IGN

Over 70 years have passed since the events of Killing Floor 2, and the Horzine Corporation continues finding new ways to make our lives miserable. Few things are worse than the relentless pursuit of Zeds, especially now they’ve been augmented into something worse, yet Killing Floor 3 refines the existing formula to deliver a significant leap over its predecessor. What’s here so far feels flashier, stylish, and it’s shaping up to be a bloody good time.

Going hands-on before next week’s closed beta test, I was joined by fellow critics and Tripwire’s staff for some intense co-op matches. The Stronghold leaves a good first impression as your new base, letting you access facilities while exploring. It’s a more immersive approach that doesn’t place everything behind menus, though that remains an option for quick convenience. Once you’re ready, choose your location and prepare to head out.

Survival remains your main goal, and the six specialists provide an appealing range of play styles to suit different tastes. Blasting through Zeds with a shotgun as the Engineer feels great, as does slicing them into finer pieces as the Ninja. I personally prefer giving Zeds a quick cremation with Firebug, each character has compelling perks and versatile loadouts at the start.

Killing Floor 3 offers great evolutionary changes over Killing Floor 2, though it doesn’t change the fact that defeating zombie waves is an idea done to the absolute death. You’re still clearing through waves as they appear across a series of well-designed expansive maps, while stocking up on goods between missions from trading stations feels cleaner and more streamlined. The core idea remains intact while boasting significantly improved visuals, boosted further by welcome user interface changes.

Tripwire’s brought back the Massive Evisceration and Trauma system, or M.E.A.T., for added visual flair to these enjoyably brutal kills. Special abilities are useful in a pinch when Zeds suddenly surround you, though a lengthy cooldown means you can’t rely on this too heavily. Dismembering heads and limbs alike soon becomes utter carnage with the suitably excessive blood splatter as you tear down these well varied enemies. Grotesque acid spewing Bloats still haunt these maps, Sirens are terrifying screamers, and who on earth thinks to give these cursed creatures a chainsaw?

I’m also enjoying how Killing Floor 3 implements its light narrative through assignment challenges, something Tripwire aims to use for an evolving story. You can safely ignore these if all you want is plow through more hordes, yet giving you optional criteria to hit during a mission provides that little extra for those who’d like it. Granted, the endless hordes can become relatively irritating as you try searching for particular parts, though it’s a welcome inclusion regardless.

I’m also pleased by the horde balancing depending on your team size; playing with a group of four or playing solo all feels adequately scaled. My big concern is that the action will become stale during longer sessions, so I’m pleased Tripwire’s introduced gameplay modifiers that kick in across rounds.Changing criteria like ensuring only crawlers try to attack you ensures these threats remain sufficiently varied.

There’s a lot I’ve yet to see, so I’m hesitant to make any definitive calls yet on Killing Floor 3. The launch game features seven maps, three difficulty modes, six specialists and different levels for customizing your character, and Tripwire plans post-launch similar to Killing Floor 2. So far, I’ve only tried three maps and half the specialists, while the store didn’t include finalized item pricing.

Still, it’s a promising start. Plowing through Zed hordes is nothing particularly new, yet Killing Floor 3 feels like it’s doing enough to compellingly refresh this familiar format. Whether it can maintain that momentum long-term is another matter, but I’m ready for more when Killing Floor 3 launches on March 25 for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5. The closed beta kicks off next week from February 20 to February 24.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lets players act how they like in the medieval open world but not without consequences, and it turns out being an absolute arse all the time unlocks a secret, utterly dire ending.

Warning! Spoilers for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 follow:

GamesRadar spotted an X/Twitter post from @NikTekOfficial that shows what happens when you “commit multiple crimes” in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. “This is impressive,” they said of the scene that sees protagonist Henry executed.

Guards will accost Henry if he commits too many crimes, presenting him with an option to pay off his sins or continue the chaos by fighting his way free. The amount set is seemingly always too high, however, as Henry can only say he can’t afford the price and is instead thrown in prison.

