This model has slightly different names and product codes in different territories:
UK: Shark Anti Hair Wrap Bagless Cylinder Pet Vacuum CZ250UKT US [discontinued]: Shark Canister Pet Bagless Corded Vacuum CZ351 AU [discontinued]: Shark Bagless Barrel Vacuum CZ250
For this review, we tested the UK version.
Shark is well known for making some of the best vacuum cleaners around and we know the brand as one of the frontrunners when it comes to cordless vacuums. But unlike its rival Dyson, Shark still makes a range of plug-in corded vacuums. This includes uprights and canister vacuums, which are also known as cylinders and barrel vacuums depending on what part of the world you’re from.
The Shark Anti Hair Wrap Bagless Cylinder Pet Vacuum CZ250UKT is the slightly cheaper sibling of Shark's top-of-the-range plug-in canister vacuum, but that’s not to say it’s lacking in features. The powered brushroll floorhead employs Shark’s Powerfin technology to get deep into carpets, as well as its self-clean anti hair wrap technology. The cleaning wand bends in half to reach under furniture and can be used for overhead cleaning too. There’s a crevice and an upholstery tool included in the box, plus UK customers benefit from a powered pet tool too.
On test, this Shark canister displayed good performance and maneuverability. We noticed particularly good pick-up on carpets, but it’s equally at home on hard floors as well as cleaning upholstery or overhead. It’s a great choice for those who don’t like upright or stick style vacuums or for anyone who wants a reliable clean without having to worry about how much battery is left.
(Image credit: Future)
Shark CZ250UKT: price & availability
List price: £299.99
Discontinued in Australia and the US
This vacuum has slightly different names in different countries. It’s the Shark Anti Hair Wrap Bagless Cylinder Pet Vacuum CZ250UKT in the UK. Whereas in the US it goes by the name Shark Canister Pet Bagless Corded Vacuum CZ351 and in Australia you’ll find it called the Shark Bagless Barrel Vacuum CZ250. The only real difference between the three models is that the UK version comes with an additional small, powered pet tool.
It's well priced in comparison to cordless vacuums and is also cheaper than Shark's top-of-the range canister vacuum, which comes in at $479.99 / £329.99/ AU$799.99. You may even be able to use one of the Shark promo codes currently available to bring the price down.
Shark CZ250UKT review: design
1.9 quart/ 1.6 liter dust cup capacity
25 ft/ 9 meter power cord
HEPA filter
Weighing in at 9 lb/ 4.4kg without the hose or any attachments in place and without a full dust cup, the canister itself is a pretty good weight for most people to carry up and down stairs, the large carry handle and rubberized grip certainly help, too.
The canister size is fairly standard, measuring 19.3 x 10.2 x 10.2 inches/49 x 26 x 26cm (h x w x d) and there are plenty of different configuration options for storage, depending on whether you’ve got a tall or short cupboard space.
(Image credit: Future)
The floorhead has headlights in the front to illuminate dark spots such as areas below furniture. There’s a powerful self-cleaning brushroll that’s designed to remove debris from deep within carpet fibers, whilst avoiding that annoying clog of hair around the brush. There’s no option to turn off the brushroll though, which can sometimes be desirable for particularly delicate floors.
A control panel on the handle houses a power button, but there’s also one on the canister so you can switch it on using either. A suction level button allows you to easily cycle between the three suction levels using your thumb, and a third button lets you choose between carpet or hard floor modes. For this as well as the suction levels there are easy-to-understand symbols that light up to display the selections you’ve made. It defaults to hard floor and the middle suction power when first switched on.
(Image credit: Future)
In the box you’ll also get a crevice tool and an upholstery tool as well as a clip to hold them to the wand, providing convenient and easy access when cleaning. If you buy it in the UK you’ll get an additional pet power brush to tackle pet hair on upholstery and cushions.
The flexible wand can bend in half at the midpoint, allowing it to reach under low furniture without the user having to bend down, a feature seen on many Shark upright vacuums. And for overhead cleaning the small tools can be attached directly to the wand. Likewise, the main floorhead can be attached to the handle for easier cleaning of small spaces like stairs.
Shark CZ250UKT review: performance
Maneuvers well
Controls conveniently located on handle
Good dust collection
The flexible wand does its job and allows for easy cleaning under low furniture without having to bend. Although it’s not quite so easy to maneuver in this mode, we didn’t feel we had as much control over the direction of vacuuming as when it’s in standard mode.
The floorhead is self-supporting so when you click it upright to go and move a stray sock out of the way, it stays put without falling over or having to be placed on the floor, plus the brushroll will automatically pause. And switching between power levels or floor type is super easy with the controls at your fingertips on the handle.
(Image credit: Future)
General pick up is good on both carpet and hard floor and the beauty of a plug-in vacuum means you don’t feel the need to use one of the lower power levels to conserve battery, you’ll only need to switch to lower power for vacuuming delicate rugs or upholstery. Speaking of rugs, it coped well with a long pile area rug, removing lots of debris left behind by a robot vacuum that had cleaned it the same day.
We were impressed with the dust and dirt collection even if it was slightly horrifying how much it removed from recently vacuumed carpets. Edge cleaning is good, too, and it was able to collect oats from along our baseboards no matter whether we approached with the front or side of the floorhead. It didn’t struggle to remove hair from carpets and we were pleased to see that none of it became tangled in the brushroll.
The canister is small enough to balance on stairs and by removing the wand and attaching the floorhead or one of the tools directly to the handle, cleaning stairs is a breeze. Similarly, we were left with clean sofas after vacuuming them with the upholstery tool. And the crevice nozzle attached to the wand came in handy for removing cobwebs overhead, though you wouldn’t be able to clean like this for long without getting arm ache.
(Image credit: Future)
The dust cup is easy to remove and during our tests all of the dirt and dust fell straight out into the trash at the push of a button. Having said that, though, the large capacity means you don’t have to do this too often, which is particularly helpful if you’ve got allergies and are sensitive to the usual dust cloud that erupts upon emptying a vacuum. The filters are also easily removed and they’re washable, so keeping them in good condition doesn’t require expensive regular replacements.
(Image credit: Future)
During use, the floorhead proved to have good general maneuverability and the canister followed behind, with very little effort required to pull it along. Occasionally the hose would become folded and inhibit suction, but that’s quite common for long hoses and doesn’t take much to adjust back.
On the highest suction power vacuuming hard floor, our noise meter maxed out at 76dB, but this went down to around 68dB on the lowest suction level. On carpet the noise levels were pretty similar, but the tone wasn’t quite so high pitched.
Should I buy the Shark Bagless Cylinder Pet Vacuum?
• Original review date: May 2022
• Still Sony's flagship headphones
• Launch price: $399 / £380 / AU$649
• Regular price now: $329 / £319 / AU$549
Update: February 2024. The Sony WH-1000XM5 remain as Sony's best-ever headphones in terms of what they can do: rich and detailed sound, superb active noise cancellation, great smart features and a comfortable fit. However, their competition has grown more fierce over time, and while they've had a general price cut that helps keep them competitive, they're no longer our absolute first choice among the best noise-cancelling headphones in their range. The Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless offer better sound quality, double the battery life, great noise cancellation, some some even smarter app-based features, usually for a cheaper price than the Sony. If noise cancellation is your priority, spend a little more on the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, which are the best in class for this, and also sound clearly better than the Sony. To be clear, we love the Sony WH-1000XM5, and if you like to stick with Sony cans, as many do, we recommend them – but they've been pipped in the headphones race. The rest of this review remains as previously published.
The Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones have one of the most revered family trees in modern audio history. Following two best-in-class over ear noise cancelling predecessors, the WH-1000XM5 land with a level of anticipation that is unusual in the world of personal audio.
TechRadar deservedly awarded the Sony WH-1000XM3 and Sony WH-1000XM4 top marks in their respective reviews, and so the expectation is that the WH-1000XM5 will follow in those perfect audio footsteps.
In terms of specs and performance, they mostly do follow in their predecessors' footsteps (a little too closely) but in terms of design, the Sony WH-1000XM5 cans represent the biggest departure that the line has seen since its conception. Still, we enjoyed reviewing them, which is why they're one of our top picks in our best wireless headphones guide.
So are the differences in design enough to raise the already-high bar Sony has set for itself? Read on for our full Sony WH-1000XM5 review.
Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Price and release date
Price: $399 in the US
Price: £380 in the UK
Price: AU$649 in Australia
Released in May 2022
On sale now, the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones will begin to ship from May 20, 2022, priced at £380 / $399 / AU$649 – a significant step up above the £350 / $349 / AU$549 asking price of the previous-generation Sony WH-1000XM4.
At launch, you’re looking at around a £30 / $50 savings by choosing the older – and still very good – Sony WH-1000XM4. It’s a sizable chunk of change and, more importantly, it’s a gap that could widen as the year goes on and we drift towards the big shopping holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. At some point in the future, we’re likely to see the Sony WH-1000XM4 dip below the $300 mark before plummeting to half-price – and, at that price, the Sony WH-1000XM4 is a no-brainer.
They're still a fair sight cheaper than Apple’s alternative though, with the AirPods Max still commanding a $549 / £549 / AU$899 price tag when bought direct from Apple.
(Image credit: Future)
Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Design
All-new design
Comfortable for long listening sessions
Design prevents wind distortion – but no longer folds into a compact shape
Still no water resistance
After two generations of largely-identical over-ear headphone designs, the WH-1000XM5 headphones are a significant departure from their predecessors.
The best way to quickly describe the WH-1000XM5 headphones is that they’re a bit curvier than their predecessors. It’s all a bit tidier, a bit sleeker – there are fewer visible points of articulation, more discreet noise-cancelling mic ports, and a slimmer headband with additional leather-look covering to hide away its joins and extension points. The cavity for your ears to sit in is a slightly different shape too – a more squat ovoid than the oval of the WH-1000XM3 and WH-1000XM4. Though we’ve not stress tested them to their absolute limits, the slide-out extension points feel sturdier than earlier designs too, with fewer pressure points that could snap away – a complaint of well-used previous models.
The XM5 headphones on the left, and the older XM3 headphones (which have a near-identical design to the XM4 headphones) on the right. (Image credit: Future)
But there are some changes that may not be so welcome. Frustratingly, there’s still no water resistance of any kind featured here. As the headphones can no longer fold in on themselves, they’re not quite as portable as they once were. And while the headband is better hidden and integrated into the overall design aesthetic, it feels as if it has less padding than previous Sony headphones in the line.
That may be a slightly moot point though – in our experience, they’re no less comfortable as a result, and will happily sit on your head for long listening sessions. There’s ample padding around the ears, and the cups twist and pivot to suit all sizes, with just the right amount of clamp pressure exerted from the band to keep them in place without squeezing your brain out through your ears. That headband now smoothly extends too, rather than using the stepped extension of earlier versions.
(Image credit: Future)
Controls are largely the same as the 1000XM4 headphones. Smart context-aware auto controls aside (which we’ll discuss in the ‘Features’ section of this review), there are two physical buttons on the left ear cup edge. The first cycles between noise cancelling and ambient awareness settings, and you can now use a couple or trio of taps of the ANC button to activate Spotify Tap, letting you fire up and play from the music streamer without getting your phone out of your pocket. The second is the power button, which you can keep held down to activate Bluetooth pairing mode. You’ll also find the exterior to the right ear cup is touch sensitive: swipe up and down on it to change the volume, double tap it to pause audio and answer calls, and cover it with your palm to instantly jump to an ambient awareness mode that funnels in exterior sound. There’s also still a USB-C charging port on the right cup, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the left cup.
(Image credit: Future)
So, of the obvious exterior changes and additions, what’s going on and why?
First up, that curvier design is intended to reduce wind-drag across the headphones, which can cause that annoying distortion in noise-cancelling performance when out and about on a windy day. A more aerodynamic design here should help reduce that effect, and while we’ve not run head on into the path of a hurricane, that claim held up on a breezy London day exploring Greenwich park.
The second obvious addition is a doubling of the amount of microphone points housed on the headphones. This provides the onboard noise cancelling processors (yes, there's two inside the headphones) more audio data to to anaylze and improve active noise cancelling performance with, as well as doubling the amount of beamforming mics near a user’s mouth for calls up from two on the WH-1000XM4s to four on the WH-1000XM5s. Call quality, according to our critical buddies, was crystal clear.
Despite these additions, the headphones are actually lighter than the previous model, weighing just 250g – 4 grams lighter than the last version. On top of this, they use ABS plastics in their construction (as does the packaging), made of recycled car parts to up their green credentials.
(Image credit: Future)
Again, there’s a much-welcome included carry case with these latest Sony over-ears. Made of a grey fabric, it’s somewhat collapsible, offering a little more bag space when you’re using your headphones. Just don’t expect it to flatten down to a paper-thin size, as an inner pocket for cable storage keeps it a little beefier. It’s not a like-for-like assessment, but the surface area of the new case is larger than that of the earlier models, even if you can squeeze its cubic area down.
Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Features
The best active noise-cancelling in the business
Smart ambient awareness options
Allows a connection to two devices at once
App has features to protect your hearing
Active noise-cancellation features have long been the hallmark of the Sony WH range, and the WH-1000XM5 headphones continue in that fine tradition. It must have been difficult to top the superb performance of previous generations and, admittedly, it’s not a world apart from the WH-1000XM4 model. But there is a definite, if slight, improvement.
The WH-1000XM4 already effectively wiped out low-frequency sounds (the din of public transport, or a plane’s rumbling engines), but the XM5s work harder at the higher frequency zone. That’s in part thanks to the new 30mm driver design that, while smaller than the 40mm design of old, makes use of a high rigidity dome and soft edge to take some of the bite off of higher-pitched sounds. Indeed, walking through London’s Paddington Station, a hive of scum and villainy (and sounds of all kinds), I could barely hear a thing, even with the volume of my music dialled back to a minimum. It was very impressive.
(Image credit: Future)
Active noise cancellation is the headline act among a whole bunch of smart features Sony includes with the WH-1000XM5 headphones, many of which automatically kick in without you needing to do anything, improving the overall listening experience without you having to lift a finger.
First up is location awareness. By pairing with your smartphone, the WH-1000XM5 headphones can learn your daily routine, and adjust Ambient Sound Control settings according to your location. If the headphones spot that you’re sat still at home, they might jump to a less intense level of noise cancellation compared to while you’re sat in the office, based on your preferences. And if you’re out for a walk, it may pipe in more exterior audio to keep you safe while crossing the street.
Speak-to-Chat is another handy feature. As its name suggests, if you begin talking while listening to the headphones, they’ll halt playback and pump in ambient sound so you can have a conversation without taking the cans off. But like the WH-1000XM4s before them, they come with an unfortunate side effect – it’ll stop playback if you begin singing when the feature is switched on. Thankfully, it’s an optional feature, so if you too are a wannabe Pavarotti, you’ll still be able to stretch those lungs when listening.
A more immediately useful and intuitive feature is the fact the WH-1000XM5s will automatically pause audio when removed from your head, thanks to a hidden sensor in the ear cup. Leave them off for a little longer, and they’ll automatically switch off completely, saving your battery life. You’ve also got the option of connecting to two devices at once, switching between the two depending on what’s happening on each, such as to prioritise a notification.
Finally, there’s better support for voice assistants and their wake words. Alexa and Google Assistant can be activated hands-free by their respective trigger commands, and can then be used to do everything from place and answer calls to reading incoming text messages and notifications, as well as controlling music.
