.
Cassette has experienced a revival in the last year, and along with vinyl, there seems to be a trend where analogue media is making a concerted comeback. However, considering the number of new CD players we’ve seen launched in the past year, we’re putting our money on the silver disc having more staying power than the cassette tape, which at the moment still feels like more of a retro fad.
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