If you commit multiple crimes in Kingdom Come Deliverance II, you will get a full execution cutscene. This is impressive! pic.twitter.com/m5IX7hUQ1J

— NikTek (@NikTekOfficial) February 5, 2025

A near two minute cutscene then shows Henry — who can exist as a hero of the realm beloved by all in other playthroughs — sitting in a cell awaiting a march to the gallows. He’s then taken away and jeered at by a crowd as he’s escorted to the hangman’s noose. Looking sad all the while, Henry’s life ends as the wood is kicked from under him and the game over screen appears . “You have been executed for your crimes,” it says.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 arrived February 4 as a story driven RPG that looks to emulate the atmosphere of 15th century Europe. It’s proved incredibly popular so far, having almost immediately sold one million copies, and it also earned high praise from critics.

In our 9/10 review, IGN said: “Armed with excellent melee combat and an exceptional story, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is one part sequel and one part coronation, bringing a lot of the original’s ideas to fruition.”

Getting started in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? Check out our advice on Things to Do First and How to Make Money Fast Early to get you started, or head to our Walkthrough hub for a step-by-step guide to the main quest. We’ve also got guides for the myriad Activities and Tasks, Side Quests, and even Cheat Codes and Console Commands.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Crytek has announced a round of layoffs affecting 60 of its 400 staff.

In a tweet, Crytek said that while Hunt: Showdown is growing, the company could not “continue as before and remain financially sustainable.” The developer put Crysis 4 “on hold” late 2024 and had worked to shift staff over to Hunt, reducing costs and operating expenses in the process, but the layoffs became “inevitable,” affecting 15% of its workforce.

The layoffs hit staff across Crytek’s development teams and shared services. The company said it will offer severance.

Last year, it emerged that Crytek had worked on a battle royale-inspired Crysis project codenamed Crysis Next when very early gameplay hit YouTube. The footage revealed third-person shooting in a basic warm-up arena, with Crysis’ trademark abilities and sound effects layered on top.

Crytek never announced Crysis Next, which was canceled in favor of Crysis 4 ahead of its announcement in January 2022.

Crysis is a first-person sci-fi shooter series known for its impressive visuals, cool nanosuit powers, and open-ended gameplay. The first game in the series, released in 2007, was often used as a PC benchmark given the demands it would make of PCs at the time. Crysis was so demanding that it spawned the now infamous catchphrase, “But can it run Crysis?” which was used in the years following the game’s release to deliver a verdict on a PC spec.

The last mainline game in the series, Crysis 3, came out in February 2013. Crytek released remasters of the originals in recent years, but fans hadn’t heard more about Crysis 4 since its announcement and teaser three years ago.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Former Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick believes Universal’s 2016 adaptation of Activision Blizzard’s Warcraft was “one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.”

In a candid interview on Grit, Kotick — who led Activision Blizzard for 32 years before stepping down in December 2023 — suggested the movie also impacted the development of World of Warcraft as the film was a “distraction” to the team and one of the reasons veteran designer Chris Metzen left the company in 2016.

“Chris Metzen was — and is, to me — the heart and soul of creativity of the company,” Kotick said.

“He left, got burnt out. They made World of Warcraft the movie, which I thought was a terrible idea [but] they had signed the deal before [Activision] had owned the company.

“It took a lot of resources and distracted [developers at Blizzard],” Kotick added. “You think about all these people who make video games for a living, and now they have the chance [to], like, make a movie. They’re helping with the casting, and they’re on the set, and… it’s just a huge distraction.

“Our expansions were late. You know, patches weren’t getting done on time. And the movie was terr— it was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.”

While fans of the Warcraft movie may never get a sequel, in 2020 director Duncan Jones opened up about his cancelled plans for a trilogy. The overall arc for the trilogy would have seen “the fulfilling of Durotan’s promise to give his people a new home,” according to Jones.

While Warcraft underperformed in North America, grossing a measly $47 million domestically, it went on to temporarily become the most successful video game adaptation of all-time internationally, largely due to its popularity in China. Overall, Warcraft brought in $439 million for Legendary Pictures, which largely deemed it a failure after not breaking even on its massive budget.

Claiming Metzen “took it very personally” before he left to start a boardgame company, Kotick added that he eventually “begged” the designer to return on a consultancy basis.

However, Metzen was unimpressed by plans for the next two expansions, suggesting they needed to be “redone” entirely.

Asked if he spoke to Metzen much after his return to Blizzard, Kotick said: “Hardly ever. What am I going to tell Chris Metzen about game design, you know? I just wanted him to do his thing.