(Image credit: Future)
Lots of these features can be tweaked an customised by the accompanying app, which is far more useful than similar supporting software of this ilk. There’s a responsive EQ, with a bass boosting function, that makes a genuine impact on the sound profile of the headphones (though we were very happy with the default tuning), an ear analyzer for optimising the effect of Sony’s proprietary 360 reality audio spatial sound format), and lots of options when it comes to customising noise cancelling levels and the location-aware settings that the app can be set to automatically configure based on your usage and surroundings.
A nice touch which I never realised I’d appreciate before having it presented to me was the “Safe Listening” section of the app. The headphones are constantly logging the decibel level and sound pressure of your listening sessions and lets you know how close you’re coming to the recommended weekly loud noises allowance as defined by WHO. For someone who regularly enjoys drowning out the world at ear-blistering levels, it was a wake up call to have the potential damage I was doing to my ears visualised. The app also tracks the amount of time you’ve spent listening to the headphones too, which is a nice touch for life-loggers, and awards gamified for badges for using the different features of the headphones over time. It’s a shame then that it seems only possible to log time used when connected to a device with the app running, rather than keeping this data onboard the headphones – you won’t get a log of time spent listening to a connected laptop, for instance.
Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Audio quality
Spacious soundstage
Spatial audio support
LDAC and DSEE Extreme perform well
Well balanced, with powerful bass and eye-opening detail
The jump from a 40mm driver in the WH-1000XM4 headphones to the new 30mm driver in the latest WH-1000XM5 headphones had us initially raise our eyebrows – would the signature dynamism and space of the WH line be lost with the smaller driver? Thankfully those fears were unfounded – they sound pretty much just as good as the exemplary XM4s, though we must admit they don’t sound dramatically better, either.
Sony’s again leaning on a one-two punch of both LDAC codec and DSEE Extreme support here to offer the best possible sound quality from your connected devices. LDAC is your hi-resolution audio option, compressing and decompressing tracks on the fly to deliver much greater wireless bandwidth than a standard Bluetooth connection could conjure. But even if you’re on a lowly standard-resolution streaming service over Bluetooth, DSEE Extreme ekes out a little more detail by using AI upscaling techniques to restore some of the audio data which would otherwise be lost. Both do a great job.
(Image credit: Future)
Even with the driver change, the soundstage remains spacious and capable of giving all elements of a mix room to breathe and shine. Take the mighty solo section of Metallica’s classic One, for instance – all thrash metal riffing and double bass drum madness, but Kirk Hammett’s blistering high-register finger tapping cuts through and shines. In a more sedate but layered tune like Jeff Buckley’s Grace, the acoustic strum percussively rattles below the harmonised vocals and chorus-pedal guitar line, but there’s room for a walking bassline to sit alongside soaring strings too. Everything finds its place with the Sony WH-1000XM5s, and the effect is a wonderful enveloping of sound, even outside of the 360 Reality Audio spatial settings.
If you’re looking for a test of the tightness of the bass, there’s little better than Rage Against the Machine’s Bullet in the Head, where the bass work of Tim Commerford runs like a… well a piston-powered machine through the track. The WH-1000XM5s let the bassline kick behind the trebley guitar riff with real power without flattening everything else. If you want to see how low the cans can go without losing definition, Massive Attack’s brooding Angel sees the WH-1000XM5s retain musicality and detail at even the lowest frequencies.
At the other end of the mood spectrum, jumping into Prince’s joyous Raspberry Beret revealed details previously missed. It’s Prince’s 80s “more-is-more” production at its pomp, with snapping snares and hand claps piercing the wizard-like mix of synths, strings and guitars. I may be mistaken, but is that a harpsichord sitting beneath it all? If it is, it’s the first time I’ve noticed it in my 35 years of listening to the song.
(Image credit: Future)
And, if you want to listen to the clarity of a wonderfully realised vocal performance while having a good cry, pop on the Prince-penned, Sinead O’Connor-performed Nothing Compares 2 U – she might as well be in the room with you, from forceful chorus to trembling bridge, O’Connor runs the gamut from anger to heartbreak, with the Sony cans picking up each inflection and sibilant cry with wondrous effect.
There’s very little sound leakage too. Sat in the office next to a colleague, they didn’t register any sound even with the volume ramped up to its highest setting, which is an improvement over last year’s version based on what those around me said at the time.
Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Battery life
There weren’t many areas that the Sony WH-1000XM5s could have improved over their 1000XM4 predecessors, so many had hoped that one area that could have seen a jump in performance was battery life. Sony is claiming a slight improvement here – while the 30 hours with noise cancelling activated matches the predecessor, 40 hours with noise cancelling switched off is a two hour improvement over the WH-1000XM4s. That may be a little disappointing for some readers, as competitors are beginning to squeeze out more battery life per charge. But the quality of the other features offset any loss to the competition here, particularly in terms of noise-cancelling abilities, and 30-40 hours of playback is more than respectable enough regardless.
Do Sony’s playback estimates hold true? From our experience, we’d say they’re broadly true – we appeared not to quite reach the advertised 30 hours with ANC switched on, but also tend to crank the volume up louder than the average person would (or the recommended safe level is, even), and thus would expect to see the battery drain faster in line with the high volume.
Sony’s definitely put effort into the charging experience generally though – using the USB-PD standard, you’ll get three hours of playback from just a three minute charge of the headphones, getting you out the door and into your tunes as quickly as possible.
We pride ourselves on our independence and our rigorous review-testing process, offering up long-term attention to the products we review and making sure our reviews are updated and maintained - regardless of when a device was released, if you can still buy it, it's on our radar.
If we were to judge the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra on nothing but its cameras and, in particular, the optical and digitally-enhanced zoom capabilities, we might call it the best smartphone ever.
Of course, even before its successor landed, it wouldn't have been fair to judge the S22 Ultra as the best based on its cameras alone – every handset is the sum of its design, features, components, utility, and value – but taken as a whole, this Samsung Galaxy Series-Galaxy Note hybrid is an excellent, albeit massive Android handset that not only ticks all the important boxes, but delivers more features than you may ever want or use.
The design is an echo of, but also more forward-leaning than, Samsung’s last Note device. It really is a hybrid. There will be no complaints about the ultra-high-resolution, 6.8-inch screen, which offers brilliant colors and smooth motion at 120Hz, but is smart enough to stop down all the way to 1Hz, when that’s all you need, to save on battery life.
The camera array is strong. Sure, it’s not a complete overhaul of the Galaxy S21’s camera system, but that was already pretty darn good. This is arguably better – the Optical and Space Zooms are simply marvels of modern technology.
We also love the thin and light S Pen, and we’re thrilled that it’s finally integrated – literally – into the Galaxy line. It does so many things so well, and for productivity-focused mobile users it could be a godsend.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra's back is black, satin Gorilla Glass Victus+ (Image credit: Future)
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Specs
Display: 6.8-inch, Quad HD+ Dimensions: 77.9 x 163.3 x 8.9 mm Weight: 229G Screen refresh: 120Hz Screen brightness: 1750 nits Glass: Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ Water resistance: IP68 Selfie camera: 40MP resolution Main camera: 108MP resolution Telephoto camera: 2 10MP resolution sensors Ultrawide: 12MP resolution Battery: 5000mAh Memory: 8GB or 12GB available Storage: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB available
Samsung’s One UI 4.1 software is mostly good, even if it does create some duplication of browsers, photos, and messages apps. Other tools, like Expert Raw, a freely downloadable Samsung app that gives you full access to all the camera controls and lets you capture and save RAW format photos, and the video-conferencing app Google Duo, which both do an excellent job of showing off the phone’s power and versatility, are the real highlights here.
Performance-wise, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra’s 4nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor acquits itself nicely (no, it doesn’t beat Apple’s A15 Bionic). The point is, we couldn't find a single app that was sluggish or disappointing on the mobile monolith.
Battery life was more of a mixed bag. We did get a full day of solid use (18 hours or so), but we thought we might get more out of the massive 5,000 mAh battery and high-performance, energy-efficient CPU.
Ultimately, though, this is the kind of device that can make you forget what’s come before it. If you were used to a smaller-screen device, you’ll feel cramped if you ever go back to it. If you struggled in the past to take photos of the moon, you’ll wonder why Apple hasn’t figured this out yet. If you wished that your device had just a little more power to complete those raw image-editing tasks, your wish has been granted.
Part of Samsung’s new S22 lineup, but looking nothing like its siblings, the Galaxy S22 Ultra is to the casual observer a Galaxy Note in a shiny, new coat. It does have a much bigger and bolder camera array (lifted pretty much intact from the S21 Ultra), but it’s otherwise a canny adjustment of the Note aesthetic or, as Samsung might call it, the “Note Experience.” Still, this adjustment leaves it as easily the best Samsung phone.
If you're looking for the perfect Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra audio partner, you may want to check out our Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro review.
Starts at $1,199.99 / £1,149 / AU$1,849 for 128GB storage and 8GB of RAM
Storage options up to 1TB, no microSD slot for expansion
A device that combines the best of Samsung’s S Series and the Note’s more industrial design and capabilities doesn't come cheap. The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra starts at $1,199.99 / £1,149 / AU$1,849 for 128GB storage and 8GB of RAM.
There are naturally bigger storage options (that also include more RAM), which can take you all the way to a 1TB model ($1,599.99 / £1,499 / AU$2,449 ). 256GB will run you $1,299,99 / £1,249 / AU$1,999, and 512GB is $1,399.99 / £1,329 / AU$2,149.
(Image credit: Future)
Choose your storage options wisely, because none of the Samsung Galaxy S22 phones come with a microSD card slot for upgrading your storage space.
The good news is, prices are often lower than that now that the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is getting on a bit - and they're likely to drop further now that the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra has arrived.
An inarguably beautiful device, the 6.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra – owing to its Note roots – doesn’t look much like the Galaxy S22 Plus. It starts from the original Galaxy Note 10 design but takes it forward with even more premium materials.
The frame is a solid Armor Aluminum that rigidly resists bends. Polished on the outside to a near-chrome finish, the metal is sandwiched between two Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ plates. The front glass is high-gloss, and the back is a warm satin finish; both do a decent job of repelling fingerprints. The phone’s IP68-rated body also handily resided the water we ran over it.
The above finishes come in seven color options: Phantom Black, Phantom White, Burgundy, Green, Graphite, Sky Blue and Red. The dark green is sexy, but we’ve fallen in love with the inky Phantom Black of our test device.
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Did we mention that this is a big phone? Its dimensions are 163.3 x 77.9 x 8.9mm, which is taller than a 6.7-inch Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max, but, somewhat surprisingly, at 229g, lighter than Apple’s biggest handset. Small hands will struggle with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. The curved edges make the Galaxy S22 Ultra comfortable to hold, but the lack of edges also makes it feel slippery as a fish – albeit a fish made of hard glass and metal.
There are two flat surfaces, on the top and bottom of the device. The top plane is a mostly unbroken slab of metal, with one tiny drill-through hole for a microphone. The bottom surface houses the SIM slot, USB-C charging port (the phone ships with a USB-C cable but no charging brick- BYOB is a thing now), speaker grille, and the S Pen.
If you’re in any doubt that this is a Note in S Series clothing, you need only to press that slight bump on the base and pop out the familiar and light S Pen. It’s all the things a Samsung S Pen should be, giving up nothing for its new Galaxy S22 Ultra home. More on the stylus later.
The 6.8-inch AMOLED screen is another highlight. It supports up to 3088 x 1440 pixels (WQHD+) resolution, which works out to 500 ppi. The iPhone 13 Pro Max, by contrast, has 458ppi on its 6.7-inch 2778 x 1284 screen. It’s worth noting that the S22 Ultra’s default resolution is 2316 x 1080 (FHD+), which Samsung says uses somewhat less battery life – although halfway through our testing we switched to WQHD+ and didn’t notice much, if any, battery performance loss.
Everything from games and videos to apps looks fantastic on the display, which now has the ability to smoothly shift from a 1Hz refresh rate all the way up to a butter-smooth 120Hz. Such adaptive technology can be hard to notice because, for instance, 1Hz might be used for the home screen or a word processor, while 120Hz might be called on for gaming.
The point is, when the imagery should be clean and smooth, it is. The lower refresh rates primarily help to conserve battery – there’s no need to update the screen more than a hundred times per second if nothing is moving.
With a peak brightness of 1750 nits and Samsung’s new Vision Booster technology, the screen does a decent job of maintaining visibility even in direct sunlight. Naturally, though, this means the brightness gets turned up to 100%, which will impact your daily battery life.
Hidden under the screen, roughly a third of the way up from the bottom edge, is the effective ultrasonic fingerprint reader. We found it easy to both register a finger and use it to unlock the phone. The other biometric security option is facial recognition, but Samsung warns that this isn’t as secure as other options, like a PIN or fingerprint.
There’s also a small drill hole through the screen for the 40MP front-facing camera.
Put simply, this is a lovely screen for viewing and writing.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra: Cameras
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra camera array (Image credit: Future)
Main camera is 108MP with f/1.8 aperture and an 85-defree FOV
Two telephoto lenses with 10MP sensors, one ultrawide 12MP sensor
Optical zoom up to 10x, Space Zoom enhanced up to 100x
When people say, “So, it’s basically a new Samsung Galaxy Note, right?” we have to flip over the phone to show them the camera array, which is a dead ringer for the one on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.
Don’t worry, though – this is not some Frankenstein’s monster of smartphone design. Because Samsung has done away with the contour box that popped the whole thing up a millimeter or so above the back of the S21, the S22 Ultra’s array of five lenses looks perfectly at home.
The cameras don’t just look similar – they’re almost the same. There are two 10MP telephoto lenses: one is f/2.4 with a 36-degree field of view (FOV) and the other is f/4.9 with an 11-degree FOV. There’s also a 12MP ultrawide with a 120-degree FOV, and then there’s the 108MP main wide camera (f/1.8) with an 85-degree FOV.
However, the technology backing these lenses has gotten an upgrade. While the image sensors haven't changed since the S21 Ultra, Samsung has done some work on optical image stabilization, digital image stabilization (for a better Super Steady system), and image processing. The result is better performance from all the lenses, but especially in the zoom arena.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra’s zoom capabilities simply blow away anything we’ve ever seen before from a mobile phone camera. Obviously, the 3x and 10x optical zoom are not only solid but offer clear images of distant objects with enough clarity that you can crop in on details without seeing much pixelation.
The 30x and especially 100x Space Zoom is where, at least in previous iterations of Samsung’s technology, you’d see significant artifacts in your photos.
Now, however, these images are shockingly good, at least at first glance. Sure, you can’t crop in too much without the images breaking down into a Picasso-like mess, but untouched, these can be perfectly shareable images.
Part of this has to do with the stabilization, which at 100x, basically takes control of the lens and holds a subject (like the moon) in the frame. It can feel a little like you’re no longer in control of the lens, but it does do a good job of countering your shaky hands.
Wide and ultrawide images also benefit from some new pixel sorcery. With the Galaxy S22 Ultra, Samsung introduced Adaptive Pixel. This takes nona-binning (first introduced with the S21 Ultra), which takes nine pixels of information and combines them for better color and contrast, and combines it with the full resolution of the 108MP wide-angle original. That lens also gets an auto-focus assist from what looks like a fifth lens on the back of the phone - it's actually a Laser Auto Focus sensor. If you look closely, you can see the little red laser light peeking out from behind the glass.
Virtually every image we shot looked great, even if we did detect a hint of over-saturation (it wouldn’t be Samsung if they didn’t over-saturate the image).
The front-facing camera, meanwhile, uses tetra-binning to combine four pixels into one for a high-quality 10MP image.
