Sony has announced a slew of new audio products as part of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas as part of its push to capture music lovers and home theater enthusiasts alike.
Perhaps the most interesting new model the company will showcase is its GTK-PG10 outdoor speaker, a massive cube of sound with foldable top panels that contain its tweeters — and four cupholders to fit Solo cups in while your guests get their dance on. It will offer buyers 13 hours of playback time via a built-in battery, and even comes with an onboard XLR mic input, should you want to sing karaoke on the go. It will retail for $250, and will be available this coming spring.
In addition to the portable party speaker, Sony has announced refreshed versions of its Extra Boom Bluetooth speaker lineup, including three new models — the SRS-XB12, XB22, and XB32 — with an IP67 dustproof and waterproof rating, as well as built-in passive radiators for bold low-end response. They will retail for $60, $100, and $150 respectively, and will hit the market in the spring.
On the home theater front, the company has announced two new soundbars, the HT-X8500 and HT-S350 models, both of which will help you hear your favorite content with much better fidelity than from your TV’s built-in speakers, but with a more compact footprint than more traditional surround sound setups.
The HT-X8500 is perhaps the most exciting of the two devices, in that it offers support for both DTS:X and Dolby Atmos object-based surround sound, meaning buyers can get full immersive surround sound in a compact and aesthetically pleasing soundbar. This is something of a theme at this year’s CES conference, with many of the top manufacturers launching their own new Atmos soundbar models, but we expect Sony’s to be among the best. Sony has a long history of excellent video-and audio processing technology, and if there’s any company we expect to have nailed virtual surround sound, Sony is it.
The HT-S350 is designed to offer very loud volumes, rather than detailed object-based surround. It comes with a wireless subwoofer, and offers a room-filling 320 watts of sound, which should be more than enough to give you the full Michael Bay explosion experience in your living room. The two new soundbars will be available in spring 2019, and pricing will be announced at the same time they are released.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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