“The last expansion, he had his fingertips all over it. It’s excellent. The next one is going to be great.”

That last expansion certainly impressed us, too, securing a 9/10 in our World of Warcraft The War Within review. We called it “the best World of Warcraft has been on all fronts in many years, making this two-decade-old MMO feel fresh and thrilling again.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Alan Wake 2 has exceeded 2 million sales worldwide.

That’s up from the 1.3 million copies sold between October 2023 and March 2024, when developer Remedy hailed the horror sequel as its fastest-selling game ever.

In its latest financial report to investors, Remedy said the milestone — coupled with the release of The Lake House expansion and Alan Wake 2 Deluxe Edition — now means the game has “started to accrue royalties” after recouping its development and marketing costs.

Looking ahead, the studio also teased that Control 2, which is being developed in partnership with Annapurna, “has been finalizing the production readiness stage” and will enter full production at the end of February 2025, along with Max Payne 1&2 Remake, which is also “making steady progress in full production.”

Similarly, FBC: Firebreak, Remedy’s multiplayer Control spin-off, continues in full production following a “successful” closed technical test in December, which saw external players test matchmaking and back-end services. While no firm release date was confirmed, FBC: Firebreak will be self-published by Remedy later in 2025.

“We are in a great place to begin our strategy period and have set targets we are confident in reaching,” CEO Tero Virtala said.

In IGN’s Alan Wake 2 review, we awarded the sequel an impressive 9/10, calling it a “superb survival horror sequel that makes the cult classic original seem like little more than a rough first draft by comparison.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy streams on Peacock beginning Thursday, February 13, and opens in theaters outside the United States on February 14.

Even the cheeriest romantic comedy ending can leave us with a nagging question: What follows happily ever after? After all, there are no neat, easily satisfying endings in real life – a truth hit home in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the fourth in a series of rom-coms whose heroine has seen her share of “happily ever after.” It’s the first entry in the franchise to be undercut by a note of genuine sadness, leaving Bridget (Renée Zellweger) the widowed mother of two small children: 9-year-old Billy (Casper Knopf) and 4-year-old Mabel (Mila Jankovic). While director Michael Morris’ take on Helen Fielding’s novel of the same name also has a totally unexpected and novel touch of childlike wonder and magic, there’s no avoiding that this chapter in Bridget’s story is in large part about grief. She’s older and a little wiser and, though the movie ditches some of the usual silliness as a result (for the better perhaps, after the misfire that was 2004’s Edge of Reason), this is more than made up for by a whipsmart script from Fielding, Dan Mazer, and Abi Morgan.

With her husband Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) gone – though not Firth himself, who plays the late Mr. Darcy as Bridget’s imagined companion at some especially poignant moments – Mad About the Boy jokes that its protagonist is back where she started in Bridget Jones’ Diary. She’s still susceptible to bad advice, with her trio of pals Shazzer (Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson), and Tom (James Callis) reiterating their favorite solution to life’s many problems: sex. As the endearing everywoman navigates the era of Tinder while simultaneously juggling childcare, all the things the series is known and loved for – relatability, mishap-packed charm, picture-perfect London locations, and great running gags – are in plentiful supply. She even finds herself at the epicenter of a classic love triangle, caught between the affections of swoony, part-time ranger Roxster (Leo Woodall – the “boy” of the title) and the more sedate new teacher at her kids’ school, Mr. Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Much as a calamitous meet-cute in the park with Roxster and stomach-suctioning date-night knickers might sound like well-worn ground for the series, Mad About the Boy ascends to fresh levels of sly self-awareness and crackling comedy – with the bonus of parenting jokes that rival the heights of About a Boy or the BBC sitcom Outnumbered. In fact, young Mabel gets some of the best lines, and her comic timing often outstrips that of her older co-stars. (Her main quip is asking every man she encounters if he is going to be her “new daddy”.) Having Mabel and Billy’s perspective in the mix leavens some of the heavier passages; the enigmatic owl who takes up residence outside of the kids’ bedroom window takes much of the credit there.