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Samsung’s lenses, stabilization, image sensors, and algorithms also make what the company calls ‘Nightography’ possible. While we don’t like the marketing term, the phone’s night-time and low-light photographic skills are clear. It can brighten a night sky to near daytime, capture the moon or your face in poor lighting, and has some long-exposure skills too.
The front and rear cameras do a nice job with portrait photography, courtesy of a Portrait mode that’s getting good enough to separate stray hairs from a bokeh background. Samsung told us this is due, in part, to its new depth map technology. The presets, which include the ability to create a virtual backdrop (a chromakey color is used so that you can easily substitute some other background later) are pretty good, as well.
You can also shoot some high-quality 4K video at 60fps, and up to 8K at 24fps. We were pleased with the results.
We were less impressed with the phone’s Portrait Video capabilities, which come nowhere close to the magic of Apple’s iPhone 13 line’s Cinematic mode video (it needs a face in frame to work). The auto-framing capability, which literally zooms the camera in and out to keep people in frame, doesn’t seem all that useful – we suspect it needs more refinement.
One thing we do appreciate about Samsung’s video shooting capabilities is that, unlike an iPhone, it lets you shoot video, hit pause, and continue shooting while keeping the entire shoot in one video file. Apple should add this feature ASAP.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra: Camera samples
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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Space Zoom photo of almost full moon (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Space Zoom shot of the moon through trees (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra optical zoom test (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra front facing camera Portrait Mode test (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra portrait mode test (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Space Zoom photo Freedom Tower from 3 miles away (Image credit: Future)
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Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Pro Camera test full control shutter speed ISO (Image credit: Future)
Aside from the awesome cameras, the main reason you’d spend all that extra dough on a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is for the integrated S Pen. The light and versatile stylus is hidden inside the phone’s body; it’s small, thin, and feels so easy to lose that you’ll wish there were magnets in the S Pen and on the body of the S22 Ultra to hold these companions together when you don’t slip the stylus inside the phone.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra S Pen (Image credit: Future)
With the S Pen, you can take notes on a lock screen (they’re white ink on a black background), or open the phone and access a slide-in menu of eight customizable options.
These include taking notes, viewing them, making smart selections of anything on the screen, drawing on a screen capture, live messages, doodling in augmented reality, translations, and PenUp, a community space where you can learn how to draw with the S Pen and share your creations with others.
All of these features work as advertised, and offer fast ways of grabbing content, marking it up, and sharing with friends and coworkers.
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In our estimation, the S Pen is a wildly useful implement and, despite its small size (small for this reviewer’s hands anyway), it’s an effective drawing implement. We opened Sketchbook and had a great time drawing, especially because the pen and screen recognize pressure and angle.
The S Pen is also a solid productivity tool. We scrawled some notes in Samsung Notes and then let the system convert the scribbles to real text. It didn’t miss a word.
Overall, there’s a lot you can do with the S Pen, but it also follows the 80/20 rule – most of us will use 20% of the features, 80% of the time.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra: Software
Android 12 with Samsung One UI 4.1
Some apps, like Messages, are duplicated with Samsung and Google versions
While the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is an Android 12 phone - and one of the best Android phones at that - it’s also running One UI 4.1, the latest version of Samsung’s Android interface software. Like most Android overlays, this one isn’t primarily there to enforce a bespoke design aesthetic on top of pure Android; rather, it duplicates some utilities, like the web browser and photos apps, and adds tons of smart software touches and useful tools, like Samsung’s new Wallet, that should enhance the Android experience
Samsung’s onboard photo and video-editing capabilities, for example, are strong. We especially like the ability to magically remove an object from a photo, which worked like a charm on a photo of a dozen donuts – instead of eating them, we just selected them one by one and removed them from the original image. The software did leave behind a few telltale artifacts, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell what was there before we digitally removed a donut.
There’s also a freely downloadable Expert Raw app, which gives you access to all the pro shooting tools (ISO, white balance, focus, shutter speed) and lets you shoot raw images, which we then edited on the phone in Adobe’s Lightroom app.
It’s not great, however, that there’s both a Messages app and a Samsung Messages app. The icons look similar, but they’re two distinct apps. It’s this kind of nonsense that will always keep the Android messaging system slightly behind iOS’s iMessage. We want one system – the new RCS (Rich Communication Services) is fine – and complete cross-app compatibility.
Samsung has made a lot of noise about Google’s updated Google Duo video conferencing utility, which makes its debut on the S22 Ultra, and it does work as advertised. We made a Duo call to a friend, which looked and sounded good on both sides, and then quite effortlessly shared views of our screen, apps like Twitter, and played a YouTube video that we were both able to enjoy.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra connecting phone to Windows 11 (Image credit: Future)
Samsung is also strengthening its partnership with Microsoft, and we had no trouble adding our Microsoft account, which includes OneDrive and the Office Suite. It was also easy to connect the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra to our Windows 11 PC.
We started the process on the phone, and then we had to visit a URL on the PC (it was supposed to pop up automatically, but didn’t) where we found a QR code. We pointed the S22 Ultra camera at the code, and the phone then guided us through the rest of the set-up process.
With the connection complete, we were able to control our phone through the desktop using our mouse; we even ran Asphalt 9 for a hot second before the connection crashed.
While, in our tests, it wasn’t immediately clear how having these platforms blended in this way benefits the user, we think the ability to quickly access on-phone data, messages, and calls is surely part of the attraction.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra: Specs and performance
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra with camera app open (Image credit: Future)
A 4nm processor, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in most of the world
UK and Australia get Samsung Exynos 2200 chipset
Over almost a week of intense testing, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra never let us down. It’s a fast and powerful phone. The 4nm processor (in our test phone it’s the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset – UK or Australia will get Samsung’s own Exynos 2200 chipset.) doesn’t outperform Apple’s A15 Bionic in Geekbench benchmarks, but raw numbers never tell the full story.
For what it’s worth, here are the numbers for our device, which shipped with 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage).
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Geekbench benchmarks
CPU:
Single Core: 1236
Multi-Core: 3417
GPU
OpenCL Score: 5866
Apple’s numbers are better, but the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra didn’t feel any slower across all tasks. Perhaps the only situation where we detected a small stutter was on 8K video playback (that’s 8K video that we shot with the very same phone).
This is also a gorgeous and quite powerful gaming phone, and handled my Asphalt 9 race through Barcelona without a single hiccup.
Call quality was generally excellent. We could hear our caller clearly, and they told us we were coming through equally clear. The 5G performance (we were on T-Mobile in the US) was, by turns, excellent and average – it seemed to depend on how close we were to a decent 5G tower.
Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra: Battery life
Large 5,000 mAh battery and wireless charging
Could not meet our expectations for battery life
Like the Galaxy S21 Ultra, the S22 Ultra features a beefy 5,000mAh battery and wireless charging. In our tests, the battery was good for a full day of varied activity (roughly from 7am to 11pm) but not much more (this was the same for mid-range and high-resolution screen settings).
We were a little surprised that such a large battery didn’t provide a day and a half of battery life. Perhaps the new 4nm chip isn’t as efficient as Samsung had hoped.
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The phone has a built-in vapor champer and heat-sync material. Even so, we detected some warmth on the back of the phone when performing a variety of tasks, including web browsing, photography, and gaming, for extended periods. We wonder if Samsung might be able to improve battery performance with some software tweaks.
As noted above, the phone doesn't ship with a charger, just the USB-C cable to connect to one – a potential shock for people upgrading from the previous Note. Also, the in-the-box package no longer includes a set of earbuds, and while this at least makes some sense, as the phone no longer has a 3.5mm headphone jack, you start to feel like Samsung is asking for more money while giving you less.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is probably not for everyone. It’s giant, expensive, and might be overkill for people who simply want a nice screen, decent photos, and a good on-screen social media experience. For those who want more, say a phone that is ready to run Raw photo editing apps, mark up screens and images, create detailed works of art and take zoom photos that will make you the envy of all your iPhone-carrying friends, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is worth every dime.
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra?
Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra?
(Image credit: Future)
Buy it if...
Don't buy if...
Also consider...
If the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review has you curious about the fastest smartphones on the market, you can read our full roundup of the best phones you can buy.
• Original review date: August 2020
• Newer Sony WH-1000XM5 now out
• Launch price: $349 / £349 / AU$549
• Target price now: $249 / £199 / AU$399
Update: February 2024. The Sony WH-1000XM4 might be getting on these days, but because you can regularly find them for so much cheaper than their launch, we think these still rule the roost in terms of bang for your buck. The 'target' price above is what you should aim to pay for these headphones, and we've seen them for cheaper than those prices, so they're not unrealistic at all. The Sony WH-1000XM5 have now been launched, but with a much higher price than the XM4 and without feeling like a huge leap in terms of sound or noise cancellation. So the WH-1000XM4 really hit the sweet spot if you can get them for our recommended prices, which isn't hard. We still rate them as the best headphones for most people – they've been bettered in many ways, don't get us wrong… but not for this kind of price. Plus the new version doesn't have the handy folding design for traveling! The rest of this review remains as previously published.
Sony WH-1000XM5: One-minute review
The Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Headphones are a wonderful pair of wireless noise-cancelling headphones in every way. That's why they're still up there among our pick of the best headphones of 2022, even though they were released in 2020 – and even though they've recently been superseded by the new WH-1000XM5.
We love that they deliver exactly what they promise and then some, thanks to their exceptional noise cancellation and cutting-edge codec support.
Granted, they haven’t seen a massive overhaul aesthetically from theSony WH-1000XM3 that were released back in 2018. However, the WH-1000XM4 headphones pack in a number of new improvements, including DSEE Extreme audio upscaling and multipoint pairing.
The Sony WH-1000XM4 support Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format, which enablesspatial audio on stereo headphones, plus the LDAC codec that can send a bitrate of up to 990 kbps. The unfortunate bit there, though, is that it no longer supports aptX or aptX HD, so your hi-res audio support mileage may vary.
Thanks to their extremely comfortable fit and great noise cancellation, we highly recommend the Sony WH-1000XM4 as the best headphones and the best over-ear headphones for most people, but particularly travelers or those with long commutes. However, they’re not great for workout enthusiasts who need a secure fit and water-resistance – or business people who require a best-in-class microphone for phone calls. For nearly everyone else, however, these are some of the best wireless headphones you can buy from a brand with an excellent track record in audio devices.
Since their release in August 2020, the Sony WH-1000XM4 have been given a few updates. For starters, Sony released a limited edition white colorway with a gold finish. The company also releases a firmware update to improve Bluetooth stability when the headphones are paired to multiple devices and to fix a bug which saw users struggle to connect the Sony WH-1000XM4 to Windows computers.
Read on for our full Sony WH-1000XM4 review, with everything you need to know about the best noise-cancelling headphones you can buy today.
Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Price & release date
Price: $349 in the US
Price: £349 in the UK
Price: AU$549 in Australia
Released in August 2020
The Sony WH-1000XM4 were announced on August 6, 2020 and while they come from Sony's flagship line, they are no longer Sony’s top-tier go to proposition simply because they've now got a younger XM5 sibling. These over-ear cans sit above the mid-range Sony WH-CH710N and true wireless Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds.
In terms of price, you’re looking at $350 / £349 / AU$549 or thereabouts – which is exactly what the Sony WH-1000XM3 launched in 2018 in the US, and £50 more expensive in the UK.
That puts the Sony WH-1000XM4 in the same price range as the Bose Noise-Cancelling 700 Headphones that come in at $339.99 / £349.95 / AU$599.95, and slightly less than the more upscale Bowers and Wilkins PX7 that cost $399.99 / £349 / AU$600 – but let's not forget, that model has now been superseded too, thanks to the arrival of the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 S2, which can be yours for a cool $399 / £379 / approx. AU$575.
They're also far cheaper than the Apple AirPods Max, which cost $549 / £549 / AU$899 – and since the Sony XM4s are now a slightly older model, we wouldn't be surprised if there are some tasty deals to be had soon…
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Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Design
Imperceptible design changes since the 1000XM3
Sturdy build and comfortable padding
New SoC for improved noise cancellation
Lack any sort of water-resistance
Though the Sony WH-100XM4 have a slew of new components inside the headphones themselves, there’s not a major difference between them and their predecessors in terms of aesthetics. In fact, put them next to each other and you’d have a hard time telling the 1000XM3 apart from the 1000XM4.
That’s not the end of the world, though, as the design of the 1000XM3 is refined and subtle, allowing it to blend in on subway stations, planes and offices without drawing any attention.
In terms of materials, you’re mostly looking at a high-quality plastic build with supple pleather padding. The result is a product that feels mostly durable while remaining extremely comfortable to wear for an extended period of time.
Around the outside of the earcups you’ll find two physical control buttons for power/pairing and a button that cycles through noise-cancelling modes, as well as a 3.5mm aux. jack and a USB-C port for charging. The outer part of the earcups act as a touch-capacitive control panel that can be used to play, pause or skip music, and raise or lower the volume.
Inside the headphones is where the magic happens, though. Sony has swapped out the old system-on-a-chip (SoC) for a new one that promises better noise cancellation. Key to that, of course, is the Sony QNe1 Processor that constantly samples ambient audio to reactively adjust the level of noise cancellation. It’s an ingenious setup and design that separates it from the one-size-fits-all noise cancelling algorithm from other manufacturers.
The bad news here, however, is that the Sony WH-1000XM4 aren’t water-friendly - they’re not splash-proof, water-proof or even very water-resistant. Sony recommends keeping them dry and far away from any source of water that might damage them. That sounds like common sense - and fairly easy to achieve - but that does limit the places you can bring them: if you’re looking for a pair of running headphones, these aren’t them.
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Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Features
Class-leading noise cancellation
Situational and conversational awareness
Multi-point pairing to connect to two devices
May pause the music if it hears you singing along
The Sony WH-1000XM3 were feature-rich upon release, full of inventive control schemes and intelligent applications of their noise cancellation technology. All that was great about the WH-1000XM3 headphones has carried over to the WH-1000XM4 successors, and with some all-new tricks, too. These aren’t just gimmicks either – they’re useful additions that actually work as advertised.
So let’s kick off with the brand-new stuff. First, and perhaps most importantly, Sony has refined its wireless noise-cancelling approach. Like all good design, it’s subtle to the point where you may not notice it at first (such was the strength of the previous system, anyway).
Key specs
Acoustic design: Closed
Weight: 253g
Frequency response: 4Hz to 40kHz
Drivers: 1.57-inch dome-type
Battery life: 30 hours
Active noise cancellation? Yes
Extra features: Speak to Chat, DSEE Extreme, 360 Reality Audio
But with the WH-1000XM4, you’re getting a much greater sense of noise cancellation in the mid-ranges – those sorts of areas where you get a low-level humming kind of sound that you could attribute to a fan, or air conditioning unit, or engine noise. It’s never fully silenced, but it’s remarkably quiet, and as soon as you have actual audio playing through the cans, you can’t hear the outside world at all.
Though high wind can still cause a bit of extraneous noise to come through, it’s otherwise among the best (if not, the best) noise-cancelling system we’ve heard from a pair of wireless headphones.
These noise-cancelling modes are intelligent, too – with your permission, the WH-1000XM4 headphones can learn where you are using geo-location access, and apply your preferred level of noise-cancellation or ambient sound passthrough depending on where you are. So, at home you may prefer a fully cancelled noise mode, while in the office you may want voices to come through.
With the feature activated, the Sony headphones play a small chiming tone when it’s reached one of your set locations, and dials the noise-cancellation up or back appropriately. Though GPS requirements mean it won’t be able to work during a subterranean commute, you can preset your station or travel hub in the accompanying Headphones Connect app, and have it activate your preferred noise cancelling settings whilst above ground before descending.
The best of the WH-1000XM4 features though are those that pander to convenience. They’re simple and effective additions. A sensor in the earcups will recognize when you take the headphones off, and pause music accordingly, resuming playback automatically when you replace them. If they’re paused for a few minutes (at a delay of your choosing), they’ll automatically switch off to save battery life. A new multipoint connection lets the headphones connect to two devices at once, intelligently switching between both as the requirement of each device dictates – say, to deliver a notification or answering a call.
Most impressive is a new Speak-to-Chat feature. With this option switched on, the headphones’ microphone will intelligently recognize when you’ve started talking, and pause your music while ramping up ambient noise being funneled into the cans. It’ll let you have a chat naturally without taking your headphones off, with a short pause occurring after you stop chatting before resuming music playback.
However, it’s a double edged sword, as it’s almost too effective – if you decide to break into song and sing along with your tunes with the feature activated, it’ll pause your track, ending your karaoke session. Convenient then – so long as you’re restrained with your vocal gymnastics.
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Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Audio quality
Circumaural 40mm drivers
Warm and balanced, clear and powerful bass
Support for 360 Reality Audio for spatial audio
LDAC and AAC but not aptX or aptX HD
Sony’s using the same 40mm drivers in the WH-1000XM4 as it had in the WH-1000XM3, so tonally and in terms of mix, there’s not much to separate the WH-1000XM4 from the WH-1000XM3 headphones that preceded them. It’s a warm and balanced sound that does well to offer a wide soundstage when required and detail that can pierce through a powerful bass performance.
On the noise-cancelling front, Sony’s using its Dual Noise Sensor tech, making use of two mics in each earcup to suck in sound and analyse it with the QN1 noise cancelling processor. This allows the headphones to adjust its noise cancellation response imperceptibly quickly, at more than 700 times a second. It’s fantastically powerful, and never gets in the way of your tunes.
While aptX HD support would have been welcome, the Sony’s LDAC codec, present here, does a good job with devices that support it, pushing lots of detail through wirelessly. The introduction of DSEE Extreme, an AI-driven process that looks to restore detail from lossy compressed formats, does well to bring clarity to even the lower quality formats and files you may throw at the WH-1000XM4.
Sony’s still pushing its 360 Reality Audio offering too, which is its homegrown immersive audio format, putting you in the middle of a surround-sound mix, and it’s still impressive – even if actually accessing its library is limited to just a few streaming services, and the catalogue’s growth has been slow.
As ever, we put the headphones through their paces with a mixture of streaming services, file formats and spoken word clips, and the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones impressed across the board.
Jeff Buckley’s elegiac Last Goodbye shimmers into action, its slide guitar giving way to a warm bass groove and layers of acoustic guitars, jangling electrics and orchestral strings. It’s a complicated mix, but the WH-1000XM4 headphones do it justice, soaring with Buckley’s falsetto comfortably sitting at the fore.
Putting the bass to the test by jumping over to Bjork’s Army of Me, you can hear the can’s masterful management of bass frequencies, with the arpeggiated bass line walking through the song as the machine-like snare snaps through.
For something a little softer, Bright Eyes’ First Day of My Life has a great warmth – great vocal clarity is paired with sparkly finger picked guitars and a comforting, guiding double bass that never sounds flabby.
At the other end of the spectrum, Janelle Monae’s absolute banger Make Me Feel sounds supremely powerful on the WH-1000XM4 headphones. From the bop of the percussion to the wall of sound that accompanies the pre-chorus, it sees the Sony WH-1000XM4s firing on all cylinders, with expressive dynamics and clear and distinct separation between each instrument. It’s a pleasure at the best of times, and Sony’s cans bring out the best of the track.
From the perspective of a work-at-home, share-the-kitchen-table-with-a-flatmate user scenario, those around us did notice a substantial amount of noise leakage from the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones – enough to distract at even half their maximum volume level. You may not be able to hear the outside world, but it can hear what you’re listening to, so keep that in mind if you’re planning on taking these to a quiet office or library.
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Sony WH-1000XM5 review: Battery life
No improvement on battery life compared to predecessors
30 hours with noise cancelling on / 38 hours with it off
Quick charging (five hours of charge after just 10 minutes)
Last just as long or longer than the competition
While the Sony WH-1000XM4 didn’t get a boost in battery life compared to their predecessors, you're getting a substantial 30 hours with noise cancelling turned on and around 38 hours with noise cancelling turned off.
At first, that number somewhat disappointed us – how could a product not improve battery life year-on-year? But then it dawned on us that now the headphones have speech detection, a new SoC and algorithm, plus new sensors, too. The fact that it remained the same in spite of adding a host of new features is actually kind of impressive.
Although the Sony WH-1000XM4 don't come with a battery life improvement compared to their predecessors, they do stretch their playback time as far as possible thanks to the new auto-on/off and play/pause sensor inside the earcup that can tell when you’ve taken the headphones off. It’s a huge boon to folks who might forget to turn off their headphones at the end of the day only to find that they’re dead 24 hours later.
The 30 hours should be enough to get you through multiple international flights or a few days to the office, but it’s also good to know that the headphones can be charged in a matter of minutes thanks to fast-charging. According to Sony, you can get about five hours of charge from 10 minutes of power and a full charge after about three hours.
So how do the Sony WH-1000XM4 compare to the competition? Quite favorably. The Bose Noise-Cancelling 700 only clocked in at around 20 hours of battery life with noise cancelling turned on, while the Bowers and Wilkins PX7 matches the Sony at 30.
Should I buy the Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Headphones?
• Original review date: August 2019 • No refresh on the horizon
• Launch price: $249 / £229 / AU$399
• Now with limited availability
Updated: January 2024. One of the most expensive Kindle devices around, the Amazon Kindle Oasis remains one of the best premium ereaders around. It's a little long in the tooth now, having been released way back in 2019. But with no refresh on the horizon, likely due the the Kindle Paperwhite offering a great ereader experience, the Oasis is still relevant in 2024. It's availability appears to be limited however, so you may have to go hunting to find it in some regions. Nevertheless, the Kindle Oasis is still worth your consideration, though for most people the Paperwhite may be the better bet. The rest of this review remains as previously published.
Amazon Kindle Oasis: One-minute review
The Kindle Oasis devices are Amazon's top-of-the-line ereaders, and the most recent one is this 2019 model. If you want a luxury reading experience (and don’t want those large, expensive, lumps of dead tree known as a ‘book’), the Amazon Kindle Oasis (2019) is where you should look.
In Amazon's hierarchy, the base Amazon Kindle sits as the most affordable device, with its basic screen, limited storage space and few features, and the Kindle Paperwhite bumps up the screen resolution and storage space and adding a few tricks like waterproofing. This Oasis is technically the top Kindle, though the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition has lots of its features and is two years newer.
The Oasis has a range of features you won’t find in lesser ereaders, like its high-quality display and the range of customization options for screen color and brightness. The fact that you’re plugged into the Amazon Store doesn’t hurt either.
But how much value do you put on this experience? Are you willing to splash out on such an expensive device when you’re going to have to buy the books on top? We think for many people the Kindle Oasis is going to be prohibitively expensive.
Amazon Kindle Oasis review: Price and availability
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Given the status of the Amazon Kindle Oasis (2019) as Amazon’s most premium ereader, you should be prepared to wince at its $249.99 / £229.99 / AU$399 / AED 999 price tag. That’s for 8GB onboard memory; if you want 32GB storage the price goes up to $279.99 / £259.99 / AU$449 / AED 1,099.
There’s also a version with 32GB memory and free 4G for downloading books on the go in limited markets, which will set you back $349.99 / £319.99 / AU$559.
In comparison, the base Kindle costs $89.99 / £69.99 / AU$139 / AED359 for 4GB storage, and the Kindle Paperwhite will set you back $129.99 / £119.99 / AU$199 / AED649 for 8GB memory, so even the cheapest Oasis is still a big step up from the Paperwhite.
DEAL: try Kindle Unlimited for FREE in USA | UK | Australia
Amazon Kindle Oasis review: Design
The Amazon Kindle Oasis (2019) doesn’t follow the mini-tablet design of most ereaders – one half of the device is noticeable thicker than the other, which gives you a ridge down the back so that it’s easier to hold (in theory).
In practice, we found the ridge wasn’t quite thick enough to offer a comfortable hold – at 8.4mm thick, it’s only 5mm thicker than the 3.4mm of the main body, which doesn’t provide a deep enough ridge to really get your fingers into. We found the Kindle Oasis a little hard to hold when only using this ridge, so we wouldn’t recommend it depending on what position you like to sit in to read.
The Kindle Oasis (2019)’s other dimensions are 159 x 141mm, so it wouldn’t be big compared to a tablet, but its display is bigger than those of the other Kindles – more on the display later.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
One of the more ‘premium’ features of the device is the metal build, which you won’t find in other Kindles. This makes it feel more hardy, which offsets the fact the 3.4mm part of the device, and its relatively lightweight of 188g, can make it feel a little delicate – the overall effect is a device the looks and feels sleek.
The device is also water resistant, with its IPX8 rating meaning that in theory it can survive being immersed in two metres of water for a whole hour. We can’t imagine that you’d want to take it underwater for that long, but it’ll certainly be fine if you accidentally drop it in the bath while reading, or get it splashed here and there.
Something a little less premium is the micro USB charging port, as most tablets and smartphones have done away with it in favor of USB-C, which is faster for charging. You’re not going to be using that much power with an ereader, so it’s not a huge issue, but we could do without the inconvenience of swapping out the charging cables we use for the rest of our devices.
There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack either, nor loudspeakers, so if you want to listen to audiobooks you’re going to need to use Bluetooth headphones or speakers.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
There are two buttons on the right of the Kindle Oasis, used for skipping forward or backwards through pages. It felt a lot more snappy using these to turn pages than touching the screen, due both to the fact they’re in positions that fall naturally under the fingers, and also because pages turned quicker when we pressed the buttons than when we touched the screen.
There were occasions, however, when the buttons didn’t register our touch, and other times they did but the device stuttered before the next page loaded, prompting us to press again then accidentally skip pages. This often happened when reading books that were complicated in terms of their layout and design, like comic books and our own PDFs, and we didn’t notice it as much for text-based books.
It’s worth noting that for the most part, the design is exactly the same as the previous generation of Kindle Oasis, and that ereader costs quite a bit less now.
Amazon Kindle Oasis review: Display
The display is where you’re seeing the main improvements on the Amazon Kindle Oasis (2019), as there are quite a few additions and changes that improve its quality, and the reading experience.
The display is 7 inches diagonally, which is bigger than the 6-inch screens in the Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite, so you can fit more words or comic book frames on the screen at once, and it’s also higher quality, with 300 pixels per inch, so content looks good too.
This screen is backlit by 25 LEDs, a big jump over the 12 LEDs in the 2017 Kindle Oasis, and you can see the different – max brightness is really high, so you can read in a variety of situations, and there’s better contrast between light and dark, which makes comic books in particular more vivid.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
The brightness can be changed through the easily-accessible settings menu, but there’s also the option to have it automatically change depending on your environment, as on many smartphones.
It’s in the settings menu that you’ll find another of the Kindle Oasis’ big new features, in the form of the ‘warmness’ light setting. This gives the display an orange hue, which makes it more comfortable to look at during night-time reading, and protects your eyes over long reading binges.
The feature is primarily designed to make it more comfortable to read at night, but we also found that when we used it on a low setting we could read more easily in daylight. There’s not a huge range when you change the warmth, but it’s an appreciated upgrade anyway.
The refresh rate of the screen is appropriate – being an ereader display, you’re not seeing as snappy a refresh as on a smartphone screen, but it was far from slow. When zooming into parts of a document we could see the zoom increments, and this made it easier to zoom to the right part of the file.
Amazon Kindle Oasis review: Battery life
Amazon estimates that the battery in the Kindle Oasis (2019) will last you for six weeks, but that’s with a few caveats: to achieve that figure you’ll need to limit your reading to half an hour a day, keep Bluetooth turned off, and the brightness setting on 13, which is roughly half brightness.
While that might sound slightly limiting, in practice, if you’re going to be reading for an hour or so daily, and with the display a little brighter than Amazon recommends, your ereader is still going to take a fair few weeks to run flat, and this is exactly what we found in our testing.
We read for a good two-three hours daily, and it took about a week for the battery to drop down to 50% – that’s roughly the rate of battery consumption quoted by Amazon. In short, the battery life is pretty impressive – this thing will last you for ages.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
This is one of the perks of E Ink, as the tech uses barely any battery power to show content on the screen, and it’s certainly an eco-friendly alternative to reading books on your smartphone.
Charging via the micro USB port isn’t exactly snappy though – we found it took a few hours to charge the Oasis up to full power, but this doesn’t really matter too much if you’re only going to be powering up once in a blue moon.
Amazon Kindle Oasis review: Software
The Amazon Kindle Oasis (2019) runs on software that’s very tightly integrated with the Amazon Store – so much so that it can be easy to get confused between which books you own as part of your library, and which are suggestions from Amazon.
Once you get the hang of the software, though, it’s easy to find your way between the home page, your library, the settings, the store, and everything else you’ll need.
As is the case with ereaders in general, it’s not the snappiest device in the world, and it can often take quite a while to navigate through menus. This sluggishness can be particularly annoying when you’re trying to type, but it’s a price you pay for using a device that’s optimized for reading books rather than for smooth navigation of the user interface.
(Image credit: Amazon)
As on other Kindles, you there are a few useful features you’ll find in the Oasis that make it a useful reading tool. One of these is the ability to change text fonts for ebooks, so if you absolutely must read your books in a sans serif font, you’re set. You can also change the page spacing, margins, and orientation, to fully customize your reading experience.
Amazon Kindle Oasis review: Features
The Amazon Store is the biggest collection of ebooks around, so you’re almost certainly going to find the fiction or non-fiction book, comic book or audiobook with relative ease.
If you’re a keen reader you may be interested in Amazon Kindle Unlimited, a subscription service available in some parts of the world that lets you ‘rent’ ebooks. It costs $9.99 / £7.99 / AU$13.99 per month, and you can download and store up to 10 books or comics at any one time, so it’s perfect for quick readers.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Kindle Unlimited is particularly good for fans of comic books and graphic novels, as those are typically quite quick to get through but the physical versions cost quite a bit; and the Kindle library has many of the classics, so you can use Kindle Unlimited to make your way through lots of titles quickly.
The selection of books on Kindle Unlimited is rather limited, certainly compared to the standard Kindle store, but it’s great for classic novels like War of the Worlds and 10,000 Leagues Under The Sea, as well as comic books, and a smattering of other titles you may not have heard of but might want to try.
Depending on your tastes and reading habits, Amazon Kindle Unlimited may or may not be worth the regular outlay for you, so do have a look at which titles are supported before you commit.
Alternatively, Amazon Prime members can use Prime Reading, which is like Prime Video in that it offers you free reading of certain ebooks as part of your Prime membership.
You can access both of these services from your Kindle or computer browser, as well as the standard library of books which you can buy, and overall we were able to find any book we wanted.
Should I buy the Amazon Kindle Oasis?
The Amazon Kindle Oasis is for people who value their reading experience above all else, and are willing to throw a good chunk of money at a device that will deliver that experience.
Should you buy it?