There is also a sizzling energy between Zellweger and her latest love interest Woodall, and the movie is refreshingly unjudgmental about the 27-year age-gap wedged between them. If anything, one of its few disappointments is that their relationship could use more screentime. We don’t get much backstory for Roxster, a character who claims to be more responsible than your average 28-year-old but then wildly waltzes in and out of Bridget’s life more than once. Mr. Wallaker is shown to be the more reliable prospect in comparison, with Mad About the Boy drawing obvious parallels between his brand of uptight rationalism and Mark’s no-nonsense approach to life. The heat Ejiofor generates opposite Zellweger can’t quite compare to the uncontrolled flames she and Woodall ignite, but smaller sparks do fly.

Alongside these bright new stars in the Bridget Jones universe, fan favorites from earlier in the series make encore appearances, including Emma Thompson as Bridget’s snippy doctor and Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones as her madcap parents. Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), miraculously raised from the dead after being killed off in Bridget Jones’ Baby, appears to offer a trace of the franchise’s smutty, slightly outdated 2000s humor while he occasionally mucks in with babysitting duties. But most notably there is a newfound gentleness in this story about loss. Mad About the Boy recycles some some musty material on the topic, but treads carefully to ensure it’s meaningfully used: a lesser movie would have over-sentimentalized Billy’s storyline of a son struggling after his father’s death or cynically used his plight simply as a means to bring Bridget and Mr. Wallaker together. Whatever room is made for schmaltz, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy always stays (one sickly musical number notwithstanding) just on the right side of artlessness and sincerity.

Hold onto your butts because this seemingly idle Wednesday is actually brimming with exciting bargain opportunities. I’m particularly all about From’s mech-tastic Armored Core VI going for 61% off and Persona 3 Reload for 42% less. And I’ll always holler the praises of a cut price Red Dead 2 (especially when it’s at a new historical low, pardner). Without much more ado, let’s all discover the best Aussie deals for Wednesday, February 12, below:

This Day in Gaming 🎂

In retro news, I’m getting an Armacham Black Ops Pyro to light 16 candles on a cake baked for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. I loved this nerve-shredding (at the time) sequel that continued the supernatural suspense story of Alma “just call me the chick from The Ring” Wade.

The tense atmosphere and jump scares from the original were ramped up with more intimidating enemy types and actual, physical interactions with ol’ Beelzebedhead herself. All talk aside, my most enduring memory of this whole thing was spamming an automatic nail gun to hang dudes like picture frames with 14mm depleted uranium spikes. How did that ammo go out of style?

Flexispot is running an early President’s Day deal on its workhorse Flexispot C7 ergonomic chair with built-in footrest. It’s normally listed at $429.99, but there’s a $201 off coupon code “CVSGFG7229” that drops it to only $229. We generally like the Flexispot brand because it includes electric standing desks and ergonomic chairs with solid build quality and a plethora of practical features at a fraction of the price compared to other more well-known models. We rated the Flexispot C7 is the best budget-friendly ergonomic chair and the Flexispot E7 Pro as the best overall standing desk of 2024.

Flexispot C7 Ergonomic Chair with Footrest for $229

When it comes to sales events, Presidents’ Day might not be on your radar. It’s just another federal holiday that happens to be right in the middle of February. Nevertheless, retailers are starting to drop prices on plenty of items ahead of the weekend. The Amazon Presidents’ Day sale may not be as big as Black Friday or Prime Day, but if you’re looking to do some online shopping right now, we’re seeing some of the best prices of the year so far.

If you want to take a look at the full sale, Amazon has an official Presidents’ Day landing page with all of its discounts. To help you find the very best savings within this, however, I’ve sorted out the popular products that are actually good deals. Each discount featured below is either the lowest price, or matches the lowest price it has been all year.

The Best Amazon Presidents’ Day Deals Today

A good portion of the best deals in this Amazon sale are on Amazon devices. The deal on the Kindle Paperwhite is the first discount we’ve seen since Black Friday, which especially notable since Kindle deals in general are few and far between. The Apple Watch SE discount we covered last week as part of the Valentine’s Day sale is still noteworthy at its current price. There’s also a pretty good sale on sleeping Pokémon plushies that brings these adorable toys down to their lowest price of the year so far.

There are generally a lot of discounts that Amazon has brought onto its sale page that we’ve either seen before in 2025 or were much lower during sales events last year. If you’re looking to save as much money as possible, it’s probably worth waiting for better price cuts on any bigger purchases.