If you’re in the market for a premium ereader you could do worse than the Amazon Kindle Oasis (2019), but it’s not much of a jump in quality over the previous-gen Amazon Kindle Oasis, which has now had a price reduction thanks to there being an upgrade on the market.
If the upgraded screen quality appeals to you, and you’re willing to stump up the cash for it, buy the new Kindle Oasis – but if you can take or leave those features, the older version will serve you just as well.
First reviewed: August 2019
DEAL: try Kindle Unlimited for FREE in USA | UK | Australia
Competition
Kindle Paperwhite
(Image credit: Future)
If the high price tag of the Kindle Oasis puts you off somewhat, then you might want to take a step down in the Kindle range and look at the Paperwhite. It’s a simpler device in terms of build quality and screen customization options, but it has all the features and functions of the Kindle, so you’ll be able to read your books just as easily.
Kobo is one of the best-known competitors to Amazon, and the Forma is basically its equivalent of the Oasis. Kobo’s ebook store may not quite rival Amazon’s in terms of choice, but it’s a sturdy device with a very long battery life.
You don’t need to pay for an ereader at all if you have a smartphone, as the Google Play Books app, which is available on Android and iOS devices, is free, and gives you access to millions of cheap or affordable books. Of course, your smartphone doesn’t make for as great a reading experience as an ereader, but it’s certainly a more economical solution.
The Dyson V12 Detect Slim was only mentioned in passing during the official launch of the V15 Detect – it was almost as though Dyson didn’t really want much to do with the V12 because it wasn’t a flagship. But I've just spent a few weeks with both new Dyson stick vacuums and I'm pretty impressed with what the V12 Detect Slim can do… at a slightly lower price than the V15 Detect.
Compared side by side, the V15 flagship is the clear winner in terms of performance, with far superior suction, but given the V12 Detect Slim comes with the headline-making features like the Laser Slim Fluffy cleaning head and the piezo sensor that ‘listens’ to what’s getting sucked up, but in a slightly cheaper package, there’s not much to complain about here. While it's not the most powerful model from this brand, it still compares well to the best cordless stick vacuums when it comes to suction, and it might well be the best Dyson vacuum for people with smaller homes.
The smaller, lighter build includes a far smaller bin than you'd find on the average stick vacuum. It'll be annoyingly small if you have a larger house or shedding pets, and I also found the compact size meant hair and dust regularly got stuck when emptying.
If you're not too fussed about that, though, I found there were hardly any other compromises with the V12 Detect Slim. It packs a decent amount of suction power and boasts automatic suction adjustment when it detects a particularly dirty patch of floor. A digital display on the main body of the vacuum shows you everything that's being sucked up, in real time. Plus, it ships with its own version of the amazing Hair Screw Tool – a masterpiece of engineering capable of sucking hair and fur (even slim cables if you’re not too careful) of any length without tangles.
That's the short version; read on for my full Dyson V12 Detect Slim review.
Launched: 2021 (but not until 2022 in the US and UK)
Availability: US and UK, discontinued in Australia
The Dyson V12 Detect Slim was unveiled alongside the flagship Dyson V15 Detect and the Dyson Omni-Glide in May 2021. To start with, it was only available in Australia, New Zealand and Japan (in several other countries, Dyson initially introduced the now-discontinued Micro 1.5kg instead – an even lighter model with a maximum runtime of just 20 minutes). In June 2022 the V12 Detect Slim arrived in the US and UK.
It's not part of the flagship range and as such, seems to attract much less attention than the core range. At time of updating this review (April 2025), if you go direct to Dyson in the US, the V12 Detect Slim costs $649.99 (but has been discounted to $499.99). At Dyson UK it's the V12 Detect Slim Absolute, at a list price of £499.99.
This models in no longer available to buy direct from Dyson in Australia, but when it was it came with a list price of AU$1,199.
As a side note: Dyson told us that the company decided to jump a couple of generations when it comes to naming its vacuum cleaners because the numbers 13 and 14 are considering unlucky in some cultures.
Dyson V12 Detect Slim review: design
Lightweight cordless stick vacuum with tiny 0.35L bin
Operates via power button rather than a trigger
Screen provides information plus real-time dust reports
Dyson hasn’t veered from its design aesthetic in… forever, so the V12 Detect Slim looks very much like the rest. Except for a large red button on the barrel of the handheld unit. This is the power button that replaces the trigger we’ve seen in all the other V-series handsticks. For those who’ve used any other Dyson stick vacuum, you’ll know that the trigger needs to be constantly pressed when using the appliance and can cause wrist fatigue or pain, particularly when trying to maneuver the vacuum in different directions. (Dyson would finally switch from trigger to single-press button in its flagship line with 2022's Dyson Gen5detect.)
This power button, in my opinion, is a wonderful change as it removes the issue of wrist/hand pain – press once to turn on, press again to turn off. That said, it needs your free hand to press each time, so this V-series model isn’t as well suited to one-handed use as its other siblings.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
The only other major difference between the V12 Detect Slim and the V15 is the bin capacity. The V12 comes with a 0.35L bin – the same one used in the Omni-Glide. That's really very small for a cordless bin; on test I found it was just enough for a one-bedroom apartment. If you live in a larger home, especially one with wall-to-wall carpeting, then you’ll find yourself emptying the bin often.
The mechanism to empty the canister is the same as in the V11 and V15 models, but here it’s not as hygienic – I found I regularly needed to stick my fingers in to pull out hair, fur and fluff. If you’re not too fussed about that, then pretty much everything else about the V12 is like the V15, including the attachments that ship with it. That said, the Hair Screw Tool that comes with the V12 is slightly different from that of the V15 and they aren’t interchangeable.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Look closely, though, and you’ll find the flower-like arrangement of the radial cyclones is also slimmer than the V11 or the V15. Where these two models have 14 radial cyclones, the V12 Detect Slim only has 11. That means lesser suction as compared to the V11 or the V15. However, even on the lowest mode, I found it was still capable of doing a pretty good job.
The smaller bin and fewer cyclones means the V12 is lighter than the V11 or V15. It weighs just 2.2kg (as compared to over 3kg for the other two) with a cleaning head attached, and also happens to be 3cm shorter than the V15. The lighter weight makes it a lot easier to hold the handheld unit aloft for getting at ceiling corners as compared to the V15, and also makes it easier to move across a floor.
Despite the lower price tag, you still get the digital display with the graphical representation of particle size and number displayed, along with the remaining runtime on each power mode. The suction level selection button is elongated, though, as compared to the silver circle on the V11 and V15 models.
The clip-on battery pack from the V11 has also made its way here, so if you think 60 minutes of max runtime isn’t going to do it for you, you can always consider buying an extra one to swap out when necessary. The slightly uneven weight distribution I found on the V15 because of the clip-on battery is thankfully not an issue here.
The Laser Slim Fluffy that’s the headline act of the V15 has made its way into the V12 box as well. In both cases, I found that the casters used on the Laser Slim Fluffy tool aren’t great when trying to move the vacuum at an angle or backwards. As a result, the High Torque cleaning head (called the Motorbar cleaner head in some territories) was my favorite attachment for general use.
Dyson V12 Detect Slim review: performance
Automatic suction adjustment
Soft floorhead has a laser to highlight dirt
Great on hard floors; the more powerful V15 Detect better for carpet
While it's less powerful than the V15 Detect, if you happen to live in a home with mostly hard floors and you’re lusting after the Laser Slim Fluffy cleaning head, you won’t regret getting the V12 Detect Slim. When it comes to suction power, even the lowest setting – called Eco – is more than enough for general cleaning. There are two more higher power settings available, but you will be eating into the 60-minute battery life, especially when using the motorized cleaning heads.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
During my testing I found that the Eco mode did a good job on carpets, although if it’s a particularly ‘hairy’ task, it takes a few back-and-fro movements to get it all off (I wouldn't rate this amongst the best vacuums for pet hair). On hard floors, though, it's an excellent cleaner, working impeccably with both of the supplied floorheads, even on the lowest suction mode.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
If you need proof of how well it can clean, all you need to do is use the Laser Slim Fluffy (designed specifically for hard floors) and watch as the illuminated dust and dirt get sucked up. Or you can keep an eye on the display and watch as the graph changes – although after a few uses I found myself barely looking at the display except to keep an eye on the remaining runtime.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Be careful when using the Hair Screw Tool though. While it’s absolutely brilliant at sucking up hair and fur without tangling anywhere, it does also gobble up slim charging cables with ease. It’s best used on furniture or pet beds, but you can (theoretically) also use it on a floor. However, as with the V15 Detect, the attachment’s small footprint means it will take a long time to go over every inch of the floor space.
And because of the slightly unwieldy nature of the Laser Slim Fluffy casters, I found myself using the High Torque cleaning head the most, on both carpets and hard floors.
Dyson V12 Detect Slim review: battery
Up to 60 minutes
Recharges in 4.5 hours
Swappable battery pack
There are no compromises when it comes to battery life. Dyson seems to have used the same battery capacity on the V12 as it has on the V11 and V15 models, with a maximum runtime of 60 minutes, and it's fade-free. So if the appliance has run out of juice, it just stops, rather than gradually getting less sucky while the power runs down.
You get the full 60 minutes only when using the Eco mode with a non-motorized attachment. With the High Torque cleaning head, for example, I got about 46 minutes of power on the Eco mode, but the full hour when the Combination tool was attached.
On the Auto mode, I got a maximum of 40 minutes of power, while the Boost mode gave me no more than 20 minutes with the Laser Slim Fluffy. And that’s pretty much the same as what the V15 Detect offers.
If you think you may need more than 60 minutes, you do have the option of purchasing a second battery pack to swap out when necessary.
Should I buy the Dyson V12 Detect Slim?
Buy it if...
You want a laser-lit Dyson without paying top dollar
Although the Laser Slim Fluffy seems like a novelty, it does have its uses when trying to find dust and dirt gathered under furniture or in corners where you normally wouldn’t spot them. This is the headline-act of the V15 Detect and you get it by default with the V12 Detect Slim as well.
You live in a small home
The V12 Detect Slim’s bin capacity is enough for a single-bedroom home, but anything bigger, particularly if some (or all) rooms have carpets, then you’ll end up interrupting your vacuuming sessions just to empty the bin. If that doesn’t sound like something you’d want to do, you might want to consider opting for one of the Dyson V11 models instead, available for a similar price.
You really want the latest Dyson cordless vacuum cleaner
When it comes to vacuum cleaners, Dyson is arguably the most popular and, perhaps, the most coveted brand. So if the V15 Detect is beyond your budget, the V12 Detect Slim isn’t a bad alternative, if you can manage with the smaller bin and lower suction power.
Don't buy it if...
You need a more powerful vacuum cleaner
When it comes to suction power, not all Dysons are made equal. While the V15 Detect is the most powerful yet, the V11 – with its 14 radial cyclones – is also a touch more powerful than the V12 Detect Slim. And considering they both have better bin capacities, they’re both far better options for anyone looking for a great new Dyson machine.
You’re on a budget
Even though the V12 Detect Slim is cheaper than the V15 Detect, it’s still quite expensive. For those on a tighter budget, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the Dyson V10 Cyclone, which matches the V12’s suction power, offers a bigger bin and comes in at a far lower price than any of the newer models.
You need a larger, more hygienic bin
Having to empty the bin often may not seem like a chore, but if you need to stick your fingers in to pull out clumps of fluff and entangled hair, that’s far from ideal. That’s my biggest complaint with the V12 Detect Slim.
For this review, we tested a Dyson V15 Detect, and a Dyson V15 Detect Absolute. They are the same vacuum cleaner in different colorways.
The Dyson V15 Detect is a powerful, tech-packed cordless cleaner from perhaps most innovative vacuum brand in the world. The V15 (and the V15 Detect Absolute, which is the same vacuum in a different color) is able to sense the amount and size of particles it's sucking up, and adjust power in response. It'll even give you a real-time summary of this information, via the LCD screen on the main body of the vacuum. The other headline addition is a green laser on the hard floor floorhead, which illuminates dirt that might otherwise be missed. We're assuming that the new 'Detect' in the name is inspired by one or both of these additions.
Elsewhere, you'll find impressive suction power, even on the lowest 'Eco' setting. However, our favorite mode was Auto, which adjusts suction based on not only the floor type but also how dirty it is, to ensure a low-effort, efficient clean. In our tests, this vacuum sucked up everything we put in front of it, including handling tangled hair impressively well.
Both the regular V15 Detect and the V15 Detect Absolute (which is the same vacuum in a different colorway) ship with two floorheads: a Digital Motorbar head (the one that can be used with Auto mode) and a Fluffy Optic floorhead (the one with the laser, designed specifically for hard floors). There's also a selection of extra tools for different cleaning tasks. The exact tools included depends where you live and which iteration of the V15 you buy, but if you live with long-haired people or pets, it's worth seeking out the Hair Screw tool, which was new to this model, and great at getting hair out of furniture.
Runtimes are good – up to a full hour on one charge – although recharge is a little slow. If you need longer than that, you'll appreciate that the battery is removable, with additional batteries available to purchase separately.
It's not quite perfect. It's a little heavy, and especially so in handheld mode. It's also frustrating that it switches on via a trigger, which needs to be continually depressed, rather than the one-push button found on other Dyson vacuums. The jury's also out on whether the features like the laser illumination and real-time dust reports are genuinely useful, once the initial novelty factor has worn off.
As you might have guessed, it's also an expensive purchase. While the advanced features and meticulous engineering do help justify the price, there are plenty of cheaper options about with fewer bells and whistles, which will suffice for most people.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
For this review, we tested a couple of V15 vacuums – one in Australia and the other in the UK – to see how they compare to the rest of the best cordless vacuums on the market.
A bit of context so you know where this model sits in the wider Dyson range. The V15 Detect launched in 2021, at the same time as the (non-flagship) V12 Detect Slim. The previous flagship cordless vacuum was the V11 (read our Dyson V11 review for more on that one). The model to follow was the Gen5detect (see our Dyson Gen5detect review). That one features several upgrades to the V15, and at time of updating this review is the best Dyson vacuum available, based on specs.
There's also a sister model in the V15 range: the V15s Submarine, launched in 2023. This is similar the regular V15, but has a wet roller head to enable it to wash hard floors as well as just vacuuming. We've tested that separately, in our Dyson V15s Detect Submarine review.
That's the short version. Read on for our full Dyson V15 Detect / Dyson V15 Detect Absolute review, and to learn if it's the best vacuum cleaner for your needs.
Dyson V15 Detect review: price & versions
List price: $749.99 / £649.99 / AU$1,449
Launched: 2021
As with most Dyson cordless vacuums, there are a few different versions of the V15 Detect, with an extra word added onto the end of the name. Generally, it's the same base model, but sometimes there are differences in the range of tools included. That can make examining the pricing a little difficult, but to give us an idea, we'll be looking at what's available to buy direct from Dyson at time of updating this review. There may be other versions and different pricing available at other retailers.
In the US there's the Dyson V15 Detect, with a list price of $749.99. There's also the Detect V15 Detect Absolute for the same price (reduced to $599.99 at time of update). They're the same vacuum in two different colorways, and in this case even the tools included are the same.
The UK just has the Dyson V15 Detect Absolute, at a list price of £649.99, reduced to £549.99 at time of update. It's the same in Australia – just the V15 Detect Absolute, this time with a list price of AU$1,449.
Regardless of which iteration you go for, it's going to fall into the premium price category. It's generally a bit cheaper than its successor, the Gen5Detect (from $949.99 / £769.99 / AU$1,549 at list price). If you're hoping to score a discount, Dyson promo codes are rare, but we do sometimes see Dyson deals, especially around events like the Black Friday sales.