Should You Shop the Amazon Presidents’ Day Sales or Wait?

One of the advantages Presidents’ Day sales have are the time of year they take place. If you look at our calendar of upcoming sales events, there aren’t really any big shopping holidays again until Memorial Day weekend at the end of May. So while a lot of these discounts will likely be better during main events like Prime Day and Black Friday, if you’re looking to buy something right now, this sale is likely your best bet.

That being said, you can still be smart about your purchases. If you don’t need a Kindle or a TV right this moment, it’s still worth waiting until later in the year. You can also check historical pricing on CamelCamelCamel to make sure any of the deals listed are actually worth it. This is a helpful trick we consistently use to ensure we’re recommending things at the right price point.

More Presidents’ Day sales live now

Sony has never been one to shy away from pushing the boundaries of home theater innovation, and with the Bravia Theater Quad, the company is making its latest bold statement in the world of immersive audio. The Theater Quad is a four-speaker ensemble that takes the plug-and-play simplicity of a soundbar and blends it with the spatial prowess of a traditional home theater setup, making for a system that is both physically and audibly different from anything else you can buy today.

It’s also more expensive than most flagship offerings on the market today. But for its gargantuan $2,500 retail price, the Quad creates a soundstage that, thanks to its Dolby Atmos capabilities, spatial sound technologies, and overall detail, is one of the best we’ve heard to date. It’s not perfect, especially when it comes to bass. But it’s an experience that you truly have to hear to believe.

Sony Bravia Theater Quad – Design and Features

First, let’s address the elephant in the room. The Bravia Theater Quad is physically different from any competing soundbar system on the market today. Instead of an ensemble built around a long, hefty soundbar with most of the system’s drivers tucked inside, the Quad features four distinct speakers – two accompanying your TV up front, and two filling out the rear of your listening space. Each of the four speakers are wall mountable, but will otherwise work best sitting on speaker stands, so be sure to factor that into how these fit into your room.

The previous version of the Quad, Sony’s HT-A9, had a cylindrical look to its quartet of speakers. With the Quad, Sony opted for a flattened-out iteration that presents a far more sleek aesthetic that blended subtly into our living room. The drivers inside the enclosures are also new and improved, moving from a two-way design to a three-way setup that includes a dedicated woofer, midrange driver, and tweeter. Plus, each of the four Quad speakers has its own upfiring driver for Dolby Atmos content and other 3D formats.

There is no included subwoofer in this system, which seems like a miss at this price point (and from a performance perspective – more on that later). The good news is that the Quad is compatible with either of Sony’s wireless subwoofers, the SA-SW3 or the larger SA-SW5, though that will cost you an extra $400-700 depending on which model you opt for. Additionally, each speaker in the Quad communicates with the system’s control box, which connects to your TV via HDMI and only HDMI. If you have an older display that needs an optical connection, you are out of luck with the Quad.

Setting the Quad up was just as simple as getting a soundbar system up and running. Each speaker needs to connect to a power outlet, and the control box needs that aforementioned HDMI connection to your TV or display. From there, though, the speakers automatically sync with each other. All that’s left is to download the Bravia Connect app to adjust aspects of the system to your personal tastes. The only bothersome part of the set up for some may be finding spots to place each of the Quad speakers; you won’t be able to put the front speakers on your TV stand like you would a soundbar, and if you don’t have speaker stands, you may have to get a bit creative with placement.

As Sony’s flagship home theater system, the Quad has absolutely no shortage of features in store. It uses Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology to virtually place sound around your entire listening space, something we’ll talk more about in a moment. It supports Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and 360 Reality Audio, and has streaming support for Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, and Bluetooth. Plus, when paired with a compatible Sony Bravia TV, the Quad can use its Acoustic Center Sync technology to outfit the TV’s speakers to act as a center channel for the system. There’s tons more to explore in the realm of features – including the Quad’s video format support for 4K HDR, 8K HDR, and Dolby Vision – but we’ve buried the lede long enough. Let’s dive into how the Quad sounds.