Value for money score: 4 out of 5
Dyson V15 Detect review: design
Upgraded motor compared to previous flagship model
LCD display shows info about dust collected and remaining run time
Wand can be removed to turn into a handheld
True to Dyson aesthetics, the V15 Detect is a beautiful machine to look at. Under the hood, the motor has been upgraded from its predecessor's (and was improved again for its successor), and generates 230 air watts of suction power. Other than that, it looks similar to the other modern V-range vacuums, comprising the motor, cyclone array and dust canister, in an in-line arrangement. We might have preferred a bigger dustbin on this model, but it's just the standard 0.2-gallon / 0.75L canister that's used in the Cyclone V10.
Inherited from the V11 is the swappable battery pack. This can come in handy if you've got a large home and would prefer to get the vacuuming done in one go instead of recharging at the mains – that can take a few hours (more on that later).
The V15 Detect looks similar to other modern V-range Dyson vacuums (Image credit: Dyson)
That battery, though, makes the weight distribution of the V15 Detect quite uneven. It weighs in at 3kg, but feels top-heavy, and it's tiring to use for longer cleaning stints. Our testers found their arms getting tired after using it for about 30 minutes, and they needed to keep switching hands regularly if they wanted to clean for any longer than that.
While later models (and, actually, the V12 Detect Slim that launched alongside the V15) switch on and off via a single-press button, but the V15 still uses a trigger that you need to keep continuously depressed. That, combined with the uneven weight distribution, makes the V15 even more of a workout for your arms. We found it less of an issue with the smaller and lighter V7 and V8.
The V15 can detect the size and amount of particles it's sucking up (Image credit: Dyson)
One headline upgrade on the V15 Detect and Detect Absolute is the addition of a tiny piezo sensor, housed within the vacuum's handheld unit, which can measure acoustic vibrations from microscopic particles as small as 10 microns. As dust and debris get sucked in, they reverberate off the sides of the vacuum, and the piezo sensor uses those changes in vibrations to measure not just the size of the particles, but also the number.
These are then graphically displayed on a one-inch circular digital screen. As you clean, you'll see the representation change in real time and, when it finally becomes static, you'll know there's nothing more for the vacuum to suck up.
A countdown clock shows you how much cleaning time you have left (Image credit: TechRadar)
Displayed below the graph is a countdown clock representing the remaining runtime, and it also displays the power mode you've chosen. There are three power levels, which can be selected using a silver button on the circular panel. Eco is a lower-suction mode, Boost is a more powerful mode for ingrained dirt, and Auto mode will intelligently adjust suction based on the floor type and how dirty it is.
All versions ship with two floorheads: a Digital Motorbar head (previously called the High Torque head) and a Fluffy Optic head (previously called the Laser Slim Fluffy head, and currently referred to as the Illuminated Cleaner Head in the UK... possibly because they couldn't trademark the 'Fluffy' name there).
The Digital Motorbar is a motorized head that features a couple of rows of 'teeth' that cut hair and fur into smaller pieces that get sucked up easily and thus prevent tangling around the bristles of the brush. Perhaps most exciting is the fact that this floorhead can monitor brush bar resistance to enable the vacuum to increase or decrease suction based on floor type, when used in Auto mode.
The Digital Motorbar head is designed to cut up hair and channel it straight into the bin (Image credit: Dyson)
The Fluffy Optic head is designed specifically for hard floors, and it has had a redesign from the one shipped with previous V-series models. The whole head has been slimmed down (although the footprint remains the same), but the major difference is that there's now an in-built laser diode (class 1, so it's safe for humans and pets). Thanks to a custom-designed lens (which is only marginally bigger than a grain of sugar), the laser emits light at an angle that reflects off solid particles to highlight them green. The light is activated via a small switch on the top of the floorhead, and the fluffy part is also washable, so you can keep it at peak performance.
The V15 easily transforms into a handheld (Image credit: TechRadar)
Like other Dyson cordless vacuums, you can convert the V15 Detect Absolute into a handheld cleaner by removing the main wand and attaching any of the other tools. Exactly which tools are included will vary depending on where you live and which iteration of the V15 you buy, but all are well-designed and useful.
The Hair Screw Tool designed specifically to tackle hair (Image credit: Future)
If you want to be able to deal with hair (human or pet) in upholstery or furniture, look out for the Hair Screw Tool. This uses the principle of an Archimedes screw, with a tapered design that directs strands of hair or fur (no matter how short or long) towards the narrow end. This is where the suction hole is, allowing whole locks to get sucked up into the bin. Even the bristles have been placed at an angle, to ensure there's no tangling at all. This tool was new with the V15, but is compatible with older models and available to purchase separately.
Design score: 4 out of 5
Dyson V15 Detect review: performance
Powerful suction; great on carpet and hard floors
Laser highlights dust that's invisible to the eye
Auto mode is an excellent, low-effort feature
Even though there are three power modes, the V15 Detect is just fine at its lowest setting. To see how it coped with different types of debris, our testers sprinkled fine dust, biscuit crumbs and cereal (separately) on both carpet and hard floor. We found that even in Eco mode, it sucked everything up with just one slow pass. It also did a pretty good job on a hair-entwined carpet in Eco mode.
During our testing, though, we found the Auto mode the best – it was like a set-and-forget option that handled hard floors and carpets alike. Additionally, when using the Digital Motorbar head, the suction changes reactively when surfaces change, increasing automatically when it senses a rug or carpet.
This graphical representation of what you're cleaning also works really well. All particles are divided into four categories, depending on their size, and as you clean a specific surface, you’ll find the bars rising. When they become static, you know that the area has been cleaned to the best of the V15 Detect’s ability. We're not sure this feature is strictly essential, especially after the initial novelty had worn off, although we did find it a good way to see when a floor had been cleaned properly.
The laser is great at illuminating dingy corners and edges (Image credit: Future)
The laser on the Slim Fluffy tool does exactly what it says on the tin, highlighting particles you normally wouldn’t see with your naked eye, either illuminating a bright green or creating visible shadows. One of our testers deliberately missed the edges of a room with hard floors, and then pushed the head towards these edges – with the green laser illuminated, they were shocked by just how much dust, which wasn’t previously visible, was on the floor.
Our other reviewer wasn't quite as sold on this feature, ultimately deciding it was a little superfluous. They found that dust tended to settle on the inside plastic of the tool, diminishing its ability to, well, shine a light. They had to repeatedly wipe down the inside of the Laser Slim Fluffy to get the best results, and after a while found themselves leaving it switched off, and relying on the display as an indicator of when there was nothing more for the V15 to suck up.
Even after what you think is a good clean, the laser tells you otherwise (Image credit: TechRadar)
Our second tester also found the floorhead a little tricky to swivel around. Because the Digital Motorhead can swivel a lot more, they found themselves using that one on hard floors as well – especially since it’s the only cleaning head that works with Auto mode.
(It's worth noting that the newer Gen5detect has a brighter laser, which is more visible in well-lit rooms, and the same tester was far more impressed with the upgraded version.)
Converting the vacuum to handheld mode and back again is simple – just remove the telescopic tube, clip on your desired attachment and you’re ready to go. However, the click-in battery pack does make the barrel feel heavier than older models like the V7, V8 and V10. Both of our testers found that holding aloft the V15 for more than a minute or two was quite difficult. The Gen5detect simplifies the process further by hiding a tool inside the wand, but that model is even heavier.
The V15 is a little heavy in handheld mode (Image credit: TechRadar)
We can't fault the V15 Detect's cleaning power in handheld mode, though. One tester used it to clean their car, and it sucked up all of the dirt and debris such as small stones and even a few leaves, along with human hair that had collected on the driver’s seat, with ease.
Unlike today's best car vacuums, which are designed specifically for this task, converted floor vacs like this one are typically quite bulky when used in handheld mode. Our reviewer struggled to fully clean under the driver and passenger front seats, as well in the storage areas on the center console, which frequently attract dust and debris.
The exact tools that are included with the V15 Detect and Detect Absolute varies by country and version, but you'll typically get a Crevice tool and a Combination tool, which we found were good for edges and narrow spaces.
Both of our review models came with a new-to-this-model Hair Screw tool. This works best as part of the handheld unit to remove pet and human hair off smaller surfaces like sofas, car seats or pet beds. It is possible to also use it on carpeted floors, but given it's small footprint, it's far more efficient to use the much larger Digtial Motorbar head for this task.
The tools included with one of our review models – note, these vary depending on which iteration you buy (Image credit: TechRadar)
Either way, the Hair Screw Tool is a marvelous piece of engineering. When testing it, we removed a clump of hair from a brush and placed it on a sofa – the anti-tangle tool sucked it all up without a single strand getting caught anywhere. It all curled up and got sucked right into the canister. However, we did find this tool could be a little less effective at collecting dust and dander from upholstery, when compared to the Mini Motorized head included with previous models.
Emptying the V15 Detect’s bin is easy. Once the wand and any cleaning attachments are removed, the red lever on the canister pushes open the lid and all that dirt comes right out in a single move.
One final performance element to discuss is noisiness. We were impressed with how much quieter the V15 Detect is in low-power settings as compared to some of the older V-series models. However, bump the suction mode to Boost and it hits 81 decibels – as loud as a truck trundling down a highway at 65kph.
Performance score: 4.5 out of 5
Dyson V15 Detect review: battery
Up to a full hour's cleaning on Eco mode; 18 minutes in Boost
Battery takes up to 5 hours to fully recharge
Swappable battery reduces interruptions to cleaning
On the lowest-powered, Eco setting Dyson claims the battery will last up to 60 minutes. That's the same as the V11, although because the suction power has been improved over that model, you should be able to clean more efficiently with the newer V15. On test, the claims were accurate – one of our review models managed a respectable 59 minutes, and the other clocked up nearly 61 minutes.
If you prefer the Auto mode, you'll get about 40 minutes of runtime per charge, which is enough for the general upkeep of a small two-bedroom house. However, because of the intelligent nature of this mode, runtimes will vary depending on the types of floors you have, and how dirty they are. Bump up to Boost and you'll only get about 18 minutes of power.
The Auto mode suited our testers best, but even the Eco setting has plenty of suction power to clean up a small mess. So the latter is your best bet to maximize on battery life. A countdown of how long you have left is handily available on the digital display.
If you want to be able to clean for longer than 60 minutes, then you’re going to need an additional battery pack. This would be handy in large family homes, because recharge times are long – our testers found a full recharge took between four and five hours.
[Update February 7, 2023: The Kobo Libra H2O is now only available in Australia and will now set you back AU$269.95, AU$20 more than its price on release.]
When the Kobo Forma launched in 2018, we had high expectations that it would give Amazon’s Kindle Oasis a run for its money. However, a slightly lackluster design and a jaw-dropping price tag changed our minds. Rakuten – the Japanese company that makes the Kobo ereaders – seems to have learned some lessons from that Forma feedback, and its new 7-inch Kobo Libra H2O introduces a range of refinements and changes that largely address the complaints.
While the Libra’s 7-inch screen makes it a fair bit smaller than the 8-inch Forma, it brings with it the latest E Ink technology, making it one of the fastest, most responsive ereaders currently on the market.
Add to that a refreshed user interface and a superior build than the Forma (plus the waterproofing and support for multiple file formats that Kobos are famous for) and you’ve finally got a very compelling competitor to the Kindle Oasis. Better yet, the Libra H2O is far more affordable than either the Oasis or the Forma.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Kobo Libra H2O price and availability
The Kobo Libra H2O was launched first in the US and Canada in September 2019 – just a couple of months after Amazon released the second-gen version of the Kindle Oasis – and it became available in other markets later that year.
Considering it shares a lot of the Forma and Oasis’ premium features, its biggest selling point is perhaps its price tag. The Libra H2O was available directly from the Kobo Store and from major retailers for $169 / £149 / AU$249 on its initial release. In comparison, the 2019 iteration of the Kindle Oasis will set you back $249 / £229 / AU$399, while the Kobo Forma is available for $279 / £239.99 / AU$429.95, though the Forma is no longer available in the US.
And while it’s possible to occasionally pick up the Kindle Oasis for a cheaper price directly from Amazon, you’ll be hard-pressed to find discounts on any of the Kobo ereaders.
As of February 2023, the Kobo Libra H2O is only available in Australia from Rakuten Kobo, with both the global and UK store no longer offering this 2019 ereader. It has also had a small price increase of AU$20, and will now set you back AU$269.95.
Design and display
Unlike more traditional tablet-like ereaders like the Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Aura One, the Libra H2O’s asymmetrical design closely resembles the Forma and the Kindle Oasis. One bezel is much thicker and wider than the rest, providing lots of space to comfortably and securely hold the device without covering the screen. A pair of physical buttons on that same bezel are used for page turning, and the ereader’s battery is housed inside this area of the chassis, with the microUSB charging port on the side of this thick spine. However, the difference between the Forma and the Libra is that the latter has a 7-inch E Ink Carta HD display (the same as the Oasis) as compared to the 8-inch screen on the Forma.
One bezel is thicker and larger than the rest, making it comfortable to hold and use the Kobo Libra H2O single-handed. (Image credit: TechRadar)
The Libra H2O and the Kindle Oasis also share the same screen resolution of 1,680 x 1,264, which translates to 300 pixels per inch (ppi), offering a beautifully sharp display that’s easy to read on. That said, the screen on the Libra H2O is not flush with the bezel (as it is on the Oasis) and is, instead, fitted into a recess within the frame.
This slight depth makes the text on the display appear sharper when compared to the Oasis, and also allows Rakuten to use Neonode’s zForce infrared technology – a plug-and-play sensor module used for touch and gesture control. And whether you’re selecting a word for dictionary look-up or typing in a Wi-Fi password during setup, the screen is supremely responsive – on par with the latest Kindle Oasis and a beat or two faster than Forma.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
The Libra H2O shares the patented ComfortLight Pro screen technology that’s found on all modern Kobos, and reduces the exposure to sleep-disrupting blue light. There are white and amber LED lights on the bottom of the screen that project light upwards and evenly across the display. Both color hues can be used either together or independently, with the brightness adjusted via a simple slider built into the touch interface.
And while there’s no ambient light sensor on board, you can set the lighting to change depending on your time zone. This change in color temperature happens even when the device is ‘sleeping’ and, if you happen to read a little in the afternoon, then pick it up only around bedtime, you will notice the light is warmer. That, we found, doesn’t happen with the Kindle Oasis, where you’ll have to manually change the brightness to adjust the light at night if you’ve just picked it up for reading in bed.
The Libra weighs 192g, which is 4g heavier than the Oasis, despite the latter’s metal finish. The difference is so small that they both feel the same in the hand, however the larger bezel (or grip) of the Libra H2O is slightly thicker than the Forma’s and its smaller screen size gives it a slightly stocky look.
The physical page-turn buttons are sturdy with a good feedback (Image credit: TechRadar)
Despite its plastic chassis, the Libra H2O looks a lot better than its more expensive sibling. Where there’s a joint on the thicker bezel of the Forma (between the buttons and the screen) for dirt to collect, the Libra’s front face is constructed from a single piece of plastic. Moreover, the Forma’s soft-touch plastic begins to look shiny and oily within weeks of use, leaving it looking grubby and old. The Libra’s harder plastic finish should mean it’s a little more resistant to this, although you can see fingerprints on the bezels if you have particularly oily or sweaty skin.
Another reason to recommend the Libra H2O over the Forma are the page turn and power buttons – on the latter they feel too squishy, while there’s a very good click and feedback on the Libra. That said, the buttons on the Kindle Oasis are easily the smoothest and best feeling of the three.