Sony Bravia Theater Quad – Performance

I originally unboxed and set up the Bravia Theater Quad in my office, only to realize that this system needed a lot more room to breathe. So I relocated to my living room, which afforded the ability to properly place the system in the space – the front speakers to the left and right of my TV, and the rear speakers at the back of the room. I set up the Quad in the Bravia Connect app, ran the speakers through the app’s Sound Field Optimization feature (which adjusts the speakers to the environment they’re in), and went to work.

Cards on the table: the Quad beats every soundbar system I’ve ever heard. The three-way speakers are incredibly balanced and extremely detailed, and the soundstage that the system creates is absolutely unmatched. Part of it chalks up to being able to space out those front speakers to foster a wide, encompassing front stage, a feat that has proven far harder to achieve with soundbar systems. Perhaps the ace up the Quad’s sleeve, though, is the masterful way it virtually places sound. I watched The World’s Greatest Beer Run – which is starting to become a favorite for testing Dolby Atmos, both for its compelling audio mix and because Apple TV is one of the few remaining streaming services that doesn’t reserve Atmos content for its highest-paying subscribers – and was blown away by how the Quad adds three-dimensional sound to Chickie Donohue’s travels through the heart of the Vietnam War. Atmos aside, the Quad handles standard surround sound far better than every soundbar I’ve tested. With four speakers and Sony’s 360 Spatial Sound Mapping technology, it uses the entire space to virtually send sound from movies like Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire all around you with powerful precision, with the sounds of the mega monsters brawling it out perfectly matching their path across the screen. It’s hard to quantify with words, but it’s an experience that will change the way you think about surround sound.

On the music side of things, I employed Spotify Connect, my wife, and a living room that now fully resembles a demo space to do a bit of a blind listening taste. Using Spotify, I asked Mrs. Woodard to close her eyes as I swapped between the Quad, the Sonos Arc Ultra, and my personal home theater system consisting of Fluance towers, a Yamaha receiver and a JL Audio subwoofer. I didn’t tell her which was which, but instead auditioned tracks like Chris Stapleton’s Joy of My Life, Macklemore’s Good Old Days, and Jelly Roll’s I Am Not Okay among other songs on all three systems in succession until she felt confident to try and identify each sound source. She got the Arc Ultra right, since its great, but more centralized sound sticks out compared to the other two. But she mistook the detailed, full sound of the Quads for our bulky tower speakers, and ultimately said that the Quad’s sound signature was above and away her favorite of the three.

I tend to agree, with one caveat. The Quad’s big missing puzzle piece is bass. It tries, and earnestly so, but it falls significantly behind in the bass department to both the Sonos Arc Ultra and my personal home theater. A dedicated subwoofer would definitely fill the gap here, and the Quad is compatible with both Sony’s SA-SW5 subwoofer and its smaller SA-SW3 counterpart. But that would mean a substantial added cost to a system that’s already one of the most expensive routes you can take, leaving me to wonder why such a high-end option is notably incomplete.

Sony Bravia Theater Quad – The Competition

For as unique of a product as the Quad is, it’s a bit difficult to pin down who, exactly, this powerful lineup of speakers is standing against. Sony almost undoubtedly built the Quad to be a soundbar killer, and it wears that hat extremely well. I prefer the sound of the Quad to both the Sonos Arc Ultra and Samsung HW-Q990D, although the bars themselves are punching out of their weight class in this instance. I would wager to say that pairing a Sonos Sub 4 ($800) and a pair of Sonos Era 100 speakers ($470) to the $1000 Ultra would create a system that rivals the sound quality of the Quad and easily eclipse it in terms of bass. But for the sake of standalone systems? It’s the Quad, and it’s not close.

Sony may have another, slightly more unintended competitor in this space: the traditional home theater system. As a longtime fan of the “old school” home theater, complete with dedicated speakers, a receiver, and a subwoofer, I came into testing the Quad skeptical of its ability to justify its price, which (give or take) rivals the total cost of my own system. I left testing having told my wife that if we could commit to the Quad, I would happily sell off my theater system and get rid of the towers that may not be the most aesthetically pleasing part of our home decor. The Quad is that good, from the way it blends detailed vocals and impeccable instrumentals in music to the unmatched way it places sound in your space for movies and TV. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sound of my system. But it simply cannot do what the Quad is capable of. If Sony added a subwoofer output to its control box to allow folks to use their own subwoofer, I would be selling my speakers as we speak.