There's a microUSB port on the side of the thicker bezel for charing the device (Image credit: TechRadar)
There’s a recessed power button round the back of the Libra, and while it’s reasonably easy to locate just by feeling for it, it’s practically impossible to press if you’re using the Libra single-handed. It can also take some getting used to locating it without flipping the device over if you tend to keep rotating the Libra to read in different orientations, as it’s far from where your hand sits – on the opposite side to the grip, in the corner diagonally across from the Kobo branding on the bezel.
The Libra H2O retains its IPX8 waterproofing and can survive a 60-minute dunk in about 2m of water. However, you will not be able to use the touchscreen if the device is submerged, but the physical page-turn buttons still work just fine.
Battery life
The underlying hardware that keeps the Libra H2O ticking consists of a Freescale Solo Lite 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage – which, sadly, can’t be expanded as there’s no microSD card slot on board.
It matches the 1,200mAh battery that’s in the Forma which, we found was capable of powering weeks of constant reading. If you are an avid reader and spend pretty much all day doing just that, then you should be able to get about two weeks’ worth of use between charges. If, however, you’re a more casual reader and spend no more than an hour or two reading per day, you can likely push that to around four to six weeks with display brightness set to about 15%.
During our test period, we spent about three to four hours each day with the Libra H2O for over a week (with brightness set at 8%) and barely made a dent in the battery indicator on the screen.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Reading experience
Like the Forma before it, there’s a gyroscope inside the Libra H2O that’s capable of detecting full 360-degree movement. That means you’ll be able to read in portrait orientation with the page buttons either on the left or right, or in landscape mode with the buttons above or below the display.
Thanks to the latest generation of black-and-white E Ink technology, page turns on the Libra are almost immediate, whether you choose to use the touch interface or the physical buttons, and its smaller and lower-resolution screen make it a bit faster than the Forma in many areas. When you rotate the device, for example, the change in page orientation is a lot quicker than its bigger brother, and using the onscreen keyboard is more responsive and immediate.
The Forma’s physically larger display may not sound like a significant increase over the Libra (8 inches vs 7 inches) but, in the flesh, that difference is quite stark, and arguably makes for a more immersive reading experience on the bigger Forma – and that extra screen real estate means it can fit more words, so you’ll be turning the page a bit less frequently too. But the downside to the Forma’s bigger size is that it’s less portable – the Libra, conversely, is compact enough to fit into a smallish shoulder bag, satchel or handbag, so it’s more friendly for anyone who wants to read on the go.
The user interface remains largely unchanged but there are some new features (Image credit: TechRadar)
The Libra’s user interface is simple, with only one or two points of difference from the older models. You can quickly do all the basics, like adjust the font size, look up unfamiliar words, add annotations, and change margin and line spacing. However, the Libra H2O’s new version of the Kobo OS has added a few new features, which have selectively been rolled out to some other Kobo ereaders.
The new Kobo interface adds an improved ebook navigator that’s accessible by swiping up from the bottom of the screen or tapping in the middle of the display. The progress bar on the lower part of the navigation overlay makes it easier to scan forwards or backwards through a book and be able to find your place again. It also offers one-touch access to all your annotations, and a search box so you can look up a specific word or phrase through the entire book. You can even pull up a list of chapters from this new menu.
Move the scrubber and a preview of the pages appears on screen (although you will need to lift your finger off the slider before the preview is displayed), letting you decide if you’ve found the right page instead of taking you directly to it. After moving to another location within a book, there will also be a dot on the slider marking your last page, so you can get back to it easily with a single tap on the dot. We were already partial to Kobo’s UI and these improvements make it a lot more streamlined than the cluttered interface on a Kindle.
The new ebook navigation scrubber makes it easier to skim through your current read and find your previous place again (Image credit: TechRadar)
Another reason we’re partial to Kobo is because of its support for multiple, open file formats. You can read books in EPUB or PDF format, and there’s support for CBR and CBZ formats for fans of graphic novels and comics. You can even load MOBI, PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, TIFF and HTML files onto a Kobo device for viewing. Heck, you’ll even be able read plain old TXT files on a Kobo device.
If you happen to be a Pocket user (a website and browser plugin that lets you save articles for reading later), you can sign into your account on your Kobo and all saved articles will automatically be synced to your ereader. Dropbox also has an agreement with Kobo that allows users to wirelessly transfer files from a Dropbox folder to the Kobo device – a much easier way to get free or non-DRM books and documents onto your reader than laboriously plugging in a USB cable. (Ugh, such inconvenience!)
You can hold the Kobo Libra H2O in any orientation and read (Image credit: TechRadar)
Another major benefit of the Kobo OS is baked-in Overdrive support, which in supported countries can allow you to borrow ebooks from your local library – a very handy money-saving tool.
Verdict
Despite a plastic finish, the Kobo Libra H2O is a strong all-round ereader, particularly if you’re not keen on Amazon’s more locked-down Kindle ecosystem. What makes it a worthwhile upgrade if you’ve been using a more traditionally shaped ereader (like the Kobo Clara HD, the Auras, or even the Kindle Paperwhite) is its more comfortable and convenient asymmetrical design, with page-turn buttons that are perfect for single-hand use – whether that’s in bed, during your daily commute in a crowded train or bus, or while simultaneously sipping a glass of something naughty in the bathtub.
And while you can also get that with the Forma or the Kindle Oasis, the Kobo Libra H2O is significantly cheaper than either of those options, while also being notably more responsive than its bigger (and more expensive) sibling.
If you’re already a heavy user of Amazon’s ebook services like Prime Reading or Kindle Unlimited, then there’s perhaps still a case to be made for picking up the Oasis over the Libra. But for anyone else looking to buy an ereader with an asymmetrical design, Kobo's newest option is a compelling choice.
Competition
Amazon Kindle Oasis
(Image credit: TechRadar)
Amazon's Kindle Oasis has a much more premium feel than either the Kobo Forma or the Libra H2O, thanks to its metal body, but its luxurious reading experience doesn't stop there. There's Audible support on board, so you can listen to audiobooks, and Bluetooth connectivity means you can use a set of wireless headphones to listen. However, it will cost you more than the Libra H2O, support very limited file formats and will keep you locked into Amazon's Kindle ecosystem.
The Dyson V11 launched in 2019 and sits around the middle of the brand's stick vacuum lineup. It's not the most hi-tech model in the range, but when it comes to cleaning powers it's one of the best cordless vacuums I've tested.
One of my favorite features is the LCD screen, which provides a ton of useful information. It'll tell you which mode you're using and exactly how much cleaning time you have left in that mode, and it'll flag up issues like blockages and show you how to fix them.
The design looks and feels premium, but is rather top-heavy, which makes it a little awkward to use in handheld mode in particular. From a usability perspective, it would benefit from a lock for continual running, so you don't need to keep the trigger pressed at all times. It's also lacking an air intake slider on the main floorhead, which could be opened up to make the vacuum easier to push on deep-pile carpet.
Where the V11 shines is in its cleaning powers. In my group test of various cordless vacuums, it was one of the most effective at cleaning on carpet, and handled pet hair incredibly well, too. Despite being top-heavy, it maneuvers very well, and the battery life is excellent.
Price-wise, the Dyson V11 sits the in premium bracket. For some people, it'll be worth investing a bit more to unlock the special features that come with Dyson's best vacuums – I missed having automatic suction adjustment based on floor type, and a soft floorhead with a dirt-illuminating laser for hard flooring.
However, it's still an excellent vacuum when it comes to cleaning powers and battery life, and an especially strong recommendation if you spot it on sale. Read on for my full Dyson V11 review, including the results of my in-depth tests.
(Image credit: Future)
Dyson V11 review: price & availability
List price: from $629.99 / £429.99 / AU$1,199
Availability: worldwide, including US, UK and Australia
Launched: March 2019
The Dyson V11 launched in March 2019 and remains a key model in the brand's lineup. It's available widely around the world, including in the US, UK and Australia. At time of writing the list prices were from $629.99 in the US, £429.99 in the UK, and AU$1,199 in Australia. That puts it in the premium price bracket for vacuums.
There are various bundle options for the V11, with different tools included. There are also two different iterations of the main machine – one with 200AW of power, and another with 185AW of power. The more powerful option is usually called the V11 Advanced, but I have seen lots of inconsistency with Dyson vacuum names, so do check before you buy.
In the wider lineup of flagship Dyson vacuums, the V11 sits above the Dyson V8 (see how the two compare in my Dyson V11 vs V8 article). There's a bit of a step down in price between the two – the V8 is around $589.99 / £329.99 / AU$999, but is regularly heavily discounted.
Is it good value for money? Kind of. It looks and feels premium, features like the LCD screen are very useful, and the cleaning is generally excellent. However, I'd expect an Auto mode for this kind of money. Dyson promo codes are rare, but Dyson deals do crop up semi-regularly, and especially around major sales events like Black Friday.
Value for money score: 3.5 out of 5
Dyson V11 specs
Weight (no attachments):
4.5lbs / 2.06kg
Weight (with wand and main floorhead):
6.6lbs / 3kg
Bin size:
0.77L / 0.2 gallon
Max runtime:
60 mins
Charge time:
4hrs 30
Size (H x W x L):
49.7 x 10.5 x 9.8 in / 126.2 x 26.7 x 25cm
Filter:
Whole-machine filtration
Max suction:
185AW / 200AW
Modes:
Eco, Med, Boost
Submarine option:
No
Floorheads:
Motorbar
Dyson V11 review: design
Useful, intuitive screen provides information
Easily maneuverable but a little top-heavy and not that comfortable to use
Trigger-operated, with no lock for continual running
The V11 was the first of Dyson's cordless stick vacuums to have its motor, cyclones, dust cup and wand all arranged in a straight line. This in-line configuration is designed to improve suction efficiency compared to the previous setup.
There are three power modes – Eco, Med and Boost – and you cycle between them by pressing a round button. There's a useful screen that spells out which mode you're in, as well as how long you have left on the battery in the current mode and with the current attachment. This screen will also flag any issues and help you fix them – for example, it'll tell you if there's a blockage, and where the blockage is.
Testing alongside vacuums that used various symbols, LEDs and color-coding to convey information made me all the more appreciative of the V11's straightforward setup. It's intuitive to use and easy to understand, with minimal potential for confusion.
(Image credit: Future)
To switch the V11 on and off you use a trigger. In newer models, Dyson has swapped this for a one-press button. The trigger means you don't have to have a free hand to switch the machine on and off, although it can be annoying to have to keep it compressed during longer cleaning sessions – it's frustrating that there's no lock for continual running.
Thanks to the in-line configuration, you'll now need to remove the wand to empty the bin, which is a bit of a hassle. Once removed, you push down the big red lever open the bottom hatch and to shoot out the contents of the bin. This works well, although I did on occasion have to go in with my fingers to pull out clumps of hair or dirt.
(Image credit: Future)
There's one main floorhead – the Motorbar floorhead – which is suitable for use on either hard floor or carpet. The version that came with my test model did not have a slider to adjust how much air can get in, but other V11 models we've tested in the past have included one of these. A slider can be extremely useful on deep-pile carpet, to release some of the pressure and make the vacuum easier to push around.
Newer Dyson stick vacuums (the V15, Gen5detect and V16 Piston Animal) have the ability to sense how dirty your floor is and bump up or low suction as required, but that's not included here. If you want to maximize battery life, you'll need to switch modes manually.
(Note: it looks like a previous version of the V11 did have an Auto mode. Our original V11 review mentioned sensors in the floorhead that measure brush resistance as an indicator of floor type, and the ability to increase suction for carpet and lower it for hard floors. I've also spotted some press photos that show the vacuum with 'Auto' on screen. However, my review model has no such capability, and I can't see any mention of it on the various international Dyson sites.)
(Image credit: Future)
Like pretty much every modern stick vacuum, you can reconfigure the V11 to turn it into a handheld. Exactly which detail tools are included will depend on which bundle you go for, but expect a Mini motorized tool, Combi tool and Crevice tool at a minimum. I found the tools easy to add and remove, and everything felt secure once clipped on.
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(Image credit: Future)
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(Image credit: Future)
In terms of comfort, the V11 isn't the best. The main body of the vacuum is rather heavy, and the in-line configuration means this part is rather elongated. So while the overall weight is acceptable, it doesn't feel that balanced and is especially unwieldy in handheld mode. (This issue is worse in newer Dyson vacuums.) There's no padding or shaping on the handle to improve comfort or grip. However, the floorhead maneuvers well and pivots easily, and can lie nice and low to the ground for cleaning under furniture.
Design score: 3.5 out of 5
Dyson V11 review: performance
Excellent cleaning on carpet, but would benefit from an air intake slider
Strong cleaning on hard floor but other models more specialized for this
Superb at clearing of pet hair
During general use, I was very impressed with the V11's cleaning powers. I missed having an Auto mode, though – these are now fairly common amongst the vacuums I test, and it's reassuring to hear the suction amping up and down as I move around the house. I tended to default to Med mode, which probably means I was wasting battery life when cleaning my hard floors, as these don't really need much suction.
To gain a more objective view of the V11's cleaning performance, I ran a series of standardized cleaning tests. For these, I used a mix of dry rice and lentils to represent chunky debris, and dry, loose tea to represent fine particles. I also used dog hair from a friendly local dog groomer. I tested all the particle types on medium-pile carpet, deep-pile carpet, and a lino floor.
Carpet
The V11 performed extremely well on medium-pile carpet. It cleared every speck of tea in one forward pass in Med mode, earning a perfect score in this test. It handled the chunky rice and lentils almost as well – a few stragglers were left in the fibers, but the vast majority disappeared in one forward pass.
(Image credit: Future)
This vacuum is not quite as well suited to deep-pile carpet, but not because of a lack of suction. The V11 picked up both fine and chunky particles very efficiently on my deep-pile test carpet, but it was just a bit hard to push, and there's no air intake slider to lessen the strain.
Switching to Eco mode did help, and pickup was still very effective in this mode. If you have mostly medium-pile carpet or are happy to manually switch modes as you move onto deeper-pile carpet, the V11 is still a very solid choice. (For other options, head to my guide to the best vacuums for carpet.)
Hard floor
The Dyson V11 performed well in my hard floor suction tests. It cleared most chunky and fine debris with a single pass in Med mode, but did cause debris to pool when the floorhead was pulled backwards over the spillage. This is a common issue with vacuum cleaners, although Shark has come up with a solution that improves things considerably (the Shark PowerDetect Cordless features this pull-back technology).
The V11 is a solid choice for hard floors, but there are other models that are more specialized for this floor type. The best vacuums for hard floor have a separate, soft floorhead that's equipped with a laser to illuminate dirt that might otherwise be missed (examples include the V15 Detect and Dreame R20).
Pet hair
The Dyson V11 is one of the best vacuums for pet hair that I've tested. It cleared all the hair from the medium-pile carpet with a single pass in Med mode, and was very effective on deep-pile carpet too – I had to shift down to Eco mode to make the vacuum easier to push, but it cleared almost everything in one pass, leaving only a few rogue hairs.
(Image credit: Future)
My review sample didn't come with a small motorized tool, which is what you'd usually use on upholstery (there are two options in the Dyson range: the older Mini motorized tool or newer Hair screw tool). I used the Combi tool to remove pet hair from a velvet cushion, and it was incredibly effective, clearing everything in a single pass in Med mode.
The down-side of the Combi tool is that it has a relatively small suction area, so it'd take you a while to cover, for example, a whole sofa. Mini motorized tools are included with some V11 bundles, and available to purchase separately if not. However, note that I ran the same test using Dyson's Mini motorized tool with the Gen5detect, and it was decent but not as effective as the Combi tool.
Performance score: 4 out of 5
Dyson V11 review: battery life
15 mins in Boost mode, 33 in Med mode, 65 mins in Eco
4 hours and 30 mins to recharge
Battery removable and swappable
Officially, the Dyson V11 will last 60 minutes in Eco mode, but on test I managed 65 minutes. That's an excellent maximum runtime. As ever, more powerful modes will drain the battery much more quickly, but the V11 is much better than most on this front.
I think it's more important one to pay attention to is the runtime in 'medium' mode, because that's the one most people will be using most often. In my test, Med mode lasted 33 minutes of cleaning. As a rule of thumb, anything 30 minutes or longer is good.
In the most powerful Boost mode I managed 15 minutes of cleaning, which is very good. This mode is designed to be used only occasionally, for the toughest dirt. It's not meant for general cleaning.
The battery is removable and swappable, which is good news because this is often the first thing to fail on a cordless vacuum. Recharge is slow at 4 hours and 30 minutes.
You're unlikely to run out of juice unexpectedly because the V11 will spell out on its screen exactly how much cleaning time you have left – and it'll adjust timings depending on which tool you have attached and which mode you're in. (Interestingly, the timer doesn't just count down, but can jump about a bit.) If you press the mode button while the vacuum is plugged in, you can also see how much charge it is, as a percentage.
Battery life score: 5 out of 5
Should you buy a Dyson V11?
Attribute
Notes
Rating
Value
Premium price partly justified by high-end, user-friendly design and strong cleaning. At this price, I'd expect auto adjustment, though.
3.5 / 5
Design
Very maneuverable but a little top-heavy, and lack of lock for continual running is annoying. LCD screen very useful and intuitive.
3.5 / 5
Performance
Excellent on mid-pile carpet and superb at dealing with pet hair. Good on hard floor and would benefit from an air intake slider for deep-pile carpet.
4 / 5
Battery life
Long runtimes in Eco, Med and Boost, although lacks an Auto mode to maximize battery life.
4.5 / 5
Buy it if...
You have a hairy pet
On test, the V11 proved absolutely excellent at clearing dog hair from carpet. The Combi tool also removed hair from a velvet cushion incredibly efficiently.
You have lots of mid-pile carpet
The V11 performed especially well in my cleaning tests on medium-pile carpet, clearing fine and chunky particles with ease.
You want long runtimes
Sometimes, cordless vacs will have a long runtime in their lowest suction mode, but not it'll drop dramatically for the other modes. The V11 has a generous runtime in all three modes.
Don't buy it if...
You want maximum value for money
While far from the priciest Dyson, I think the V11 is a tad overpriced. The simpler, cheaper V8 delivers better bang-for-buck. Or, arguably if you're spending this much, you'd be better splashing a bit more cash and going for a V15 with its far longer feature list.
You have mostly hard floor
While the V11 performed well in my hard floor tests, there are other models that are more specialized for this. Look for a vacuum that has an extra, soft floorhead, and laser illumination to highlight hidden dirt.
You want something that's comfy in handheld mode
The V11 is a little top-heavy and difficult to wield in handheld mode, plus you'll need to keep the trigger compressed at all times.
Dyson V11 review: alternatives to consider
Model:
V11
V8 Cyclone
Dyson V15 Detect
Weight (stated):
6.6lbs / 3kg
6 lbs / 2.7kg
4.57 lbs / 2.07kg
Bin size:
0.77L / 0.2 gallon
0.54L
0.77L / 0.2 gallon
Max runtime:
60 mins
60 mins (check)
60 mins
Charge time:
4hrs 30
4 hrs (check)
4hrs 30
Size (H x W x L):
49.7 x 10.5 x 9.8 in / 126.2 x 26.7 x 25cm
45.7 x 8.3 x 9.8in / 116 x 21 x 25cm
49.6 x 10.5 x 9.8in / 126 x 26.6 x 25cm
Filter:
Whole-machine filtration
99.99% to 0.3 micron
Whole-machine filtration
Max suction:
185AW (200AW for Absolute)
150AW
240AW
Modes:
Eco, Med, Boost
Low, Med, Max
Eco, Auto, Boost
Submarine option:
No
No
Yes
Floorheads:
Motorbar
Motorbar
Digital Motorbar, Fluffy Optic
Dyson V8 Cyclone
The V8 Cyclone is an updated version of the bestselling V8. It's simpler than the V11, with no info screen and a less premium build. However, on test it still proved excellent at cleaning, and it's much cheaper than the V11.
The model that sits above the V11 is the V15 Detect. It's pricier and heavier, but adds a slew of extra features, including automatic suction adjustment and a separate, soft floorhead with a laser, designed specifically for hard flooring.
For two weeks, I used the Dyson V11 as my main vacuum cleaner. I used it regularly, in both handheld and floor mode, in a four-story home with a mixture of carpet, tiled and engineered wood floors. During this period I focused on usability, assessing how intuitive and comfortable it is to use. I also got a general feel for its cleaning performance on different floor types, as well as how effectively it handles hair (my own, armpit-length hair and that of my black Cocker spaniel).
To get a more objective view of this vacuum's cleaning powers, I also ran a series of tests in our testing studio. For these, I used loose dry tea to represent fine particles, and a mixture of dried rice and lentils to represent chunky debris, as well as dog hair from my local groomer. I tested the V11's pickup on medium-pile carpet, deep-pile carpet and lino. I also used the detail tool to clear hair from a velvet cushion.
[Update February 7, 2023: The Kobo Clara HD is no longer available in the US and has had a small price rise in both the UK and Australia, now priced at £119.99 / AU$189.95.]
Competing against the Amazon Kindle brand is a difficult task, but Kobo is attempting to do so with its new Kobo Clara HD, which has a similar specs list and price to the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite.
If you want an alternative to the big A’s biggest selling ereader, the Kobo Clara HD is here to offer you all of the same features but with a slightly different design and reading experience.
Below we'll talk you through everything we like and loathe about the Kobo Clara HD, plus everything you need to know about it.
Kobo Clara HD price and release date
The Kobo Clara HD price is £119.99 / AU$189.95
On sale in the UK and Australia
Currently unavailable in the US
The Kobo Clara HD's price has recently increased by £10 / AU$10 and is now £119.99 / AU$189.95, though the device is no longer available in the US. This aligns with the price of the 2018 Kindle Paperwhite, which comes in at £119.99 / $129.99 / AU$199.
While you can still pick up the Kobo Clara HD in both the UK and Australia, it's predecessor, the Kobo Clara 2E was released in September 2022 and is available for $139.99 / £129.99 / AU$229.95 in those two regions and as well as the US.
You can get it now in the UK and Australia from a variety of retailers including Kobo's manufacturer, which is called Rakuten. You can also buy it in the UK from a variety of other retailers including John Lewis and WHSmith.
Design
Lighter than the Kindle Paperwhite
Strange looking rear that won't appeal to everyone
Comfort is one of the most important elements of an ereader, especially when you'll likely be reading books for long periods.
So you’ll be glad to know the Kobo Clara HD is comfortable to hold for long periods of time without it becoming too heavy in the hand.
At 166g this is a similar weight to the standard Kindle model, and quite a bit lighter than the Kindle Paperwhite. That's pretty much ideal.
We found it was easy to hold for long periods of reading, but also wouldn’t blow away in the slightest gust of wind. The size of the device also means it's easy to hold in one hand.
There’s still room for a 6-inch screen though, which is the most common size on ereaders at the moment. All of Amazon’s range sports a 6-inch display, but if you want something a little larger there’s always the Kobo Aura One, which comes with a 7.8-inch display instead.
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Despite the 6-inch screen, this is still a very compact device with dimensions of 157 x 111 x 8.3mm. It managed to fit in the back pocket of men's jeans, and it's easy to slot this into your bag ready for your commute.
Basically, it's a lot easier to pick up, carry and read the Kobo Clara HD than it is most of George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series in paperback.
It’s made of plastic, so doesn’t feel as premium as the latest version of the Kindle Oasis, but it’s easy to grip, with the rear of the device having an odd effect that helps your fingertips hold on.
We don’t fully know how to explain it, but there are lots of little dots that looks similar to the pointillism style of artwork. It sort of feels perforated, but it's made of solid plastic rather than a pliable material that feels soft to the touch.
It may be comfortable to hold, but the effect on the back doesn’t look great compared to many other ereaders - including Kobo’s own range - so don’t expect this to be the best looking device on the market from the rear. It's also not waterproof - for that, consider the Kobo Aura H2O.
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On the front there’s the Kobo logo emblazoned just below the screen. There are then thick bezels around the edges of the ereader, and these don’t sit flush to the screen like on the Kindle Oasis.
The bezels are quite raised away from the screen, which doesn't look great. Those bezels give you lots of room to rest your fingers though.
You won’t find yourself tapping on any buttons around the edges while you're reading, as there’s only a power button on the bottom of the device that sits next to a micro USB charging port.
Display
There's a 6-inch Carta E Ink display that's 300 pixels per inch
Easy to read in bright sunlight and has customizable brightness too
On the front of the Kobo Clara HD there's a 6-inch Carta E Ink touchscreen display that is great for reading books, as it comes with the standard 300 pixels per inch, which we’ve seen on lots of other devices including the Kindle Paperwhite.
The screen is the perfect resolution for ebooks and even suits if you plan to read graphic novels on the display, but note this will only show them in black and white.
If you want to read comics in color, you'll have to opt for a reading app on a tablet.
The Kobo Clara HD has the perfect size display though, and you're easily able to navigate the books you're reading as well as having enough room to read at the same time. For example, you can hang your finger over part of the display ready to change page without having to stop reading and slowing down the action.
You can easily change the brightness on the display to make it easier to read in bright sunlight, or you can leave it on the auto-brightness mode, which we found worked well.
Kobo's own ComfortLight PRO technology will also change the color temperature and hue of the display depending on what time of day it is.
You can set your bedtime within the brightness section on the ereader and it will then switch to a more natural lighting that's easier on your eyes before you go to sleep. It turns down the blue light in the screen and brings forth the warmer, redder colors which are proven to help your brain switch off at night.
We had it set to come on at 10pm and it would immediately switch to a redder tint that's easier on the eye. You can also turn this on manually if you want, and there's a slider, so unlike some other products you can decide how much you want it to do.
Battery life
Should last for weeks without charging
You can recharge with micro USB at the bottom of the device
Ereaders generally have great battery life, lasting for around a month or so, and we’d expect a similar amount of time from the Kobo Clara HD.
We’ve used the ereader for a week now and found it dropped in battery by around 26%. With around an hour or so of reading a day you'll likely find this ereader to last roughly three weeks to a month, depending on how bright you have the display and whether it's connected to Wi-Fi.
Kobo has yet to provide an official estimate of how long the Kobo Clara HD will last from a single charge though. If you want to charge up the ereader, you’ll plug it in using the micro USB port at the bottom of it.
We found this will take a few hours to charge, but you won't have to do this that often so it's not much of an issue.
Software and Kobo Store
Comes running Kobo's own software that's easy to set up and use
Kobo Store is more limited than competitors, but still extensive
The Kobo Clara HD comes with the company's own software on board, and it's easy to get your head around and set up.
Once you've got the Kobo Clara HD set up, you can find all of the menus you'll need by tapping on the three horizontal lines in the top left corner of the display.
Here you'll be able to find shortcuts to your books, your saved articles, the Kobo Store (so you can buy books) and much more. You'll also find the Settings in here, where you'll be able to set up Wi-Fi on your ereader.
The Clara HD will automatically sync with your Kobo account, so if you've used an ereader from the company or bought books on Kobo before you'll get them all automatically connected to your account.
You can then just tap on them to download. Scrolling through books is just an easy tap on the left or right of the display as there are no buttons here to help you navigate through the menus.
When you're in the book, you can tap at the top of the display to view different elements of it. The percentage read appears in the top left, while the bottom right is where you can change the size of the font or skip to different chapters.
The software on the Kobo Clara HD is accomplished and is perfect for what it sets out to do. It's simple and easy to use, so you shouldn't have many issues with reading on the Clara HD.
The easiest way to read books on your Clara HD is buying them directly from the Kobo Store, but there are a few other routes you can use to get titles. You can upload EPUB files by connecting the ereader to your computer, and some libraries also allow you to borrow ebooks too.
Different libraries have different methods of supplying ebooks, so it's best to speak to your library about how to upload titles to the ereader.
It's worth noting the easiest way to read on your Kobo Clara HD is through the official Kobo store. You can buy and download them on the official website, connect them to your account and then access them from the ereader, or you can buy them directly on the device.
The Kobo Store is certainly more limited than the Amazon Kindle store. Kobo has over 5 million books on offer though, so you should be able to find the top-selling titles you'll want for the Clara HD, but more specialist titles may be missing here.
We tried to find ten popular books that people in the TechRadar office had read or planned to read and found that 9 out of 10 were available on Kobo's store. If you have particular favorite genres or authors, we recommend taking a look to see if they are on the Kobo store before buying this.
One thing worth pointing out is that the Kobo Clara HD comes with 8GB of storage. The Kindle Paperwhite only has 4GB, while if you want more than 8GB you'll have to opt for the 32GB and much more expensive Kindle Oasis.
That means there's lots of space on the Clara HD for ebooks, and Kobo expects there to be enough space for around 6,000 titles. It's unlikely you'll have that many, but it's good to know you've got enough space for as many as you want.
There's no 3.5mm headphone jack or Bluetooth audio on the Kobo Clara HD, which means you won't be able to listen to audiobooks on the ereader.
Considering this is a feature introduced on the Kindle Oasis and standard Kindle, and that Kobo launched its own audiobook service in 2017, we were hoping this device would be capable of playing titles. It can't though, so you'll have to opt for your phone and the Kobo app if you prefer the spoken word.
Verdict
There isn't much development in the ereader space at the moment, but that doesn't mean it's not a great time to upgrade your ereader if you bought one a few years ago. It's also a great time to get one if you've never owned one.
The top-end of the ereader market is where the more interesting developments are happening right now. That said, if you're just planning to read the odd book for an hour a day on your commute or you want a device you can load up with titles to be entertained by on your holiday and don't want lots of fancy features, the £110 / $130 devices on the market will suit your needs.
It's hard to compete against the behemoth that is Amazon in this space, but Kobo has done it here, offering a remarkably similar product for a similar price.
Who's this for?
This is for anyone who wants an ereader but doesn't need any top-end features such as a premium-feel metal design or audiobook integration. If you're looking for a mid-price device, it would be hard to go wrong with the Kobo Clara HD.
It features a great-looking 6-inch display that has the useful ComfortLight PRO features, an easy to hold design that's comfortable in the hand and tons of storage too.
The fact the Clara HD doubles the Kindle Paperwhite storage will be great for some as well, but it's very unlikely the average reader will have 6,000 ebooks to fill this up.
The software from Kobo is easy to use too, so this is perfect for anyone just starting out with an ereader who wants to get into reading ebooks instead of paper ones.
Should you buy it?
The Kobo Clara HD has a remarkably similar specs and feature list to the latest Amazon Kindle Paperwhite model, so your decision comes down to which design you prefer and which book store suits you better.
You do have twice the storage here, so if that's important for you go for the Kobo over the Kindle.
We do recommend inspecting both book stores though to ensure the sort of titles you'll want to read are covered by the option you go for.
If you're happy with both, it's then time to look at the design, see which one you prefer and make your decision that way.
